Seasonal Winds: Winter Wind Read online

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  New Concepts Publishing

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  Copyright ©2006 by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  First published in 2006, 2006

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  WINTER WIND

  By

  Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  © copyright December 2006, Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  Cover art by Jenny Dixon, © copyright December 2006

  New Concepts Publishing

  Lake Park, GA 31636

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author's imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

  Chapter One

  Kai McDonough loved the snow. He found solitude in walking through freshly fallen drifts and wonderment in watching the flakes drifting silently to earth, catching one on his tongue. When it snowed, all sound was muted and the air was crisp and clear and pristine. The cold didn't bother him. He reveled in it. His heart soared at the sight of branches laden with white crystals that turned the tree into a fairyland wonder. It was in the winter that he felt the most alive.

  Picking his way carefully along the ridge, he glanced down at the immaculate beauty that spread out below him. The warm-brown tint of his sunglasses gave sharp detail and depth as the polarized poly lens killed the glare. He needed that, for as far as the eye could see the ground was covered in a lush, fluffy blanket of snow. The sky overheard was a vibrant, vivid blue and the air carried on it an ozone scent that was sharp to the nostrils. Tall pines, spruce and aspen, were draped with a mantle of snowy white and the lake about a hundred yards east of his property was frozen solid, Canadian geese skating playfully across its mirrored surface.

  Muffled in a thick Spanish merino shearling parka with a substantial wool scarf wrapped around his neck, dark hair protected beneath a black watch cap nestled within the ample hood of the parka, his hands encased in cashmere lined lambskin gloves and his feet protected by fur-lined mukluk boats, he was toasty warm as he climbed the gentle slopes that formed the northern boundary of his Black Hills ranch.

  He rolled his shoulders, for he had not adequately adjusted the load he was carrying in his backpack. The shoulder straps and hip belt were pinching and for the amount of money he'd paid for the hauler, he was not a happy camper—no pun intended. Inside the main compartment he carried a sleeping bag, spare clothes, food, and various other items that would allow him to spend a night or two in one of the caves to which he was trekking. One of the items was a personal cooking system that weighed a bit more than he would have liked. It added to the discomfort he was experiencing at that moment but just knowing he had an Isobutane canister to prepare his meals had seemed worth it when he bought it.

  As he stood there with the cold wind blowing over his chilled face, he could imagine himself to be a hardy pioneer seeing this terrain for the first time. He fancied no human foot had ever stepped upon this virgin ledge and mentally he was claiming it for his own. Had it not been for the communications gear in his backpack—the personal locator beacon with an internal GPS receiver, the Smartphone with its graphics-driven video games, and the laptop computer with two fully charged spare batteries—he might have been able to believe he truly was conquering the wilderness.

  Continuing on up the slope, he spied white tail deer scampering down in the meadow amidst a dozen or so wild turkeys. A lone raccoon waddled from beneath a pine to disappear over a small rise. Since he wasn't a hunter and didn't allow poachers on his property, the animals seemed to know he was no threat to him. For the most part, they ignored him. Deer came right up to his back porch, enjoyed the salt block he provided, and there were always turkey tracks and bobcat prints around his woodshed out back. One set of tracks he was fairly sure belonged to a black bear and that was one of the reasons he carried a stun gun as well as a large knife in his gear when he went hiking.

  Getting a bit of a headache, hearing his stomach rumbling, he was relieved to spy the cave entrance that he wanted to investigate. It was a few hundred yards farther up the slope and examining the untouched snow on the path between him and the cave, he hoped he wouldn't be running into a hibernating ursine with a taste for horror writers.

  "Especially not ones with a severe case of writer's block,” he mumbled to himself.

  That was partially why he had decided to pull out his backpack, load it up, and strike out for a bit of solitude away from the almost daily phone calls from his agent who was beginning to hound him unmercifully for the next book in his Demon Sired series. That and the not-so-friendly breakup with his girlfriend of five years who had—with a viciousness that stunned him—given him an ultimatum of either fishing or cutting bait where their relationship was concerned, had piled depression on nerves already raw with frustration over not being able to concentrate enough to put word to screen.

  So he had struck out that morning for the wilds of the slopes beyond his elaborate log cabin and the solitude he was in such desperate need to find.

  Once at the entrance to the cave, he shrugged off the backpack and laid it in the snow, bending down to retrieve the flashlight. Flicking it on, he ducked under the low overhang and ventured inside.

  As he knew it would be, the cave was pitch black with only the small shallow arc of daylight flooding into its entrance. As he played the flashlight beam over the walls, Kai realized the chamber was much larger than he would have guessed and that the walls were smooth and not craggy as he would have expected. Frowning, he went over to the nearest surface and ran his gloved hand over it. The face was as slick as a pane of glass and just as reflective as a mirror.

  "Weird,” he pronounced, moving around the circular room. It almost felt as though the chamber had been bored out with some huge drill turning at super high speed in a one hundred and eighty degree arc. There was a long tunnel off the main chamber that seemed to go on forever, the beam from the flashlight disappearing into inky darkness.

