“Tell me about it! This guy makes things happen!”
“Yeah, he sure does that.”
Eight
The sky was a perfect blue, but the wind cut like frozen knives, even in the shelter of the trees. There were four of them, about a hundred and fifty yards away. The alpha male, a huge, magnificent beast, and three females. One of them was alpha. The other two jockeyed for the male’s attention, but at a snarl from the alpha female they scattered and then came circling back, playful, appeasing.
These were not Alaskan gray wolves. These were canis lopus albus, tundra wolves from Siberia. They were bigger, reaching up to seven feet in length and up to one hundred and twenty-five pounds in weight. This pack had been introduced into Alaska by Maria’s team, so they could study them more closely. They had been hunted to near extinction in Russia because they were more dangerous, more aggressive and more organized than other wolves, and had been known, during severe winters, to lay siege to villages and kill the inhabitants.
Maria shouldered the rifle, adjusted the sights, exhaled, aimed just behind the big male’s right shoulder and fired.
The animal yelped and jumped. The females scattered and Maria grabbed her kit and half ran half slid down the snow bank to the shallow valley below. She crouched down beside the great beast. He was a magnificent specimen, easily six and a half or seven feet from nose to tail. She withdrew the tranquilizer dart and opened her small case. She filled a syringe with his blood and introduced it into a phial, which she labeled Alpha 1.
Then she checked his eyes and teeth. He was in great shape. She patted him and smiled.
“You’ll be back on your feet in an hour. Thanks, pal.”
She was about to stand when she heard a noise. It was a soft, snuffling behind her. She turned slowly. Ten paces away there was a wolf. She recognized her. It was the alpha female. The situation was potentially very dangerous. Maria was in a dominant position over the alpha male, effectively challenging the alpha female’s position in the pack. She remained still and did not make eye contact. The female moved a little closer. She was making no signs of aggression as yet.
Then there was a movement in the trees. Four, five, then seven, then ten wolves appeared and began to close in on her. Her heart was pounding. These were the only wolves on record ever to have attacked and killed people. And here she was, potentially challenging both male and female leaders of the pack. Her instinct was to run, but she knew that running was not an option, particularly in this deep snow. They would be on her in seconds and tear her apart. All she could do was communicate, with her body language, that she meant them no harm.
But her fear slowly turned to excitement as the female, clearly more interested than threatened, approached to within a few inches and began to smell, first her hand, then her arm and her leg. Next thing she was nuzzling her and rubbing her great, shaggy head against Maria’s face and shoulders. Maria burst out laughing in sheer delight and hugged the huge beast. Then the others, a total of twelve, approached, and within minutes they were bounding playfully around her, rubbing against her, asking to be petted and stroked. Somehow, for some reason, they had accepted her as one of their own.
After fifteen minutes of sheer, unmitigated joy, Maria got to her feet and began the long trudge back to the cabin. It took an hour and a half to cover the distance. She could have done it faster on the snowmobile, but that would have risked scaring away the wolves. Plus, her instinct told her not to advertise her presence. You never knew.
Half way back she suddenly sought the cover of the trees and crouched down in the snow, scanning the sky. Far off she could hear the buzz of a small biplane, maybe four or five miles away. They were more numerous in these parts than cars, but still they were not common. She waited for the sound to fade, then carried on.
By two thirty, when she got to the cabin, the sun was already sinking towards the horizon, casting a soft, copper wash on the snow. She locked herself in the cabin, stamped the snow off her boots and hung up her coat. The fire was burning well and she stood in front of it until she had thawed and warmed up. Then she changed her clothes, poured herself a stiff whiskey and took her blood samples from her kit.
The cabin was really a field lab, and a pretty sophisticated one at that. It had cutting edge computers and the capability for advanced blood and tissue analysis. She set up her tests, and to the quiet hum of the machines she set to work typing her report, with the results of her tests so far.
She was not sure yet whom she would send her report to. She would try the conventional channels, the dean, even the FBI. Perhaps she would contact a journalist. It was impossible to tell how people would react to what she had to say, but her tests were proving conclusive. They would provide proof positive of what she already knew. There had been a mutation, probably as far back as thirty-five thousands years ago, in which the genes of the ancestor of the tundra wolf had melded with a group of humans and produced the necessary proteins to ‘switch on’ those genes, and under intense emotional stress, those genes were triggered and the person experienced a temporary metamorphosis into a being that was part wolf and part human – a werewolf.
But what was terrifying, what was really going to make the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan, was the next step; the step that would be put down to conspiracy theory paranoia - the step that said that this small group of people, being stronger, more aggressive, with an overriding pack instinct of loyalty and servitude to the alpha male and female, had risen to positions of power in society, and now preyed on the weak and the vulnerable.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. It was dark outside. She had lost track of time. An icy wind was howling through the pine forests and a huge silver moon was beaming its strange, silver-blue light through the window.
The moon. Every time she saw it she could not help thinking of Mark. How would it have been if he had survived? If somehow they had managed to defeat Sylvia and Cún, could they have made a relationship work? Could she have ‘cured’ him? Knowing what she knew now, she was confident she could. But would he have been happy? Could he have lived with the loss of that side of himself? She would never know, but she could at least bring this knowledge to the world.
