Jumlin's Spawn

Evernight Publishing www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2011 Melody Clark

ISBN: 978-1-926950-94-5

Cover Artist: LF Designs Editor: Angela Oesterreich

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DEDICATIO* With thanks to Robin Kickingbird of the great Sioux nation, and with love to Larry.

JUMLI*'S SPAW* Melody Clark Copyright © 2011

Epilogue There stood only one Black Hill of a different color; and yet, it was the blackest hill of all. The man had climbed the trail to Angel Peak for as long as he could remember. He had seen this vista through the eyes of a baby, a boy and a man. In those years, spring clung to the fresh grasslands across the tribal plains. Now, the Black Hills seemed gray; the grasslands dry and dead. The only sound he could hear was a thundering wind or a deadly calm, and both sounds blew in from the city. He watched the old man walk slowly from the inside the house to the outside edge of his porch. On the porch sat a big, swayback porch swing. Nearby, a middle-aged, black-braided woman sat with a cast iron pot between her legs. Her hands busily broke the backs of pea pods and spilled their bounty with steady thumps into the pot. Just beyond her, a young man watched over a little boy as the child dragged a toy metal truck over hand-built dirt mounds all around him. The man on the peak recognized the old metal toy truck had once been his own. The man who watched from Angel Peak thought the little boy looked something like the boy he once had been. He hoped the boy would climb the mountain one day, too. But, he prayed the boy would never set foot in the caves. Angel Peak Man knew too well that, inside of the mountain, lurked old and bad things. He had seen them himself - big, black, feathery demon angels, hell birds with wings big enough to smother all the breath out of the world. The man at Angel Peaks had not survived the caves. Not completely. He had come to know the hell birds far too well. No longer part of the world of the old man, the young people or the boy,

the man at Angel Peaks had been bound to the peaks forever. Well, almost forever. “Čhaŋtóčhignake, Chaske,” he whispered to the wind. He wondered if that young boy had ever been taught Lakota. The Angel Peak man had been told the time had come. There were three strangers approaching from the city. They didn't know their path. They could not know their future. The man on Angel Peak only knew that, of the four of them, three would live, and one would die. But it would be a joyous ending.

Chapter One

She missed South Dakota. She missed it more than she might have missed her knees. Not that she would admit that, even to herself. New Orleans had been a fascinating place to wander, but her roots had long ago grown deep into Rapid City soil. Walking through the airport terminal, her stomach muscles twisted into tiny Gordian knots inside her. She reveled in the easy familiarity of coming home but still felt the chill of apprehension. She hadn’t been scared until she saw Yancey and Oliver hovering by the luggage return. They stood beside her luggage, already plucked from the carousel. Their very appearance made her want to turn and run, but she stayed. Somehow, she stayed. Oliver appeared as light and Irish-American as Yancey was dark and Sioux. They appeared visual opposites and, yet, were more alike than either man knew. They had been her two best friends in the world since fifth grade. And she had just turned thirty. Yancey’s long black hair ran past his shoulders now. He stared at her with black eyes filled with as much hurt as anger. Oliver scowled…though Oliver never scowled…and Oliver was scowling at her. The last time she had seen either of them, she’d told her two best friends to get the hell out of her life. At the time, she felt abandoned and discarded. At least now, she felt in control of her own life. She drew back a little as Yancey reached for her luggage. “I can carry that myself,” she said, trying to keep the handle. “We picked you up, so I’m carrying it,” Yancey said, pulling it away from her while Oliver collected the rest of her smaller bags. “I parked the car in the day lot.” “I didn’t think you parked it on the runway,” she replied, “and, for the record, I didn’t ask you to pick me up.” “No, we offered, okay?” Oliver cut in from Elfie’s other side. “Now, can we please save the screaming at each other until we reach somewhere private, like the car?” She pressed gently at her eyes, the miles she had travelled weighing heavily on her words, “I don’t want to scream at anybody.”

“Good,” Yancey said, “Neither do we.” Yancey drove them out of the airport lot, then headed east on Highway 44 where the road splits -- one part headed toward the Cheyenne River basin and the other made tracks for Rapid City. Elfie gestured toward her old hometown, the so-called star of the west, “We’re going to see your Captain?” Yancey murmured an affirmation. “He has a few questions. Nothing major.” She grimaced, staring out at the familiar blur of road. “Let’s just hope I have the answers.” **** Captain Darwin always looked like a man in a perpetual search for his car keys. No matter where he was, even in his car, even with the keys in the ignition, he always seemed to be searching for them. Now, he sat at his desk, hunting-and-pecking at a keyboard until Yancey, Oliver and Elfie walked into his peripheral vision. He turned sharply toward them and nodded Elfie toward a chair. He tilted casually into his own chair, his hand sliding with easy familiarity into the handle of his coffee cup. Out of office mode, back in Captain mode, same as always. “It’s good to see you, Elfie,” he said, pulling folders from a far pile toward him. “I’m glad to hear you’re back.” “I’m here,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t know about back.” Darwin smiled reassuringly. “I appreciate your coming in. I’m just trying to piece this whole Professor Duryea thing together. We’re hoping you might remember something we need to know.” She shifted forward in her chair. “I’ll tell you what I know.” He sipped his coffee. “I remember that you left your job here to work for Professor Duryea a year ago. In what capacity did you work for him?” Elfie cast a look back at Yancey, who stood protectively beside her chair, and Oliver, occupying a chair behind her. Finally, she looked over at Captain Darwin and nodded. “I took a college course of Narvel Duryea’s when I was in grad school. A while after that, he offered me a field anthropology position with him. I passed on it then; but later, when I decided to leave Rapid City, I contacted him. The offer still stood, so I accepted it.”

“It seemed to me, at the time, your leaving was rather hasty. You couldn’t even give us three weeks of notice in forensics.” Darwin glanced back at her friends. “I understand the three of you had something of a falling out. This is generally regarded as, well, the real reason you moved to New Orleans.” She folded her hands before her, trying to preserve some illusion of calm. “Yes,” she said, making clear with the empty sound of her voice that there would be no further information added to her response. Darwin rubbed at an eyebrow, in thought. “How much did he confide in you about his activities?” “Not at all.” “Then the two of you weren’t personal friends?” She chuckled dryly. “No. He was a…taciturn individual to the end, okay? There were elements of his work that I've only learned about since his death.” Darwin scrunched up his face with a grin. “A taciturn individual?” “He was a suspicious asshole, is that better?” “That sounds more like you,” Darwin said, laughing a little. “I was wondering if you have any idea why Duryea came out here by himself.” Elfie shrugged at the memory. “He said he was doing some research for a new lecture series. He’d made some momentous mythological discovery, according to him. And, he wanted to research a theory he called the Lakota Book of the Dead.” Darwin scrunched up his brow again, this time in surprise. “What the hell might that be?” Elfie shook her head. “I think it dealt with his labyrinthine theory of links between ancient Egypt, Ireland and pre-Columbian Indians. It’s hardly a new idea. He posited that the striges, which supposedly was an Egyptian vampire race, were a direct ancestor of Jumlin’s spawn. He thought it had connections to a ton of different cultures, including the Irish.” “So what the hell is a Jumlin’s spawn?” Darwin asked. Yancey grinned and shook his head. “He's the Badlands Boogeyman, Cap. Jumlin was the evil spawn of Laughing Bear, who's like the Lakota Count Dracula. He went off and had little Laughing Bear Cubs. It's strictly Halloween crap.”

“Maybe so, but interesting, given the circumstances around Duryea's death,” Darwin said. Elfie sat up more, paying closer attention. “What circumstances?” Darwin pushed the top file from the folder pile toward her. “That's the medical examiner's findings on Professor Duryea's body. Take a gander. Riddle me that.” She picked up the file and skimmed over it until her attention became riveted on a word. “Exsanguinous? You mean he’d bled out?” “He was bloodless. Drained,” the Captain said. “I’d say he was empty as a beer barrel at a college kegger. And he’s not the only one. There have been ten buffalo exsanguinations in the vicinity. On top of this, we’ve had women disappear. Another man vanished but was found dead, in much the same manner as Duryea.” “You can’t be serious,” she said softly, shaking her head. “Serious as a myocardial infarction, I'm afraid,” Darwin said. “And, we got the FBI flying down day after tomorrow, seeing as it's Federal land.” Elfie squinted hard, fighting to follow the conversation. “The FBI? So…animal mutilations, exsanguination. Are you thinking there’s a weird ritual killer on the loose or something?” “Well, we’ve pretty much ruled out UFOs and chupacabras. If it’s a ritual killer, it’s more than one,” Darwin said. “I mean, no one can pull down ten buffalo and live to tell the tale without one heck of a lot of help. To be honest, I half-suspected Duryea was the head of some blood cult or something, until he turned up dead. His work, combined with his familiarity with the north and south units, would have festooned him with motive and opportunity.” “I didn't know him, or his work, well enough to know for sure. I can't say I'd eliminate the possibility,” Elfie said. Yancey moved around her side to stare at her directly with more than a little surprise. “What the hell happened to Duryea being your own personal Indiana Jones?” “I was wrong, okay?” she replied, sending him an angry stare. “You were right. I found out a lot of things in the last couple of days.” Darwin plunked down his coffee. “This is how it works, Elfie. We need to send a team up to the Angel Caves tomorrow. It'll take a

couple of days to get there while covering all the terrain. That’s the actual reason I wanted to speak with you.” “Okay,” she said warily, “and how am I involved?” “Yancey's a cop, Oliver's an archeologist, and we could use a damned good forensic anthropologist on this case. We pull them out of the sheriff's office now and the guy there, well, let's say he wouldn’t be my pick for second string. Yancey and Oliver are going out toward Angel Caves tomorrow.” “What does that have to do with me?” Elfie asked. Darwin replied, “I'd really like you to go out there with them. We need to see what's up before the FBI locks us down. Not just for us, but for the Sioux, too.” Elfie exhaled loud and long. She shut her eyes for a long moment before asking, “Why Angel Caves?” “That's where Duryea's body was found,” Yancey said. Elfie grew quiet, trying to sort through a thousand bits of information and decisions to be made, all of them important. Finally, she said, “Okay, I guess I owe you guys that much. I'll go along...for the investigation.” Darwin smiled. “Good. You three can firm up the details. Where will you be tonight if I need to speak with you again?” “She'll be with us,” Yancey said. “We’ll get up early. It'll be easier that way.” Elfie centered herself internally to firmly reply, “I have a reservation –” “So have I,” Yancey said. “A big one. And I have a nice house on a little part of it with a room just for you. You'll be with us.” Elfie smiled wanly across at the Captain. “I guess I'll be with them.” **** The big brown-hazed windows of Sioux Ann's Diner had grown glazed through many years of sand, sun and rain. The diner was located in what the three of them, when they were teenagers, had considered the middle of nowhere. All of them orbiting thirty, they now thought Sioux Ann’s was way too close to town, though nothing had built up around it in the intervening years. The distance measured had changed inside their minds.

After surviving Sioux Ann's Diner’s unique interpretation of cheeseburgers and fries, the three friends headed toward the car. Yancey had parked it outside the main gates of the old, dead amusement park where they had spent many hours of their shared youth. Rapid Fun City sat right across the road from the diner. Yancey walked past the car and toward the amusement park's main gates. “Hey, where are you going?” Elfie called out. “We're going to the Fun Zone,” Yancey called back. “Small problem, Crow Wolf. It’s closed. For like fifteen years.” Yancey smirked, flashing his shiny badge. “Everything is open to the police, Elf. Anyway, this is where Duryea hid a lot of his grave-robbing swag.” She redirected her interest toward the overgrown field of thrill ride ruins. “Makes sense. There’s nowhere more out of the way than a dead amusement park.” Badging them past the gate guards, Yancey led the way around the Tilt-a-Whirl that had flopped over into the sand like a shed tarantula skin. The nearby booth that had once vended ride tickets now housed a gray coyote that stuck its nose through the side door and glared at them. The big building Yancey led them toward had once been the Dakota Arcade. The glass double doors remained unlocked. They walked inside. One wall had been lined with shutdown arcade games. One arcade game was situated in their direction—a Top Gun pinball machine, still playing a few shrill bars of Danger Zone, over and over, as an enticement to play. The game lights sprang on in sequence around the play screen’s edges, but the sparkle effect had been muted from the many years of dust. “God, that movie sucked,” Oliver said. Yancey tossed him a grouchy glance. “I liked it.” “You liked it because Tom Cruise’s ass was in it,” Elfie added. “Hey, say what you will, koka kola, but do not mock my first love,” Yancey replied.

They kept walking until the door marked DURYEA came into view. Yancey groped for a key from his pocket. He found it and opened the door. Boxes had been stacked floor to ceiling, in what, even in daylight, was a dark room. Elfie slapped along the wall for a light switch. She finally connected with one, and the overheads flashed on. At once, they all heard a burbling noise, followed by the scuffle of tiny feet. The scuffling clamored down a room beyond them and quickly departed. “Damned coyote puppies,” Yancey said, with some degree of forced certainty in his voice. “That was a weird ass sound, though,” Oliver added. “The Badlands are filled with weird ass sounds,” Yancey said. “Oliver,” Elfie said, having left the other two to open a nearby box. She removed from a thrown-together box lot a bird-shaped clay figure. “Is this Cahokian?” Oliver moved around to take the offered object into his hand to study. “Maybe. It looks like an Aztec grave artifact. At least the bastard wasn't picky in his grave-robbing.” “Looks like he stole from everybody,” Yancey said, shaking his head. “I wonder how he'd have felt if somebody dug up his grandma and sold her skull on eBay.” “How do we know he didn't?” Elfie asked. “Boy, you really don’t like him now, do you?” She made a hum of affirmation and then placed the artifact back in the box. “Heaven knows what else he has in here.” “Maybe even the sacred stuff. Boy, wouldn’t that make the traditionals crazy?” Yancey asked. Elfie shook her head. “No, the sacreds are somewhere else.” Yancey looked at her strangely. “How do you know?” “We’ll get to that later,” she said. “When we’re somewhere more private. Just trust me on that one.” “Okay,” Yancey replied, glancing around again. “Based upon our initial investigation, we have reasonable cause to think these are all stolen Indian artifacts. Can we all sign-off on that?”“I’d rather not search through every box,” Oliver said. “So I’ll just stipulate, yes.” “What about you, Elf?” Elfie nodded, without hesitation. “Yeah, I agree.”

Yancey pulled out a roll of yellow tape. “Then this is officially a crime scene. Let’s tape it off so we can get back to our place and talk for real.” **** His home had once been a modular house onto which Yancey had grafted handcrafted pieces of his soul. Yancey’s huge carved owl still hung above the archway. His willow hoop dream catcher still dangled at its side. His medicine wheel swung off the verticillated transom. As they crossed the house's threshold, Elfie felt like she had awakened from anesthesia after being knocked out for the better part of a year. A mountainous Newfoundland sprung up from the front room’s hearth. The dog trotted over to greet her and leaned against her like the old friend she was. “Hey, Mato boy,” she said gently, scratching behind the dog’s ears. She looked over at Yancey. “Where’s Chikala?” “He took the journey two months ago. Bone cancer,” Yancey said, with his face still grim, “I had to put him down.” “I’m so sorry,” she said softly, absorbing the news with a hesitant sigh. She gently patted Mato’s head, as if a stand-in for an unseen lost friend. “I know how badly that must have hurt.” “Oh, it hurt. Like hell,” Yancey said sharply, “but not like the hell Oliver and I went through in losing you.” “Yancey –” she said softly, as if bereft of anything further to say. He waved away her reply, and then pointed toward the hallway. “Forget the past for now. Let's head to the den and go over tomorrow.” Oliver gestured toward her luggage, which he had placed on the floor. “I'll take these to the guest room.” “Thank you, but actually,” Elfie said, reaching for the smallest case, “I'll take this one with me now. I have something to give back to Yancey.” “You do?” Yancey asked. She failed at a smile. “Yes. I do.” Oliver led their way down the hall with as much city grace as Yancey followed with flat-footed Sioux directness. As they moved

toward the den, Elfie realized they were approaching the Door. The Door. Through their years of friendship, she had walked past the Door a hundred times on her way to somewhere in Yancey’s house. The last walk by before this one, she had been stopped dead in her tracks. The Door was the door to Yancey’s bedroom-the open door to Yancey's bedroom. What she had seen there in that moment almost a year before had changed her life forever. The stark clarity of the series of images had faded little over the last year. The memory rushed through her like an aftershock every time she recalled it. At first, she had remembered it in every moment she wasn’t thinking of something else…anything else…Oliver and Yancey, intertwined. Yancey’s long black mane streaming over Oliver's blond hair as their mouths mashed together. Oliver seizing the other man’s shoulders and flipping Yancey over, only to have Yancey’s lips clamp down on Oliver’s tongue. That was all she had seen. All she had needed to see. She’d walked in on them by accident. They hadn't even noticed. Even now, they had no idea what she had seen. They didn't know yet that she was aware her two best friends, to whom she had once been the third musketeer, whom she had known and loved since junior high, had chosen a deeper relationship with each other than the one they shared with her. She had been disqualified and eliminated. And no one had bothered to tell her. Which was why she left. Of course, Oliver and Yancey had happened before. She knew they had slept together before. They swore it was a one-time thing. But, what she had seen in the bedroom that day meant it hadn't been just a fling. And now? “You okay?” Yancey's voice interrupted her, as she hesitated there, staring through the Door into his room. She fought to brush-off the visceral impact of the image. “Yeah, sure, just tired,” she murmured, then followed him into the den. Oliver’s man-eating television occupied a far wall. The last she had seen it, the set was sitting in his Rapid City condo. His impressionist paintings had been moved into Yancey’s place and now hung on another wall. This house had clearly stopped being Yancey’s pad and started being Yancey and Oliver's home.

