by KL Mabbs
“Sammy, he won’t hurt us either. Please, come here.”
Sammy backed up, but she never took her eyes off of Kerrigan.
Zach blinked, and the tension bled from the room.
Sammy sat down on her haunches, as close to Samantha as she could get in her current form.
Zach took a deep breath. “What's going to happen to me?”
“I don’t know, Zach. The satellite feeds shows Michael as human. Sammy, have your functions changed any in becoming a wolf?”
“No, ma’am.” That same sexy contralto he’d heard before came from the throat of the wolf. Another shiver ran down Kerrigan’s back.
“If it happens, Kerrigan, I think your control will be . . .”
“That didn’t look like full control, Samantha. Your machine reacted to body language. That’s just an attack waiting. And I wouldn’t have hurt you.”
Samantha raised herself from her chair and walked over to Kerrigan. She slipped her legs over his lap, careful of the wood shards on the floor. “And Sammy?” Her hands went to his cheeks, the soft warmth reminding him of what she was to him.
Kerrigan looked up into her emerald green eyes fully aware that with her strength she could snap his neck with ease, but then, he would probably just heal. “I would defend myself. I don’t like dogs for the most part.”
“You’re looking at a wolf, Lieutenant. She has access to everything on the net that applies to her current physiology. She can smell your emotions. The same way you can smell mine.”
He smiled. The lust he could sense growing in her, like the musky scent of over-ripe oranges. There was another emotion overlaying that, but he didn't know what it was, didn't have a reference for it. Could she actually love him? “I couldn’t do that a week ago.”
“I doubt Michael could either, but I would bet that’s a different matter, now.”
Samantha leaned down and kissed her mate. It was a slow kiss that eased his mouth open, letting her tongue explore, and her teeth nibble at his lips. Kerrigan’s hands found their way under her blouse. She couldn’t be sure if the moan that she heard was his or hers, but it was loud enough to add to her arousal. His breath gasped as she plied his lips once more. Her hands running over his bare chest.
Neither of them noticed that Sammy had returned to her wrist, somehow, or that she had planted several hundred Nano-filaments deep into her flesh.
Chapter 37 Michael
“Boyen?” Scott said, firing another smart bullet.
“Aye, Captain.” The telltale from the computer screen in the arm of his suit blinked a few times. “That fuzzy edge is gone, sir. Not sure what that means. But I have life signs.” Boyen pointed east, into the hills, and the caves the area sported.
“That’s not good. This is a training mission, boys. No one has our six. And the media liaison would be pissed if they were left out.”
“Yeah, they want their oil, like the rest of the world,” said Ahmed.
“It’s in the damn sand,” said Huer, brushing the fine dust of the desert off his assault rifle. The gun’s action wasn’t harmed by the sand, but Huer liked things clean. Like his motorcycle. “More like the damn sand gets into everything.”
“It’s the wind. They should use it for power like Europe and Canada,” Ahmed claimed.
“You want a new job, become a civvie,” said Captain Scott. “Stop complaining.” Michael Scott led his men back to the west and the camp they shared with the regulars, the media, the U.N., and the Warsaw Common. The cluster fuck that was his life right now.
“Humph. That’s Huer’s job,” Ahmed said.
“Yeah, and our job is to find oil and keep P.A.C. out of enemy hands. Move on, men.”
Node One: Name, PAC. Primary Interface: Captain Michael Scott: Adapting. Primary Systems: Nominal. Organics Engine: online. Behaviour and Emotional files: Updating. Command structure: Unchanged. Vector analysis: Footsteps have a pattern. Movement is more than rhythm of heart and muscle. Environment: Damn hot. Oil is in the sand. Bloody hell. Energy. Power. Environment: ecologically unsound. Transition. Wind is power. Electric. Hydro. Laser fed Deuterium, nuclear power. Sunlight. Sodium. Environmental power is free. Updating Political Files: Power is never free. Power is energy.
