by Ann Vremont
He pillowed his head against her breast, lazily thumbed the nipple closest to his mouth. “I didn’t think I’d ever have any decent memories of this mine shaft… let alone this,” he said.
“How long do you think we have here?” she asked, and curled up against him. She could feel him shrug.
“We have enough supplies to hide out for a couple weeks -- snow covered the scene. For all they know, you were dragged out to the shore. They don’t look for bodies very long out here -- Superior doesn’t give ’em back very often.”
He wrapped a lock of her hair around his index finger. “Could go deeper north, leave the Federation’s territory for the CBC’s. Not going to be easy living.”
Shariya tilted Eli’s head until he looked into her eyes. She saw that same flicker of guilt ghost across his face. “If I’d been into easy living, I’d never have joined the Ministry.” She kissed him, forcing another tangle of lips and tongues until she felt him relax against her and then dropped her head back onto the pillow.
“And Dupre? You never said if you finished him off.” He had been mid-inhalation and she felt him stop and hold the breath. “Is he dead?”
“Yeah. Dead and gone.”
She shook her head lightly. “Shifters are hard to kill -- Ministry uses acid; you burned the first three after killing them.”
“Your point?” He was growing restless against her, his shoulder shifting along the mattress in a twitch.
“My point is, how do you know he’s dead? Doesn’t seem like you had the opportunity to burn him.”
He lifted his head, looked at her. Whatever his answer would be, she didn’t see any guilt, just the cold glitter in the pale green eyes. Coming so soon after the heat of their lovemaking, it reminded her of the old legends of the creatures that walked these woods, of the bodies in the trees and the long winters snowed in. He laid his head on her shoulder and she curled a palm around it, threading her fingers through his hair in acceptance.
Taking a hard swallow, Shariya said good-bye to everything she had thought was right.
He’d finished Dupre off.
About the Legend
The source of the Wendigo legend is in dispute. Some say the legend did not exist until Algernon Blackwood’s horror story of the same name. Others say the history of the Wendigo stretches far back into the history of the Great North Woods, with the first mutation of a man into a Wendigo resulting from cannibalism during one of the region’s harsh winters. Regardless of how the legend started, Wendigos are said to be immune to cold, capable of producing illusions in their victims, able to heal instantly and in possession of a human intelligence that only grows sharper as they age. They also can summon darkness and other animals as well as travel interdimensionally. They are not, in short, anything you’d want to meet in real life.
Ann Vremont
Ann Vremont is a mother, wife, licensed attorney, technical writer, high school dropout and former Russian linguist for Army SigInt. She’s called Bingo for a living, waitressed at a strip club, scooped ice cream and conducted political surveys -- including for the wrong party. She maintains that, if she hadn’t dropped out of high school, she would probably be a mineralogist or a geophysicist. Ann further maintains that if she had never met her husband of seventeen-plus years or had their son when she did, she would probably be making her living illegally -- or, if unsuccessful, sitting in jail. She has a large collection of minerals and a growing collection of lighthouses. Having been born and partially raised in Arizona, the mineral collection doesn’t surprise her, but she’s still puzzling the source of her lighthouse fetish. You can find her on the web at wwww.annvremont.com