White Wolf

Sweaty, hot and shaky, Dain used the wall to steady himself as he stumbled from the large master bedroom to the bathroom. His mouth was so dry it felt like it was going to crack. That damn white wolf. He hated the animal! He hated the nightmare that plagued him every night!

Cursing, Dain fumbled for the light switch. The resulting glare hurt his eyes. The doctors said he’d be photophobic from now on—sunlight, or indeed, any bright light, would make him wince like he was being struck. Not that a little pain should bother Dain, who’d taken enough beatings as a young kid. One of the matrons at the orphanage had loved to slap the boys across the mouth. Smiling mirthlessly, Dain reached for a glass on the sink. He’d lost count of how many times that old crone had slapped him, but he remembered he’d always had red cheeks. Back then, it was a badge of honor.

Jerking the faucet handle, he felt the cold water spill across his hand. To hell with it. He set the glass aside, cupped his hands and filled them with the cold, delicious water. Leaning down, he splashed it across his face. Yes! The cold always revived him. Helped him. Steadied him. He remembered going to the boys’ bathroom to cry after getting a few good slaps from the matron. When his tears abated, he’d wash his face with cold water and make the redness disappear from his cheeks. What a lucky lad he was.

The cold water chased the last of the white wolf’s yellow eyes out of his haunted subconscious—at least, for now. Jerking a towel off the rack, Dain wiped his face. Filling the glass, he drank the water in huge gulps, some of it spilling out of the corners of his mouth, dripping down onto his chest and across his still-pounding heart.

Absently, he ran his fingers through the dark mat of hair across his chest, spreading the water over his heated skin. Water always soothed him. Turning, he put the glass aside. Why not take a swim in that Olympic-size pool of his? Indeed, why not? In six months, he wouldn’t be here to enjoy it, anyway.

Moving robotically and using his hands to steady himself, he walked through the fifteen-room mansion he’d bought for a mere ten million. It had every convenience, designer this and designer that, artwork from the Old Masters, Ming Dynasty porcelain from China and anything else a man could want with his money.

But money couldn’t make this cancerous tumor deep in his brain disappear. Opening the sliding glass door, he walked woodenly toward the pool as the predawn coolness wrapped around his hot, sweaty body. Dain halted and looked up. The lights of New York City glimmered in the distance. His mansion sat on some of the most expensive real estate a New Yorker could buy. But what did his magnificent house mean to him now?

He laughed harshly and glared heavenward. The night sky was light with a nearly full moon. Many of the stars were blotted out because of the moon’s pale, radiant light. Scowling, Dain was reminded of the white radiance of the wolf’s coat. Shrugging off the image, he turned his attention to the pool, long and rectangular and inviting. Without hesitation, Dain dove in.

Just the act of leaping into the cold depths, chilled by the early September weather, was enough to shock his senses and bring him back into the here and now. He swam with hard, swift strokes, trying to outrun the last of the nightmare, burying himself in the nurturing water, which surrounded him like a lover. He turned over and did a backstroke, moving like an arrow, his legs strong and powerful. Water raced and gurgled around him, healing him.

By the time he’d swum ten laps in the pool, the eastern sky was just beginning to lighten, not quite gray, but no longer inky black, either—a promise of something to come. As he dragged himself wearily out of the pool and wrapped himself in a thick, white terry-cloth towel, he studied the eastern horizon. The sun would edge it in gilt within a couple of hours. A tremor raced through him as he dried the short, black hair that clung to his skull and wiped the last of the rivulets from a harsh, rugged face that few would call handsome, he knew.

Well, he might not be a pretty boy, but he’d carved an empire that no one on the face of this earth could steal from him. After the orphanage had stolen his soul, crushed his heart and destroyed his hope, he’d sworn that once he got out of that hellhole of the damned, he’d insulate himself against the cruelty of the world and make a safe place for himself.

Laughing bitterly, Dain walked to a chair and sat down. His knees were feeling weak again. As he buried his face in the white towel, he closed his eyes and took a deep, shaky breath. He was dying. How damned unfair! He was only thirty-eight, one of the richest men in the world, and there wasn’t a cure on earth his money could buy to stop this brain tumor from growing, from taking his life.

