Red

by Kait Nolan

  Would he expect that? Of course he would. He’d been stalking me for months. He knew I wouldn’t stay put. But had Patrick really learned me so well that he would suspect I might come back? Would he anticipate that I would be that stupid? It was stupid. I wasn’t so far gone that I didn’t recognize that fact. But I thought it might be unexpected enough that it was worth the risk.

  But then what? If I actually made it back to the cabin, what would I find? A trap? Sawyer’s body still laid out in a pool of blood? Or would the cabin be empty, scrubbed clean again of all traces of violence and death? No sign of Sawyer’s sacrifice?

  I shoved a hand against my mouth to hold in the whimper.

  I couldn’t think about it or I wouldn’t be able to function. There was nothing I could do to help Sawyer now. All I could do was avenge his death.

  With a last look at the trees where the wolves had disappeared, I set off. The going was slower than I’d have liked, not because my trail was faint but because I could barely see beneath the canopy of trees. What little moonlight filtered through the branches was quickly lost before it ever found its way to the ground. Even with my wolf’s eyes, I had to keep to a walk and pick my way over rough terrain.

  How the hell had I run through here in my half-shifted state and not broken something?

  The rain began with a drizzle, building up on leaves and dripping down just enough to be an annoyance. Another mile further and the drizzle became a torrent, complete with the growl of thunder that echoed off the mountains. What little light there was came in the sporadic flash of lightning, which did nothing more than foul up my night vision.

  I should be taking cover somewhere, not stumbling around in the dark, trying to follow a rapidly disappearing trail. But honestly, it was hard to care. My survival, at this point, had only one purpose, and I was hardly going to die of exposure in a rainstorm in July. Physical misery was far preferable to the emotional that rode in as soon as I stopped. As long as I was moving, I could hold the nightmare at bay.

  Within an hour, I’d lost my trail. Visibility was nil, and without a flashlight, I couldn’t search for other signs of my passage. I was well and truly screwed, as lost in the mountains as any newbie hiker with no sense of direction. All those years of training, all the careful planning, wasted.

  Frustration boiled up in a roar, and I whirled to strike at the nearest solid thing. My feet slipped in the wet leaves and grass and I went down with a crash, striking my elbow on something hard enough to make my vision white out. Then I was falling. Slipping, sliding, rolling, down an embankment, where I bounced off trees and rocks and other unforgiving surfaces that cut and bruised and stole my breath. At last I slid to a stop. Dizzy and sick, I lifted my head.

  And saw the creek.

  Even in the dark I could tell it was bloated with runoff. Were there other creeks and tributaries? Was this the creek? The one that ran below Patrick’s cabin? I closed my eyes trying to bring up a mental image of the map, but all I saw was Sawyer’s fingers tracing all the waterways. His hand curled around mine. His fingers against my cheek.

  I choked out a sob.

  Okay, not helping. Not helping. Focus.

  I had to look past his fingers, see the map. There was only one other possible waterway that this could be. I’d escaped from the cabin to the northwest. So chances were, this was still the creek I needed. It was action. I needed action. Had to keep moving.

  I dragged myself to my feet and headed downstream. One foot in front of the other.

  The rain stopped. I only noticed when the moon peeked out from behind storm clouds. There was still a steady patter of water dripping from the canopy of trees. Still I walked. The sky began to lighten, which improved my visibility and unfortunately made me more visible. I moved deeper into the trees, taking the harder path, the more hidden one, though my body cried out for a break. Patrick would give me no mercy. I couldn’t afford to give any to myself.

  It was the rising sun that tipped me off, as the setting had done just the day before. Light glinting off one of the barely visible window panes on the other side of the cabin. Just the sight of it made my throat close up. I approached cautiously, taking the time for stealth, as I had with the elk. There was no overt sign of Patrick. No sound. No vehicle, though I could now see a narrow track where one had been through. I took my time, circling around. Waiting. Listening.