Elfie perched herself precariously at the edge of a sofa, to which she once would have surrendered like a second home. She set the suitcase she had carried in beside her. “So, no more Duryea hero-worship, huh?” Yancey asked briskly. “No,” she said matter-of-factly, “you had his number from the very beginning.” “Don't start the Duryea pillory without me. Dead or not, I hated the bastard,” Oliver said, returning from depositing Elfie's other bags in the guest room…a room that had once been Elfie’s room. Oliver seated himself in a big, overstuffed armchair. In his black suit and cultured finesse, he was the antithesis of nearly everything around him. He swept back his hair, removed his glasses, and leaned forward, toward the suitcase that Elfie had carried in with her. He looked up into her eyes directly. Elfie drew the small case toward her and opened it. A protective sheet of cushion plastic obscured its contents. Yancey came around to stand between Oliver and Elfie. “So, what is it?” “This is what I was talking about earlier. When Narvel died under such suspicious circumstances, my curiosity got the best of me,” Elfie explained. “I had been restricted from his storage areas. This concerned me, since it was my job to speak for the whole of the collection. Yesterday, after you two called me, I decided to break the locks and investigate. What I found there far exceeded my worst fears.” She peeled away the protective cushion wrap from the sheltered pieces of hardened clay, chiseled rock and black glass. Yancey leaned over them like a protective big brother. “It's the Jumlin antiquities,” he said, in a hushed voice. “That thieving son of a bitch.” “From looking at his records,” Elfie said sadly, “I think the rare antiquities that he didn't steal; he bought off poor locals who were just trying to survive. Then, he sold the items to big city collectors at a massive mark-up.” “I wonder why he kept these,” Yancey said. Elfie replied, “Probably because of his crazy theorizing about Egyptian-Sioux-Irish vampire people. Narvel had these items in his

private storage. I didn't mention it to the Captain because I was afraid they'd be seized for evidence, just like the stuff we looked at today.” “Yeah, they would have been,” Yancey said. “Where the hell did Narvel get them in the first place?” “His notes said he stumbled over them deep in the Angel Caves,” Elfie said. “I knew right away it was nonsense. I’ve always heard the Angel Caves were very dangerous.” Yancey nodded. “The caves are lined with obsidian, a black volcanic glass that’s sharp as hell and deadly when somebody falls on it. The obsidian also makes the cave system really dark in places. There are drop-off projections all over them. Every couple of years, they find some poor, dumb kid impaled on one of the spikes.” “Then how did Narvel, or whoever he got them from, come into possession of them?” Elfie asked. “They weren't buried deep,” Yancey said. “I believe they were in the sacred outer areas where ancestral graves are. As our anthropology professor friend can tell you, everyone knew the relics were there.” Oliver leaned forward, a number of thoughts appearing to crowd his face. “True, their inherent sacredness, not to mention the very convenient legendary curse on them, kept them safe in the past. What I don't get is, if Duryea found them, or paid someone to find them, why did he return to the same place? That's where he died.” Yancey shrugged. “Looking for more maybe?” “Probably researching his Lakota Book of the Dead, I think,” Elfie said. “It's not a big area to research, the part that can be walked,” Yancey replied, “and the M.E. Report said he had cave dust on his shoes. There is a handful of old cave-walker Sioux who can survive them. They probably made the trek for him, killed him and kept whatever they found. Duryea walked over dust that they had tracked out.” “Then how was he drained of blood?” Elfie asked. “I don’t know,” Yancey said. “Some wacko cult group working together pumped the blood out of him so they could blame it on vampires, maybe?” “And they expected the police to believe it?” Elfie asked, her eyebrows crowding together in confusion.

“Well, the fake vampire theory is better than the real vampire one, isn’t it?” Yancey asked. “Who knows…maybe I'm wrong, maybe he got deep in the caves somehow. Could be he cut himself on obsidian groping around in all the darkness and bled to death inside. Could be he just stumbled out and died in the opening, with no blood around him.” “If the caves are dark enough for that to happen, why do they glow from the outside?” Elfie asked. “Isn't that why they call them the Angel Caves? Because of the halo glow?” “The theory is the black glass reflects a whole series of natural light shafts from various points in the mountain,” Oliver explained. “That gives them the optical illusion of a glow from the outside when you look up from Willow Wash.” “Willow Wash? I thought this place we’re talking about was some place on the Stronghold,” Elfie said. “No, you're thinking of the Wounded Knee place,” Yancey said, “where Wovoka and the Ghost Dancers were. The Angel Caves are beyond Willow Wash.” “Beyond Willow Wash?” Elfie asked, wincing slightly. “That's a two or three day drive over that terrain.” Yancey shrugged. “It's going to take some time to get there. We're going to take Oliver's Land Rover. The bench seats fold down into beds.” Elfie frowned a lot. “I hate camping, you know that.” Yancey smirked in reply. “I know that, but my Starfleet transporter is on the fritz.” Elfie groaned in frustration, and then finally leaned back in surrender. “Okay, okay, I guess we're going camping. Besides…” Elfie pushed the case gently toward Yancey. “I need to put these back where they belong.” Yancey's eyes widened with amazement. “We can seize the other items because he hid them on Sioux land. But wouldn’t keeping these get you in trouble with his estate?” She shrugged. “They aren't in the paperwork anywhere. And, there is the fact it was theft. Let them set the dogs on me, I don't care at this point.” Yancey slowly leaned down toward her. He cradled one side of her face in his hand and planted a firm kiss on the other side. He moved his mouth against hers for a moment. As he'd never kissed her

on the mouth before, she leaned away from the strangeness of the gesture, but her eyes burned with a tender memory of a time past. His voice tightened around every word. “I appreciate this. More than I can say.” She fought a smile. “To whatever extent I’m responsible for assisting in what he was doing, I owe your tribe at least this much.” “What about what you owe our tribe?” Oliver asked suddenly, sitting forward with his artful grace, as if to close the distance between them. “Our tribe?” she asked, knowing a second later she had fallen into the trap. “You don’t think you owe Yancey and me an explanation for why you left?” Oliver asked. She considered the question for a long moment, but turned away. “I've told you. I had personal reasons.” “That’s bullshit!” Yancey said. “We don’t have personal reasons between the three of us. We don't have boundaries. We’ve known each other too long for that shit.” “I’ve come to believe,” she said, “that boundaries are a good thing.” “Stop it!” Yancey lashed out at her. “Stop talking like we’re new acquaintances at a cocktail party. I kicked Morgan Stewart’s ass in junior high when he made fun of you. We held you the night your father was killed. Don’t treat me or Oliver like we’re strangers. Get mad at me. Yell at me. Say something!” “What do you want to hear?” she asked with her voice thin and crisp as rice paper. “I want to hear whatever it was that drove you away,” Yancey said. “I want you to sound as hurt as you are. Like leaving tore your heart out, just as it tore us apart. Don't sound like the last fifteen years didn't matter in the first fucking place!” She shut her eyes in frustration, carefully conceiving of each word before it was spoken. “I have spent the last year trying to get over what you want me to relive again. When there is a long-time circle of trust like the three of us had…” “Like we still have,” Yancey said through tight teeth, “and we have to force it out so we can deal with it. We can’t heal a wound we can’t see, Elfie.”

She swung a hard glance directly at him. “What if it isn't possible to heal it?” “What if it is?” Yancey snapped back. “I mean, don't you owe us an attempt to try?” “Owe you?” she finally erupted, slamming a fist against the arm of the chair. “I owe you? What about what you owed me?” “What do we owe you?” Oliver asked. Elfie shook her head hard. “How about loyalty? The truth? What about the right not to live an illusion? What about things like that?” She forced herself into silence by standing up and walking to the picture window that faced Yancey’s ceremony garden. It gave her time to think. In the window’s reflection, she watched Yancey shake his head, as though in total confusion. “What in the hell does that –” “Yancey,” Oliver said quickly as he reached out to touch Yancey's arm, “she knows. About us.” She watched in the reflection as Yancey turned toward Oliver, and the two men seemed to share a slow-rolling gaze of understanding. The Sioux man looked away at the impact of the guilt. “Elfie…” Yancey shrugged a little, like he didn't know what to say. “I’m sorry. I honestly didn't think you'd take it this hard.” “Then why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. Yancey wove his arms across his chest. “I wanted to believe you knew somehow. You somehow had guessed and it didn’t matter. I mean, you knew already that Oliver and I had slept together.” “I knew,” she said quickly, “that you'd been together casually a couple of times. You both told me it was over. I was told there wasn’t a relationship.” “So what is this?” Yancey asked, his voice sounding like he was out of words. “Homophobia?” “Give me a break!” she yelled back. “I've known you go both ways since high school. I never had a problem with that. This is different. You two have formed a relationship, have you not?” Oliver looked over at Yancey, then back at Elfie. Oliver met her gaze directly and honestly. “Yes, we have.” “When it started this time, it was forever, or it wouldn’t have started,” Yancey said. “I mean, it’s not just a one-night stand thing, if that's what you're worried about. I wouldn’t do that to Oliver.”

“Oh,” she said softly, “but you would do this to me?” Yancey appeared taken aback at the question. “And what the hell does that mean?” She smiled, although it hurt like hell to do so. She shook her head. “It means I’d never have had a romantic relationship with one of you, simply because it would have diminished my relationship with the other one. Made him feel left out. And I could never do that…to either of you. But not only could you do that to me…you did do that to me. And that, in a nutshell, says how little I meant to you.” Oliver and Yancey looked to each other again, the inward battle with guilt they were sharing written plainly over their faces. “We never intended to hurt you!” Yancey said. “You should know how much you mean to us.” A quiet pain worked its way through her voice again. “We didn't have a normal friendship. We were one entity. We were the three musketeers. Out of that, you two formed a relationship that meant more to you than your friendship with me. Which tells me exactly where I’ve always stood in our relationship.” “That isn’t true,” Oliver said. “That’s your assumption, Elfie,” Yancey shot back. “You jumped to a conclusion and then ran away. Because something scared you.” “Oh, here we go!” she said, “It's all my fault again. You tell me what other way I should have taken that big a betrayal of trust. Tell me how you'd feel if the circumstances were reversed.” Standing, Yancey's black eyes darkened, as though searching inside him for a possible answer. After a long moment, he turned toward her again. “Okay, I’d probably feel betrayed.” “Probably?” she asked. “You know damned well you would. Now, man up and admit it. You two made your choice. At least allow me to make my own.” “She's right,” Oliver said to Yancey. “We acted without thinking.” “All right, I admit it,” Yancey said, taking a step back from the circle. “We were thinking with the wrong heads.” Oliver's blue eyed stare turned brightly toward her. “So, Elf, tell us. What do we do to fix it?”

“We can't,” she said sadly. “Our friendship was a wonderful, youthful moment of time in our lives. But, the mirage is gone now. We can't bring it back.” “What if we can build something even better?” Yancey asked. “Can we save that question for later?” Elfie asked with a thin, raspy weakness to her voice. “I'm exhausted. I've had a long, weird week. And a long trip in an even longer day. I just want to turn in early. I am assuming we leave in the morning on this great adventure of ours?” Yancey smiled with a tinge of regret. “Yeah, at dawn. We have an appointment to meet with Wolfram Ten Bears at 8 AM. That's stop number one.” “Who is he?” Elfie asked. “A gigantic waste of time, that's who he is,” Yancey explained. “I have to see him, to appease the more conservative traditionalists, before we go into their holy lands.” “I need to reserve a portable argon laser for the field,” Elfie said. “You mean like the one you used on the Dani artifacts I wanted tested?” Oliver asked. “We still have that one at the university. I can call Pat in equipment assignments and have it delivered to the field.” “Terrific. We'll need a field generator, too,” she said. “I’ve got it covered,” Oliver said. “What the hell,” Yancey asked, looking to Elfie for an answer, “is a portable argon laser?” “Well, you know what a laser does?” Elfie replied. “An argon laser uses gases to create white light. This laser uses light to sanitize field tools. I don't want any of what might be growing in Doctor Narvel Caligari's cabinet to take root in the grasslands. He's already done enough damage to your people.” Yancey reached for Elfie's hand, squeezing it gently, then holding it to his lips. “You are my people, Elf,” Yancey said, “and it's good to have you back. Even if it's only for a little while.” **** Elfie sat on the edge of the bed in Yancey's thin-walled guest room. The wind's howl gave way to a far-off coyote yipping through

the night for its cubs. The southwest had only recently been swept up by European civilization. Most of the grassland miles continued on in spite of the city, not because of it. Elfie had almost forgotten these prairie sounds in the jazz-steeped nights of the Crescent City. As she shed her jacket, she remembered the letter in her pocket. She didn't have to open it to know what was in it. She had written a letter to both of them before she left, outlining her reasons for leaving. She had sealed it in an envelope and written their names across it. But she realized, once she’d written it, that she could never let them read it. Good grief, she thought to herself, that was all she needed – for that to fall out of her pocket and one of the guys to read it. “Yeah, guys, I ran away from jealousy…because of a double shot of it” – from the sudden knowledge that she cared for them both, in the way they obviously cared for each other. They would never buy the rest of her defense. She carefully hid the letter in the left compartment of her small bag. On the right side compartment was her e-reader. Wasn't that ironic justice? She turned up the air conditioner vent in the guest room, where it felt as stuffy as she remembered the room always being. The coolness came through immediately. The breath of the air conditioning helped mask the outside sounds into a smoother quiet. However, the slats vented through another source of sound – the hard shock of muffled voices punching through the wall. Two male voices, a stream of playful laughter flowing through them, their words grinding together like hard flesh on flesh. The tangle of groans quieted into a softer moaning sound…probably kissing, she decided. She fought to not picture it. It had to be oral sex. As she had said in the letter, the brutal pleasure of it, the intensely personal, invasive oral sex. It was happening all over again, on the other side of the wall. Elfie flicked on the TV beside her bed and fought for focus. The groans intensified. She turned up the TV sound. The memory kept flickering into view. The memory of the last time she had seen them – in Yancey's room. Yancey's brownskinned muscles on top the tension-gripped sweaty body of her other best friend. They had looked like wild animals, fucking in heat.

As the sound from the other room grew louder, she turned up the TV some more and hoped for relief. When that did nothing, she got up and shut the vents to try to block out the sound. It wasn't helping. But they had to know she could hear. So what was this? Retribution? A cumulative “fuck you” of sound? Something else? She gathered herself up on the bed then covered herself in blankets. Tomorrow would be for business. Tomorrow, she would get beyond all this, do what she had to do, and go the hell back to New Orleans -- even if her heart would be breaking every step of the way. Finally, the men stopped. The sounds quieted. She turned up the TV and focused on the sound. Somewhere between the infomercial and the last blare of a silly talk show, she mercifully fell asleep.

Chapter Two She showered, dressed, and grabbed coffee and a bagel from Yancey's cupboard before crawling, with her overnight bag, into Oliver's big Range Rover. The amazing Elfie accomplished all this before anyone else awoke. She sat there in the jeep, looking through a detailed list of the locations of exsanguine buffalo. Clipped to it was a graphic veterinarian's report on the condition of the carcasses. Charming. After what might have been forty-five minutes, the driver's door to the Range Rover popped open. Oliver, wearing a weird combination of brown dungarees and a red ball cap, ascended sleekly and easily into the driver's seat. He looked around to Elfie, huddled in the backseat with her studies. “Anything interesting?” Oliver asked. She waved the list at him. “This is one hell of a lot of dead buffalo.” Oliver nodded. “It‘s escalating.” Elfie shook her head. “It’s increasing.” “It’s turkey vultures,” Yancey added, suddenly climbing into the passenger seat. Elfie frowned in thought. “Not unless buzzards have started leaving carrion behind.” Yancey shrugged a little. “I’m a cop, remember? I‘m a skeptic.” “I’m a scientist, remember? So am I,” Elfie said. “You said our first stop is Wolfram Ten Bears?” Yancey opened a map on the dashboard as Oliver started the engine. “Yeah, he's an elder. But we call him Billy Jack. Believe me, you'll see why.” **** She saw why. He drove an old wheezing motorcycle out to greet them as their jeep rolled through the wide park gate. He wore a scruffy old leather jacket that damn near matched the color of his leathery old face.

“That's the elder?” Elfie asked incredulously. “You were expecting a war bonnet and a peace pipe?” Yancey asked, tossing a grin her way. “I'm from Rapid City, remember? Of course not. I just wasn't expecting...him.” When the elder dismounted the motorcycle, he yanked off the old gloves that jibed with his jacket and almost matched his face. As he walked up to the jeep, they didn't leave the vehicle, and he didn’t extend a hand to Yancey. He just glared at them with eyes that looked locked and loaded. “Yancey Crow Wolf, where you been keeping yourself?” the old guy asked Yancey through stained teeth. He stared hard over at Elfie in the backseat. “These your friends?” Yancey blocked his view of her while he popped open the side door. “Yeah, she’s Elfie Hardesty, and he’s Oliver Ryan. Hop in the jeep. It's more comfortable than your old camper.” Elfie felt grateful to be in the rear seat. The old man's conception of personal hygiene seemed startlingly different from hers. He turned around to stare hard at her again with egg-yellow eyes, probably cataracts, until Yancey climbed over the console to yank the old man around so that he faced his direction. “Okay, let's hear it,” Yancey said. Ten Bears looked back at him. “You asked me to dance, Yancey. You lead, I follow. Ask your questions.” “Okay,” Yancey said. “I need you to tell me all the stuff you're supposed to tell me in as short a time as possible. About the Angel Caves and the Jumlin vampire crap.” “First,” the old man said, “you tell me what you believe.” “I don't believe in anything,” Yancey said. “You don't believe in Jumlin, you mean?” the old man asked. “No, I don't believe in anything I can't see, hear, touch, taste or smell. Not our gods, not European gods. I'm an atheist. And I certainly don't believe in Jumlin and any kind of backward, superstitious mysticism. But, I have promised my grandmother and the elders I would speak to you.” “At least you listen to your grandmother,” the old man said. “If the locals had listened to the Indians about the mouse fever, the Hantavirus wouldn’t have killed so many. Indian myths told them all about the mouse fever that came after the big rains.”

“The Hantavirus was identified by science,” Yancey said. “Jumlin is a fairy tale. You can’t compare the two.” Oliver turned around in his seat. “Mr. Ten Bears, I'm an anthropologist. I have more time for mythology than my rude friend here. Just tell us the Jumlin story, and we'll be on our way.” The old man nodded toward Oliver. “It’s more than a story. It’s a myth. You know what a myth is, young man?” “It’s a lie,” Yancey said. Oliver softly cleared his throat, as though to redirect the conversation. He dragged a hand back through his blond hair. “The writer Joseph Campbell said a myth is a public dream. A dream experienced by a lot of people. It reveals a deeper truth.” “This dream is a nightmare,” the old man said. “Jumlin told the first lie. He was the first liar, the great deceiver. He was among the oldest entities, so he was very powerful. No one could trust him. To protect the rest, he was imprisoned in the Realm of Spirit Shadows.” “If he was so powerful, how could they imprison him?” Yancey asked tartly. “He was so old and powerful. He was also very weak. His only great power was in his ability to deceive.” “Typical Indian myth,” Yancey said, “it makes absolutely no sense.” Oliver gave Yancey another sharp warning glance. “Native Americans are largely aboriginal Asians. What you’ve described, Mr. Ten Bears, sounds like a kind of early Zen thinking. It makes perfect sense. Please ignore him and go on.” “There was a medicine man of a tribe,” Billy Jack continued, “who was brother to the chief of the ten tribes. He made a pact with Jumlin so the medicine man’s barren wife might have children.” “What kind of pact?” Oliver asked, leaning forward. “Jumlin promised the medicine man that, if he used dark magic to return Jumlin to the real world, Jumlin would give the medicine man many sons and daughters. But when the medicine man brought him back, all Jumlin did was possess him, body and soul. With the medicine man’s body, he brought forth children, but they all had Jumlin‘s evil seed in them.” “Don't you hate it when that happens?” Yancey asked.