Looking up, Dain gazed at the moon. Somewhere in this world there had to be something that could help him. But where? And what? His money had bought him advice from the world’s top specialists and they’d all told him to go home and die. There was nothing they could do for him. Oh, sure, they could operate and more than likely injure the other parts of his brain, leaving him a helpless dullard who couldn’t speak or walk.

Dain balled the damp towel in his hands as he studied the white orb in the sky, hanging so silently. It was so beautiful and free. In six months, he’d never see the moon shine again. And then he thought of the white wolf of his dream. Wolves howled at the moon. A sad, twisted smile pulled at his mouth. Well, maybe he was more wolf than he realized.

Laughing bitterly, Dain shook his head. What was he going to do? There had to be some kind of healing for his tumor somewhere in this forsaken world! For the last year, ever since the tumor had been discovered, he’d sent his best people abroad to find such a medicine and such a person—and they’d all come back empty-handed because no one in traditional medicine would tell him what he wanted to hear: that they could cure him of the tumor.

His mouth flattening, Dain studied the moon’s reflection on the surface of the pool, the water shivering now with ripples from the morning breeze. There was a wild, animal restlessness in his soul. This wasn’t the first time he’d felt it. No, when he’d been caged in that orphanage as a young boy no one wanted, he’d felt just like the white wolf that had pursued him in his nightmares. Yes, that was it. Maybe the white wolf that haunted his dreams nightly ever since he’d gotten the tumor was actually him.

I’m going crazy, Dain decided as he studied the water. Well, he if he wasn’t crazy yet, he would be soon enough. Toward the end, the doctors said, he’d be drugged and put away—for his own good—as the runaway tumor began to make his behavior volatile—even dangerous to himself and others. That was a joke. He’d made nothing but enemies growing up and later, while creating his empire. And while he’d loved many, many women, taken the fruit of their bodies, he’d never married. He’d recognized the greed in women’s eyes when they saw his billion-dollar empire, and he knew each and every one of them was simply playing the game to get him, and more important, his money.

Damn it, there had to be something he could do! He just couldn’t accept that he was going to die. His mind churned as it always did after awakening from the nightmare. Who could cure him? And where? Hadn’t he looked everywhere? His mind was facile and moved like a powerful Indy race car, swiftly closing in on the ever-elusive finish line. Associates had said he had a mind like a hummingbird, always in motion, never resting. To stop meant having time to remember things about himself and his past—memories too painful to contemplate. So he stayed busy. He guessed he was just a Type A personality. And why not? No grass grew under his feet. He had no friends, no wife, no children. Only a worldwide empire, new fields to conquer and money to burn. Yes, he was one of the most powerful corporate raiders of the past two decades—and he’d always gotten everything he’d gone after in the business world. He was a winner.

Wasn’t he?

Snorting softly, Dain slowly eased himself to his feet. He pulled the towel across his shoulders. Winners didn’t die of brain tumors. He’d overcome so much, so damned much. And now this! A stupid tumor was stalking him, just like that white wolf did every night.

As Dain walked slowly around the pool, the coolness of the fall air making him shiver slightly, he had a sudden thought. It came out of nowhere and stopped him midstride. Yes. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He’d go see his favorite medical doctor tomorrow, Dr. Sarah Goodwin. He liked her. She’d always been honest with him—and surprisingly compassionate. And Dain had seen enough doctors to know that compassion didn’t come cheap. But then maybe it was a game, an act on her part. Maybe she just wanted his money, too.

Well, whatever. Dr. Sarah was into a lot of things medical doctors weren’t supposed to be into. She’d hinted he should take vitamins and minerals, get a massage on a weekly basis to stimulate his immune system. Yes, she had some oddball ideas about healing, but for some reason, he hadn’t made time to sit and really ask her in depth about these alternative methods she seemed to know something about. A slight smile curved his mouth. Okay, so he’d go see Dr. Sarah and he’d peer into that fine surgeon’s mind of hers and see what else she knew. If he didn’t take the time now, he’d never have it. Besides, who knew? Maybe Dr. Sarah had a lead for him—something he might want to track down himself. Personally.

