by Abby Weeks
Just as Aisha was getting into the car, she thought she saw something. It wasn’t far away, a few yards across the lot, she was sure she saw a pair of sparkling yellow eyes.
“What was that?” she said, but when Heath and Hunter turned to look, the eyes were gone.
Aisha shivered. There was something unearthly about the atmosphere in the lot. She looked up at the moon, a broad blue crescent above them.
“What the hell is this place?” she said to herself.
*
Chapter 42
AFTER PICKING UP SOME TAKEOUT, Hunter drove them to a little motel on the edge of town that had a bright neon sign over it. The sign said Dancing Girls.
“What is this place?” Aisha said as soon as she saw the sign.
“Relax. It’s the only place to stay.”
“I’ll stay in the car.”
“You will not,” Heath said. “You’ll catch your death out here.”
Aisha followed the two men reluctantly into the motel office. They passed through thick wooden doors and she saw that the place looked more like a bar than an office. There was an old jukebox playing some depressing country music. No one was there apart from the bartender.
That didn’t stop Aisha from noticing the nature of the place, though. Leading right down the middle of the room was a long catwalk that opened up to a stage, and there was a metal pole in the center of the stage rising up to the ceiling. They were in a strip club.
“What can I do for you?” the bartender said.
“You got any space for the night?” Hunter said.
“Room four’s free.”
“We’ll take it,” Hunter said. “And we’ll take breakfast in the morning.”
The bartender nodded. “What time?”
“Six.”
The bartender was eyeing Aisha. She looked back at him, hoping he’d stop staring but he didn’t take his eyes off her. The way he looked at her made her feel naked, even though she was wearing her new thick winter coat.
“She looking for work?” he said to Hunter.
Hunter nodded toward Heath. “She ain’t mine. She’s his.”
Heath shook his head. “She’s coming with me to Dead Wolf,” he said.
The entire conversation took place as if Aisha wasn’t even present. It unnerved her.
“We’re sharing a room again?” she said as they made their way across the lot to room four.
“Even if there were two rooms free,” Hunter said, “which there aren’t, we’d be sharing a room.”
Hunter opened the door and Aisha saw an utterly typical motel room in front of her. There was an old television on a dresser, a white door leading to a dingy bathroom, and one double bed.
“You think they got a minibar?” Heath said, a grin spreading across his face.
Aisha marched into the room and threw her backpack on the floor. “No drinking,” she said.
“Come on,” Hunter said. “It’s our last night together. We should celebrate.”
“I don’t want to celebrate,” she said. “Why in God’s name would I want to drink with the two of you after what happened last time?”
Hunter shrugged. He shut the door and locked it, drew the curtains and went over to the dresser. Inside one of the doors was a fridge filled with cheap-looking liquor brands that Aisha had the impression were all made locally.
He pulled a bottle from the shelf, opened it, and took a long swig. Aisha saw trouble coming, and she knew she was in the last place on earth she could get any help—a strip club motel on the side of a remote Alaskan highway.
She went into the washroom and ran the shower. The water took a minute to heat up, but when it did it was very hot, just the way she wanted it. She took off her clothes and stepped into the shower. She could hear the men out in the room laughing.
When she got out of the shower she examined herself in the mirror. It felt so good to be clean. After all of this traveling she vowed never to take for granted the comforts of a proper home ever again. She looked at her shoulder and was surprised to see that her paw-shaped birthmark was even darker now than it had been back in Anchorage. It was as if the farther north they got, the darker her birthmark became.
She could still hear Heath and Hunter talking loudly outside the bathroom door. The television was on too. She went to the window and looked out at the back of the motel. There was very little to see other than a few dumpsters and an old pickup truck. She opened the window and let the ice-cold air spill into the washroom.
Just as she opened the window, she heard the unmistakable sound of a wolf howling in the distance.
*
Chapter 43
SHE WENT OUT INTO THE bedroom with her coat on over her naked body. She grabbed her backpack and brought it back into the bathroom. Then she put on her warm cotton pajamas and went back out into the room.
Both Heath and Hunter were sitting on the bed.
“Here,” Heath said when she approached. He got up from the bed and let her get in under the blanket.
“Thank you,” she said.
She was relieved to see that they’d put the bottle of liquor away. They couldn’t have drunk too much in the time she’d been in the shower. Maybe Hunter’s hangover was making him think better of it.
They were watching some wilderness survival Discovery Channel show. Aisha pulled the blanket up to her neck and peeked out at the TV.
“What’s this?” she said.
“Nothing much,” Heath said. “Just something to watch.”
“I heard a wolf howling,” she said.
“Get used to that,” Hunter said. “Once we head north of this town, we’re in their country.”
“Wolf country?”
“It’s like, completely their territory up there.”
“And they’re aggressive, you say?”
“You’ll see for yourself. The town we’re headed for, it’s called Dead Wolf for a reason. It’s practically a compound up there. They’ve got armed guards shooting wolves that come too close.”
