PRINCE OF WOLVES

by Susan Krinard

  That night they walked hand in hand over the frozen lake under a moon so luminous that the brittle winter stars were overwhelmed by its brilliance. The ice was uncertain under Joey's feet, but Luke was always there to hold her, whispering the secrets of his world into the stillness. The winter was a world in waiting, dormant until the coming of spring, only the wolves and the animals upon which they fed braved winter's harsh and austere beauty.

  It was the first of many such walks Luke took her out into the woods, by day and by night, teaching her to see and hear and smell, testing the limits of her senses. Confirmation of that newborn inner truth—of what she was—came to her slowly. It settled into her bones, into her heart and into her soul. The bond she felt with Luke was no convenient little fairy tale, his need for her no mere excuse for endless lovemaking. Yet, in spite of that deep inner conviction, Joey was sometimes aware of a blank where the need to analyze and understand and make sense of a truth so irrational should have been. Luke filled that small emptiness so completely that acceptance came almost without struggle.

  Acceptance should have been enough. Joey's happiness was real, more real than the phantoms of a previous life that sometimes haunted her dreams. But a new and strange restlessness came over her with the brutal cold of February, when Luke curtailed their walks and kept her confined to the cabin. The small gifts and enthusiastic loving continued, but Joey found herself stalking the cabin as if it were a cage, unable to shake the growing disquiet.

  When Luke went for his daily runs, Joey began to walk the edges of the forest alone. She concealed her forays from Luke, knowing instinctively that he would forbid them if he knew, his protectiveness had almost begun to trouble her. She took pains to walk along previous tracks, using the new woodlore Luke had taught her to hide the evidence of her passage.

  She made one concession to Luke's fierce concern for her safety, she always carried the rifle he had insisted she learn how to use.

  It felt heavy and awkward and wrong in her hands. Luke never used it, she had never seen him hunt with a man-made weapon, and the touch of the rifle seemed almost a betrayal of what he was. Of what they both were.

  But she earned it, and she walked alone in the winter silence. She watched the squirrels, rulers of an empty kingdom, chasing each other through their vigorous courtship rituals, she avoided the musky spoor of a wolverine and found the places where herds of moose had yarded up, stripping the foliage and packing the snow with their heavy tread.

  And she found the tracks of wolves. She knew Luke's mark from among all the others, but she followed the lesser ones, drawn by the lure of that hidden part of herself.

  It was on such a day that she discovered the tracks that did not belong. They blotted out the wolf spoor she had been following, blundering and awkward, human prints that violated the innocence of snow. There were many, a human pack's worth, they intersected the wolf prints and paced them ominously.

  Joey rocked back on her heels where she had been kneeling in the sullied snow. She could smell them with her newfound senses, and the stench was disturbingly familiar. There should be no trespassers on Luke's land, especially at this time of year when even Nature forbade intrusion. The hair along the nape of her neck rose. She stood slowly, retrieving her rifle, closing her eyes, she breathed in the icy air, testing it. The men weren't close, but they had passed not long before. Her senses shouted a warning.

  It was then, when all her inner awareness was tuned to the invaders, that it struck. She felt the stab of pain so powerfully that her body collapsed on itself, doubling over around a phantom injury that made her cry out. Luke!

  She fell back against the tree, managing somehow to cling to the solid weight of the rifle. Her vision blurred, and for an instant her mind went black with shock. The report of a gunshot, and then another, slapped the air violently. Her senses reeled under the twin impacts of debilitating pain and the revelation that Luke was in terrible danger.

  There was no time to assimilate any of it. Her mind screamed and battered at the frozen walls of her body. She could almost see him, floundering in deep drifts, his blood staining the snow.

  Joey drew in a deep, steadying breath and clutched the rifle as if it were her last grasp on sanity. She stared down at the human tracks and began to follow.

  At first she walked, still dizzy with the repercussions of her mind-numbing awareness. But the urgency grew, she began to jog over the tracks, using them to break her path, new stabs of illusory pain making her stagger. For her they were not deadly, but for Luke... She forced her feet into the steady, mile-eating pace Luke had taught her. Her heart pounded as if it would force its way from her throat, marking rhythm in time to her sobbing breath and unvoiced cries.

