Rumble strips thundered under her tires and woke her up with a startling reminder she was still driving, and yes, she had been driving for 17 hours. Shaking from a close call, Kat wound up at a Petrol Truck Plaza and slept for a couple of hours. There would be other close calls and close encounters she never expected, nor wanted before this night would end
Making it back to Lewisville in one piece and climbing into bed to slip into a coma were top priorities. Of course, there were complications to that plan. Big Crow with Little Feet makes a timely visit, revealing the threatening nature of Kat’s newest predicaments. They were marked and no longer alone.
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Chapter #12 – Hunted
At dusk, early Saturday evening the following day, Kat pulled into the parking deck attached to her condo in Lewisville, Texas. She was happy to see her assigned slot on the fourth level unoccupied for a change. Weekends often yielded squatters because of the additional visitor traffic, especially on Cowboy home game weekends. She breathed out an unconscious breath, knowing she was home and close to her ultimate destination – the bed – where she desperately wanted to crash. The sun had an orange sliver left as it sunk deeper into the horizon, and the interior lights in the parking deck had just come on. With her backpack slung over her shoulder, Kat headed for the stairwell to go down two levels to the connecting walkway to her floor.
She avoided the elevator whenever she could, choosing to walk the stairwell instead. Throwing a hip into the push bar, the heavy steel door clanked open, echoing down the concrete walls to announce her presence. That was all the two strangers lying in wait one floor below needed to alert them of an opportunity to play their role. They planned a snatch-and-grab abduction; they knew who they would abduct and why, but the rest of the crime would happen at another location where no proof would be left behind. Kat paused in the stairwell on the fourth landing to listen for sounds that should not be there, which was her standard practice. Her mind always played what-if games, offering options, and that afternoon was no different. Uninvited thoughts slipped into her mind. Maybe you should take the elevator, lingered in her gut. She stayed silent and wondered if the what-if in her head was a warning. Would a warning come from her gut? Kat shook her head to clear away any sense of foreboding and ignored the thought as paranoia blamed on the fatigue of almost 17 hours behind the wheel.
The two threats slipped quietly inside the third-floor exit door to wait for their prey. When Kat turned onto the landing to descend one more level to her floor, a powerful hand clamped over her face from behind, slapping duct tape across her mouth to ensure her silence. He pulled her off her feet and, in a harsh voice, said, “Don’t fight this, and you will not be hurt. We just want the baby.”
Kat struggled against the duct tape in a screaming rage, fighting to turn her head to see her attacker. She caught a fleeting glimpse of two attackers before a black bag slipped over her head. It did not matter both men wore ski masks and gloves, with no discernable details of what they looked like. The man who held her off her feet spoke to his accomplice, “Get the ties on her ankles.”
The other man knelt just in time to catch the toe of Kat’s left shoe under the chin, slamming his head against the stairwell railing. She was in a screaming rage and growling behind the duct tape like a muzzled wildcat. The guy slumped against the railing as his brain tried unsuccessfully to reboot.
“Okay, Katherine, we can do this the hard way.” said the man, holding a wildly kicking and squirming body. He put her down, chopped behind her knees, and forced her face down on the landing. When he straddled her, his weight and power sent a clear message to stop struggling. When the big man locked her ankles down with his heavy boots, he gripped her arms by the wrists and wrenched them behind her back roughly and into zip ties. She stopped struggling, but she did not stop growling. He leaned over her and said firmly, “You need to relax.”
You don’t tell a female OCD-enflamed wildcat who has already blindly dropkicked your partner into next week to relax, especially when you’re about to hogtie her. She calmed a bit when her ankles were bound with more ties, but the growling continued as her nose hissed with anger. From a zippered pocket on his jumpsuit, he pulled out a syringe. “This will help you relax,” and he flipped the cap off, leaned down, and jammed the needle into Kat’s neck right through the hood. She fought like a tiger as he partially lost his grip on the syringe, struggling to depress the plunger. Kat’s world rapidly began to turn blacker than the darkness under the hood as she drifted into unconsciousness, melting into a limp puddle.
The man holding her had emptied only a tiny amount from the syringe into her neck before a wisp of smoke choked him as an extremely powerful and bony hand closed around his neck, crushing his thorax with a sickening crunch. The hand snatched him up roughly and threw him against the concrete wall like a ragdoll.
The syringe still dangled from the bag over Kat’s head, and the bony hand removed it before turning swiftly and plunging it into the neck of the second assailant. The attack was over almost before it began, leaving one dead and another dispatched to wherever the juice in the syringe would send him. Big Crow with Little Feet knelt to remove the hood and duct tape, breaking Kat’s restraints with strong hands. He lifted her limp body like she was a child, picked up the backpack, and turned to survey the wrecked bodies. They were gone with only a wisp of smoke where each body lay. For the first time, Big Crow knew they were marked and not alone. Without hesitating any longer, he headed for the second floor.
Before they reached the landing, Kat’s body stiffened in Big Crow’s arms as she regained consciousness. Whatever had been partially injected began to wear off, and she started to squirm to get away from her attacker. “You’re okay now, Katherine. I’ve got you.” Big Crow said softly.
She heard his voice, smelled his smoke, and instantly relaxed in his arms. Still somewhat foggy, she said, “I knew you were here, Crow. A split second before I passed out, I smelled you. I knew it was you, and… Oh my God, Crow, I don’t know how you…how did you get here? How did you know what was happening?” He said nothing, and Kat continued, still groggy and sounding a bit drunk but not waiting for answers, “But you were here, Crow. You were with me just like you promised. You saved me.”
