Frostbitten Page 4

  I tore off, but I'd stayed to enjoy the sight a few seconds too long. He caught me ten feet from the embankment, grabbing my back leg, yanking me down, then pouncing over me and shaking, water spraying everywhere. I tried to buck him off, but he bit the scruff of my neck and pinned me beneath his soaked underside.

  I flipped him over and we tussled, fangs flashing, nipping and kicking and snarling, tone changing, the need for exercise and play fading fast, the need for something more primal taking over. The nips and growls grew rougher. I wriggled free, about to take off in a final chase before a quick Change back and--

  A scent floated past and I went still. Clay's teeth clamped around my lower jaw, trying to get my attention. I shook him off and got to my feet. He tried one last time to grab me. I growled and stepped aside, nose lifting telling him however much I hated the interruption, what I smelled demanded my attention.

  The distant murmur of a voice got him to his feet. He turned his nose into the breeze. His sense of smell wasn't as good as mine, but after a moment he caught it. His only reaction was a grunt, deep in his chest, the canine equivalent of a mildly curious "huh." When I started toward the source, he caught my hind leg in his jaws. Just a light tug, like catching my arm.

  I looked back. He had his ears down, expression uncertain, cautious even. Normally, Clay's leading the charge and I'm holding back, but this was one situation where I was bolder than he.

  I chuffed, getting his attention, then gave a slow shake of my head. I'd be careful, but I was going to investigate. He snorted, his jowls vibrating, huffed breaths hanging in the air. Fine, but he wasn't happy about it.

  I took off at a lope, Clay at my heels. The sun was cresting the mountains now, the valley still gray and gloomy, with patches of snow glittering where the sun pierced the thick trees. It was a strangely eerie time of day, shadows playing with the light. More than once I thought I saw something and slowed, only to gaze out over empty forest.

  We went a half mile before the distant murmur turned into three distinct male voices, and even then I couldn't make out what they were saying. For that, I'd need to concentrate, and I was focused on getting closer.

  As the voices grew loud enough for me to eavesdrop without effort, Clay nipped my heels, saying we were too close already. I could have safely gone another fifty feet, but I stopped before those nervous nips became anxious bites.

  I couldn't see the men, but their voices seemed to come from a lighter patch ahead, presumably the forest's edge. I circled to the east, until I could see a frozen lake through a gap in the trees. I kept circling, wide enough to keep Clay's complaints down to a steady grumble.

  When I drew close to the forest's edge, I hunkered down, sliding across the snow on my belly. Clay tried to follow, wanting to stay close, but I chuffed and shook my head. He grumbled a little louder, but knew I was right. Our fur matches our hair color and, against a snowy backdrop, his gold caught the eye far better than my silvery blond.

  I stuck my muzzle out beyond the tree line and took a deep breath. Four men--three standing, one on the ground. The scents didn't betray their positions; their voices did. For the three, their voices above my head told me their position. The scent of the fourth told me where he was. His smell was the one I'd caught back by the creek. The stink of decomposing flesh.

  The smell wasn't overwhelming, but I should have picked it up while we'd been goofing around. I suspected it was no coincidence, then, that I'd noticed the smell and the voices at the same time. The corpse must have been buried under a layer of snow, now found and uncovered.

  I pushed forward a few more inches. When my eyes passed the tree line, I could still make out only shapes in the twilight.

  I shuffled another few inches forward. Clay's grumbling turned to growls. I stopped as soon as I could see the three standing figures. They were all too bundled to guess age, but I could take a good stab at occupation, given that two had badges on their hats and the third was in camouflage gear with a glow-in-the-dark vest.

  At their feet lay the body... or what was left of it. Most of the clothing had been torn away. What remained was dark with frozen blood. Even up close it didn't smell too bad--a human nose would barely detect it. Freezing had kept decomp at bay, but by the time it got warm enough to stink, there wouldn't be anything left to smell. Being buried under the snow was the only thing that had stopped the scavengers from finishing what they'd begun.

