Overwinter

by David Wellington

  “Go and take a look at the house next door,” he told her. When she hesitated he waved one hand dismissively. “Go ahead.”

  She went to the window and looked out through the curtains. Across the street was a house much like Varkanin’s. There was an old man sitting next to the window, watching her back. He had a cup of coffee sitting next to him and a hunting rifle across his knees. When he saw her he picked up the gun.

  Chey drew back from the window.

  “Sharon is going door to door, teaching each person in this town what she knows about how to kill a werewolf. I have a patron, in your government. He has been most generous to the people of Umiaq, and provided for their safety with silver bullets in a variety of calibers. Of course, they already had the necessary firearms. Everyone up here owns a gun of some sort, if only for protection from moose and polar bears.” He shrugged. “They know what is happening. They know your face. If you were to leave this house you would be gunned down. Many times. Is this clear?”

  “Yeah,” Chey said.

  Varkanin nodded. “Very good. I see you are a reasonable woman. Will you answer a question?”

  “Depends.”

  “Of course. And perhaps this is one you will not wish to answer. Can you tell me why your lover has not come for you yet?”

  Because he doesn’t have any eyes, right now, Chey thought. It wasn’t the kind of thing she thought she should share.

  “Maybe he thinks I’m already dead,” she told him.

  “No, I doubt that. Your friend the animal spirit will have told him what happened. And he is smart enough to know that I will use you as bait.” Varkanin went to the kitchen and poured himself a bowl of granola. He glanced at her, then made a second bowl, and filled them both with milk. He put a spoon in each bowl and then brought them back out. “Please. To show I am not going to poison you, you may pick which bowl you will eat from.”

  She glanced at the bowls in his hands. She couldn’t deny that she was starving. “Let me guess,” she said. “Those are silver spoons.”

  His eyes went wide. “Wonderful! Such a wonderfully clever idea. But as I said, I am not a cruel man. I have no desire to torture you or cause you pain. Please. Take one.”

  Hunger won out over defiance. Chey grabbed the bowl out of his left hand and dug in. The spoon was stainless steel, and there were no nasty surprises in the granola.

  “Perhaps,” Varkanin said, “your lover waits for the moon. Perhaps he thinks he has a better chance of rescuing you in his wolf shape.”

  She shook her head. “No. There would be too much chance of accidentally hurting somebody innocent, then.”

  “Very good. Then, when the moon rises tonight, I will not worry.” Varkanin smiled at her.

  “Tonight?” The time had gotten away from Chey. “I’m going to change tonight? Is that—is that when you’ll—when you—”

  “Do you really wish to know exactly when death is coming?” he asked. “Perhaps it is more of a mercy to have it come unexpected.”

  She shut her eyes and set her bowl down on a coffee table. “Maybe.”

  “But no,” he said. “Not tonight. Not until he comes. He seems a smart man. If he learned somehow that you were, truly, dead, then he would not come, would he? And he would not bring Lucie with him. So you have a temporary reprieve.”

  “Great,” she said.

  He left her alone most of that day. Just before the moon rose, though, he took her to a little room at the back of the house. “I apologize for this,” he said, and opened the door. Inside, Sharon Minik was crouching on the floor. She had a silver collar around her neck and it was chained to the wall. She didn’t look happy. A second collar lay next to her on the floor. “It is the only way.”

  Chey did as she was told. What choice did she have? She sat down next to Sharon, who wouldn’t even look at her. She let Varkanin put the collar around her throat. It was very loose—but of course, her wolf’s neck was thicker than her own. He had thought of everything.

  When she was secure, he left the little room and closed the door. Almost instantly the air inside grew stuffy and thick.

  Sharon closed her eyes and started muttering to herself.

  “What are you saying?” Chey asked. “A prayer?”

  Sharon shook her head. “I’m trying to talk to my wolf. I’m telling it to tear your guts out for me when I’m not here.”

  Chey sighed. “They don’t listen to us. They can’t understand language.”

  Sharon shrugged. “It can’t hurt.”

