She was in control of that decision, because she hadn’t told him where she’d hidden the flash drive, only that her grandfather would look there if for some reason she turned up missing. But she wouldn’t turn up missing. She’d be fine in camp until he could go back for her.
Telling himself that and believing it were two different things. As he lay on the cold ground and willed his shift, he realized that being separated from Abby was a condition he didn’t care for at all. It felt unnatural, as if he’d left part of himself back at camp.
But he wouldn’t want her here, either, to witness his transformation into a wolf. She might have pictures of it, but that was one step removed. Aidan claimed that Emma was used to seeing her husband shift, but Roarke questioned that.
He still believed in the separation of humans and werewolves. It defied the natural order to throw them together. What a cruel joke, that fate had placed Abby in his path.
As he rose from the ground and shook himself from head to tail, he glanced down at his large forepaws. A few hours ago, they’d been human hands capable of caressing Abby. How could he expect her to accept that he could become…this? He couldn’t.
Nudging the plastic bag under a bush with his nose, he turned, caught the scene of the Sasquatch, and headed back the way he’d come. When he sighted the camp through the trees, he paused, head up. A light was on in Abby’s tent, and…damn it to hell, that traffic cone of a man was sitting in front of the open flap, probably droning on about his accomplishments at Sony.
Roarke fought the urge to charge in, take him by the throat, and shake him like a rag doll. But that would be stupid. Although Donald wouldn’t know the wolf shaking him was Roarke, he’d certainly tell everyone who would listen about his life-threatening encounter with a giant beast, and Weres didn’t need stories like that floating around.
Skirting the camp, Roarke picked up the pace. He had a job to do.
Abby pretended to fall asleep during Donald’s description of a conference he’d attended as, of course, a featured speaker. Donald didn’t seem to care whether she was conscious or not. Abby wondered if he talked to the wall at home. She couldn’t imagine Donald not talking. For all she knew, he held some sort of world record.
“So then, you’ll never guess who came up to me after my speech,” Donald said.
Abby faked a soft snore.
“The Terminator himself! Arnie! I pointed a finger at him and said, in his accent, hasta la vista, baby, and he just cracked up. He said I should’ve been an actor. Which I thought about back in college, but I—” Donald paused. “Did you hear something?”
Abby’s eyes snapped open. She couldn’t possibly have heard something with Donald droning on, but now that he’d stopped, she did hear a rustling noise. Were those footsteps?
Propping herself on her elbows, she raised up so she could see Donald. She’d no sooner done that than he scrambled into the tent with her and zipped the flap. Like that would protect him.
Outside a stick cracked as if someone, or something had stepped on it. All the possibilities ran through Abby’s head—Bigfoot had given Roarke the slip, a bear had smelled their food and wanted some, a herd of deer had shown up now that the werewolf had left the area. Or it could be a human, although why a human wouldn’t call out a greeting made her think whatever was out there wasn’t human.
She eased to a sitting position. She wasn’t quite ready to give Donald the information that she wasn’t hurt, after all. But if push came to shove, she’d rather use her legs than be trampled or eaten or whatever else might happen to her if she kept up the charade of being a maiden in distress.
Donald was shaking and his face had lost all color. “It can’t be Sampson and Delilah,” he murmured. “I checked the equipment an hour ago and their position was static. They’ve stopped for the night.”
“Maybe they changed their plans.” Donald had informed her earlier about his decision to name the Sasquatch pair, so she knew who he was talking about. But she was inclined to believe that it wasn’t them. For one thing, she couldn’t smell them, and both Roarke and Grandpa Earl had assured her she would gag once she did.
“Could be a herd of deer,” she said.
Donald stared at her, hope struggling with terror in his eyes. “You think?”
“Bigfoot would smell.”
“Oh, my God, you’re right.” His shoulders sagged in relief. But then they hunched up again. “Could be a griz.”
Abby smiled and shook her head. “Not around here. Could be a bear, though. I’ll grant you that.”
He began to shake again and his teeth chattered. “Which means we’re supposed to curl up and play dead, right?”
Abby felt sorry for the poor guy. “Why did you come out here by yourself if you’re so afraid?”
“My sister double-dared me.”
“Oh.” She made sure not to let a hint of a smile cross her lips.
“I researched the area, and bear sightings are rare.”
“That’s true.” And now Abby had a good idea why. With a pack of werewolves living on the Gentry estate, bears would tend to go elsewhere rather than fight for territory. She had seen deer over the years, but they were used to sensing predators nearby and the foliage was lush and plentiful enough to keep them hanging around, werewolves or no werewolves.
“I thought if I could get a picture of Bigfoot, I could stick it to all those people who think I’m some kind of nut, including my older sister,” Donald said.
Abby was tempted to ask him if he worked for Sony at all, or if he was a technician in a second-rate repair facility. But she didn’t want to kick a guy when he was down. Roarke was convinced Donald was really smart, but his lack of social skills might have caused him to be underemployed.
Another branch cracked. Whatever was out there hadn’t gone away. “I’ll bet it’s deer,” Abby said, more to calm her own jumpy pulse than to reassure Donald. She’d never camped overnight alone. She’d always had her brother along.
