Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega 1)

Chapter EIGHT

"We started later than I thought we would," Charles told Anna. "But we've made pretty good time anyway. Baree Lake is still a mile or so away, but we'll make camp here before it gets dark. The wind's blown most of the last snow off the trees, and the branches will shelter us from any snowfall tonight."

Anna looked around doubtfully.

Her expression made him laugh. "Trust me. You'll be comfortable tonight. It's getting up in the morning that takes some fortitude."

She seemed to accept his assurance, which pleased him. "When will we go by the place Heather and Jack were attacked?"

"We won't," he told her. "I don't want our scent anywhere near there. I want us to look like prey, not any kind of official investigators."

"You think he cares one way or the other?"

Charles took off his backpack, set it on a rock that stuck out of the snow like a whale rising out of the ocean. "If he's really a rogue defending his territory, no. If he's here to cause trouble for my father, he won't attack people who look like they might carry word of his work out to the world."

She followed his lead and set her pack up out of the snow. He pulled a packet of raisins out of the pocket in his arm-the last packet he had handy, so he'd have to restock for the morning. She took it with a put-upon sigh, but opened it anyway and started munching.

With Anna occupied eating, he took a moment to examine his chosen campsite. There was a better one near the lake; he'd intended to reach it sometime in the early afternoon and give Anna the chance to rest up. It wouldn't be the first day of hiking that got to her-he had some experience taking other greenhorns out into the mountains. It would be the third or fourth.

But the first rule of playing in the woods was to be flexible. They could have made it to his first pick before dark, but he thought that giving her some time to rest after the first hike was more important.

He'd slept here before, and the rock hadn't changed since he was a boy. The last time...he thought about it for a minute, but he couldn't pin it down. The bushes on the side of the rock hadn't been there, and he could see the stump of the old Douglas fir that had sheltered him from the east the last time he'd been here. He put his toe against the rotten stump and watched the wood crumble. Maybe fifty years ago, or seventy.

Charles laid down a ground cloth but didn't bother setting up the backpacker's tent. As long as the weather held out, he had no intention of making them that vulnerable to attack. He seldom used tents if he didn't have to-and never if he was out hunting something that might hunt him back. The tent blocked his vision, muffled sounds, and got in the way. He'd brought it for Anna, but only if necessary.

The old fir was too wet to be good fuel, but there were other downed trees. A half hour of hunting gave him a generous armful of dry wood coaxed from the corpses of a couple of old forest monarchs.

Anna was perched up on the big rock next to his backpack when he returned, her snowshoes leaning against the base of the rock. He took off his own and set about building a small fire, conscious of her eyes on him.

"I thought Indians built fires with friction," she said when he took out a can of Sterno and a cigarette lighter.

"I can do that," he said. "But I'd like to eat sometime in the next day or so. Sterno and a Bic are much faster." They were all right again, he thought. It had started when she fell asleep in the car, but throughout the whole hike up here, she'd been relaxing more around him. Until, during the last few miles, she'd grabbed his coat several times to point out this and that-the tracks of a wolverine, a raven that watched them from a safe perch in the top of a lodge-pole pine, and a rabbit in its winter white.

"What would you like to eat?" he asked her after he'd arranged the fire to his liking and put a pot of snow on to boil.

"No more jerky," she said. "My jaw is tired of chewing."

"How about sweet-and-sour chicken?" he asked.

* * * *

He stirred in the packet of olive oil and handed her the larger foil bag. She looked inside dubiously. "It doesn't look like sweet-and-sour chicken," she said.

"You need to pay more attention to your nose," he admonished and took a bite of his own stew. It wasn't as good as dinner last night, but not too bad for something you poured water on and ate. "And at least the sweet-and-sour chicken doesn't look like dog food."

She leaned over and looked in his bag. "Ewwe. Why did they do that?"

"They can only freeze-dry small pieces," he said, pulling his bag back before she got her hair in it. "Eat."

"So," she asked, back on her earlier perch, "how long will our scent disguise last?"

He was pleased to notice that after she'd taken the first bite, she'd fallen on her food like a lumberjack.

"It won't matter," he told her, as he made quick inroads on his own meal, "as long as we keep talking about what we're doing so that any wolf out there can hear us."

She stopped eating and opened her mouth to apologize, then stopped midword to frown at him. He wondered if he should have smiled so she'd know he was teasing; but she got it, because she waved her spork at him. "If there was a werewolf within hearing range, you'd know it. Answer the question."

He seldom spoke of his magic to anyone, including his father-because Brother Wolf told him that the fewer people knew about it, the better weapon it was. But Brother Wolf had no objections to telling Anna anything she wanted to know.

So he ate a bite of beef and admitted, "I don't know. As long as we need it to-unless we tick off the spirits and they decide to aid our enemies instead."

She stopped eating a second time, this time to stare. "You're not teasing this time?"

He shrugged. "No. I'm not a witch to impose my will on the world. All I can do is ask, and if it suits their whims, the spirits allow it."

She'd taken a mouthful of food and had to swallow hastily to ask, "Are you a Christian? Or..."

He nodded. "Like Balaam's ass, I am. Besides, as a werewolf, you know there are other things in the world-demons, vampires, ghouls, and the like. Once you know they're out there, you have to admit that God is present. That's the only possible explanation of why evil hasn't yet taken over the world and enslaved the human race. God makes sure that evil stays hidden and sly." He finished off his food and put away his spork.

"Balaam's ass?" She muttered to herself, then caught her breath. "Balaam's ass saw an angel. Do you mean you've seen an angel?"

He grinned. "Just once, and it wasn't interested in me...but still, it sticks with you." Gave him hope in the darkest night, in fact. "Just because God is, doesn't mean there aren't spirits in these woods."