by Keri Hudson
Red nodded, a smile twisting that bushy beard. “Feelin’ my oats.”
There was little for Quinton to say about that. He could only image what kind of hungers the man had, and what he did to satisfy them. But Alaska was a wild and wooly place, befitting its frontier past, and Anchorage had survived visits from the big man before.
A new thought flashed in Quinton’s mind, however; that there was a new and lovely and vulnerable young woman in Anchorage. The idea that Red might target her in some way instantly set his blood to boil.
But Quinton knew better than to mention her. That would only set Red on her trail. The two men were already rivals, the tension between them palpable. And Anchorage was a big enough place that there was a better chance that the two would never even be in the same room. Quinton could only hope not.
“All right, then,” Quinton said.
Red answered, “You take care, now.”
The two men replaced their goggles and revved up their motor sleds to head off in opposite directions. Quinton was worried, images of that beastly man overwhelming his adorable new friend. He’d be capable of any number of terrible things, and he would be a hard man to fight off even for a man of Quinton’s size and strength. A lithe little creature like Jessica Hume wouldn’t stand a chance.
He could already picture it: that big bastard bearing down on her, her little fists punching at him, legs kicking to repel him, his big paw over her mouth to silence her screams.
Quinton was almost ready to turn around, but he knew he could not. To turn and follow Red would be to touch off a conflict that wasn’t necessary. The big man would know Quinton was coming up on him, and even if that didn’t create a terrific and terrible fight between them, it might signal to Red that there was something in Anchorage worth protecting. And since Red had already declared his intentions in town, he’d know it would not be something but someone.
And Anchorage was not, in fact, the lawless frontier town it had been. They were living in the modern age, law still ruled, and it was easy to believe that Quinton was over-worrying. He was so struck by having met Jessica that his brain was scattered, his instincts riled up and frothing over. What he was imagining was against the odds by an almost incalculable amount. Quinton almost felt silly thinking about it.
Then again, he thought, I met up with her. If he goes to the Gold Dust, where she’s likely to be …
But a woman like Jessica would never let a man like Red get that close, Quinton felt certain of that. She was clearly no babe in the woods. She’d never let that happen.
If she had a choice, Quinton had to remind himself.
Because people went missing in Alaska quite often, and not all of them fell into the ice or crashed in a small plane misadventure. Anchorage was like any city in that way—alleys and windowless vans, mean and miserable men with lust and murder on their minds and in their hearts.
Quinton drove onward toward his cabin, torn apart by ten impulses at once. But he also knew that Red had been to Anchorage countless times; he had haunts and whores all his own. He had no need to make a vicious criminal of himself. Whatever Red needed was readily available.
But not Jessica Hume.
He had little choice but to push on toward his cabin. But he drove even faster, and he knew he’d be anxious until he saw her again. He’d rise before the sun, head back to Anchorage, and find her safe and sound, he was sure of it.
Almost.
CHAPTER FIVE
Quinton had been plagued by bad dreams that night, and it was the one he dreaded most. It had been a calm afternoon ten years before, when Quinton had been twenty-five years old. His father had taught him to hunt, to butcher, and to skin. He’d taught him the ways of the shifter, the ways of man.
It was as if he was reliving that terrible day, the sudden appearance of the ursine shifter. Quinton had known just what it was, there could be no doubt. A giant red bear, much bigger than any polar bear, and more vicious than any normalo creature that walked the land. He and his father had been chopping wood for the premature winter, then still bitterly cold. Quinton could still smell the pine chips, smell the stink of the thing as it ambushed them in the thick of the forested area of the mountain.
It had known them, stalked them, and on that fateful day, replaying in Quinton’s sleeping imagination, it made its move.
Quinton could still feel the wooden axe handle in his hand, striking out against the beast by sheer instinct, no time to shift. The ursine threw a hard swipe at Quinton, and as he writhed in his bed, Quinton could still feel the terrific blow. It had sent him reeling, stumbling in the snow before smashing into the trunk of a paper birch, pain shooting through his head, mind numbed as his legs gave out beneath him. It had been a lucky blow for the ursine, unlucky for Quinton and his entire family.