  What if he was in there? What did I think I was going to do? I still hadn’t shifted fully. I was faster and stronger than most humans, and I was more agile not stuck between forms, but was I really ready for this? Sawyer hadn’t managed to overpower Patrick. In fact, he’d seemed almost . . . weakened somehow. What if I found Patrick now, before I was ready, and failed?

  Failure was not an option. Before it didn’t matter which of us died because I had no child to carry on the curse. Now that I knew there were others like me out there, this wasn’t just about revenge. It was about protecting them too.

  “It ends with me,” I whispered.

  My hands curled to fists, and I crept forward to peer in the window. It was the back room, the one with the bed. No sign of Patrick. I pressed my ear to the glass, listening. Nothing moved inside. If he was in there, he might be asleep.

  I crept around to the door, pausing to listen again. Still nothing. I took a breath and held it as I turned the knob degree by slow degree. There was a snick as it disengaged, and I nudged the door open an inch, just far enough to press my eye to the slit. The room was swathed in shadows. Still no sign of Patrick. I released the breath and took another before I edged inside.

  The room was empty. No Patrick. No Sawyer, though the floor was coated in a sticky residue of drying blood where his body had lain. It looked as if Patrick had started to drag him into the back room, then changed his mind and dragged him out of the cabin. The trail ran right between my feet to the door. Of course he’d have to get rid of the body.

  I bolted out the door before I could vomit and compromise the scene, just in case the cops ever actually did find this place.

  When the heaving stopped, I went back inside, steeling myself to ignore the blood and do what I needed to do. Our packs were still dumped in a pile on the floor. I hauled them both outside. Yes, it was in the open, but I wasn’t about to spend any more time in that bloody room than I had to.

  There wasn’t much to remove from my pack. Sawyer had taken on all the heavy stuff after my half-shift the day before. I shifted some of the foodstuffs, grabbed the water filtration system, and the flint. I left the tent. No way was I making myself a sitting duck by not being able to see what was coming. I pawed through the rest of Sawyer’s pack, looking for the knife. He always wanted it out of my hands, so he’d filched it again and hidden it. But it wasn’t in the bag. The body chills were starting again, and I couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

  I slipped out the map and compass and marked the coordinates of the cabin, as I hadn’t remembered to do yesterday. If something happened to me, maybe someone would find the map, find the cabin and figure out what it meant. A whole lot of ifs. Studying the topography of the area, I tried to best judge where I could take shelter. I’d never make it back to my cave, so what was my closest option? The X’s I’d marked a couple days before seemed to float in my vision. Great, so hallucination was coming next? I wasn’t going to make it far.

  I pulled my attention back to the X’s. Where Rich and Molly had been picked up. Rich said he’d stowed Molly in a cave within walking distance of the cabin. I estimated that maybe they’d have made it two miles in the shape they were in. I drew a rough circle of that radius around the location of the cabin. Rich had said it was near the river. I hadn’t seen anything suggesting a cave on the way up, so it seemed my best bet was to continue upstream.

  My hands were clammy as they folded the map and stowed it and my compass in an outside pocket. After a moment’s hesitation, I swapped my sleeping bag with Sawyer’s. I’d want those sub-zero capabilities when I was freezing with fever
. With a few more adjustments to the contents of my pack, I slipped it on and headed toward the river. I needed to find shelter before the next round of fever hit.

  ~*~

  Sawyer

  The tent was small, one of those ultra-light backpacking numbers that folded up to practically nothing. To the front, a circle of stones marked the remnants of a fire from the night before. Gear, if there was any, must’ve been inside the tent. Nothing stirred in the long, dawn shadows, but I didn’t go any closer. I could move in silence, but I couldn’t move fast. Not yet.

  My chest wound had closed up in the dark hours before sunrise, the whistle-gurgle blessedly changing to a wheeze. My collapsed lung still hadn’t re-inflated, and I’d been coughing up blood off and on for a few hours now. That limited my capabilities of exertion, which meant I had to be smart rather than rash. Rushing the tent and tearing it open without knowing who was inside and how they might be armed would just be foolish. So I bellied down at the crest of the ridge above to wait and rest.

