Ghost Stalker (12 page)

“I got him out in the barn.”

She heard him chuckle.

“Bet the horses love that.”

“Just for a few days. Then I’ll let him go.”

“Thought you said he was a pet.”

“Yeah, let him go back to his owners, I mean. They’re coming to get him. I’m petsitting.”

“Jessie, you really okay?”

“Sure, Larry.”

“My nephew works for the ambulance corp. He said they found an injured man on your property after that storm. Said he refused treatment.”

“That’s right. His wife came and got him. No insurance, you see.”

“Ah. Well, you had a busy day.”

“Thanks for checking, Larry. Give my best to May and the girls.”

“Okay, I…”

Jessie closed the phone, turned it off and placed it back on the counter, then headed out the door. She paused on the steps, as she always did, to glance out of the window at the pasture across the road.

It was her custom to see what her mares were doing. At this hour, they usually lined the fence, staring hopefully at the house in preparation for her arrival with breakfast hay. But today they stood herded together at the far corner of the pasture, tossing their heads with restless glances toward the barn.

Jessie wrinkled her brow and turned in the direction of their nervous glances.

Her grip on the doorknob slackened and she leaned forward in her double take.

There, beside her barbed-wire fence, grazed a massive male buffalo. “Oh, what now?”

She headed for the gun closet and retrieved a high-power rifle, then loaded it, recalling that last night she’d nearly used the same bullets on Nicholas Chien.

She left the house with the intention of getting her mares into the barn before calling the national park to see if they were missing a bull.

But buffalo didn’t generally just wander away from the herd. Maybe it was a sick animal or a young bull chased off by a stronger male. She crept off the porch, eyeing it critically. The beast looked healthy, strong, as big as a minivan and about as bright.

Jessie inched forward slowly, edging behind her truck, and then hesitated. She’d have to cross the road, without cover.

The buffalo lifted his head and seemed to be staring directly at her.

She ducked behind her truck, clutching her rifle before her as she pointed the barrel toward the brightening
sky. A moment later she heard hooves striking the pavement.

“Son of a…” She peeked over the flatbed to see the monster making a beeline for her. “Bitch!”

She raised the rifle, using the truck bed to steady her aim. The buffalo stopped. She stared down the sight, lining up the bead and notch just behind the creature’s shoulder blade. But the dust surrounding the thick hide obscured her shot. The dust hung about the bull a good ten inches above its hump. She squinted in the first rays of sunlight as another possibility occurred to her.

Auras were hard to see at the best of times, but at sunrise they were nearly impossible to spot. Still, that did look like an aura.

She lifted her head and lowered the rifle. She could still take her shot, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.

Jessie drew a breath and lifted her chin.

“Are you here to see Nicholas?”

The bull pawed at the blacktop. Why didn’t one of those semis show up when she needed it?

She felt silly shouting at a buffalo. “The Skinwalker? He’s inside.”

The buffalo turned from her and headed toward her house. She ran behind the truck, shouting as she went.

“Wait. You can’t go in there like that. Please change forms first.”

The bull swung its massive head in her direction, causing her to stagger back. There was a puff of dust as the male transformed into a young Native American, wrapped in a buffalo robe. An instant later, he stood in worn jeans, dusty work boots and a fringed leather shirt
that made him look like some kind of reenactor at the annual rendezvous. He beat at his shirt, raising a cloud of dust.

Jessie prayed to the Great Spirit that her neighbor was not still standing in his upstairs window. “Been a while since I walked as a man,” he said by way of apology. “How did you know?”

She flipped the safety to the on position. “I’m Jessie.”

“Tuff,” he said and lifted a foot to rest on the first step of her stairs. “Tuff Jackson. Actually Jackson is just where I come from. Don’t know my real surname. Long story.”

“Can I help you?”

“I’m here to help him.” He thumbed toward the door. “Heard his call for help.”

“Do you know him?”

The man wore his thick black hair in traditional twin braids, secured with leather sheaths made of short brown fur.

“Never had the pleasure. I can tell from the scent he’s a wolf. Don’t hang around wolves as a rule.”

