Overwinter

by David Wellington

  From the tree line came the smallest of sounds. The noise of someone delicately adjusting their weight.

  Like a wolf, she pounced, leaping up the side of the muddy bank, grabbing wildly at tree branches to haul herself up. She would pounce on him, she thought, laughing, pin him down to the ground and—and then—she would tickle him, yeah, until he begged for mercy.

  But when she rushed into the little stand of trees, her eyes flashing, there was nobody there. She reached down and patted the ground and found that it was still slightly warm, as if someone had been crouching there for a while, but there was no other sign of anybody having been there.

  “Lousy jerk,” she said, mock-pouting.

  She found her clothes where she’d left them, in a heap near the camp, and put them on hurriedly. Dzo had a pretty good fire going by the time she arrived, made out of the branches they’d stripped off their two paltry logs. Powell was crouched on the far side of the blaze, roasting a squirrel on a long stick. Dzo had some roots and berries mashed up in a cooking pot—where he’d got that she had no clue, maybe he’d had it the whole time hidden away in the bulk of his heavy furs—and was making his own nasty dinner, since he was a vegetarian.

  She walked up to the fire and let it steam the water out of her damp hair. “Come clean,” she said to Powell. “Did I catch you peeping back there, or what?”

  “What are you on about?” he asked.

  “Back by the water. Was that you in the trees?”

  He frowned and shook his head. “I’ve been right here the whole time. With Dzo.”

  Dzo looked up from his cookery and nodded. “I saw him catch that varmint. It was gross, the way he snapped its neck.”

  “It was humane,” Powell insisted.

  Neither of them seemed very concerned that she’d seen someone down by the water. Then again, she told herself, she hadn’t seen anyone either. She’d just heard something. It could very well have been an animal. She blushed a little to think she’d just given Bambi a free show.

  Embarrassed now herself, she reached across the fire and grabbed the squirrel off Powell’s stick. “You’re going to burn that,” she said, and tore off a piece of meat, still a little bloody, to shove it in her mouth.

  9.

  In Toronto there was a very exclusive club, a little place above a bookshop. The club did not advertise. It had no sign out front and no one watching its door. To get in you had to possess a key that fit into the lock of a cheap metal fire door with cracked gray paint.

  The rooms beyond that door were sumptuously appointed in dark, polished wood and green leather. Gathered around roaring fires were massive armchairs where members of the club could doze all day if they wished, or smoke cigars, or drink single malts carried to them on silver platters by servants dressed in livery. For those who didn’t drink, coffee or bottled water were cheerfully provided. No music played and no newspapers were allowed inside. There were certainly no televisions permitted anywhere on the premises.

  Beyond the open common rooms out front there were a few private rooms, small, cozy spaces containing little more than a table and a few chairs. There was a bedroom for anyone who’d had a few too many tumblers of whisky. And that was all.

  The club’s dues were fifty thousand dollars a year. Most of that money went to a private security firm, which routinely swept for listening devices and subjected every member and employee to a rigorous background check. The hushed conversations taking place around the roaring fires were of the kind that were not meant for too many ears. The club provided seamless, invisible discretion of a kind the twenty-first century was all too short of.

  In one of the private rooms at the back of the club, a man named Preston Holness sat waiting to have just such a conversation.

  Holness worked, technically, for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the governmental organization responsible for identifying and neutralizing threats at home and abroad. He was what was called, in his line of work, an undeclared asset. This status meant he could operate with a certain degree of latitude that more public figures did not enjoy.

  Enjoy was probably the wrong word. Holness did not sleep well at night. He did things, for a living, that the Canadian government tended to deplore and condemn in public. Should he be caught doing them he would be disavowed, the government denying all knowledge of his activities. He would probably go to jail for the rest of his life. He was expected to take this in his stride, but in fact it had given him ulcers.

  And this meeting might just give him a coronary, he thought. He did not expect it to go well. He had prepared for it carefully. He’d had a manicure and a haircut, and he had dressed in his best Armani suit and silk Hermès tie. His shoes, which could not be seen under the table, were worth more than a thousand dollars.

  Holness liked to dress well. It was a passion, one that made him feel good about himself and gave him a certain amount of confidence in an uneasy world. Still, when he heard a knock at the door, he jumped in his seat.

  The door opened silently and a young man stepped through. He was perhaps half of Holness’s age, with whitish blond hair and a pair of wire-framed glasses with rectangular lenses. His suit was made of silk. Holness didn’t recognize the cut, but he knew quality haberdashery when he saw it. The young man looked like a very sharp, very tough lawyer, which he probably was.

  “Hello,” the young man said. “My name is Demetrios.”

  It was not his real name, of course. “Demetrios” was a code name used by a certain oil company that did business with the Canadian government. A lot of business. The company pumped billions of dollars and thousands of jobs into the Canadian economy every year. That meant the government wanted to keep this young man happy, no matter what the cost.

  Things were already off on the wrong foot.

