airport and forcing him to take him northeast into a storm. Somewhere over the Boston Mountains in Arkansas, the plane got into serious trouble. Unable to withstand storm and wind pockets, they were forced down in a remote meadow, which the pilot had called a miracle find amid the mountainous terrain below them. The pilot, a well- groomed, retired auto executive, was counting his blessings when the plane touched down, but before it even came to a stop at the end of the meadow, Matisak had slit the man's throat from ear to ear. His look of shock was pleasing to Matisak.
After feeding as well as he might on the other man's blood, Matisak slept like an innocent child in the cradle of the cockpit beside the dead man who'd called himself Norman Easthan.
The following day, Matisak heard the approach of a helicopter, possibly searching for Easthan, or quite possibly FBI searching more for him than for the now-dead pilot.
He tumbled from the cockpit and worked demonically to force the light plane into the trees nearby. He then went about the business of covering the plane and its markings with debris and brush.
He took as much money as Easthan had in his wallet, sixty-four bucks, and struck out on foot. He went in search of telephone poles, wires, homesteads, a road, preferably paved. He had reasoned that the people searching for him would not expect him to return to the Tulsa area, and so this plan pleased him.
He took his time returning, however, with stopovers in one small town after another, pretending to be a drifter and a hobo, doing odd jobs for people-all the inane work they put off forever. He worked for a place to sleep and, for appearances, a bite to eat. Determinedly, for a time he held his urge for human blood in check. He didn't want anyone discovering a corpse, which would point a dead finger in his direction. The FBI net had come too close for such encounters now. For the time being, he wanted Jessica Coran to wonder and wait, without a clue as to when and where he would strike.
His ultimate goal in life was to have her completely and wholly to himself, just long enough to bleed her, not once but many times. He knew just how much he could take from a victim before she lapsed into coma, and if he continued they'd die soon after; however, if he denied himself for that moment, allowing the victim's body to regenerate a fresh, new supply of blood, then he could take this refill as well. With Jessica Coran, he intended to take such good care of her as to have her produce blood for him as often as he liked, to use her like a milk cow, for as long as her body and soul could withstand the shocks he pledged for her. Either that, or he'd put his quest for her blood to the ultimate test, take it to the max-which he himself could no more survive than she. It would be an end which in truth would be a new beginning, one which promised an eternity with her. He hadn't completely decided which direction their fate would go in, not yet anyway.
But whatever his choice, it would take careful preparation, time and money. Still, nothing so petty as currency should stand in the way of a man's ultimate dream, he reminded himself.
So, his quest had brought him here, finally locating Tahle-quah, the old capital of the Indian Nation where Cherokee lohn Ross held court and sway as the president of the Indian Nation for most of his life during the 1800s. Matisak had some Cherokee blood in him, or so his family history went-relatives in the tribe, distant, yes, but what better relatives to have?
The Redbirds weren't exactly blood relatives-until now, tie silently jested-but while they were not kith and kin, the aid folks were living in the ancient house where Matisak's mother's mother had been born to Janie Elyse Elkheart, a quarter-blood Cherokee who'd married outside the tribe to Karl Matisak, a German immigrant who became a self-taught doctor who worked among the tribe, and learning just how good he was at faking it, set up practice some years later in Chicago for the better part of his life. Matt Matisak's grandfather had told him tales of how he had buried gold coins in gunnysacks under the floor of that old house whenever they returned. He'd hidden over two thirds of his fortune amassed in Chicago somewhere around the old place.
Matisak's grandfather may well have been telling tall tales for a wide-eyed grandson, but he'd left a detailed map of how to find the old house and its treasure for his grandson. The aid man had learned to detest his own son, Matisak's father, who was so overwhelmed by Matisak's mother, a big woman af Irish descent who had a way of making her husband and young son grovel for any and all things.
