Overwinter Read online

  In some ways, wolf society was as complicated as that of humans.

  The blood had stopped steaming when she bent to eat. The meat was already starting to freeze. She tore a few strips of muscle tissue away from the dead thing’s skeleton and held them in her mouth, then padded away to chew them at her leisure. Once she had stepped away from the feast, the white female lunged in to gobble up everything that was left, including the bones.

  When it was done, the male rose and walked back and forth stiffly, his tail up and his ears forward and alert. Once he had their attention he headed away from the bloodstained snow, looking for the next meal. The females followed and soon he had broken into a run, head held low and level, tail streaming out behind him.

  The gray ran to catch up with him, exulting in the strength that flowed through her muscles. She was still sore from her long convalescence, and her body still pained her wherever even an atom of silver remained in her flesh, but she was mostly recovered now and back up to speed. She started running capers and leaping every once in a while, even when she didn’t need to clear some rock or tree root or other impediment in their path. It just felt so good to run. She dashed up beside the male, intending to race him, intending to spur him on to greater speed. She came up level with him until they were running side by side, and then she poured on a little more velocity, pushed her legs just a little harder—

  The male slammed into her from the side, knocking her off her feet. She rolled in the snow, flakes filling the air as she shook herself in surprise. She got her forepaws down on the ground and stared at him with wide eyes.

  He growled and showed her his teeth.

  Then he turned away from her, and started running again. Behind them the white had stopped to wait for them. She danced back and forth in impatience, but she would not approach the gray where she lay on the snow.

  In a pack, the alpha always led the way. No other wolf was allowed to run in front of him. He would be the first to spot danger or prey, the first to pounce, always the one to decide where they ran to, and this duty could not be interfered with.

  The gray got back on her feet and followed him, not quite as exuberant as before. She didn’t know how to live in a pack, how to operate as part of a well-oiled team. She was paying for her ignorance, now.

  But she would learn. It wouldn’t be difficult. The rules were written on her bones. They echoed in the beat of her heart. They were coded for in her DNA, in the secret place in every one of her cells. In time they would seem as natural as breathing.

  Which wasn’t to say her feelings weren’t hurt.

  35.

  “Jesus, it’s cold,” Powell said, and hugged himself. He was shivering wildly, his teeth smashing together again and again as he stamped his feet, trying to generate any kind of warmth. “What’s keeping Dzo?”

  The three of them were standing next to a frozen pond, little more than a puddle of ice in the middle of a stand of willow bushes. They had left Great Bear Lake well behind them, and this was the only body of water they’d been able to find, which meant it was the only place Dzo would be able to reach them. Lucie squatted down by the edge of the pond, clutching herself for warmth. She giggled, but Chey didn’t even bother wondering why. Lucie was just crazy—she was the kind of person who would just giggle for no reason while she was naked in the freezing cold, waiting for somebody to bring her clothes.

  Not as crazy as me, though, Chey thought. She had her arms wrapped around her chest and her feet placed tight together on the snow because she didn’t want the others to know her secret.

  She wasn’t cold. Oh, she could feel how frigid the air was around them. She could feel the icy wind blowing through her hair. But it didn’t bother her.

  She could almost hear her wolf panting inside her brain. It liked the cold. It had evolved to live in temperatures like this. With every second that passed, as Chey’s human body demanded that she start shivering, that she blow on her hands, that she start cursing the goddamned weather—the wolf was enjoying this more.

  “He’s so funny like that,” Lucie said. She tore a long stick off one of the naked bushes and tapped at the ice of the pond. “Don’t you think?”

  “What are you talking about?” Powell demanded.

  Chey stepped over to the edge of the pond and looked down.

  The ice was nearly opaque, full of bubbles and white streaks. She could just see through it to the water below—where Dzo was pressed up against the surface, slapping at the underside of the ice with his hands. Silver bubbles streamed from his mouth and nose.