“You're not doing a good job of listening, as your grandmother wanted,” the old man said, his lips drawing up into a patient grin. “Jumlin’s son, Laughing Bear, was just as evil as he but more cunning. While Jumlin was believed to be destroyed by the magic knowledge of the Hunters, Laughing Bear escaped his father’s fate.” “So where is he supposed to be?” Oliver asked. “This Laughing Bear guy.” The old man continued, “Laughing Bear and his brothers and sisters still walk the earth. They feed on the blood and flesh of the beasts of the field, on the humans, and they breed with human women. That is what is happening now in the Angel Caves.” “I get the allusion, okay?” Oliver said. “The spawn supposedly feed on the blood of the beasts of the field, in other words, the buffalo. Thank you for the information. We'll take all that under advisement.” “You may,” the old man said, nodding toward Yancey. “He won't.” “Look, Billy, I don't mean to be rude,” Yancey said, “but it's just, there's no evidence there is any reality to this. But, if we find signs of a buffalo-blood-sucking fiend, I’ll let you know. Conversation over.” “For your own sake,” Ten Bears said, “and that of your friends, don't dismiss this too quickly. The creatures will do everything in their power to keep the Caves. They are wicked beyond compare. More evil than the deceiver himself. If you need help, you should talk to the trees, Yancey.” Yancey shook his head. “I've always found trees to be awful conversationalists. But philámayaye, tókša akhé,” Yancey said with a smile that said “now get the hell out of our Jeep.” As Ten Bears left, five minutes passed before Elfie saw the university transport arrive with some nervous-looking undergrad bearing a suitcase-sized container. “Is this one of those new super-lasers, like in the comic books?” the big-eyed undergrad asked as Oliver unlocked the hatch for Elfie and the undergrad to slide the contraption inside the cab. “Yup,” Elfie said. “I'm really Laser Lady. We're delivering it to Condorman.” “Really?” the undergrad asked.

“No,” she said plainly. After the puzzled young man had driven away, Yancey shook his head back at Elfie as she reclaimed her rear seat in the jeep. “You're merciless, you know,” he called back to her. “Well, he did ask,” she said. **** The jostling of the Jeep was constant and steady, lulling Elfie into a ready-made sleep. She had tried to read but kept losing the line against the hazy horizon. She found herself re-reading the same page two or three times. Finally, she just shut down the e-reader and focused on the drone of the wheels. More than camping, she hated car trips. And, she truly hated any car trips that would end in camping. She began to lose the fight to keep her eyes from closing. She would think she was still awake until she saw a small and stark white face mask staring in at her, as if a kabuki child hung off the side of the Jeep, and that would jolt her awake. She would blink, look around, determine to stay alert, and the cycle would begin anew. It was only when the movement stopped that she fully awoke. She blinked around. She listened to the drone down of the engine as it murmured softly into silence. She was about to ask if they were “there already” when she held her wristwatch up to a stream of light and saw that nearly two hours had passed. “Unlisted dead buffalo that looks like a fresh kill,” Oliver said, shifting the car into neutral. “Wonderful,” Elfie groaned. They left the jeep and walked the short distance to the dead animal. Elfie studied what remained of it, for all the good it did her. “See anything?” Oliver asked. “I wish I knew more veterinary science. We'd need a necropsy to say anything for certain.” Elfie reached over to feel the upper musculature. She pushed deeply through the pelt, palpating for a major artery. “It feels suspiciously soft. Exsanguination is certainly a possibility.” “I'll go check the area,” Yancey said, walking away. Oliver walked up to stand beside her. “How did it die?”

“No obvious signs of disease. No indications of an accident.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “I’d say it was a drug deal gone bad.” “Very funny.” “Well, you asked a stupid question,” Elfie replied. “I don't know. I'm not a vet. It's dead. There's no blood that I can tell. That's about the limit of my knowledge of animal anatomy.” Oliver smirked, playfully slapping at a shoulder. “Can you at least tell if it died from natural causes?” “All deaths have natural causes, don’t they?” she asked, smirking back. “It’s what brings about the natural cause that is the question. But I’d say a buffalo of this size doesn’t come down easy.” “I'd agree. Took more than a couple of people to kill it.” “We know they weren't Sioux,” Yancey said, walking back to stand with them, “and very few Sioux would kill near ceremonial sites. There's a mound of what looks like cremains just up the rise. We should look at it next.” They walked together quickly until they rounded a rock shelf to a pile of what appeared to be bone bits and ash. A mixture of spice, leaves, or dried plants of some kind had been added to the circle around the ash. Yancey pointed toward them. “Weird place for cremains.” “No way to say for sure that they're cremains,” Elfie said. “I mean, it could even be a bunch of burned wood and pottery or something. Look at all the dead flora mixed in with them.” “No, they’re cremains for sure. With a circle of protection around them,” Yancey said. “I see sage, cedar and wheatgrass. The circle of protection is closed.” “So, our friend the village atheist transforms into an American Indian mystic all of a sudden?” Oliver asked wryly. “I’m an American Indian who has cremated two grandparents who were traditionals, koka kola. I know the cultural ropes. Bite me.” “Later,” Oliver said, laughing. She felt herself blush at the obvious double entendre, so she quickly turned back toward the jeep. She looked toward the sky instead. “We’d better move on. It's already afternoon. We'll be losing daylight before we know it.”

“We'll make it to Old Peso Rock by then,” Yancey said, “I think we can camp there.” “Oh, goodie,” Elfie said, climbing back into the jeep. “Let’s break out the s’mores.” **** It seemed like she had spaced out for some amount of time. She had been reading her e-novel again. Had she been sleeping? It was hard to say. She felt herself losing grasp of the day. She had that long-car-trip surreal feeling, like her head was full of fog. She wasn’t tired; she was just vague. And rather car-sick and twisty-headed. “Whatcha reading?” Yancey called back, clearly as bored as she was. She didn’t look up. “A novel.” “I know. The Captive Bride at Red Rock Ridge. I took a peek at it while you were asleep. Sounds suspiciously like a scarlet fever bodice ripper.” “First of all, what the hell are you doing looking at my stuff?” she asked, finally looking up at him. “Secondly, what the hell is a scarlet fever bodice ripper? Not that I probably want to know.” “It’s one of those prairie women kidnapped by hunky Indian brave novels. They have tons of hot injun sex and fall madly in love.” She gestured to the thing she held. “I don't even know what the hell this is yet. I bought it off the Web to read on the plane. I didn't, so I'm reading it now.” “So, who do you picture as the Indian?” She gazed hard at him again. “I've barely made it past the words ‘Chapter One,’ thanks, in part, to this inquisition. What's more, I never picture anyone as anything.” “It’s an erotic romance?” “It‘s none of your business, is what it is.” He winked at her. “Nothing to be ashamed about. I don’t mind that you fantasize about me. I think it’s hot.” Her eyebrows almost collided. “Yancey, your ego is just too adorable. I'm not fantasizing about anyone. I'm reading.” “Then how come you’re blushing?” he asked, winking. “Because you're embarrassing me with --”

The jeep swerved hard, sheering left then right again. Elfie slammed against the bulkhead. She hung half off the seat, the bench seat yanked forward. “What the fuck --” Oliver said, his foot flooring the brakes until the jeep slid to a stop. Yancey pulled himself up. “What happened?” Oliver shook his head while staring at the road. He yanked open the door. “I swear to God I just saw a little kid run across the road.” “Out here?” Yancey asked, but looked back at Elfie who was still picking herself up off the floor. “You okay?” “Yeah,” she said, brushing herself off. “I think.” Before she could ask after them, they had already left the jeep to investigate. She followed them out and rounded the jeep's front bumper to find the men studying the distance. “I swear it looked like a little kid,” Oliver said, confusion swarming in his voice, “like a toddler. Two, maybe three years old.” Yancey turned around to survey the whole area. “Sure it wasn’t a coyote or a dog or something?” “Yes!” Oliver shot back. “Those have four legs, this had two. It was a kid. A little kid. It ran right through our path.” Elfie drew up beside Oliver, who was staring at the grassy emptiness that might have been the path the toddler had taken into the brush. “Maybe it was a child from the campgrounds around here?” Elfie said, looking all around her. “We should search. A child that young could be killed by predators.” “A child that young wouldn’t be able to run too far. He’d be easy to see,” Oliver said, pointing. “I think, if it was a kid, it would be right here. There are flat grasses in every direction.” “Maybe a reflection off somewhere?” Yancey asked. “Or a visual hallucination? We’ve been driving a long time.” Oliver shook his head and shrugged. “Maybe. I was sure we’d find kids playing tricks on us or something. But maybe it was a hallucination. I‘m dead tired from driving.” “In that case, we’d better make an early day of it.” Yancey said, “We’re not far from Old Peso Rock. That’d be a good place to camp. It would also be a great time for me to take over the wheel.”

Oliver managed a laugh. “No, thanks, Chief Leadfoot. I’d rather survive.” Yancey smirked back at him. “Old Peso Rock is just above Coyote Crossing. Back in high school, we used to ride our mountain bikes up there, remember?” Oliver appeared to pale a little. “You mean that steep, jagged trail?” “Yeah, that steep, jagged trail. Like all the other steep, ragged trails around here. You’ll want me to drive.” Oliver nodded. “I want you to drive.” “That’s what I thought.” **** The jeep climbed quickly and nimbly up Old Peso Rock Trail, a rugged shelf about a third of the way up to Vista Point. The jeep had breached the edge of the road one too many times for Elfie’s taste. “Well, that was fun,” Elfie said, unclenching her fists and exhaling as the jeep finally wheezed its way to the top. “Why don’t we try for something a little less steep next time?” Oliver asked, putting the jeep in park. “Like 22nd Street in San Francisco?” Yancey cracked a grin. “Aren’t you glad I drove? And to pay me back, you can heat up dinner. I brought MREs.” “The hell with that,” Elfie said. “I’m starved, so I’m cooking.” “Elfie, far be it for me to point this out,” Yancey said, grinning over at her, “but that’s a little sexist. Do you think you should cook because you're a girl?” “No,” she said. “I’m going to heat them up because I'm the only one who won't burn the crap out of them. Capisce?” **** The men spent dinner eating and talking in low voices. Elfie nibbled away at hers while she sat in the jeep. She watched the men from a distance as they stayed slack-seated in their squat camp chairs. The men's voices traded soft and low, their hands now openly clinging together.

After finishing dinner, the backseat easily collapsed into a bunk. She had pulled the bagged blanket and pillow out from under the seat. She drew the blanket over her, perched her head atop the pillow, and started trying to read again from her e-novel. At that point, the guys also dragged themselves into the jeep. Oliver collapsed the front bench into a bunk as Yancey smiled knowingly over at Elfie. She proceeded to ignore his stare as the man perched himself across Oliver's knees. Out of her peripheral vision, she could see Yancey looking hungrily at Oliver and Oliver lifting an eyebrow in reply. His eyes still on Elfie, Yancey reached back to pop open the closure on Oliver's jeans. Then he lowered his face to Oliver's crotch and pulled out his already rigid cock. He engulfed it with his mouth, sucking along its staff like something delicious. Yancey's tongue whipped out to slither across the glans. Oliver arched back against the jeep's wall, grasping at the front seat as if enduring a wave of pleasure. Yancey deep-throated him, sucking voraciously in and out until Oliver's groans sounded louder to Elfie than her own heartbeat. "Shit," she said harshly, trying to control her own breathing, as she set her book aside. She hunkered down inside her blanket and fought to ignore them. But, a sputtering rage of sound swept the night air, beginning far and approaching fast. Yancey groaned in protest as he released Oliver’s cock. Oliver zipped himself back securely as both men climbed out of the cab to investigate the clamor. Elfie crawled forward to watch Yancey and Oliver as they climbed outside, Oliver hanging back aways. They watched a man with long black hair ride his dirt bike to the edge of the rock face where they had camped. The man on the bike slowed down to stare over at them, as if trying to discern who they were. Finally, he dismounted and walked toward them. “Yancey?” the new man asked. “Yeah, it's me. What’s up, Severin?” The other man waved an arm at the sky. “There's a pack of wild dogs roving. Be sure to stay near the campsite unless you're in the jeep.” “That's our plan,” Yancey said.

Elfie now stood outside the jeep, listening to the exchange. Severin looked toward her, and then walked in that direction. His large brown eyes seemed unspeakably sad yet, he smiled a little. “You’re Yancey’s friend. I’ve seen you around. You especially have to be very careful. Pretty young girls up here on the Unit can go missing.” Elfie smiled nervously in return. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” Severin considered her sadly another moment. “Nice seeing you,” he said quickly and returned to his bike. He glanced one more time toward Yancey. “Amba, cous.” “Amba. Pilamaya,” Yancey replied. Elfie nodded toward the rapidly growing distant figure now kicking up clouds in the dirt. “Who was he?” “Severin,” Yancey said. “He rides all night making sure the populated areas of the unit are secure. Nice guy with a superhero complex.” “Gee, I don't know anyone like that,” Elfie replied. Yancey tossed her a smirk. “I brought you a beer, smartass,” he said, offering her a bottle. She accepted it from him while crawling back inside the jeep. “Now you have my full attention.” “Good, then you won't need this thing,” he said, gently pulling the e-reader out of her grasp as he moved across the jeep to sit beside her. Elfie flicked him a look of mild annoyance as she dragged the e-reader out of his hands. “Yes, I will.” She laid it aside and opened her beer. “So, how's the Captive Bride coming along?” “Not surprisingly, I'm about two paragraphs past the words Chapter One.” “A lot of those white women weren't captive brides, you know,” he said. “I mean, they were captured but most stayed for their own reasons. Some women rescued by the whites went back to their Indian husbands.” “I know that's a tale one hears,” she said, sipping more beer.

“You really can't blame the women, though. Married to all those starchy white military types, prairie settlers, good puritans who wouldn't know their dick from a candlestick. At least not when it came to pleasuring their women.” She looked at him closely but then looked away. “That's sort of a stereotype, don't you think?” “Not if it's true,” he said, softly. “Just think of it. Prim and proper little maiden. Never had an orgasm in her life. You know how it was back then.” “More stereotypes,” she replied, swigging from the bottle. “And she's in bed, and there stands this big, hot Indian guy. Warrior, a red man, forbidden, with a big hard cock. And he knows just what to do with it. He's got no fucking inhibitions. Can you imagine what that must have been like for those women?” “Stop it,” Elfie said. “Why?” Yancey asked. “Because it's making you hot?” “No, because it’s embarrassing,” she said tightly. “Then why are you trembling?” he asked with a knowing grin. “I am not trembling,” she said. “You're trembling,” Yancey said, leaning toward her to peel the beer bottle out of her hand, and then combing his fingers gently into her hair. “Now you're going to tremble even more.” Yancey captured her mouth under his. She had no idea where this fire had flashed from. A reaction to his words…the last year…a little of the beer…and a lot of something she hadn't wanted to accept. She found herself kissing him back with abandon, twining her tongue around his. He groaned his approval and then pressed her back against the bunk Elfie had chosen for her own. He covered her with his body, moving his hips against her for emphasis. The sound of the jeep opening cracked across their intense quiet. Oliver climbed in. Elfie shook Yancey off of her by crawling away to the bunk the men had chosen. “Oliver!” she gasped, chasing after a breath. “I'm so sorry. I don't know what – ” “Don't quit making out because of me,” Oliver said in a breathy voice, his eyes shining with heat. “I came in here to watch.” “I would never do that to you,” Elfie said to Oliver.

“Sure you would,” Yancey said, recovering from the kiss. “You’d do it to him right after you did it to me. So let's get back to you and me.” “Instead of it being just Yancey and me, it can be all three of us,” Oliver said. “It's the ideal solution.” Elfie reached for her beer again, for want of something else to say or do. She gulped some, but the beer nearly went flat in her mouth before she grasped the meaning of his words. “Oh, my God,” she said finally. “You can't mean…I mean, you don't mean what I think you mean by that –” “Yes, we do,” Yancey said, drawing a deep breath as if to steady himself against frustration. “Let's get real here. The three of us have always had feelings for each other. We've loved and, yes, fantasized about each other. That kiss we shared a minute ago should prove that to you. After you saw Oliver and me together, you were jealous. And that's why you took off to New Orleans. ” “Oh, now your ego has really taken titanic proportions, Yancey –” she said. “Deny it all you want, but it's true,” Yancey said. Elfie shook her head. “No, it's not true. I will not be a pathetic third wheel in some pity sex arrangement to appease me.” “That's not what I mean and you know it,” Yancey said. “I mean that we don’t want any man closer to you than we are. We never have. That should be obvious.” She rubbed at her more-than-weary eyes. “I'm sorry. It's not possible.” “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done,” Oliver's voice piped up as he smoothed the blond stray hair out of his eyes. “Robert Heinlein had more patience than I do,” she said. “I have trouble maintaining one relationship at a time.” “You don't have relationships,” Yancey snapped. “You have serial one-night-stands. Your longest lasting relationships should also be fucking obvious.” “You are talking to me about temporary relationships?” she yelled back. “Oliver and I changed our ways. We figured things out. Time for you to get on board,” he said, grasping her arm insistently and pulling her close again. “You know why you’re scared?”

“No, I don’t; care to enlighten me?” “Because,” Yancey said, “the idea of making love to us scares the shit out of you. The idea would be hotter than fuck. It would also be addictive. It would be forever. And it’d be true love. The very idea of that terrifies you.” She jerked her arm free. “Regardless, I said no,” she said, reaching for the jeep's door to push it open. “I have to take a walk. I'll be back.” Yancey thrust an arm in her way. “Are you kidding? You're not going out there.” “I'm afraid I have to,” she said. “I require the use of that luxurious open pit toilet provided by our benevolent Parks Department.” He moved his arm down. “Okay, but you're not going alone. You heard Severin. There's a pack of wild dogs roving.” “Trust me, if I see a pack of wild dogs, I will scream. It's only sixty feet or so. I appreciate the concern, but I can do this on my own.” “What don’t you want to do on your own?” Yancey shot back. Stopping a moment, she shook off the comment without a reply. She stepped down into the blustery night and slammed the door behind her. The outside wind struck her with a cold, bracing shock to her system. Something to throw water on her inner fire. She had come so close to saying yes. So close to getting into something she knew she could never, ever end. So close that she could never tell them how close. She walked toward the rustic hut in the near distance. The night around wore a haunting glow. It lent luster to its dust devils and ghostly tumbleweeds and even to the infinity of stars. Lightning flashed through the sky, to highlight the land around her, but there was no rain. She looked up and down the swag of the valley. The valley through the gorge from Old Peso to the distant peaks. She thought the peaks might be the Angel Caves. There appeared another, nearer mountain. She saw on its rise what she thought at first to be lights from some campsite – after a moment, the lights appeared life-sized. A string of them surfaced suddenly from the dark, all glowing like marble angels in a moonlit graveyard.

