Silent Prey

by TM Simmons

  She kicked the rabbit aside and grabbed the arrow first, then scanned the trees one more time, searching for any glimpse of Nenegean hiding close by. At another shout from above, she cautiously backed away from the snowmobile, then started up the hillside.

  By the time Radin was emerging from the deep hole, the other four men in the search party were gathering around the two snow sleds at the foot of the hill. Keoman handed a small bundle to one of them and climbed up to where Radin was untying the rope from beneath his arms.

  "Did you find both children?" Channing asked.

  "Yes. You need to go on down there and look them over. I didn't see any sign of frostbite, but you're the doctor."

  She left him with Radin and, in her excitement, half slid, half scooted down the hillside. When she approached Gagewin, the tribal chairman opened his jacket to show her a little girl.

  "Lark's asleep now," he said, tears in his eyes and a catch in his voice. "She was crying at first, but I think she's too tired now."

  Channing hurriedly examined Lark, but as Keoman had indicated, she didn't see any frostbite. Or any other sign of injury for that matter. She tenderly patted the child on the head and her grandfather zipped up his jacket again.

  "I have the other child," Grant said, and Channing quickly inspected him. Again, the little boy appeared fine except for tear tracks on his dirty face and sleeping in an exhausted state.

  "How on earth did she keep them warm?" Channing asked.

  "Keoman said they were in an inner chamber," Grant answered. "It was actually warm there. Plus she had some blankets she had taken from somewhere. There were empty milk and water containers in the chamber, and a nearly dead cooking fire in the outer cave."

  Channing pointed at the dead rabbit. "I think she was going to cook some rabbit for them."

  As Keoman walked over to them, she told both him and Grant, "Nodinens is wrong about Nenegean not having any human emotions. She hasn't forgotten she was once a mother."

  "I wouldn't let that thought take hold of you," Keoman cautioned.

  She stared up at him. "It's true. She was here."

  "Here?" Grant asked.

  "Where?" Keoman demanded, his expression deadly as he stared at the trees. His face softened only a little when he asked, "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine. And I'll have to tell you what happened later. Right now, let's get these children back to their parents. I hope you've already called to let them know they're safe."

  "Our radios can't make it out that far," Keoman said. "As soon as we get back to our trucks, we'll use one of the CB's or sat phones." Before he started toward his snowmobile, he told her, "And yes, you will tell us exactly what happened here, Channing. So don't forget one word of it."

  Chapter 23

  Walt had been with a different search party, and Gagewin handed Lark over to her father as soon as they got back to the vehicles. Channing didn't try to hide her tears as the little girl's father clutched his daughter and buried his face in her hair. Around them, men loaded their snow sleds onto trailers, even some of these stoic males glancing over at where the small party of grandfather, son and granddaughter stood in their reunion.

  As soon as the men were ready to leave, Gagewin called, "We will give thanks!"

  The men who had already gotten into their trucks returned to stand around Gagewin. He raised his hands toward the sky and sang. Channing still didn't understand his words, but she clearly comprehended the joy and gratitude pouring from Gagewin's heart.

  The Old Words, as Channing had heard Nodinens call them, reminded her that she wanted to talk to Nodinens about what Nenegean had said. As soon as Gagewin finished his prayer of thanksgiving, she hurried to Keoman's truck and climbed onto the trailer, where the snowmobiles were latched down for the ride. Removing her medical bag from the luggage rack, she carried it into the truck. By the time Keoman and Grant joined her, she had written down how the words Nenegean had said sounded phonetically.

  Still holding Annalise's nephew, Grant asked, "Does anyone know this little lad's name?"

  "Kirby," Keoman said. "I was at the B&B when Hjak was talking to Ilka, Annalise's sister-in-law."

  "Good," Grant murmured. "I think he's starting to rouse, and it will help if I know his name."

  "Do you want me to take him?" Channing asked, but Grant shook his head. Instead, she helped him stretch and latch the seatbelt around the two of them, then returned to her notepad.

