Overwinter Page 7

  Varkanin stared into the fire. He’s just pretending not to be tempted, Holness thought. Time to bring out the big prize.

  He made a big show of it, unzipping a pocket on his snow pants, drawing out one crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it very carefully along his leg. “I also have this. I bet you could use this.”

  “I suppose I must ask what it is,” Varkanin said, with a sigh.

  “This,” Holness said, flourishing it over the fire, “is a classified document. It’s a report on satellite intelligence. Just showing this to you could get me arrested. It shows exactly where your lycanthrope is, right now. As in today.”

  Varkanin’s eyes blazed as he stared at the piece of paper. “How far away is she?” he asked.

  “You could get there this afternoon, if you hurried.” Holness shrugged and started to crumple the piece of paper, as if he intended to throw it in the fire. “That would be pretty helpful, wouldn’t it? Too bad you aren’t a Canadian citizen, or attached somehow to my government.”

  Varkanin sat back down. “One moment, please,” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  The Russian closed his eyes and stroked his cheeks. He was thinking this through. Weighing the benefits of signing on with Holness versus trying to go it alone. Figuring out the best plan of action, the one that would lead him straight to killing his lycanthrope.

  He opened his eyes again. “There is something you should know.”

  “Spill it,” Holness said.

  “I said she killed my three daughters. Any werewolf could do that. This one is different. She did not kill them at the same time. Do you understand?”

  Holness shivered a little, and it wasn’t just from the cold. “Yeah, I get it.” Lycanthropes weren’t necessarily evil, he knew. They didn’t necessarily want to kill people—at least, their human halves didn’t. It sounded like this one was more in touch with her animal nature than the others. If she had made a point of tracking each member of Varkanin’s family, one by one, picking them off just to get back at him because he injured her slightly … Jesus. Holness was glad he wasn’t the one who would have to face her in the woods.

  “I understand what you’re saying,” Holness added, “but it doesn’t matter.”

  Varkanin nodded as if his first chess move hadn’t worked out and he needed to consider another. “You have some problem, something you need my help with. You are making me guess what it is. I can only guess you have another werewolf on your hands.” He nodded again, decisively this time. “In exchange for your help, you want me to kill this other werewolf as well. I am aware of him. She considers him to be her mate. I have no grudge against this male, of course. But if it is the price I must pay, so be it.”

  He rose to lean over the fire, holding out a hand for Holness to shake.

  Holness didn’t rise right away.

  “We are agreed? I kill one werewolf for you, that is what you ask?”

  “Actually,” Holness said, rising carefully to his half-frozen feet, “there’s more than just the one.”

  “As many as you’ve got,” Varkanin said. He thrust his hand forward again. “Shake this. And may God have mercy on me for it.”

  17.

  The second that lunch was over, Powell asked Lucie to leave.

  “But why?” she asked, her eyes very wide.

  Chey wanted to laugh out loud. Did anybody ever fall for this little-girl-lost shtick, she wondered? One look at the redhead and you knew she was trouble. Even if they’d met in some alternate, totally human life, in some shopping mall in the suburbs of Toronto, she’d probably still have wanted to scratch Lucie’s eyes out. Who wouldn’t?

  Powell. That was who. He’d fallen for her act at least once. When she cursed him. And maybe again, in 1954.

  “I am being chased, and you turn me away. I come to offer to help you with your own troubles, and you send me out into the snow.” Lucie dropped down to her knees and grasped Powell’s belt buckle. “Is it because of her?” she asked, not even looking at Chey. “Can it be, mon cher? You have fallen in love with … someone else? But even this, even this … I can share you.” She looked deep into his eyes. “I have before.”

  Chey’s jaw dropped open. The shameless little …

  “None of that,” Powell said, his chin looking very square, “matters.”

  Lucie blinked. She slumped her shoulders and looked around as if seeing the rest of the camp for the first time. “How can you say this?” she asked, in a very small voice. “After what we have meant to each other. After what we did together.”

  Powell shook his head. Chey wished, and not for the first time, that she could read his mind. Figure out what he was really thinking. “You’re being followed by some madman bent on killing werewolves.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her to her feet. “What did you expect, when you came here?”

  For a moment the French werewolf’s body tensed. As if she were about to attack. Maybe, having run out of other options, she intended to force them, physically, to let her stay. But she was outmatched, two to one—even an absolute nut like Lucie must see that. Her body fell again and a shudder of abject sorrow went through her.

  It was almost enough to make Chey feel sorry for her.

  Well. Not really. Lucie had tried to kill Chey on sight. There had been no misunderstanding, either—Lucie had acted out of simple jealousy.

  Which, Chey had to admit, she felt to some degree herself. But hers was different. It had to be different in some way. She needed it to be.

  “I suppose I expected some warmer welcome,” Lucie said, her sad eyes watching the ground. “But what more can I ask from him I have hurt so much?” She brushed Powell’s arm with one slender hand. “Farewell, my love. I see you have found a replacement for me, and truly, I am glad. Glad that you will be happy, now. You, who for so long have deserved—”

  “Yeah,” Chey said. “See ya. Bye.”

