Dangerous Women (76 page)

“I feel humidity.”

Jamie raised his hand. “Sign me up for hunger.”

“Annoyed,” Brandon chimed in. “Look, it’s for one night. Me and Jamie are going to dowse a little and try to find a place to dig.”

How could he appear so chipper about what they were planning? “You’ll be digging up a grave.”

They froze.

“What?” Brandon asked.

Cait nodded. “The treasure is buried with Louina’s husband, William, who was one of the Creek leaders during the Red Stick War.”

Jamie narrowed his gaze suspiciously. “How do you know all of this?”

“I told you. Louina. She keeps speaking to me.”

Brandon snorted. “I’m laying money on Google. Nice try, C. You probably know where the money is and you’re trying to scare us off. No deal, sister. I want a cut.”

Laughing, Jamie chucked him on the back, then headed to the cooler to grab a beer.

Anne stepped closer to her. “Are you serious about this?”

Cait nodded. “I wish they’d believe me. But yeah. We shouldn’t be here. This land is saturated with malevolence. It’s like a flowing river under the soil.”

And with those words, she lost Anne’s support. “Land can’t be evil or cursed. You know that.” She walked over to the men.

Cait knew better. Part Creek herself, she’d been raised on her mother’s belief that if someone hated
enough,
they could transfer that hatred into objects and into the soil. Both were like sponges—they could carry hatred for generations.

Louina was out there, and she was angry.

Most of all, she was vengeful.

And she’s coming for us …

Cait felt like a leper as she sat alone by the fire, eating her protein bar. The others were off in the woods, trying to summon the very entity that she knew was with her.

“Louina?” Jamie called, his deep voice resonating through the woods. “If you can hear me, give me a sign.”

While it was a common phrase, for some reason tonight it bothered her. She mocked him silently as she pulled the protein bar’s wrapper down lower.

Suddenly, a scream rang out.

Cait shot to her feet and listened carefully. Who was it, and where were they? Her heart pounded in her ears.

“Brandon!” Anne shouted, her voice echoing through the woods.

Cait ran toward them as fast as she could.

By the time she found them, Brandon was on his back with a twig poking all the way through his arm.

“He said he wanted a cut …”

She jerked around, trying to pinpoint the voice that had spoken loud and clear. “Did you hear that?” she asked the others.

“All I hear is Brandon whining like a bitch. Suck it up already, dude. Damn. You keep that up and I’m buying you a bra.”

“Fuck you!” he snarled at Jamie. “Let me stab you with a stick and see how you feel. You the bitch. Asshole!”

“Boys!” Cait moved to stand between them. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Brandon hissed as Anne tried to see the wound. “I was walking, going over the thermal scan, when all of a sudden I stumbled and fell into a tree. Next thing I knew … this!” He held it up for her to see.

Cringing, Cait averted her eyes from the grisly wound. “We need to get him to the hospital.”

“Not on your life,” Brandon snarled. “I’ll be all right.”

“I take it back. You’re not a bitch. You’re insane. Look at that wound. I hate to agree with Cait, ’cause I doubt there’s a hospital anywhere near here, but you need help.”

“It’s a flesh wound.”

Cait shook her head. “Anne, you should have never let him watch Monty Python.”

“I should have never left him alone to go to the bathroom,” Anne growled at him. “They’re right. You need to see a doctor. You could get rabies or something.”

Yeah, ’cause rabid trees were a
huge
problem here in Alabama. Cait barely caught herself before she laughed. Anne hated to be laughed at.

“I’m not leaving till I find that treasure!”

Greed, pride, and stupidity. The three most fatal traits any human could possess.

A sudden wind swept around them. This time she wasn’t the only one who heard the laughter it carried.

“What was that?” Jamie asked.

“Louina.”

“Would you
stop
with that shit?” Brandon snapped through gritted teeth. “You’re really getting on my nerves.”

And they were getting on hers.

