As Ghost ran toward them, Jack found Callie rising even higher in his estimations.
Their old captain stopped twenty feet from Jack and Sabine, the three surviving, bleeding wolves covering him from the sides. He was grimacing through a mask of blood. He held something behind his back, and from the bulging of his arm and shoulder muscles, Jack knew that it was heavy.
"The last of your friends," Ghost said, and tossed it at them. A polar bear's head, flesh ragged where it had been ripped and hacked from its body, thudded to the ground and bounced toward Jack. With each bloody bounce it seemed to shrink instead of appearing larger, yet Jack took several steps back.
"'Ware the blood!" Callie said.
The head rolled to a stop. It stared up at the moon, mouth slightly open, long teeth receding even in death, one eye swollen almost shut as it reverted to human. The skin was dark, hair long and unbraided. Jack looked down on the face of a man, and for a shocking moment he thought that Ghost's laughter issued from the dead Tlingit Indian's mouth.
"There are no more," Sabine said softly. She was staring at Ghost.
"Not close, at least," Callie said. She stepped forward, still holding the silver knife, and nudged the head with her foot. Jack looked away. The head looked so wrong, like it could have never been part of a living, breathing man with dreams and ambitions. Unnatural dreams, he corrected himself. Bloody ambitions.
The three wolves were slowly reverting back to human form, watching Ghost as they did so.
Ghost looked back the way he had come. His clothes looked whole and untorn, his body big but not deformed. Had he really fought and defeated that thing in his wholly human form? Jack did not know, and truly the answer frightened him.
After the burst of violence and blood, the scene was suddenly peaceful. No night-creatures called from the darkness — shocked or scared into silence, perhaps — and there was only the sound of the river and their own heavy breathing. Ghost remained looking back into the dark spread of trees from where he had emerged. Vukovich glanced over his shoulder at the river, and the vague shadow of Maurilio's beheaded body still caught on the rocks. Sabine moved close to Jack, and he could sense her exhaustion. He hoped she held no guilt, and he was about to turn to her and say so when Ghost spoke at last.
"Your beast aided me, Jack."
Jack knew immediately what he meant, but still he asked, "My beast?"
"The wolf. Your wolf." Ghost looked back at them, and his smile was oddly soft. "More a wolf than any of us ever were, that's for sure. A proud beast, and strong. It jumped at the monster's throat as it went for me when I fell." He seemed almost shocked that a creature as mighty and as mysterious as Jack's wolf had come to aid instead of attack him.
"It must have seen something worth saving," Jack said.
Ghost came closer and looked down at the head, staring up from the ground between them all. "Either that or it wants them all dead."
"Any right thinkin' thing, man or beast, wants all of them dead," Callie said. She was still holding her knife, Jack noticed. Standing before him, she was looking directly at Ghost. Jack wished he could see her expression, because he had never seen her so still. Like a dog on the hunt, or a rabbit frozen in the gaze of a dreadful predator.
"The other passengers are all dead," Ghost said, pointing back over his shoulder with his thumb. "They put up a scrap, but not much of one. And there wasn't much they could do. Only one of them armed, and they went for him first. Then the others. Played with them a bit." He looked up and caught Callie's eye, stared right back at her. Jack had been subject of Ghost's glare on many occasions, and he respected Callie for not backing down at all. "You don't often see animals playing with their prey like that. The hunger was there, for sure. I could smell their hunger from where I hid, watching. But they were enjoying it, as well."
"You didn't help them," Callie said.
Ghost smiled, hands held out. "There was no one there I wished to save."
"Just what the hell are you?" Callie asked.
"Ghost is mostly like the others," Sabine said, loud enough for them all to hear.
"No," Callie said, "he ain't."
Ghost laughed and walked toward Louis, paused in front of him, then did the same to Vukovich and the Reverend. He was smiling and pleasant, not at all threatening, but none of the men backed down. The air rang with old violence, the threat of something new was distant, and seemed to Jack unlikely. When Ghost at least reached him and Sabine — passing Callie without a glance — Jack knew that things had changed.
