by Vella Munn
“You’ve been watching me that closely?”
“You know what I mean. Like I said, if I was you, I’d be digging through old military records, asking for anything and everything the general might have written while he was here. Instead, when I took you into the archives room, all you were interested in was what we had on the Modocs.”
Stomach knotted, she frantically asked herself if there was any way Fenton could know she’d been with Loka. But only she had proof of Loka’s existence, didn’t she? With a sinking feeling, she remembered her first conversation with Fenton, when he’d waxed eloquent about the possibilities for exploiting rumors of a ghost warrior. Did he suspect, or know, that they weren’t rumors? Had he actually seen Loka—with her?
Belatedly she forced herself to concentrate on what Fenton had just said. She told him that as an anthropologist, of course she was interested in Modoc culture and after seeing the caves where the Indians had been forced to live, her curiosity had only grown. Not once did he take his eyes off her, and she had the sinking feeling she was rattling on, protesting too much. “You’re right,” she finally wound up. “I do want to see what’s in storage that pertains directly to General Canby. I hope to do that today.”
“Hmm. By the way, you were at your place yesterday, weren’t you? Alone.”
Alone. “What are you talking about?”
“I looked out that way a couple of times. I knew you hadn’t left because your car was still here. I kept trying to find time to come out, but yesterday was insane.”
“I imagine it was,” she said despite her dry throat.
“The thing was, I swore I saw someone out there.”
“What?” Hoping to make a point, she glanced back at the cabin. It wasn’t visible from here. “How could you—”
“Binoculars.”
The way he said the word, smug and not at all ashamed of what he’d done, she didn’t know whether to beg him not to say anything about what he might or might not have seen or pull a bluff. “You couldn’t have been as busy as you said you were if you had time for that. What were you doing, spying on me?”
Smiling a little, he shrugged. “I make it my business to know everything that’s going on here, especially if I think there’s a way I can use something to enhance the park’s resources, and my career.”
What did he mean by that? She debated demanding he explain himself, but decided she didn’t want to tip her hand by appearing to be too interested in his innuendos. “I’m glad you told me that,” she said instead. “It gives me the opportunity to tell you as clearly as I can that I have no intention of trading on my relationship with General Canby, and I expect you to do the same.”
“Is that so?” He leaned forward, his smile friendly, his manner intimidating. “Somehow I don’t believe you, Tory. You’re an ambitious young woman. You wouldn’t have gotten where you are in your career if you weren’t. Something’s got your interest here—something maybe we both know about.”
Don’t say a word. Don’t give anything away. “Something?” she asked, hating herself the moment the word was out.
To her frustration and concern, he merely gave her another of his noncommittal shrugs. She might be imagining it. Given her emotional state, she couldn’t trust her reaction to anything he said or did, but it seemed as if his gaze had become more knowing, more superior. As if he knew something but wasn’t willing to tip his hand, yet.
Loka, be careful!
“So,” he said after too long a silence, “when are you going to start looking at what of General Canby’s has been preserved? Or maybe you have other things to do, other places to go today.”
“What do—” As a rough and yet familiar sound reached her, she stopped in midsentence. Looking down the road, she recognized Black Schonchin’s old pickup and let out a silent sigh of gratitude. The old Modoc man would keep Fenton occupied for a while, hopefully long enough for her to decide what she had to do—and how much danger Loka might be in.
“Black,” Fenton called out as the Modoc got out of his truck. “You remember Tory Kent, don’t you? The anthropologist?”
Black nodded but said nothing. He walked toward them, his gait slow and dignified. Despite her suspicion that Fenton had something up his sleeve, she couldn’t help imagining what it would be like if Black Schonchin and Loka could meet. Somehow, damn it, she had to make Loka realize that he could trust. That he could share his vast treasure of knowledge with someone.
Like her? But because of her, his freedom might be in jeopardy.
Fenton said something to Black about wanting to keep the Modoc council apprised of everything that was being planned for while the senator was here. He certainly hadn’t intended to exclude the Indians; he just hadn’t seen this brief visit as something that would interest them.
“I’m not a fool,” Black cut in. “If you can possibly turn the lava beds into your own private triumph, you will. I spent last night on the phone with the council’s attorney. He’s looking into the park’s bylaws and standards to ascertain whether we can block you from turning this visit into a media circus.”
Tory wanted to applaud Black for his direct, no-nonsense approach. Although he gave the impression of being a quiet and somewhat backward man, obviously he was anything but. And Fenton was getting that message loud and clear.
Glaring, Fenton sputtered that he didn’t appreciate having the Modocs question his motives when he was working day and night to assure that park funding was maintained.
“The only thing you’re interested in is what you get out of it,” Black interrupted. Holding up his hand to keep Fenton quiet, he swept his gaze over the horizon. “The spirits of our ancestors have been disturbed. They sense danger to our land. Owl warns of death, as does Coyote.”
“What are you talking about?” Fenton asked, his attention not on Black but on Tory.
“Whites call it a mirage, a trick. But we Modocs know different. He is here.”
“He?” Tory managed.