  I didn’t have to wait long. The buzz of the zipper being dragged open seemed abnormally loud in the morning quiet. Muscles tense, I leaned forward watching the opening. My vision shifted, my wolf rising as a hand emerged, shoving the tent flap down so a man could crawl out.

  It wasn’t Patrick.

  I had to hold in the gust of disappointment. Campers. Just campers. No use to me, just someone else to evade.

  A dog trotted out after the man and raced for some bushes beyond the camp to relieve himself. A few moments later, after considerable flopping around, a woman emerged, shoving a pack in front of her.

  “I would pay a week’s salary for coffee,” she declared.

  “There’s instant in the side pocket,” her companion offered.

  “No, I mean, real coffee. I bet they’ve got real coffee at base,” she said wistfully. “You know they always keep Eileen fueled.”

  Base?

  “Well they’ve gotta keep her going. She was probably up most of the night, just in case anybody called in. You know nobody got Nate to actually stop looking. I mean who can blame him.”

  Search party. They’re part of a search party looking for Elodie. I was suddenly doubly glad I was positioned downwind.

  “I’ll grab the radio and report in. See if we have any new orders.”

  I settled down again. They might not be a waste after all.

  The woman dug a walkie out of her bag. “Good morning Base, this is Charlie Team.”

  “Morning Janet.” I recognized the voice as the dispatcher who ran the search for Rich and Molly Phillips. Same team then.

  “Sun’s up. We’re gonna make a bite to eat before we head out. Any news in the night?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did anybody get Nate to sleep at all?” asked Janet.

  “Two hours during the rain. That was it.”

  “Are we sticking to yesterday’s grid?”

  Before Eileen could reply, another voice crackled on the line. “Got something.”

  Elodie’s father.

  “Found some tire tracks on an access road that seem to match the ones we found on the Phillips search.”

  “What’s your location?” asked Eileen.

  Nate relayed the coordinates.

  “Sending a deputy your way to take a cast.”

  An access road to the cabin or somewhere else?

  “George will stay. Dr. Everett and I are gonna keep going, see where this leads.”

  Shock kept me frozen in place. Patrick wasn’t out skulking around the mountain trying to pick up Elodie’s trail on his own. He was with the goddamned search party. With Elodie’s dad, the person most likely to know what she’d do out here because he’s the one who trained her. And Nate had no idea he was practically a walking hostage.

  Shit.

  I had to get my hands on that radio and a map.

  The radio went to static for a bit. Then the dispatcher came back on. “Ken, you and Janet proceed according to yesterday’s trajectory. You’ll be informed if anything changes.” Eileen signed off.

  “I hope this comes to better results than the Phillips search. If anything happens to that girl, Nate’s gonna lose it,” said Ken.

  “He won’t be the only one. Elodie is one of ours. We’ve gotta bring her home,” said Janet. She put the radio back in her pack. “We can eat and be packed in fifteen.”

  Fifteen minutes. That wasn’t much time for me to come up with any kind of diversion. How the hell was I going to manage to distract both of them and the dog? I had absolutely nothing on me. I wasn’t at top speed. No way could I just run in and snatch what I needed. What could I do when I was still injured that would draw them away from camp and leave their gear behind so I could get to it?

  Still injured . . .

  As Janet began pulling out provisions and Ken headed to break down the tent, I edged away from the ridge. My vocal range wasn’t far with my limited lung capacity. But I figured I should be able to get just far enough away to call for help. It might not be loud enough for the people to hear, but the dog would catch it. And it would be trained to respond to that. If I was lucky, they’d all come running, and I’d have just enough time to slip around back to camp to nab the map and radio. It was my only shot.

  It was difficult to keep my wheeze to a minimum as I moved. I felt a cough welling up in my chest and had to fight to hold it in. I needed the accompanying blood as something for the dog to fixate on when I got to my diversion point.

  Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe.

  Seventy-five yards was about as far as I got before the hacking burst out of me. I doubled over with the force of it. Blood spattered the ground at my feet. Man, how long was I gonna keep doing that?