  Underfoot, the ground was covered with sandstone clay and silt and chip breakdown consisting of irregular limestone fragments. But walking back toward the tunnel, Kai realized the ground appeared almost to have been raked, for it was much smoother than any cave floor he'd ever seen.

  "Really weird,” he said with emphasis.

  Yet there were no footprints in the soil areas. The sediment under foot did not look as though it had been disturbed for a very long time and Kai breathed a little easier, hoping the cave was not home to something with jagged teeth and a voracious appetite.

  In the distance he could hear the plink-plink-plink of water dripping and echoing back through the tunnel. The skirl of bats reverberated back to him also, which seemed odd, as well. Going back for his backpack, he decided there had to be a fair-sized grotto somewhere off the tunnel and he would cautiously seek it out. Holding the flashlight between his knees, hating to strap the backpack on again for his left shoulder felt raw from the rubbing of the strap, he sighed and swung it up, settled it a bit more comfortably on his back this time. When he had it the way he wanted it, he reached down for the flashlight and headed for the tunnel.

  Attentive ears pricked at the muffled sound of approach. Keen eyes peered unblinkingly into the darkness. Sensitive nostrils
flared at the intoxicating scent hovering just beneath the surface.

  "One comes!"

  The silent energy thought flew from one eager mind to another until all were aware and they began to gather.

  A sniff of the air. A turn of an inquisitive head. Scrutiny.

  "Male.” That one word flowed like warm honey—sweet and achingly tasteful—among them.

  The tunnel seemed to go on forever and with every step he took, Kai became even more intrigued. Above him and to both sides the tunnel was as slick and smooth as the cavern had been and as straight as an arrow. He couldn't shake the feeling that something massive and sharp had cut a swath through the hill. The walls were too uniform in their smoothness, the ground under foot too free of obstruction to believe nature had carved such perfection.

  Stopping again to adjust the backpack, he thought he heard furtive movement ahead and stilled, cocking his ear toward the sound but after several moments of intense listening, all he detected was the steady dripping of water. Around him, the flashlight beam sent arcs of illumination on the polished rock and reflected them back at him in a dizzying array of colors.

  Continuing on, he realized the air around him was getting warmer. He knew the median temperature range within the cave systems of the Black Hills was 53 degrees but it seemed much warmer than that. The air touching his face was almost humid.

  When he'd checked the weather before leaving that morning, it had been 37 degrees in Hot Springs with snow on the way to add to the four inches already on the ground. He shot his arm out to check the time and was surprised to see he'd been gone from his home for nearly two hours.

  "How can that be?” he asked aloud and began walking a bit faster.

  "Vigorous!” It was perceived with glee.

  "Healthy!” Satisfaction came.

  "Alone...” The word hung suspended then drifted away on a long sigh.

  The energy thoughts wafted on the swirling eddies of the heated air. As one, they moved—touching mind to mind and limb to limb, gathering power.

  He felt the slight shifting beneath his feet and looked down, pointing the beam of the flashlight at the cave floor. When the shifting came again, he took a cautious step back.

  "What the hell...?"

  Those were the last words out of his mouth before the ground opened up and he dropped like a rock through the floor, the loose chip breakdown closing over the opening almost as quickly as it had occurred. A ripple shifted back along the tunnel floor and when it stopped, there was no evidence that Kai McDonough had ever trailed the path.

  Chapter Two

  Opening his eyes, Kai found himself staring at an intricate arrangement of boxwork veins. The thin blades of calcite projecting from the ceiling formed a honeycomb pattern that was being illuminated by the beam from the flashlight clutched tightly in his hand. Since boxwork was largely confined to the lower levels of caves, he wondered just how far down he'd fallen.

  Having landed on his backpack, his fall had been somewhat cushioned but the slightest movement of his limbs brought it home forcefully to him that he had taken a long fall that must have taken him into unconsciousness. Wincing as he lifted his left arm to take a look at his watch, he realized he'd been out of it for over an hour.

  "Not good,” he proclaimed. Gingerly sitting up, he tested each leg to make sure nothing was broken. Other than a few sore spots, everything seemed to be in working order.

  He heard movement behind him and snapped his head around, the flashlight beam pointed in that direction. It flickered toward the spot from which he thought the sound had come but there was nothing there. A sweep of the walls, the ceiling, and the floor told him he was alone in a small cavern with a long fissure in one wall that he hoped led out of the cavern.

  Kai frowned and pointed the flashlight up at the boxwork. “How the hell did I get here?” he asked. There was no crack in the ceiling, no gaping hole from which he had plummeted.

  Another close circuit of the beam along the ceiling of the cavern revealed no opening whatsoever through which he could have fallen. He shone the beam on the fissure. It seemed barely wide enough for him to pass through. Could he have been disoriented after his fall and have crawled into this small chamber? That didn't seem logical to him. Just looking at the opening, he realized he would have had to have moved through it sideways.

  "This is bizarre,” he muttered.