  75.

  The silver light came, and changed Chey’s body.

  But not her mind.

  She sat up on the floor of the small room and blinked in confusion, unsure what had just happened. Her vision was blurred and the colors seemed washed out—but her nose was assaulted by a million smells she couldn’t begin to process. She could smell wolves and silver and wood and metal and Varkanin’s aftershave and … and …

  She looked down and screamed. The sound came out of her throat like a squeal. She didn’t have hands anymore. She had paws. Big furry paws with inch-long claws.

  She had let her wolf inhabit her human body for the fight with Sharon. It had relished the opportunity and it had possessed her with glee, only to be horribly injured when it attacked Varkanin. Now it must be tucked away in some corner of the brain they shared, licking its wounds—and it had decided not to come out when the change occurred.

  Chey felt as if her hands had been chopped off and her throat had been scrubbed out with sandpaper. She couldn’t talk, couldn’t make any human sounds at all, no matter how hard she tried. The body she was in felt alien and wrong and she barely knew how to coordinate its muscles to move at all. She started to panic and tried to fight against the silver collar holding her to the wall, but that was a bad mistake. When her body changed her clothes had fallen away, so now there was nothing between her skin and the silver but fur, fur that crinkled and died at the softest pressure from the collar. She felt her throat rub up against the metal as if acid were eating away at her skin.

  From the far corner of the room—only two meters away—Sharon’s wolf growled at her. It was a beautiful creature, but a terrifying one, almost all black except for a few patches of tan fur on its face and legs. Its teeth were enormous. Was that what Chey’s wolf looked like? It had been so long since she’d seen a dire wolf that she was horrified all over again—as scared as she’d been when Powell’s wolf attacked her and gave her the curse. She pressed herself tight against the wall of the little room to get away from Sharon’s wolf, but that just put more pressure on the silver collar.

  It wasn’t long before Sharon’s wolf realized there was something strange about Chey.

  Whining and whimpering, Chey could only cringe away as Sharon’s wolf lunged at her, again and again, jaws snapping. Sharon’s paws swatted at the air as she pulled and yanked at her own collar, trying to get free, trying to attack, to kill—

  The only thing that saved Chey from madness, that night, was the fact that the moon set barely three hours after it rose. When the silver light came again, she had never been so grateful for the change.

  She woke up on the floor. Human in shape. She touched her face, her skin. She was still in control of her own body. The silver collar had left a wide swath of burn tissue around her throat, but she could breathe. She could think, and even see colors again.

  She remembered what had happened, though it had been so terrifying that she thought her brain had shut down at some point and spared her any further horror.

  That was probably a blessing, she decided.

  Sharon was nowhere to be seen. Her collar lay abandoned on the floor. It was a while before Chey figured out how to remove the cotter pin that held her own collar shut. Removing it meant burning her fingertips, but she was just glad to be free of the thing. She picked up her clothes from the floor and studied them. Her claws had torn her shirt in a couple places as she had scrabbled around on top of it in her panic, but
it was still in one piece, as were her pants. She pulled them on and went to the door of the little room. It swung open easily when she pushed on it.

  Outside of the little room was a kitchen. Sharon was leaning against the counter, running an electric razor over her head. Her eyes were wild.

  “It keeps growing back,” Sharon screamed. “Why the fuck does it grow back? I was overdue for a haircut when this happened. Now I’m stuck with long hair for all eternity, is that it?”

  Chey shook her head. She didn’t know what to say.

  “I can’t live like this! I won’t! I’d rather be dead. What the fuck have you done to me?”

  Chey took a step backward as Sharon waved the razor at her. It couldn’t hurt her, of course, but she couldn’t bear the weight of the accusation.

  “What the fuck are you? Why couldn’t you just die, the first time? He poisoned you, and you didn’t die! He laid down land mines and you didn’t even step on one! What the fuck are you?”

  Chey could only run away in fear. She dashed into the parlor of Varkanin’s little house—and got another surprise. This one was a little more pleasant.

