by KL Mabbs
PAC didn’t know that, then.
He turned back to White Bear, frozen. Indecision rippled through him, but under that was another emotion. He didn’t know what it was but he had felt it before, three years ago when Ahmed had died. PAC let it course up through him, felt the lighting of it quicken his muscles. The body that looked like Michael. PAC was the Witchery Way, he knew the forms from research, knew the intimacy of Faelon from her flesh. White Bear needed a skin.
PAC shimmered into his wolf form, a snarl coming from his lips as he understood the emotion coursing through his body. Coursing through Michael’s body three years ago.
He was angry. No, he was more than mad. He felt the rage take him over, saw White Bear’s eyes widen and heard a word come from his lips.
“Shash,” said White Bear, the Navajo word coming harsh from his ancient voice. And seven hundred kilos of grizzly bear stood in front of him.
PAC attacked, savagely, ripping flesh with his first lunging bite, and then made a swift retreat while, blood dripping from his mouth, he gulped the meat and fur down his throat. White Bear roared, the cave shaking with the power of it. Then he stomped the ground with his bulk, dug his claws into the rock and pushed himself forward with all of his strength. His chest drove into PAC’s body, flinging him into the air to drop six metres away.
Nimble as a wolf, PAC was back on his paws, faster than thought. He padded around the bear that was his enemy and Michael’s foe. White Bear reared up again and PAC climbed his body, his teeth snapping at White Bear’s throat—and then he was gone, leaping backwards in a way a wolf never would. The bear’s huge claw swiped past PAC’s flank, shredding the meta-material of his body, but that material could knit back together as fast as Faelon’s flesh could.
A growl roared through the cave, a wave of sound that deafened.
Then White Bear lunged, grasped his prey in a hug that drew PAC’s body to his fur, and giant teeth clamped down on PAC’s head. There was a pop and a crack as the composition of PAC’s body crumbled under the assault.
Chapter 61 Kerrigan
Kerrigan stood over Michael Scott watching his life blood flow from the wound in his neck even while it healed. He bared his teeth at the wolf that had been Ma’ii tsoh, sure that what he had seen was no longer his pack-mate. Not since Ma’ii tsoh had stepped within the threshold of sand and Kerrigan had felt the ripple of power flow from it. The air wavering, the sand vibrating in his new senses.
Kerrigan was still confused. He knew he was wolf, revelled in the way the change had taken him over. No longer scared, not of that. After three days, it was like breathing, the solid rhythm and beat that he felt within himself and under his paws.
But without Ma’ii tsoh there, he had no family, no friends, unless he counted Samantha, and he didn’t know if he could. Even though the thought of her filled him with an ache worse than any weapon that had slid through his flesh.
That left Michael the one person he knew. And Faelon, who was as much a part of him as anything else he had ever been. That was part of his nature now, the bond he could feel through the wolf. The connection to the world around him. But part of him was still a man, as divided from the wolf as the sky from the earth. And with Ma’ii tsoh gone, he resented the wolf that had lunged at Michael.
And with that thought and a quick snap of his jaws he attacked what had been Ma’ii tsoh, a pack-mate, a brother, but never his friend.
The wolf, the man that he had been, could have beat Kerrigan in a fight. Not because he was an alpha, but because he’d been born a wolf, knew the ways of fighting in a four-legged body with built-in knives and teeth that could rend flesh so easily. But Kerrigan had seen the boy that Ma’ii tsoh had become. He had no allusions about who would win.
The black wolf could feel that confidence blaring forth from Kerrigan’s being. He staggered back from the assault, the sheer ferocity of the snapping jaws and claws that wanted to rend. The red wolf barrelled into his opponent, pulling flesh from him with every bite, patches of fur dropped to the ground, the weight of the flesh attached keeping the tufts from flying about the cave. The growls, roars, and snap of ivory filled the air until none of the fighters had an idea of where the noise and fury came from. Then Kerrigan found the black wolf’s throat and ripped. Then tore at the same spot again until the animal’s spine was in his mouth and a final crunch of bone sounded in the cave. The black wolf's head dropped to the ground. Everything went quiet for a moment, enough to draw the attention of PAC and White Bear.