  Pushing himself to his feet with a grunt, he found the top of his head almost touched the ceiling of the chamber. The intersecting mineral blades plucked at the wool fabric of his watch cap so he bent over a bit to keep from having the material snagged. Going over to the fissure, he aimed the light through the crack and realized there was very warm air coming through the split in the rock. The sound of water was very loud so he moved into the opening.

  "Handsome!” Energy bristled in that single thought.

  "Ours."

  Flowing back into the deeper shadows above him as the male squeezed through the fissure, his watchers moved spectrally along with him—beyond his human ability to detect. Every step he took was monitored and every breath he took was heard. The beat of his heart, the pumping of his blood, the ooze of his sweat beneath the heavy constriction of his clothing was carefully noted.

  "Good."

  "Prime."

  The fissure seemed to go on forever and Kai knew there was no way he could have found his way through here in a semi-conscious state. He had to have missed seeing the hole through which he fallen for there was no other explanation of how he'd come to be in that boxwork chamber. With the sound of water now a constant roaring in his ears, it was obvious to him there was an underground waterfall just ahead of him and the darkness being illuminated by the flashlight did not seem quite as ebon. Lowering the beam, he thought he detected a milky green glow not too far away and thumbed off the flashlight.

  "Yes,” he said on a long breath. There was light in the distance and so he left the flashlight off to conserve the battery. Moving forward in his sideways stance, shuffling his booted feet on the crust beneath his feet, he kept his sights on the pale glow ahead of him.

  As the light grew brighter, Kai began to feel as though he was being watched. At first it was just a slight impression of heaviness between his shoulder blades that made him uneasy, nervous. Pressed into the fissure as he was, he couldn't crane his head back to look up at what was above him but the sensation seem to come from that direction. It was as though he could feel the weight of eyes—hungry eyes—following his every move and yet he heard nothing. There were no furtive sounds of scraping talons or the scuttling of some strange insect keeping pace with him as he moved but still the uncomfortable feeling persisted. It sent a cold wriggle of anxiety down his spine and made the hairs on his arms stir. He couldn't wait to be free of the imprisonment of the walls that felt as though they were closing in on him. By the time he had cleared the fissure and found himself in a small antechamber, there were goosebumps covering his arms. He shot out of the fissure, spun around, and fumbled the flashlight on—nearly dropping it in his haste—spraying its powerful beam along the top of the fissure.

  "Goddamn it!” he spat, his breath coming in heaves. He could feel his heart racing as though he'd ran all-out at top speed. Sweat dripped into his eyes and the hand holding the flashlight was shaking.

  But there was nothing there for him to see. Nothing lurked along the ceiling of the tunnel save for pebbly outcroppings.

  Running the back of his free arm over his forehead he let out a long, shuddering breath and bent over to clear the sudden wooziness from his head. With his racing heart and adrenaline level pumping through him like mad, all he wanted to do was sit down to gather his wits about him.

  High overhead an opening in the ceiling allowed in a thin shaft of dim light that lit up the small cavern into which he'd come. The domelike hole would be impossible to reach in a free-climb and at any rate he doubted there would be a passage from the opening to the surface even if he was able to scale the dr
ipstone walls surrounding the chamber. But beyond the chamber in which he stood, was an archway flooded with brighter light.

  Attempting to leave his misgivings and unease behind, he hurried to the archway and was shocked to find a wide grotto spread out before him in a huge cavern with a pool of crystal clear water rippling beneath the cascade of a high waterfall. Thin, flat layers of calcite had formed at the edges of the pool to extend into the water like lily pads and rare cave pearls—small deposits of calcite lodged around small grains of sand or minute rock fragments—glistened on the bottom of the pool. Stalactites adorned the chamber and stalagmite ridges with horizontal crests acted as a dam to hold the water in its basin. Huge, soaring columns had formed where the stalactites and stalagmites met. The most beautiful sight in the cavern, though, were the helictites—needle-form constructs made from calcite and aragonite—clustered together to form free-form bushes as large as six feet tall. The bushes grew from the floor of the cave and were ranged all around the chamber, their twisted, turning crystal branches a marvel to behold.

  "Beautiful,” Kai whispered.

  He moved to the edge of the pool and hunkered down, stripping off a glove to run his hand through the water. It was warm and felt soft between his fingers. Looking longingly at the waterfall as it tumbled into the far side of the pool, he ached to take off his clothes and wade out into what looked to be waist high waves further out in the basin.

  But as enamored as he was with the lushness of the pool, the humidity that urged him to take off his backpack and heavy parka, he could see no way out of the chamber. A shaft high up in the ceiling allowed in a bright column of light that sparkled in the pool's water, but there was no way he could climb the vertical walls. As far as he could tell, he had reached a dead end.

  Something flitted just beyond the peripherally of his vision and he jerked around, searching for whatever had caught his attention but there was nothing there. He had heard nothing, felt nothing, just caught a fleeting movement like that of a retinal flash—that natural ophthalmologic occurrence when tiny bits of vitreous gel tug on the sensitive tissue of the retina.