The Call (The Great North Woods Pack Book 2)

by Shawn Underhill

  Lying still in the dark, wretched, her mind was awash in swirling thoughts. The swing from such exhilarating highs to such a terrible low in the matter of days felt like whiplash to her spirit. No sense could be made of it—no more than could be made for a weekly TV sitcom. Maybe old Ed was right with his rollercoaster analogy. Maybe that’s all it was—a senseless ride with no real purpose, no destination, and a sudden end. That’s how it was for Emmy. One night careless and free, and the next ...

  Rolling over, Evie faced the large window and gazed into the hazing night. How she loved the clear night sky in the cool north, the depths of its darkness so far from city lights. How she hated to see the clouds obscuring it, dulling the moon and stars, giving the world below a smaller feeling, like being under a canopy of gloom. She stared and stared, her eyes half open, focusing on what stars were still visible until all the sky was an even gloom.

  ***

  Blinking, realizing that she’d been dozing, she took a long breath, felt herself coming back into her weighted body, and rolled over facing the dark wall opposite the window. The nap had numbed her body like a mild anesthesia, but it had done nothing to lighten the heavy presence of her grief.

  The bedroom door slowly opened. Her grandfather asked softly if she was awake.

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “It’s meeting time. I’d like you to join us.”

  For a moment she lay still, on the verge of saying she didn’t want to go. Then somewhere deep inside her she felt her will bending to his gentle plea—the soft invitation of the man she valued more than any other in the world, who provided safety and stability to the lives of so many, who could demand rather than ask and be well within his rights.

  She arose and followed him down the stairs silently. The children were still there, sprawled out sleeping on various pieces of furniture. The two of them stepped out quietly, shifted once their feet left the steps, and landed at a run, the elder a half a body length ahead, in the direction of the southernmost cornfield.

  From wretched lethargy to infuriated might Evie felt herself pass in a second. Grieving in its own strange way, the wolf’s bitterness, exhausted with crying, now sought outlet through wrath. A snarl arose in her throat almost beyond her control as they passed the barns, and she had to train her eyes straight to keep from seeking a helpless victim therein to scapegoat.

  “Steady,” said the white wolf. “Control is most crucial in times of grief.”

  “Yes,” she acknowledged, pushing it down with the help of his voice. “Are meetings not held on Moon Rock?”

  “Family meetings are. Before that, we have a smaller meeting that must remain secret. All share your bitterness tonight.”

  “Secret? With who?”

  “We are not meeting with wolves,” he said as they crossed the corn field. “I will explain when we draw near. For now our focus must be on time. Our full speed is required; our window is narrow. Once near town we’ll turn west and venture off of family land.”

  Without voicing her questions Evie pressed on, running at his side with her vision a fixed tunnel on the trails ahead. The destination mattered little, she realized, in comparison with the privilege of enjoying his special favor. And she trusted him like no one else. Wherever they were going, it was certainly important to him. So, she told herself, it must also be with her.

  ***

  What felt to Evie like at least a half a dozen miles quickly disappeared behind them once they joined the western trail, which was a new trail to her. Holding back a step, she ran at her grandfather’s shoulder, tense with nerves, unsure of the feeling that leaving family lands stirred within her. Home lands were good lands to her experience. Strange places—especially in light of the recent events—seemed under a constant and foreboding shadow of doubt.

  At an open spot of the trail they finally slowed. Catching their breath side-by-side, they looked out over the countryside dropping away from the rise on which they stood. Below there was a small town in the distance—small to Evie’s eyes but still much larger than Ludlow. The lights of a brief main street glowed foggy orange under the starless gloom, and occasional cars alit the small neighborhoods. Beyond the town she saw portions of a river snaking through the hilly landscape, and nearer, a stretch of railroad tracks still in use, evident by the locomotives and the station present on the edge of town, bordered the eastern corner of the valley town and then stretched off into the green countryside.

  “The town of Jackson,” the white wolf said. “Just beyond it is the Vermont border.”

  “Quaint,” Evie remarked.

  “That it is.”

  “How far have we traveled?”

  “Roughly eight miles.”

  “What’s here?”

  “Nothing for us.”

  “Then why come?”

  “Here is simply an easy meeting place to agree upon, with miles separating us from the other wolves. I can smell my friend already, so we won’t wait long. His name is Eustace Billings. He is a cat.”

  At the word cat Evie’s scruff stiffened as the surges of instantaneous electricity began pulsing through her spine. “Why?” she asked, with no attempt of sounding pleased or open to the idea.

  “He was once my enemy, but for years since I have considered him a friend,” her grandfather said. “You have now seen the full repercussions of rivalry. I have brought you here for another view—one misunderstood by most. By phone he requested to speak in person, apart from all the others. So here we are. And here he comes.”

  She smelled the cat clearly now that she knew what scent to search for. After being distracted by the sight of the town, and before she could turn her head from the view of Jackson to the dark of the trail from where the scent came, she heard a voice. Then, looking as she listened, she saw two pairs of pale cat eyes moving closer, one just ahead of the other. Only the sounds of very light padding accompanied their slow visual approach.