  “Jesus, Lucie! Were you going to tell us, like, ever?” Chey demanded. She climbed out on the ice and started pounding on it with her fists. “He’s trapped down there!” The ice cracked under her repeated blows and once Powell started helping her, they quickly smashed open a hole that Dzo could crawl through.

  The animal spirit emerged dripping and bedraggled. The water on his furs was already starting to freeze over. Icicles hung from his mask. “Brr,” he said, and then shook himself like a wet dog. Freezing water splattered all over Chey and Powell. Powell jumped back, cursing, but Chey just stared at Dzo in concern.

  “You okay?” she asked Dzo.

  The spirit squeezed some water out of his furs and shrugged. “Sure.”

  “You could have suffocated down there,” Chey said. “Lucie would have let you drown!”

  “Always you are so dramatic,” Lucie said. “He can’t die. Don’t you know that by now? He is not what you might call human, jeune fille.”

  “It’s true,” Dzo said, with a shrug.

  “How about those clothes, old man?” Powell asked. Dzo nodded in understanding and took three bundles of clothes from under his furs. They were perfectly dry. Lucie shrugged into the woolen coat while Powell and Chey pulled on their pants and shirts. For a while no one spoke. Lucie and Powell closed their eyes and looked like they were just enjoying being warm again. Chey stared at her shoes.

  “Okay,” Powell said. “Let’s get moving. We’ll warm up as we walk. I want to cover twenty kilometers today before the sun goes down. You see that line of hills up there?” he asked, pointing. Almost lost in the white sky, the hills looked to Chey like they were perched on the edge of the world. There were no trees on them, no cover of any kind. “That’s where we get to rest.”

  Chey rose to her feet and started to walk, not even waiting for Powell to lead. She knew what would happen in a second, and she didn’t want to deal with it.

  “Chey,” Powell said, from behind her. “Chey. Come on. Put them on.”

  “I can’t,” she told him.

  “Please. For me.”

  She stared down at the shoes in her hands. She had tried to put them on her feet. She really had. It had felt wrong. It had felt like she was putting on chains. Or a blindfold. Her feet wanted to feel the ground. To know it. Putting the shoes on would have been a betrayal of her body.

  On a conscious, rational level, she knew exactly how crazy that was. She understood perfectly that it was her wolf telling her these things, feeling these sensations. That her wolf was winning.

  On an emotional level, she would rather have chewed off her own feet at the ankle than shoved them into the shoes.

  “It may help you, if you force yourself to be as human as possible,” Powell told her. “It might delay the transformation.”

  “Just—just let me do this my way,” she told him. “I’m still wearing my parka, aren’t I?” Even though she was sweating underneath.

  She threw the shoes into a snowbank. She couldn’t even bear to hold them.

  “If she doesn’t want them, I’d be glad for them,” Lucie announced, and ran over to dig them out.

  36.

  They had no maps, nor any GPS system to tell them so, but sometime that afternoon the werewolves crossed the Arctic Circle. Even if they had known, they wouldn’t have stopped to commemorate the fact. Powell kept them walking at a brisk pace without a moment’s rest.

 
; By the time they reached the hills, the sun was already setting. It had never risen more than a few degrees above the horizon and for much of the afternoon it had been touching the earth, its lower edge blobby and wavering. In the long shadows of twilight they made a fire out of the branches of juniper bushes.

  Chey lay back on a long stretch of gray rock and stared up at the sky. The clouds that scudded by sedately overhead were painted a million shades of orange. They formed great ramparts and bastions, impossible castles that stretched on forever. Beyond them a few of the more robust stars flickered in and out of view.

  How long, she wondered, would she be able to look up at a sky like that and marvel? How long would she be stunned by it, awed by its beauty? It would mean nothing to her wolf. When her wolf took over her mind completely, would she ever look up at the sky again?