White Bear roared, his scream a cry of anguish. He dropped to the ground, and shrugged off the latest attack from PAC. His skin rippled like water, a force stronger than anything in nature, and PAC was in the air again. The grizzly wuffed, his lungs bellowing out the noise. He wuffed again and then his beady eyes found Kerrigan, his nose pointed straight at him, unerring as he moved his mass so fast no one saw it coming.
Kerrigan was crushed under the weight as White Bear stomped on his body again and again.
Chapter 62 Michael
Michael stood up, gathering his strength, his hand running over his neck where it had been sliced open by the black wolf’s teeth. He looked around. Faelon was alive. Thank God, she was alive, though she looked unconscious. No, in a trance state. Her hips settled in the sand, her hand holding her up, the one White Bear had bitten clean through. How was that possible?
And PAC was delaying the grizzly, fighting a holding pattern he could never win, not against something with that kind of bulk. Patches of fur were missing from the great animal. Flesh showing through. Meat, and where PAC had bitten deep enough, the skin flapped at the edges.
Beside him, the red wolf was severing the spine from the child. No, it wasn’t really a child. Just like the fox in the Oil Wars hadn’t really been a child. It was a wolf. A Skinwalker. Yeenaaldlooshii.
White Bear went crazy when he heard the boy’s spine pop and crack. Fur and muscle brushed past him as if he didn’t exist; he was too intent on destroying the wolf that had killed his son. The Witchery Way demanded a sacrifice and White Bear had paid that price. Again.
White Bear Dying stomped on the red wolf, grunts of pain coughing out from the body under the grizzly. Michael couldn’t just stand there. He reached down and picked up his knife off the granite floor of the cave. He raised it over his head and jumped onto the back of the grizzly, its white fur covered in blood, sticky and red. He grabbed a hank of fur to hold on with and plunged the blade deep into the bear’s back, sawing centimetres of flesh open before the shaman bucked and dropped down again, his legs stiff, making his body shudder with the impact. All the force transferring up into Michael’s body, like he was a rider being bucked by a bull. Michael squeezed his legs and lowered himself closer to the bear’s back, changing his center of balance. Holding on with the knife buried deep into flesh and his hand pulling at fur and skin. Ripping it from the meat that was White Bear. The Yeenaaldlooshii used the skin of an animal to become that animal.
Michael smiled.
He pulled the knife and plunged it back into the hide he was riding, sawing at it more. White Bear screamed, the roar a deafening thunder. He thumped the ground again, the red wolf howled with pain and then the bear stepped sideways slamming the wall of the cave. Something went crunch. A grunt expelled from Michael’s lungs, blood trickled down his leg. He was sure his knee was broken, the grip on that side of his body gone, his weight shifting.
He hung on. Drove the knife through flesh again, making the skin part more and more. White Bear ignored the red wolf, finally, and stood up on his hind legs and then let his weight fall backward.
Michael leapt off, took a stance, and drove his blade into White Bear’s eye, feeling the knife grind on bone as the shaman’s rage filled the confines of the cave. Claws ripped at Michael’s flesh, parting the muscles of his thighs and buttocks, and for a moment, Michael couldn’t move. Couldn’t stand up. He dropped to his knees and heard the broken one, barely healed, crunch again.
&nbs
p; He screamed.
Then PAC was there, drawing the shaman’s attention again. Claws rending flesh and meta-material both.
Michael stood up, carefully, settled his weight on one foot and jumped for the bear’s back one last time. He gripped hair in both hands, huge hanks of it, brought his good knee up for support and ripped fur. Flesh tore, like leather being sheared apart. A wet meaty sound.
White Bear went still. His muscles locked. His huge maw open in a grimace of pain and shock. Michael pulled again, lowering himself to the ground and using all the muscles in his shoulder and the leverage of his almost two-metre length to shear the hide from his enemy. The shaman’s buttocks and thighs became a bloody mess and the mass of the animal diminished until there was only a bloody ruined man standing there. Shivering in old flesh. He fell forward.
