Overwinter

by David Wellington

  She took a faltering step forward, quivering on legs that she could barely lift. Then another step.

  The white, looking annoyed at the fact that she couldn’t just get down to enjoying her victory, jumped to her feet and turned her head around slowly to look at the gray. Her arrogance was a mistake, a tactical error the gray could take advantage of—if she had possessed the speed necessary to capitalize on the white’s lack of attention.

  Every step she took brought new and terrible waves of agony to come crashing against the shores of her will. She couldn’t run, not when half the muscles in her belly were severed. But she could still hit. She gathered herself together, arching her back, and then dug her stronger forepaws deep into the frozen dirt.

  With everything she had left, she leapt forward, her forelegs propelling her by sheer willpower. It was not how a wolf would normally jump—that would have come from the bigger, springier rear legs—and so when the white tried to dash out of the way, she went the wrong direction.

  The gray twisted in midair and brought her hindquarters around like a bludgeon. Her hard, bony hip slammed into the side of the white’s head, instantly stunning the white and making her yelp in surprise and pain. The white slid to one side, desperately scrambling to keep all four paws underneath her so she didn’t fall over. She managed to do so, but only by spreading her legs out as far as they would go, her chest touching the ground to add support.

  It was an awkward, ungainly position and it did not allow the white to defend herself against what came next.

  The gray snarled and snapped at the white’s sensitive ears. When her teeth found fur she bit down hard and then shook her massive neck. It was an instinctual attack, one designed to snap the spines of small prey animals. The white was too big for the attack to be effective against her.

  Normally.

  Normally the gray would not have been so desperate in a routine dominance fight. Normally the gray would have reserved some of her strength in case this struggle went on longer than expected. Normally she would not have the strength born of knowing that if she lost now, she was doomed to an eternity of cruel submission, of slavery, at the jaws of this white interloper.

  The gray twisted and shook so hard that she fractured her own bones. Tore her own muscles. The white jumped up and tried to run away—and only managed to drag the gray along with her, still holding on with perfect tenacity. The gray felt her feet come out from under her and every instinct in her body flashed warning signals, demanded that she instantly let go and find her balance again.

  The gray ignored her body, her brain, and fifty thousand years of evolution. She held on. When the white’s ear tore away from the side of her head, the gray snarled again and snapped for a better hold, her jaws grating against the armored plates of the white’s skull. The white cried and mewled and smashed at the gray with her forepaws, batting at her enemy, scratching at the gray’s eyes and soft nose. She danced and spun in circles and leapt into the air to try to buck the demonic gray, who held on for dear life.

  Then she did the one thing none of the wolves would have expected of her. She lay down and tried to roll over on her back. The ultimate gesture of surrender.

  At first the gray refused to believe it was true. It was a common ruse to start to lie down, then jump up as soon as your opponent tried to move in for the final coup. That kind of feint was a basic move, one pups learned before they even left the mother’s den for the first time. The gray wasn’t about to fall for it. She dug in deeper with her massive teeth. Those fangs had evolved to crunch caribou bones, to crack them open so she could suck out the rich marrow inside. If she’d been a little stronger, if she hadn’t lost so much blood, she could have cracked the white’s skull like an eggshell.

  In the end, though, she just didn’t have the strength. She’d suffered too much from her belly wound, which had been sorely aggravated as she was dragged and flung through the air. Eventually, she had to let go.

  She closed her eyes and sank backward, her teeth so deeply imbedded in the white’s head that they left grooves in her skull as they pulled free.

  She slid back and found that she could barely feel her hind legs anymore. Sitting was out of the question, so she just propped herself up on her forelegs and tried not to look too undignified.

  A true wolf, a timber wolf, even one of the extinct dire wolves she resembled, would have been dead many times over by now. She was barely able to hold onto consciousness. But she refused to pass out now.