  There were bigger things to worry about. They needed to eat. They hadn’t seen a single animal during their northward trek, but Powell had told her not to worry. Now, while she watched, he made a spear out of a long, straight twig. He put a point on the end by scoring it with his teeth and then snapping off the end of the twig on a steep diagonal cut. Then he walked over to an unbroken field of snow and just stood in it for a while. When she asked him what he was doing, he said he was listening.

  She watched him stand there until she started to get bored. Then, just before she decided to walk away and see what Lucie was doing—which was bound to be more entertaining—Powell moved.

  His arm came up and down in one very fast, very smooth motion. His twig stabbed down into the ground like an arrow fired point-blank at the snow. She thought perhaps he’d just gotten fed up with waiting, until she heard a very thin, very piteous shriek from under the snow.

  “Lemmings,” he told her. “They burrow through the snow the way moles burrow through dirt. They eat whatever seeds they can find frozen into the soil below, and they never come up into the sun until it’s time to mate.” He reached down and brushed some snow away from the point of his makeshift spear. The weapon impaled the body of a creature no bigger than a field mouse.

  “Nice,” she said. There was a lot of blood, far more than she thought such a small creature could hold. There had been a time when that sight would have nauseated her. Now it just made her mouth water. Was that the wolf inside her, or was she just hungry? “Catch about fifty more of those and we can actually feel full tonight.”

  He smiled at her, then went back out into the field with his spear. And waited.

  By the time it was fully dark, there were a dozen little dead animals hanging from his belt. As cute as they were, the very sight of them made Chey salivate. She tried to grab one away from him to eat it raw, but he held her at arm’s length. He wouldn’t give her any until they were fully cooked.

  They tasted burnt. That was the wolf talking, of course. In reality he’d cooked them until they were just barely medium rare. Hunger overrode her preferences. The cooked lemmings were full of savory juices, dripping with fat. She ate as much as he gave her, and wished she could have more.

  37.

  After they’d finished dinner they had about an hour to kill in the dark before the moon rose. None of them wanted to sleep. Powell, who seemed to always know exactly when the moon would rise and set, had told them what was coming.

  Up in the Arctic the moon did strange things—sometimes it never got above the horizon, and there would be entire days when the wolves never came out. Sometimes it rose and then never quite set again, and for five days the wolves would have free rein. The moon was about to enter one of the latter cycles, at a time when they least wanted it. “If this Varkanin comes back to finish the job when our wolves are awake,” Powell said, “we could be in real trouble. They’re tough and they’re smart enough to know he’s a threat. But he’s already proven how tricky he can be. Our wolves wouldn’t know what to do if he poisoned them, and if he sets a really clever trap they’ll wander right into it.”

  For five days they wouldn’t be human, not even for a minute to figure out their strategy. They would have to surrender themselves to the wolves and hope for the best.

  “You really think he’ll come back now?” Chey asked.

  Powell shrugged. “He can read an almanac like anybody else. He’ll know we’re vulnerable, and for exactly how long. If it were me, this is the time when I would strike.”

  “So maybe we should find another bear den and hole up,” Chey suggested.

  “No!” Lucie said, shaking her head from side to side. “This I will not do. It was agony, down there. Pure torture.”

  “We need to keep moving,” Powell decided, looking both Lucie and Chey in the eye. “We need to keep moving north. We can’t afford to lose five days, not now.”

  They were all silent for a while as they thought about what he meant. He means, Chey thought, that I can’t afford to lose five days. When we don’t know how many my human side has left.

  “I’ll keep an eye on your wolves,” Dzo promised. “If something happens—”

  Powell shook his head. “I appreciate it, old man. But if something does happen, if he comes for us—there won’t be much you can do.”

  Dzo shrugged. “Maybe I can warn the wolves away from danger.”

  Powell smiled at Dzo and grabbed his shoulder through his furs. “They won’t listen to you.”

