Dawn woke Meredyth where she had fallen asleep beneath Lucas's weight. Her eyes opened in reaction to the noise of a helicopter, which came slowly over the rocks, first sounding like a chain saw, then a lawn mower, until suddenly it was deafening. She saw it go over so quickly she hadn't time to react. It had the HPD logo on it, and she dared guess that Randy had gotten to Captain Phil Lawrence.
She lifted the rifle so its stock was balanced against the rock and fired a distress shot into the air.
“Damn noise is enough to wake the dead!” Lucas shouted at her as he came to.
“Lucas! You're all right.”
“Shot all to hell, if you call that all right. God, I got pain to complain about now. Damn, but this arrow in my side is annoying as hell.”
She laughed and kissed him, his face grimy from perspiration and dirt.
Ouch! Owwww! Easy, easy on me,” he complained.
They heard horseback riders, and over the stones now rescuers appeared, followed by Phil Lawrence and Randy Oglesby, alongside of whom stood Fred Amelford and Jim Pardee. They all saw Meredyth, the rifle and Stonecoat. Beyond them, they saw Bryce's dead body. Not far off in another direction, they saw what remained of Bullock.
“Damned dead people strung all along the gulch!” shouted Lawrence down to them. “I can see that Stonecoat's a bloody mess, but are you hurt, Dr. Sanger?”
“No!” she returned. “But Stonecoat is hurt badly, and he's lost a lot of blood. We need to airlift him out of here to the closest trauma center.”
“You got it!” Lawrence radioed for the chopper to return to their quadrant.
“So, what happened to the water beetle after he dove into the great ocean world?” she asked.
He only hazily recalled telling her of the creation story. “He dove below the waters and came up with mud, and on that mud the earth's land masses were built, and then he returned to the sky people.”
'To tell them there was a land for them?”
“No, he then told the buzzard to fly down to see if the island of the earth was dry enough for the animals and ready for the Ani-yun-wiya, the chosen people, to oversee it. And everywhere the buzzard's wings touched the earth, which was still soft and mushy, a valley was created, and whenever the buzzard lifted his wings, there came into being a mountain. This, it is said, is why the Cherokee country is covered in mountains.”
“That's beautiful, Lucas,” she said. “You came back… like a War Woman of the Wolf clan,” he said.
She smiled at the images, and shook her head. “I only did what I had to do. “You got Bryce,” he said. “I wanted Bryce for myself.”
“You got all the others. You couldn't have all the fun. Not fair.”
“You saved my life,” he said again. “And you stayed with me through the night. You renewed my spirit.”
The deafening noise of the helicopter swooped up his final words and he could not hear her reply. A basket was lowered down to Meredyth, who helped a stubborn Lucas, who wanted her to take the ride up before him, buckle into the basket.
She leaned in over him where he sat in the basket, his legs dangling now. She pulled him close and shouted, “Behave at the hospital!”
He stared into her bright blue eyes, and still amazed at the depth of her courage, shouted, “You weren't supposed to be within miles of me, yet you were here, and you saved my life.”
“I got lucky.”
“I'll never be able to repay you.”
“The hell you say.”
He kissed her and she returned his kiss, unsure of the future or if they had a future together. She yanked on the rope and they took him and his carriage up, the electronic winch doing its work. She watched as Lucas was hauled safely into the chopper and the big black-and-white machine swerved off and away per Phil Lawrence's orders.
Randy and Phil Lawrence were very near her now, having made the difficult climb down to her. With Phil taking charge of the weapon and Andrew Bryce's body, she hugged Randy and began to cry again. Randy held her for a long moment before he draped a coat he'd brought from Mrs. Bryce's closet around Meredyth's shoulders. She buttoned up and thanked Randy.
“I brought a change of dry clothes for you. They're up in the Jeep.” He pointed overhead.
Together, they made their way back up the sloping rocks. From the gulch below, Phil Lawrence began coordinating the effort to recover the additional bodies before wild animals should get any of them.
“Stonecoat did a hell of a number on this bunch of creeps,” Randy commented.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “You get the sense that God was on his side?”
“God and you,” countered Randy.
“And you, Randy… and you…”
They'd made the treacherous climb up to flat land. “Captain Lawrence told me to take the Jeep,” said Randy, pointing.
“He thought you'd want to get over to the hospital as soon as possible.”
She nodded, going for it and climbing into the passenger seat, feeling weak and wasted. “I hope he's going to be all right. I got him into this, you know.”
“I rather doubt that anyone gets Lucas Stonecoat into anything he doesn't want to get into,” Randy countered as they tore off for the main road and the hospital.
Stonecoat survived his injuries, including a broken kneecap, adding scars to his already scarred body. He made life hell for the doctors and staff at nearby Kerney Memorial Hospital, complaining the entire week of his convalescence that it was an awful place and time for him. The staff there was equally anxious to see him go.
