Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega 1)

"Not tonight," he said. "Not if your toes are numb. Let me find somewhere that will give us a little shelter-there's a storm coming through tonight."

Anna shivered a little harder at the thought. At the tail end of a particularly long shiver, her teeth started chattering.

Charles put his hand under her arm. "A storm will be good. I heard bone go when you hit that wolf. If it isn't a phantasm of some sort, it'll take it a while to repair. A heavy snow and a good wind will keep it from picking up our trail."

He caught sight of something uphill, and it seemed to Anna that they climbed forever until they reached a small bench of land littered with downed trees.

"Microburst last spring, maybe," he told her. "It happens sometimes."

She was too tired to do anything but nod, while he waded through the trees until he found something he liked-a huge tree propped up by another, both of them leaning against a hump of land, creating a cave with an uninviting floor of snow.

"No food," Charles said grimly. "And you need food to combat the cold."

"I could go hunting," offered Anna. Charles couldn't. He had been limping badly for a long time. She was so tired she could have fallen asleep standing up, and she was cold. But she was still in better shape than he was.

Charles shook his head. "I'll be damned if I'll send you off on your own in this country with a storm waiting to unleash-not to mention a witch and two werewolves lurking about."

He lifted his head and sampled the air. "Speak of the devil," he said softly. Anna sniffed the air, too, but she didn't smell anything. Just trees and winter and wolf. She tried again.

"You might as well come out," Charles growled, looking out into the darkness below their bench. "I know you're there."

Anna turned around, but she didn't see anything out of place. Then she heard the sound of boots in the snow and looked again. A man stepped out of the woods about ten yards down the mountain. If he hadn't been moving, she probably wouldn't have seen him.

The first thing she noticed was hair. He didn't wear a hat, and his hair was an odd shade between red and gold; it hung in ragged, ungroomed tangles down his back and blended into a beard that would have done credit to Hill or Gibbons of ZZ Top.

He wore an odd combination of animal skins, rags, and new boots and gloves. In one hand he held the bundle she'd made of the things that had been in Charles's backpack, and her own bright pink backpack was slung over one shoulder.

He tossed them both toward Charles, and the packs landed halfway between them.

"Your stuff," he said, his voice at once hoarse and mumbly, with a healthy dose of Tennessee or Kentucky. "I saw her set the beast on you-which makes you her enemy. And along the lines of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' I thought I'd bring your stuff to you. Then maybe we could talk."

It hadn't been the man's scent that had clued Charles in that they were being shadowed, but a host of smaller things: a bird taking flight, the hint of a sound, and a feeling that they were being watched.

Once the stranger stepped out of the trees, Charles could smell him as he should have been able to for some time because the wind was favoring Anna and him. Werewolf.

Though he brought a peace offering and said he wanted to talk, his body language told Charles the other wolf was ready to take flight.

Careful not to look straight at him or move in any way that might spook him, Charles left Anna where she was and walked down to pick up Anna's pack and their ground tarp filled, he supposed, with everything that had been in his backpack. Without saying anything, he turned his back to the stranger and started back up the mountain.

It wasn't as foolish as all that because Charles kept his eyes on Anna and watched her face for any sign of attack. Then he deliberately cleaned the snow off the top of a log and sat on it. The man, he saw, had followed him until he stood where the packs had first landed, but he came no farther.

"I think it would be a good idea to talk," Charles said. "Would you join us for a meal?" He met the man's eyes, letting him feel the weight of the invitation that was just short of an order.

The man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if ready to run. "You smell like that demon wolf," he rasped. Then he shot Anna a shy glance. "That thing's been killin' and killin' up here. Deer, and elk, people, even a griz."

He sounded like it was the bear that troubled him the most.

"I know," Charles said. "I was sent here to take care of the wolf."

The man dropped his eyes as if he couldn't bear to look Charles in the eye anymore. "Thing is...thing is...it got me, too. Infected me with its evil." He took a step back, wary as an old stag.

"How long have you been a werewolf?" Anna asked. "It's been three years for me."

The man tilted his head at the sound of Anna's voice, as if he was listening to music. And for a moment his agitation slowed down.

"Two months," ventured Charles, when it became obvious that the other man was too caught up in Anna's spell to speak. He understood that feeling. The sudden peace as Brother Wolf settled down was as startling as it was addictive. If he'd never felt it before, he doubted he'd be talking, either. "You stepped between the werewolf and the grad student this fall. Just like you stepped between Anna and me when you thought I might hurt her."

It fit, Charles thought, though it added complications to just what the other werewolf was. Only another werewolf could infect a human. But he was certain that the beast's tracks stopped as soon as it would have been out of sight.

The sound of Charles's voice was enough to make the man jerk his gaze away from Anna. He knew who the dangerous one was here.

"I was going to let him die. The student, I mean," the other man said, confirming Charles's theory about who he was. "There was a storm coming, and it'd probably have killed him if he'd been in the wild when it hit. The mountains here demand respect, or they'll have you for lunch." He paused. "There's a storm coming soon."

"So why didn't you let the werewolf kill him?" Anna asked.

"Well, ma'am," said the man, staring at his feet rather than looking at Anna. "Dying by the storm, or from a bear attack, those things just happen." He stopped, evidently having trouble putting the difference into words.

"But the werewolf didn't belong here," said Charles, with a sudden inkling about why this wolf was so hard to sense and why he'd received no warning of his attack. From the clothes he wore, he looked as though he'd been living here a very long time.