Before, the journey had been about their final aim. Sabine was the one, the reason, and although Jack's venturing back to the Yukon might also lay some of his ghosts to rest, it was Sabine's great history and deep mystery they had come here to solve. On the way, perhaps, the wolves would discover more about themselves, and in the wild would find themselves more a part of the world.
Now it was as much about the journey as the final destination. Maurilio was gone, torn to shreds by a monster that left a blank space in the soul of the world. Vampires had hunted them, and would perhaps hunt them some more. They had to survive long enough to reach Dawson, and from there Jack was unsure where fate would take them.
Ghost, he now understood, was an inextricable part of their future. Perhaps he always had been, from the time Jack had dreamed of him swimming after their ship. Their paths had always been destined to cross again. Fighting that destiny had perhaps been the wrong path.
"Ghost," Jack said, and he heard Sabine's sharp inhalation. She can hear my acceptance, he thought.
"Mister London."
"You've been following us."
"For longer than you think, Jack."
Jack stood his ground before Ghost's imposing presence. The wolves were panting, and as they reverted fully back into their human guise, there were gentle sighs of pain as they examined their own wounds. Now there was also a sense of confidence about the group that had been absent before. On the steamer, sighting Ghost every now and then, they had been waiting for something to happen. When the vampire polar bears had attacked, their main aim had been escape and survival. Instead they had fought back, and proved themselves a capable team. Maurilio's loss was sad, but Jack knew that the others would view it as an acceptable sacrifice. They had proved themselves against monsters larger than them, more powerful, and easily more terrible.
Ghost's help had not been requested, and yet he had taken one of the beasts single-handedly, with no distraction, and no silver bullets or blade.
"It's perhaps twenty miles to Dawson," Jack said. "Callie, will there be more?"
"Perhaps," she said, still clasping the knife. "Four will be a great loss to them, but they're not things that'll retreat to lick their wounds."
"They'll be out for revenge," Louis said, staring at Ghost. "And we all know the madness revenge can bring down."
Ghost raised an eyebrow but did not reply.
"We go as fast as we can," Jack said. "My guess is about seventeen miles, maybe five or six hours. By the time the rest of their . . . pack, or whatever it is, discovers what has happened, we'll be in Dawson."
"And what then?" Sabine asked. "What if Dawson . . ." She trailed off, the inference obvious.
"Dawson's prepared," Callie said, but did not elaborate. "Jack's right. Stayin' here's a fool's game. We need to move on as soon as we can."
"We should check the others, see if there are survivors," Sabine said.
"I told you, no survivors." Ghost's voice was light but deep. Jack though he was enjoying this.
"Then we should use the dead for meat," the Reverend said. "Our blood is up. We've expended energy fighting."
Jack and Sabine glanced at each other. Jack felt the familiar revulsion, and yet he also acknowledged the wolves' need for sustenance. Sabine frowned at his hesitation in replying, but as she opened her mouth to object, it was Callie who spoke.
"No," she said. "That meat is tainted."
"With their vampire blight?" Vukov
ich asked.
Callie nodded.
"But you know very well what we are," the Reverend said.
"No matter," Callie said. "Perhaps it won't turn you into . . . somethin' else. Maybe you'll eat it an' still find you can bear the sun, and a cross pressed against your skin. But that which they've bitten or fed on carries their own dark taint. I still can't quite figure you out, but I'm pretty sure there's somethin' good in you, as well as something bad. That won't last if you're touched by what they are."
"They're nothing," Jack said, thinking of what he had felt. "They're shadows on darkness. You're all much more than that. Even you, Ghost."
"Even Ghost," Sabine said. It was a pained acceptance, and Ghost's eyebrows raised in surprise, his face slackening with pleasure. It might well have been the first time Jack had ever seen Ghost lose himself just a little, and it gave Jack pause.