His father had already shifted, and the two were fast engaged in a terrible battle. It was a blur of snapping jaws and swiping claws. The ursine was much bigger than his father, and despite his father’s strength and skill, he was naturally overmatched. One of the great advantages of the lupes was that they were communal and the ursines were much more solitary. It made Quinton’s isolation all the more painful, wasteful, and dangerous.
But that wasn’t nearly the worst danger they’d faced that day, or that Quinton had to face again and again, night after night.
Quinton tried to push himself up out of the bed just as he’d tried to push himself up from the foot of that tree. It was no good, his body still failing him.
The ursine drove his father back, a vicious swipe sending him reeling. The ursine turned to Quinton, an easy kill. But his father charged with even greater passion, biting into the ursine’s vulnerable rear hind leg and shaking hard. The ursine roared and turned from his charge on Quinton to fight off his father. The ursine swiped at Quinton’s father, snaps at his forearms rewarding his aggression.
“Hey!” All turned to see Quinton’s mother, aiming a shotgun at the ursine. “Get away from my man!”
K-blam! The ursine took the shot and flinched, but it did not knock the creature off its feet. Quinton’s mother cocked the shotgun again and fired again, delivering another shot. But the ursine turned to absorb the second shot with its broad, heavy side. It was the ursine’s least vulnerable spot. Then he turned on her and charged.
Quinton thrashed in the bed, his arms and legs nearly immobile around him. He couldn’t save her. He’d tried to shift, but the head injury was too much. His father went after the ursine from behind, jumping on the ursine’s broad back. He bit down hard and shook, growling. But it wasn’t enough to stop the creature’s charge, and they both fell into Quinton’s mother in a mad tumble of bodies—normalo, ursine, lupine.
Quinton’s father and the ursine challenger rolled past her and over the slope, where a river lay covered in ice. Quinton had finally found the strength to shift, his body transforming into the massive, wolf-like beast he was born to be. He had instantly restored strength, shaking off his injuries to jump into the fight.
But he was faced with the vision of his mother’s body, lying flat in the snow. Quinton relived the striking terror, paralyzing to be looking at her in quiet stillness, staring up with wide eyes, an open mouth.
Quinton sniffed her, leaning in and listening for her heartbeat. His heightened senses could hear far beyond those in his human form, and he could already tell that her heart would never beat again. She’d been crushed by the great weight and force of the rolling shifters. He could smell her internal bleeding, his mother… dead.
Emotion welled up in Quinton then even as it had before, the same tearful torture to look at the only woman who’d ever loved him, the one single touch of normalo love that he’d ever thought he’d know.
The pain had been too much to bear, the howl reaching up from out of the lowest corner of his soul to burst out and ring over the territory. But it wouldn’t bring her back, and it wouldn’t help his father, still engaged in the battle of his life.
Quinton ha
d thrown himself through the wooded slope to the riverbank on the other side, weaving deftly through the tamarack and balsam, snow powder rising up around him. The sounds of his father’s battle with the ursine grew louder as the two alpha shifters engaged in their death struggle.
By the time Quinton arrived, the ursine had his father pinned on the snowy riverbank, a sheet of ice over the water beyond him. The ursine’s tremendous jaws were clamped down onto his father’s throat, lupine legs kicking.
Quinton charged and leapt at the ursine, jaws biting into that thick fur, feeling the layer of fat and muscle beneath. And though it was just a dream, it was as if it was happening all over again. He could still taste the rank hide, could feel that reedy hair against his tongue.
They tumbled onto the ice. Quinton held on, but the ursine twisted his great, massive body and threw Quinton across the river and onto the ice. It cracked under his weight and momentum. The big ursine charged, clearly enraged. It had come to them in a focused attempt to kill the entire family, and it was clearly possessed with the rush of the assault, instinct propelling him back into the struggle.
