The Comanche Vampire (22 page)

“I
don’t want to risk it.
 
He’ll just give
me some high-powered cough syrup anyway and tell me to rest. I wish I felt
better, that’s all and I’m sorry.”

“You
don’t have to apologize, Anne.
 
You
didn’t get sick on purpose. Want some more honey?”

“I
guess,” she said. “I’d like some coffee too, anything hot.”

“I’ll
stir up the fire and add wood.
 
Then I’ll
make coffee on the stove. If you want, lay back down.
 
It’s probably warmer.”

“I
don’t know.
 
I love the buffalo hides,
but the floor’s getting hard.”

She’s fussy because she doesn’t
feel well.
 
Ned paused before he replied. “I’ll drag the
mattress from the bed in here if you want.”

“I’d
like that,” she said with the faint glimmer of a smile. “Thank you.”

Ned
dosed her with
spoonfuls
of honey then made
coffee.
 
He used some of the gallon jugs
he kept around for such occasions.
 
By
now, he wouldn’t be able to dredge much out of the pipes.
 
She drank two cups of coffee then lay down on
the mattress he delivered.
 
Ned covered
her with the hides and fetched pillows for her too.
 
“Aren’t you going to climb in with me?” she
asked.

He’d
had more rest than he could manage now.
 
“I need to go out and check on the horses, toss them some hay.
 
Then I’ll see if I can rustle something up
for dinner.
 
Try to rest, honey, and feel
better if you can.”

Anne’s
sigh carried the force of the wind. “I’ll try.
 
Hurry back, okay?”

Ned
bent down and kissed her feverish forehead. “I will, honey.”

Her
illness worried him, not because he thought it serious, but because it brought
back unpleasant reminders of when his daughters died.
 
They coughed, too and struggled to breathe,
but they had a white man’s disease, diphtheria, not bronchitis.
 
Ned recalled all too well how harsh their
coughs racked their slender young bodies and the way their skin glowed with a
bluish cast––something the eagle doctor said meant they lacked air in their
lungs.
 
Anne wasn’t as sick as his
children but the slight similarities frightened him.
 
As he fed the horses, he wracked his brain
for ways to help his woman.
 
It’d been so
long since he’d thought about healing and even long ago he hadn’t done much, but
depended on others.
 
Sage tea came to
mind and so did sweat lodge.
 
He gave hay
to the ponies and decided he’d best take a little blood.
 
Within a day or two at most, he would need
human blood or he’d sicken too.
 

Ned
selected
Taabe
,
his favorite, one of the paint
stallions.
 
He moved in close, held it by
the halter and bit the animal on the withers.
 
He’d learned enough finesse over the decades he could make his bite all
but painless and the horse didn’t protest much.
 
The taste of its blood rankled in his mouth, the flavor very different
than human.
 
After, he cleaned his mouth out
with snow and spit to rid the lingering aftertaste on his tongue.
 
Before he checked on Anne, he poured a cup of
lukewarm coffee from the pot on the stove.
 
Then he wiped his lips in case a drop or two of blood lingered.

Anne
slept, curled on one side, but her breathing sounded rough to him.
 
Ned waited until his hands warmed up before
he touched her but her skin still burned with too much heat.
 
He smoothed back a stray bit of hair and
returned to the kitchen.
 
Although he
wasn’t sure how he’d get her to drink it, he brewed some sage tea.
 
He hadn’t had any in years, and if Anne
hadn’t stocked his cupboards, he doubted he would have had the herb on
hand.
 
Ned drank a sip and made a
face.
 
The bitter flavor rankled so he
added a bit of sugar.
 
He tasted it again
and decided it might be palatable.
 

A
series of barking coughs erupted from the front room.
 
“Ned?” Anne said between coughs.

“I’m
right here.” He carried the steaming cup of tea into the room. “Will you try
this? It’s sage tea, an old-fashioned Comanche cure for fever and coughs.”

Her
lip curled up. “What’s it taste like?” she asked in a raspy voice.

“Sage,”
Ned told her. “It’s a little bitter, but I added some sugar.
 
I can dump some honey in too if you want.”

She
sat up and peered at the murky contents of the cup. “Will it help?”

“Yeah,
it should.”

“Okay,
I’ll try it.” Anne sipped it and frowned. “Yuck. It tastes terrible. Let me try
some honey with it.”

He
added some to the brew and she drank a little more. “That’s a little better, I
guess.
 
Thanks for making it, Ned.”

“
De nada.”
 
He watched her drink it.

“You’ve
drunk this before, I guess.”

“Yeah.
I wish you weren’t sick, though.”

A
faint smile fluttered across her mouth and faded. “Do you have any other old
Native American healing tricks up your sleeve?”

Despite
his worry, he grinned. “I might.”

“Like
what?”

He
couldn’t do what he’d like unless the electricity came back.
 
As Ned hesitated, the lights flickered.
 
Then they dimmed and came on.
 
He held his breath, willing the power to
remain and after a few minutes, it did.
 
“We’ve got lights!” Anne cried. “Oh, I’m glad.”

“Me,
too,” Ned said. “Now I can try the other idea.”

“What
is it?”

Ned
knew she wouldn’t like it if he painted her face to ward off evil entities but
he’d already made up his mind to create a modern version of a sweat lodge.
 
He could remember being ill and taken to a sweat
lodge so the impurities in his body could be leached away.
 