  Demetrios’s company had bought up a parcel of land in the Arctic, beneath which lay one of the largest oil deposits in the Western hemisphere. Before they could start exploiting the deposit, however, the lycanthropes had moved in. Now work crews couldn’t be sent in to drill, because the lycanthropes would just kill and eat them. The CSIS had been given the task of removing the lycanthropes, and in this they had failed. If Demetrios wanted someone to blame for that failure, it was Holness’s head on the chopping block.

  Holness guided Demetrios to a seat on the far side of the table before sitting back down. “I’d really like to apologize on behalf of—”

  “Robert Fenech fucked up,” Demetrios said.

  “Fenech is dead.” Holness frowned in mock compassion. “He will be missed. He was a true patriot, and an excellent operative.”

  “He was a pathetic little boy, who thought he was James Bond.” Demetrios folded his arms in front of him. “You should never have sent him on this mission. We asked for something very simple. There was one lycanthrope you needed to kill.”

  “Not an easy task, under any conditions,” Holness said. “And given the lycanthrope’s location—the country up there in the Northwest Territories is notoriously treacherous, even in good weather …” He gave Demetrios a little smile and spread his hands in resignation.

  “You could have sent in troops to do the job properly. Instead you sent in a subcontractor and a civilian. The civilian was infected by the lycanthrope. Now there are two of them for us to worry about.”

  Holness couldn’t deny that. He could only try to explain himself. “It was felt, at the time, that sending in troops would be too great a risk. Public opinion is already so divided about the wars in the Middle East. If we sent in our boys and some of them got killed—well, the prime minister is going to have a hard enough time getting re-elected already. He doesn’t need that kind of bad press.”

  Demetrios fumed in silence for a minute. Then he leaned forward and spoke very slowly and very carefully, as if he thought Holness might have trouble understanding him. “We like Canada.”

  Holness smiled. “We aim to please,” he said.

  Demetrios shook his head. �
�We like Canada because we like doing business with civilized people. We would very much like to keep our business here. But I can assure you there are other oil deposits, in Venezuela, in Iraq, in Indonesia. Places we could learn to love, if only because there are no lycanthropes there. Now, if we have to resort to moving our business out of this country a significant part of your nation’s gross domestic product will evaporate overnight. So it seems you and I have a mutual problem. So far I haven’t heard of any possible solutions.”

  Holness fought down the urge to adjust his tie. He had one card left to play. “I have someone in the field right now,” he said.

  Demetrios didn’t smile. He didn’t look like the kind of man who ever did. But his posture changed, he relaxed a fraction of a degree, and he nodded in such a way as to suggest he was willing to listen.

  “Let me tell you about a man named Varkanin.” He reached down into his briefcase to take out the blue-skinned Russian’s dossier. “I think you’ll be pleased.”

  Demetrios leaned forward to see the photograph stapled to the front of the file folder. Holness couldn’t help but notice the way the younger man’s suit draped as he moved.

  “Do you mind my asking?” Holness said. “Is that Dolce and Gabbana?”

  Demetrios plucked at his own sleeve. “Savile Row. I have them made custom.”

  “It’s … gorgeous,” Holness said. “If this all works out, maybe you’ll give me the name of your tailor.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Demetrios told him.

  10.

  The temperature started to drop even before they’d finished their paltry dinner. The air got crisp and thin and suddenly Chey was hugging herself, pulling her parka closer around her. It was the first time in a while she remembered being truly cold.

  It got dark in the little camp, too, even with the fire’s embers popping and flickering merrily away. Exhausted by the day’s labors, Dzo curled up near the ashes and pulled his wooden mask down over his face. In a moment he was snoring, a discordant rhythm of wheezes and grunts that made Chey laugh.

  She was tired, herself, but there was no point in going to sleep now. In a few hours the moon would rise. She never liked going to sleep as a human and waking up naked and sore in a snowbank—if she was going to transform into a wolf, she preferred to be prepared. So she rose stiffly from her place by the fire and brushed off the seat of her pants, thinking she would have an easier time staying awake if she was at least standing up. Powell was staring into the coals, toying with a splinter of wood in his hands, tearing off fibrous chunks of it and throwing them into the dying light. Chey cleared her throat until he looked up, then gestured with a nod of her head toward a nearby copse of trees.

  “You don’t need to let me know that you’re going off to heed the call of nature,” he said.

  She sighed dramatically. “I’m taking a walk,” she told him. “I’d like your company, if you don’t mind.”

  He muttered in frustration, but eventually he got up and followed her. They headed into the near-perfect darkness of the trees, lit only sporadically by a ray of starlight that managed to wind its way down through the sparse branches of the pines. “I wanted to tell you about something that happened earlier. I guess I was too embarrassed to say it in front of Dzo,” she said, her voice startlingly loud in the otherwise flawless silence. She grabbed a branch of a birch tree and pulled at it until the entire tree swayed, then sighed again before telling him about how she’d thought she was being watched when she took her bath.

  “You’re probably right,” he said, when she’d finished. She could just see the white plume of his breath streaming out away from him with each word. “Just an animal. I haven’t seen any trace of people in this area. If I had, we would already be moving again.”

  “I know. I just figured it was the kind of thing I should share.”