It was late and she was tired. She switched off her computer and rose. She threw more logs on the fire and went to draw the drapes across the window.
She frowned. A dark shape moved among the trees in the moonlight. She switched off the desk lamp, leaving only the flickering glow of the flames. The snow was luminous blue outside. The shadows of the trees played tricks with your eyes, seeming to move and shift. She thought she saw wolf. A large wolf in the shadows. She was certain of it. Too big for a gray. It must be a tundra wolf, from her pack. It was rare to see one alone. Was it the big alpha male, still groggy and disorientated from the tranquilizer?
She smiled. Or was it just her eyes and her imagination playing tricks on her?
She closed the drapes and climbed into bed.
For a while she was not sure if she was dreaming. She lay very still. She was not scared, not even alarmed. It did not seem strange to her at all that the door to the cabin was open. Through it she could see the blue luminescence of the snow, and she could feel the icy air on her cheeks and her nose. That was when she began to realize that she was not dreaming.
The wind, she thought, must have blown open the door. But the lock was secure, and the wind was not that strong. Then she saw the wolf. It was standing in the doorway, watching her.
She swore, “Shit!” and sat up.
It took a couple of steps towards her. It did not seem alarmed. It paused and smelled the air, then came close, smelling her hand and her face. She went cold. On some visceral level she knew, without the faintest doubt, that this was not the alpha male. This was not any wolf.
She stroked his head and his neck. He nuzzled her and seemed to whimper. She whispered, “Mark…”
Then he turned and left. She wanted to rise and follow him, to call him back, bu
t a terrible sleepiness took hold of her. Her eyes were like lead and she sank into deep sleep.
When she awoke the sun was shining. She looked immediately at the door. It was closed and securely locked. It must have been a dream. She rose and went to the kitchen area to make coffee. She pulled back the drapes to let in the sunlight, and froze. There were the tracks. A single set of large tracks, leading from the trees to the door, and then off again, into the wilderness.
He was here. She knew it. Somehow he was here, and he wanted her to know it. But how? He was not in an emotionally stressed state. He was not aroused or enraged, nor was he in the form of a werewolf for that matter. He was just a wolf. Why?
On some instinctual level she knew why. She didn’t know how she knew. She just knew. She dressed rapidly, packed a knapsack with food, a flask of hot, sweet tea and a first aid kit, then put on her coat and set out to follow his tracks.
Nine
She did not have to go very far. The weather was cold and dry and his tracks were easy to follow. Still, progress through the dense snow was slow and difficult and it took her the better part of an hour to reach him. He had sought the cover of the trees, deep inside the forest, and lay curled up at the base of three tall pines that half encircled him. She hurried towards him, struggling through the drifts. He did not look up.
She knelt by his side and examined his eyes. He was alive, but barely. He had visited her to say his last farewell. She fought back the tears. Now was not the time, she told herself. Now was the time to focus, think and act.
That night she had been groggy and half asleep. She had just stroked his head and face, but he had whimpered. Now she examined his neck, his shoulders and his back. She found deep gashes and savage wounds unhealed and infected. She did the best she could with the first aid kit, but a feeling of helplessness was overtaking her.
“I need to get you back to the cabin, Mark. Can you walk? Can you even hear me?”
He opened his eyes. They were dull and lifeless and she knew he was telling her to leave him to die. She sighed. “That’s not the way it works, pal.”
He closed his eyes again and rested his head in the snow. She stared at him. He must weigh a hundred and twenty pounds if he weighed an ounce. There was no way she could carry him and there was no way he could walk. Her only option was to go back for the snow mobile. The thought gave her a deep sense of foreboding. The noise would broadcast her presence far and wide, and if Mark had tracked her to Alaska, what were the chances Sylvia and Cún were looking for her here too?
But she had no choice. It was the snowmobile, or Mark would surely die out here. She took out her flask of tea and spilled some of the hot, sweet liquid onto his mouth. It seemed to revive him a little and she gave him some more. She stroked his face.
“I’m going to get the snowmobile. I’ll be back in just over an hour. I’m going to fix you up, OK? Stay strong.”
Was that distress she saw in his eyes? She knew it was, and she knew why. Sylvia and Cún were on her trail. But she would have to cross that bridge when she came to it. Right now her priority was to save Mark’s life, and nothing was going to prevent her from doing that.
She tramped back to the cabin, and was exhausted by the time she got there, but she had no time to rest. She found the keys to the shed, hauled opened the doors, filled the gas tank, hooked up the trailer and fired up the engine. Then she was away, speeding over the snow like a skipping stone over waves.
She made it back to him in about ten minutes, and every one of those minutes she was aware of the tremendous noise she was making, echoing from hill to hill and across the forests, shouting her presence to the four winds.
She gave him a little more tea and that seemed to revive him enough to coax him into the trailer, where she covered him with a blanket and started the slower, more careful journey home. Twenty minutes later she had managed to get him from the trailer into the cabin, and he was lying on the rug in front of the fire. She cleaned his wounds, gave him a shot of antibiotics and spoon fed him a beef broth, then allowed him to sleep.