Aisha felt a shiver run across her back. It had been one thing to hear stories like this back in Washington. Even as they traveled up here, she’d only listened with half an ear. Now that she realized just how remote and isolated they were, she listened to the talk of beasts a lot more intently. The farther north they’d come, the more willing she’d become to believe Hunter’s strange tales of beasts in the forest. There was a solid five hundred miles of thick forest between where they were now and where they’d gotten off the boat the day before.
“Is there an airport in Fairbanks?” she said.
“Of course,” Hunter said.
“Why didn’t we fly up here?”
“It’s not safe. The only time you can reliably get a plane in and out of here is from May to August.”
“What if there was some sort of emergency?”
“Well, there are emergency services here in the town.”
“What if there was something worse? Like an earthquake or something.”
“Something like that, the government would fly in military aircraft. Wouldn’t matter what sort of weather we were having. A real emergency? Then sure, yes, there’s an airport with two runways less than five miles from where we are right now.”
“But for anything less than emergency?”
“For anything less than an official state of emergency, you’ll see very few aircraft in these parts. Especially commercial aircraft. Most travelers, most supplies, all comes the way we’ve just come.”
Aisha nodded. They really were isolated. She’d never even known a place could be so remote, so difficult to reach.
Heath turned off the TV.
“Let’s turn in,” he said to Hunter.
*
Chapter 44
AISHA WAS DEATHLY STILL AS the two men got up from the bed and changed out of their clothes. She wanted to watch them, see that they were putting on pajamas, but she was too shy to spy on them while they undressed. After her exper
ience in the ship cabin, she had every reason to believe they might come to bed naked.
She inched her way over to Heath’s side of the bed. She didn’t want to be in the middle of them. She knew it wasn’t safe.
Hunter was the first to come back to the bed. The entire mattress tilted in his direction as he let his weight down onto it. Aisha kept her distance. She didn’t know if he was naked or not. She could feel the warmth of his body. That felt good, but the fear did not.
When Heath got back to the bed he asked her to move over.
“Can’t I sleep on the side?” she said.
Heath ignored her. He climbed in next to her and shoved her into the middle of the bed.
“I’m exhausted,” Heath said.
Aisha had to move over to make room for him. She felt the warmth of Hunter’s body on one side as Heath moved in on the other. She still wasn’t sure if they’d put clothes on or not. She prayed they had.
“I guess this is our last night together,” Hunter said.
Aisha lay there, straight as an arrow. She stared up at the ceiling above her, too scared to look to her left or right.
“I guess it is,” Heath said. “You’ll still be around when we get to Dead Wolf though, won’t you?”
“When I’m not going south to escort more newcomers.”
“Well,” Heath said, “I’d like to thank you, we’d like to thank you, for seeing us up here safely.”
Aisha wasn’t so sure of that. She hadn’t exactly survived the journey unscathed.
“Aisha, thank the man.”
“Thank you,” Aisha said weakly.
“Well, I haven’t gotten you there yet,” Hunter said. “We’ve still got the last stretch ahead of us.”
“That we do,” Heath said.
Everything was still then, still and silent. Aisha could tell that no one was going to sleep, though. The air in the room was latent with expectation. They wanted her again. She could sense it. She shut her eyes and lay there, as motionless as stone, and she tried to think of something, anything.
Then she felt it, Hunter’s hand on the waist of her pajama pants.
“No,” she said. “Not again. I’m not like that.”
“Don’t fight it,” Heath said from beside her. “It’s not worth it. You’re in the north country now.”
Aisha put her hand on Hunter’s and tried to remove it from her pants, but she couldn’t. The man was far stronger than she was. He slid his hand inside her pants and fondled her thighs. She shut her legs tightly together. His hand moved up over the mound of her pussy. She could feel his skin sliding gently over hers. She clamped her legs shut and endured the fondling.
“Heath,” Aisha said, but even as she said it, she knew it was completely pointless. Heath was originally from these parts. He agreed with this sort of thing. He thought it was normal.
She knew that if she wanted to avoid what was happening, she would have to take the situation into her own hands. No one else was going to look out for her.
“If we’re going to do this,” she said to Hunter, “at least let us be civilized about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me put on something a little more alluring,” she said. “I have some lacy lingerie in my suitcase.”
Hunter hesitated, trying to detect any deceit in her words.
“It’s true,” Heath said. “She’s got killer underwear.”
Aisha didn’t wait. She sat up and climbed out from the blankets. Hunter and Heath sat up to watch her. If she was going to put on a show, they were all eyes.
Aisha’s suitcase was by the door and she went over to it. When she reached it, she didn’t stop. Without thinking, without hesitating for a moment to consider the repercussions of her actions, she grabbed the handle of the door and opened the lock.
“What the hell?” Hunter said, leaping out of the bed.
Aisha moved like a cat. She was fast when she wanted to be. She was out in the pitch black of the parking lot, the icy air rushing around her like a flood of water.
“Help,” she screamed.
She was in her pajamas, barefoot, sprinting across the icy surface of the parking lot, snow six inches thick freezing her skin. She had no idea what her destination was. She just ran.