"So we move out, together," Jack said.
"You'll have me with you?" Ghost asked.
"Rather you were with us than behind us," Callie said bluntly.
"Ghost," Jack said, "meet Callie. I think you'll like her."
They moved off, Vukovich and Louis scouting ahead, Ghost following them, then Jack and Sabine. Behind them came the Reverend and Callie, silent in the darkness. The river flowed beside them, innocent of the terrors that had emerged from it and the violence that had been wrought upon its banks. It carried present to future mindlessly and timelessly. Jack breathed in its scent and listened to its music, and it calmed him as he walked, and went some way to settling his mind.
Because he knew that their flight, and perhaps their fight, was far from over.
As they followed the river, the forest came to life again. Night creatures called — hunting, stalking, mating, or simply relishing the dark — and Jack took this as a good sign. Back at the scene of the fight and slaughter, the forest had fallen silent in awe and horror at what had been visited upon it. Perhaps those vampire Tlingits, shape-shifted into the most powerful of beasts, always carried silence with them, and thought that the world sang only with their own roars and the sounds of their victims' cries.
With the forest alive around them now, those dead things could be nowhere near.
Jack was filled with questions which he suspected Callie King could answer. Where did the vampires come from? He had seen the Tlingit Indian's head, but were there others from other tribes, and black and white men and women from the flood of gold prospectors? Had they been vampires for a long time? Had they always been here, or had they moved in from a different area? The north, perhaps, as could be witnessed by the fearsome shape they chose to take?
Jack suspected Callie had a closer connection to the vampires than anyone else. How did she know about them, and what was her story? He had seen it in her face as she confronted them, and in her eyes when the fight was over. In the aftermath she had been somewhere else, more distant than any of them could see by simple moonlight.
But now was the time for survival, not questions. As they moved swiftly through the trees, Jack knew that this wilderness had changed much since last he was here.
Though he was constantly aware of Sabine by his side, the sound of the river and the smell of the wild air inspired memories of the last time he was here. Then, he and his friends Merritt and Jim had fought their way along the river until winter froze them in. Their journey had been a trial that almost killed them, and it was their determination and friendship that had kept them alive. That, and Jack's wolf protecting him out in the great white silence as he had lain there unconscious, smothering him with the torn corpses of fresh kills to keep him warm. His journey with his two friends had continued, until Jim's brutal murder at the hands of the slave runners.
Jack's blood went cold at the memory. He no longer felt culpable for Jim's death — Merritt had made sure he saw the truth, and that truth held no blame for Jack — but he still bore a tremendous rage for the men who had steered events that way. Jack had come here then to make his own story, and those men had stolen his control. Jack had fought his way from beneath their influence, and he and Merritt had triumphed in the end.
This time he was returning to Dawson seeking the truth of another story — that of Sabine, his love, and a beauty who might have lived forever. And already their tale together was being influenced from outside once again. The vampires cut their own narrative with tooth and claw, and the color of this story was red.
And then there was Lesya. She was a part of his story, but she was also something that might link him and Sabine together forever. For a moment, before the battle, he had considered that she might be responsible for the beasts that had attacked the steamer and which stalked them through the forest. After all she had controlled the Wendigo, , the wretched and terrible monster that Jack had faced the last time he was here. But Lesya was a tree spirit and a friend to the forest, and those vampire monsters were friends to nothing.
Only to darkness, Jack thought, and he looked between the trees to where moonlight did not penetrate. Only to death. He remembered the screams of Tim Underwood and his party as they were stalked, taken down, murdered — the women, with their nervous smiles, and the little girl, whom Jack had known had no place out here in this wild land.
Darkness and death were his new enemies, and he swore that he and Sabine would face them together.
