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The moment I was fully outside, my head felt
clearer. I dragged myself around to the side of the cabin and
leaned back against it, already feeling my body beginning to work
faster, harder at repairing the damage. Outside at last, feeling
progress, at last, I could wait with grim purpose, until my body
was well enough to hunt.

I had a murderer to track.

Chapter 13

Elodie

I
woke up human with visions of blood
and death still etched in my mind. I was prevented from shooting up
by the warm, furry bodies draped over mine. The pack had stayed.
Some of the blood lust eased as I came fully to consciousness. My
body was filthy, covered in blood and scrapes and bruises. But it
was mine. My arms. My legs. My aches. The fever, it seemed, had
passed for now. I felt raw, inside and out, as if a great claw had
reached in and scraped out anything of substance, leaving behind an
empty shell.

When I opened my eyes, my entourage was
rising, stretching in the dark. The forest around us was cloaked in
the relative silence of deep night. I rose with a series of pops
and creaks as joints realigned. The pack watched me, but my
pseudo-transformation during sleep hadn’t phased them. The large
male I had seen first gave a yip and the others began to mill
around him, restless, making small yaps and growls.

My friends were readying for the hunt.

As much I wanted to do the same, albeit with
different prey, my top priority was food, shelter, and figuring out
how I was going so survive through transition.

The alpha looked at me with an expression
that could only be deemed invitation. Though I felt completely
ridiculous doing so, I bowed to the pack. “Thank you. But I have my
own business to settle.”

I have no idea if they understood me or if
my notion of wolf whisperer held outside of my own kind. But the
alpha gave a howl of farewell, echoed by his packmates, before they
all spun away and disappeared into the dark.

A gibbous moon rode the tree line, lighting
the way for my dark-adapted eyes. But there were clouds rolling in.
I wasn’t going to have light for long. Rousing my wolf, I circled
my position until I found my scent trail. Our packs were back at
the cabin. While I
could
survive with no supplies, no
nothing—I was certainly in better shape
with
supplies. Even
if all I could nab was my map and compass, that would enable me to
get back to my cave faster. My best chance was if Patrick had left
the packs behind when he came after me.

It was a risk. If he had any decent tracking
skills to speak of, I could run into him on the way. I was in no
shape to fight him right now. I was in no shape for anything right
now. I wasn’t even sure if I’d hear or smell him coming. Yet I
couldn’t just stay where I was. If I wanted to stay hidden, I
needed to keep moving.

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.