Overwinter Read online

  It didn’t look like much. Just a couple dozen low, square buildings, half buried in snow. The rooftops were completely covered except for where chimney pots and radio aerials stuck up out of the accumulations. There were roads, or at least places where someone had plowed the snow back, leaving wide striped tire marks in the white. At every corner a light on a tall pole loomed over the buildings, shedding sickly yellow illumination that bounced off icicles and windows alike.

  As the two of them walked cautiously into the town’s main road, they didn’t see a single human being. Occasionally they heard a snatch of music from a distant radio, and once they had to step back into a snowdrift to let a rumbling pickup truck glide past. Chains on its tires jangled and its lights painted the walls it passed by, but there was so much half-scraped snow on the windshield that they couldn’t see the driver.

  Chey found herself glad that they’d arrived so early. The fewer people they came across, the less likely they were to get into trouble. Powell had been a jerk for telling her she couldn’t do this, but she knew he was right—this was a dangerous mission behind, in a sense, enemy lines. She kept her head down in case anyone was looking out of a window, and she studied the buildings they passed, anxious to get this over with.

  It didn’t take long to find the place they were looking for. It was one of the largest buildings in town and it had a handicapped ramp out front of a wide pair of double doors. The brown-painted front of the building was adorned with a hand-painted mural that showed a smiling Inuit family, dressed in parkas with fur-lined hoods. In the middle of the mural was a big sign in yellow type that read:

  HAMLET OF UMIAQ, NU

  Town Offices, Fire Brigade,

  Post Office, Northern Store,

  Community Center, Health

  Clinic & Public Library

  -welcome!-

  She shook the snow off her feet and headed inside, Dzo trailing after her.

  69.

  It was so weird to be inside again. It was warm inside the community center, far warmer than the air outside. She couldn’t hear the wind. There was no snow on the floor. But most important—there was a roof over her head, and walls all around her. Electric lights that hummed quietly on every side. Glass and metal and bricks.

  The last building Chey had actually lived inside was Powell’s cabin down by Great Bear Lake, near Port Radium. That felt like a lifetime ago. Now she was once more in a place built by and for human beings. She felt afraid to touch anything in case she got it dirty.

  That was silly, of course. She cleared her head and looked around. She was standing in a broad foyer with doors that led off in various directions. One glass door was labeled “Library.” Through it she could see a couple of shelves lined with paperback books and three Internet stations next to a circulation desk. The lights were off inside but the computer monitors were on, cycling through screensavers that showed pictures of life in the Arctic. She reached for the door and found that it was locked. It had a solid metal frame but she figured she could pull it open—as a werewolf, she was pretty strong. Maybe she could get in, get on the computer, and get this done before anybody came in to work. The perfect crime, she thought, until she heard a door open behind her.

  “Library’s closed, hon,” someone said. The voice was gentle but firm.

  Chey spun around, a big smile on her face. The voice belonged to a middle-aged woman in a turtleneck sweater that made it look like she had no neck at all, as if her head were just fused onto her shoulders. She looked Inuit and she wore enormous cat glasses.

  “Hon?” the woman asked again. “You feelin’ alright?”

  “Hi,” Chey managed to say, finally. It had been so long since she’d spoken to someone normal that she felt like she’d forgotten how. “Um, I need the Internet. Are you the librarian?”

  “Phyllis Oonark,” the woman said. “I do lots of things.”

  Chey nodded and thrust out her hand so Phyllis could shake it.

  “Like I said, it’s closed. Come back about nine-thirty. No, better make it ten—my husband’s just due home then from the plowing, and he’ll want some breakfast.”

  “What time is it now?” Chey asked.

  Phyllis squinted at her. “Just after seven. I wouldn’t be here myself ’cept the post needed sorting. Hon? Did something happen?”

  Chey frowned, not comprehending. Then she noticed Phyllis was looking at her feet. She had, of course, forgotten to put her shoes on before leaving the camp at the inukshuk. “Oh,” she said.

