A rifle. That was what Tuomas held. He raised it in a single fluid movement, until the barrel pointed at her face. He leaned his head into the scope.
Leah closed her eyes. Perhaps this was a fitting resting place, she thought. Her father lay here. Her grandfather too. She could think of worse places to die.
You’re a Wilde. You don’t close your eyes and wait for death. You fight. Until you have nothing left.
Taking a breath, she opened her eyes.
Tuomas said something to her, and it took a moment for her brain to process his words: Get down.
An explosion of movement behind her.
Hooves. First churning mud, then thumping across hard-packed ground.
She did not have time to run. Did not have time even to turn and confront the creature that charged her. Instead, she dived.
Tuomas chambered a round; the rifle’s bolt snapped back, forward and down.
Leah hit the ground hands first, gravel chips slicing her hands like shards of glass. Beneath her she felt the vibrations of the charging stag.
The rifle blast, when it came, ruptured the air like two motor vehicles colliding. Still the animal came, hooves drumming against the earth.
Leah rolled onto her back. Saw it bearing down on her, a mountain of antlers and muscle. The front of its head was a mess of pulverised bone and flesh. Even as its forelegs dipped and its chest hit the ground, its momentum carried it onwards, antlers scouring the earth as it slid towards her. It came to a rest a yard from her feet.
Leah gasped, feeling the cold press of soil against her spine. Raising herself to her elbows, she stared at the animal’s ruined skull.
She climbed to her feet and faced Tuomas. When he chambered another round, she raised her hands, backing away.
‘Stop,’ he said.
The smell of blood was rich on the air, mingling with the stag’s musk. For some reason, her legs wouldn’t obey her. She took another step backwards.
‘Leah, I said stop. Now.’
She froze, registering the urgency in his voice. Her boots were a few inches from the tips of the stag’s antlers.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘Whatever you do, don’t touch it. Careful as you can, come towards me. Just a few feet. Until you’re away from it.’
‘You followed me here,’ she said, and heard the fear in her voice.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘You need to come away from there. It’s not safe.’
‘I asked you a question.’
Tuomas lifted his cheek from the rifle scope. Scanned the valley. ‘You’re being hunted.’
Leah swallowed. Looked back down at the carcass by her feet. Finally she complied, taking a step away, not towards Tuomas but to her right, towards the trees. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘How much detail do you need? You’re being hunted, Leah.’
She felt her blood beginning to chill. ‘By a stag?’
‘By lélek tolvajok. Trust me. You really don’t want to touch it.’ Tuomas tilted his head towards the forest and paused, listening. ‘There may be more of them. We need to go. Now.’
‘Wait a minute. You’re telling me that was one of them?’
‘Yes, and I can’t protect you in the dark. We’ve only a few minutes of light left.’
‘If you think I’m going with you—’
‘Is that your Mercedes by the gate?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you don’t need to go with me. But if you stay here and argue, you’re going to be in serious trouble.’
She stared at him, wishing she could see his eyes in the failing light. But even though his sudden appearance had frightened her, he sounded sincere.
And how much value do you place on that? He’s hosszú élet. Of course he’ll sound sincere. Look sincere. You know nothing about him. Who he is. Why he followed you.
From somewhere beyond the ridge, she heard an animal wail, almost like a fox’s scream. A moment later an answering cry rolled towards them from the other side of the lake.
Tuomas stiffened. ‘They’re coming. It’s up to you, but we don’t have time for debate.’ He began to walk back up the track.
‘Wait.’ Leah broke into a run, reaching his side in moments. ‘OK, so I don’t know who you are. That’s freaking me out. Or why you followed me. You just killed that thing, and I’ve no way of telling whether what you say is true.’
Another cry drifted across the water. Closer now.
‘But you’re right,’ she continued. ‘That’s not a sound I’ve heard before. Something’s out there.’
‘Stay close,’ he replied. ‘In the dark, their vision will be better than ours. If we—’ He raised a hand, and she stopped dead. Tuomas swept the night with his scope. Nodding, he said, ‘Let’s go.’