  I took a breath, wondering if I imagined that that was a little easier than it had been.

  “Help!” Well shit, that sounded pathetic. Right on target. “Help me!”

  I fell quiet, listening. No sign that they’d heard me. My next inhale brought on another coughing fit that took me a couple minutes to recover from before I could manage to call again, louder this time. “Help!”

  That was it. A bark in the distance. The dog had heard me. I called out once more for good measure then let my wolf ascend, changing my scent as I started circling my way around to come at their camp from the other direction.

  Please, please work.

  “What is it, boy? Show me, Ripley.”

  Okay, Janet’s on board. What about Ken?

  He was still packing up gear when I came around, rolling up the tent and stuffing it in his pack.

  Shit. Now what?

  I was contemplating whether I could rush him when Janet called out, “Ken! Come here!”

  The blood had done its work then.

  Ken bolted after Janet, leaving the packs behind. I didn’t waste time. As soon as Ken was out of earshot, I slunk into their camp and began rifling through the bags. The radio was easy. Right where Janet had left it. I shoved it into a pocket of my cargo shorts and began rifling for the map.

  C’mon, where the hell is it?

  I checked all the outer pockets. Nothing.

  “ . . . need to call it in.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Why were there so many damned pockets? Elodie hadn’t carried a pack this size on her rescue. Why were they? I finally found the compass wrapped in a bandana in the top of Ken’s pack.

  “He’s not alerting to Elodie, but that blood is human. Somebody’s out here and they’re hurt,” Janet insisted.

  Where was the goddamned map?

  I gave up on stealth and tore through the bag. There! A corner of paper sticking out of the sleeping bag roll. I tugged. Success.

  Who the hell puts a map in a sleeping bag?

  I zipped the pack shut and tore out of the campsite, but not before the dog was close enough to hear. He came streaking through the trees after me, barking the alarm. I whirled, dropping to a crouch. The dog skidded to a halt, sniffin
g, barking, clearly confused at this mix of scents that matched what he had found, and yet didn’t. I let my wolf as close to the surface as possible without actually shifting. The growl rumbled out, low and menacing. The dog backed up a couple steps but didn’t stop barking. I could hear the crunch of footsteps as the searchers ran toward us.

  No time for this.

  I reared up, venting my frustration in a bear-like roar that sent the dog skittering back to its people. Then I turned and fled, mentally repeating the last coordinates Nate had reported.

  ~*~

  Elodie

  It was the scent of old blood that caught my attention. I was weak and dizzy with fever as I knelt to inspect the traces of rust caught at the top of a fissure of rock, as if a hand had grabbed it and been cut. Was it human? I bent to get a closer sniff. My pack shifted and I overbalanced. For a long suspended moment I hung there, arms pinwheeling, struggling to right myself before I toppled over the side and into the fissure.

  It was my pack that kept me from plunging to the bottom and breaking bones. I wedged between it and one craggy wall, losing a few layers of skin in the process where my legs banged against rock and my shirt rode up. But I was still whole. And stuck.

  I kicked my feet, trying to find something to push off of and climb out, but the space below me widened and I couldn’t get my knees high enough to gain purchase against the sloping walls. Within the harness of my pack, I wriggled, unsnapping straps to see if I could get free of the bag itself. It would fall, but then I should be able to climb down and get it, pushing it up ahead of me. The fissure wasn’t so deep that I couldn’t climb back out again. It took a lot of effort and exhaling, trying to compress my chest like a mouse, but at length I got my arms free of the pack and dragged my body up a few inches.

  As predicted, the pack slid down, landing at the bottom with an echoing thump. I made my way carefully after it until I sat at the base of the shaft, gasping and exhausted from something that shouldn’t have taken that much effort. The light didn’t penetrate too far down here, but I could tell from the echoes that the space continued on for some distance. By some miracle, my flashlight had survived the fall. Its beam pierced the dark, revealing a cave. Nothing so ideal as mine. The floor was rock strewn and uneven. But it was tall enough for me to stand, and it would hide me well enough while I went through transition.