  “You’re not from town, or I’d recognize you,” Phyllis said. She looked more concerned than afraid, which was something. “Plus you’re white, which is pretty rare in Umiaq. I know I shouldn’t just question strangers, it isn’t polite, but I’d really like to know what’s going on.”

  “It’s—it’s complicated,” Chey tried. “I just need to use a computer. Just for a little while. I don’t have any money, but—”

  “You’re trying to bribe me? So I’ll let you check your e-mail?”

  “Mrs. Oonark,” Dzo said, then. He’d been standing in the shadows by the door. Now he moved to Chey’s side. Phyllis just about jumped in the air. “It’s important, alright. Do you recognize me?”

  The librarian blinked a couple of times. Her face didn’t change much, but she did take a step backward. “Not … as such,” she said.

  “But you know what I am.”

  Chey looked over and saw that Dzo had his mask down over his face.

  “Now, that’s … that’s difficult to say,” Phyllis told him. “Maybe I should put some coffee on.”

  “Coffee?” Chey asked. “Seriously? That would be so awesome, I can’t even tell you.”

  “Sure. Anything you need.” Phyllis edged around the two of them as if terrified of touching either of them, even though she’d already shaken Chey’s hand. She unlocked the door to the library and switched on the lights inside. “Have you eaten?”

  “We’re not hungry,” Chey said. It seemed to come as a distinct relief to the human woman. “But I can’t tell you how much I would love a hot shower.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Dzo said. “I’m a vegetarian, so you know.”

  Half an hour later, with her hair still wet and stinking of shampoo (her lycanthropic nose could be too sensitive sometimes), Chey finally got to sit down at the computer. Phyllis typed in the password and launched up the Web browser for her.

  “I—I don’t know what you folk need with the Internet,” she said, “but we’ve got a filter going to stop you from looking at adult sites and such,” she told Chey. “You don’t need that turned off, do you?”

  “No,” Chey said, “that won’t be necessary.”

  “Alright, then,” Phyllis said, and left her to it.

  Chey navigated to a map site she’d used a very long time ago and found that the interface had completely changed. She figured out the new system easily, though, and started a search for satellite images of Victoria Island. She quickly realized that Powell hadn’t been lying. Victoria Island was the eighth largest island in the world, she learned, and the biggest island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago—a triangular mass of islands curling from the northern coast up toward and around the north pole. A helpful little text box came up telling her that it had a population of less than two thousand people, most of them in the town of Cambridge Bay, and that it was shaped like a stylized maple leaf. She squinted at the picture on the screen but couldn’t quite see that. Clicking on the onscreen arrows, she zoomed in on the island and found that it was liberally dotted with lakes. Hundreds of them, some no bigger than ponds, some big enough to surround their own archipelagos. Almost none of them had names, according to the map software.

  She sighed. She had no idea how big the lake she was looking for might be—or how small. She was going to have to zoom in on every single one of them until she found one that matched the outline Raven had drawn in the snow. Well, at least it was possible, if laborious. She started at the northwe
st corner of the island and zoomed in until she found the smallest lake in the view. It was the wrong shape. She panned over to the next one.

  It was also the wrong shape.

  So was the third lake she looked at. And the fourth. She sat back in her chair and sipped at the coffee Phyllis had made for her. It was heavenly. The caffeine buzzed in her bloodstream and helped her keep her eyes wide as she looked at a fifth lake. And a sixth. Which didn’t have any islands in it.

  Some time about the fiftieth lake, the library opened for the day. Phyllis came in and put some new magazines on a shelf, then went out again without saying a word. Chey panned over to the fifty-first lake. Eventually people started coming into the library. They stared at her—the town didn’t get many strangers coming through to use the Internet—but she was able to ignore them. They picked through the magazines or the paperbacks, checked their e-mail, left again. The seventy-fifth lake looked kind of right, except there was no island and its southern shore was too round. Someone sat down at the Internet station next to her, but Chey didn’t even glance at them. The seventy-sixth lake was all wrong.