Her Mercedes came into sight a minute later, a black outline in the gloom. ‘Don’t unlock it,’ he told her. ‘Not until you’re beside the door. The indicator lights will alert them.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m parked at the top of the hill.’
‘Then let me drive you there. If it’s dangerous out here for me, that goes for you, too.’
He scanned the track in both directions. ‘You’re sure?’
Oddly, she found she was. As she unlocked the Mercedes its lights flashed orange.
Leah slid behind the wheel. Tuomas jumped into the passenger seat, clamping the rifle between his knees. He locked his door and she did the same.
‘Drive,’ he told her.
She didn’t need any encouragement. Revving the engine, she threw the car into reverse and backed up, sliding it around as soon as she had the space.
She found first gear, floored the accelerator. The wheels spun, digging for traction before they bit on hard ground and the vehicle rocketed forward.
Leah switched on the headlights just as something crashed out of the bushes up ahead. She cried out. Instead of swerving to avoid it, she punched the car into second gear and accelerated. Tuomas braced his hand against the dash.
The impact bounced them out of their seats. The Mercedes’ left headlight shattered and the vehicle sloughed around. Leah fought against the wheel, and for a moment she thought the car was going to spin. By sheer luck she managed to regain control, and then they were flying up the track, shredding vines and snapping tree branches.
‘Did I kill it?’ she shouted, throwing a glance at her mirror. Nothing was visible back there except darkness. Ahead, the track was lit only by her right headlight. She could see virtually nothing on her left but she couldn’t afford to slow down.
Tuomas twisted in his seat. ‘It’s following.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Two of them.’
Leah cursed, and then the car was barrelling over the lip of the track. Ripping the wheel to the right, she slid the Mercedes onto the main road and controlled the skid, tyres shrieking. With tarmac beneath her, she floored the accelerator once more. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘Forget it,’ Tuomas said, drawing the seatbelt across him. ‘Drive.’
CHAPTER 26
Outskirts of Dawson City, Canada
1944
This close to spring, Izsák did not usually risk driving the fifteen miles from their cabin into town. The Yukon, frozen since October into a white slab of river ice, choppy with its crusts of snow, was finally beginning to thaw, and he did not like to test the truck’s weight on its surface, preferring instead to hitch his dogs to the sled.
In two days’ time it was Georgia’s seventh birthday, and he had driven into Dawson to visit the post office and pick up the parcel that had arrived from Winnipeg. He and Lucy had pored over the Eaton’s catalogue for three weeks before placing a mail order for the cherry-red bicycle with its bright silver bell.
They both knew there was nowhere near their cabin for Georgia to learn to ride. For more than half the year the area was covered with snow, and even after the thaw the ground was uneven and harsh. Izsák would worry about that l
ater. The smile on Lucy’s face when she’d seen the catalogue illustration had warmed him like a baker’s oven. Buying Georgia the bike might not be practical, she had reasoned, but neither was raising their daughter in the frozen wilderness, with no electricity or running water. That hadn’t stopped them from doing it, so why should a lack of roads prevent them from purchasing the bike?
Izsák agreed; rarely, he had discovered, was anything strictly practical particularly fun. Despite its challenges, he had grown to love the Yukon’s savage wilderness almost as much as his wife and daughter. They’d built a perfect life here, full of wonder and peace; as free from the horrors of close-living humanity as they could possibly get. During the short Yukon summer they could sit out on the deck until midnight and still have enough light to read. Lucy’s vegetable garden produced a steady crop of potatoes, carrots and turnips, and Izsák fished for grayling along the river.
But it was the wintertime he liked best. The world froze and grew still. The windows of their cabin thickened with ice and the wood stove burned day and night. Izsák shot caribou, elk and moose, hanging the meat from nearby trees to foil the attentions of scavengers. They clothed themselves in the heavy garments Lucy knitted from the wool Izsák picked up in town, and during the long nights they watched the ropey green ghosts of the aurora borealis and listened to the howling of the wolves.