  “The old wolf speaks truly,” said the lead cat, brown-gold in the gloom. “We have great respect for one another, your grandfather and I, though in my estimation he is the more deserving of the two.”

  The feelings Evie had seeing and hearing the cat were confused, offsetting, and set in on her as suddenly as a heart attack. She trusted her grandfather in her heart, but every drop of blood racing through her veins despised the presence of this creature. Without intending it, her posture lowered to a defensive stance—a very unwelcoming greeting.

  “She is very young,” the white wolf said, “and this is all very new to her. Pardon her, old friends. I can vouch for her goodness.”

  “She is pardoned,” the old cat said.

  “Most certainly,” said his wife at his side.

  “Eustace and Hannah,” the white wolf said to his granddaughter. “We have known one another for long decades.”

  “Centuries make the number smaller,” said the old cat as he looked directly at Evie. “Hello, young Snow.”

  “Hello,” was her weak acknowledgment, like answering a telemarketer’s call. Her body was rigid, her eyes unmoving.

  “My kind has made a very poor first impression on you,” Eustace said to her. “My sons, my own blood, have directed toward you unprovoked evil. I cannot blame you for your uncertainties, I can only apologize. And to you, old friend,” he said to her grandfather, “I am profoundly sorry.”

  “As am I,” said the white wolf. “Our children are often beyond our control. Such pride and such shame they bring us, and so thin is the line of decision they walk. My pack meets soon, and my brother is near. What can I do for you in short time?”

  “Nothing,” said Eustace. “I ask nothing and expect nothing. You have come in good faith without question. Now in good faith send me off. This is the last time we will meet. I could not respectfully say goodbye into a clumsy device with static in my ears. Bell’s machine was never my favorite.”

  “It is that bad?” asked the white wolf.

  “It is.”

  “Is there nothi
ng to be done?”

  “Nothing humanly.”

  “This grieves me,” the wolf sighed.

  “As it does me.”

  “Reconsider. I—”

  “No. To escape as an animal is our last resort. We will no longer accept your charity; we are leaving for good. My last two sons, I trust, have not survived their foolish endeavor this evening. You’ll understand, as one who has also buried young, that we cannot remain living near the grounds where all five children born to us are now condemned to decay.”

  “I do,” the wolf said softly.

  “I have failed completely as a man,” said Eustace. “As an animal I can at least survive with small dignity. So this is how we will finish our days on the earth, on four legs, traveling by night, and hiding by day. Without our sons, humanity has nothing more to offer us.”

  Evie made not a sound while the old cat spoke, but listening to his voice she came to believe that the cat Ed had shot must have been one of the sons he spoke of.

  “You understand also,” the old cat continued, “with regard to this night, why I could not warn you, though I knew the plans of my sons and gave all of myself to discourage them.”

  “I understand,” said the white wolf. “Neither could I give up my own, no matter their wrongs. It is too much to bear.”

  “As you can see, I have lost all sway over family and likeness. The others pay me no respect. This night has been a long time coming. I am old and foolish in their eyes, weak and unworthy of being an example. Of course, the newer implants pushing in from the west do not remember the good years between us. As independents they come east to test the closer quarters, yet they refuse to accomplish anything good together. They see only closed doors on the paper mill, poor towns apart from tourists, shrinking wild lands behind their homes, and the old, like us, struggling to keep a peace that makes no relative sense in the urgency of their times.”

  “I have always despised politics,” said the wolf, “as my father did before me.”

  “I remember that about him,” said Eustace. “Sense was his way, as it is yours.”

  “These colonies once held tremendous promise, but my faith in these moderns is weak.”

  “Mine is gone altogether,” complained the old cat. “Vanished.”

  “How old are you?” Evie interrupted. Her posture had relaxed as she’d listened to the old cat speak, and her curiosity was taking her over.

  “Old enough to know better,” replied Eustace with a very faint hint of humor. “Closer to two centuries than one I have lived. Long enough to have seen the lands vary; be desecrated to satisfy the thirst for lumber, change owners and sprout new life again. I have observed your grandfather to be the most deserving of us to possess what he does.”

  “No,” said the white wolf with a small grunt.

  “Do not dishonor me, friend, on a night of such loss,” Eustace said with a low growl. “You have won both the battles of finance and territory; I merely speak of what I observe. Still I have love for my kind, but I have lost all respect for those I know. Hannah and I are leaving. It is final. We could not withdraw without expressing our respects.”

  “No we could not,” said Hannah. “With every word my husband has spoken I am in complete agreement. Damn these lands and the greed that struggles for them. Damn the men in power that crush us, and damn the fighting between the animals. We will go west and test its potential … and north if we must, to live out our final days in peace. It is better to wander than to sink in place.”

  “I have no words,” uttered the white wolf. “Things are worse than I realized.”

  “They are,” agreed Eustace. “But I trust you will hold on even as I am letting go. May you never change, and,” turning to Evie he said in the same breath, “may you learn from him the proper ways of men and beasts. He understands the world better than most. Listen to his teachings and follow in his ways. It was you that lost a father in your infancy, was it not?”

  “I never knew him,” Evie said quietly.