Faelon’s scent lay over the brisk odour of the pines. Wrapped around it was the coarse thick smell of oil from the helicopter that had taken her. Its engine was electric, but bearings and motors needed the blood of dinosaurs, or plants, to run. The United States, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.—their skeletons were decaying the rest of the world.
The wind picked up, shearing snow from the tops of the evergreens to drop clumps of frozen water down his neck. Michael ignored the brief cold before his body absorbed it and turned the water warm.
“Another satellite has been brought into play, Michael.”
“So, surveillance is what twenty, thirty degrees?”
“Yes. But the overlap makes for less downtime. They now have the resources for thermal and to ping for sonar discrepancies, as well.”
“Can you . . . ? Right. We’ve been here before.” Michael said, remembering something that had been lost to him.
He stopped to smell the shifting wind. He had new gifts, and ones not supplied by PAC or his enhancements. He wasn’t about to let them go to waste. The air was cold, but it didn’t stop the aromas of the mountains as they traced their way through to his nose: Faelon was still southwest of his position, and then there was the sharpness of rock mixed with the decay of moss, the musk of animals, and men.
And fear. He smelled fear in the wind.
“You’re becoming like Faelon.”
“You mean a wolf?”
“I don’t know.”
PAC didn’t say it, but Michael knew the thought that came on the other end of that sentence, because it was what he was thinking. They shared the same sense of loss. Of not being useful.
“What’s this mean, PAC?”
“You’re no longer within human parameters. I don’t know, yet.”
“Then we take it slow. I need you, PAC. Don’t ever think I don’t.”
Then his jaw started to ache with a shiver of sound that rattled his teeth, and left his mind dazed.
“PAC?”
“If we wish to be undetected . . .”
Michael heard PAC’s response to a sonar ping for the first time in his life. The noise slithered from Michael’s jaw and into his bones. He grabbed at his ears in a useless attempt to stop the sound and dropped to his knees.
“PAC. That . . . fuckin’ hurts.”
The noise stopped. Michael sighed with relief. The vibration in his bones toned down to a tingle, as if his funny bone had been hit lightly, but all over. It was especially disconcerting inside his skull.
“Their satellites won’t line up forever. Let’s just get out of the area.”
PAC’s tactical display suddenly sprang to life, blossoming in front of Michael. The thermal dots of life forms appeared, hundreds of them in the area, but only the men showed up in coloured relief. Ten men. More than before, if he understood who they were from their equipment signature. The Canadian army was escalating their behaviour. Scattered in the area of the pass, they were moving, gaining position, high ground.
Michael ran. His bare feet gripping the snow in ways that weren’t possible for him days ago. His toes splayed. He could feel the capillary action of his blood vessels. Knew the skin of his foot was the same temperature as the snow, making it possible for him to stay on top of the terrain. It was an instinctive control that wolves exhibited, and now, Michael found that same control.
PAC’s heads-up display continued to light the ground at his feet, a reference if he needed it. The men that were hunting him had the same capability though. Not in the same form as he, but they could see him and use the terrain to guide and pen him in. Michael needed the same high ground that his trackers were using. He turned up slope, still heading south towards Faelon.
If they hurt her—Michael gr
owled.
He dug his hands and feet into the snow and the rock of the slope before him. His grip sure, thanks to PAC acting as the muscle for his right hand, he found purchase and climbed, faster than normal, leaping from stone outcrop to tree root. His strapped-down pack swung slightly with the lurch of his body and his rifle. He had to be wary of the barrel. He jumped to another outcropping and stopped, listening to the wind and the scents that it brought to him.
There were men here, near the top of the slope; the slither of cloth over metal gave them away.
Their fear gave them away.
He eased up to the ridgeline, looked over to the right, and then left. PAC’s holo-display disappeared as Michael got closer to the soldiers. If they had been wearing a combat suit, the display would have been projected on the inside of his visor, unnoticeable to an outsider.