She could hear Hunter behind her, gaining on her, but she didn’t dare look back. She was headed for a chain-link fence at the far end of the parking lot and she didn’t even know what she was going to do when she reached it. She was so scared, she felt she could do anything. She would leap over the fence if it came to it—anything to get away from Hunter and his lascivious desires. He was tolerable during the day, he and Heath were both tolerable, but at night, after drinking … she couldn’t take that again. Not again.
As she ran for the fence, she began to realize the hopelessness of her action. Where was she going to go? Was she going to hide in the forest?
Hunter was gaining on her. Another few seconds and he’d have her.
“No,” she cried again.
And then she stopped. She just stopped running. Behind her, Hunter stopped too. Before her was the most frightening sight she’d ever set eyes on. It was a wolf.
Aisha had seen wolves before, she’d studied them, she’d rescued one at the clinic. This wolf was nothing like anything she’d ever seen. It was larger, easily outweighing an average man. It was probably six feet from snout to tail, and a few feet high at the shoulders—its highest point. Everything about it looked designed to kill its prey.
It was snarling, growling louder than Aisha had even known a wolf could. It’s eyes were that same deathly yellow she’d seen before. Where had she seen it? On the ship.
The wolf was twenty yards from Aisha, between her and the high fence. She knew there was no way she could get to safety now. This was it. This was going to be the end of her, ravaged by the jaws of a massive wolf on her second day in Alaska.
Hunter was a few yards behind her. Aisha didn’t dare take her eyes from the wolf to see just how far behind he was.
“Don’t move,” Hunter said.
Easy for him to say, Aisha thought. He wasn’t as close as she was.
“What’s going to happen?” she said hoarsely.
Hunter didn’t answer. She knew what that meant. They were in trouble.
The wolf took a few steps in her direction, its head low to the ground, its teeth bared in a sinister snarl. It looked ready to attack.
“Don’t move,” Hunter repeated quietly. “Whatever you do, don’t run.”
Aisha didn’t see what difference it would make at this point. The wolf had them and there was no way out of it. This was what it felt like to know you were going to die. She was surprised that she wasn’t more scared. She felt strangely calm. She looked at the wolf and the biggest thought that came to her mind wasn’t how terrifying he was, or how painful it would be to be ripped apart by those teeth. What she thought was how beautiful the wolf was, how majestic. The rumble of its growl, the strength in its jaws and limbs, the intensity of its haunting eyes. It was breathtaking.
The wolf approached her cautiously, and when it was a foot away from her, it stopped growling. The snarl on its face changed, its teeth withdrew into its mouth. He looked almost friendly. Aisha had enough experience with animals to read body language. She suddenly didn’t feel afraid. She felt protected.
“What’s he doing?” Hunter said from behind her. He couldn’t see the wolf’s face from where he stood.
Immediately the wolf’s countenance changed. It rose up, rounded Aisha, and snarled menacingly at Hunter. Aisha was afraid it was actually going to pounce on Hunter. She did something that she never would have expected from herself. She put her hand on the wolf’s neck.
“Shh,” she whispered, just as she would have if the wolf had been brought into her clinic. “Shh, he’s not your enemy.”
The wolf calmed down again. Aisha withdrew her hand. The sensation of just touching the wolf was electrifying. Its white fur was soft a
nd smooth, but it was blatantly clear how much power and strength rested beneath it. The wolf’s back and neck was solid muscle. And it was enormous. His head came up well above Aisha’s waist, almost to the height of her breasts. It was a beast like none she’d ever seen or heard of—an alpha predator of the first order. This animal was at the top of the food chain, a super-predator.
When Aisha looked into its ferocious face, she didn’t see what she knew she should have seen. She didn’t see the face of a killer. She saw the face of a friend. Was it trying to protect her from Hunter? That was the overwhelming sense she got from the animal as it placed itself between her and Hunter. It grimaced again at Hunter, and this time he disobeyed his own advice and took a step back. The wolf growled louder and Hunter backed away even more.
Then the wolf turned back to Aisha. Those yellow eyes locked on hers and she realized it was true—the wolf was protecting her, almost telling her that she was safe now. As long as an animal like this was nearby, nothing bad could happen to her. That’s what those deep, rich yellow eyes told her.
It was a strange moment for Aisha. Having grown up an orphan, having never felt protected by Heath, it was the first time in her entire life that she truly, honestly felt safe. Standing there in the icy parking lot, hundreds of miles of hostile forest in every direction, she suddenly felt at home, safer than she’d ever been anywhere else.
“Who are you?” Aisha whispered.
The wolf looked at her and for an intense moment she felt as if it was actually going to answer her.
And then there was a loud bang, the sound of a gunshot, and the sudden thudding sound of a high-velocity impact. A bullet hit the wolf on its left shoulder, a spattering of blood flying from the site of impact like the splash of a rock hitting a lake.
Aisha screamed.
The wolf crouched down, a low growl of pain coming from its throat.
Another gunshot—this one missed. Aisha looked back toward the motel. Heath was standing by the land cruiser, a rifle at his shoulder. The wolf backed off. A third shot, closer than the last but a narrow miss. The wolf turned and ran. Aisha watched as it leapt over the six-foot fence like it was the simplest thing in the world.