From a distance in another direction, she heard a low burbling sound, similar to a baby's babble. It sounded the same as the noise they had heard earlier in Duryea’s storage room. She turned in that direction, only to see a two-foot tall something toddling toward her. An animal? A small person? “Hi?” she said, squinting in confusion. Its eyes gleamed with a spectral blue and pearly baby fangs thrust over its thin black lips. It hissed, like a hungry animal about to pounce. She stood, ready to run, when a lowing sound, an animal distress call, shot up out of the distance. The hissing figure whirled around and ran in the direction of the distress call. Elfie damned near ran back to the jeep. Had to be the beer. Had to be. Then, her mind started busily transforming what she had seen into the face of a dog. Yes, it had to be a dog…like that Severin guy had said, a wild dog. By the time she crawled back into the jeep, she almost believed the dog story. “You okay?” Oliver asked, as the two men sat up on the bunk they were sprawled across. “Fine,” she said quickly. “I saw a dog. Maybe a wild dog, like your friend said.” She surrendered herself onto her own bunk, with her pillow, blanket and personal bag. “I got back here fast.” Yancey looked to Oliver. “I should go check it out.” “No, it’s okay,” Elfie said quickly, pulling her blanket to her chin. “I think he ran away. He's gone now. Let's just go to sleep.” Yancey stared at her for a long moment. “Our earlier conversation isn't over.” “Whatever you say,” she said, closing her eyes. “Please. Just let me sleep now. We can sort everything out after this is all over.” Yancey rolled back onto their bunk, as if giving ground to her request. As she tried to fall asleep, she made herself the following promises: she was not in love with Yancey and Oliver, and what she had seen was a dog. A hissing dog. A weird, strange, hissing dog. That was all. Soon she fell into the dreamless sleep of denial.

Chapter Three Conversation from the night before echoed in her head in words and whispers – “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done” - “Robert Heinlein had more patience than I do.” They echoed until the words joined a much older carom of sound. The images flickering past were from junior high. Chess Club. The evening before their match against Wade Middle School's killer chess squad. Oliver had insisted they could win. A teenage Elfie had shaken her head sadly. “It’s impossible, Oliver.” “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done,” he’d replied. Her eyes had gazed back in frank surprise. “Heinlein!” “You like Heinlein?” he’d asked, equally surprised. “I adore Heinlein. You like Clarke?” “I love Clarke!” he had said. Oliver had been a straight-A student, a marathon runner, the unbeaten head of the debate club, and a major uber-geek. How she had worshiped him from afar. “Afar” eventually became “up-close” when he joined her junior high chess club, and she actually had to form coherent sentences in his presence. She eventually had to make ordinary light conversation as the two of them became the club’s ranking chess players. Oliver had always been her personal rock star. He had always been both her champion and her toughest critic, her best friend and, at times, her taskmaster. The very appearance of his face, in her younger years, would set her heart skipping over stones. She had worshiped him then. She was actually forming whole lucid sentences in his presence by the day they beat Wade Middle School at chess for the first time ever. And that had commenced their friendship, during which they had exchanged any number of complex sentences. Given how unique he was, and his mythic trappings, she had not been terribly surprised to learn he was also Yancey’s friend. She had known Yancey before Oliver.

As her dreams shifted, the scene changed to junior high and its main school hallway. She saw herself backed up hard against a wall of metal lockers as the usual gaggle of bully girls snarled words into her face. Elfie had been too slight and slender to wage a defense. Their words kept pounding on her. The detail of their words didn’t matter…they made for a hateful whirring in her head. In the dream, a tall young man rushed around that corner and stuck an arm between the bully girls and the girl Elfie once had been. “That’s enough,” the young man had hissed. “Stop it. Now.” That was the moment she met Yancey. He had come around the corner, taller than anyone she’d ever met. He had walked between her and the bully hive and stuck out an arm. Yancey drew a line in the sand she couldn’t draw. She had loved him immediately. She had never seen a whole group of people turn in unison and walk away. He would have been the perfect target for them if he hadn’t been so tall. Yancey had never hidden anything, ever, in his life. He had known he was bisexual since his early teens, so “half-fag” and “near-queer” were yelled at him from across the football field. He never flinched. He carried himself with pride. He'd been a Sioux kid in a white jungle for long enough to know how. And he taught her, a white girl, all the moves. Yancey-love was demanding, overpowering, a gripping primal force that excused nothing, allowed nothing, and held nothing back. She loved him as much as anyone she had ever loved, and the fact scared her. Dreaming of the familiar, she awoke to a moment that was instantly alien. Oliver sat beside her, reading over something. With his blond hair in disarray, he looked every inch the tousled-haired poetic figure of her moony girlhood imaginings. Yancey had been right. She preferred semi-romantic skirmishes with slight attachments over real relationships. Midnight adventures and a morning breakfast, followed by promises of phone calls that were never kept. Maybe because she knew, all the time, she belonged with Oliver and Yancey? As she thought through the ramifications again, it felt like every sinew in her body was tightening. Loving Oliver and Yancey at

the same time might possibly kill her, though she imagined she would die with a smile on her face. The jeep door yanked open. “You guys awake?” Yancey called in. “I need to show you something.” He walked them around to the side of the jeep, where a small pile of cremains now lay. They hadn't been there the night before, Elfie was certain. “Could someone have brought them here?” Yancey asked, shaking his head. “They sure as hell weren't here last night.” “Someone came up to the jeep and spread ashes right by it?” Oliver asked Yancey. “Without us noticing?” Yancey stared down at the cremains with obvious concern. He shook his head slowly. “No. They couldn't have. And they wouldn't have. Not like this. Not in the opening, near a car.” “Maybe they aren't cremains?” Oliver asked. “They're cremains,” Yancey said, as if at the point of despair, “since there's a circle of consecration around them.” “But overnight?” Elfie asked, looking around them until she spotted something strange just beyond where they stood. She walked about twenty steps away to kneel down and study the dirt going in one direction. Splashes of coagulating blood, tufts of brownish hair in a line pointed toward what looked like a standup cave. “What did you find?” Yancey asked. “Looks like buffalo pelt,” she said. “This might explain what I heard last night…what I saw last night…after I…walked out.“ “You said you saw a dog,” Oliver said. “I saw a dog…I'm pretty sure. There was very little light, so it looked strange. It had to have been a dog, though. And it was making a weird sound, like it was going to attack. From a distance, there was the sound of another animal in distress. Then, the…dog, I guess…ran away.” “In other words, you’re not sure at all you saw a dog,” Oliver replied. “And you haven't thought to tell us until now?” Yancey asked quickly. “I wasn't exactly in the mood for conversation last night when I came back in, was I?” she snapped. “I told you the basics.” Oliver looked around. “So where does the blood trail lead?”

“Only way to know is to follow it,” she said. She pulled up the jeep's storage bay and yanked out her tool tray bag. “You guys focus on the cremains. I'll be right back.” Yancey turned around to look at Oliver, and they both turned back toward her. “Is it safe for you to go in the grotto, you think?” Yancey asked. She had already advanced toward the distant standup cave. She turned around to give them a smile while she continued to walk backward. “Yeah, I don't think I can't hurt it too badly.” Obsidian, she recognized. The little cave was lined with obsidian. But, the depression only went six feet or so into the cliff. The grotto looked like a giant geode, cut open to the light. The blood and shredded pelt had indeed come from a buffalo. The carcass lay there, small enough to fit inside the grotto. It appeared to be young. Its curly brown pelt felt soft to the touch, its skin still warm with life. The other carcass had felt stiff from the twin effects of death and weather. This carcass had just bloated and started to putrefy, which became too apparent with its overwhelming stench. This poor thing had fought like hell. Fought for its life, against an enemy far stronger than it was, or so it appeared from the butchery that had been done. She knelt to check for life signs, but there were none. Once again, the major arterial junctures felt deflated, empty of blood. Just then, she heard a too-familiar burbling sound behind her. She felt the presence of something by her shoulder. She slowly looked around. Its white face gleamed like high-fired porcelain. The lambent blue eyes burned dark as soot at the center. The worst part was the deadness in them, the vacancy of soul or anything remotely human. It looked like a toddler child, its limbs pink and pudgy. It burbled with the innocent sound of a human baby, but there was nothing innocent about it. The minute it bared pearly white fangs, all resemblance to a child vanished. It emitted a harmonic high-pitched growling sound that hurt her ears. She stood so fast she had to grab for a cave wall. She took a step back from the thing she had seen, and the two others just like it standing beside it.

The taller one lunged first. Jumping away, Elfie fell backward. The smallest one toddled forward, its mouth opening, poised to strike. A blast of light pierced the cave. The light beam struck each one of the screaming creatures, pulverizing them one by one into rubble and ash. The light beam emanated from a flashlight. It blinked out. Severin’s face appeared, just visible in the shallow daylight. “You okay?” he asked, tucking his flashlight into his belt. Elfie felt the cloudy stampede of her heart slow down a little. She swallowed, coughed, and nodded. “Yeah, I guess.” She looked around at the shattered remains of three creatures. “Is that the…pack of roving dogs you were talking about?” Severin walked up with a bag of flora. He scooped out a handful and began to encircle each rubble mound. “They’re what I was talking about, yeah.” She knew her eyes must look terrified, if they looked anything like she felt. She turned them up toward Severin for answers. “What were they?” “Beats me,” Severin said. “Don't know what they are. I only know what they do.” “I thought the theory was they only come out at night,” Elfie said. “No, these things pretty much bring the darkness with them.” Severin extended a hand to help her up. “Can you stand?” Elfie nodded. She stood up by herself, slapping the dust from her slacks. “Thank you. I mean, really. They would have killed me if you hadn't come in.” “No, like I said, they keep the young women. The elderly they kill for blood and flesh. The young men they make into one of them. The child-bearing age women are hoarded for breeding purposes. By the time they got to you, though, I expect you would have wished you were dead.” The outside sound of running footsteps slowed, and Yancey and Oliver, gasping for air, swung themselves headlong into the cave. “Are you all right?” Oliver asked in one gasp. “I'm fine,” Elfie said. “Thanks to Severin here. If he hadn’t happened upon me, I’d be in deep kimchee.”

“I didn’t just happen upon you,” Severin said. “I was sent to find you. All of you.” He moved his attention to Yancey. “Grandmother needs to see you. The three of you.” “Molly?” Yancey asked. “Why?” Severin bobbed his head sideways with uncertainty. “She says you have the people’s business.” Yancey nodded toward Elfie. “Yeah. We have a mission or two to accomplish at the Angel Caves.” “The Angel Caves. Then it's true what I heard.” Yancey's eyes opened wide. “How could you hear anything out here?” Severin cocked his head back and shot off a loud laugh. “The trees knew. The Cottonwoods. They told me.” “Bullshit. Molly told you,” Yancey said, grinning, “and Molly knows everything.” “Just about.” Severin turned toward Elfie and pointed north. “Molly Coddle lives by the springs, in the Willow Peak, above the Wash. Yancey knows the way. It’s important that she sees you soon.” Elfie's brow furrowed more than ever. “Why?” “That’s for her to tell you. So be careful,” he said, walking toward the mouth of the grotto as he left. Yancey walked to Elfie’s side and touched a hand to a track of dirt on her face. His thumb whisked it away. “You look no worse for the wear.” Oliver had knelt beside the three piles of rubble and fine blue powder. He unclipped his flashlight from his belt and shined the light across the debris mounds. Elfie walked to a big U-shaped rock in the grotto's base and sat down. “I don't know what the hell just happened,” she said. She nodded toward the rubble. “I think we have an answer to the consecrated cremains. Severin puts the dried flowers around them.” Yancey considered the mounds Oliver examined. “Did he bring these cremains here?” Elfie inhaled deeply. She covered her face with her hands. “Hell, to the fucking no, he didn’t. Not that you’ll believe it…hell, I don't even know if I believe it. But, I think I saw what Oliver swerved the jeep to avoid hitting.” “The kid?” Oliver asked.

“Oh, yeah. Three of them. They look like children but, believe me, they're not. Severin shined a light on them and they disintegrated. Right in front of me.” “Severin’s a wily Indian guy. He seems to like you. Maybe he played a trick on you,” Yancey said. “He saved my life. It wasn’t a trick. They were real, damn it, I saw them!” “Something like that can't exist, okay?” Yancey said. “I mean, barring mad scientists building evil robots, you had to have hallucinated it or dreamed it or imagined you saw something when you didn't.” “I know what I saw!” “The question is not what you saw,” Oliver said, “but how you interpret what you see, in the words of Isaac Asimov.” “Ah, because Isaac Asimov knows how to interpret what I see better than I do?” Elfie asked. “So you think you guys are the only ones who see correctly?” “No. But I’m a skeptic,” Yancey said. “And that’s the difference.” “I’m a scientist, I‘m a skeptic, too,” Elfie snapped back. “I saw it and you didn’t. That’s the only difference. You have the luxury of disbelief. I saw one last night, and today I saw three of them. Whatever they are, I have no doubt they exist.” Yancey's face darkened. He shook his head to himself and at the others. “Elf, last night, you said you saw a dog.” “I was wrong. Last night, I saw it in moonlight after a huge fight with you two. Today, I saw three of them dead-on. They were not dogs. They’re nothing I would ever want to have for a pet.” “Elfie, Yancey,” Oliver said, walking between them. “Why don't we go back to the campsite and discuss this on home territory?” Elfie sighed. “That's a good idea,” she said, as she reached into her tools and pulled free a sample bag and a scoop. She reached down to quickly sample some of the cremains then slip them into the sample bag. She sealed it and then poked the bag and scoop away with her tools. “Come on. Let's get the hell out of here.” ****

They ended up sitting in the jeep again. The bunks had been righted again into bench seats. Elfie claimed one and leaned back into it. “Whatever they are, they are real, Yancey. I'm telling you what I saw. Don't you trust me?” Yancey dropped himself back against the rear bench. “Yes, of course I trust you. I believe you saw something. What it was, I don't know, but you saw something.” “Well, that's something at least,” Elfie said. “I think whatever was in there is linked to the dead buffalo. I saw one of these creatures just before the animal distress sound. And three of them were in the cave with the carcass. Whatever this thing is may be some of the answer to whatever is going on around here.” Oliver added, “Elfie is right. This woman Severin talked about, Molly. Who is she?” “Molly Coddle,” Yancey explained, “a medicine woman, a nice lady, but more than a little crazy. She’ll make something out of nothing.” “Maybe she can make some sense from what’s going on,” Oliver said. “I don’t know what happened here with Elf, but what’s going on is simple,” Yancey said. “A bunch of grave robbers were working with Duryea to make black market money in stolen Indian artifacts. They probably killed Duryea so they wouldn’t have to split the loot with a white guy. The buffalo thing is just a coincidence.” Elfie said, “Narvel held there was a legend of blood theft by creatures, the ones he wrote about in his Lakota Book of the Dead – ” “You said yourself it was crap!” Yancey snapped. “I know, I know,” she replied. “And, if I hadn't seen what I just saw, I'd still think so, believe me. I wish I could go back and not see it. But, I can't. The way I look at the world will never be the same again. Now, don't you have enough doubt about your own knowledge or sufficient trust in me to consider you might be wrong about this? That there might be something here? Just maybe?” “I trust you, you know that,” Yancey said, “and if you two want to go, I'm there with you. Molly's place is on our way to the Angel Caves. It's as good as any place to stop for the night.” A sudden clap of thunder split their conversation apart. A drizzle of rain ensued.

“Where the hell did that come from?” Oliver asked, squinting through the jeep window and up into the sky. “I’d say it's awfully early for a flash summer storm.” “Just what we needed…stuff to make our job harder,” Yancey said. “We'd better get a move on,” Oliver replied, stepping over the seat bridge to slip into the driver's seat. “I’m driving, so where do we go?” “Head 48 kilometers toward 0 degrees on the compass,” Yancey said, climbing into the passenger side. “Translation please,” Oliver replied. Yancey pointed due north. “Molly's place is about 30 miles that way.” The road narrowed, steep and long, but their jeep made it…just. It navigated the split crannies through crags and the larger cavern walls. Yancey pointed out a rugged wall beneath an outcropping of boulders. Elfie had thought it another rock face. “This is it, Willow Peak,” Yancey said. “You can park right here.” It was not Elfie's imagination. The moment they left the jeep, she saw that the stormy sky had taken on the warm honey light of a Rembrandt painting. She could sense energy wash across her skin, her hair standing on end. Static electricity from the storm, she concluded. Only more. Much more. The tan rock wall gate had obviously been constructed to blend in with the landscape. Beyond the gate lay a group of three natural springs surrounded by cement, to look like three bubbling water pools with steam rising off them. The largest one was fed by a ground tapped aquifer that looked like a waterfall spilling over arranged rocks. Artificial masonry upon the mountain. Landscaping by Palmer & Sons, a little sign read. As Yancey pushed open the gate, Elfie could see the next rising hill beyond it, otherwise hidden by the slant of the road. Seven apertures appeared atop the hill's apex. Elfie could see silent lightning glancing off the caves. Even in the afternoon light, the caves looked like glowing portals. Wanagi Yata, the Lakota called them. The Angel Caves. To the left, a path sloped to a walled rock garden. Great floating jewels of blown glass had been dangled from unseen wires

hung on trees. The house beyond it was a standard middle-aged double-wide mobile home. A blast of flame jetted through the gape of the gate around the spring pools. Carrying the flame was a woman who quickly shutdown the blow torch. She also toted through the gate two big, misshapen glass objects. The old woman’s brownish face wore an incongruous map of freckles, her stark gray eyes lit up by the sun. She could have been anywhere from an old 50 to a young 70. Her black hair had been brushed into two pigtails. Elfie remembered Yancey saying to her many times that there were only enough living full-blood Indians to fill a 747, and he was one of them. Everyone else had mixed ethnicity. Apparently, even medicine women. “Ho, Yancey,” Molly said. “Hi, Molly,” he replied. “Severin tells me you wanted to see us about something. This is Oliver, and Elfie. I think you may remember them.” “Yeah, I do, heya,” she said, limping toward a huge, thick metal barrel. She placed the glass pieces she carried into the barrel. “I knew I had that damn glass flame too high. I lost a lot of chances.” She aimed her blowtorch at the barrel of glass and fired it inside it. “Gotta send these back to their source. This will soften them. I can kiln them later.” Elfie gazed at the many glass objects of art she now recognized, artfully placed throughout the springs area. Concrete furniture inhabited the area. The concrete wore the same subtle harmony of color palate. A blown-glass golden orb sat in the middle of the table. “Did you make all of this glass work?” Elfie asked. “They're beautiful.” “Yeah, all of them,” Molly said, laying the blowtorch beside the burning glass barrel. “I guess it started as an art, and then it was a business, now it's just a habit. Can I get you kids some hot tea? Or coffee?” All three of them shook their heads. “We’ve come a long way,” Yancey said, “I think we’d just like to hear what you wanted to see us about.” Molly nodded. “Well, you'd best be seated because it's a long story.”