“I hope you’re right. Deer are cool.”
Abby decided to give him a chance to be manly. “Do you want to go out there and make sure?”
“Oh, I think we should leave them alone to do their thing. No use scaring them, right?”
“I guess you have a point, Donald.” He was beginning to grow on her. Or maybe it was any port in a storm.
“Think about it, Abby. If I walked out there, they might think I was some big, bad hunter ready to fire away. I saw Bambi as a kid. I can relate.”
“Okay, then.” Abby had to say this for the experience. It was a lot more exciting than listening to Donald bragging about his life as an engineer. She was beginning to suspect most, if not all, of the things he’d told her weren’t true.
But all guys couldn’t be like Roarke, who had the muscles, the looks, the courage, the brains, the fur…
Something sent a rock skittering along the ground very close to the tent and Donald flinched. “They wouldn’t stampede or anything, would they?”
“I’ve never heard of deer stampeding through a camp. You might be thinking of a cattle drive, or maybe even wild buffalo, back in the Old West.”
“You’re right.” His shoulders sagged again. “You know how it is in the dark, when your imagination runs away with—”
“You there, in the tent!”
Abby’s wide gaze met Donald’s and she couldn’t have said who was more scared. She couldn’t speak for him, but she almost peed her pants.
Even so, she must have found some courage somewhere, because she piped up immediately with “Who’s there?”
No answer. Her skin prickled. “I said, who’s there?”
Apparently they weren’t going to play her game of Knock, Knock, because no one bothered to answer her question.
“Drug dealers,” Donald whispered.
She shook her head. “They wouldn’t want anything to do with us.” She lifted her eyebrows. “Would they?”
He gulped. “I have some grass in
my backpack.”
“Just so you don’t have any crystal meth, I think we’re okay.”
“God, no, but still, they might think that—”
“Come out of the tent,” said a voice cold as the waters of the Columbia. “We don’t want to have to wait for you.” Then light poured through the nylon tent from what had to be several battery-operated lanterns.
If this had been a movie, Roarke would have arrived just at that moment to save the day and put the intruders, whoever they were, in their place. But Abby didn’t think Roarke would show up just now. And she had a very bad feeling about who was outside the tent.
Donald could barely speak, but he leaned toward her. “Do you think it’s banditos here to rob, rape, and pillage?”
“No.” She would have preferred bandits. At least they had a profit motive.
Donald cleared his throat and clenched his fists. “We have an injured woman in here!” His voice quivered as he said it, but at least he’d tried.
“Thanks, Donald,” she said softly. “Don’t be a hero. I’ll be okay.”
“No, you stay here. They might have guns.” He looked as if he might pass out any minute. “I’ll see what they want.”
“Maybe you should let me go first.”
“Nope.” Resolution gleamed in his gray eyes. “Wallace told me to watch out for you, and I will.” He lifted his round chin as if he figured he was about to meet his death. “Semper Fi.”
“You were a Marine?” She regretted the disbelief in her voice, but if Donald was a former Marine, she was a former Miss Universe.
“No, my sister was.” With that he zipped open the flap and crawled out into the glare from the lanterns.
She couldn’t let him do that alone. Crawling out after him, she blinked in the bright light. Then she stood and faced…damn it all…Cameron Gentry, king of the Portland werewolves.
Chapter Nineteen
All Roarke had to do at this point was follow his nose. Why anyone would want to track down Bigfoot was beyond him. The creature might be sweet and exotic, but an open sewer couldn’t rival the stench.
When he was about two miles from the pair, he started looking for another cave. The one he and Abby had so thoroughly enjoyed wouldn’t have been big enough, so he was hoping for something a little larger. There…a shadow in the side of the hill. Bingo.
A family of coyotes had taken up residence, but he convinced them to vacate for the next couple of days. He didn’t tell them they’d have to fumigate when they returned, but if they were this close to the Sasquatch pair already, they couldn’t be all that particular.
A half-mile away from the Sasquatch, Roarke buried his nose in some wild mint for a few seconds, just so he could go on without barfing. He doubted any creatures had remained this close to the encampment. Roarke hated to move the Sasquatch somewhere else, because he’d only be transferring the noxious odor to another part of the pristine forest. But the creatures had to live somewhere, and they were part of biodiversity, so Roarke was committed to the relocation plan.
Finally he could see their camp, such as it was. Sasquatch weren’t known for their domestic skills. A pile of mangled roots and berries lay in the small clearing, and the mated pair lay sprawled against each other near the pile of what was essentially garbage.
Although the common wisdom pegged Sasquatch as omnivores, Roarke had never known them to eat meat. But he’d never figured out why, if they were herbivores, they smelled so bad. Maybe they simply had bad digestion, which might be an inherited trait. A creature that large could give off some serious gas.
Especially when they were asleep after a meal. Jesus. Roarke wondered if he’d be asphyxiated before he completed his mission. But he took a moment to recognize that cryptozoologists the world over would sacrifice their retirement account to be where he was right this minute, gazing at two mythical creatures seldom seen by the human eye.
