Windigo Thrall Read online

  Synopsis

  “The Windigo has a heart of ice.”

  The legends of an ancient cannibal demon might have been enthralling, but they were folklore. To Jo and Becca, investigating reports of a Windigo is a lively scholarly exercise, and for Grady and Elena, it means a weekend at an idyllic mountain retreat. Only Pat and Maggie can draw on their Native roots to recognize a monster out of Algonquin myth, but only if they unlock the mystery of their shared past. Throw six volatile personalities into a snowbound cabin, beset by a blizzard, and stalked by a monster, and there’s no assurance they’ll survive the night with their sanity intact—or their lives.

  Windigo Thrall

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

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  Windigo Thrall

  © 2014 By Cate Culpepper. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-015-7

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: January 2014

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editor: Cindy Cresap

  Production Design: Susan Ramundo

  Cover Art By Richard Gerhard

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  By the Author

  The Tristaine Series:

  Tristaine: The Clinic

  Battle for Tristaine

  Tristaine Rises

  Queens of Tristaine

  Fireside

  River Walker

  A Question of Ghosts

  Windigo Thrall

  Acknowledgments

  I give thanks to all the gods that be that after eight books, I haven’t managed to kill off my long-time editor, Cindy Cresap, with my penchant for comma splices and perpetually confused modifiers. Betas Connie Ward and Gill McKnight proved their usual indispensable selves in the writing of Windigo Thrall, though I declined Gill’s suggestion that I change the title to Eat Me. A fond personal nod to Amy Kruetzman-Bernheisal and Pam Goodwin for their amazing support of all my books.

  Dedication

  For Sarah Dreher and Stoner McTavish

  Prologue

  1828

  Snow Moon

  Minnesota

  She called on the last of her will and ran faster, her breath bursting from her laboring lungs in the frigid air. A raging wind gusted through the forest, slapping her face. The rough path wending through the trees was snarled with dead vines and fallen branches, and her feet and legs were scratched and bloody. She no longer felt pain or hunger or anything but cold, terrible cold.

  But she was Chippewa, and her people knew winter and cold. Her people knew courage.

  She ran on, cradling her newborn in her arms, his cries a thin, tired mewling against her breast.

  The young brave who shared her furs, her life, ran after her, screaming. Ravenous.

  The long, dark season had been cruel to her tribe. Great hunger. Death. And with great hunger came the unrelenting agony, the gnawing craving for the last taboo.

  With great hunger came the Witiko, the Spirit of the Lonely Places. The Cannibal Beast.

  A nursing mother, she was one of the lucky women the tribe tried to keep strong, but even her legs were spindly and weak. She fell at last, as she knew she must, slipping on iced moss and crashing to the snow-crusted earth. He was on her in seconds, the handsome warrior she had loved all her life, the father of the child in her arms.

  He crawled over her, gibbering, saliva dripping from his jaws, his sweet body and spirit like a spider’s now. The Witiko had taken him, and there was nothing of the laughing Chippewa brave, the husband and father, left.

  Except for one brief moment. She lay gasping on her back, squeezing the squalling baby in her arms as the man straddled her waist. His mad eyes found hers, and for one breath too cruel to endure, he was her love again. He knew them for his wife and son. His face filled with shock and horror and sure knowledge of what was to come, and he lifted his arms to the merciless moon and roared, in terror and loss and farewell.

  She sobbed his name as his teeth found her throat.

  Chapter One

  Present day

  Washington State

  Grady looked at her young wife, whose eyes were clenched shut, lower lip clamped in her teeth. Elena held her hand in a death grip, and Grady gave it another comforting pat.

  “Hey,” Grady whispered. “You don’t want to miss this.”

  Elena squinted one eye open. “We’re crashing?”

  “Nope, not crashing.” Grady had offered this reassurance several times during the flight. “Just saying hello to an old friend.”

  She nodded out the plane’s window. Elena frowned, but leaned forward and followed her gaze. Then her eyes widened and a smile tugged at her generous lips.

  “Madre de Diosa,” Elena whispered. “Grady, she’s beautiful.”

  The crystalline clarity of the day offered an amazing vista of snow-cloaked Mt. Rainier out the oblong window as they descended toward Seattle. It didn’t surprise Grady that Elena deemed the old volcano a woman; Elena’s kind eyes found the feminine in most of nature’s creations. Rainier had always seemed more male to Grady, austere and remote. At least sixty climbers had lost their lives trying to scale its craggy peaks, but she decided to keep this particular tidbit to herself.

  The plane dipped lower through a heavy blanket of clouds, darkening the cabin and sealing them in mist. Elena’s smile faded as she sat back, her throat moving as she swallowed.

  “Most crashes happen either during takeoff or landing,” Elena pointed out.

  Grady knew Elena had just summarized the whole of her knowledge of air travel, as this was her first flight. She still marveled that a woman could live for twenty-five years in this world and never board a plane, but Elena’s world had always been a small desert town in southern New Mexico. “We’re not going to crash. I absolutely guarantee it.”