Kat wrapped her arms around Big Crow’s neck, buried her face into the smoky wool fabric of his topcoat, squeezed him tightly, and began to cry as her adrenalin dump pushed her deeper into the safety of his arms. As Kat fiercely hugged his neck, it suddenly came to her that this was the first time they had touched…and the first time she realized he was real. He had to be real.
Big Crow held her against his chest; a comforting warmth radiated from his body, reinforcing her decision to let him carry her. As she became more lucid, caution returned when she considered how to explain to her neighbors why this nearly seven-foot-tall Indian medicine man dressed entirely in black with a crumpled top hat and stinking of wood smoke carried her like a child. “Crow, you need to put me down. I think I can walk from here. If my neighbors see us, I don’t want to try and explain who you are.”
“No one but you and Madeline can see me, Katherine. I am here with you always, as I promised. My role in the prophecy binds me to protect you and the seed of Shadow Eagle you carry as you complete your journey,” he explained, setting her down and steadying her.
“Complete my journey? What’s left to complete? I don’t even know if I’m pregnant,” she protested.
“You will be soon,” he said with no emotion, “but it will not be an ordinary pregnancy.”
Her thoughts began to spin …will not be an ordinary pregnancy? Sure, why not? Nothing ordinary could come from all the extraordinary things that have already happened. Kat fumbled in the zippered backpack pocket to retrieve the key to her condo. When she turned to invite him in, he was gone, leaving a telltale wisp of smoke.
Standing by herself in the hallway, she lamented angrily. “Why do you always pull this stunt? You say things loaded with implications for me and questions only you can answer, and poof, you’re gone?” He was not visible; however, his voice spoke in her head, “Katherine, there is much to share with you about this prophecy, but not now. You need to rest and recover from a traumatic event. I know you will try to act like it does not bother you, but fatigue can close your eyes to the facts.”
She launched a flaming indictment to an empty hallway, “You are not Big Crow with Little Feet; you’re Teasing Chicken Shit with No Balls,” and slammed the front door.
“Very clever,” he said, not taking offense. “Now go take a hot shower and sleep well. We will talk more when you are rested and have had a chance to cool off.”
She shrieked, “Don’t tell me to cool off you…you…” and trailed off, knowing there was no way to argue effectively with a spirit, not that there ever was. Kat resigned to being alone, except for Big Crow’s hooks in her mind, or was it her heart, or wherever spirits hung out. It didn’t matter. He had been there, and thoughts tempered her rage with a reminder, I’m so glad he was, or the ordeal in the stairwell would have ended badly.
When she headed for the bathroom, her phone rang with an incoming call from Maddie, “Great,” she said to no one. This is just what I need – a dressing down because I didn’t call to say I was running about three hours late getting home.
Ignoring the urge to let the call go to voice mail, Kat answered with obvious annoyance, “Hey there, Mom!”
“Don’t you hey mom me,” Maddie scolded before unleashing a string of questions, neglecting to wait for answers, “Where the hell have you been? Did you stop at the ruins for old-time sake? Or maybe you visited the abandoned diner at the gas station just for grins. I’ve been worried sick.”
Kat knew better than to interrupt a big sister rant, so she tried to remember the questions coming at her rapid fire. When the barrage stopped, Kat pushed back and said, “Hey, simmer down, Maddie. I nearly fell asleep at the wheel less than a hundred miles from home. Thank God for those rumble strips that saved me twice before I had to give in. I had to stop someplace, and a Petrol truck plaza parking lot happened to be where I landed to grab a couple of hours of sleep.”
Maddie jumped back into her scolding tone, “…and neglected to call your sister, who saw you no longer moving and was scared out of her…”
Kat cut her off with a flurry of her own when she squawked, “Saw me no longer moving? How did you see…? Are you tracking me now? Where am I right now? Am I still moving? How many fingers am I holding up? Right, Mom, only one, and you know which one it is.”
On the other end of the call, Maddie held up her hands in surrender as she sat at the kitchen table, leaning over her phone. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry, Duwit.”
Kat shouted one word, “Don’t…!” a not-so-subtle warning for Maddie to avoid going down that path again. “It was a long, hard drive, and honestly, the most dangerous part of the trip was in the stairwell at my condo.”
Kat stopped speaking abruptly and wondered if the details of her recent encounter could have waited until morning, but then, she’d already spilled enough of the beans to hook her sister into a discussion. She had passed the point of no return. Fatigue weighed heavily on her shoulders, but Kat told the story and how Big Crow emerged from wherever spirits hung out and rescued her from an awful situation.
Maddie instantly had questions, but Kat said, “Not now, please. I could tell you more, but I am beyond exhausted and just want to shower and go to bed. I need sleep.”
“Okay,” Maddie relented, “but you better call me when you wake up. Promise me!”
“I promise,” she said.
Kat had no idea what this night had in store for her and that she would have so much more than the stairwell incident to share from what things would arrive between falling asleep and her first cup of coffee in the morning.
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I hope you enjoyed chapter #12! I’m still editing and writing, so this is a work in progress that may become a novel one day. I’ll continue to share each chapter, so keep checking back. I would love to know your thoughts so far at gdogwise@live.com Enjoy the read!
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