They weren’t being seen by the human eye, now, either. They were being seen by the werewolf eye. But he hoped to lay this spectacle at Abby’s feet, and maybe at Earl’s as well. That possibility helped him deal with the fetid odor of a Sasquatch camp.
The light was dim, so he couldn’t make out the color of their shaggy coats. The scientist in him wondered where they fit along the known spectrum of dark brown to red, but clouds obscured the moonlight that might have revealed that.
Padding silently toward the sleeping pair, he lifted his head and howled, the werewolf version of an alarm clock. They woke up slowly, groggily, as if some of the berries they’d consumed had been fermented. Roarke hoped not, because that wouldn’t be good for the little one carried in the female’s rounded belly.
The male stood, all nine feet of him, and towered over Roarke. But he was flabby and Roarke was solid muscle. Besides, Sasquatch and Weres had never fought over anything. The huge creatures seemed to recognize a superior intelligence and deferred to it.
Roarke sent the telepathic message he’d mentally constructed as he traveled here. Through images he hoped they would understand, he told them they were not safe here and needed to find another place to have the baby.
There was no response at first. Roarke expected that. The Sasquatch were slow thinkers and needed time to assimilate new facts. The male’s protruding brow wrinkled as he struggled with the proposition.
At last the answer came, and it was as he’d expected. The female had been born near here, and she wanted her baby to be born here, too.
Roarke understood that urge. His kind were territorial in that way, too. But he projected the image of werewolves and let the pair know they’d invaded Were territory.
The female rose and shuffled over to join her mate. She stared at him stubbornly, defiantly. Obviously she didn’t want to go elsewhere, despite the Weres.
Roarke looked into her dark eyes and absorbed the rest of her message. She was too far along to go a great distance.
Roarke wondered if he’d be able to pull this off, after all. He’d never coaxed a mated pair into a helicopter before and he didn’t know if they’d understand the concept. He mentally projected climbing aboard a helicopter, lifting off, and then landing somewhere safe.
If he hadn’t been about to gag from the stench, he would have found the scene pretty funny. They turned to each other, their brows wrinkled in an obvious effort to figure out the whole flying concept. Then they literally put their heads together and muttered in a language Roarke hadn’t yet studied. Telepathy was much more efficient.
Finally the male turned and puffed out his chest. Then he shook his head and put a protective arm around his mate.
Roarke admired the male’s protective stance. If Roarke were in their shoes, he wouldn’t trust his mate to some unknown mechanical bird, either. But they had to go.
He decided to try a different approach. He projected an image of humans tracking them down. For good measure, he threw in a scene of them being captured and hauled away.
The male glanced around the clearing as if expecting hunters to rush out of the trees. When nothing happened, he turned back to the female and they muttered some more. Apparently she held equal power in the relationship, and Roarke took note of that so he could add it to the accumulated knowledge about the creatures.
He would have to remember to tell Abby about that. In fact, he needed to remember every detail of this interaction so that he could relate it to her. He imagined how her blue eyes would shine with wonder and all the questions she’d ask.
Once again the male faced Roarke, but he seemed more open, more willing. He wanted to know more about the helicopter.
Roarke did his best. He projected images of safety, but added that there would be noise and wind from the whirling blades. He didn’t want them to be unprepared and turn tail at the last minute. They seemed to be concentrating very hard as they tried to understand.
So much depended on that moment when the Sasquatch were expected to climb into a machine that would take them up in the air, something they’d neve
r experienced. They would be terrified. Roarke became so involved in his task that he almost forgot that he was in sensory hell. These creatures might not be particularly intelligent, but they were kind and respectful to each other, and that counted for a lot with Roarke.
Finally he realized what had to happen. He’d meet them at the cave in wolf form, escort them to the waiting helicopter, and ride with them on the way to their new home. He’d show them with his calm demeanor that there was nothing to be afraid of. That meant Earl wouldn’t be able to watch the departure, but Abby still could.
Facing the Sasquatch pair, Roarke communicated the plan, and they both brightened considerably. They conferred once more in their muttered language before facing Roarke again.
Interestingly, the female was the one who transmitted their thoughts. Apparently because she was the one having the baby, she had the final say. They would go on the helicopter.
Abby would love hearing that the female had the authority. He could hardly wait to tell her. In the back of his mind lurked the thought that soon he wouldn’t have the luxury of being able to tell Abby things, unless he wanted to keep in touch on the Internet.
Yeah, right. They could be Facebook buddies. Not. There was no way in hell he’d be willing to maintain some anemic online contact with a woman with whom he’d shared copious orgasms. It was all or nothing.
But he couldn’t think about that now. He had to focus on finishing this task. Coaxing the pair to follow him to the cave he’d picked out was much easier than convincing them to fly in a helicopter.
He suggested they gather food along the way, enough to get them through a couple of days, until he could come for them. They left quite a trail of destruction on the way to the cave, ripping up entire bushes until both of them had more than they could carry.
After multiple relays, they seemed to think they had enough food to last for the duration. After extracting their promise that they would not leave the cave until Roarke showed up, he started back. He moved quickly, eager to tell Abby that he’d set up the relocation plan.
Werewolf in the North Woods Page 19