  The smell hit her like a wall. Forcing herself into utter stillness, Joey listened, she heard them then, gruff, angry human voices that taunted and argued, profaning the silence. She could not see them, not yet—but she knew they were there, beyond the next small rise of the forest. And Luke... She felt his pain and his desperation as if they were her own. The intensity of it made her close her eyes to gather her control and her courage.

  Joey lifted the rifle and drifted forward, light as the gentle snowflakes that had begun to fall. The sound and scent of the men assaulted her, but their noise masked her approach so thoroughly that she breathed silent gratitude for their blatant disregard.

  The last concealing screen of trees fanned across the top of the gentle rise. She pressed herself against the trunk of a grandfather fir, listening, forcing her heart to slow. Adrenaline made her legs tingle, with infinite care she rounded the tree and took in the tableau.

  She knew the men at once. She recognized the blond ringleader and shuddered; they were the same roughnecks who had harassed her by the lake. Their attention now was turned to far less defenseless prey. Joey's heart nearly stopped.

  He crouched at bay with his back to a copse of trees, huge and magnificent even as his blood burned steadily into the torn snow at his feet. His ears were laid flat to his skull, his eyes like chips of green ice; Joey stared at Luke and felt each wave of pain and fury as if it were her own. The men had fanned out in a half-circle with Luke at the center, they cursed and snarled at each other like a snapping pack of mangy dogs.

  "Just shoot it and be done with it!" Joey knew the voice, though the man's hair was covered by a knit cap.

  She pressed back into the tree and tried to still her trembling .The rifle was a leaden weight that burned through her gloves like frigid fire.

  "If you hadn't 'a screwed up by missing the first time, it'd be dead already!" another familiar voice snarled.

  "If you put more holes in it, the pelt won't be worth a damn," a third man complained.

  "I don't give a damn about the pelt." The others fell silent at the fourth man's words. "I want this wolf dead, and as many others as we can find. That's what we came for."

  Joey stared at the leader. He stood closest to Luke, a rifle tucked under his arm, she could smell his hatred and feel the vibrations of it without seeing his face. "Particularly this wolf," his rough voice growled. "So no more playing around."

  As if in slow motion, Joey watched him shift his rifle and raise it to his shoulder.

  "Hold it right there." She heard her own voice crack the sudden hush. Her feet carried her into the little clearing of their own accord, her rifle trained on the leader's head. "If any of you move, I'll kill you."

  The stunned silence that followed echoed Joey's astonishment at the cold-blooded fury that had overwhelmed her. She walked among them without fear, and they fell back as if from some dire apparition. One of the men shifted, Joey froze and tightened her fingers on the trigger. "I mean it," she said icily. She watched the leader's eyes widen as he focused on her, saw him scan the faces of his companions.

  Joey stopped a few feet from the leader and met his startled gaze. The chill rage that filled her had swept her mind clean of anything but the matter at hand, she stared into the man's vicious l
ittle eyes until he dropped them. "Put it down," she commanded as his hands tightened on his rifle. "Put it down now!"

  Again the man looked aside, swept his eyes over his friends in indecision. "You're outnumbered, little lady," he muttered ominously "If you make one move..."

  "If you make one move," Joey interrupted, "you won't be around to see what happens next." She took another step forward, so that the muzzle of her rifle was only inches from his chest. With a soft curse he dropped his weapon into the snow and slowly raised his arms.

  "I put it down, see? Now why don't we talk this over, nice and friendly." His eyes slid sideways, his face was twisted into the mockery of a smile.

  The growl warned her. Before one of the other men could slip up from behind, she had the muzzle of the rifle pressed into the skin at the base of the leader's neck. Her breath caught with suppressed violence. "You think I won't do it?" she said very softly. "Tell your friends to back off and put their weapons over there, behind those trees. Now."

  She heard them begin to disperse even before the leader managed a half-strangled command. Some hesitated, she could hear the whisper of their feet on snow, the way they shuffled and muttered among themselves. But they complied. Only then, when they stood some distance away, bare-handed, did she let her gaze move past the man to Luke.