  Before her, the white was on the ground. On her back. Her paws slapped at empty air. Her head rolled on the ground, torn open and bleeding liberally. Her tongue slithered over her own fangs as her mouth opened and closed, seemingly beyond her control. If this was a ruse, it was an awfully good one.

  The gray dragged herself forward, centimeter by centimeter. It was up to her how she finished this. She could tear the white’s throat out, if she wanted to. It was what the white deserved, what she had opened herself up to when she chose to make this struggle a real fight.

  The gray moved forward and stretched her neck out to get her jaws closer to the white’s body. Then she stopped, perfectly still.

  The male had padded over to stand above the submissive white. He was standing as tall as he could, ears up. His tail was held straight back, at the same level as his spine. It was a posture that would not have made sense to a human observer, perhaps, but to another wolf it was perfectly clear. This was what was called the “dominance parade.” It was what the alpha did when it was time for him to receive respect.

  His behavior sent a message the gray understood. He was saying it was his choice how the struggle would end. How the pack would align itself, in cruelty or in cooperation. If he turned around now and walked away he would be refusing responsibility for the white. Leaving her to her fate.

  He did not turn away.

  The gray howled and whined—she deserved the kill, she wanted it desperately—but in wolf hierarchies there could never be dissent in the ranks. Eventually she tucked her tail between her legs (or tried to—she couldn’t feel her tail) and leaned forward to lick the male’s chin and snout. He accepted this deference silently, gazing straight ahead of himself and not acknowledging either of the wolves beneath him.

  The white, seeing her chance, lifted her head and started licking the gray’s face as well. The gray couldn’t refuse the submissive gesture, not without breaking her own submissive bond with the male. The struggle was over, the order of the pack decided. The male was the alpha of the pack. The gray was the dominant female. The white was the omega, the bottom of the pack. Over time these relationships would be cemented and reinforced, but it was extremely unlikely they would ever change.

  At least, if they had been true wolves … but werewolves were another matter.

  20.

  The gray was badly injured. As a werewolf she could survive her wounds—but even a supernatural creature immune to all hurts save those inflicted by silver couldn’t get very far with her guts trailing on the ground.

  When the submissive displays were finished she crept away into the trees, away from the others. The male made no attempt to stop her. As long as she remained within range of his nose—which meant within a circle with a two-kilometer radius—he would let her be. She needed to lick her wounds, to recover a little strength. Maybe he would even bring her a little something to eat.

  Maybe … maybe she would just sleep for a while.

  The moon, in its course, never rose very high above the horizon that night. Before long it had settled back, like a cold woman in her bed, burrowing down under the covers until only the frozen stars peered down on the world.

  When the gray woke the world was covered in snow. Just a fine powdering, a crystalline overlay that made the yellow grass twinkle in the sunlight and made the trees pale and heavy. It was beautiful, in a way a wolf could not appreciate.

  Especially when she felt so awful.

  The pain had transformed. It no longer s
ang and thrilled through her veins. Now it was deeper, a bone soreness that made her flesh stiff and loath to move. She crawled forward to the snow and licked at it to assuage a terrible thirst that chapped her lips and made her tongue swell. She barked and whimpered softly to herself as she tried to understand what had happened. Her legs felt wrong—like they’d been broken, and the bones set in new shapes. Her fur had all fallen out. Had the white torn it out while she slept, for revenge? Wolves rarely indulged in such sport.

  Her face felt wrong. Her snout had shortened and it felt as if her teeth had broken up and fallen out of her mouth. She sighed and clutched at herself, rocking back and forth in fear and confusion. What had happened? What had …

  Chey closed her eyes tight and fought against the thing inside her head. The wolf didn’t want to leave. She had transformed, and the change had healed her body—she ran one hand down her bare stomach and couldn’t even find a scar—but the wolf was still there, a presence crouched in the back of her head, howling to get out, desperate for the moon to come back.

  She tried to talk and her mouth made strange shapes around her tongue. Her throat warbled and a choked howl came gushing out of her. Her fingers were curled like claws and she felt a desperate urge to scratch at the ground, to dig and bury herself in the frozen dirt. She wanted to make a den, she realized, somewhere she could hide until all the confusion and anger went away.