In the meantime, Commander Andrew Bryce's computer records were opened by court order and Randy Oglesby was placed in charge of disseminating information. It came as no surprise to Meredyth or Lucas that Bryce had extensive connections to Father Frank Aguilar, and that Bryce had selected Aguilar as a martyr to their mutual cause…
Further investigation into Bryce showed that he had been the son of a fire-and-brimstone Texas evangelist-the worst kind, Lucas had quipped. He had been raised to see Satan's footprints everywhere, his tentacled arms reaching into every avenue, corrupting the fiber of American culture and government and economy. But Bryce also learned at an early age that evangelism and preaching alone could never persuade enough followers to make war on Satan. He learned of other avenues to motivate followers. Andrew Bryce had from young adulthood set himself up in a dual life, that of a forthright, honest, hardworking and peacemaking lawman, and that of a secret priest and overseer of a private club that strove to exterminate cult leaders and demonologists with undue influence over many numbers of people.
The financial rewards of his actions engaged in by the cult to destroy cults, according to Bryce's own words, was unexpected pennies raining down. Father Aguilar began to feel that Bryce and the others had become overly greedy, however, and had begun killing more for the money than for the principles set up by Bryce. A growing rift between the “brothers” of Helsinger's Pit had gone unchecked until Aguilar was murdered along with his henchmen.
All of them had begun their religious sect in college at Texas Christian University. The trail led back to the murdered lad named Gunther who, as it happened, had been a disgruntled employee on staff with an FBI computer lab. He had gotten close to the group with an eye to playing spy when he smuggled them a computer listing of active vampires, people who professed to live the lifestyle of practicing vampires. Gunther's disappearance went unnoticed, since no one in the FBI had taken him seriously.
Over the years, the sect began to actively deceive and soon murder these so-called vampires. News of the sensational, near unbelievable tale of Internet murder and intrigue involving some of the highest-ranking officials in Houston broke like the lightning that'd turned a tree into tinder before Lucas's eyes the night Bryce was killed. Now, for the second time in the sensational, roller-coaster ride of this case, Lucas and Meredyth had become unwitting celebrities, hounded by the press.
The convolutions of the story, which tentacled to so many parts of the country, led the state legislature and the U.S. Senate and House to reconsider the long-lost concerns over what should and what should not be monitored and outlawed in the land of the microchip.
When the day came for Lucas to walk out of the hospital, Meredyth was there to greet him with a limo at a back entrance, but she had Conrad McThuen in tow as well. Conrad wanted very much to shake Lucas's hand now that he'd become a celebrity, and he wanted Lucas to know that while he had no other friends who were Native Americans, he meant to remedy that situation. Conrad didn't explain how he would do this.
Lucas looked across at Meredyth and realized that she had successfully found a way to keep them-Lucas and her-apart, at least for now.
“They've got to give you your promotion to detective status now, Lucas,” she assured him, as if this would ease the pain of realization she saw in his eyes, that, after all they'd been through together, she still wanted him at arm's length, and her Conrad on her arm. “And we're all going out tonight to celebrate.”
“We? We are?”
“Oh, I… I have a date for you. Her name is Abigail Heston, one of my dearest friends, from a fine family. Says there's some Indian blood in her distant past, too, something to do with a grandmother on her mother's side, oh, and she's mad for you…”
Lucas did nothing to hide his displeasure at the idea of a blind date. He frowned and shook his head and waved his hands, but Meredyth stubbornly said, “Just get in the car!”
Lucas climbed into the waiting limo and found Abigail there, a busty, tall, red-cheeked, red-haired woman with alabaster skin, a striking pair of green eyes, and a tempting pair of smiling lips. She seemed one great invitation, and Lucas sacrilegiously wondered if Meredyth had paid for her. Either way, Lucas decided that Meredyth meant well, even if she was misguided; that one day, perhaps sooner than she realized, she would come to him. In the meantime, she feared falling in love with him, and he could hardly blame her. He had little or nothing to offer, save his feelings for her, and in today's society, in a land called Houston, that wasn't worth a whole hell of a lot. It wasn't like the gift of the water beetle and the buzzard who'd fashioned a world for the Cherokees.
A part of him remained, as always, angry with her; another part of him remained, as always, accepting of her.
“Well, so you must be Abigail,” he said to the woman Meredyth had procured for him.
“I'm Lucas-”
“I know who you are.” She beamed, handing him a goblet of brandy. It was a goblet identical to the one he had lifted from Judge Charles Mootry's home, and Abigail sipped from a second one.
“How fitting,” he said, “a girl after my own heart.”
She smiled a disarming smile, her curly hair playing coquettishly about her temples. “Beware…
I'm after more than your heart, Chief…” Stonecoat settled into the seat as Conrad drove off, Meredyth saying, “I hope you like the opera, Lucas.”
“Opera? Well, sure,” he lied. He'd never been to an opera in his life.
“Splendid,” came Meredith's voice from the front. She seemed not to want to look in the back seat.
Lucas took Abigail in his arms, kissing her passionately, more for Meredyth's sake than anyone else's. But he was surprised by Abigail, finding himself stirred by her return kiss, her searching tongue now deeply exploring his mouth.
Sit back, shut up, and enjoy the ride, he told himself, feeling that he had earned it. If he couldn't have Meredyth, then by the Great One, he'd have this proffered substitute, this police groupie, this Abigail Heston, whose hand now played a flutelike pirouette over his wounded knee…