  Dzo was standing in the parlor, talking quietly with Varkanin.

  “Ah, there you are,” Varkanin said, gesturing for her to come in.

  76.

  “Your friend,” Varkanin said, gesturing at Dzo, “arrived a few minutes ago and asked to see you. I told him you were still sleeping and I didn’t wish to disturb you, and he said he would wait. We’ve been having a very pleasant chat.”

  Chey stepped into the room without comment. She didn’t know what to do, whether she should sit down on the couch or scream or … something. “Hi, Dzo,” she said, because it was the only thing that felt like something she ought to do.

  “Hi, Chey. I’ve come to rescue you,” he said, with a big smile.

  “Thanks,” she told him.

  For a while no one spoke. Dzo just stood there, smiling, looking very proud of himself. Varkanin waited patiently. He had one hand in his pocket and he didn’t take it out, even as he moved over toward the couch and sat down.

  “Alright,” he said, finally. “If no one else will ask, I will. How do you plan on doing that?”

  Dzo squinted for a second as if trying to remember something. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m supposed to say that Chey and I are going to walk out of here right now and there’s nothing you can do to stop us. You can’t hurt me, um,” he thought about it for a second. “Because … you can’t hurt me because I’m an immortal animal spirit and none of your weapons will affect me. Is it affect or effect? I can never remember.”

  “You got it right,” Chey said.

  “Oh! There was one more thing. If you hurt Chey, Powell will kill you. He’ll hunt you down for the rest of his life. Or maybe it was the rest of your life. But anyway, he won’t stop. Ever.” He looked over at Chey and gave her a wink.

  Something in her chest started to flutter like a bird taking wing. It was hope, which she thought had died inside her. “What do you have to say to that, Varkanin? Can I go?”

  The blue man shook his head in apology. “Let us not be foolish. Not now. Of course you can’t go. You are my prisoner, and you will remain so until I decide on your disposition. Now, Mr. Dzo. I’ll give you a chance to leave my house peacefully. Alone.”

  “Not going to happen,” Dzo told him.

  “I was afraid so. Alright. Let’s discuss another matter, then. I’ve been studying you, my friend.”

  “Really?” Dzo asked. He looked flattered.

  “Indeed. After my plans were thwarted by your friend Nanuq, I requested all the information the Canadian government had on you and the other animal spirits. There wasn’t much. The government’s position is that you do not exist. That you are only a story told by less sophisticated people. A bit of folklore.”

  “Kinda, sure,” Dzo said. He shrugged.

  Varkanin smiled warmly. “However, there was a very thin report on you dating back to the events at Port Radium. You may remember that incident, Ms. Clark—that was when you and Montgomery Powell killed Robert Fenech and his associates.”

  “I remember about half of it,” she agreed. The half that she’d experienced as a human being. “It’s not something I like to dwell on.”

  “Understandable. I’m not interested so much in rousing feelings of guilt, however. I was far more interested in learning about Mr. Dzo’s participation in those events.”

  “I wasn’t even at Port Radium!” Dzo said. “I can’t even go there. Just can’t—if I tried, it wouldn’t work. The water there is too polluted for me to swim in.”

  “I know,” Varkanin confirmed. “Specifically it’s polluted with radionuclides. Tailings and runoff from the former uranium mining operations there. You would have liked to go there, to help your friends, I’m sure. But the background radiation that pervades the Port Radium site precluded this.”

  “Yeah,” Dzo agreed. “But what does that have to do with anything?”

  Varkanin took his hand out of his pocket. There was a square little gun there. It didn’t look like it had much stopping power, but Chey felt terrified at the sight of it anyway. Was it loaded with silver bullets? Was this the moment he was going to kill her—as he’d promised, when she least expected it?

  “Put that away,” Dzo said. “You know it can’t—”

  Varkanin shot Dzo in the stomach. The noise of the gunshot was enormous in the small parlor and it made Chey jump. Dzo stopped talking to grimace in annoyance, but he didn’t even take a step backward. The bullet seemed to ruffle his furs, but there was no blood, nor any other sign of an injury.