When they were seated, Molly grew quiet and, after a moment, finally spoke in what sounded like carefully-calibrated words. “I hear you are going to the Angel Caves. Do you know why?” An odd way to phrase the question, Elfie thought to herself. But she answered. “I have the Angel Caves antiquities that were stolen by the late Professor Duryea. I need to return them.” “You have them?” Molly asked, her mouth opening wide. “Yes, I worked with Duryea. I've brought them back with me. They're in the jeep.” “To think I had no hope,” she said softly. “I believed we were resigned to fighting this alone. But providence prevailed. And you’ve come here after all.” “Excuse me?” Elfie asked. “I don’t follow you.” Molly laughed to herself a little. “It means I was right. It means you…the three of you…are the Wakinyan.” Elfie looked over at Yancey. “What is that?” “Well, the word means thunder and lightning and stuff in Lakota,” Yancey explained to his friends. “I don’t know what it means in this instance.” “The Wakinyan is the Lakota thunder and lightning beings that restore balance, right?” Oliver asked. Molly smiled and nodded. “That's a lot of Sioux knowledge for a white boy.” “Not for a white boy who is head of the Anthropology Department at Rapid College. What on earth makes you think we're the Wakinyan?” “When the artifacts go missing,” Molly said, “the land is unbalanced and the spawn are released. There have been many who've taken the antiquities and then restored them when their lives were threatened or their loves ones died. That's why the artifacts were kept safe for so long. This Duryea man, who paid the ultimate price, didn't know enough to stay away after he stole them. He came back for more.” “He paid the ultimate price,” Oliver said. “He’s dead.” Molly leaned forward toward Yancey. “There have been many deaths. But they were only people from Shoma. So no one cared.”

“Not this again, Molly. I've told you before,” Yancey said, “the law cares about them, there's just not much we can do. Red-light districts create a perfect shit storm of crime of all kinds. People who live in those places are going to disappear or die. It happens all the time.” “Five years ago, six women vanished in the span of three months,” Molly said. “Twelve people the year before. People with the wrong parentage, the wrong color. You have had an invisible serial crime wave going on under your noses. And it's being carried out by a perpetrator you don't know how to fight.” “Here it comes, the Jumlin stuff again,” Yancey said with a groan. “Molly, you know me, you know what I believe. Do you honestly think I'm going to buy this crap?” “It doesn't matter what you believe they are, I don't know what they are either,” Molly said. “I think you believe in those creatures that tried to attack your friend, don't you?” “Yes,” Yancey said reluctantly. “That's all the belief you need to fight them. You're the Wakinyan. That means you will have to fight them, whether you choose to or not.” “Not if we drop off the artifacts around here and book it back to my place,” Yancey said. Molly shook her head. “They know what you are and they have you surrounded. If by some wild chance you made it through their barricade, they would follow you home. If you run, they'll destroy you. You must fight them to survive.” “Oh, terrific, can we resign from this Wakinyan thing?” Oliver asked, shaking his head. Elfie looked around the garden, as if searching for a reason to disbelieve. “You're saying we don't have a choice?” “I'm saying none of us do,” Molly said. “There's always a choice!” Yancey said, with a laugh both short and brutal. He looked over at his friends. “You guys don't really believe this garbage!” “I wouldn't have before I saw those creatures,” Elfie shot back, “but right now, I'm inclined to listen.” Oliver looked up from silently studying his hands. “Okay, how do we fight them? What can you tell us about them?”

“They look very different, from the young to the old,” Molly said. “Elfie's seen the young ones. They suckle from cave milk. The older ones feed on buffalo blood. And human blood, too, when they attack older people.” “What do they do to the young people?” Oliver asked. “They abduct the young men, to make them into what they are. Young women are impregnated by them. They give birth to the creatures Elfie saw. The small ones are less dangerous. The older ones look like black-feathered angels and are almost impossible to kill.” “Almost impossible?” Elfie asked. “Light kills them all,” Molly said. “Even the mature ones, the black-feathered angels. They are much harder to kill, but some form of light can kill them. You three are the thunder beings who are the bringers of lightning. It clears the darkness and destroys the wicked.” “What kind of lightning do we bring?” Yancey asked. “What’s the source?” “The prophecy doesn't say.” “Of course,” Yancey said wryly. “They never do.” “You'll find the source. As for tonight, you should stay at the springs,” Molly said, rising. “Stay in the guest house here. The spawn and the elders can't enter the cottage. You can bathe, relax, sleep, and rejuvenate yourselves. I'll send Severin along with your journey. I'm too old to walk the caves now. But, he knows them just as well.” “Okay,” Yancey said. “We can do with a cave guide. And I appreciate the offer of the springs. We can all definitely use a hot bath.” **** The spring garden felt small but roomy, with a dirt area dotted with native plants. Beyond the springs lay a guest cottage with three rooms. The small bedroom was filled with a king-size daybed and two smaller beds. The other rooms included a bathroom and a galley. As with everything on the res, the springs belonged to the tribe. It was apart from the grasslands and the middle part of the unit, but it was still Sioux territory. As such, the items there had been well-cared for and undisturbed.

Elfie stood at the front wall, thinking warily of all the samples to card and all the cards to catalog, to say nothing of a thorough laser cleaning of the tools, as she looked upon the tools Yancey had just toted in for her use. He set the cases on the big dining table. “You're working, right? You mind if I borrow your e-reader?” Elfie uncapped the hooding from the carousel portion of the sterilizer. She grinned over in his direction. “You're really into reading that novel, aren't you? “I’d like a peek into your fantasy life, yeah. Anyway, I'm crawling out of my skin about tomorrow. You're working. Oliver is soaking in the spring. I'm bored out of my mind.” Elfie cast him a knowing glance. “I thought you said nothing is going to happen.” “Nothing is going to happen,” he said firmly, “but until something doesn't happen, I'm going to be stressed out, so can I?” She shook her head and laughed a little. She reached for her bag and pulled out gym clothes. She handed him the rest of the bag. “I'm taking a shower after I compile all this stuff. You have custody of my bag till I'm done.” Yancey looked into the bag. “Where is the e-reader?” “In one of the side compartments,” she said. “I hope you have fun with the Captive Bride.” Elfie commenced the exacting feat of cataloging her samples and slides. After she finished the cataloging, she slid each instrument used into the carousel within the argon laser portable sterilizer. While she worked, she had the weird, crawly feeling that she had made a mistake. A big one. She kept trying to backtrack through her notes and procedures, to see what it might be but found nothing. It took her an hour but, finally, she slid in the last of the tools she had used. She shut the housing on the carousel and fired off the argon laser inside it. A warbling sound preceded the bright flash that told her sterilization was in process. The light flashed off, which meant it had finished. The thought clung to her, like a fine spider web on her face she couldn't completely sweep away. The simple shower, tiled in natural stone, felt cool against her skin. It was a soft and calming cool. She leaned into the rock so that the overhead spray could burst water in every direction over her. She tilted back to let the water rush across her face and hair.

Her mind moved in multiple directions. She thought about the shampoo in her hand, the soap across her skin, the scent of artificial essence over natural rock. She thought back across the lines of cataloged samples until, finally, she remembered what else was in the pocket of her personal bags…other than the e-reader. My beloved boys, the letter had started. I realized, suddenly, I cared for both of you. You know the words that I can't say. The words I can't write. Well, I wanted what I wanted, but you wanted each other. I could never intrude on that or you. She realized now, leaving had been the act of a coward. Yancey had been right. And now, he would know. Fear's coldness shot through her arms to counter the hot spray. Shaking, she reached up and shut off the spray. Maybe Yancey wouldn't read it, she thought. This is Yancey, she replied to herself. He kicks in doors, he doesn't know white world boundaries, so of course he'll read it. The shower room door opened, then very slowly closed. “You think,” Yancey's voice started, “that oral sex is intrusive?” She shut her eyes. So much for the hope he hadn't read the letter. “You weren't supposed to read that.” “It was addressed to us.” “But I hadn't given it to you yet. It was private until I did.” “Is the letter true?” he asked sharply. She stayed quiet a moment, but the shaking in her voice echoed with her words as she said, “Yeah.” “Then I was right about why you left,” he said. “Yes, yes. You were right, okay? The victory is yours. It doesn't give me the right to intrude upon you.” “It's not an intrusion if we let you in,” he said, his voice very near her now. “It's still not right.” A hand touched her shoulder. She tried to move away but the hand held her in place. Her whole body seemed to be growing sunburn from the flush across her skin. “Before we have this talk, at least let me get dressed,” she said.

“That would be counterproductive,” Yancey whispered into her ear, his lips brushing softly against her throat. “I need you to tell me, why do you think oral sex is brutally intrusive?” She shook her head hard. Her skin's burning sensation invaded her blood, seeping through her veins. “I meant the vision of it was…the energy of it was. Not the act itself.” “In other words, it made you fucking hot,” he said. She whirled around to face him, swung her body to move around him. He put out an arm to block her path, but she jumped the other way. She grabbed up her clothes and stormed back into the cottage's bedroom, but then jumped under the king-sized daybed's blankets. “Well, that hurried things along,” Oliver said, walking up to climb into the bed from the left side. “And here we thought we'd have to talk you into getting into bed with us,” Yancey said as he crawled across the king-sized bed from the right side. “No more excuses.” “We need to take this slowly,” she said. “Not anymore,” he replied. “I say waiting just makes more room for your fear.” “We tossed a coin to see who got you first,” Oliver whispered. “I won,” Yancey said as grabbed the blanket over her and flung it to the floor. Yancey and Oliver pounced at once. The sensations, the sharp unforgiving waves of pleasure, caused by two men sucking hungrily at two different nipples, instantly dragged the breath from her. Her fingers clawed at the bedclothes beneath her. She could barely inhale at the onslaught. Yancey broke away to smile. Then, he lapped at her nipple to make it hard again. “What were we saying about oral sex? About it being intrusive? Invasive? Something like that?” Yancey murmured. His tongue slid between her breasts, sliding up and down the cleavage. “Remember?” “Yes,” she managed to choke out. Oliver wrapped a leg around her left one to pull them her legs apart. Yancey crawled up the bed between her legs. Her trembling worsened the closer he came and shook the bed like an earthquake as he slipped in his tongue. He licked up and down across her sensitive slit, which grew more sensitive with each probing pass of his tongue.

The twitching, the trembling, the growing wetness responding to the toying intrusion of his tongue, became worse as Oliver's mouth returned to sucking her nipples. The moaning was feverish and shapeless; the words almost seemed to be gushing out of someone else's mouth. Yancey's lips closed over her clit and started sucking it harder. His fingers thrust into her faster. “See what's so great about having two lovers?” Oliver groaned softly into her ear. She couldn't begin to formulate an answer. “What else do you want, Elf?” Yancey asked, between laps of his tongue and thrusts of his fingers. Elfie's hips rose up so she could reach him completely. “What the hell do you think?” she cried out. “I don't know,” he said, teasing her clit with his tongue, “I just know my cock wants to make you come. Do you want it?” Elfie nodded feverishly as Oliver tenderly pulled at her nipples. “Then tell me to fuck you,” Yancey said with a naughty, raspy laugh. “It only goes where it's invited, baby. So tell me what you want.” “Please,” she begged, as Yancey returned to sucking at her clit. “Tell him,” Oliver said. “Fuck me,” she finally gasped out. “That's more like it,” Yancey said. Yancey withdrew his fingers and tongue. Oliver pitched the other man the towel he'd pulled off his shoulders. Yancey dried off his face and hands. Grinning knowingly at Elfie, as if he understood the depth of her need, Yancey unzipped his jeans and pulled them off. He tossed them aside. He grasped his cock as it throbbed feverishly. “As you can tell,” Oliver whispered, “Yancey is about to fuck the shit out of you for both of us.” Yancey grinned bigger, crawling up between her legs. “And I'm gonna make you come like a thirty-year-old virgin,” he said, and then thrust his cock deep inside her. Elfie cried out in shock at the pleasure. Oliver reached down to rub at her clit.

“Oliver!” she cried out as his clit massage began while Yancey thrust in his cock. Oliver replied with a hot laugh. “Thought you'd like this.” “Like we said, two are better than one,” Yancey coughed out, as he kept thrusting faster and faster. Elfie nodded helplessly, groaning with every thrust from Yancey’s cock and Oliver’s hands. Yancey thrust relentlessly. “Rub her clit faster, baby,” Yancey gasped out to Oliver. “She’s almost there.” “Not quite,” Elfie moaned, and then pulled away from Oliver's weakened grasp. She swung a leg around to move Yancey's back to the bed. She mounted him. There was an explosion of passion in Yancey's eyes. “Oh, yeah,” was all he managed to say. She leaned down into his face. “Make me come like a thirty year old virgin?” she asked, with a laugh. She shook back her sweatmoistened hair. “I'll show you a captive bride.” She shifted her weight to drive his cock farther into her, and then seized the shaft from inside her with a muscular clench. The effects of the internal grip on his cock surfaced quickly on his face. He surrendered, helpless, against the bed. “Shit…please, baby…do it,” he groaned. While her pussy gripped his cock within, she humped his body, harder and harder. She reached out for Oliver's erection and pumped it with her hand just as hard as she grasped Yancey from within. She rode him until she felt the orgasm jerk violently through him. Until his whole body arched up and his head leaned back and there wasn't an inch of tension left in his body. She jerked off Oliver until he cried out and then spurted hot streams of cum across her hand. Laughing with her victory, a sweaty Elfie collapsed back against the bed beside Yancey. The Sioux man rolled over to stare down into her face. “You haven't come yet,” he said. “You didn't really think you'd get away with not coming.” His lips encompassed her wetness again as he lapped his tongue feverishly up and down over every spot that made her shiver and cry out.

Elfie felt the burst of pleasure closing in on her. She tried to keep herself from crying out, but it wasn't possible. Yancey grinned down at her as the last of her pleasure ebbed away. He was drying his face again. “What in the fuck did you just do?” he asked. “Showed you that invasions can be overcome from within,” she said. “What? You didn't like the invasion?” he whispered, his tongue darting out to lick at the end of her nose. “Oh, yes, I did,” she said. Oliver moved around to sit in their circle. He pressed his lips tenderly to Yancey's and then leaned across to do the same to Elfie. “Next time is my turn,” Oliver said into her face. “I think we all know this is permanent, right?” “Do you see me going anywhere?” she asked. Coming out of nowhere, a loud sound, like the world's biggest windmill, swooped above them. It seemed to encompass the sky. They all looked upward. “That's one big damned helicopter,” Elfie said. Oliver shook his head, tossing a look of challenge at Yancey. “More like a UFO.” “Please,” Yancey said, shaking his head as jumped into his jeans and boots. “I'll go look. It has to be military aircraft.” “Or a UFO,” Oliver said, standing up quickly to dress himself and follow Yancey out the door. The men gazed upward as what looked like bat-shaped kites soared in a larger circle far above. “Could be cliffhanger sailplanes,” Yancey said, “or birds.” Oliver shook his head. “Gliders couldn’t fly in that tight a formation. And those can't be buzzards or any other kind of bird. Even from this long distance, they look six feet tall at least.” Elfie, clad in her gym clothes, stepped out into the garden to join them. She shadowed her eyes with a hand and squinted in the objects' direction. They looked huge and menacing. Big black birds of prey on a mammoth scale. “Advanced, weird military aircraft?” Elfie suggested. Yancey looked back at her. “We're a long way from Area 51. No, they're birds that just look big,” Yancey said with what sounded

like forced certainty. “It has to be a moisture lens effect from the storm or something.” An explosive bang behind them came from the cottage. “It came from the roof,” Oliver said. Yancey climbed up a side fence outcropping to the cottage's eaves and then pulled himself on top. He stood up, like a shadowman against a threatening sky, staring away across the land beyond the walled garden. His hand extended his weapon, like some kind of shamanic totem to ward off an unknown evil. “Holy shit,” he said, taking a step back, as if something crawled up the roof's other slant toward him. Yancey aimed and fired several rounds until Elfie heard something slide over tiles and fall off the roof. “What is it?” Oliver yelled, about to boost himself up. “Hit the flood lights on the garden!” Yancey called down, as he shoe-surfed the roof tiles until he hit the eaves, then jumped straight down to dirt. Elfie scanned the garden quickly until she saw the control box. She hit the biggest lever with the bottom of her hand. The lights blared to full life. Yancey appeared, jogging slowly, almost disjointedly. He grasped onto her shoulder as if needing to cling to an edge of reality. “My God,” he coughed out. “I don’t know what that was. Baby, I'm sorry I doubted you.” She combed her fingers back through her hair. “Like Molly said, we don't have to know what they are, only what they do. How many are out there?” He shook his head and shrugged at the same time. “A hundred, maybe two. Maybe more.” “Molly said that light destroys them, right?” Oliver asked as he joined them. “Shouldn't the light keep them out of the walled garden? She said we'd be safe here.” “Molly also said the mature ones were stronger and much harder to kill,” Elfie said. Yancey stared upward, at the still-circling wheel of flying black arcs. “And she said that, close-up, they appear to be black angels.” “We have to make a run for it,” Elfie said.