Black barely glanced her way and didn’t answer her question. She knew all too well what he thought of her profession. Still, she couldn’t pretend the conversation didn’t concern her. “You said something about this—this—warrior the other day.” Again she struggled for a calm tone. “Are you saying you actually saw him this morning? Or thought you did?” she amended, belatedly putting doubt in her voice.
“He was watching me this morning. I looked over at Captain Jack’s Stronghold as I drove by and saw him. He was waiting for me.”
Emotion rolled through her, briefly making it impossible for her to speak. Loka must have heard Black’s truck approaching and deliberately revealed himself. She could only guess at Loka’s reason for reaching out to the old Modoc. Maybe her argument had been responsible. Maybe he had decided on his own to risk crossing the bridge from past to present.
“What are you trying to pull, Chief?” Fenton asked. Sarcasm fairly dripped from him. “Wait a minute. I get it. You’re going to turn this spirit-warrior business into a big joke, aren’t you? Or maybe—” His gaze narrowed. “It’s been your people all along. Is that it? You’ve got some of your men parading around like savages to stir up the visitors? No.” He turned toward Tory, looking confused now. “No, that doesn’t make sense. The last thing you’d want is some cheap tabloid showing up.”
The way he was looking at her made her blood run cold. “All this mumbo jumbo is giving me a royal pain,” Fenton said. “Until you’ve got something concrete, I’ll thank you to stop trying to throw your weight around. Wanting Spirit Mountain closed off because it was once considered sacred—you’re going to have to give me a lot more than some babbling about seeing a Modoc ghost on it, or anywhere else, before that’s going to happen. Wait a minute. Wait just a damn minute. I’ve got it!” He laughed harshly. “Miss Kent is more than an anthropologist taking a busman’s holiday. A hell of a lot more. Go on, Tory. Tell him who you are.”
Knowing what he was going to say, she could only wait. It
didn’t take Fenton long. “This young lady’s related to General Canby. In fact, he was her great-great-grandfather. Maybe there is a ghost around because her ancestor killed him.” He laughed again. “What do you think of that?”
Chapter 15
Eyes not at all dimmed by age bored into her. She’d thought that only Loka’s eyes had the power to turn her inside out, but maybe Indian eyes, no matter whose they were, would always touch her like that.
“You carry the general’s blood in your veins?”
The softly asked question rocked her because Black’s words so closely paralleled what Loka had asked. Did Black live in two worlds, one of attorneys and legality, the other primitive and basic, and maybe enduring? She started to nod, then decided to give him a more honest answer. “Maybe that’s why I feel so drawn to the lava beds. The first time I came here, it was as if I’d waited all my life to see this country.”
“The first time?”
“Last winter. It was just for a day, but it whetted my appetite for—”
“Last winter?”
“Yes,” she said, wondering why that mattered. “I really didn’t have the time. It was pushing it to come at all, but—”
“Tell me,” Black insisted. “When you came, what did you feel?”
Not what did she see, but how her emotions had been touched. Beginning to understand, she answered as honestly as she could, because on this quiet morning nothing mattered as much as learning the truth. Being part of the truth. “I’d bought some Indian flute music in Klamath Falls. I listened to it all the way out here, so I was feeling pretty tuned in to the whole Native American experience. It was cold. I remember a brisk wind and wondering how long it would be before it started to snow. There weren’t that many other people around. A tour bus, I remember seeing that.”
Black was watching her so intently that she felt as if she were being scraped raw by him, but the past had her in its grip and she couldn’t temper her words.
“I was going to go right to the headquarters so I could get oriented, but the sky was so incredible, clouds building on the horizon, the wind flattening grass and bushes. I wanted to know what it sounded and smelled like so I got out of my car.” She scanned her surroundings, seeing, not today’s clear sky, but last year’s clouds. It had been a feeling, something she might never have words for. All she knew was that she’d felt empty and had somehow known the feeling would go away only if she experienced, really experienced her surroundings.
“I heard birds, thousands of them. They were in and around the lake. I wondered if it had been like this back during the war. I hoped so, because the birds gave me a feeling of contentment, and I wanted the Modocs to have felt the same way. The air—” Tears gathered inside her, but she was helpless to fight what she was feeling. “I’ve never smelled anything so clean, so pure. Once the tour bus was gone, there were absolutely no sounds of civilization.”
Black hadn’t once taken his eyes off her. She spoke to him, her heart exposed. “I turned so I didn’t have to look at my car. It was so easy to pretend that I’d stepped back in time. I—I know it sounds crazy, but I reached out with my mind looking for something, anything that might remain of my ancestor. Some sense of what he’d experienced and felt. I didn’t find that.”
“What then?”
Black’s question was gentle. It gave her the courage to continue. “Something. An essence, a presence. Later I told myself it was because I was standing where Modocs had stood for thousands of years and my imagination had gotten away from me. But for a little while…I felt as if I wasn’t alone. That someone was watching me.”
Exhausted, she fell silent. She still couldn’t take her eyes off the elderly Modoc, but she wasn’t trying to connect with him. Instead, she faced herself and something she’d denied for the past six months.