  He had half-fallen into the deep bank, his eyes slitted with pain and weakness; blood had burned a black scar in the snow under him, and his right foreleg was unnaturally bent. Joey took it all in coldly and then met his eyes.

  It was a shock that, at another time, might have broken her concentration. The message he sent to her was as clear as if he had spoken it aloud. Go. Run. Leave me. The inner words almost cracked the ice of her resolve. Then she broke the compulsion, beating it back with a message of her own, ignoring the desperate plea in his eyes.

  Slowly she turned back to the man who waited under her rifle. His face was white except for two hot patches of red at the tops of his cheekbones fury, she thought, and hatred and fear. Aimed at her. She could feel a frigid smile forming on her face. He could not meet her eyes.

  "I'm going to let you go," she murmured. "I want you and your buddies to get off this land and never come back." She pressed the rifle into soft flesh for emphasis, and he choked on his strangled rage. The men muttered and stirred on the edges of her peripheral vision. "Now move—away from the guns." Shoving him, she held the rifle steady as he backed away. The men bunched, clumsy with emotion and herd instinct. She watched them dispassionately as they started away, their muttered threats floated back to her, growing louder and bolder as the distance increased. At last the noises faded, the clearing suddenly still. She waited until she was certain the men would not return and then dropped to her knees in the cold snow.

  Luke was there, against her, solid and warm and alive. His breath came in heavy pants that plumed the air; Joey brushed at his shoulder with her hand, and it came away sticky with blood.

  The pain surged through her again. "Luke!" she cried. Raking him with her gaze, she found the places where the lush gray pelt was matted with blood, the unmistakable sign of bullet wounds half-hidden in the fur. With a gasp of overwhelming fear, Joey tried to clear her mind. He was still breathing, still with her, he was strong enough to stay alive. He had to be.

  With infinite gentleness Joey lifted the heavy head in her hands. "Luke, listen to me Luke!" She gripped the fur to either side almost fiercely, willing him to hear her. "Look at me, Luke!"

  He opened his eyes slowly. His tail thumped once against the snow, and a sound caught deep in his throat. Joey forced back tears. "Can you understand me, Luke?" His tail thumped again, and a sigh shuddered the massive body. Shutting her eyes tightly to impose control on her racing emotions, Joey considered her options.

  "You're badly hurt, Luke," she said at last, hardening her resolve. "I can't help you here." She knew his weight was far more than she could hope to handle. Even his head dragged at her hands. "I need you to help me, Luke. You need to hang on." His tail thumped again, and his eyes locked on hers. The unspoken message there gave her courage. "Can you change? Can you help me get you back to the cabin?"

  The despairing sound Luke made was answer enough. Another shudder racked his body. "All right," Joey said, breathing deeply. "You can't change. I can't carry you. That means going all the way into town for help, or finding some other way of getting you back to the cabin." The sound of her voice was harsh and brittle and practical. "Help me, Luke. What should I do?"

  His head lifted from her hands. His eyes stared into hers with all the old familiar intensity and knowledge came to her from some deep place beyond the reach of words.

  The thing that flooded into her mind then almost made her lose her grip on Luke's fur, with deliberate care she lowered her hands to pillow his head in the snow.

  "No," she whispered hoarsely. "No—I can't." Her body began to shiver in reaction, a glaze of denial blurring her vision. Luke lifted his head, slowly, painfully, to regard her. "I can't..." Luke's head dropped back into the snow and his eyes closed as if in surrender.

  Joey stared at Luke and felt as if her mind and heart were being torn apart bit by inevitable bit. With shaking hands she unzipped her parka and pulled her outer shirttail from under her sweater, she used her small knife to tear strips from it, enough to bandage his hurts. Her fingers were clumsy, her efforts painfully inadequate. The bullet wounds had almost stopped bleeding, but she bound them up as best she could and stroked his head while the resolve built within her and the weight of conviction settled into her bones.

  She closed her eyes, feeling the blood rushing through her veins and arteries, the workings of muscle and sinew, the flow of cold air into her lungs. What passed through her mind then was nothing so clear as conscious thought. Raw need compelled her. To save Luke.