Oliver shook his head in an attempt to hurry his thought process. “Make a run to where? We're surrounded by those little fuckers. And we've got God knows what flying over us.” As if summoned by his words, the black shapes began their glide down, like arc-shaped kites, from the clouds. They stopped at a hovering pace, still keeping their distance. “We'd better head to the cottage,” Yancey said, pulling both of them with him. Panic and sweaty palms made the doorknob hard to turn, but Yancey opened it. They banged through the door to the cottage, one person after the other. Oliver slammed the door and locked it behind them. The black-feathered angels descended slowly from the sky. “What in the hell do they want from us?” Yancey said. “Um, to kill us maybe?” Oliver asked. “I get that, Madam Savant,” Yancey said. “But, why? I mean, aside from Molly's theory about the Wakinyan. There must be something we have that they're after.” “Oh, my God,” Elfie said. “The artifacts.” Oliver looked around. “Where are they?” She covered her face with her hands for a long moment. Finally, she said, “In the jeep. I left them there. I have to go out and get them.” “Like hell you do,” Oliver said. “I brought the antiquities here,” she said, “and they're my responsibility.” “Oliver’s right. They can stay in the damned jeep,” Yancey replied. Elfie looked around at him with a sudden dose of incredulity. “What? You're still unconvinced that something is going on here?” “No,” Yancey said, “but I only believe in the parts of it I can see.” “Oh, that's right, don't worry about the whale's teeth, Captain Ahab. All we can see is its fluke.” “I'm not about to jeopardize your life for supposition,” Yancey shot back. “I can do this!” Elfie said. “You guys would be in as much danger out there as I'd be. I can run as fast as you guys can. I know how to shoot a gun. I am responsible for the artifacts. I've brought

them this far. I want to see them returned to where they came from. It’s the fastest, easiest way to do it. I'm the obvious choice to go out there and you both know it.” “Maybe,” Oliver said, “but you'll be faster on a dirt bike.” “We have a dirt bike?” Yancey asked. “I saw it earlier. It’s in the garage,” Elfie said. “I don't know how to ride one.” “I do,” Oliver said. “You ride on the back, I'll drive. Like our old bike trip days.” Elfie thought for a long moment. “This isn't your battle, Oliver. I'm the one who made the decision to go work with this jerk.” He shrugged. “It’s the fastest, easiest way to do it. It’s the obvious choice to go out there, and you know it.” “I hate it when you use my own logic against me.” She laughed a little. “Okay. I agree, that would be faster.” “I'll give cover,” Yancey said, checking his handgun. “I shot one of the little bastards off the roof. Bullets might not kill the big ones, but they probably faze them a little.” “I can carry a flashlight for the little ones,” she said, reaching for one of the short wand flashlights she brought in with supplies and provisions. She clicked it on. “No time like the present.” A one-car metal shed that seemed to lately be used for garden tools, the garage contained the dirt bike, propped up against a wall. The bike bore no trace of dust or spider webs, both of which told Elfie it had been used in recent days. Ergo, it would run. “The garage lets out on the side trail that comes up over the property, remember?” Yancey asked. “Be careful, though, because the next ramp up is Angel Peak. This way will let you come around the side of the jeep. Once you grab the artifacts, you can drive the bike around through the main gate. I'll be waiting to open it.” Oliver wheeled the dirt bike toward the garage door. He straddled it, started it, and gunned the engine. Elfie hopped on the back. “Ready?” Oliver asked her, and Elfie nodded. Oliver looked back at Yancey. “When I nod, open the garage door.” Elfie switched on the flashlight. Yancey reached for the lever. Oliver nodded. Yancey yanked up the door. The dirt bike scooted hard through pebbly sand that kicked up debris behind them, as Elfie sprayed the dark clouds with light.

Movements toward them became frantic and haggard. Behind them, the sound of Yancey's gunshots rocketed off, aiming at threats they couldn't see. Elfie heard the angry hive sound form around them. In the dark, she could barely see them, so she swung the flashlight in every direction. A flash of blue dust occasionally laced through the gray, followed by silence. The dirt bike circled around to the back of the jeep, to the hatch where supplies were kept. Oliver stabbed a key in the lock, and yanked it open. Elfie handed him the flashlight while she reached up to claim the case filled with artifacts. Oliver kicked at one of the spawn, and then killed it with a flashlight. “Ready,” Elfie said, clutching the artifact case between them. Oliver sped off around the front of the jeep, skidding fast across the pavement and around the edges of the garden wall. The dirt bike made another long pass to move around a cluster of spawn, grasping out at them without success. The bike slid through the gate, and Elfie thought for a moment their race was won. Yanked backward, Elfie flew off the bike like a rag doll pitched into a garden corner. The artifacts’ case slid sideways. The creature jumped toward her, its black wings extending to cover her body. Its face peered out from its tattered feathers – the face that had possibly once been human, a red spot at the center of its forehead buttressed by needful eyes pulsing with power. She felt repulsed, but drawn...a paradoxical lust bursting through her with the thoughtless ferocity of fire. It seemed that the force had radiated from the black angel and shot through her. She fought to push it away. Yancey stepped between them. He aimed and blasted the creature. It withdrew only to drag Elfie with it. Oliver grabbed her arm to pull her free and the creature returned the attack. Yancey emptied his gun into the creature. The creature flew upward. As if caught in a whirlwind, it was forced upward and then swallowed by the dark. Yancey grabbed the artifacts’ case, and they dragged themselves, the case and the dirt bike back into the cottage, and then slammed the door. Elfie reached for the artifacts’ case to push it to safety. She slumped against the wall on the far side of the bed.

Yancey rammed the dirt bike into the garage again. He then surrendered to the floor beside Elfie. Oliver dropped back against the bed to catch his breath. Each breath was only fleeting, but it felt like hours before any of them could exhale. **** Elfie's watch revealed it had been one hour. She had risen with effort and walked across to the window. With the sky fully dark outside, the low-hanging moon appeared distant in the wake of the garden lights. The gentle quiet felt palpable, as if it transfused the hub of the house with something warm and comforting. “The light keeps out the spawn, I get that,” Elfie said, the first of them to speak, “but why did the older ones vanish so quickly?” Yancey rubbed at his forehead and sat forward. “Maybe they didn't expect us to fight? The gun surprised them?” “Why didn't they follow us into the house?” Elfie asked. “They're supposed to be mortally afraid of us. They just retreated when we took refuge inside.” Yancey shrugged. “Molly said the cottage was safe.” “What?” Oliver asked suddenly, his voice harsh and unexpected. “Before, you didn't believe any of this and now, you're quoting a medicine woman?” “Before, I hadn't had the boogeyman attack people I love right in fucking front of me!” Yancey barked back. “Yeah, strangely I'm inclined to believe her more now, thanks very much. I’m a skeptic, I’m not stupid.” “Sorry,” Oliver said quietly. He winced a little as he stretched out his arm. “My wrist hurts. So, I'm cranky.” “Let me take a look at it where there's light,” Elfie said, walking across to accompany him around the corner to the kitchen sink. Yancey stood up and moved toward the corner storage cabinet. “I'll grab the first aid kit.” Elfie switched on a light, then plugged up the sink and turned on the tap. Warm water spilled into the basin as Oliver unbuttoned his sleeve. As his arm extended into the water, it became pink. When Elfie turned on the overhead light, they both could see his shirtsleeve

soaked with blood. Oliver unbuttoned it to roll it up but Elfie reached for scissors to split the sleeve's seam. “Yikes,” Oliver said, flinching at the sight of the gash in his arm. “You wouldn't think all the adrenaline in the world would let me ignore that.” “That'll need stitches when we get back to the city,” Yancey said, looking over his friends' shoulders as he handed Elfie the first aid kit. “We can disinfect it now and wrap it up,” Elfie said. “I believe this disinfectant is that packet kind that hurts like hell so put on your big boy pants, okay?” “Yes, Ma'am,” Oliver said, grinning until he winced as the disinfectant did its job. Elfie handed one end of the gauze roll to Yancey. “Feed that back to me while I wrap his owie, would you?” Yancey took the roll and did as ordered. “Elf, did you get a good look at that thing?” “Hell, yes,” she said. “Too good. It had…you know those Native American headdresses they wear in cowboy movies but that no real Indian ever actually wears?” “A war bonnet, you mean?” Yancey asked in reply. “Yeah, like that, except it was all black feathers.” “The creature had a weird energy emanating from it, too,” Oliver said, blanching as the disinfectant salve reached his wound. “Sorry,” Elfie said, wincing in sympathy as she wrapped the gauze around three times. She snapped off tape and sealed the dressing. “No, I'm sorry,” he said. He stretched his fingers out, as if to try the bandage on for size. “For what?” Elfie said, squinting to discern any possible reason for his regrets. “Senior prom,” Oliver said. “Honey Trowbridge.” Confusion ran rampant through her face. “Who? Oh, you mean, that girl you went out with back in high school?” “That's the one. I knew you didn't have a date for the senior prom. I knew you wanted to go. But I took Honey Trowbridge.” “That was, like, a hundred years ago, Oliver. Who cares?” “I care,” he said. “I know it's a weird time to bring it up, but I've always felt guilty about it.”

“Girls in the chess club aren't often asked to the senior prom. It's a badge of honor for the breed. Anyway, you liked Honey.” “I liked you too,” he said. “Not like you liked Honey. You can't change how you feel. Life is like that.” Oliver shook his head. “The main reason I didn't ask you out is the guys from the track team razzed me about you having a crush on me. I didn't want them to think – I don't know –” “That a girl nerd was the best you could do?” she asked, chuckling at the thought. He sort of nodded and shook his head at the same time. “I'm afraid so, yeah.” She smiled at the thought. “That's a very high school thing for a guy to do.” “Yeah, but it hurt you. Badly. And I knew it would.” She retrieved the gauze roll from Yancey and closed it in the first aid kit again. “So?” “So, it's like what I did to you…this last time. I said I'd never do that again, but I did.” “Back in high school, Yancey and I did a group baby-sitting gig for all of the high school faculty who had to chaperone the prom. We pulled in major bucks that weekend. Remember, Yancey?” “Oh, yeah,” Yancey said, nodding. “I bought a used car with the money from that weekend,” Elfie said, “and our new relationship grew out of the thing with you two. Everything works out for the best.” “I'd like to think so,” he said, moving forward to reach his arms around Elfie. He stared down into her eyes with a power that seemed to echo inside of her. It felt like she was hearing his thoughts on the inside of her head. Oliver didn't hug. Not like this. When she felt his tongue taste her throat, she knew there was something wrong. She gently pushed him away and tried to laugh it off. “Come on, you've been injured. You can't possibly be in the mood for this now.” “Sure I can,” he said, reaching to pull her back. She stepped back again. “Well, I'm not.”

“Why?” he snapped. “Are you backing off again like you did before?” She squinted at him and shook her head. “I can back-off whenever I like, Oliver.” “So, you are backing off?” he said, walking toward her again. “We've told you we love you. We've given you every reason to stay-” “I didn't say I was going anywhere!” she shot back. He grabbed her again, and this time, thrust her against the wall. His mouth captured her mouth. His hands climbed her belly to her breasts and began to knead them. “She told you, back off!” Yancey said, grasping Oliver's shoulders to drag him off Elfie. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” The front door flew open. A figure rounded the corner into the room. A voice shattered the kitchen's quiet like brittle old glass, “Get away from them!” They turned around toward the voice that had just intruded. A Native American man stood there, brandishing a sub-machine gun, pointed squarely at Oliver. It was Severin, the man from the motorcycle, the man who warned them about the phantom dogs. “Back off and stand against that wall,” Severin said, moving to stand between Oliver and the other two. “What the hell are you doing, Severin?” Yancey said sharply. “You have to trust me for a moment, Yancey,” Severin said. He yanked a pair of handcuffs from his belt and tossed them across to Oliver. “I need you to listen. While you still have enough concern for your friends, put these on.” “Why?” Oliver asked, clearly confused. “Just do it,” the man with the gun said. “I'll explain after.” “But, he has an injury on his arm,” Elfie added quickly. Severin reached for Oliver’s uninjured arm and cuffed it, pulling the other end to lock around his own wrist. “I know. When the beings attacked him, your friend was infected by them.” “How the hell do you know that?” Yancey asked. “I know because I know,” Severin said, “and very shortly, he'll bear no resemblance to the man you know. For your safety and the safety of others, I have to bring Oliver with me.” Oliver's face was overshadowed by concern. He seemed to be listening to his own head, to whispers in his own blood. “I think he's

right,” he said, his voice tightening in upon it. His gaze appeared to turn inward. His complexion grew even whiter. “I have to leave.” “You'll come with me,” Severin said. “I'll see you safely to where you must go.” “What do you intend to do to him?” Yancey asked sharply. Oliver reached out with his un-cuffed hand and grabbed Yancey's arm. “It'll be okay. I'll be back. Somehow. I'll come back.” “Oliver!” Elfie said, her voice breaking, “You can't leave us. Not now.” The first signs of tears misted his eyes. “I have to,” Oliver said, removing his glasses and handing them to Elfie. “I promise you, I’ll be back.” Severin looked back, with regret in his eyes, and said, “I'll see you soon.” Oliver didn't look back…Elfie sensed that he couldn't look back…and the door closed with a dark finality between them and him.

Chapter Four Oliver's mind flickered through random thoughts like a ship’s masthead blown by the wind. He thought he felt the peak path ripple beneath his feet, as if the world was a transmission and his brain kept drifting off the signal. It terrified him while something else tried to calm him. It felt like a kind of lullaby humming through his blood--a mental signal to draw him toward the embrace of the invisible. It also felt like a lie. Severin put his weapon on safety and set it aside before he plucked down on a big rock. He nodded Oliver to the boulder across from him. Severin unlatched the handcuff from his own wrist and latched it onto the metal bar embedded deeply in the ground rock beside Oliver. The cuff on Oliver's wrist was now chained to the ground. “I'm sorry for this. One day, I hope you will realize it was necessary,” Severin said. Oliver watched as the final lock clicked in place. He shook his head in disbelief. “I had a friend once who was fine one day and the next day, he learned he had a brain tumor. One day fine, the next day, a death sentence. I know what he felt like now.” Severin shook his head and pulled his knife from his left boot. “You will survive. They've claimed you to establish what they see as balance. None of this was an accident. They wouldn't have gone to that trouble just to destroy you.” Oliver squinted, trying to follow a conversation that was turning on a dime. He also watched the knife. “They claimed me? What do you mean?” “They weren't after your friends. They were there for you. You're a pawn in a very old chess game.” “Why?” The Sioux man shrugged. “I don't know why they do what they do, only that they do it.” “That's what the lady…Molly…said.” Severin nodded and tossed him a smile. “She would have. She's the one who taught me everything.” “You're the guide she was going to send us,” Oliver said, in sudden understanding.

Severin's smile melted into a gentle laugh. “In truth, I've been riding with you the whole way, just to be on the safe side.” The Lakota man leaned down to aim the knife's blade at the ground. He drew a pattern showing one entry branching off several ways. “This is the layout of the Angel Caves. Laughing Bear's inner circle amass in the depths of it, the spawn live in the portal coves. You must stay as far from the inner circle as possible and wait for us to come.” “But if I've been infected by whatever they are won't I become them?” “No. There are choices to be made. You'll make a better one, just as others have done. The caves are a vast, subterraneous circuit. The creatures only live in a portion of it. The song in your head will lead you away from danger and toward safety. You'll be safe from the sun in the caves. We know the newer beings can survive in there.” “I hope you know what you’re talking about.” “Believe me, I do,” Severn said, stowing away the knife in his boot again. “I'll toss you the key to unlock yourself in a moment. When you do, follow the call in your head toward the caves. One way or another, your stay there will be short-lived, I promise.” “Why doesn't that sound very reassuring?” Severin laughed a little. “You should feel fortunate. You're going to be part of a great battle, a battle for the ages.” He pitched the key at Oliver, who caught it. “I'll see you soon.” Before Oliver could rebuff him sarcastically with some bit of wit about willingly forgoing the honor of a great battle of the ages, Severin had already vanished from the path, his footsteps echoing crisply down the hill. Oliver turned toward the seven mouths of the caves. He could hear the summoning voices singing through his blood. He could feel the daylight stinging his skin, as if he was growing allergic to it. The sun was barely reaching the sky. The brighter the sky grew, the harder he found it to breathe. He walked into the center cave. Swallowed by a bright, white fog, he walked utterly blind into the depths. Once beyond the blinding whiteness, the passage ahead appeared dark, dark, dark, without all hope of day dark, as John

Milton once put it. The only illumination flickered like fireflies trapped behind black glass walls. His hand trembled as he touched it to the glassy cave wall. He slowly advanced. Something flickered from torches at the far end of this passage. It flickered like fire, but it gave off no light. Somehow, it burned with a black flame. He heard a clatter of many feet shuffling his way. The sound swept toward him like a low wave. The marching stopped suddenly. He swung toward them. He remembered the flashlight on his belt. He flicked it on and flashed the beam their way. The line of child doll faces fractured into blue ash. The child-like warbling gathered again and moved closer. He crept nearer to the wall. All the way to the end of the natural colonnade, where the cave passages annexed a central part of the structure, the black flame burned dimly enough to see through. Past the torches, Oliver could see a pit at the center of the annex. Phantom shadows fluttered over the cave pit walls, cast off by the black fire torches. Something draped in black fire arose from the pit. It resembled a human-sized bat with angrily outstretched wings. What he first thought to be feathers appeared to be licks of flame. It pivoted upwards and turned slowly around. He never saw the being completely before it rushed toward him. He never felt the bite from the jaws that clamped down on him from behind. **** They just stood there, like two clenched fists, unable to relax their grip on the moment. Elfie had no clue what to say or do. She felt like she'd been broadsided by a truck and left half-conscious in the middle of the road. “What do we do?” Elfie asked. “What the fuck can we do?” Yancey replied, slamming a hand against a wall. “Stand here, sit there, do something pointless and wait.” “How well do you know this Severin fellow?” she asked.

“Well enough to know that Oliver is safe with him. Severin did what he did to protect us.” Yancey arose from the patch of wall he was leaning against. With a burst of sudden rage, he kicked the box of artifacts. “Stupid atavistic backward garbage. That box matters a whole lot now, huh?” “Oliver risked his life to get them back here,” Elfie replied, emphasizing every word. “So what?” “So, maybe we should honor his sacrifice by not knocking it.” “He's not dead!” “I didn't say he was!” she said. “You're not the only one who is hurting here, you know.” “I'm the only one who didn't leave him!” Yancey said, his face reacting with regret the moment he said it. “Listen, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.” “If I could change things and save Oliver from this,” Elfie said carefully, “I’d go back with the artifacts and never return.” “You know I wouldn't have wanted that.” “I don't know that,” she said, her eyes growing dark. “I can see why you'd feel that way. You and Oliver chose each other. Clearly, you two belong together. It's destiny…fate, whatever. You and Oliver were fine together until I came back. And I'm messing things up. Maybe you're right, I shouldn't be here.” “I didn't say that in the first place!” he said. “You know I don't believe in fate.” “Well, yesterday, you didn't believe in vampires either, did you?” she asked. He strode across the room to stare directly into her eyes. “Don't you dare use this situation to chicken out of the three of us.” “I'm not chickening out of anything!” she said, staring straight at him. He took a step forward, until he stared deeply into her face. “Then what the hell are you doing?” “Trying to make your argument for you. That maybe I - ” Yancey grabbed her and pressed their mouths together. He thrust his fingers into her hair and plunged his tongue through her teeth. Elfie's mouth reacted to his, her tongue responding in an instant.