  "What are you writing?" Keoman asked as he pulled onto the narrow county road that led back to Neris Lake.

  "The words Nenegean said to me," Channing answered.

  He glanced quickly at her, then returned his attention to the road. "She actually spoke to you?"

  "Yes," Channing replied, then went ahead and told them what had happened when the entity approached her while Radin was trapped in the hillside. While she spoke, she looked over at Grant once in a while. She could tell he was listening, but his main focus was on cuddling the little boy. He stroked his hair and hummed a soft lullaby, interspersing Kirby's name into the lyrics. His ministrations were working, since the little boy settled back down to sleep. There would be plenty of emotional interaction as soon as they got him back to Ilka, so Channing was glad the tyke was resting now.

  She blocked the surge of emotion that tried to surface. Grant had been a wonderful father. Their love for Rose had been the reason their marriage could not survive the guilt they both suffered. She couldn't think about that right now, though.

  After she finished her tale of meeting with Nenegean, she noticed Keoman's white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and the grim set to his lips. He didn't comment on what she had said, but Grant did.

  In a soft voice, Grant told her, "You were damned lucky. Gagewin told me what happened to that man named Alan."

  His comment made Channing recall that Nenegean had also talked to Keoman when she attacked him. He obviously understood some of the Old Words. She started to ask him if he recognized the words the entity had spoken to her, but one look at his face told her he wasn't in the mood for conversation. Instead, she slipped the notepad into her jacket pocket and remained silent until they got back to the Lake Sunrise Bed and Breakfast.

  Ilka's joyous reunion with her son was everything Channing had anticipated. She took Kirby from Grant and carried him to a lounge chair, where the toddler finally woke up. He stared into his mother's face, then grabbed her around the neck tightly. Ilka clutched him, ignoring anyone else in the room as she uttered both nonsense and heartfelt love words to her son.

  Annalise was in the room with them. However, Ilka made no move to show her son to her sister-in-law, nor did Annalise approach.

  "I already have my bags packed and in the car," Ilka said to the room at large as she stood with Kirby in her arms. "I'm leaving now, before something else happens to my son."

  She glanced around the room, not including Annalise in her gaze as she said, "Thank you for returning my son. I guess, anyway. He wouldn't have been taken by that monster if I hadn't come here. And you can bet, I'll never be back."

  Channing tried to think of something to say in response, but Ilka didn't seem interested in anything they might offer. No one tried to stop her as she strode to the entranceway and lovingly zipped Kirby into a tiny snowsuit, then put his boots on. Within five minutes after her son had been returned, Ilka donned her own warm clothing and scooped Kirby into her arms.

  When Ilka opened the door, Hjak stood there, his hand poised to knock.

  Ilka attempted to veer around him, but Hjak blocked her path.

  "Wait a minute, Ma'am," Hjak said. "I need to speak to you."

  Ilka glared at him and shoved past. Over her shoulder, she said, "Annalise has my phone number. Call me in four hours, after I get home."

  Hjak didn't try to stop her again. He stared as she got in her car, until Annalise said, "Do you want to pay my heating bill, Sheriff? If not, close the door."

  Instead of coming in, Hjak shut the d
oor and left.

  "Can you give me a ride back to my cabin, Keoman?" Channing asked. "Or maybe I should check in at the clinic first."

  "Daisy or Papaw would have called you if they needed anything," Keoman assured her. "But we can detour by there if you want."