  “St-stop it,” she managed to spit out. “Just—g-g-go away.”

  In her mind’s eye she saw the wolf staring back at her. She saw it panting and desperate. It didn’t like being confined inside her skull. It didn’t like being anywhere near her human form.

  “Get out!” she screamed.

  The wolf put its tail between its legs and padded off, into the darkest corner of her being. It was gone—for the moment.

  She rolled over on her side in the snow and tried to just breathe for a while, tried to focus on just existing, on being a human being in a human body.

  What had happened the previous night? Normally she could remember nothing of what her wolf did, only a few flashing impressions of sensory imagery that fled from her if she tried to study them or remember them more clearly. This time she was left with a scream in her ears, an echo of phantom pain that she knew wasn’t real but that she couldn’t choose to not hear. Her stomach—she’d woken up clutching at her stomach, terrified and searching to make sure it was still there. Had the wolf been hurt somehow? Had there been some accident so traumatic that the wolf had forced her to remember it, to have it so clearly that the wolf could manifest inside of her even when the moon was down?

  This wasn’t good.

  She hurt all over. Well, that was the normal transformation hangover. She was used to it. It would go away by the time she finished breakfast. It didn’t worry her. Not the way she was worried that her wolf had lingered on. Had stayed with her through the night and into the first stages of waking. That was something she’d never experienced before.

  She would have to ask Powell about it. Or—did she really want to do that? What if he told her that what she half suspected now was right? She wouldn’t be able to deny it anymore.

  Don’t think about that, she commanded herself. Think about how hungry you are. Which was very true. She was extraordinarily hungry.

  Sitting up carefully, she looked around herself. There was no sign of Powell anywhere around her. She could smell a campfire nearby, though, and the tuneless sound of Dzo singing quietly to himself.

  Time to get back to being human. Time to be Chey again.

  21.

  Back in the camp she gathered up her clothes and put them on quickly. She found Dzo tending to the fire, building it back up from the night’s last embers. His furs were dripping with water and he had his mask down over his face—he often kept it that way when no one was around to talk to. When he saw her he lifted it and gave her a broad smile.

  “You were up to some real hijinks last night, eh? You and Monty? Huh?”

  His leer wasn’t human enough to be annoying. What Dzo knew about mortal sex wouldn’t fill a very long pamphlet. She shrugged and returned his smile. “You know I have no idea what my wolf gets up to when I’m not around. So I couldn’t say.”

  “A lady never does,” he said, and poked the fire with a stick.

  She rubbed at her abdomen, wondering what had happened. Her abs didn’t hurt anymore, they just twitched occasionally as if the muscles there couldn’t believe they were whole again. “What did you see?” she asked.

  “See? Nothing. The wolves were making so much noise that I went and slept in the lake.” He twisted a piece of his furs in his hands and water splatted on the ground. “There’s something there for your breakfast,” he told her, pointing to a tree at the edge of the camp. “You hungry? I’ll have this fire ready to cook on in a minute.”

  Chey’s mouth watered so much that she had to tilt her head back to keep from drooling. Hanging from a low branch were three hares, strung up by their feet with their throats slit. A year ago, she thought, she would have found them repulsive. Now she tore one down and stripped its skin off with her fingers. She didn’t wait for the fire. Her body demanded that she eat, and right away. The meat was stringy and bloody, but she gulped it down in huge bites without even bothering to chew.

  Dzo gave her a searching look when she did that, but then he just shrugged and put a cooking pot over his fire. He filled it with lake water and then crumbled in pieces of bark and various plants, making his own vegetarian breakfast.

  “Have you seen Powell?” she asked, wiping her bloody fingers on a clump of dry grass. The grass crackled with ice, but her fingers barely registered the cold. “He must have been around at some point to hang these up.”

