Jumlin's Spawn (3 page)

Elfie replied, “Probably because of his crazy
theorizing about Egyptian-Sioux-Irish vampire people. Narvel had
these items in his private storage. I didn't mention it to the
Captain because I was afraid they'd be seized for evidence, just
like the stuff we looked at today.”

“Yeah, they would have been,” Yancey said. “Where the
hell did Narvel get them in the first place?”

“His notes said he stumbled over them deep in the
Angel Caves,” Elfie said. “I knew right away it was nonsense. I’ve
always heard the Angel Caves were very dangerous.”

Yancey nodded. “The caves are lined with obsidian, a
black volcanic glass that’s sharp as hell and deadly when somebody
falls on it. The obsidian also makes the cave system really dark in
places. There are drop-off projections all over them. Every couple
of years, they find some poor, dumb kid impaled on one of the
spikes.”

“Then how did Narvel, or whoever he got them from,
come into possession of them?” Elfie asked.

“They weren't buried deep,” Yancey said. “I believe
they were in the sacred outer areas where ancestral graves are. As
our anthropology professor friend can tell you, everyone knew the
relics were there.”

Oliver leaned forward, a number of thoughts appearing
to crowd his face. “True, their inherent sacredness, not to mention
the very convenient legendary curse on them, kept them safe in the
past. What I don't get is, if Duryea found them, or paid someone to
find them, why did he return to the same place? That's where he
died.”

Yancey shrugged. “Looking for more maybe?”

“Probably researching his Lakota Book of the Dead, I
think,” Elfie said.

“It's not a big area to research, the part that can
be walked,” Yancey replied, “and the M.E. Report said he had cave
dust on his shoes. There is a handful of old cave-walker Sioux who
can survive them. They probably made the trek for him, killed him
and kept whatever they found. Duryea walked over dust that they had
tracked out.”

“Then how was he drained of blood?” Elfie asked.

“I don’t know,” Yancey said. “Some wacko cult group
working together pumped the blood out of him so they could blame it
on vampires, maybe?”

“And they expected the police to believe it?” Elfie
asked, her eyebrows crowding together in confusion.

“Well, the fake vampire theory is better than the
real vampire one, isn’t it?” Yancey asked. “Who knows…maybe I'm
wrong, maybe he got deep in the caves somehow. Could be he cut
himself on obsidian groping around in all the darkness and bled to
death inside. Could be he just stumbled out and died in the
opening, with no blood around him.”

“If the caves are dark enough for that to happen, why
do they glow from the outside?” Elfie asked. “Isn't that why they
call them the Angel Caves? Because of the halo glow?”

“The theory is the black glass reflects a whole
series of natural light shafts from various points in the
mountain,” Oliver explained. “That gives them the optical illusion
of a glow from the outside when you look up from Willow Wash.”

“Willow Wash? I thought this place we’re talking
about was some place on the Stronghold,” Elfie said.

“No, you're thinking of the Wounded Knee place,”
Yancey said, “where Wovoka and the Ghost Dancers were.  The
Angel Caves are beyond Willow Wash.”

“Beyond Willow Wash?” Elfie asked, wincing slightly.
“That's a two or three day drive over that terrain.”

Yancey shrugged. “It's going to take some time to get
there. We're going to take Oliver's Land Rover. The bench seats
fold down into beds.”

Elfie frowned a lot. “I hate camping, you know
that.”

Yancey smirked in reply. “I know that, but my
Starfleet transporter is on the fritz.”

Elfie groaned in frustration, and then finally leaned
back in surrender. “Okay, okay, I guess we're going camping.
Besides…” Elfie pushed the case gently toward Yancey. “I need to
put these back where they belong.”

Yancey's eyes widened with amazement. “We can seize
the other items because he hid them on Sioux land. But wouldn’t
keeping these get you in trouble with his estate?”

She shrugged. “They aren't in the paperwork anywhere.
And, there is the fact it was theft. Let them set the dogs on me, I
don't care at this point.”

Yancey slowly leaned down toward her. He cradled one
side of her face in his hand and planted a firm kiss on the other
side. He moved his mouth against hers for a moment. As he'd never
kissed her on the mouth before, she leaned away from the
strangeness of the gesture, but her eyes burned with a tender
memory of a time past.