  I could tell that the body had been eaten, but unless I could get close enough to sniff it, I had no idea what had done the eating--wolf, werewolf, mink or one of the dozens of other predators out here. Even knowing what ate the man wouldn't tell me what killed him. At the tail end of a long winter, even wolves won't turn down free meat. And that, I realized when I concentrated on the men's speech, was exactly what they were saying.

  "Fresh snowfall yesterday means no tracks today," the shorter cop said. "No way to tell if it was canine, ursine or Homo sapiens."

  "You think a person could have done this?" The taller cop's voice squeaked with surprise and youth.

  "Eat poor Tom for dinner? I hope to hell not, but I wouldn't put it past some of the whack-jobs we get up here. I meant he could have been murdered, then eaten by scavengers. He's so chewed up, we might not ever know for sure."

  "I always told Tom he was crazy," the hunter said. "Checking his traps at night. But it was his favorite time."

  There was a moment of silence for the dead man.

  The younger cop broke it first. "I saw some wolf tracks back there."

  "Wolf?" the older cop said. "You sure about that?"

  "I can tell canine from ursine, Reed."

  "He means there's more than one kind of canine out here," the hunter said.

  "And I mean don't go jumping to conclusions," the older cop said. "Folks hear about paw prints near a dead body and they start crying wolf."

  "My money's on a wolf-dog," the hunter said. "City idiots think it's cool to own a dog that's half wolf... until it turns out there's some wild beast in their pet pooch. Fancy that. Then what do they do? Let them loose out here and tell themselves they've done the humane thing."

  "That'd explain the big canine tracks people have been seeing since the pack moved on. A wolf-dog got dumped here, started harassing the pack, scaring off the prey, so they left. If an animal's been raised by people, it doesn't fear them. It gets hungry? That big hunk of meat on two legs looks damned tasty."

  As I backed up, Clay huffed in relief and circled in front to herd me to safety. Even being raised near people had never erased that gut-level anxiety that said a human in the forest was a bad thing. In this case, his instinct was right. If these guys caught a glimpse of a big yellow wolf right now, we'd be picking shotgun pellets from our butts for weeks.

  I started walking away, my nose to the ground, skimming it like a metal detector. Clay watched for a moment, then made that rumbling noise deep in his chest, one that said he'd rather get as far from these humans as possible, but I had a point. He put his nose down and joined my search.

  DOWNTIME

  WE FOUND TRACKS about a half mile from the kill site. It looked as if the trail went in that direction, but we didn't dare follow it any closer--not until the people had left. I supposed they were waiting for the coroner or crime-scene techs. But whoever was coming was taking his time and I could still hear the men talking.

  The tracks were definitely canine, as the young officer had said. While they seemed too big to be wolf, I won't say definitely too big, because wolves have been found weighing up to two hundred pounds. The average, though, is just over half that. These tracks were the size of Clay's, but the scent already told me we were dealing with a werewolf.

  The trail was a few days old, the prints remaining only because the tree canopy protected this patch from the freshly fallen snow. I had to pace along it before my brain really latched on to the smell. Then I sat on my haunches and mulled it over, like a wine expert with a cork, trying to place the vintage. When it
didn't tweak a memory, I sniffed again. No match to anything in my mental file cabinet.

  I glanced at Clay, who was sniffing another section of the trail. He lifted his muzzle from the ground and shook his head--no one he knew either. My dossiers document twenty-five werewolves currently living in the United States, but we weren't arrogant enough to believe that actually meant there were only twenty-five.

  Mutts were always immigrating and emigrating, plus there were a handful that stayed under the radar. Keeping tabs on all of them was impossible. We really only tracked the troublemakers and the ones from the oldest werewolf families, like the Santoses and the Cains.

  Still, in the Lower 48, we could say with some confidence that we knew most of the werewolves around--either by reputation or by scent. Up here in Alaska, though, we might as well be in another country. The only Alaskans we had in our dossiers were the Stillwells, and if Clay didn't recognize this scent, then it wasn't either of them.