But Quinton backed up, able to think a bit more clearly and in the crucial moment. He also knew what the ursine didn’t seem to know, that the ice was already weakened. It would never withstand the weight of the ursine. The strategy was to get far enough away so he wasn’t pulled under with him.
And Quinton’s retreat only seemed to fuel the ursine’s passion for the kill. Closer… closer…
The ursine charged in and hit the fractured ice. It gave with a crash, the big beast falling into the rushing waters between them. The ursine screamed, clearly shocked, and it flailed as it disappeared under the ice.
Quinton waited, a sudden calm overtaking the area. Quinton walked slowly, carefully toward the hole. The waters rushed beneath the ice sheet with no trace of the ursine. Quinton looked downriver, not a break in the ice to be seen. The ursine was trapped, and not even a shifter could breathe underwater.
A quick sighting of another figure grabbed Quinton’s attention, his father lying on the snowy riverbank.
Quinton writhed in that bed as he relived approaching his father’s body. He lay dead, beyond even a shifter’s ability to heal quickly. His throat had been torn out, his body lay on its back. He was the great man of Quinton’s life, his mentor and his best friend.
And Quinton had failed to save him, or his mother.
The emotion had been too much to sustain then and it still was, obliterating any thought or reason. It had poured out of him in a gut-wrenching howl then, but at the end of his dream he never could shout or even breathe.
He woke up as he had so many mornings before, a cold sweat sheeting his skin, white hair plastered to the side of his face. He looked around at the bedroom of his cabin, the same one his father had built for their family. He was alone, yet again, but he was far removed from that frightful day.
That goddamned dream again! Quinton dropped himself back down onto the sweat-damp pillow. He glanced at the window to see the dawn. Crap, I overslept!
Quinton thought of his father and mother, ten years dead. There was nothing he could do for them, he knew that. He’d struggled to accept it but still struggled. Then he thought of Jessica Hume. She could still be saved, she could still live, and give him the love he longed for and needed, but only if he had the strength to protect her, as he did not have for his own family.
CHAPTER SIX
Quinton was more than relieved to see the lovely Jessica Hume waiting for him in the Gold Dust lobby. She looked adorable in tight jeans, thigh-high leather boots, a suede coat, tan scarf around that creamy neck that Quinton could hardly take get his mind off of. She carried a black leather bag which Quinton recognized, knowing it would be her camera equipment.
“Good morning,” she said with a little smile. “Thank you for coming.”
“Happy to do it. Have you had breakfast?” She shook her head, and Quinton held his hand out to the hotel’s restaurant and bar where they’d met the night before. Deliah eyed them as they walked into the restaurant and the two sat down. Walt came up, working his morning shift as a waiter, before the bar opened. “What’s good? And not a Moscow mule!”
They shared a little chuckle, and Jessica said to Walt, “They were very good though, it’s just… y’know, a bit early in the day.”
“You haven’t been in Alaska long,” Walt answered, inspiring another chuckle. “How about eggs Benedict?”
“Sounds perfect,” Jessica said, “not too runny.”
“Benedict, poached medium.” Walt backed away from the table, leaving Quinton and Jessica alone.
“Nice kid,” Quinton said.
“Seems it. I wish everybody around here was so friendly.”
This grabbed Quinton’s attention. “Pardon?”
“Not you, no, I… more and more, I’m glad we met.” Quinton turned his head to hear her just a bit more clearly. She seemed to read his body language, a bid for her to explain. “I dunno, it’s… it’s nothing. I’m silly to even bring it up, but… I’m here from Los Angeles, so I guess I’m just used to a different sort of person. And I don’t mean to be insulting, because, y’know, you live here. You come from this area, right?”
Quinton already had a terrible idea what or who she was talking about. But he let her go on. “I am. But…?”
Jessica waved it off. “It’s nothing, like I said, but… there was one guy, last night down the street, some place I stepped into. I don’t know why, I was bored, I guess.”
“One guy?”
“Yeah, big, bushy red beard, kind of rugged, y’know?”