His voice tightened around every word. “I appreciate
this. More than I can say.”

She fought a smile. “To whatever extent I’m
responsible for assisting in what he was doing, I owe your tribe at
least this much.”

“What about what you owe our tribe?” Oliver asked
suddenly, sitting forward with his artful grace, as if to close the
distance between them. 

“Our tribe?” she asked, knowing a second later she
had fallen into the trap.

“You don’t think you owe Yancey and me an explanation
for why you left?” Oliver asked.

She considered the question for a long moment, but
turned away. “I've told you. I had personal reasons.”

“That’s bullshit!” Yancey said. “We don’t have
personal reasons between the three of us.  We don't have
boundaries. We’ve known each other too long for that shit.”

“I’ve come to believe,” she said, “that boundaries
are a good thing.”

“Stop it!” Yancey lashed out at her.  “Stop
talking like we’re new acquaintances at a cocktail party.  I
kicked Morgan Stewart’s ass in junior high when he made fun of
you.  We held you the night your father was killed. 
Don’t treat me or Oliver like we’re strangers.  Get mad at
me.  Yell at me.  Say something!”

“What do you want to hear?” she asked with her voice
thin and crisp as rice paper.

“I want to hear whatever it was that drove you away,”
Yancey said. “I want you to sound as hurt as you are. Like leaving
tore your heart out, just as it tore us apart. Don't sound like the
last fifteen years didn't matter in the first fucking place!”

She shut her eyes in frustration, carefully
conceiving of each word before it was spoken. “I have spent the
last year trying to get over what you want me to relive again. When
there is a long-time circle of trust like the three of us had…”

“Like we still have,” Yancey said through tight
teeth,  “and we have to force it out so we can deal with
it.  We can’t heal a wound we can’t see, Elfie.”

She swung a hard glance directly at him. “What if it
isn't possible to heal it?”

“What if it is?” Yancey snapped back. “I mean, don't
you owe us an attempt to try?”

“Owe you?” she finally erupted, slamming a fist
against the arm of the chair. “I owe you? What about what
you
owed
me
?”

“What do we owe
you
?” Oliver asked.

Elfie shook her head hard. “How about loyalty? The
truth? What about the right not to live an illusion? What about
things like that?”

She forced herself into silence by standing up and
walking to the picture window that faced Yancey’s ceremony garden.
It gave her time to think. In the window’s reflection, she watched
Yancey shake his head, as though in total confusion.

“What in the hell does that –”

“Yancey,” Oliver said quickly as he reached out to
touch Yancey's arm, “she knows. About us.”

She watched in the reflection as Yancey turned toward
Oliver, and the two men seemed to share a slow-rolling gaze of
understanding. The Sioux man looked away at the impact of the
guilt.

“Elfie…” Yancey shrugged a little, like he didn't
know what to say. “I’m sorry. I honestly didn't think you'd take it
this hard.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.

Yancey wove his arms across his chest. “I wanted to
believe you knew somehow. You somehow had guessed and it didn’t
matter. I mean, you knew already that Oliver and I had slept
together.”

“I knew,” she said quickly, “that you'd been together
casually a couple of times. You both told me it was over. I was
told there wasn’t a relationship.”

“So what is this?” Yancey asked, his voice sounding
like he was out of words.  “Homophobia?”

“Give me a break!” she yelled back. “I've known you
go both ways since high school. I never had a problem with
that.  This is different.  You two have formed a
relationship, have you not?”

Oliver looked over at Yancey, then back at
Elfie.  Oliver met her gaze directly and honestly.  “Yes,
we have.”

“When it started this time, it was forever, or it
wouldn’t have started,” Yancey said. “I mean, it’s not just a
one-night stand thing, if that's what you're worried about.  I
wouldn’t do that to Oliver.”

“Oh,” she said softly, “but you would do this to
me?”

Yancey appeared taken aback at the question. 
“And what the hell does that mean?”

She smiled, although it hurt like hell to do so. She
shook her head. “It means I’d never have had a romantic
relationship with one of you, simply because it would have
diminished my relationship with the other one.  Made him feel
left out.  And I could never do that…to either of you. 
But not only could you do that to me…you did do that to me. And
that, in a nutshell, says how little I meant to you.”