  Followed by Grant, they walked toward the door. It dawned on Channing that they should say goodbye to Annalise. However, when she peered back, the parlor was empty.

  ~~~~

  As Keoman had indicated, Channing wasn't needed at the clinic. He drove her and Grant on to the resort.

  When he parked in front of Channing's cabin, Grant opened the passenger door. "I'm going to crash on your couch until Nodinens has my cabin ready, Channing. If that's all right. Call me in a couple hours. There's still a monster to find."

  He left the door open, evidently assuming Channing would get out also. However, as she unsnapped her seatbelt, Keoman grasped her arm.

  "You shouldn't have to go out with us again," he said when she stared at him in question. "But if you do, you're going to stay with me."

  Warmth stole through her at the concern on his face. They'd barely met, but already she had formed an opinion about him. A good opinion.

  He was quiet, but beneath that exterior calm lay a power that could come out when needed. He cared deeply for others. There were depths to this man that it might take a woman a lifetime to uncover.

  Where did that thought come from? she asked herself as they studied each other. We haven't even had a first date yet.

  "If you remember," she said in a teasing tone, "I'm the one who had to rescue you from Nenegean the first time."

  "I remember," he said. "And if we didn't need your medical skills so badly, I'd try to make you go back to Texas until it was safe up here again."

  "Safe again?" she repeated. "From what I understand, two dangerous entities have rampaged and killed people up here the past five months. One is still on the loose. But even when you get rid of it, according to what people say, things come in threes."

  He shook his head and dropped his hand. "Please don't even think that."

  She was still close to him, as she had been since they left the search area. With her seat in the middle, whenever he had gone around a curve, she had been pressed against him even tighter. At one point, he had laid his right arm along the seat back and driven with his left, perhaps to give them both more room in the seat. Or … perhaps because their close proximity to each other was a distraction.

  That right arm was behind her head again.

  He was the first serious threat to the resolute ice block around her heart since her divorce. Her grief over Rose was the hardest thing she had ever endured. Loving and losing hurt too much.

  Over the years, she had tried — with notable success at times, lack of it at others — to distance herself from the highs and lows her patients suffered. She'd vowed to never again let her heart engage to the point where losing something or someone shattered her.

  Sex, though…. Lately she sometimes woke at night with a yearning for the sort of fulfillment she could only find with a man. Her body was far too young to put the need for sexual release in an ice block similar to the one around her heart. She had even bought herself a couple sex toys. However, although the release worked for a week or so, it lacked something necessary to fill that hollow inside her that wasn't there after she and Grant made love.

  Keoman would probably fill that hollowness very well, should it go that far between the two of them. But they had an evil entity to eradicate. Now wasn't the time to allow any sort of relationship to develop.

  Or maybe it was ….

  Keoman slowly bent his head. He didn't touch her face at all, as though giving her a chance to refuse the kiss, should she want to. Instead, she lifted her chin to meet him halfway.

  His lips were different than Grant's, the bottom one a tad fuller than the top. The feeling they created in her didn't stay solely on her lips. It crept down her neck. Her nipples had barely stiffened in reaction when he lifted his head.

  He didn't speak. Instead, he silently got out of the truck.

  "Well, shit," she said before she could stop herself. "If that's how he does foreplay, I'd probably orgasm a dozen times before he entered me."

  Laughing at her inane silliness, and glad for the tension relief, she followed Keoman. He walked to the resort office without looking back.

  Channing found the elderly woman where she had left her: at the computer. Nodinens had already heard about the positive search results. Keoman had mentioned after they left the bed and breakfast that several of the searchers had CB radios in their trucks. They had spread the word over the air, and the phone grapevine had done the rest.

  Nodinens looked up in greeting when Channing came in, then went back to what was evidently a conversation between her and Keoman.

  "This is the area you and Gabe were in," Nodinens said, pointing at the computer monitor. "And you say Gabe found something there?"

  Keoman pulled a small twig from his pocket. "Doesn't that look like dried rose hips on this?"

  It did, Channing noted, and Nodinens agreed when she responded to Keoman. Keoman laid the twig on the desk and pointed at the monitor.