Fine. Whatever. She wasn’t going to argue anymore. It was their lives. His wound. Who was she to keep him safe when he obviously had no interest in it?

Arms akimbo, Jamie sighed. “What do you think are the odds that, assuming Cait’s right, and Louina’s husband has the gold in his grave, that it’s in the cemetery? Didn’t most of the Native Americans in this area convert over to Baptist?”

Cait shook her head. “He won’t be there.”

“What makes you say that?”

“If it was that easy to find, it would have been found long ago.”

“Yeah, good point. Square one sucks.” Jamie glanced back at Brandon. “You sure about the doctor?”

“Positive.”

“All right. I’m heading back out. Cait? You coming?”

“You can’t go alone.” She followed as he switched his flashlight on and went back to his EMF detector and air ion counter.

“You want to take this?” He held his full-spectrum camcorder out to her.

“Sure.” She opened it and turned it back on so that she could see the world through the scope of the small screen.

After few minutes, he paused. “Do you really believe any of the bullshit you’ve been spewing?”

“You know me, James. Have I ever spewed bullshit on site?”

“Nah. That’s what has me worried.” He narrowed his gaze at her. “Did I ever tell you that my great-grandmother was Cherokee?”

“No, you didn’t.”

He nodded. “She died when I was six, but I still remember her, and something she’d always say keeps echoing in my head.”

“What?”

“‘Listen, or your tongue will keep you deaf.’”

Cait was about to compliment her wisdom when she glanced down at the screen.

Holy Mother …

Gasping, she dropped the camera and jumped back.

“What?” Jamie turned around to see if there was something near.

Terrified and shaking, Cait couldn’t speak. She couldn’t get the image out of her mind. She gestured to the camera.

With a stern frown, Jamie picked it up and ran it back. Even in the darkness, she knew the moment he saw what had stolen her tongue. He turned stark white.

Right before he’d spoken about his Cherokee great-grandmother, a huge … something with fangs had been about to pounce on him. Soulless eyes of black had stared down as its mouth opened to devour him. Then the moment he’d repeated the quote, it had pulled back and vanished.

Eyes wide, he gulped. “We have to leave.”

She nodded, because she still couldn’t speak. Jamie took her arm gently and led her through the woods back to where they’d left Anne and Brandon.

They were already gone. Jamie growled in frustration. “Brandon!” he called out. “Anne?”

Only silence answered them.

“All who dwell here will pay …”
Louina’s voice was more insistent now.
“But I hurt those I should not have cursed.”

Cait flinched as she saw an image of Elizabeth as an old woman in a stark hand-built cabin. Her gray hair was pulled back into a bun as she lit a candle and placed it in the window while she whispered a Creek prayer.

Oh, Great Father Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind-

Whose breath gives life to all the world and with whom I have tried to walk beside throughout my days.

Hear me. I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes ever behold the glorious sunset you have provided.

Make my hands respect the things you have made and my ears sharp to hear your voice even when it’s nothing more than a faint whisper.

Make me wise so that I may understand the things you have taught my people. And why you have taken things from me that have given me pain.

Help me to remain calm and strong in the face of all that comes at me. Against my enemies and those out to do me harm.

Let me learn the lessons you have hidden in every leaf and rock. In the joy of the stream. In the light of the moon and sun.

Help me seek pure thoughts and act with the intention of helping others and never myself.

Help me find compassion without empathy overwhelming me.

I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy …

Myself.

Make me always ready to come to you with clean hands and straight eyes. So that when my life fades, as the fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.

And most of all, Great-Grandfather, keep my sons safe and warm wherever they may be.

Elizabeth leaned over and kissed the old photographs of two young men in cavalry uniforms that she had sitting in the window beside the candle she lit every night—just in case they finally found their way home. It was a ritual she’d practiced every single night for the last fifty-two years. Since the war had ended and her boys had failed to return home to tend their crops.