She sat with him throughout the day, tending to him and occasionally feeding him more rich broth to build up his strength. His wounds healed with extraordinary speed, but he remained weak and listless, and she felt she was losing him. She knew she was missing something and that as she was sitting watching him, so he was slipping away into the eternal darkness. As night closed in, she laid her bed next to his on the floor and fell asleep holding him. The answer came to her in her dream.
There was a vast, silver moon beaming down on the luminous snow. The sky was very black. She was sitting at the top of a small hill. Mark, the wolf, was lying sleeping in front of her. He was dying, slipping away. Mark, the man, was sitting opposite her, watching.
She said, “What can I do to save him?”
He said, “The wolf must die.”
“No.”
“If the man is to live, the wolf must die.”
She looked up at the great, luminous orb of the moon and realization entered her mind like light.
“When you are dying, you revert to wolf form. But you are hard-wired to that, and once the process has kicked in, the only way to save you is to shut down your wolf DNA and trigger your human DNA again.”
He stood and the moon bathed his skin in silver light. The wolf stirred and rose, and began to move away, over the snow, towards the black shadows on the forest.
He said, “You haven’t much time. The wolf must die.”
She awoke with a start and a gasp. She sat up. His breathing was shallow and quick. She knew exactly what she had to do. She scrambled into the lab area, found a syringe, fitted a needle and took a large sample of her own blood. It was in the proteins. It was the proteins that were triggering and enabling the genes. She had to isolate the right proteins and trigger their production in his system. As she worked she realized that at some unconscious level, all the while she had been there at the cabin, she had been doing that very work without realizing it.
She labored feverishly for twenty minutes, aware that with every passing second the great wolf was approaching its end. She could not, she told herself over and again, she could not have got this far just to see him die. He must live. She could save him. The dream had told her so.
Finally the serum was ready. She knelt by his side, stroked his great head, thrust the needle into the base of his skull and injected the concoction into his brain.
His eyes opened with a start, his whole body shuddered as though with a great spasm. He raised his head and looked at her. His mouth opened, as though her were trying to say something, trying to tell her something. Then his eyes glazed, he gave a deep sigh and he died.
She watched in horror. She cried out, wept and shook him, calling his name, begging him to return to her. It was too cruel, too unfair to have had him return when she believed him dead, only to lose him again, having killed him with her own hands.
She curled up and sobbed, lying by his side, by the dying light of the fire. Outside the icy wind howled, and far off the wolves bayed at the silver moon.
Ten
It was a weird and eerie chorus. She knew it was the tundra wolves. Their baying was distinctive and she had learned to recognize it. They knew he had died and they were wailing at his passing, crying out to the night. First one would wail, like a weeping daemon, then the others would follow, their cries drifting like ghosts, climbing along the moonbeams into the dark.
Her own weeping had stopped. Her convulsions had died away, leaving her wracked and desolate inside. She had gone beyond grief into emptiness. There is nothing quite so terrible as the complete loss of meaning. And her own life, with the loss of his, had also lost its meaning.
She did not know how long she had lain there, listening to the agonizing cries of the wolves, watching the small flames among the embers of the fire. It might have been an hour or more. Tears welled up again in her eyes and she reached out her hand to stroke his head one last time. But she d
id not find hair with her fingers. She found skin, and it was not cold skin. It was warm.
She scrambled to her knees, wiping the tears from her face with the backs of her hands. He lay there, naked, with the light of the dying embers playing on his skin. She reached for his wrist and felt for his pulse, it was strong and steady. She gave a small cry and jumped to her feet. She ran and piled logs on the fire, fanning it back to life. Then she grabbed more bedding and laid it over him, cuddling up next to him with tears of joy streaming down her face.
“Mark, oh Mark...”
His eyelids flickered and his eyes opened. He stared for a moment at the ceiling, then turned to smile at her. He spoke softly.
“I was in a dark place. I was going into the blackness under the trees. But you came for me. The wolf is gone. I can feel that.”
She ran her hand over the hard muscles of his stomach and his chest. “It was the only way to save you…”
“I know. You have set me free. We…they…can choose the wolf form. But when death approaches they have no choice. They must die as wolves.”
“Was that you in Brooklyn? Did you come and see me as a wolf?”
He nodded, “But from now on, I will always be with you as a man. He rolled on his side so their noses were touching, and he kissed her gently on the lips. She smiled, “Take it easy. You’re weak, you almost died…”
He silenced her with another kiss.
“So let’s not waste time. Life is too short.”
It was not brutal. It was not bestial. He gently removed all her clothes so that they were naked together in the firelight. She lay bank, languid and luxurious, and he kissed every inch of her body, slowly, tenderly, lingering exquisitely on her nipples, running his tongue slowly down her belly to gently bite her hips. She smiled and writhed with deep pleasure, stroking his hair as he buried his face between her thighs, taking bug, succulent mouthfuls of her.
Bad, Very Bad Shifters- The Complete Mega Bundle Page 39