  We couldn't follow the trail back to the kill site, but we could take it the other way. We'd tracked it for almost a mile before it ended at a clearing. Inside, we found a piece of plywood and a wooden crate. A werewolf's winter locker--a place to Change in the mud and snow, and to store your gear. We had something similar, if more elegant, at Stonehaven.

  This clearing reeked of scent and sweat, meaning someone was using it regularly. As I sniffed more, I realized it was more than someone. We had two distinct scents and possibly a third.

  Shit.

  Two or more werewolves, none the Stillwells. And as soon as they set foot in this clearing, they'd know there were two werewolves in town, one of them female.

  Double shit.

  I started backing out of their change-room, but it was too late. The moment I got within ten feet of the spot I'd left a scent that was sure to get their attention. Upon consideration, though, I decided that wasn't necessarily a problem. With the size of Alaska, finding two or three werewolves would be needle-and-haystack work. Now they'd be looking for us, which would make things easier.

  As long as we'd already left our scents, we might as well take a better sniff around. We covered every inch of that clearing searching for remnants of the man by the lake, and found not a speck of blood or shred of flesh. That didn't mean much--the long run through the snow would be enough to clean off their feet--but it bore keeping in mind. It could also suggest a deliberate cleaning before returning to this spot. Maybe one of the mutts was a man-eater trying to hide the habit from his buddies.

  Once we were sure we'd gotten all the information we could and had committed their scents to memory, we left the clearing. As I stepped out, I caught a movement in the bushes. I froze, blocking Clay. He nudged my hindquarters. I edged backward, scanning the woods. The only noise was the wind rustling dead leaves overhead. It was too quiet. Clay went still, knowing something was wrong.

  I kept looking, ears swiveled forward, nose working. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Nothing to smell. Yet the forest stayed deathly silent. Clay nudged me again--now he was worried and wanted to get moving.

  I slid from the clearing. Clay followed. We stood in the dense, dimly lit forest, looking, listening, sniffing, catching nothing. Then a bird called. Another answered. A squirrel chirruped and scampered over a branch overhead, dead leaves raining down. I shook one off my head, and I rubbed against Clay, grunting an apology for over reacting. He licked my muzzle and waited for instructions, ready to cede the lead now that any danger had passed.

  We found the scent from the werewolves in human form, and followed it. It didn't go more than twenty paces before ending at a trail thick with the stink of mixed gas and oil. Snowmobiles.

  I turned around and loped back a quarter mile toward the kill site, but the men hadn't left yet. There was no reason for us to linger. By the time the crew removed the body, all their tracks would have erased the faint trail of the killer. We returned to our truck and Changed back.

  *

  AS DISAPPOINTED AS we were over the awkward end to our run, neither of us suggested we crawl into the back of the SUV and finish it properly. We'd already done the quick-and-dirty solution in the airport. Now we wanted more, and if we couldn't get it on our terms, we'd wait and build up an appetite.

  Speaking of appetites, breakfast was long overdue. We drove back to Highway 1--the main route through Alaska... or the 5 percent of it that could be reached by car. It was a two-lane highway that didn't bear much resemblance to the interstates I was used to, and it didn't have the facilities I was used to either. Earlier we'd passed only one service center. We returned there now and found a gas station, bakery and pizza parlor.

  I was surprised by the neon sign in the bakery window offering espressos--not the kind of thing one expects to find at a highway outpost. But I wasn't arguing. I'd always considered myself a straight coffee person, but when I'd been pregnant and nursing, I drank decaf lattes to up my dairy intake and developed a taste for them, especially if they came with caramel. These ones did, so I got a large, a coffee for Clay and a bag of pastries.

  We headed outside to eat and couldn't find a single bench or picnic table. Given the view--snow-covered mountains with the sun cresting the ridge--I couldn't imagine why everyone chose to drink their coffee inside. I suppose the subfreezing temperatures had something to do with that.

  But the chance to eat with a view like that was too tempting to ignore. And Clay was just as happy not to have to eat with strangers. So we settled onto the wooden ties of a raised flower bed. Then we phoned home.