Oliver and Yancey looked to each other again, the
inward battle with guilt they were sharing written plainly over
their faces.

“We never intended to hurt you!” Yancey said. “You
should know how much you mean to us.”

A quiet pain worked its way through her voice
again.  “We didn't have a normal friendship. We were one
entity. We were the three musketeers. Out of that, you two formed a
relationship that meant more to you than your friendship with me.
 Which tells me exactly where I’ve always stood in our
relationship.”

“That isn’t true,” Oliver said. 

“That’s your assumption, Elfie,” Yancey shot
back. “You jumped to a conclusion and then ran away. 
Because something scared you.”

“Oh, here we go!” she said, “It's all my fault
again. You tell me what other way I should have taken that big a
betrayal of trust. Tell me how you'd feel if the circumstances were
reversed.”

Standing, Yancey's black eyes darkened, as though
searching inside him for a possible answer. After a long moment, he
turned toward her again. “Okay, I’d probably feel betrayed.”

“Probably?” she asked. “You know damned well you
would. Now, man up and admit it. You two made your choice. At least
allow me to make my own.”

“She's right,” Oliver said to Yancey. “We acted
without thinking.”

“All right, I admit it,” Yancey said, taking a step
back from the circle. “We were thinking with the wrong heads.”

Oliver's blue eyed stare turned brightly toward her.
“So, Elf, tell us. What do we do to fix it?”

“We can't,” she said sadly. “Our friendship was a
wonderful, youthful moment of time in our lives. But, the mirage is
gone now. We can't bring it back.”

“What if we can build something even better?” Yancey
asked.

“Can we save that question for later?” Elfie asked
with a thin, raspy weakness to her voice. “I'm exhausted. I've had
a long, weird week. And a long trip in an even longer day. I just
want to turn in early. I am assuming we leave in the morning on
this great adventure of ours?”

Yancey smiled with a tinge of regret. “Yeah, at dawn.
We have an appointment to meet with Wolfram Ten Bears at 8 AM.
That's stop number one.”

“Who is he?” Elfie asked.

“A gigantic waste of time, that's who he is,” Yancey
explained. “I have to see him, to appease the more conservative
traditionalists, before we go into their holy lands.”

“I need to reserve a portable argon laser for the
field,” Elfie said.

“You mean like the one you used on the Dani artifacts
I wanted tested?” Oliver asked. “We still have that one at the
university. I can call Pat in equipment assignments and have it
delivered to the field.”

“Terrific. We'll need a field generator, too,” she
said.

“I’ve got it covered,” Oliver said.

“What the hell,” Yancey asked, looking to Elfie for
an answer, “is a portable argon laser?”

“Well, you know what a laser does?” Elfie replied.
“An argon laser uses gases to create white light. This laser uses
light to sanitize field tools. I don't want any of what might be
growing in Doctor Narvel Caligari's cabinet to take root in the
grasslands. He's already done enough damage to your people.”

Yancey reached for Elfie's hand, squeezing it gently,
then holding it to his lips. “You are my people, Elf,” Yancey said,
“and it's good to have you back. Even if it's only for a little
while.”

****

Elfie sat on the edge of the bed in Yancey's
thin-walled guest room. The wind's howl gave way to a far-off
coyote yipping through the night for its cubs. The southwest had
only recently been swept up by European civilization. Most of the
grassland miles continued on in spite of the city, not because of
it. Elfie had almost forgotten these prairie sounds in the
jazz-steeped nights of the Crescent City.

As she shed her jacket, she remembered the letter in
her pocket.

She didn't have to open it to know what was in it.
She had written a letter to both of them before she left, outlining
her reasons for leaving. She had sealed it in an envelope and
written their names across it. But she realized, once she’d written
it, that she could never let them read it.

Good grief
, she thought to herself,
that
was all she needed
– for that to fall out of her pocket and one
of the guys to read it.

“Yeah, guys, I ran away from jealousy…because of a
double shot of it” – from the sudden knowledge that she cared for
them both, in the way they obviously cared for each other.