  “No, you did not. But you know well the absence violence has provided. Don’t you?”

  She gave no answer. Hatred for the cats had developed easily within her in such a short time, and now, hanging her head slightly, she realized that these two cats were far from the despised stereotype she’d so quickly constructed in her mind. The knowledge unsettled her. If she wasn’t living within the simple scenario of good guys vs. bad guys—they being bad of course—very quickly she felt confused about everything else as well. The very ground beneath her suddenly felt less stable.

  “Now, Joseph,” said the old cat. “I do not have to remind you of what will surely follow.”

  “No.”

  “My eldest son, I presume dead—”

  “Know that it was not I who killed him,” the old wolf said.

  “No. You striped his flesh, reasoned with and threatened him, but you would not kill him, that I trust. And for your patience he repaid you by setting in motion, even before the attack he feared would fail, the true plans to bring you harm. Of that I am most deeply ashamed. So watch diligently, my friend. Expect it. And do not let the humans succeed. My only comfort is the knowledge that they will never secure a dead specimen to dissect. Do not allow them a living one. That I beg you.”

  “Not while I live,” vowed the old wolf.

  “And the rest,” said Eustace, “has always been yours alone. The meddlers will come, rest assured.”

  “I trust so and I fear it daily.”

  “Beat them,” growled the cat. “Reserve your mercy for those more deserving. Put them down harder than you’ve put us down, until none that suspect survive. If I live long enough to someday hear news of it, I will be glad, knowing you as a friend, to have remained true, and in wisdom are reigning victoriously.”

  “As long as I live, no man will lord over us,” the wolf promised. “And no man will gut these forests.”

  “Good,” said Eustace, and with respectful bows of their heads the two old cats began turning away. “I can leave on no better of a note.” Then he stopped and looked back. “Abel is here, did you say?”

  “He is,” the white wolf replied, “but miles away at present. His attention is never drawn this far west. It is a place too polluted by men for him. Your travels should be unhindered until you reach the smaller packs of New York. The space between them is greater, easy for two to weave between, and as I know them, they worry little for drifters, as long as their presence remains secret.”

  “Again, deepest thanks,” said Eustace. “Farewell. Very well.”

  “And you,” returned the wolf.

  And turning fully away the two cats broke into a trot. Their golden outlines disappeared quickly and quietly in the dark.

  ~6~

  “I don’t know what to say,” Evie muttered as the cats disappeared. “I thought them all evil and cruel and without hearts.”

  “No,” her grandfather said. “But we haven’t time to discuss it. If you listen very closely you will hear our pack gathering on Oak Hill. Ah, yes, and here comes the cold rain. A blessing to hide the events of this night from outsiders, but a curse to us forced to live in it. In five minutes it will be pouring. We must hurry.”

  Running east and then southeast with the contours of the trail, the two rushed full speed to the corner of Ludlow. From there they moved north to the farm, entering the lower cornfield, rushing between the cornstalks and then skirting the pastures, avoiding the narrow trail used by the other wolves on the way to meetings. They reached the upper fences adjacent the house, leapt them, and loped along to the apple trees at an easy pace. Entering the wide trailhead, passing the intersection of where the narrow met the wider, they moved along without meeting another soul. The rain was tapping lightly overhead on the leaves, but still the trails were dry and firm underfoot. To wolf ears, from the north drifted through the trees the sounds of many voices.

  “Say nothing of our meeting,” the white wolf warned.

  “I won’
t.”

  “When the others have cooled, we will explain. Now their wounds are too fresh, and our focus must be on future defense.”

  “What else is coming?”

  “Men,” he growled. “Meddlers and hunters, fools tramping our trails, baring guns and cameras.”

  “Hunting season?”

  “That is close, but those are of little consequence to us; we are accustomed to them. The ones we must fear are different; those seeking trophies and proof of the paranormal. They are a dire threat and an endless frustration. The pack will be enraged.”

  ***

  Moon Rock was dark under the storm and shining black with rain, and nearly half of that wide knoll was obscured by the bodies of great wolves, pacing, panting, grumbling, tending wounds, and complaining bitterly. Above their noise the thunder was rolling near, and in the flashes of lightening their many bodies showed wet and ragged with folded back ears, wretched like drowned rats.

  “Our faithful leader arrives,” Abel scoffed when the last two wolves scaled the hill and entered their midst, the pack opening around them. “Brother,” he said, moving his eyes from the elder to the young silver-white, “and his new shadow.”

  Standing proudly beside her grandfather, Evie felt neither overly intimidated or threatened by him. But still his presence and his fiery gaze was far from comforting. He was a fire-eyed demon, a massive dark shadow animate with wrath. Even without his voice she could sense his anger and his hostile intents. In the rain his strong scent clung to him as stink to a wet dog.

  “Your arrival,” said the white wolf, speaking gratefully to counter his antagonism, “surely spared lives. We are all in your debt.”

  Pacing, stalking his brother in a wide circle, the black wolf growled low and deeply as the nearing thunder shook all. “Yes, they are in my debt, but none so deeply as you.” Holding his glare straight, disrespectfully, at his brother, he asked with a hint of humor, “What has kept you?”