She and Tuff exchanged a smile.

“Understandable.”

He paused, pointed a thumb at her kitchen door. “Your place?”

“Yeah.” She rounded the truck and offered her hand, shocked at herself for welcoming him. “Thanks for coming.”

She headed up the steps and held the door open. He stepped past her. She thought a buffalo shifter would be
big and burly, like a professional wrestler. But this man was slight and young, seeming only in his early teens. Of course, he could be eighty for all she knew. Inanoka lived even longer than her people.

The buffalo man paused in her kitchen, looking around. “Nice place.” He focused on her now. “How’d you know what I was?”

“I’m a Spirit Child.”

His eyes rounded. “Ah. Never met one before.” He looked her over. “What’s your gift?”

“I’m a Dream Walker.”

“Have you tried healing him in his sleep?”

She flushed at the reminder of what she had done. “Not exactly.”

“You could, you know. Just the suggestion would at the very least greatly ease his pain.”

“I’ve never done that. I deal mainly with injuries to the mind.”

“But your power is greater than that.”

“How do you know?”

“I can sense power, energy flows. Yours is great. But in the meantime, I’ll try.”

Jessie took a long look at Tuff. Now inside, his aura became clearer. Healers usually had a deep blue energy to them. His seemed more the color of rust. She paused before leading him to her patient, feeling protective of Nick. “Are you a Healer?”

“Not exactly.”

She felt off balance and unsure of allowing a stranger near Nick. Jessie could not understand why she hesitated. She should be happy to have another Skinwalker offer
assistance. Perhaps he could release her from her promise and spare them both from this strange attraction.

But until that happened, she had promised to see him well and would see it through.

“How do you pick up his call?”

“It’s a disturbance, like a dust storm, but inside your mind. You have to concentrate to get the direction and then you just follow it. It can travel a few hundred miles, unless you know each other, then, I don’t know, farther, I think.”

Nick had told her he had no one, yet here was another who could help. Who else had he called?

Tuff inclined his head toward Nick’s room, silently asking entrance.

She drew a breath to gather her resolve, putting the rifle on the counter, and then led the way. She paused just inside the doorway of her study, gazing at Nicholas and checking his steady, even draw of breath. The sight reassured her. He still rested comfortably. When he was awake, his breathing was shallow and his face strained. He had slept long into the morning. She glanced at the open bottle of painkillers beside his bed. How many had he taken?

She took a step toward him, but Tuff passed her, drawing up a chair beside him.

“What are his injuries?”

She told him.

“What happened to him?”

She sighed, sat on the corner of the desk and began the telling. His eyes widened at her mention of the three
ghosts and he looked perplexed when she told of the couple Nick said he protected.

“And you say this couple, they are an Inanoka and Niyanoka?”

She nodded. “That is what I have been told.”

“The world is full of wonders. I do not think it is impossible.”

Tuff looked down at Nicholas. He didn’t look tough, not in the form of a man at least. He didn’t seem insightful like Bess or charming like Nick. He just seemed serious as he stared at Nicholas.

She knew buffalo were sacred, that the Great Mystery had brought buffalo to man so they would have all they needed to live. They were selfless creatures to submit to death so the people might live. Animals of sacrifice.

But she wondered what held he could give do Nick. Perhaps he would act as a watchdog, protecting him from future attacks while he healed.

Certainly he would be a formidable opponent in animal form.

Nicholas could track anyone anywhere just by their scent. According to Nicholas, his friend the grizzly could heal any natural injury. What was the raven’s power? Something to do with the Spirit World, she’d guess. Could she see the future? And what were the powers of the buffalo?

Her musing had taken her mind far afield and so she had not noticed that Tuff was chanting a prayer. She sat quietly until he finished.

“Could you get me some water, please?”

“I have coffee.”

“No, just water. A tall glass, please.”