  Lucie smiled, though her eyes remained fraught with sorrow. She studied Chey’s face for a moment, as if memorizing her features. Then she turned and gave Dzo a big hug. Finally she walked to the edge of the camp and gave them one last lingering look over her shoulder.

  “Drama queen,” Chey muttered.

  Powell never said a word. He watched Lucie go, but his body language said he wasn’t having second thoughts on sending her out into the big cold cruel world. It said he didn’t trust her not to sneak back the second his back was turned.

  “Oh, I forget one thing,” Lucie said, when she was about ten meters away. “I forget your coat.” She unbuttoned Powell’s wool coat and slid out of it with one lithe movement of her shoulders. It fell to the ground in a heap, where she left it.

  Then, completely nude, she turned back to the game trail that led away through the forest. They all watched her until the trail curved around a boulder and she disappeared from view.

  “Good riddance,” Chey said.

  “Yeah, Powell got his coat back,” Dzo agreed.

  Powell still didn’t say anything. But he didn’t follow Lucie, either.

  “Come on,” Chey said. “We need to get back to work. This log cabin won’t build itself.”

  “Sure,” Powell said. He was still watching the game trail. Maybe he expected Lucie to come back.

  Maybe he wanted her to.

  Chey grabbed an ax and started bashing away at a random tree. After every few chops with the ax she would look up and check on Powell, who was still watching the last place he’d seen Lucie.

  “We’re better off without her,” Dzo said. He glanced meaningfully at Chey. Then he brought one finger up and rotated it around his ear. The international sign for a crazy person.

  “She kills people,” Chey said, loud enough that Powell would definitely hear. “She kills them for fun. If she can’t kill you, she messes with your head.”

  “Hmm,” Powell said. He wandered over toward them slowly and after a while picked up an ax as if he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with it.

&
nbsp; “You’re not pining for her, are you?” Chey asked. “Not remembering the good old days when you and she were together?”

  “No,” he told her. He sounded a little wistful.

  “Not thinking you were maybe too harsh on her? That you could have let her keep the coat, at the least?”

  “The coat?” he asked, as if he’d barely heard her. “Are you kidding? It would have fallen off of her the next time she changed, and she isn’t the kind to double back on her trail just for a cast-off piece of clothing. No, that’s not what I’m thinking.”

  “Then what, exactly, is?” Chey demanded.

  “I’m thinking about how she just left. Without any kind of fight, and no manipulation. We asked her to leave and she did.” He paused. Then he lifted his ax and slammed it into a tree trunk. “I’m thinking it’ll be a miracle if she really lets us off that lightly.”

  18.

  Autumn, this far north, was a relative term.

  The local Dene Indians recognized six seasons in the year, not the four southerners usually thought of. The fifth season was called hhaiye t’azé, or “freeze-up.” It was the pre-winter phase when the ground grew hard with subterranean ice, when rivers and creeks flowed sluggishly and frost formed on their banks. The time when everything turned inward and grew ready for the coming winter.

  It was a subtle season, and it bode little good.

  It started to snow that night, for the first time. Fat snowflakes, fluffy and soft, drifted down all around the camp. They melted before they hit the ground and left no sign of their arrival. One landed on Chey’s face as she was getting ready for the moon to come up. She held her hand up to the air and caught one on her palm, then turned to show it to Powell.

  He just nodded. His mouth was a tight line on his face. He didn’t find anything whimsical in the snow.

  Not for the first time, Chey wondered just how bad winter was going to be in the Arctic. It was something she couldn’t imagine, he’d told her. Something she couldn’t prepare for.

  She didn’t get a chance to worry about it. The moon crept up over the horizon and silver light drowned out all of her thoughts.

  In the next moment her wolf was running, eyes half-closed with the joy of metamorphosis, running to get away from the human smells of the camp. The wolf understood in a limited way that they were her own smells, the smells of the body she was trapped in until the moon had returned to free her.

  She scented the wind and found the world subtly changed. Every smell was slightly muted—the air had grown cold enough that ice was forming anywhere water was exposed, and dry air couldn’t carry scents as well as the moist summer breezes she’d been used to. It was as if the world had lost some of its colors, and the wolf swept her ears back, disheartened.

  The male came trotting out from behind a stand of bushes and she padded over to meet him. He was looking all around himself, searching the air—perhaps he was feeling the same diminution of his senses that had so bothered her. His jaw opened and his tongue came out, panting at the air, his sides flexing to suck more air into his lungs, and then he turned to look at her with his ice green eyes. Something was bothering him, she could tell. What could it be? The world was freezing over, but still they were free, they were in their strong, fast bodies and there was hunting to be done, which was always joyful. She leaned forward to nuzzle him with her snout, pressing her wet nose against his shoulder.

  He turned, slightly, to move into the gesture. But then he stopped and his whole body went rigid.

  From behind the bushes the other wolf emerged. The white female.