  "As near as I can figure, since I'm not really that proficient with maps, it was right here."

  Channing moved behind the two of them for a clearer view. The screen showed a landscape of some sort, although there was no snow covering the ground. A legend on the bottom of the screen indicated different colors, and they showed up faintly on the monitor. The pale green near the bottom darkened as it flowed towards the top of the screen, and she realized it indicated elevations. Keoman laid his finger two-thirds of the way up the screen, on the left.

  "And here —" He moved his finger downward. "Well, a little further back to the left."

  Nodinens clicked her mouse, and the scene shifted.

  "Yes," Keoman said. "About there. That's where the cabin would have been. Where Gabe found the rose hips."

  "Something out of place in the landscape," Channing mused as she recalled their search instructions.

  For a split second, Keoman's eyes on her softened. He quickly turned back to the computer.

  Nodinens sighed. "The problem is, now that she knows you've discovered the area of her lair, she probably won't return."

  "Do you think she can reason that well?" Keoman asked.

  When Nodinens didn't answer, Channing did. "She can definitely reason."

  Nodinens swiveled her chair to face Channing. "Now, Channing…"

  Channing pulled her notepad from her jacket pocket. "Do you know what these words mean, Nodinens?"

  Nodinens kept her gaze on Channing for another moment, studying her face. Then she took the notepad. "Nimaamaa," she read. "Abioojiiyens. Where did you hear these words?"

  "From Nenegean," Channing said. "At least, that's how they sounded phonetically."

  "You recall them correctly."

  "What do they mean?"

  After a second's hesitation, Nodinens said, "The first one is the old word for 'mother.' The other one is 'baby.'"

  Channing clasped her arms, as the entity had. "Nenegean did this when she was saying those words. She was nearly as close to me as it is from here to the door over there. She was asking me if I was a mother and if I had any babies, wasn't she?"

  Channing expected Nodinens to denigrate her explanation, but the elderly woman surprised her. Contemplation creased her face, and she asked, "Nenegean did not make even one move to scare you? Act like she wanted to attack?"

  "No," Channing assured her. "She was leery of the consecrated arrow that Radin had given me. It was on the seat of my snowmobile —"

  "You forgot to carry it with you?" Keoman interrupted with a glare.

  "I was getting the rope from Radin's sled to help him out of that hole," she defended herself. "Now, can we get back to Nenegean?"

  Nodinens mused, "Yes, we need to do that. Evidently, this monster is differ
ent than we thought." To Keoman, she said, "Remember how the windigo was drawn to Kymbria?"

  "There was a reason for that," Keoman replied. "The windigo was actually an ancestor of Kymbria's."

  "What?" Channing asked. "That thing would have had to be a human being once for that."

  "Nenegean was once human, also," Nodinens told her. "Remember? We told you her story."

  "I …" Channing pulled one of the chairs behind the desk over and collapsed into it. "It didn't dawn … I mean … Damn, it made more sense when I thought she was a mindless creature."

  "Do you hear yourself putting human traits on her?" Nodinens asked. "Calling Nenegean 'her,' as you would a woman?" Nodinens shook her head. "It is hard for me to understand this."

  "This is going to make it even harder to find her, isn't it?" Channing asked.

  "I am afraid so," Nodinens replied. "We have been treating her as we would an animal, something evil. Acting on its instincts, as the wild animals do. Now, we are going to have to deal with something that has a mind …." She stared back and forth between Keoman and Channing. "And yes, perhaps emotions."

  "She's an old being, also," Keoman added. "She may be more intelligent than we are."

  "She did not live all those years of her existence," Nodinens denied. "She was buried, so she wasn't gaining experience."

  "Can you know that for sure?" Channing asked.

  Nodinens evaded Channing's gaze by staring back at her computer. "I cannot. I was wrong about her not having the same feelings as we do. So there may be more things we do not understand correctly."

  Chapter 24

  Torn, Nenegean wandered around the now vacant chamber where she had kept the children. She was glad they had been reunited with their parents. They had cried so much. However, as long as evil existed in the midst of the people around them, they would not be safe. Perhaps their mothers would watch over them more closely now. She would keep the little bear and food, though, just in case.

  A flash of color caught her attention, and she looked behind one of the stones on the side of the cavern. The man who had carried the children out of there — that one who thought himself so important — had missed the little girl's mitten. When Nenegean had carried her here, she had only worn the one. But the cavern had been warm enough to keep the little girl's hand from suffering any hurt.