  “An easy promise for you to make, Professor Gringa.” Elena squeezed Grady’s hand again. “If we crash and we both die, I will be too busy to hold a lie against you.”

  Grady raised Elena’s hand to her lips and kissed it, then looked around to check their privacy, belatedly and out of sheer habit. They couldn’t live openly as a couple in Mesilla, and that still grated on her. She wasn’t a particularly physical person, but it would have been nice to comfort her frightened wife without worrying about hostile stares.

  The plane, of course, was filled with weary travelers preparing for landing and paying them no mind, and they were floating down into a city where gay couples were no novelty. As foreign as a large urban center would seem to Elena, Grady was returning briefly to her home ground. She’d earned her doctorate in anthropology at the University of Washington and remembered Seattle fondly.

  She was glad Elena kept her eyes shut as they emerged from the heavy overcast sky and thumped down onto the runway. While the sunlit air in the higher elevation had been sweet and clear, the cloud cover over Seattle was the dark, unbroken gray typical of long winter months in the Pacific Northwest. It already felt oppressive after the open skies of their desert valley, Grady’s adopted home. Elena didn
’t stop whispering prayers until they rolled to a stop at the terminal, and Grady was finally able to gently extract her aching fingers from her damp grip.

  She worried that Elena would be overwhelmed by the midday clamor at SeaTac, but as at most times, Elena proved open to new experience. Once she was sure they weren’t about to plunge to their fiery deaths, she began to look around with interest. The easy sway returned to her full hips and the sparkle to her dark eyes as they weaved through families welcoming passengers home.

  “We could live at this airport! Yes, let us live at this airport.” Elena turned in a circle as Grady steered her toward baggage claim. “Look. Food from four different countries, in the last ten yards! Also stores for clothes. A whole store for cinnamon buns. And how many coffee shops does one city need?”

  “Seattle will always have an insatiable need for salted caramel macchiatos. In this, they are my homies.” Grady juggled their heavy coats over one arm and the case carrying her laptop with the other. “Listen, I’ll grab our bags. Why don’t you see if our ride is―”

  “Sí, grab our bags, but let me carry these, chica.” Elena took the coats and the case from Grady. “You don’t have to butch me, remember? Sometimes I’m stronger than you. Plus, I need to get a souvenir for Mamá.”

  Elena trotted toward a shop and Grady watched her trot, grinning. Even with her arms full, Elena moved with the natural sensuality of a healthy woman at home in her body. Grady felt a pang and lay her hand over her heart. No one she knew in the Northwest would call Grady Wrenn fanciful, but she could testify in court that it was possible to love someone so much your heart actually hurt.

  She still gave herself butch points for wrestling their luggage back to the souvenir shop. Dr. Chambliss hadn’t told her how long this strange study might take, just to prepare for winter mountain weather, and they had packed for a siege of several days.

  She found Elena chatting happily with an older woman wrapping her purchase on a glass-topped counter. Grady would have paid the cashier, thanked her, and left, but Elena chatted happily with just about everyone. She counted out several of her hard-earned bills on the counter, and Grady sighed. Elena was a respected curandera in Mesilla, but spiritual healers were not particularly well compensated these days.

  “Grady! You’ll love this.” Elena rested her hand on the woman’s wrist, then lifted the tissue paper away from a small, colorful mask constructed of thin pine and feathers.

  Grady nodded, pleased. It was quite well made. “Hey, a good choice, given our assignment. That’s a Makah mask, isn’t it? The legend of the Cannibal Woman.”

  The cashier looked impressed. “That’s right. You sure know our local tribes and their myths pretty well.”

  “Grady is a cultural anthropologist.” Elena smiled proudly. “She knows so much about Native people. Grady, this is Trudy. She told me this little mask is of an evil woman who was a cannibal, and she wreaked havoc on the Makah until the children of the tribe defeated her.”

  Grady peered at the mask and tried hard not to say what she was thinking.

  “And she looks exactly like my Mamá!” Elena finished.

  “It’s uncanny!” Grady agreed, and they cackled together. The sharp-toothed, half-crazed face did hold a remarkable resemblance to Inez Montalvo.

  A hell of a long walk finally delivered them outside the sliding glass doors of the lobby to the arrivals pickup area. Cars were swerving in and out of the loading zone, but Grady saw none with anyone like Dr. Chambliss waiting for them. They hustled as well as they could toward the pedestrian shelter to await their ride.

  “Your Seattle doesn’t know how to rain, Grady.” Elena shook out her long hair. She seemed to be enjoying the city so far, and their only view was the parking garage.

  “Seattle’s going to be disappointed to hear this. It thinks it’s a fiend for rain.”

  “But no drops fall. I feel nothing; I just walk ten feet and I am suddenly wet!”

  “Hate to break this to you, but it’s not raining. That’s normal Seattle air making you wet.”

  “I don’t think so.” Elena leaned briefly into Grady. “It’s the company I keep.”

  Elena had been practicing sexual innuendo. She had been terrible at it when they first got together over a year ago, as she would be the first to admit, but they both had fun with it now.

