Winter Prey

Chapter 12

"Why should I put any trust in you?" she said before she could stop herself. Too late, she bit her lip to halt her words. She didn't have the right to add to his pain.

"You mean, why should you believe my being here would add to your safety when I didn't protect my wife and son from the same situation?"

"You don't owe me an explanation," she said.

"Maybe I want to give you one," Caleb said. "Maybe, for the first time since I entered that Colorado windigo's lair, terrified of what I'd find, I can actually form the words. Maybe I've wondered myself why I was ludicrous enough to leave my wife and son unprotected...even if I didn't know this fucking beast was on the prowl."

She understood guilt. He wasn't a patient, though, and her training was rusty now. No, not rusty, just buried under her own problems. She should listen to him. He had to be suffering tremendously. Still, she didn't know if she could handle another person's problems right now, along with her own. Hell, she even had trouble making decisions these days.

She made this decision, propped an arm on the back of the couch, then laid her head on it to meet his gaze directly.

"I'm not judging you, Caleb," she began. "God, I've got enough remorse in my own life over stupid things I've done...or not done. One of the things I'm working on now is not judging myself."

"I am judging myself," he agreed. "Hell, if there was one time in my life when I wished I had been born psychic, like a few of my friends, it was a few months ago out in Colorado."

"How would psychic senses have help you?" she asked, puzzled.

"They might not have," he admitted with a shrug. "But...how much do you know about how the psychic senses work?"

With in inward sigh, Kymbria realized that he was detouring the conversation, not quite ready to voice his deepest guilt. She well knew that path. She'd let him work through this without prodding.

"I suppose some of our people have psychic ability," she said, "but we've never singled that out of all the other abilities they have, especially the ability to communicate with the other side of the realm."

"Hearing and seeing are probably the most readily understandable," Caleb explained. "You can hear the spirits talk to you, understand what they say. It's called clair-audience. The words are there in your mind, sometimes without the benefit of sound, sometimes with a knowledge of hearing actual words."

Kymbria stifled a jab of stunned shock, hoping Caleb hadn't noticed. Probably not, since he gazed into the fire and went on, "From what friends have told me, they can also see into the other realm, distinguish beings at various levels from misty shapes all the way to fully-formed people as clear as you and I are to each other."

He sipped his drink, then continued, "I suppose you're wondering how this all ties into my guilt."

When he looked at her, Kymbria shook her head negatively. "I imagine you thought that, with a psychic ability, you might have felt or sensed the evil entity and not left your wife and son alone." He started to speak again, but she forestalled him with an upraised hand. "What if's, what might-have-been's...all those are useless guilt cultivators."

"I know. I've told myself that a few million times. And also told myself that being psychic could be a pretty horrible ability, dealing with a windigo. With any sort of evil entity."

"A hell of a horrible ability," she agreed, adding silently, especially if you start to feel the bastard is actually trying to communicate with you.

Caleb lifted his drink, one finger pointed to indicate the medicine pouch she wore. "There damned sure is evil out there. And we need protection against it."

She let the silence linger for a few seconds while she fingered her medicine pouch, then said, "But you still haven't been able to completely come to terms with your guilt. With being unable to protect your wife and son."

"Mona and Skippy," he said, giving her their names.

"Mona and Skippy," she repeated.

"And yes, I've tried to appease my guilt by reminding myself that I'm not psychic. Still, there were plenty of other things I should have been aware of that might have been warnings."

"Hindsight things," Kymbria assured him. "Hindsight is another great guilt builder."

"You're good," Caleb said. "I'll bet you were a hell of a counselor."

"Physician, heal thyself," Kymbria murmured. "But let's get back to this clair-audience thing. I - "

"Jesus, Kymbria. You heard something out there tonight, didn't you?"

She studied him. When she'd brought this up to Keoman, he'd pretty much ignored her. Did she only want to share it with Caleb because it, too, had been bottled up inside her, questions bubbling in her subconscious? Because he seemed the right person to give her some answers? Come to think of it, when she'd mentioned the voices to Keoman....that was when Keoman had insisted they get the hell out of there...and quickly. He'd even burned the sweat lodge.

It could have been her imagination, though. Could mean that her PTSD was worsening, maybe to the point where she'd end up confined to a mental ward. She didn't know Caleb well enough to trust him with that highly personal information. She needed to keep it to herself, until she could understand what was happening to her.

"Listen," Caleb said. He cupped her chin in his palm and held it so she couldn't look away. "Did Keoman hear this thing speaking?"

She had to firmly remove his hand in order to speak. "He said he didn't. And neither did I," she lied even as she recalled the weird chanting that lingered on the edge of comprehension.

"Think," Caleb said. "This could be really important. Did you hear something, but not recognize the words? Or something that you couldn't hear well enough to understand?"

He wasn't buying her lie. How the hell could he know? Would he contact Keoman and the two of them unite? Would Keoman get in touch with Niona and tell her that Kymbria's emotional stability was worsening? She couldn't handle her mother second-guessing every step she took, hovering over her even when she played with Risa. Have her mother checking up on her dosages, should she be forced to go back on her meds.

"I didn't hear anything," she said with as much certainty as she could muster. "Keoman is the one in contact with the spiritual world, not me. And he didn't hear anything, either. I asked him."

Caleb started to stand. She grabbed his arm to hold him in place.

"No you don't, McCoy. You're not pulling that 'she's a little woman and doesn't need to know' crap on me. Tell me what you're thinking." Then she frowned in puzzlement. Her voice seemed to dwindle off, her words dropping into a deep void. Yet she knew she still spoke clearly.

All at once, Scarlet stood and stared out the front of the cabin, a low growl in her throat. A second later, the same eerie howl that Kymbria had heard outside the sweat lodge rose on the frozen lake.

"That's what I'm thinking," Caleb muttered somewhere on the edge of her understanding.