Dead.
Silence fell on the cave, all but the quiet chanting of Faelon’s voice like the murmur of the water.
Then she screamed.
Chapter 63 Faelon
Faelon’s stomach muscles clenched in spasms, her teeth gritting behind her lips as pain blossomed in her gut. Her eyes stung as tears dropped to her cheeks, and her body compressed with contractions. It was too early for this. “Michael, mate. My fault. My fault. I didn’t know.” The confession slipped from her tongue as she realized that two cubs had been the price of her prayer to the First Woman. “Michael?” She looked up at him, his eyes seeking hers even as she did. The only power left in the cave shared by these two lovers. Man and wolf and other.
Even as he started speaking, Michael was moving towards her. Then he was holding her, wrapping strong arms around her frame. “No. It isn’t.”
“Prayer cost, two cubs.”
“What?” What did she mean?
She swept her hand over the sand she sat upon, at the disrupted symbols, just piles of sand now that the ‘iikááh was destroyed and the border had been disrupted. “Michael gone. Faelon and cubs alone. Used chant to save cubs, and then Michael come, and not-cub. Simon said exchange.”
White Bear’s story came back to him. Simon was her father, was the grotesque body he had found in the avalanche. Warped by Rowan wood and death and still preserved because of the Yeii. “The legends say a sacrifice is needed for the Witchery Way. White Bear could have become anyone.”
“Not Witchery Way. Not bring Yeii into self. Ask for help. To save.”
A quiet rage built up in Michael then. But he understood. “They took our children!”
“My fault.” The racking sobs making her body shudder against his.
“No, love. Their behaviour, their fault.” But he didn’t know what to do about it, how to bring a physical child back from the spirit world. He bowed his head and let his own tears fall. Beside him, PAC dropped to his paws and put his head down, a low whine pierced the air. In time they stood up, together, as if they thought with the same mind. Though it was hours later, if anyone had noticed.
“Black wolf?”
“Dead. Same with White Bear.”
“Red wolf?”
“I . . .” Michael looked around. “Not here. Gone. How did we miss that?” Michael shook his head as if to get rid of a thought that plagued him. “We have three cubs to raise, love.”
“Enemies to find. Poison maker. Yes?”
“Yes. There’s more to life than prey and predators . . .”
“. . . there is the living.” Faelon pushed herself against Michael’s side, her arm wrapping around him. “Yes, mate.”
Michael stood in front of the cave that had been White Bear’s. PAC was with him, though he stayed in wolf form for the most part. He and PAC had searched the cave again several times in the past three months since the fight. There was no sign of the red wolf, though his blood had covered the floor in the awkward drag marks of one too wounded to walk but needing to get away. That reminded Michael of himself after PAC had taken his memory. Too wounded and needing to run away, to hide in obscurity. But Faelon had changed that, and every incident after that.
They had searched for the cubs that had been stolen, but none of the ragged remains in the cave had looked like a wolf fetus, let alone two of them. Three weeks old. How big would that have made them? How could they even survive? They had been taken for their life, their essence. An exchange, or a sacrifice, he didn’t know. Didn’t want to know. If he wanted to find blame, he could follow it back to the trap he had set. Or even further to Simon and White Bear following paths best left alone. All he knew was that he couldn’t blame Faelon. She didn’t say anything, but the sadness that hovered over her was enough to tell him that she still felt responsible.
The cubs had just been born and her smiles were coming back—but, though quick and full, they never lasted long enough.
One was human, he came out first, screaming as if birth was an inconvenience. Then two more, wolf cubs, they mewled the way one might expect, deaf and blind, for what . . . three weeks. He wondered if any of them would be able to change like Faelon. He hadn’t been able to since her saliva had changed him, given his strength. Though he was stronger than he had ever been, and now even Faelon would be hard pressed to beat him in a fight, unlike before. They were equals. But that was why they were together. They were good for each other.
Michael set the timer as they walked away. Ten minutes later, the explosion brought down a slab of rock that would seal the cave. There was nothing there, no presence at least and no life forms, but it was best not to take chances. Not with all the power that had roiled through that place. And not with what Michael knew of Navajo legends.