  “Elena, I am not going to have carnal knowledge of you on a stone bench outside of SeaTac.”

  “No? Then the women of Seattle must learn to be the fiends for carnal knowledge that the women of Mesilla are.” Elena quirked one distinctive eyebrow at her, and Grady melted.

  “I’ll learn,” Grady promised.

  “And I will teach you.” Elena bounced lightly on the bench. “We have a whole week for these lessons.”

  A week. It still seemed an impossible blessing, a week alone with Elena in the snowy grandeur and privacy of a mountain cabin. Grady taking this study meant the trip was comped by the university, and talking Elena into coming along was manna from heaven.

  Speaking of hell, Elena’s cell chimed. Her smile turned wry as she groped in her pocket. “Don’t glare at me. This is your fault. You are the one who gave us all cell phones for Christmas. And you are the one who set mine to play ‘Season of the Witch’ when she calls.” She flipped open her cell. “Hello, Mamá; we didn’t crash.”

  The mental demons that haunted Inez Montalvo took the form of the most cantankerous nature Grady had ever known, and an absolute inability to leave her home. Her mother-in-law relied entirely on Elena for income, shopping, and daily assurance that she was safe and unlikely to be murdered. Inez was the reason her daughter had never set foot out of the Mesilla Valley, and it had taken some stamina for Elena to insist on her right to this rare vacation.

  “Mamá, my gringa wife did fix the window, just like you asked. No one will get in.”

  Grady lifted the little Makah mask out of Elena’s open bag and unwrapped it. She waggled it at Elena’s face, as Inez’s voice harangued her through the cell’s speaker.

  “And you know Cesar and Sylvia are going to stop by every day to see how you are.” Elena closed her eyes and bit her lip as Grady shook the mask at her in an eerily accurate imitation of Inez. “Yes, they can be Grady’s students and still be good Catholics. You’ll be fine.”

  Laughter almost bubbled out of Elena, and she took the evasive action of kicking Grady’s ankle, rather hard. Grady snickered and rewrapped the mask in its tissue paper.

  “Go make some posole, Mamá.” Elena’s voice was infused, as always, with more fondness for her mother than frustration. Grady’s affection for Inez was more grudging, but it was there. “And call me only if there’s an emergency. Te amo, Mamá. I’m going to go have more carnal knowledge of my gringa wife now. Good-bye.”

  She snapped her cell closed and snorted laughter into Grady’s shoulder.

  *

  Pat Daka brushed the prayer stick in her pocket with the flat of her thumb. She had dreamed of the warrior and his woman again last night, their terrible deaths. Odd for her. She wasn’t given to fancy, to creating people out of whole cloth. Having nightmares about them. It was this Windigo bullshit, invading her sleep.

  She shifted her hips against the side of the Outback, glad for the idling SUV’s warmth. It would be more comfortable inside her ride, but it was already too crowded in there for her liking. She didn’t relish adding two more passengers. A crowd streamed through the glass-paneled doors of SeaTac. Arriving flights were heavy this afternoon. She didn’t know how she was supposed to recognize this anthropologist when she saw her.

  One of the back side windows purred down next to her elbow.

  “Pat.” The voice was terse. “Close your jacket, please.”

  Pat looked down into the piercing eyes of Joanne Call.

  Jo gestured to the blond woman sitting on the cushioned seat beside her. “Becca is uneasy with guns.”

  Pat caught Becca’s apologetic smile as the window slid up,
and then she was staring at her own reflection in the glass. An impassive woman gazed back at her, rock-jawed, her blunt features framed by thick black hair, jagged above her pressed collar. She zipped her Park Service windbreaker shut, hiding the pistol holstered in her belt. Whenever Pat was off the mountain she preferred to be visibly armed, but she could accommodate Becca Healy’s discomfort. She didn’t know why Becca was uneasy with guns, but any woman who had to put up with Jo Call on a daily basis deserved a little indulgence.

  The sprawling airport was far enough from Seattle to avoid heavy city traffic, but Pat was still restless without forest and rock and snow beneath her boots. Too many people down here. Mt. Rainier was blocked from her gaze by the tall parking garage nearby, but there was still light in the sky. The mountain would loom to the southeast as soon as they pulled out of SeaTac, beckoning on the horizon. Her spirit yearned toward it like a lost child for its mother.

  A sharp rap sounded on the side window and she straightened. The glass lowered a mere inch and Jo’s long finger emerged, pointing at a bench beneath an awning. Two women sat closely together, laughing. From Jo’s curt signal, one of them must be their anthropologist. Pat slipped the toothpick from her lips and sauntered to them.

  “Dr. Wrenn?” Pat eyed the slender white woman and the plump Latina with her.

  “Grady. That’s right.” The woman got to her feet and peered at Pat through her glasses.

  “Pat Daka. I’m a ranger with Mount Rainier National Park. I’m here to give you a lift.”

  “Yeah?” Grady looked puzzled. “Well, thanks. This is my friend, Elena Montalvo.”

  “Ma’am.”