Without a word, he pulled away the hides and
scooped Anne into his arms.
 
He carried
her, listening to her faint-hearted protests, into the bathroom and sat her
down on the closed lid of the commode.
 
“Strip,” he told her.

She
stared at him. “What are we doing, Ned?”

“I’m
about to make the closest thing to a sweat lodge I can,” he told her. “Get out
of your clothes.
 
Now the power’s on, I’m
going to run the hottest water possible in the shower and let this room steam
up.
 
You’re going to sweat and I think
it’ll help, honey, but it’s better if you’re naked.”

Anne
cocked her head and considered his idea. “All right. It might work.
 
I’ve heard of people doing it for babies with
croup.”

He
had no clue what croup might be, but he figured it might work. “And I’m going
to sing,” he told her.

“Sing?”

“It’s
a healing song,” he explained. “If I wanted to do it right, I’d paint my face
and yours, but I won’t.
 
I doubt I’d get
the right patterns anyway.
 
But I’ll do
what I can remember and hope it’s enough.
 
It’s been a while.”

Ned
didn’t know what all the words meant.
 
Some were an archaic form of Comanche so ancient no one living would
recognize them.
 
But he knew the
intention and he sang them with emotion.
 
And it worked or appeared to make a difference.

On
Sunday, Anne wasn’t coughing as much. Monday brought warmer temperatures and
the snow melted, making the roads passable.
 
By then, she claimed to be well on the road to recovery and Ned agreed
she appeared much improved.
 
“I’d just
stay here until we go home for Christmas, but I have finals to do first.”

“When’s
your last day?”

“December
19,” Anne told him. “I thought we’d leave for Rusk on the twenty-third if
that’s okay, stay through Christmas and come home.”

Committed
to the trip, Ned nodded. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

And
did.

Chapter Eleven

The
five and a half hour trip from Lawton to Rusk took Ned almost seven.
 
Although they got an early start and stopped
for breakfast in Wichita Falls they would’ve been on time if he hadn’t had a
flat tire right as they entered Fort Worth.
 
He rolled the truck to a halt on the shoulder and changed it but his
spare wasn’t much better, so Ned decided it’d be best to stop long enough to
buy a new one.
 
“If we don’t,” he told
Anne, “it’s likely we’ll have another flat before I get you home.”

“As
long as we’re there by supper time, it’s fine. Mom’s cooking a special meal for
us.”

“I
think I can promise we’ll make it.”

At
the next tire shop he saw Ned paid for a balanced set of four new tires and
they waited behind four other vehicles until they were in place. By then it was
almost noon and although they were behind schedule, Anne wanted to grab a quick
sandwich.
 
Ned had no desire to eat or
drink blood.
 
He’d sated himself the
night before at the casino.
 
His bosses
approved his vacation request with an obvious lack of enthusiasm after his sick
days during the blizzard.
 
It might be
coming time to change jobs, something he’d done often over the years.

“We’ll
stop at the next burger joint we come across,” he promised Anne.
 
A mile or so down the road, still within the
urban sprawl of Dallas-Fort Worth Ned spotted a What-A-Burger. Anne ordered a cheeseburger,
he had two and they headed on for the home stretch.

Although
the weather forecast called for clouds and rain, the sun emerged and brightened
everything.
 
Ned cursed in silence.
 
He knew he’d look pale and washed out in its
brilliance, something he’d rather avoid.
 
As they headed eastward along the two-lane highway into the Piney Woods
country Anne fidgeted until he realized she’d become nervous about this holiday
homecoming.
 
She confirmed it minutes
later.

“Ned?”

He
knew the tone, a little sharp and a lot uncertain. “What is it, honey?”

“You
aren’t going to start any of that vampire talk, are you?”

Her
words stunned him. “What brought that on?”

“I
don’t know,” Anne said in a hesitant voice. Then her words tumbled out in swift
jumble. “Well, I do know. You haven’t mentioned it again, but…”

“You
asked me not to, Anne.”

“I
know and I appreciate it.
 
But sometimes,
the things you do are so old-fashioned, I’d almost believe it.”

He
couldn’t believe what he heard. “Like what?”

“Well,
when I was sick, you did that medicine man chant thing.”

“You
mean the eagle doctor song?”

“Yes,
that.
 
And made a mini-sweat lodge and
made the awful sage tea.”

“And?”
He didn’t see anything so out of the ordinary about any of it.

“It’s
almost enough to make me think you really lived a long time ago.
 
No guy I know would think of such things or
do them.”

“So
what are you saying?”

She
scooted a few inches away from him and stared at him with serious eyes.
“Nothing, really, just it made me think about some of your old timey ways and
all.
 
And for a minute, I almost wondered
if it was true, but then common sense returned and I knew it was silly to even
consider it.”

He’d
never wanted to tell her more than this moment.
 
She sees it
, he thought,
but she refuses to admit it
. “Anne…”

Before
he could complete the sentence she cut him off. “I don’t want to talk about
it.
 
I just said something so you won’t
bring it up around my parents, okay?”

“Sure.
I wasn’t planning to,” Ned told her.
 
“Are you worked up about bringing me home with you?”

“No,
just about coming home.”

Fine
time to learn she had doubts.
 
“Honey,
this was your idea, not mine. I thought you wanted to visit for Christmas.”

“I
do,” Anne said. “But it’s never the Norman Rockwell holiday, you know that.”