  Dzo shrugged again. “Not this morning. Here, give me one of those—he’ll want it when he does show up, and he takes his meat a little more done.” Dzo spitted one of the hares on a long stick and propped it over the fire to roast. He might not eat meat, but he was happy enough to cook it for the werewolves.

  Chey went back to her own meal, still not bothering with heating it up. She’d eaten most of the first hare by the time Powell came wandering into camp. His hair was mussed and he looked almost as tired as Chey felt. He was still buttoning his shirt as he came and sat down next to the fire.

  “What I wouldn’t do for a can of coffee beans,” he said, and rubbed at his face with his hands. “Chey, do you have any recollection of what we did last night?”

  She shook her head.

  “I feel like it must have been important,” he told her. “But of course—oh. I guess I should mention something.”

  A clump of bushes on the other side of the camp rustled and Chey stood up very fast, ready to fight. When Lucie came out, wearing Powell’s woolen coat, she didn’t sit down again.

  “I woke up next to her,” Powell explained. “It seems she ran with us last night. Her wolf didn’t get the message about leaving.”

  “Cher, how many times have you said to me, we are not responsible for what they do?” Lucie asked. She came and sat down next to him. Reaching over she grabbed the roasting hare and tore off one leg. She ate it daintily, careful not to get too much grease on her little fingers.

  “I don’t think you ever understood what I meant by that,” Powell told her. “We can’t give in to the guilt of being responsible for the wolves. But we do have a duty as human beings to limit the damage they cause.”

  Slowly, still not feeling particularly at her ease, Chey sat back down. It was clear that Powell wasn’t going to run Lucie off, at least until breakfast was over. She looked at his hair again. It looked almost as if someone had been playing with it.

  She kept her thoughts to herself. She couldn’t stop her stomach from making queasy flip-flops, though.

  Powell reached for the roasting hare and took a bite for himself. He grimaced in distaste. “This is almost raw,” he said. “It tastes funny, too. Chey, where did you find these?”

&
nbsp; She stared at him, confused. She opened her mouth to say that she thought he had caught them and hung them up before she woke. But if he had been off playing with Lucie, then—who—?

  Her voice wouldn’t come. Her tongue felt dead in her mouth. She reached up to touch her lips and found them numb, even when she pinched them. When she brought her hand back down she could see blood on her fingertips. Her own blood.

  Her stomach squeezed, hard. Painfully so. She leaned forward, trying to keep it from jumping out of her body.

  Dzo leaned over to stir his pot. “I thought you caught them, Monty. No? Was it you, Lucie?”

  “Not I,” Lucie said. “I—I—ah.” She tried to cover her mouth with her hands, but then without warning she spat up a thin stream of bloody drool. Her eyes were bright with terror as she looked up at Powell.

  Powell looked at the haunch of meat in his hand and then tore it open, pulling shreds of flesh off the carcass to study them up close. “These little shiny flecks—they’re silver,” he gasped. “Poi—pois—” He rubbed at his lips with his hand, then threw the remaining portion of the hare into the fire. “Chey,” he called out.

  She couldn’t respond, though. She was too busy rolling on the ground, the searing agony in her belly driving off all rational thought.

  22.

  Chey could hear voices but couldn’t see a thing.

  “Help me—get her on her side or she’ll choke—come on, Chey—how much of this did she eat?”

  Her vision had started to dim and then it had slammed shut like a pair of utterly black doors closing in front of her. She was left blind and terrified, trapped inside her body with no way out.

  Was this how her wolf had felt, she wondered, when it woke up and found itself inside a human skull?

  “Charcoal—get some charcoal from the fire—now!”

  She felt air whistling in and out of her, felt her heart pounding away. But she knew she was dying. It scared the hell out of her, but she had no way to express that fear. She couldn’t feel her hands or feet, couldn’t talk. Couldn’t even move. Her mind raged and tore and spat at the darkness, but there was nothing to grab or hurt or even swim through. She could hear the voices again, but she couldn’t place who they belonged to.