Young Matisak had never taken his grandfather too seriously, but he was in the area now, and he recalled the exact location from years of staring at a crude map the old man had left him, one which Matisak's mother had thrown into the fire. Matisak had come to Oklahoma to seek his fortune, whatever that treasure might be. But the Redbirds posed a minor problem now that Matisak had come for the coins. Even if it were anly a handful of gold coins minted in the 1800s, as his grandfather had said, they would be worth a small fortune, certainly enough to help him in his quest for his newfound love, Jessica Coran. It took money to keep up with the lady. She'd just jetted back to the mainland from Hawaii then to Oklahoma some six months before, and she'd been in the area only a short while, along with a hundred other FBI agents, so it had been too dangerous to get near her then.
Next time, he would choose the time and place, and he'd have the necessary provisions. He must reinvent the spigot, his control mechanism, his instrument of choice, the mechanism by which he could carefully drain her of every ounce without spilling so much as a drop, or he must acquire a new, high-tech mechanism which only money could buy. Either way, it would take some doing.
But first he had to look around the old farmhouse where he'd been doing odd jobs for the Redbirds. He'd been fortunate that the fools in law enforcement had been circulating photos of him as he'd looked when he was first taken into custody so many years before in Chicago. He looked quite different now, what with a full beard, glasses, a road map of wrinkles and sunken eyes in deep shadow. He'd put on some weight about his middle, somehow making the hunchback less pronounced nowadays, giving him a harmless Yoda or aging-old-man appearance, his graying hair brittle as fence wire.
The people around the reservation didn't ask questions. The Cherokees here were a displaced race, and miscegenation had done the rest so that there were hardly any full-bloods remaining, and so the small amount of Cherokee blood that flowed through Matthew Matisak's veins had been enough to suffice, getting him past old Mr. Redbird's threshold into one of the oldest standing homes on the reserve.
The old place was mightily ran down, chimney heaving to one side, roof faded and worn, shutters half on, half off, and the barn lived up to the old saying that you could throw a cat through any wall, but the Redbirds worked harder than most to keep their yard and front porch free of clutter: no used appliances sitting beside the front door, no rusted-out bikes on the lawn, no cinder-block sculptures or half-built outhouse shells, everything neat but the overgrown weeds, save for the ancient rusted hulk of an old, useless Ford touring car on cinder blocks and below canvas out back.
The house with its small barn needed fresh paint, and he had promised to do the work, if they'd get the materials, which they had been scraping together. In the car port a usable old Chevy rust bucket of a pickup waited now for Matisak, the keys in the ignition.
Old Redbird, in his khaki pants and red plaid shirt, had stepped into the barn that morning, curious, wondering if his visitor had finally chosen to move on. He'd told neighbors that the younger man's father had been his brother-in-law, which wasn't true, but even the People felt foolish nowadays to take in a stranger from the outside world, and the old-timers in particular felt they had to present some excuse for such behavior. If they followed the old custom of never turning away someone on their doorstep-a custom Matisak's grandfather had mentioned a thousand times-nowadays they risked the ridicule of the younger generation, even their own children. But of the Redbirds' three children, two had died young, something to do with booze and a joyride, and a third had somehow gone from the res years before to take up a life elsewhere.
Most of the traditionalists simply accepted the fact that Red-bird must house the man who showed up on his doorstep claiming a kinship. It was taboo, long-standing tradition; you never turned away anyone who knocked at your door unless he was a known enemy. It was a custom begun generations before and perfected by the great and famous chiefs who opened their own homes to any and all who traveled great distances to see them.
Such was the case with the last of the great chiefs, Keeows-kowee, or John Ross, who prospered well here in what was once Indian Territory as both a businessman and the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. His Light Horse Guard still rode, but nowadays they were on motorcycles and in Toyotas and were known only as Res Police. The Res Police seemed very interested in the stranger at first, and had asked Redbird many questions when he had gone into Tahlequah to the Cherokee Feed amp; Grain Store. They had told him to expect a squad car out at his place before he went to bed tonight. The old fool had stupidly confided this to Matisak, telling him that if he had anything to fear from police, he'd better “skee-daddle.”
Matisak only nodded, went outside without any breakfast and disappeared. He waited in the shadows inside the barn for Redbird to come out to milk his single played-out old cow. Matisak had some milking of a different color