  She looked down at him once more. "You told me once," she said softly, "that I had to hang on. Now I'm telling you." Bending down so close that her tears moistened the pale fur of his cheek, she clutched at his mane. "You said, 'I won't let you leave me,' remember? Well, it works both ways, Luke. It works both ways." She heard his shuddering sigh, saw his eyelids flicker without opening, and knew he heard her.

  With grim haste Joey stripped away the parka and sweaters and shirts one by one, peeled off trousers and underclothes and boots until she stood naked in the cold. The snowflakes were like kisses on her skin, for a moment she felt nothing, and then the cold was gone. Utterly gone, as if she stood before a roaring fire. Her body went up like kindling in the heat, burst into flame and burned until the roar of the conflagration drowned out her cries of shock and pain.

  When it was over, when the fire had settled again to embers, the world had shifted into an alien place. It bombarded her altered senses from every side. Instinct rescued her when her mind could not. She cried out to Luke a final time, hearing the thin wail of her voice, and began to run.

  "Good God, Joey!" Allan Collier's voice came from a great distance as she fell into his arms. Medicinal smells assaulted her, filling her sensitive nostrils with their stink, she leaned heavily against the doctor as he pulled her in from the doorway. Her feet nearly gave out from under her, unable to accommodate the shift in balance from four legs to two. Collier was the only certainty in a world that spun and wheeled about her.

  She was distantly aware of voices talking, exclaiming over her; she dropped into the chair Collier guided her to and tried to reorder her overloaded senses. Someone threw a blanket over her shivering body. The vinyl of the chair was icy cold under her bare rump, that, more than anything else, broke through. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision.

  Collier was there, holding something hot and liquid up to her mouth. She sipped it, nearly choked at the taste, and managed to swallow, Collier made meaningless noises of approval and made her drink more. The heat of it stilled the helpless shivers. Blinking again, Joey felt the beginnings of focus and of returning sanity.

  "Luke," she forced out at last
. "Luke... " It was hard, nearly impossible to make the words come. She floundered desperately and flailed out with clumsy hands, pushing the blanket from her shoulders. With growing urgency she sought Collier's eyes as he moved around her to pull the blanket back up.

  He stopped at last and crouched before her, taking her hands in his. They felt icy cold on her burning skin. "Tell me, Joey. As best you can." His voice was an anchor of calm reason.

  "Luke," she gasped, the human words still thick and strange on her tongue. "Hurt. He's hurt."

  "Where, Joey? Where has he been hurt?"

  Bile rose in her throat as she forced her way around it "Woods—his land. He can't move. Allan... "

  For a moment his earnest blue eyes searched her face She willed him to understand the urgency, to act, to run, he let go her hands and stood before she could scream at him in desperation. "Wait there, Joey, and rest. I'm going to go send the nurse in to look after you and go for help. If he can't move, I'll need someone to—"

  "No!" Joey fought to keep hysteria from her voice. "No, no help. They shot him. He can't... " Somehow she made her tongue form the correct shape. "He's wolf."

  Collier froze at the door, staring back at her. Understanding suffused his expression. "Good God," he murmured. There was a span of time in which Joey could see the thoughts moving behind his eyes, naked emotion as he reached the inevitable conclusion. "All right." He closed his eyes briefly and let out a deep breath. "Then it's up to you and me."

  Relief washed over Joey. She hardly heard Collier as he spoke to someone outside the door, disappearing briefly to return with an armful of clothing. "Are you strong enough, Joey?" he said, searching her eyes. "Are you going to be able to help me find him and bring him back?"

  Without answering, Joey stood up and cast the blanket from her shoulders. Collier looked away, his hand half-extended to help her as she caught her balance; she turned aside to tug on the borrowed clothing, embarrassment a meaningless burden for which she had no time. There was only one thing that mattered, one goal that carried her on shaking legs after Collier as he gathered up his equipment and led her out to the garage behind his office, firing off final instructions to his assistants and pursued by the puzzled questions of patients he had left in the waiting room.