They’d left New York fifteen years earlier. Izsák and Lucy’s memories of the Ready Eat Lunch Wagon’s last days grew dimmer each season, but they kept Emil Otto alive through stories, and sometimes Lucy would sing to Georgia the old German songs with which he had entertained her as a child. A framed photograph of Emil hung on the wall beside the stove.
A few miles due east of the cabin, Izsák guided the truck off the Overland Trail connecting Dawson to White Horse, and navigated along the track that skirted the black spruce forest close to their home. It was slow going, the old Chevy bouncing over ruts and frozen clods of earth. A raven circled above, the only movement in a sky so intensely blue it seemed encased in crystal.
Around a final bend and he saw it waiting in the distance, their cabin: a rough home of sawn logs with a covered porch, which Izsák had built the year before Georgia arrived. Beside the cabin stood the dog barn, attached to which was the lean-to that sheltered his sled.
He’d give his Malamutes a run later. In truth he should probably have run the dogs to Dawson – one of their last excursions before the weather grew too warm – but the Chevy’s clutch had been playing up recently, and he hadn’t wanted to leave the vehicle as Lucy’s only means of transport should she need one. She was pregnant again, for the first time in seven years. He didn’t know how that could be; he’d heard such a thing was impossible. But Georgia had arrived with barely a wrinkle in the fabric of their lives; Izsák had delivered her himself one evening as a white moon turned the snowy landscape into a field of diamonds.
Ahead, smoke was feathering from the stovepipe jutting from the cabin’s roof. He frowned when he saw it. Even this close to the thaw, he could feel the crunch of ice crystals in his nose. Despite the effort he’d put into insulating the cabin the draughts still blew freely, and without a fierce steady heat from the stove the night ahead would see them shivering in their beds.
Nudging a little extra speed from the Chevy, he heard its snow chains crackle and pop. The cabin grew larger in his windshield and he noticed that its door was open, banging to and fro in the breeze.
If the sight of the thinning wood smoke had bothered him, the sight of the swinging door froze his blood. Now he spotted something else: a dark figure, sunk in a deep drift of snow, perhaps twenty yards from the door.
Izsák slammed on the truck’s brakes and the vehicle canted sideways, slithering to a stop. Grabbing his hunting rifle from the gun rack, he killed the engine.
Immediately he heard the yapping of his dogs, and that was when he knew something dreadful had happened. The noise the pack was making was no Malamute greeting at his return; they sounded crazy. Yet despite their agitation, none of them waited outside. Even Nero, his lead dog, had retreated to the darkness of the barn.
Throwing open the truck’s door, Izsák dropped into snow up to his knees. He waded towards the stricken figure, his breath pluming, the frigid air like a cold brick pressed against his face.
Lucy. It could only be her.
She wasn’t moving, and the thought of what that might mean nearly bent him double in despair. How long had he been gone? Four hours? Time enough for loved ones to die and life to change.
And where was Georgia? Unless Lucy had only just collapsed, surely his daughter would have noticed her mother’s disappearance and gone to find her.
The whispery tendrils of smoke trailing from the chimney suggested his wife had been out here a while.
Don’t panic. Panic and you lose them.
He reached Lucy’s side and sank down beside her in crunching snow. She faced away from him, as still as a doll. Izsák pulled off his gloves, reached out a hand. Only then did he realise that the woman lying in the snow was not his wife.
The hair poking out from under her knit cap was grey instead of blond, that was the most obvious thing. Likewise, she was too small, too bent. He did not recognise her clothing. Relieved it wasn’t Lucy, but heart knocking in his chest just as hard, Izsák pulled her onto her back and stared down into the ravaged face of an old woman.
The crone’s eyes were milky with cataracts. Her skin, pouched and baggy, reminded him of dried fruit. Beneath a hooked nose, colourless lips were lined with wrinkles. Her mouth hung open. From between toothless gums seeped a thin mist of breath.