  “Then I’ll—I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do. But something,” Dzo promised. He looked scared, and Chey wondered why. Dzo had a very limited concept of human mortality. Death was something that just happened to people, from Dzo’s perspective, something to be dreaded no more than a bad cold or a stubbed toe. Maybe he was just afraid of being alone.

  Lucie seemed not to be worried at all, even though she must have known the hunter wanted her death the most. She sat by the fire and spoke quietly with Dzo about nothing in particular, while Chey and Powell headed off into the shadows.

  “You’re scared,” Powell said. “I don’t blame you.”

  “I think the worst part is that we’ll never know,” Chey said, when they were far enough away from the fire. “We’ll know the change is coming. And then maybe we won’t come back.”

  “Maybe that’s the best way to go,” he told her. He kicked at the snow and together they watched ice crystals glitter in the starlight. “While we were walking here, I spent the day talking to Dzo, trying to put a plan together,” he told her.

  “I have a plan, too. Want to hear it?” she asked.

  He sighed. “Sure.”

  “We give him Lucie.”

  Powell turned his face away from her.

  “Just listen. We know he wants her dead. That’s why he came here. We figure the Canadian government is helping him out and in exchange he has to kill us, too. But think about it from his perspective. He doesn’t know us. Doesn’t care about us. We’ve never even been to Russia, much less hurt anybody over there, right? So if he found her, tied up and defenseless, like a birthday present—and at the time he found her, we were a hundred kilometers away, or whatever—what do you think he would do? I think he’ll forget about us. Let us go our own way.”

  “I’m not sacrificing her to him,” Powell insisted.

  “I know it doesn’t seem like the sporting thing to do,” Chey said, as if she were agreeing with him. “But maybe it’s the smart thing to do. That’s our big advantage over the wolves, right? Our brains?”

  “This isn’t something I’m going to discuss.”

  Chey frowned. “I don’t like her. I admit it. She tried to kill me. But that’s not where I’m coming from now, I—”

  “It’s not going to happen!” he said, and grabbed her arms.

  She stared up into his eyes. He was certain about this.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because we need her. Don’t ask me what for, because I’m not going to tell you.”

  He still hadn’t let go of her. Chey leaned her head back. “It has something to do with the cure. You need her to make your cure
happen. But as long as she’s around we’re in serious danger, Powell. The cure won’t be much use if we’re all dead before we find it.”

  “Just trust me,” he hissed. “Please.”

  She had a hard time reading his face in the dark, but she knew he wasn’t going to change his mind. She thought about arguing more anyway, just on principle. She thought about pulling away from him and storming off in a huff, to register her dissent, at least. But there was something about his insistence, his certainty—

  He was doing this for her.

  “I do,” she said. “I do trust you.” And then she leaned forward and kissed him, softly, on the lips.

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Was that because you trust me, or …?”

  “Maybe it’s because you took care of me. Because when Lucie wanted to abandon me back at Fort Confidence, you wouldn’t. You took me someplace safe so I could recover. You saved my life. Like you always do.”

  “I thought I ruined your life. By making you a lycanthrope.”

  She didn’t want to think about that. Sometimes it seemed there was never a time when she hadn’t been cursed. Sometimes she didn’t want there to have been.

  So instead of thinking, or talking, she kissed him again. Harder this time. His hands released her arms and instead they wrapped around her back. She sank into him, pressing her body against his. Pulling him into her. Their mouths opened and their tongues met. Her breath came fast and hot and she felt her body curling around him, felt his body warm against hers, felt his desire. He still wanted this. Even if she was losing her humanity, he wanted what was left of it.

  “Chey,” he said, as she kissed his throat and his collarbone, “the time—”

  “Don’t stop,” she said. His hands searched her back, his mouth ran down the line of her jaw. She could feel him getting distracted, feel him worrying about the fact that at any second they were going to transform. “Please don’t stop,” she said, and moaned as his hand slipped under her parka and found the sensitive skin of her belly. “Yes,” she sighed, as his fingers slid upward, toward her breasts.