  Chey’s wolf growled softly at her. The message was simple: go away. Underneath was a far more emphatic response. Adrenaline poured into her bloodstream and muscles tensed in her legs. She was ready to kill, if it came to that.

  She would wait for a sign from the male. See how he reacted. When he made a decision, she would be ready to enforce it.

  But he only watched the white female, as if he were entranced. He could not seem to look away from her.

  The white wolf sat down a few feet away and started preening the fur on her forelegs, quite casually.

  It was clear, without any communication necessary, that the white wolf planned on sticking around. Which could mean only one thing. If she was in the territory of the other wolves, she must become one with them. She intended to join the pack.

  When the male neither attacked the white nor howled to drive her off, she rose to her four feet. She stepped easily across the broken ground, silent as her paws touched so lightly she might have been floating. Her eyes were focused on the male, but her ears twitched slightly back and forth. She was paying attention. Perhaps expecting something to happen at any moment.

  Chey’s wolf had a pretty good idea what the white female was waiting for. The two of them had met the previous night, but there had been no time then to establish the relationship that would define the two of them. There was a ritual that had not yet been performed, and neither could be easy around the other until it was done.

  The male looked between the two of them, his eyes very wide. Confusion was written all over his features, and for a wolf confusion is the worst kind of pain imaginable. Until things were settled, he couldn’t know how he should act around the two females. He couldn’t hunt, or play, or court. So it had to be done. For the good of the pack.

  Dominance must be established.

  When it had just been the two of them, the male and the female, there had been no question of authority. There had been no pack, and so no order of authority had been required. The appearance of the white female changed that. One of them had to be the dominant female. The other would have to defer to the dominant in all things. She would eat last, play the weakest roles in the hunt, and she would only be allowed to mate with the dominant female’s blessing.

  The two females circled one another, studying each other, looking for signs of weakness that could be exploited. Had there been a clear difference in their sizes, or had one of them been injured or sick, the contest would have been over in a moment—the weaker of the two would have laid down with her legs in the air and let the dominant female lick her stomach—or sink wicked teeth into her throat. The gesture the dominant female chose would have defined their relationship for the rest of their lives.

  In this case, though, the females were pretty evenly matched. The white female’s coat was glossier than her rival’s, which made her look healthier. Chey’s wolf’s fur was white and gray and brown, much like a timber wolf’s, but it was thicker and better suited to the cold climate. The white female’s body was sleeker, her legs slightly longer, but the gray’s legs were thicker, stronger, better for leaping and pouncing. Neither immediately stood out as the dominant. That meant it would come down to a fight.

  The gray started things out with a half-playful feint, lifting one paw toward the white’s shoulders. The white twisted at the waist and danced away. Her ears twitched back and her lips drew away from her teeth as she snarled a warning. The gray barely had time to get all four feet back on the ground before the white slammed into her, face first, knocking her sideways. The gray managed to keep her footing—but just barely.

  She reared up, trying to get her legs over the white’s back. It was a gesture of purely symbolic aggression. There were rules to this competition, rules as complicated and specific as the rules of Sumo wrestling or Olympic fencing. The rules were encoded deep in the DNA of every wolf, and were known by all on an instinctual level, where no possibility existed of challenging them.

  But that did not mean there was no way to bend them. It was possible, for a wolf sufficiently motivated, to change the very nature of the game. To take the competition beyond formal courtesy.

  You could kill your opponent. Or hurt her so badly she could never be dominant again.

  The white seized her chance to do just that.

  When she’d reared up, the gray had exposed her soft belly. In most dominance fights that would be safe enough. B
ut not when the white female was willing to step up the stakes. Diving low, under the gray’s falling legs, the white ripped into the gray’s belly with her teeth.

  The gray’s skin tore open and her blood and guts splattered on the cold ground.

  It was a shocking move, a level of violence most true wolf packs would never have allowed. At the first sign of such cruelty the male would have jumped into the fray and pulled the combatants apart. But these weren’t normal wolves.

  The gray screamed in pain and outrage. She danced backward on her hind feet, desperate to get away from her enemy’s teeth. She nearly slipped in her own blood as she darted around to a defensive position, showing the white only her bony flank. She wanted to run away. She wanted to go somewhere and lick her wounds, wanted very much to lie down.

  The white female bowed low on her forelegs. Her snout was thick with gore and her eyes were very bright. The saddle of fur on her shoulders and upper back stuck straight up—an invitation for the gray to come closer, to be finished off.

  The gray looked with terrified eyes between the white and the male, who sat on his haunches, off a little ways, his face impassive. His body language was quite clear: this was between the females.

  19.

  The gray did not look down at her own belly. To do so would have been a fatal mistake. It would have signaled that she was, in fact, terribly wounded—which would end the dominance struggle then and there—and at the same time it would mean taking her eyes off her opponent.

  The white, on the other hand, was happy to sit down and start cleaning her blood-splattered paws. As if she’d already won.

  The gray took a deep breath. It hurt. Everything hurt. Her hind legs felt weak and distant. Her vision was starting to dim as blood rushed out of her body. The pain was beyond measurement or description. But she wasn’t done yet.