She left him for the time it took to fill her largest glass. When she reentered the room, she found the man kneeling with his hands stretched toward the ceiling, praying again. His shirt, shoes and belt were gone, leaving him dressed only in his jeans. His body was narrow, hairless and slim. If she were to pick an animal he most resembled, she might say a weasel or coyote. She stared at the hollow beneath his ribs. About his neck hung a single buffalo tooth, wrapped in a band of colorful seed beads fashioned to resemble the hoof prints of a buffalo in white on a green background. The leather cord had several larger beads evenly spaced along the necklace. It thumped rhythmically against his chest as he rocked forward and backward with his prayer.

He ended with a sharp cry that made Jessie’s blood curdle. She found herself choking the water glass.

Tuff smiled at her. “Thank you.”

He rose to take the water and drank it down as if he was parched. Then he kneeled beside Nicholas.

Only then did she realize he had uncovered Nick, drawing the blankets, folding them carefully over his feet. Most peculiar of all was that he had torn away the bandages on his eye and at his chest, revealing the hole where the chest tube had been.

“Hey, he needs those.”

Tuff lifted a hand toward her. “Hush now.”

He rested one palm on Nicholas’s forehead and the other on the middle of his belly. He closed his eyes.

Jessie felt a disturbance in the air, as if a breeze blew
through the bedroom, except the trees outside were still. The indoor disturbance spun in circles, lifting loose papers on her desk.

She was so distracted by the strange wind that pricked at her skin like static electricity that she did not notice Tuff. His face was now beaded with sweat and the muscles at his cheeks bulged. He was pale and every line of his young face showed strain.

This was like no healing ceremony she had ever witnessed. Something dangerous passed between these two, something dark. She sensed it in the dimming of Tuff’s aura and the startling crackling in the air.

She moved to flee but instead found herself at the foot of the daybed, standing like a sentinel. She did not know of what use she might be, but she would intervene if Nicholas showed signs of distress.

She stared at Nick’s face and had to blink to be sure of her own eyes. The scabs on his cheek, forehead and eyelids dropped away like gorged ticks. She gasped and looked to Tuff for some explanation. Instead, she had to force her hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. The familiar gouges now marred Tuff’s flesh.

T
uff’s face swelled as the deep red marks grew longer and gaped open. Blood streamed down his cheek and neck, but he kept his hands on Nicholas.

What was this? She backed away and then halted. She wanted to run, but she could not abandon Nick. Stronger even than her instinct for self-preservation was her need to protect him. She glanced from one Skinwalker to the other. Nick’s breathing grew rapid and Tuff’s shallow.

Jessie’s jaw ached from clenching as she watched the deep blue-and-red bruises bloom on Tuff’s previously unmarred ribs. She heard a loud crack.

Tuff hissed and leaned toward the injury, bracing against the pain as he struggled to hold his position. Jessie was certain that beneath his smooth young skin, his ribs were breaking.

“Stop,” she called to him. “Stop now.”

She grasped his shoulder to pull him away, but the electric shock of pain threw her backward. She landed hard on her backside, feeling as if he had punched her in the chest. Her ribs ached, but Tuff had not moved.

She rose unsteadily but did not try to intervene again. Instead, she stood with her hands clasped and pressed to her open mouth. Her front teeth bit into the flesh of her index finger as she stared in mute horror.

Finally, Tuff’s hands slipped from Nick’s head and belly and he collapsed to the floor.

“Tuff,” she cried and rushed to him, but paused before touching him again. He was cold and his hair damp from sweat. Blood matted his long braids. “Oh, what did you do to yourself?”

Tears ran down her cheeks as she gazed down at the boy. He had taken Nicholas’s pain. She was in awe of the selfless powers this Skinwalker possessed. This was not a power given to heartless killers, for such a selfless gift would be useless among such a race. No, the Great Spirit would grant such a power only to those who understood selflessness and sacrifice. Jessie stared down in wonder as she realized she had discovered a deep respect for their kind.

Tuff’s face bled crimson rivers. She knelt beside him.

“Stay back,” said Tuff.

She didn’t want to, but she did as he asked. Would he bear the scars on his face for the rest of his life? They were not his to bear. She was grateful, but so sad. It wasn’t fair.