He thrust her against the wall, his lips covering her mouth completely. After a moment, he broke the kiss and forced himself away from her. “What the hell was that?” “I don't know,” Elfie said, anxious for breath. “I’d say it came out of nowhere.” “It's the life energy of the caves. It provokes mating…and anger,” Severin said from the door. She nearly leapt out of her skin at the sound of his voice. She had forgotten that Indians didn't knock. Suddenly, Severin was standing there, returning the cottage key to his pocket. “I can tell you all you need to know,” he said. Severin nodded at the door. “Come on, let's go out there to talk.” “That's not safe,” Yancey said, glancing toward the sky. “They have what they came for,” Severin replied. “You're safe. But there's a lot we have to talk about.” **** His eyes wore an inscrutable and quiet brown, like those of a deer watching from the deeper woods. His hair ran past his shoulders, like the satin drape of a black shawl. Severin sat on a rocky seat beside the table where, Elfie remembered with a sharp jolt of pain, she, Oliver and Yancey had been sitting and talking, while not all that afraid of the future. “How do we get Oliver out of there?” Yancey said, as if every word was a chore to speak. “Don't tell me it's impossible. We'll make it possible.” “It's been done,” Severin said, nodding. “I’ve seen people rescued from them. Not many, but some. I've done it myself.” Elfie sat forward. “You have?” Severin looked up toward the peak. “I rescued my woman from there. I took a member of their race from them, so I had to make a sacrifice.” “What sort of sacrifice?” Severin glanced cautiously toward the blue seeping through the black sky. “I am what they are, at least in part. I'm what Oliver may become.” Yancey’s eyebrows gathered together. “Are you actually trying to tell us that you’re – ”

“Yes,” Severin said. “I doubt you can be so close-minded as to still think we don’t exist.” “It’s not closed-mindedness,” Elfie said protectively. “Yancey is a skeptic. We need that more than ever now. I don’t believe in anything but what I see. I’ve seen enough at this point, and I think Yancey has too.” Yancey murmured his agreement. “Enough. But Severin, how is it you live outside the cave system? Why don't you look like them?” “They choose to live that way, I choose not to.” “That’s not an answer,” Elfie said. Severin smiled a little. “There were children who once grew up in the sewers of a big city. They were rescued from there, and yet, they still walked hunched over, as if they couldn’t stand up. We carry some limits within us, as they do theirs.” Yancey exhaled, slowly but surely. “Then you know their limits, so you tell us. How do we get Oliver out of there?” Severin leaned forward. “Molly says you three are the Wakinyan,” he said. “Wakinyan, in Lakota, means thunder and lightning. In a lot of indigenous American cultures, thunder is truth, lightning is vision or revelation. The thunderbird wings give thunder, the beak brings lightning. The two together bring justice and unity and -” “I know all that,” Yancey said, shaking his head, “and to borrow your words, we need to know what it does, not what it is.” “It means you three, united, have the means to destroy Jumlin and his spawn.” “How can we? We have no idea how to do that,” Elfie said. Severin nodded thoughtfully. “The myth doesn't say you have knowledge, it says you have means. You have a way.” “Oh, well, that makes all the difference,” Yancey shot back wryly. “What's the use of having a way to do something if we don't know what it is or how to use it?” “I think the way is to fracture the cave system itself,” Severin said. “There is some kind of system of external crevices that allow small amounts of light inside at each point. The indirect light reflects in the cave walls and, cumulatively, produces the glow. Yet the cave and the black glass protect them from the direct light that would kill them.”

“And you think this system of external crevices also creates a structural weakness in the caves,” Yancey said, “and if we can find a force strong enough, we can crack the cave system open like a geode. Flood it with light.” “And kill the spawn,” Elfie said. Severin nodded. “Exactly.” “So how do we know what to use?” Yancey asked. “What is strong enough to kill them?” Yancey gestured toward Molly Coddle’s place. “I believe I know what the force is that can be used, but you’re the only ones who can say for certain.” “Your guess is as good as ours,” Elfie said. “The legend speaks of working with light. My grandmother is a light-worker, in the literal sense,” Severin said. “Molly’s glass blowing?” Yancey asked. “The torch she uses? Would that be strong enough to fracture a cave wall?” Severin looked toward Elfie. “What would you say? You’re the scientist.” “Well, plain glass is a bunch of disordered atoms,” Elfie said, uncertainly, “and crystal is a structure. It’s much more coherent and orderly. Molly’s glass-blowing equipment is meant to manipulate glass.” “But doesn’t rock have glass in it?” Severin asked. “Yes, but that’s silica, it’s crystalline. It’s the structure that counts. But anything can melt if it gets hot enough. I’m not sure Molly’s equipment will do it,” she said, “though I’d say anything at this point is worth a try.” “Where would we aim the torch?” Yancey asked. “Anywhere in the structure would be suitable,” Elfie said, “Provided Severin’s theory is right. The same instability would impinge on everywhere in the structure.” “And if we blast through Laughing Bear and kill him,” Severin said, “we can destroy the entire spawn…and that would release the humans under bondage.” “Fine, great. Why don’t we test it?” Yancey asked. “No time like the present.” ****

Severin aimed the nozzle of Molly’s premix torch at a chunk of rock broken away from the Willow Peak. He fired. The nozzle’s flame skittered around each nook and cranny and around its curvature. Sparks spit back like silver rain at them from its surface. He blasted the chunk with flame for what seemed, to Elfie, like forever. Then, he shut it down. The flame went dead. The rock chunk lay there, virtually unchanged, except for some surface charring. “Well, that’s something,” Yancey said. Severin shook his head. “But not nearly enough. That won’t even knock a chip off of it.” “What else could be the lightning the legend speaks of?” Elfie muttered quietly. “Maybe it’s a metaphor for something?” Yancey suggested. “Like a symbol for our relationship.” “How is that going to knock down a cave system?” Elfie asked. “The strength of the energy behind it, maybe,” Yancey said. “I don’t know. The erotic energy around here is certainly palpable. And no, I can’t believe I’m talking about energy like it has a mind of its own, either.” “What about one of the artifacts?” Elfie asked. “Like maybe light streams through it at a certain point and triggers something?” “Yeah, maybe the sun hits a certain place on the staff and then it all just springs open?” Yancey asked with a smirk. “Don’t be silly. This isn’t Raiders of the Lost Ark, Elf.” “Well, my idea isn’t any sillier than palpable erotic energy,” she replied. “You’ll have to think of what it is by nightfall,” Severin said. “You’re the Wakinyan. You’re the only ones who will recognize it when you see it. I have to go underground before sun up.” “Wait a minute, where in hell are you going?” Yancey asked in a harsh voice. “We have to go get Oliver right now. He’s in there by himself. Alone. Without us.” Severin shook his head. “We can’t go now. We have to enter the cave just before dark. There’s no other time we can do it. And I won’t survive in direct sun.” “I understand why you have to wait,” Elfie said. “But why do we? We could go in there now.”

Severin looked at them fully, solemnly. “I have to go in first. I know the way.” “Like you say, we’re the Wakinyan,” Yancey said, “so this isn’t your battle. If you tell us what to do – ” “I can’t tell you enough to protect you. If we’re going to save Oliver, I have to enter first; I’m the only one who can,” Severin said. He lowered his voice into a soft, thoughtful sound. “There was a time that someone went before me. I’ve always known I would do it for someone else, for some better cause, at some other time. Now, I know who and when and why.” He pulled a small pouch from his pocket. “There’s something you could do for me, though.” “Of course,” Elfie said. Severin handed the pouch to her. “My dad was a Wicasa Wakan. He always wanted me to follow him. So he gave me his wasicun, what white folk call a medicine bag.” “From the age of the deerskin, it looks very old,” Elfie said. “It had belonged to my grandfather, too,” Severin replied. “I’d like it to be given to my son, Chaske, should I…well, let’s say, should I continue the journey tomorrow. Chaske lives in a home southwest of Angel Peak. It can be seen from there.” “It’s not far from my home. I know where it is,” Yancey said. Severin nodded toward the deerskin pouch. “Handle that for me?” “Of course,” Yancey said. “I’d consider it my duty. You know that.” Severin looked up at the sun reaching farther across the sky. “I have to leave now to go underground.” “Severin,” Elfie said, reaching out to touch his shoulder and stop him a moment, “you said before that humans have been rescued from the caves.” Severin smiled thinly. “They have. If they remain human enough.” “Will Oliver be human enough?” Elfie asked, as if half afraid of his answer. Severin looked kindly at her. “I hope so. I’ll see you both at dark,” Severin said, nodding toward Angel Peak, “up there.” Yancey and Elfie watched as the man descended toward Willow Wash, then beyond the compound wall.

**** A quiet settled around them. Elfie leaned her head against her hand, combing fingers into her hair. She glared up accusingly at the sun. “Why in the hell am I tired? Oliver is in there and I’m tired. How can that be?” Yancey’s hands settled on her shoulders from behind. He deposited a kiss in her hair. “Because you haven’t had a full night’s sleep in days. The body needs what the body needs. C’mon, let’s get some shut-eye. We can’t do anything for Oliver now but take care of ourselves.” Peace and quiet reigned over the house again. Elfie pulled the shades closed, because she didn’t want to be reminded of the grounds outside and all that had recently happened. She turned right into the bedroom. The bedroom had become a profoundly special place for them, just hours before. The king sized bed remained as they had left it. Yancey had followed after her. He freely shucked his blue jeans and tossed them aside. He stood there, as always, in full commando mode. Not surprisingly, given the energy of the place, Yancey already sported a growing erection. He grinned back at her when he caught her noticing it. Elfie had never been all that shy around Yancey and Oliver, but it still felt odd to strip in Yancey’s presence. She turned her back to drop her slacks. She retained her shirt while doffing her bra from beneath. She reached over to pitch the shed clothes on the bedside table, only to find Oliver’s suit coat still draped over it. Elfie left her own clothes behind and picked up Oliver’s coat. She pressed the soft cloth coat to her nose to inhale Oliver’s distinct scent: a soft mix of humanity and masculine cologne. It brought tears to her eyes as she felt Yancey’s hand brush her arm. He had extended his palm as a request. She understood and passed Oliver’s jacket along to him. Yancey wrapped the coat up in his arms, as he would have the man. He held it to him. Once again, Elfie couldn’t help sensing an impermeable bond she could never fully share. “Stop it,” Yancey said sharply. “Stop what?” “You know what,” he said, towing Elfie and the jacket with him up into the bed.

She leaned her head against Yancey’s shoulder. She found the sigh she exhaled deep inside her. “I walked away from you guys a year ago. But now the thought of losing Oliver –” “We’re not losing anyone!” Yancey said staunchly, pulling her into his arms to run his hands over her shoulders. “Anyway, the reason you could walk away is because you knew you could always come back. Now, well, the situation is different. Besides, stop thinking too much. Get some sleep. We’ll need it.” She coughed out a crooked laugh. “You don’t want to sleep, and you know it.” “No, but I thought maybe you did,” he said, rolling her onto her back. He held her arms down above her head and leaned down to bite her shirt hem between his teeth. He pulled it up. “What was that about captive bride?” “I’m not captive if I want to be here,” Elfie said, with a defiant little smile. “Maybe you want to be here, but you want to be captive too,” Yancey said, grinning, as he leaned down to blow softly over her right nipple. She gasped at the sensation. “For a bisexual guy, you’re really hot for girls’ tits.” “I’m hot for yours. I always have been.” “Since when?” “Since I met you,” Yancey said, laughing hotly. He ran his tongue around her right nipple and then licked it greedily. “So has Oliver. That’s the way it is with guys.” “How would you know that Oliver thinks about my tits?” Elfie murmured, trying hard to focus on the conversation amid the heat burning in her blood. “We’ve talked about doing you a hundred times,” Yancey whispered, his own voice growing rough and faraway as he tongued her left nipple to wetness and then blew across its surface. “Maybe a thousand. Talked about what we’d do, how we’d do it --” Yancey reached up and around the back of Elfie’s panties, grasping their crotch and yanking them down. He pushed a knee between her legs to spread open her thighs. “Kinica…” he murmured into her throat, licking tenderly at her skin. “Sogya…le.”

“Is this captive enough for you?” Elfie whispered back, with a grin. “You’re not captive at all,” Yancey moaned back as he thrust his cock into her burning, wet hole, “and now I’m going to fuck you.” Yancey’s cock dragged out of her a scream that almost sounded like pain. The pleasure pulsing through her couldn’t be vented by tiny lovemaking coos. The pleasure came not just from within, but from the world around her, a satiation at the deepest level. Something compelled them to do this. Elfie grasped out at Oliver’s suit coat to draw it near her, so they could feel his presence. Yancey’s reddened face and glassy eyes betrayed his state of mind. Passion had him in its teeth. He thrust faster and harder, his mouth claiming her right breast again, his tongue swabbing wetly over her nipple. As he continued fucking, he reached under to rub his finger through her soaking wet slit until he found her swollen clit. She gasped hard as he touched it. She lurched up to close the slender distance between them. Pleasure swept through her like a moving ridge. She drove her face into Yancey’s muscular brown shoulder. He tenderly nibbled at her throat. She saw the pattern of light pulsing in her eyes; she surfaced enough to hear his pounding heart beneath his chest, feel it drumming gently against her cheek; the light strobe through her eyes began to keep pace with the cadence of his heart. The cadence, the heartbeat, the quieting of her blood in its aftermath, and she felt herself dreaming. “Bright light,” a voice said in her dream. The light flashing in her eyes, in that moment of the dream, was trapped inside a shielded container. She gazed in at its fractured phasing over the item inside. “What?” she asked Oliver in the dream, just as she’d asked him that day three years before. “I said, the light is really bright.” “The argon laser electric discharge is pretty powerful,” she said, laughing. She removed her work glasses, and then shut down the argon laser. “I warned you, there may be significant damage done to this artifact.” “I know. I accept that. It’s just an experiment to see if we can stop the corrosion going on with the Dani artifacts given to us by a

benefactor. I picked one of the less important ones to test. All we could think of was the argon laser.” “Looked like a medicine stone to me,” she said. “It was. A black argillite stone but, like I said, not a particularly important one. We can sacrifice it in the interest of saving the rest.” In her dream, Elfie opened up the container and pulled out the capsule into which she had earlier placed a Papua black argillite stone, well-polished by geologic processes. She uncapped the container and poured the contents out onto a sterile dish. It was fine rubble. Very fine rubble. “Well, that didn’t turn out so good, did it?” Oliver asked with a broken grin. She shrugged. “I did warn you.” Oliver sipped at his fast food cup. “It’s okay. I expected the worst from something being zapped by lightning in a box.” Lightning in a box, Oliver had said…Oliver himself had said it. It dragged her back out of the dream and into the night at hand. She pulled herself onto the edge of the bed. An already awakened Yancey stood at the window where he stared out at a whitegray sky. She knew she must have betrayed something with her eyes, because he immediately took a step toward her. “What?” he asked. “I know what it is,” she said. “What what is?” “I know what our lightning is. Oliver called it that himself. The lightning is the argon laser.”

Chapter Five Her quickened breathing clouded up the night around her. The evening had closed in on them like a tiny room of darkness that blocked out the day. They stood in the midst of the most rural Badlands outreach. Nowhere felt colder than the distant Badlands at night. The whistling of wind and the bluster of night combined to chill her to the bone. Before them, close enough to see inside, the seven mouths of the Angel Caves glowed defiantly through the darkness. Their gauzy lace of light wove around each obsidian wall. The effect reminded Elfie of bad and broken teeth snarling back at them through open mouths, ready to devour. The howl of the wind might have been coming from those open mouths. Even the crisp sound of Severin and Yancey’s nearby conversation buffeting back forth could barely be heard above the howl. The scream of shifting gears finally overtook the wind. Elfie looked down to see Oliver’s jeep, driven by a young Sioux, lurching upward to the roughly even shelf below. The jeep shuddered to a stop. The young Sioux man climbed out, took up the bicycle that had been mounted to the back rack, then rode off away toward the distance. “Shouldn’t he drive the jeep up here?” Elfie asked the two men. “We must have as few people as possible with us,” Severin explained. “Besides,” Yancey said, “the road up here is a steep path that plummets off both sides. Only someone who knows that jeep can drive it up these hills, especially with the generator rigging in back. Remember the drive up to the first campsite?” Elfie smiled at the thought…it had only been a day or so ago, and yet, it seemed like a year had passed between that night and this one. “Yeah, I see your point. Especially in Oliver’s jeep.” Yancey nodded and shared a saddened smile. “Especially in Oliver’s jeep. I’ll drive it up here before Severin heads into the caves.” As if on cue, Severin pulled out his boot knife and drew a pattern in the soft sand. He drew a forked shape with several prong

lines branching off. “This is the Angel Caves system. Here we have the heart of the cave, the heart of the spawn, at the center.” “Is that where Laughing Bear lives?” Yancey asked, his voice only twisting a little, as if to quell his sarcasm. “Yes. Destroy the caves, and we kill him,” Severin said. He tapped the end of the stick at the far right side. “I’m going in first to lure Laughing Bear here. I evaded him once, I escaped his control, and he will be more concerned with my entrance than with yours.” “Will he remember you?” Elfie asked, still hugging herself against the prevailing cold. Severin looked up, his eyes seeming to convey the importance of his words. “Laughing Bear forgets nothing.” He moved the knife’s point toward the left. “Elfie, you will be here. Oliver will respond to you the best. You’re a woman. He’s still your friend, but he’s also now compelled to breed for his own. It’s something he cannot resist without great practice.” “She can’t go in by herself!” Yancey snapped. “She has to,” Severin said. “Oliver won’t be drawn to you as quickly. The part of him who is your friend will be, but he’s been driven by a more primal need from within.” “Besides,” Elfie said to Yancey, “you need to drive the jeep, remember? Like you said, can anybody else get that jeep up the steep incline? Especially with the generator in back?” “If necessary,” Severin said to Yancey. “I’ll die so that she’ll live. So that they’ll both live. As would you. But there’s a very important thing you both must do. All of you, the three of you, as soon as you are all free of the caves, you have to run for cover to the Willow Peak cottage, where you were when I found you. I can save myself. I’m the only one who can. Don’t wait for me. Get in the jeep, keep driving and don’t look back. Promise me.” Yancey deliberated for a long moment. “We’re supposed to just run and abandon you?” “You won’t be abandoning me,” Severin explained, “and unless you promise me, we can’t go forward.” Yancey looked toward Elfie. Elfie shrugged and tried to smile. Finally, Yancey nodded his agreement. “Okay, we promise.” Severin pointed away from the caves. “You had best drive my dirt bike down to the truck. We need to act soon.”

Yancey’s cranky glower turned away from the other two people and in the direction of his task. “All right,” he said, advancing first toward the dirt bike, but then turning back sharply to pull Elfie toward him and plant his lips firmly over hers. He backed off to grumble into her face, “Be fucking careful.” “I will,” she said. “You, too.” Yancey turned in Severin’s direction with a look of gratitude. “Thank you.” Severin nodded. “Time to go.” The high-pitched shriek of Severin’s dirt bike as Yancey gunned it down the hill sent a shudder through Elfie’s tight nerves. Her hands, so cold they were numb, had been stuffed into her pockets. She didn’t know if the numbness came solely from the night chill or had been helped along by her general state of terror. “First,” Severin said, “you must try to lure him toward you. You’re a woman. You know how I mean.” “Oh my God,” Elfie said, now fighting the twin rising tides of embarrassment and nausea caused by terror. “Yeah, okay. I lure Oliver toward me. What else?” “Don’t let him touch you. You will want him to touch you more than you want to breathe. As unlikely as that sounds, given the situation, just trust me. You must resist that urge. Try to convey to him, in a way that only Oliver will understand, what we’re trying to do.” She shut her eyes, breathed in, taking in the words that had been given her and finally murmured a soft agreement. “Okay. Then what?” “When you hear Yancey at the mouth of the cave, connecting the generator, you’ll know the moment is near. When you see me pick up the argon laser, you must grab Oliver and drag him with you as fast as possible toward the jeep.” “When do we do this?” “Now,” Severin said, leaning over to lift the argon laser contraption into his arms. Elfie fought to slow her breathing. She felt light-headed already. She swallowed an infinite dryness. “Are you clear on how the laser works? It’s very simple.”