  The eightieth lake was promising … but wrong. The eighty-first—well. Well, the outline was very close. And there was an island in the middle of it. She zoomed in further on the northern shore.

  “Ahem,” the person at the next Internet station said. The voice was female and very harsh. “Hey. You.”

  Chey lifted her head but kept looking at the monitor. She took a sip of her coffee. “Mm-hmm?” she mumbled. There was a rock formation on the north shore of the lake that looked just about right. This lake was definitely—

  “Are you stupid, or just deaf?” the woman at the next Internet station asked.

  Annoyed, Chey looked up and saw the woman. She was young, maybe not even twenty. She was Inuit, but unlike other Inuit women Chey had seen, her hair was cut very short, almost cropped down to her scalp. Her eyes were full of rage.

  She grabbed Chey’s coffee cup out of her hand, then dashed the lukewarm contents in Chey’s face.

  “I’ve been sitting here twenty minutes trying to get your attention,” the woman said.

  Chey was too surprised to react.

  “I want you to look at me when I beat the shit out of you,” the woman said, pushing her chair back and getting to her feet.

  70.

  Chey jumped up from her chair and grabbed the only thing at hand—the keyboard of the computer she’d been working at. As the stranger’s fist came whistling toward her face she brought it up high like a shield.

  The fist smashed right through the keyboard. Broken keys and bits of green circuit board went flying, but the fist kept coming. It collided with Chey’s chin hard enough to send her spinning backward.

  Chey threw out her hands to catch herself. The stranger swept them out from under her with one booted foot.

  So she was strong. Incredibly strong. And faster than any human ought to be. Good to know.

  The stranger brought a boot down on the back of Chey’s neck—hard—as Chey tried to struggle up from the carpet. Chey’s face hit the floor.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her voice muffled by the carpet. She was starting to wonder where Dzo had gotten to.

  “My name is Sharon Minik. You wouldn’t know that,” the woman said. “You didn’t bother to ask, the last time we met.”

  Chey’s mind worked overtime to understand. “Sharon,” she said, “I’m—”

  Sharon grabbed one of Chey’s arms and started dragging her out of the library.

  “Stop that,” Chey protested. “Listen, the last time we met I’m guessing I didn’t look like this. Right? I looked like a big wolf?”

  Sharon kicked open the library door and hauled Chey through. She didn’t answer the question. Chey could see the foyer of the community center flash past. Phyllis Oonark was standing in a doorway, talking to someone on her cell phone. Chey tried to call out to the friendly librarian, but suddenly Sharon’s hands were under her armpits and she was being hauled up to her feet.

  “I don’t want to mess this place up,” Sharon said. “I live here.”

  “Okay, I’m cool with that,” Chey said.

  “So we take it outside.” Sharon kicked Chey hard in the chest and sent her sprawling backward. Chey’s back hit the double doors of the community center, and she stumbled out into the street.

  The sun had come up and lit up the town. There were people around—most of them standing back in doorways or keeping their distance, but they were watching this and not helping. Chey fought to regain her balance. The people stopped to point and stare when they saw her slipping around on her bare feet.

  “Somebody call the cops,” she said. Though as soon as she thought about what she was saying she realized it was a terrible idea. Cops would have questions, questions she couldn’t even begin to answer.

  While she was pondering that, Sharon Minik erupted from the community center doors like a human harpoon. She slammed into Chey’s side and sent her sprawling again, arms flailing, sliding down the street like a toboggan. Chey grabbed at anything solid that flashed past her—a light pole, the side of a house, the tire tracks in the snow. She scrabbled to get her feet under her and then she jumped back up to a standing posture. Ten meters away, Sharon Minik stood outside of the community center, breathing heavily.

  “You’re good at this,” Chey said. “Tough. And fast.” Too tough, she realized, and way too fast, to be human. Which could only mean one thing.

  “I’m a hunter,” Sharon shouted back.