  Jeremy and his visiting girlfriend, Jaime, were getting ready to take the kids to swimming lessons, meaning our timing was perfect--Logan and Kate were too excited about swimming to ask when we were coming back. Clay, Jeremy and I work mostly from home, meaning the kids have grown up with us there all the time, so you'd think they wouldn't mind our occasional absence. But because we're always there, that's what they're used to, and when we take off, they raise a hell of a fuss.

  Clay talked to Kate first, which would give me plenty of time to enjoy my latte and muffin. I listened in as she told Daddy everything that had happened since he'd called the day before. Everything. In detail. And through the entire fifteen-minute recitation, Clay's attention never flagged.

  When the subject of kids first came up years ago, I'd joked that the only thing I could imagine worse than me as a mother was Clay as a father. I couldn't have been more wrong. Clay was an amazing parent. The guy who couldn't spare a few minutes to hear a mutt's side of the story could listen to his kids talk all day. The guy who couldn't sit still through a brief council meeting could spend hours building Lego castles with his kids. The guy who solved problems with his fists never even raised his voice to his children. And if sometimes Clay was a little too indulgent, a little too slow to discipline, preferring to leave that to me, I was okay with it. He supported and enforced my decisions and we presented a unified front to our children, and that was all that mattered.

  Finally, Jeremy interceded on the call--telling Kate they had to leave soon--and he gave the phone to Logan. That conversation was more two-sided. Clay had sent Logan a junior science set from Atlanta, and they discussed experiments Logan had done yesterday, under Jeremy's supervision. Science wasn't Clay's area of interest or expertise, but he was as fascinated by the working of his son's precocious mind as he'd been with his daughter's adventures.

  As Clay and Logan talked, I could hear Kate in the background, telling Logan to hurry, that she had to talk to Mommy. He calmly continued his conversation, neither hurrying to please her nor stalling to annoy her. Even before they could walk, Kate--my boisterous little wolf cub--had tried establishing dominance over her brother and he'd made it clear that she might be bigger and stronger, but he wasn't putting up with that crap. They were equals and she'd best not forget it.

  When he finally handed her the phone, I listened to a replay of her day, then Logan came on and informed me that he wanted to go to school in the fall. Apparently, he'd overhe
ard a phone call Jeremy took from the school, inviting us to the prekindergarten registration session. The twins would be four in the fall and Clay and I were still debating whether to send them.

  Clay wanted to hold off until kindergarten. Normally I'm all for any socialization opportunity, but here I was leaning toward agreeing with Clay--they just seemed so young for school, even half-days. But now, Logan was putting in his request to go, while in the background his sister howled her objections. She wanted to stay home with us. Splitting them up wouldn't be an option--they were inseparable. Luckily, at this moment, my plate was full with other tasks and I could safely postpone this one until we got home.

  Finally I got Logan to hand the phone to Jeremy, but I could barely hear him over the kids bickering about school. Then I caught Jaime's voice, reminding them it was snack time, and the arguing was replaced by pounding footsteps, then silence.

  "Food always works," I said.

  "We'll be in trouble when it doesn't. So, how was your flight?"

  I told him what we'd done so far. He was impressed by the progress we'd made. Jeremy knew we wouldn't have landed in Alaska and holed up in a hotel for eight hours, but like any good leader, he understands that the day he starts expecting his troops to perform above and beyond is the day when they'll start feeling underappreciated and drag their heels.

  "Go check into the hotel and get some sleep," he said.

  "Has Paige gotten a hit on Reese's cards?"

  He paused.

  "That means yes," I said. "I could call her myself, you know."

  "He used one to book a motel, but after that expensive flight, he's not leaving Alaska anytime soon, so you can get some sleep--"

  "I napped on the plane. If Clay's tired, I'll drop him off--"

  "I'm fine," Clay said.

  "I know Reese isn't the most urgent item on our agenda..." I said.

  "There's nothing urgent on your agenda."

  "Which is why I want to clear him off my slate."

  "You're wasting your time, Jer," Clay called.