When he shook her, her chest heaved and her eyelids flickered. She whispered up at him, the word rattling in her throat. ‘. . . Gonnne.’
Releasing her, Izsák strained to his feet, trying to fend off the terrible memory that rushed at him. His breath came in shallow gasps. As he stumbled towards the cabin, he tripped, fell, and used the stock of his rifle to lever himself to his feet. He arrived at the front step, slipped on ice, sprawled onto his back.
Almost comical, he thought. How Lucy would laugh if she saw him.
With a jumble of half-formed prayers spilling from his lips he grasped the wooden rail, hauling himself up to the porch. Strange that his strength should leave him like this. Strange what terror could do to a man.
Izsák pushed open the door and staggered inside. When he saw the overturned table and the spilled soup, he sobbed.
The cabin had only two rooms, with a snug half-loft for Georgia. Right now he was in the big room where they lived during the day and cooked their meals. He crossed to the bedroom he shared with Lucy.
He found her inside, collapsed on the floor, hands cradling the swell of her belly. Blood mantled her.
Too shocked to cry out, Izsák dropped down beside her and took her hand.
Lucy opened her eyes. After a moment they focused, and she found his face. ‘Oh, ’Sak. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It got inside me, eating me up. I tried, I really did. But it kept coming back into my head and I couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything to stop it.’
‘What happened?’
‘It took her. It took Georgia.’
He stared at his wife. ‘What took her? Where’s Georgia, Lucy? What happened?’
‘They . . . came. Two of them. The older woman and . . . the man with the strange clothes. Go, Izsák. Find her. Before it’s too late.’
‘Lucy, let me—’
She shook her head. ‘No. Leave me. Find Georgia.’ She coughed, a dark clot of blood. Screwing up her face, she sucked in a breath and closed her seaweed-green eyes. ‘Love you, ’Sak.’
‘Don’t say that to me!’ he roared. He shook her arm, and when she didn’t respond he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her far harder than he ought. ‘Don’t you say that, Lucy! Don’t you say that!’
It was pointless, and he knew it. The life had already left her.
Izsák screamed out his agony
. The tears came, blinding him. He wanted to lay his head on Lucy’s chest, to bury himself in her smell. Instead he dragged himself to his feet. Somehow he managed to turn his back on her. Bumping into furniture, bouncing off the rough-hewn walls, he navigated his way out of the cabin.
Izsák staggered down the steps, slipping and sliding on ice. He noticed that he clutched his rifle, that he must have grabbed it from the floor when he’d left Lucy.
It was useless until he loaded it. Hands shaking, he drew back the bolt and waded towards the old woman lying in the snow.
Her eyes were closed but breath still trickled from her mouth. Izsák dropped to one knee. He raised the gun and swept the area beyond the trees.
Nothing.
The landscape was frozen and still. Even the raven had vanished from the sky.
Izsák slung the rifle over one shoulder, slipped his hands under the old woman’s armpits and dragged her back to the cabin. Her boots clattered against the steps as he pulled her up onto the porch.
Inside, Izsák rolled her onto the couch. He crammed three dry logs into the wood burner. From a jug he poured icy water into a tin mug.
At any other time he would have felt guilt for what he did next. He flung the water into her face.
The crone’s eyes snapped open. Arching her back, fingers clawing at the couch, she let out a screech.
‘Where have they gone?’ Izsák shouted. ‘Think. Where will they go?’
‘Gone . . .’ the woman rasped.
‘Gone where? Who are you? What’s your name?’
‘Anke . . . my name . . . Anke . . .’
‘How old are you?’
Her eyes fluttered and closed. He slapped her, drawing blood from her mouth.
‘I asked you a question! How old are you?’
She began to weep, an awful whimpering sound. ‘I’m twelve,’ she said, voice like a child’s. ‘Please . . . d . . . don’t hurt me, sir. I’m twelve, twelve years old. I’m Anke . . . Anke.’
Izsák sat down hard, his heart a boulder in his chest. He stared at her, at the lines of her face, her milky white eyes.
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