“Yes,” he answered. He motioned her toward the leftmost cave. “I’ll enter the right-side cave mouth, but all the cave passages converge, as I showed you.” “I remember,” she said. “Then start walking now. You’ll see nothing, but keep walking forward. We’ll stop walking when we can see each other again. When the cave strands converge.” As Elfie moved forward, she couldn’t see a thing, but not because of the dark. The lustrous glow created an illuminated cloud of fog that enveloped them. She could hear a far-flung gaggle of wrawls, like a hunting pack snarling in the distance. All at once, it felt as though the hands of fog had uncovered her eyes, and she could see something beyond them. The something, at first, appeared to be sparkles in the cave walls, but then the illumination grew brighter, until she could see the heptad of cave arcades merge into a singular space. At the center, something robed in a blend of black fire and feathers dangled as if weightless above a pit. A huge black angel, at least eight feet tall, its wings folded in. In shock but also at the sight of Severin, Elfie stopped dead in her tracks. Severin set down the argon laser before him. “Hoka hey!” he shouted into the cave’s depths. “Micaje Severin. Mato Tuwe Ehate. waun ki yunke-lo!” Like the scream of a tornado ripping down a city, the roar of the black angel’s wings unfolding deafened Elfie. Its eyes expanded to reveal ice-white burning orbs. “Hecheto welo, mi hohe,” the black angel roared its reply. “Ohunko kola.” “Ai,” Severin replied. Elfie understood only bits. Severin had identified himself as Laughing Bear’s death. Laughing Bear had basically said “bring it on”. The black angel thundered, as if to make its voice echo throughout the Angel Caves, “Haho! Ya au lila wiya waste! Aku la!” With a whispery sound of labored breathing, another figure emerged from the dark. Oliver stood there, ashen from a dearth of light and lack of pigment, his hands hanging down oddly from his shoulders. Oliver always folded his arms when he stood still. You must try to lure him toward you, Severin had said.

Okay, she knew how to do this. She’d done this often enough with other men. She shook her hair free of her collar. She stripped off her over-shirt and tossed it down. “Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness,” Elfie said. “Who said that, Oliver? You remember?” The eyes stared deadly. He said nothing. “Terry Pratchett, remember?” Elfie said, as if half-pleading. “You remember him; he’s one of your favorite writers.” Something in Oliver’s eyes brightened. Half-naked, except for the remnants of his slacks, he stepped fully out of the darkness. His arms seemed more tightly muscled as they gleamed in the ambient glow. His hair shone more brightly. Even his eyes burned bluer than before. Elfie struggled to ignore it all. "Anything you think can be held against you,” she gasped out, quoting again, while taking a full step back. “Who said that? You remember, Oliver.” “Phil Dick,” he said, in something closely resembling his old voice, although the words didn’t sound spoken. They sounded as if they had fallen out of his mouth like broken teeth. “That’s right!” she said, her voice sparked by hope. “And who said, it has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value?” Something surfaced in his eyes again. “Arthur C. Clarke,” he said, like more teeth tumbling out. Elfie nodded. “Yes! Exactly!” she said, desperation gathering in her voice. “You remember me? You remember Yancey? You remember us, don’t you?” “I remember,” Oliver murmured, reaching out to yank her toward him. He thrust his body around hers and clapped his palm to her forehead. “I want you to remember now.” Her mind blasted full of broken bits of memory, like a shattered mirror capturing frozen moments in time. The full effect shimmered with silver. From somewhere behind her, she heard the growl of brakes, the assault of tires against rock and rock over road. She heard the jeep waging a hard-fought battle with the hill. But, the silver memory consumed her mind. She felt her own reactions, but she somehow intuited his, too. She sensed his body warm and hard against her, she sensed his own perception of her body

against him. Every outline of his body fit against hers wherever she hungered for it. Oliver’s slacks bulged at his crotch, hard and hot against the thin fabric she still wore. Every doubt she had ever had about Oliver’s feelings vanished in that onslaught. The slickness from between her thighs dribbled between her knees. She could sense his cock’s throbbing, pulsing fury to fuck her. Her pussy absorbed that need and added its own. The sensation in each of them mirrored the other’s and grew and exploded until Elfie wanted to drag off his slacks, then slam him against the ground. She knew how huge this pleasure would be, reflected from one to the other, larger and larger, until she understood in every nerve in all of her flesh that she would climb up his body into nothing short of paradise. Her clit pulsed inside her as Oliver used one hand to rip away his slacks then jabbed the head of his cock against the crotch of her shorts, until the impact triggered mini-pleasure spasms through her pussy. His mouth swallowed her mouth, sucking in her breath. He drove his tongue into the depths of her, promising with a thrusting flourish from it what lay ahead. From outside their union, she heard the upward rush of firewings unfolding across the cave. She knew, somehow, if she looked upon it, Laughing Bear’s enormity would terrify her. But she hungered more than anything to spread her legs for the promise burning in her crotch. Resist, she heard Severin’s voice storm across her mind. Even farther beyond them, she heard brakes hit hard, smelled the fumes of a gas-burning engine, and heard the grappling of metal against metal. A jeep door opened, and flat feet hit the ground running. Another thud, probably the now-connected generator, shook the nearby ground. “Elfie!” Yancey screamed. Somewhere inside her, she found the reason and the words. She glanced up to see Severin lifting up an armful of blinding light toward the outstretched wings of Laughing Bear. “One move to checkmate,” Elfie whispered into Oliver’s ear and then dragged him toward the real world. As they ran, the fire-wings rushed after them, as if to take them up inside them. A blinding flash exploded behind them, burning

their collective shadow into the earth until Yancey grabbed Elfie and Oliver, and the three of them rushed toward the jeep. A massive cracking sound, like the fracturing spine of a planet, screamed in their ears. The walls of the world tumbled all around them. Yancey pushed Oliver and Elfie into the jeep, then jumped behind the wheel to swing the land rover toward the only road away from the falling sky. The flying debris rained down on the jeep with resounding thuds, as if the mountain had exploded, which partly it had. A crumbling world remained where the seven apertures to the Angel Caves had been an hour before. Elfie held onto Oliver tightly, as if to shield him from the lingering Angel Caves effects as Yancey down-shifted the jeep to maneuver it along the slanted road, around hairpin corners, crumbling sides, and finally, until the road flattened out onto land. Elfie exhaled as the horizon became level with their road. It was the road that led to the Willow Wash, and up that bend was the cottage they had spent the last day inside. “Thank God we’re down off the mountain,” Elfie whispered. Yancey appeared to cough out dust before gasping out, “That was too damned close. How is he?” Elfie combed fingers into Oliver’s hair to turn him toward her, so she could see into his eyes. The stare that shined back at her was Oliver’s own blinking, self-conscious quandary. He looked down at his near-nakedness as Elfie reached for one of their blankets to cover him up. She hauled out another one to wrap around her own nearlynaked body. “He’s all right now,” she said, smiling. He nodded, hugging the blanket around him. She inhaled and exhaled as if a novel exercise of his lungs. “Yeah, I think so.” “Do you remember anything?” Yancey asked. “No,” Oliver said simply. “…I remember us fighting those…things.” A glint of what might have been memory surfaced in his eyes. He looked around. “Where is Severin?” “He told us not to worry about him,” Elfie explained. “He told us to get you safely back to the springs, and he’d meet us there later. He’s been right up until now. I’m inclined to respect his wishes.” Oliver nodded weakly. “Me, too.”

Elfie reached back to their cooler, pulling out a water bottle. She handed the water to Oliver. “This should help a little.” He opened it, swigged back some water, and then recapped it. “Thanks. It did.” Willow Wash road turned upward toward the path that they followed to the peak. The Willow Peak pond gates stood open but, otherwise, the landscape hadn’t changed. Elfie and Yancey each claimed one side of Oliver to help him through the cottage’s front door. “Please, for godssakes, get me to the shower,” he said, his voice a little stronger now. They aided him into the spa-like shower, helping him step down into the range of the nozzle’s spray. Elfie pulled away the blanket that had been wrapped around him. Yancey yanked at the shower control and focused the flow on Oliver. The spray spilled over his hair and down his shoulders, washing away the gray chalky dust that had accumulated on his skin. Oliver turned his face up toward the spray and smiled, as if the water melted away whatever had lingered in his mind. Oliver and Elfie’s eyes met. She smiled back. Slowly, Oliver leaned across to touch his mouth to hers, but then the touch grew into a kiss. Her lips parted for his tongue. “How did I know this was going to happen?” Yancey said with a smirk. Oliver drew back enough to whisper, “I believe we have unfinished business.” “Oh, yeah,” Elfie murmured hungrily, quickly shedding what remained of her clothes. Oliver boosted Elfie onto his shoulder, carrying her to the king sized bed. He reached back and pulled Yancey in to join them. Yancey, seeing the point of it all, rolled to the side to watch events transpire, but Oliver reached out to grasp his hand. Oliver probed his tongue once more through Elfie’s lips, and she opened wider to receive it. Touching his other hand to her face, she felt as if a door in her mind had burst open and sun radiated across a reservoir of memory – all their friendship, all their fights, all their near-misses, all their missed kisses, all the way to that moment. She realized she saw these memories from his perspective, just as she tasted the inside of her own mouth by sensing what his tongue

experienced. She had stared into a mirror that stared back into her. She felt Yancey’s sensing their feelings, too, even as he felt distracted by some other activity. “What is this?” Elfie gasped out, knowing the other men knew what she was asking without the question being spoken. “Residual effect from the cave,” Oliver said breathlessly. “Sorry.” “Who the fuck is complaining?” Elfie asked, pulling him all the way on top of her. When his cock rubbed against her slit, probing firmly against her pulsing clit, she felt the probe and the pulsation inside her. She experienced the pleasure Oliver felt and Yancey felt just as they experienced hers, and the rush of sensation whirled around again, building beyond them. Oliver thrust into her deeply. She clasped her pussy around his cock, gripping it to give back everything he was giving. Oliver’s moans, her moans, and Yancey’s moans all mixed together until one couldn’t be heard above another. “I’ve wanted this for so long,” Oliver murmured, before he rolled over to bare Elfie’s ass toward Yancey. Yancey covered her from behind, running an oily finger, the evidence of his earlier distraction, lightly over her lower lip before kissing it. “You okay for this?” “You have to ask?” she gasped an answer. “No,” he laughed a little in reply, and slowly but steadily pushed his lubed cock into her ass. She threw her hair back at the entry, bucking back against him slowly to hasten it along. “Oh, God, I can feel that, too,” Oliver screamed out in pleasure. “This mind bridge thing is a real time saver,” Yancey said in a smoky voice, the growing sensation strangling each word as he spoke it. “I can butt-fuck you both at the same time.” The explosive pleasure flooded through every nerve of her body, spilling down into Oliver and Yancey, then around again. Elfie felt her heart tremble in its wake. Her arms consumed both men, pulling them toward her. She kissed each face and then pressed her forehead firmly against Oliver’s. She had already started to weep.

Yancey planted a kiss in Oliver’s hair. “Thank heavens you’re safe…thank God you’re with us,” he said, a tear escaping his eye and splashing against Yancey’s and Elfie’s faces. They stayed that way, woven together, until the three of them settled into some semblance of dreamless, restless sleep. It had to have been hours because, as she awoke, the sky seeping through the window shade was purple-colored. Consciously hearing the sound that awakened Elfie from her own napping place in the huddle, she thought to herself, “Indians don’t knock.” And yet, someone was knocking. Somebody knocked hard. She tried to extract herself without waking her lovers, but she knew it was a futile attempt. Yancey awoke and sat up before she even pulled her arm free. Oliver sat up behind them. Elfie ran for her bag to pull out a sweater and pants, but a stilldressed Yancey hit the door before she could dress. Oliver had quickly donned his other pair of slacks. “Billy,” Yancey said, after he pulled the door open, “what in hell are you doing here?” Elfie moved up behind Yancey to see Wolfram Ten Bears, the man Yancey had aptly nicknamed Billy Jack, staring at them through brown-stained teeth. He still wore his black motorcycle jacket. “Severin sent me,” Ten Bears said. “I’m to pick up the artifacts to return to the caves. He would like Oliver to come with me for the ceremony.” “Is Severin okay?” Elfie asked quickly. “I mean, he got out of the caves safely?” “Yes, he got out of the caves,” Ten Bears said, “but he is injured. So he had me come in his place.” Yancey shook his head. “Sorry, Billy, Oliver isn’t going anywhere alone. The Angel Caves are gone. We’re returning the artifacts to the elders.” “But I’m an elder,” Ten Bears said. “You’re not the elders,” Yancey replied. “I learned a long time ago to take it to the whole consortium.” “I can go,” Oliver said, dragging on a sweater, “I feel fine. And I owe it to Severin.” “We can go with, Oliver,” Elfie suggested.

Ten Bears grunted his disapproval. “It’s a ceremony. We need the artifacts. And we need Oliver to be there alone.” “Why do you say that?” Yancey asked, squinting in suspicion. “He says that because he lies,” Molly Coddle’s voice arose behind Ten Bears. She stepped out of Ten Bears’ shadow to face the other three. “He is so old that he told the first lie. He is the great deceiver.” “That’s a lie,” Ten Bears replied, three harsh words spoken in a roar. Molly switched on her flashlight and pointed it at Ten Bears. “Sometimes, Yancey, old Indian myths are so nonsensical, they are true,” she said, as Wolfram Ten Bears, standing before them, dissolved into a pile of blue ash. Elfie felt Yancey grasp at her shoulder, a gesture of shock he had never displayed before. A gesture that stunned her more than Ten Bears turning into ash. “Billy was Jumlin?” Yancey asked, with his eyes wider than his words. Molly smiled sympathetically. “It seems he knew you three were the Wakinyan even before I did. He’d been waiting for the three of you to realize it for a long time.” Oliver stepped around Yancey to stare down at the ash and then over at Molly. “He was trying to drag me back to the Caves?” “The Angel Caves no longer exist. Jumlin was trying to collect the spawn and the artifacts, though I can’t say where he was headed. Laughing Bear may be gone, but I’m sure the spawn remain. Maybe somewhere deep in the earth.” “And Severin?” Elfie asked. Molly’s smile grew gentle. “Severin took the journey.” Yancey sighed softly, loudly. He translated to his friends, “She means he’s dead.” “Oh, my God,” Elfie whispered softly. “My adopted grandson always knew he would never make it out of the cave alive, my dear,” Molly said. “He also knew your good hearts would make you die trying to save him. He couldn’t let you do that. Your existence is more important than his. It’s more important than mine.” “That is a subject I’m not about to debate right now,” Yancey said, looking behind him at the cottage behind them with all their

gear. “All I want to do is pack up and get us and Oliver the hell out of here.” Elfie reached into Yancey’s jeans, pulling out Severin’s pouch. “We have a favor to do first, though. We owe him at least that much.” Yancey nodded. “That’s for damned sure. We go to see Severin’s son, and then we return to the land of double cheeseburgers and the Internet and 3-D TV. In other words, Yancey’s Personal Paradise.” He walked toward their gear to begin gathering it, but paused for a moment and swung around to add, “Oh, and everything that happened here, didn’t happen here. And I never want to hear the word vampire again.” Elfie laughed, pondering how good it felt to do so. “That’s okay, Yancey, we knew we could count on you to close your eyes to reality.” **** In a little trailer home southwest of Angel Peak, not far from Yancey’s home, the three of them stood, watching the residents from afar. A little Sioux boy sat atop his mother’s knee, as the woman shucked husks from corn then cracked the cobs in two. “See the caves fall in this morning, Dad?” the Sioux woman asked the old man seated behind her on his porch swing. “Yuh,” he called back. “White man’s strip-mining the mountains again, I expect.” “That’s what I thought, too,” the young woman replied. Elfie opened the gate to the trailer house yard with a great deal of trepidation, not wanting to interrupt the tableau they had been observing. But, Yancey stepped forward, and she and Oliver followed. “I’m looking for Chaske,” Yancey said, then gestured to his two friends. “We all are.” The young woman looked hard at him. She flicked a nod toward her little boy. “This is Chaske.” Yancey drew the pouch from his pocket. He knelt before the child. “I have a gift for you from your father, Severin.”

The young woman shook her head. “There’s been some mistake. My son’s father’s name is Yoma.” “My father’s name was Severin,” spoke the old man from the porch swing. He stood up slowly, reached for a cane, and then made several short, hard-won steps toward them. “My great-grandson here was named after me. I’m Chaske, too.” Elfie blinked hard, trying to take in the whole of the revelation. She swallowed hard. “Severin was your father?” “Yes, but he has been dead for many years,” the old man said softly. His eyes began to shine. “I’m afraid he couldn’t have given anything to three as young as you. He gave his life to save my mother long ago.” “It came to us from a roundabout way,” Yancey explained. He took two steps up to place it in the old man’s weathered palm. “But, I know he’d want you to have it.” A hard, throttled sob choked out of the old man, as he stared at the item, his eyes full of a tenuous belief. He clutched the pouch to his cheek. “His pouch. I know it. I remember it. So well. Where on earth did you find it?” “It was given to us to give to you,” Yancey said, smiling. “Let’s say it came from a friend.” “Thank you,” the old man said, still struggling with tears. “Thank you so, so, so much.” Elfie heard Yancey utter a few stray words of Lakota, which sounded something like you’re welcome…have a good life…amen. She and Oliver had walked all the way through the gate again, on the open road to Yancey’s house. Their jeep was parked nearby. Yancey soon joined them. As Elfie turned to climb into the jeep, she felt a gentle tug on her hair from behind. “So, Elfie,” Yancey said, with Oliver beside him, “where do you go from here?” “From here?” she asked, grinning. “I’m going to your place. To take a shower and eat something that doesn’t have to be rehydrated.” “And afterward?” Oliver asked. “Afterward, tomorrow or something, I’m hopping on a plane to go back to New Orleans.”

Yancey and Oliver looked at each other. Yancey spoke the soft, uncertain truth, “You are?” Elfie tapped at his shoulder. “Well, yeah. Somebody has to move my stuff back to South Dakota, don’t they?” “Back to our place?” Yancey asked, smiling fully for the first time in days. “Yes, of course. And you two are going with me, you testosterone-bearing men, you.” Oliver laughed in reply. “Somehow, I knew we wouldn’t get out of the heavy lifting.”

The End

www.melodyclark.net

Evernight Publishing www.evernightpublishing.com