  Varkanin ejected the gun’s clip. Then he placed gun and magazine on a side table. “I apologize. I assure you it was necessary.”

  “Oh, come on,” Dzo said. “That was just silly. Bullets can’t hurt me. I told you that already! I’m immortal. I’m—”

  Chey felt her face go slack in terror. She watched as Dzo grew pale and some of his fur started to fall out. He looked like he might throw up.

  “I—I don’t know what—you hoped—to.” Dzo couldn’t seem to finish his sentence. He blinked rapidly and looked around the room as if he was having trouble seeing straight. “Chey? What—was—”

  “No,” she said. She shook her head violently. “No, no, he couldn’t have …”

  A thread of blood erupted from Dzo’s mouth. “Pitchblende?” he asked.

  Chey remembered Raven’s story. How the Sivullir had used pitchblende to poison Amuruq and make her vulnerable. How even its presence could trap a spirit and leave it defenseless.

  “A little more than that. Pitchblende is the ore from which uranium is processed,” Varkanin told him. “The bullet I shot you with is made of depleted uranium. It is mildly radioactive. Much like the water around Port Radium.”

  Dzo dropped to his knees. “I have to get out of here. I have to find—oh, boy.”

  “Dzo,” Chey said, rushing over to hold his shoulders. “Dzo? Are you okay?”

  He shook his head. “This really hurts. I can’t remember the last time something hurt. I guess when Raven took my fur. Chey, I’m sorry.” He staggered back up to his feet and rushed for the kitchen, where Sharon Minik was boiling a pot of water.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, and then he dove into the pot. He seemed to hang in the air for a moment, a kind of furry blur across Chey’s vision, and then he shrank down to nothing and was gone.

  “You killed him,” Chey said, turning to stare at Varkanin. “You killed Dzo.”

  77.

  She shouted in outrage. She stormed around the room. She wanted to attack Varkanin, beat him down with her fists, but she didn’t dare. It would just break her bones and burn her skin. So she raced back and forth like a wild creature stuck in a cage. “Do you even understand what you just did?” she demanded.

  “I fear I may have doomed the muskrat to extinction,” Varkanin said. There was a deep sadness in his voice that startled he
r. “That is how it works, is it not?” He shook his head. “I don’t enjoy doing these things.”

  “Then stop,” she screamed. “Just stop! Let us go. Let us go and we will never bother you again. Please! Please just stop this!”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but a sudden noise made him stop.

  It was a gunshot. A distant gunshot. Somewhere out in the town someone had just fired a gun.

  “Oh, God, no,” Chey said. “No—Powell!”

  Powell and Lucie must be coming for her. They must have realized that Dzo’s rescue attempt had failed—or maybe they just thought it was taking too long. So they had come to Umiaq to do it themselves. To save her.

  And now they were going to die.

  “Please,” she begged. She dropped to her knees and clenched her hands together in front of her chest. “Please! I’ve never asked anyone for anything before. I’ve never done anything to hurt you!”

  “Not me, perhaps,” Varkanin said. “But Sharon—”

  “Keep begging,” Sharon said, stepping into the parlor. “Come on. Tell me what you’ll do for me if we let you live.”

  “Please,” Chey said. It was all she could manage.

  Another gunshot sounded out in the town. A cell phone in Varkanin’s pocket started ringing out the strains of Tchaikovsky, a quiet, tinny music that made mockery of Chey’s horror. She stared at him as he answered it. He spoke quietly into the mouthpiece for a few seconds.

  “Very good,” he said, and closed the phone. “Montgomery Powell is near the community center. Now it is only a matter of time. There has been no sign of Lucie yet.” He sat down on a low bench and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Sharon? Could you bring me a mineral water?”

  “I’m not done with her yet,” Sharon told him. She looked down at Chey. “I think I told you to beg some more.”

  Chey swallowed with some difficulty. “Please,” she said. “I will do anything you ask.”