For as long as she’d been at the lava beds, she’d felt part of a force greater than herself. Ancient and powerful. Living.
“You,” Black said. “You brought him back.”
“Him?” Fenton spat the word. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Black jabbed a gnarled but still powerful finger at her. “She knows.”
Tory was standing near the barred entrance to Fern Cave before she forced herself to go back over what had happened. Even though it had been a good two hours ago, she still shook from the impact of what Black had said. No matter how much Fenton had pushed, the Modoc had refused to explain himself. Not that she’d needed him to.
Yes, she could admit now, she did know.
That’s why she’d come here, not just because she felt closer to Loka, but because she now knew she was responsible for his awakening.
“You don’t know how to reach out to anyone,” she whispered. “You want to. You know your heritage is too rich to remain in the past, but who can you trust? So far there’s only me because—because, maybe because we were destined to find each other.”
She shied a little from the word destined, but she didn’t have to justify it to anyone, and in the end let it go. When she’d been inside Fern Cave earlier and had looked at what had been left behind by Loka’s ancestors, she’d told herself he wasn’t really, totally alone because he had history to sustain him. But that had been before they’d become lovers, before they’d both discovered the wonder of truly being part of another human being.
She still lived in the world of people. She could pick up a phone and call her parents. She had a job to go to, people she considered friends.
All Loka had was antiquity.
And memories of making love to the woman who’d taken him from there.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I wish I’d never come here. Never brought you back because maybe you don’t belong here—because you won’t let yourself belong.”
“Maybe I do not dare.”
Although she jumped, on a subconscious level, she’d been waiting for Loka to speak. Straightening, she watched him stride toward her. Someday, if she lived long enough, she might no longer feel as if she were coming to life simply because he was near, but that time hadn’t yet come.
He looked different from yesterday, different and yet achingly familiar. She couldn’t put her finger on what had changed about him. Maybe it was only that she now knew him in the most intimate of ways. And maybe…
“You were right to reach out to that Modoc,” she said, reluctantly concentrating on what he’d said. “I talked to him this morning. Black Schonchin. He cares about this land. He’s going to do everything he can to keep it from being exploited any more than it already has been. Loka.” She stepped toward him, stopping just out of reach because she might fly apart if he touched her. “He believes in you.”
An emotion she didn’t understand settled in his eyes. She wanted to ask him why he’d shown himself to Black this morning but couldn’t hold on to the question. She’d been so lonely without him beside her, had hurt so deep, she couldn’t begin to tap its source. It was as if she’d lost part of herself while they were apart, and although it terrified her to realize how deeply he’d impacted her being, at the same time she never wanted that to change.
“I—there’s something you need to know. Fenton James, the man you saw me with in Fern Cave, he might have seen us yesterday.”
Loka shifted his weight, drawing her attention to a dark length of naked thigh with his obsidian knife resting against it. She imagined her fingers on his flesh, looking into his eyes for his reaction, feeling it through her own flesh.
“I know,” he said.
“You—you were aware we weren’t alone? Why didn’t you say something?”
“It was too late.”
Because Fenton had already caught them in his binoculars or because Loka had been incapable of tearing himself from her? “You should have told me. The way he talked, I don’t think he’s sure of what he saw. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have been so surprised when he said what he did.”
“What did you tell him?”
Loka di
dn’t trust her. Damn it, considering what they were to each other, she deserved better. Didn’t she? “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Was that true?
He folded his arms across his chest. Although she’d seen him do that before, her reaction was as total as it had been the first time. Nothing could harm this man. He was timeless, endless. Proud and powerful. Mist and substance.
“I dreamed of Grizzly last night.”
“Grizzly?” she repeated stupidly.
“Grizzly knows when a Maklaks has an enemy. He comes to him in the night and warns of danger.”
“Danger? Loka…” She couldn’t tell him that he wasn’t making any sense, that there couldn’t possibly be anything to a simple dream, because everyone who knew of him or suspected he existed might constitute a threat. “Did you ask Eagle for guidance?”
“Not yet. I came to you first.”
He put her before his guardian spirit? Feeling weak, she spread her fingers over his forearm. Although his flesh felt cool, she took warmth and strength from him, nearly lost herself in memories of when he’d taken her into his arms and more. “Why? To tell me of your dream?”
He didn’t answer her. Instead, he briefly studied a bee, which was drawing nectar from a nearby bitterbrush flower. “At dawn I went to the mother lake. While I crouched there drinking, a water snake wrapped itself around my leg.”
“A snake?” Her attention flickered to his bare leg.
“When one does that, it means a Maklaks will have a long life.”
“It does?” Loka didn’t seem aware that she was touching him. Feeling as if she’d somehow invaded his privacy, she drew back. “You have an enemy, but you will have a long life? I don’t understand.”
“I must find my enemy. End him.”
Kill him, he meant. “No! Loka, you’ll be treated like a murderer. If you’re caught, they’ll throw you in jail.”
She wasn’t sure if he knew what jail meant, but when his eyes narrowed, she had her answer. “A warrior does not run from his enemy. A warrior is like Grizzly.”