“Long hair, a bit tangled?”
Jessica leaned forward, eyes wide with some sense of surprise, no doubt at Quinton’s accuracy. “Yes! He went on about how our kids would be redheads and all that. Disgusting.”
“He didn’t… hurt you?”
“No, no, he didn’t. Thank God!” Walt brought the two plates, each with a pair of poached eggs sitting on a plank of Canadian bacon, resting on an English muffin and smothered with creamy Hollandaise sauce and sided with a few spears of green, shimmering asparagus tips crusted with pepper and dripping with butter.
But Quinton had suddenly lost his appetite.
Jessica added, “You know who I’m talking about?”
Quinton almost hesitated to say. “I think I might.” A tense silence passed. “I’m glad things didn’t go too far.”
“What? What do you mean? Was there really a chance that…?”
“How did you handle it?”
“I left the bar and came back here, of course.”
Quinton knew what that meant. His worst imaginings had nearly come true, and they could yet. Brutal Red Fellows had gotten a bead on Jessica Hume, and he’d likely taken the time to observe where she went, where she was.
Red was a tracker, a hunter, like Quinton. And he was a man of considerable skill. Anybody who survived in the mountains as long as both men had couldn’t have done it without being tough, dangerous, deadly. But Red was the kind of man to turn those virtues into vices, put his shoulder to malicious purpose, and Jessica was clearly already in his sights.
But he wasn’t anywhere around, not that Quinton could tell. And Jessica was in his company, and he was going to remain close and for good reason. Red was a dangerous man, there couldn’t be much doubt.
But Quinton was much more powerful, than Red or any normalo.
And Red seemed to understand that. Red Fellows was a bully at heart, Quinton had always felt. But he didn’t dare bully Quinton, something Quinton found fascinating. He’d never made a move against his cabin, though he knew where Quinton lived, as most men of Red’s quality might. Quinton had often wondered, Does he know my secret? Is he planning something?
But since Red was a bully, Quinton considered him also to be a coward, and Quinton was well accustomed to not being afraid. Without fear, the bully had no power.
His attention was drawn ba
ck to Jessica, to their hot breakfast, creamy and nourishing. “Don’t worry about him,” Quinton said. “But… you do have to be careful.”
“I will be,” Jessica said, lifting a forkful of egg, bread, and sauce to her luscious lips. “Don’t stray too far off.” She took the bite, eyes rolling as she chewed, licking her lips. “Oh my God, tastes so good, so… so flavorful.”
“Food’s no good in Los Angeles?”
Jessica seemed to give it some thought. “Well, there’s so much manufactured food, everything all filled with steroids and everything. Eggs have no flavor, the chickens are all overgrown and weird-tasting.”
Quinton couldn’t help but smile. “We have a pretty different menu here too. Ever had caribou?” Jessica shook her head. “Reindeer? You’ll like it, great in sausage.”
Jessica seemed to give it some thought. “I’m open to it.”
Quinton wasn’t sure how to take that. Was it a sexual remark? Is she trying to tell me that she’s as ready as I am? I’m not sure I’d want her to be… Quinton tried to leave it alone. If she shared his feelings, that would be enough.
After breakfast, Quinton drove Jessica out to the outskirts of Anchorage on his motor sled. She sat behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist. She pulled tight, and he could feel her breasts pressed against his back.
Does she know? Is this… intentional? Quinton wanted to believe it was true, but she just didn’t strike him as that kind of woman. Surely, a creature of her stunning beauty and grace could have any man she wanted. She didn’t have to come on to Quinton or any man, with jokes about sausages and those incredible breasts. Jessica Hume was surely a woman of more class, of greater style, of better character.
Chugach State Park held many of the sites Jessica needed to visit. She was very precise about the locations, as she had to match previous photographs from the same vantage points at the same time of year to chronicle the gradual degradation of the planet. But Quinton didn’t live by numbers like that. For him, the mountains were living things, not charts or maps or graphs made real.