  She could barely make out his silhouette nodding in agreement. “That’s good. Good thinking.” He took a step closer to her and without warning he was touching her face. She started to flinch away and she felt him tense up. It could have ended there.

  Instead she forced herself to relax, then leaned into his touch.

  His fingers traced the curve of her cheek. Brushed her temple. They were quite warm, which was nice in the cold night. Very nice.

  “You were giving me a show, hmm?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “In the water. When you thought I was watching you.”

  “It felt like the right thing to do at the time.” She reached up and took his hand off her face. But she held onto it, inside her own. His hand was rough with work and very large, the fingers thick and square at the tips. She couldn’t remember ever holding it before. “Now I’m not … sure.”

  “You’re not?” he asked. “You’ve been acting so strangely,” he said. “Are you alright? It’s just—”

  “I’m attracted to you,” she told him. “Lord knows I have plenty of reasons not to be.” She felt her face harden in bitterness. “You made me what I am today. You killed my father. You hurt me, and gave me your curse in the process. I wouldn’t be here right now, having this conversation, if you hadn’t fucked up my life so badly.”

  “That was my wolf, not me.”

  “And sometimes I can believe in the difference.”

  He dropped his head. “When we’re just human again. After we find the cure—”

  “What exactly would that change, even if it was possible? We’ll still be us. Just all the time. I like you, Powell. That’s the hardest part of this. I think if I could hate your guts, really detest you, it would be a lot easier to let you touch me. Things would be less complicated. As it is I keep second-guessing myself.”

  He pulled his hand away from hers. “Don’t,” he said.

  She was confused. “Huh?” she asked. Her breath came out in a broad pale cloud as her question crystallized in the air before her.

  “Don’t toy with me,” he told her. He sounded a little angry, she thought. “If you want to be with me in … that way, then fine. You know I have no objections.”

  She pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. In that way? No objections? Sometimes she forgot how old he really was, and how old-fashioned. What a prude he could be.

  “But if you’re going to change your mind halfway through, don’t even start.”

  Jesus, she thought. He was more sensitive than she’d been willing to believe. He had actual feelings, even if he rarely let them show. It was making him a little stupid, she thought. If he’d been another kind of man—the kind she’d known far too often, the same kind as every lover she’d ever had—this would be easy. Her flirting would be enough of a signal. He would have taken what he wanted. And the force of his desire would be enough to melt through any doubts she might have. For a while, at least.

  “Are you seriously going to wait for me to make the first move?” she asked.

  “I’ve never been any good at this,” he grumbled. He turned away from her and took a step back toward camp. “I was a virgin when I got this curse. Since then every woman I’ve ever been with has initiated things. Chey, you should know something.” He turned back to face her and she could see starlight glinting in his eyes. “I haven’t had … relations with a woman since nineteen fifty-four.”

  If she said anything in response she thought she might crack up laughing, and she knew he would take that the wrong way. So she kept her mouth shut.

  “I imagine I remember how. But the rest of this, the game we’re playing, the little courtesies I’m supposed to make, gah!” She heard a nasty snap and realized he must have broken a branch off of a tree. “Am I supposed to bring you posies of wildflowers now? Are we supposed to dance under the aurora borealis? I don’t know how it’s done. I want you. I do know that much. But you have to tell me what you want.”

  “Okay,” she managed to say. “When—if—the time comes. I’ll make sure you know.”

  He turned and strode away from her, as if
she’d frightened him off. She followed him back to camp more slowly, taking her time.

  They didn’t so much as look at each other again before the moon rose and silver light scrubbed away their confusion.

  11.

  The wolves might have settled the question. There were no moral conflicts in their streamlined minds, no doubts in their legs and their stretching muscles. The ineluctable pleasure of transformation gripped them both and they circled each other hungrily, wanting, desiring, nothing more.

  Except—

  There was a distraction. The female wolf couldn’t place it at first, but she could see in the male’s eyes that he was suddenly alert, suddenly very much on his guard. His hackles slicked back and his ears stood up very rigid.

  Slowly, cautious not to make a sound, she turned to look about her. To smell the world, the best way she knew to identify threats. Her long lungs drew in the air, her sensitive snout decoding every molecule that streamed in through her skull. Her nostrils were specially designed for this, with flaps that slammed closed on every indrawn breath, trapping the scents inside her where they could be analyzed and logged.

  The world had frozen since last she’d stood on four legs, that much was evident at once. The ground here was hard with permafrost all year round, frozen down to a depth of several feet, but since the moon last rose the ice had gone deeper, the groundwater hardening in long sharp crystals pointed like arrows at the planet’s core. The trees were creaking and groaning with the extra weight of frost.

  Next she caught a human scent, that most hated of stenches. In an abstract way she understood she was smelling her own human form, and that of the male. But there was something else, something human she could not identify. It wasn’t the musquash spirit, either. The fur-covered, wooden-masked enigma lay by the remains of a fire, as inscrutable to her nose as to her brain. She’d never understood what he was, but she’d never needed to, either. He was a familiar presence, a friendly one.