The Navajo gods were crafty. Way too crafty.
Chapter 64 Samantha
Former general, Samantha Ariyan, stood at the bottom of the valley that led to former Captain Michael Scott’s cabin. He had been in her chain of command, once. Though truth be told, he never should have been. He was too strong, too unreliable, to ever be “under command.” But he got things done, he always had.
The air was cold. Full winter had settled into place and the snow was deep, the sky that crystal blue that only happens at high altitudes. Samantha wore very little in the way of clothes, just jeans, boots, one of those old wife-beater T-shirts, and a light jacket. Her long black hair was pulled into a ponytail and a cap covered her head, the brim keeping the sun from her green eyes. A charm bracelet chimed at her wrist. The scents in the air only told her what was behind her. That meant Michael would know she was coming. She was certain of that even if she didn’t have proof.
Snow crunched under her feet as she moved, faster and faster, as she revelled in the abilities she had acquired from Sammy. In minutes she was a klick up the hill, and then two. When she stopped, her breath plumed out in the cold air, her lungs barely working hard even at this extreme altitude.
Below her was a bowl-shaped depression. The smell of cold steel came from under the snow, a trap of some kind, she surmised. Samantha walked the klick and a half to the cabin, her hearing picking up the sounds of play, a family cavorting in the snow. But this family was different than any family in the history of the world. This family growled and laughed as it played. She knew what Michael had become. She still didn’t know what the woman with him was, but if she was as close to Michael as she guessed, she was his equal. Michael had never struck her as the kind to want less than that.
She topped the small rise at the cabin’s foot and the sounds disappeared. Only the breath of five bodies greeted her ears.
“Hello, Michael.” He wore clothes, jeans and a T-shirt like hers. No shoes though. No scars showed on his shoulder where the black wolf had bitten him. But his hand, that had a ragged scar between his fingers, a dark line, as if the flesh there was different than the rest of his hand. A woman snuggled up to him as Samantha spoke. She was beautiful, maybe more so than Samantha herself, with her brindle-coloured hair and amber eyes. Her right hand peeked out from around Michael’s back. It was a pure white in contrast to the rest of her skin. The colour of beach sand at the finest
of resorts.
“Samantha? Done trying to kidnap me?”
“It was only ever recon, Michael. I wanted . . .”
“PAC, yes I know.”
“I thought your girlfriend was the P.A.C., at one time.”
“Mate. Faelon, this is Samantha Ariyan.” He rattled off three more names, but he didn’t point them out to her. He was just being polite, not really telling her so that she could get familiar with his family. “Ah-Na-Ghai, Us-Ddzoh, Ha-Yeli-Kahn. PAC is around.”
She looked at the family unit hunched down in the snow behind the two, as Sammy’s voice sub-vocalized in her ear and translated the Navajo words: Leader, Dash, and Dawn. But she couldn’t tell her which was which. Two cubs, amber-brown in colour, their fur still the softness of youth, a bare growl on their lips, and a boy, maybe six years old. He stood tall, his fists clenched. He had the dark skin of his father, short tight curls covering his head. But he looked more like the mother. As families went, no one would fail to see the family resemblance. He didn’t wear any clothes in this weather. Just like his mother.
And there was a third wolf. Full grown, but the size of a mastiff, a brindle coat covering it. The eyes a bright yellow. He ranged around the perimeter, his eyes always on Samantha or Sammy. PAC, she was sure. “Right. Mate.”
“You look younger than I remember, Samantha.”
“Good living.”
“I don’t believe that. Funny, you never went in for jewellery when I knew you, not even at the officer’s club.”
The innuendo was enough. “Sammy.” The air rang and the bracelet at her wrist dripped like living fire to coalesce on the ground, growing up into a miniature wolf, her rich auburn fur ruffling in the wind.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you again, Captain Scott.”
“Hello . . . Sammy was inert when Ahmed . . . after Ahmed died. That’s why I left her there. Figured she’d be buried with him. Seemed respectful, considering.”