They only stopped once to drink; then just as Jack sensed they were nearing Dawson, Callie called a whispered halt. She moved on ahead of them all, passing Vukovich and Louis where they had lessened their lead. She moved silently through the forest, and Jack realized that dawn was smearing the hilly eastern horizon, hazing its way through the canopy and showing them the way. It was such a different light from the moon; more alive, almost breathing. He breathed his own sigh of relief, and beside him Sabine sank to her knees and relaxed.
"Dawson is close," she said, and Jack nodded.
"Can't you smell it?" he asked. For the past few minutes he had sensed wood smoke and sewage, the latter even though the river would be carrying it away from not toward them.
"I'm too tired to smell anything," she said.
Jack knelt beside her. "Are you all right? Really?"
"Tired from the journey, and weak from being on land," she said. "It seems that since meeting you I'm learning more about myself every day."
"We can rest in Dawson. It's far from a peaceful place, but at least it'll be safer than this."
"From them?" she asked wearily.
"With us there, yes," Ghost said. He had closed on them from behind and now stood silently a dozen steps away. That's the first time he's used the word "us," Jack thought, but he was too tired to commence word games with Ghost.
Callie returned, and the woman seemed suddenly tense again. "There are traps," she said. "Pits, spikes, trip-wires . . . . You'll have to all follow me, step where I step, move where I move. Understand?"
"Hunting traps?" Vukovich asked.
"Yes. For them. The people of Dawson know how to slow them down, at least." She turned and started walking, then paused and looked back over her shoulder when none of them made to follow.
"Something wrong?" she asked, looking around at the wolves.
None of them liked to receive orders, less so since ridding themselves of Ghost as their brutal captain., but they had begun to look at Jack as their pack leader. If they were going to follow instructions from anyone, it would have been him.
He had hesitated, but he did not want his pack to think he did not trust this woman. Callie was not being superior. Any suspicion Jack might have had that she would intentionally lead them into a trap had vanished during the night. There was much to Callie that still intrigued him, but treachery was not her style.
"Lead the way," Jack told her.
When Callie started out again they followed her, away from the river and up a gentle wooded slope. In several places she paused to point out a trap — deep holes with rope netting laid across them, and branches and dead leaves camouflaging them
almost perfectly from view. At one point they found a pit that had been uncovered, and Callie held back for a moment, looking up at the hazy dawn sky and drawing her knife.
Louis stepped past her, throwing her a golden smile. At the edge of the hole he crouched down to look in, then stood and turned back.
"Moose," he said. "Big one." Jack saw a glint of hunger in Louis's eye, and suspected each wolf smelled blood on the air. However, they all tempered their reactions. Callie moved on, and Jack gave Louis a grateful nod.
They crested a small rise, and before them lay Dawson, cradled within the embrace of a wide river bend. It was larger than Jack remembered, a haphazard sprawl of buildings spreading inland from the river, following the easier contours of the land and seemingly constructed with little or no thought to the layout of any connecting streets or paths. Only the buildings at the river followed some sort of uneven order, as if the first settlers had soon been overrun with those too eager to build and expand. Smoke rose from a dozen chimneys and scores of open fires. At the riverside, boats bobbed against rough docks, and great piles of belongings and provisions were strewn along the shoreline.
The main differences, though, were the structures now built around the settlement's extremes. In some places a tall wall made of timber and rock bracings ran for forty feet or more, crowned here and there with small open platforms. In other strategic places sat fortified square buildings, offering a good line of sight across the river's plain and into the trees beyond. These structures had wide, thin openings, and though from this distance he could not make out any gun barrels, he was certain they were there. "Dawson's prepared," Callie had said. Rather than comforted, Jack felt chilled at what he saw — a settlement under siege.
The sun burned clouds above the eastern hills as Dawson came awake. It was here that Jack called them to a halt, looking down on the place he had last visited almost two years before.
"This was a lawless place when last I was here," he said. He was aware of Callie watching him, and wondered what she thought of this young man traveling in the company of people who she perceived of as all slightly inhuman. "But that doesn't mean any one of us has to succumb to the wild."
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