Maybe that was the problem, too, Dain decided. He’d spent millions sending his representatives around the world looking for a cure for him, when he should have searched himself. With his body beginning to show the effects of the tumor, it was now or never. Gripping the towel more firmly in his fist, Dain entered his palatial home, closing the sliding glass door behind him. He padded across the thick carpeting to his office to make a note for his secretary, John Hastings, to get Dr. Sarah on the phone early that morning.

Dain didn’t believe in hunches, but he chalked up the need to talk to Dr. Sarah as a logical progression, one born out of desperation and a vague memory of her attempts to get him to stay a few more minutes after his appointment to discuss some “alternative” healing methods with him. At the time, he’d pooh-poohed her. He wondered what she would say if he told her about the nightly dream of the white wolf.

“Wolves are about our primal, survival self,” Sarah told Dain as she sat behind her huge, walnut desk.

Dain moved restlessly, pacing back and forth as he always did across her spacious office in the city. Early afternoon sunlight slanted through the venetian blinds, filling the room with a sense of warmth. Of hope. “Do people who are going to die get nightmares like this?” he demanded brusquely.

Sarah shrugged and folded her hands in her lap. “Sometimes. I had suggested a good therapist for you to—”

He gave her an angry look. “Doctor, if I wanted a damn shrink, I’d have gotten one by now.”

She frowned. “Then why are you here, Dain?”

He halted and placed his hands on his hips, a gesture he’d picked up in his days as an air force fighter pilot. “You mentioned something about other forms of healing. Not traditional ones,” he muttered, beginning to pace again and closely watching her thoughtful expression. Sarah was in her mid-forties, with red hair and dark green eyes. She was pretty. And intelligent.

“Oh.”

“What do you mean, ‘oh’?”

“I didn’t think you’d be the type to be interested, Dain.”

Anger stirred in him. “Doctor, I’m going to die in six damn months. What the hell makes you think I’d shrug off a good idea that just might cure me?”

With a sigh, Sarah stood and slid her hands in the pockets of her white lab coat. She moved slowly, with deliberation, around the desk. “Okay,” she murmured. “Last year I attended a conference in Arizona on Native American healing techniques. I talked to this one medicine man, a Navajo from Chinle, who had cured stomach cancer in some of his Navajo patients. I asked him if there were any women healers who could do what he did, and he said yes. I thought a woman healer might be best since I feel you have more trust in women than men, and part of the healing is trusting the healer.”

Dain halted a few feet from her. He saw Sarah’s green eyes narrow. “And?”

“He became very evasive. Nervous, almost. He muttered something about this woman whose name is Tashunka Mani Tu. She’s Eastern Cherokee, but she lives on the Navajo Reservation and the name she goes by is Lakota. It seemed an odd combination to me, but he said she lived the life of a hermit and only those who had the courage to find her would. Apparently,” Sarah continued, “those that could find her were healed.”

“Did she heal tumors?”

“This old man said she was heyoka.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Heyoka is a Lakota word for coyote. It means a person who is not what they seem to be. The coyote is considered a trickster. The medicine man said this woman could change shapes, become an animal, a bird or whatever she chose. He said that those people who overcome their fear of her would find her. He said that a woman who had breast cancer, and who had only weeks to live, sought out this medicine woman. When the old Navajo medicine man saw her two months later, the woman was cured, happy and was telling everyone she met of the miracle.”

“Humph.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

Irritably, Dain said, “She’s cured breast cancer. That’s a tumor. Where can I get a hold of her?”

Shrugging, Sarah said, “I don’t know.”

“What about this old Navajo medicine man?”

“He died shortly after the conference.”

Angrily, Dain glared at her. “All right, I’ll go to Chinle, Arizona, and ask around about her. Someone has got to know about her.”

Smiling tentatively, Sarah ran her fingertips along the edge of her desk. “Yes, I’m sure someone has heard of Tashunka Mani Tu.” She paused, studying him intently. “One word of warning, Dain.”

His hand was already on the doorknob. “Yes?”