  “You’re a werewolf.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  Chey nodded. She dropped her hands to her sides. Shook them out. Dug her toes into the snow. “We can talk about that,” she said. “Or we can fight.”

  “Guess which?” Sharon asked.

  “Thought so.”

  Sharon came running at her, charging with her head down and her fists up to defend her face. She knew Chey wouldn’t just stand there and take the next hit. Chey tried to kick out low, to hit Sharon in the knees, but the hunter was ready for that and turned sideways at the last moment, stepping inside Chey’s kick. She threw a punch while Chey was still following through, and it took every bit of Chey’s supernatural speed to block it with her forearm. Sharon hooked her left fist around and there was no way for Chey to block it, so she took a nasty jab in the ribs.

  Damn, Chey thought. She’s tougher than me. A much better fighter.

  Her body insisted that she double over in pain and she had no choice but to lower her head. Which let Sharon bring down her right fist hard on the back of Chey’s neck.

  Sparks lit up the inside of Chey’s skull. Sparks that woke something that had been sleeping.

  Chey’s wolf understood it was being attacked, and it wanted to fight back. It howled to be released. It begged to help her.

  Just as it had the day she’d first met Lucie. She hadn’t understood its power then, and she had let it out. Let it fight. She’d still gotten her ass kicked, but the wolf had been fierce and desperate. It had given her energy and strength she didn’t know she had.

  Sharon brought her knee up hard into Chey’s chest. Bone snapped in Chey’s side and she felt like she was being stabbed in the liver by her own shattered rib. It hurt.

  Jesus, it hurt.

  The wolf was panting in her head.

  Letting it out now would be a mistake, she thought. It already had so much power over her. Every day it was getting stronger. Letting it fight for her now would mean surrendering more of her precious stock of remaining humanity.

  Sharon laced the fingers of both her hands together and brought her entwined fists around like a club that slammed into the side of Chey’s neck. Chey’s head snapped around and she felt her vertebrae pull apart under the force of the blow. Her spinal cord didn’t snap, but it was a close thing.

  The wolf whimpered. And whined. And grunted in frustration.

  She needed it. She would have to make the sacrif
ice.

  “Okay,” she whispered, her eyes clenched tightly shut.

  “Okay what?” Sharon demanded. “You think I’m done?”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Chey said. And let the wolf loose.

  71.

  The gray wolf inside Chey’s brain leapt out of its confines and immediately seized control. It took the wolf a moment to take in its surroundings and understand what was going on—and even longer to adjust to the fact that it was inside a human body. But then it turned and saw the other human drawing back her fist for a nasty punch at the wolf’s face.

  Growling wildly, it rushed at Sharon Minik, its shoulder low to catch her in the chest. It dug in hard with its feet and shoved her backwards, up against the wall of a house. Sharon’s breath went out of her in a puff of crystallizing vapor in the cold air. She tried to bring her hands up to protect her face, but the wolf just grabbed her by her collar and her belt and threw her bodily across the street.

  Sharon went down in a heap. Almost immediately she was up on her feet again—she was very fast—but the wolf was charging again, one hand up to rake at Sharon’s eyes. It was a feint and Sharon fell for it. The wolf body-slammed her into another house, sending a miniature avalanche of snow sliding down from its roof.

  Sharon coughed up blood that flecked the wolf’s face. She wasn’t finished, though. She brought up one hand to chop at the wolf’s throat, a blow that would easily have crushed the wolf’s windpipe.

  So fast. But the wolf was faster. The wolf grabbed Sharon’s fingers and splayed them backwards until the little bones inside popped, one after the other.

  The wolf didn’t fight fair. It didn’t fight dirty, either. It fought like an animal trapped in a corner for too long.

  Sharon tried to headbutt the wolf. The wolf swung its head around and dug its teeth deep into the skin of Sharon’s neck. Sharon screamed as the wolf’s mouth pulled free, taking a mouth full of skin and blood with it. The wolf leaned over a little to spit, and Sharon took the opportunity to break loose and dodge down the street.