She refused to believe them dead. Just as she refused to die and let her sister’s curse harm the town where they had both been born.

Her heart aching, she pulled two brittle letters from her pocket, the last that her boys had written to her, and sat down at the table. Old age had taken her sight so that she could no longer read the words, not even with her spectacles. But it didn’t matter. She’d long ago committed their words to her heart.

I dream only of returning home to marry Anabelle. Give her my best, Mother. Soon I will see you both again.

Robert

He’d only been nineteen when he’d left her home with his older brother John, when they’d been conscripted to fight a war that had nothing to do with them. Eighteen months older, John had sworn that he would watch over Robert and return him home.

“On my life, Ecke. I’ll bring him back whole and hale.”

And I will watch for you every day, and every night I will light a candle to help guide you both to my door.

Tears swam in her eyes, but they didn’t fall. She was stronger than that. Instead, she reached for the old hand-carved horn her father had given to her when she’d been a child. “Take this, Lizzie. Should anyone come to our door while your brothers and I are in the field, sound it loud to let us know and then hide with your mother and sisters until we can get to you.”

So much had changed. To this day, she didn’t regret marrying her husband. She had loved her John more than anything. But he had left her far too soon. She’d laid him to rest on a cold February morning when Robert was barely seven. Since her brothers had been forced to leave along with her sister, Lou, she’d raised the boys on her own, along with her daughter, Mary.

There is no death, only a change of worlds …

Soon she would change. She could feel the Great Spirit with her more and more.

Do not grieve for that which is past or for that which you cannot prevent.

“I will see you again soon, my sons.” And she would be with her John …

Cait flinched as she felt Louina’s pain.

You must live your life from beginning to end. No one can do it for you. But be careful when you seek to destroy another. For it is your soul that will be consumed and you are the one who will cry. Never allow anger and hatred to poison you.

“I am poison …”

Those words echoed in Cait’s head as she followed Jamie in his quest to locate their friends.

“Maybe they went to the hospital, after all.” That was her hope until they reached the tents they’d pitched earlier.

Tents that were now shredded and lying strewn across the ground. Jamie ran ahead, then pulled up short. With a curse, he turned and caught her before she could get too close.

“You don’t want to know.”

“W-what?”

His gaze haunted, he tightened his arms around her. “Trust me, Cait. You don’t want to see them. We have to call the authorities.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “Anne?”

He shook his head. “It looks like an animal attack of some kind.”

“Why!”

“I don’t know.”

But her question wasn’t for Jamie. It was for Louina.

Words spoken in anger have strong power and they cannot be undone. For those who are lucky, they can be forgiven in time. But for others …

It is always our own words and deeds than condemn us. Never the ill intent or wishes of our enemies.

Do not dabble with what you don’t understand. There are some doors that are blown from their hinges when they are opened. Doors that will never again be sealed.

“Welcome to my hell.”

They both jerked at the voice beside them.

There in the darkness stood Louina. Her gray hair fanned out around her shoulders. Her old calico dress was faded against her white apron.

“My sister protects you. For that you should give thanks. Now go and never come here again.”

But it wasn’t that simple.

“I will not leave and allow you to continue hurting others.”

Louina laughed. “You can’t stop me.”

For the first time in her life, Cait understood the part of her bloodline that had always been mysterious and undefined. She was the great-great-granddaughter of Elizabeth.

It all came together in her mind at once. Her grandmother had told her the story of Elizabeth, who’d died when her cabin caught fire while she was sleeping. Something had knocked the candle that she lit for her sons from her window.

“
You
killed her!” Cait accused.

“She wanted to die. She was tired.”

But that wasn’t true and she knew it. Yes, Elizabeth had been tired. She’d been almost a hundred and ten years old. Yet she’d been so determined to keep her sister’s curse at bay that she’d refused Death every time it tried to claim her.

Until Louina had intervened.

In that moment, Cait felt a connection to Elizabeth. One she embraced.