Below him, the Johnston Creek Valley spread out, and Palsatilla Pass loomed before him. That made military sense, hold the pass and none could get by them. They hadn’t counted on Michael or PAC being who they were, who they were becoming.
Snow crunched under Michael’s bare feet; it wasn’t a loud sound, barely a whisper, and was covered in the whine from the wind, and the voices of two men.
“It’s not normal for a man to live through that.”
“Tech keeps getting better. Fifty years ago, most people didn’t live over a hundred, and a combat suit wouldn’t keep you alive in the field. Barely stop a bullet in those days. He’s not so weird though, it’s that bloody wolf. I saw it when they put it on the copter, fucking thing was still alive, twitching and moving like it was in a seizure.”
“It’s not tech, and I heard its brainpan was missing.”
He saw a shiver run through one of the men. The other just stared into the distance.
The smell of fear erupted on the wind.
At the mention of the black wolf, the rage that had been following him climbed into his thoughts, stole them away. For a brief moment, he stilled completely, ready to lunge, to attack anything that got in his way of finding Faelon.
Then he remembered Ahmed Ariyan, and his reason returned. Another memory surfacing from the past.
He closed his eyes and took a breath, and another. His rage was better spent in another pursuit.
Michael’s clothes weren’t camouflaged; he stood out in dark silhouette to the snow and trees around him. He moved for cover, as fast as possible. This team didn’t notice him. Too busy talking. He slipped behind a tree, then to a boulder. A bush, a copse of trees, the browns, greens, and the dark blue of his jeans blending in with the darker components of nature.
A metre.
One of the sentries moved.
Three metres.
“Look.” The other pointed to a hawk passing overhead.
Thirty metres past the two men and he could breathe for a moment. PAC, remembering and adapting, put up his display briefly, a miniature map to show what Michael was learning to guess from scent and hearing of his enemy’s behaviour.
But he wasn’t infallible. The read-out was needed.
“Thank you, PAC,” he whispered, sure his friend could hear him. For the last three years, his only companion.
Michael studied the telltale again and moved, watching his back for the two men behind him. He was sure they wanted him alive, or they would have killed him earlier. After the Oil Wars, Michael had promised himself that he would only kill in self-defence. These men didn’t need to die, even though, tactically, it didn’t make sense to leave an enemy at one’s back.
The rage he had been feeling had leaked into everything he was doing. Now he was pouring that into saving Faelon. It was the only choice that made any sense to him.
He continued along the ridge, and soon Boulder Pass was below him. The ridge he was on flowed into the Lake Louise Valley. He could have followed it down and then back up to the ridgeline that held his cabin. But that was southeast. He would follow the ridge southwest, where it split, towards Faelon. That would put him away from any military positioning the army was following. And put him in control. They would have to play catch-up.
Michael smiled. It seemed much like Faelon’s when he had first met her.
Feral.
Chapter 38 White Bear Dying
White Bear Dying filled the bowl in front of him with the ashes of the dead. Then he took the fine sand that was used to draw the painting that would hold the concept for his Curse. It used three different colours of sand, so he repeated the procedure, each ritual adding to the danger and the rewards. The wind howled through the cave at his back, but the shelter of hides draped around his area kept the unruly spirit at bay. He was careful not spill any of the fine bone ash; uncontained in a ritual, it was a curse waiting for a victim. With all the courage and knowledge that the Yeii gave him, there was a point in the ritual where he could stop this—and not. He told himself this was just practice.
To learn the form.
He watched his son through a small parting in the hides. He danced an old ritual, a knife held in his hand, as he played at slaying an imaginary grizzly bear; he was the hero of the tribe.
White Bear smiled. He laid out the spell in his mind, the boundaries it would need, drawn in the sand and conceptualized in the painting. Then he cleaned the area in front of him, the rock that would be the ‘iikááh. A deep breath steadied his hand. He started the ‘iikááh: the place where the gods come and go.
Łizhiní Sals—black sand—made the border, to hold the spell. The left side was left open, to let the gods in. He scooped more of the dark colour into his fist, careful not to let any leak from the bottom until he was ready to relax the muscles enough to draw a fine line. He let it fall, a thin stream of sand and bone dust, the remains of his grandfather.
AŁizhiní outline appeared, a human, someone he knew and wanted punished. The leader of the tribe that sought to outlaw him for the knowledge of Skinwalking. For just knowing. Rage trickled into his awareness, disturbing the trance he held. Sand flowed unevenly as his muscles reacted. The wind picked up. He clenched his fist, stopping the flow of sand.
His heart beat faster as he noticed the fine black dust escape his barriers and drift into the world. Then breathed a sigh of relief. It was too little, too small an amount to curse anything in the land before him.
He eased the breath back into his body and found the trance state he had lost so easily. He needed more control. That is what practice did. The First Man, Etsáy-Hasteén, and First Woman, Estsá-assun, understood that. They directed his hand.
He returned to his spell.Łigaii Sals—white sand—gave a soul to his creation, a beginning, the purity he needed to call it into being. Doklizh Sals—blue sand—showed the life force of his victim, a place for the growth of the curse to take place.
Another figure grew into place under his hand, a grizzly bear. The curse under his hand took shape, the bear seen to be ravaging the man outlined in theŁizhiní Sals that represented the underworld.
White Bear Dying smiled at the simplicity of form that had grown under the soft whispers of the Yeii. He knew if he sealed the edges once the power of the Yeii had filled the sand painting the curse would come to life. He wiped his hand through the fine grains of sand, the wild chaos building there, waiting for completion. Waiting for the Power of the first Man and Woman to flow and take hold in the real world.
Outside, his son wiped the trace amounts ofŁizhiní Sals from his cheek, continuing to play the hero from the myths of the Diné. Soft sand slipped under his smooth leather moccasins.
The edge of the plateau looking out over the land.
The wind howled, as if the spirits would rip away the world and leave it clean once more.
No humans, no Skinwalkers to punish the pale skinned, and especially no Witch that revelled in the voice of the First Man and Woman.
White Bear Dying pulled his furs tighter to himself, glad for the warmth of the huge animal under his buttocks. This horse had been a good companion over the years. It
was getting on in age, like himself; soon it could roam in the pastures of its ancestors, in the wild meadows that dotted this land, harsh as it was.
He had stopped to rest for the night. This hunt might be his last and he didn’t know when he would return or even if he could. Once he changed again, into the predator he could become, he may not be able to find the strength to leave the form. Once he could have, but that was before his son had died, before the corruption of this power took hold of him.
It was the grizzly bear he would wear this night, after the rituals were over and he could hunt down Michael and his mate.
He had found the cave one summer, years ago. Centuries ago, an earthquake had split the granite of the mountains into huge slabs, and twisted, they fell into the place wrong, leaving an opening. Wind and animals had tracked in earth to coat the floor. Overhead, granite blocks hung, like inverted stairs. Seeping mineral water had left crystals striated in the cracks and veins of the faulted granite. It held a natural hot spring that left a slight sulfur smell in the rock and the still air of the cavern. There was room in the back near the springs for a bed, and space for his rituals and supplies. Even fresh water. It was the same mineral base as the hot springs, but somehow in the earth, it had been separated and cooled before finding its way back to its tributary. He had taken the time to bring in a water testing kit several years ago. It was pure enough to drink, the sulfur content minimal.
He set out his tools for his first ritual. The blood he had gathered. Two sources of it: one was Michael’s, the other the black wolf that Michael had talked about. Not what he had perceived, at first, when he saw the brindle-coated wolf drooling over a human body.
Had he always been this set in his ways? This blind?
He didn’t answer himself, but continued with his preparations. He fell into the trance state so easily; it was second nature to him, now. Emotions didn’t take him out of it like they had many years ago when the black curse sand had taken his son from him.
