Going for her legs and face, they landed bites that were knocked loose with the ewe’s fighting. She kicked out like lightning, then wheeled when she couldn’t break free, crashing into Kage and Zar with her horns in one powerful rush. For a second, Zar was trapped under her, snarling and yelping, while Kage was thrown on his side. Jed lunged and secured a hold to the nose, clamping down and using the full weight of his body to drag her head to the ground. Isaac released a hind leg to try again for the throat. He made the catch, yet still the ewe crashed through the brush with them.
The bighorn weighed probably 200 pounds and her strength was astonishing as she fought and battered the wolves with her sharp, splayed hooves.
Once more, Jason caught a hind leg. Andrew and Zar were still trying to get to their feet. Kage bit into her flank, but she kicked him off, along with Jason, and bolted as well as she could with the two wolves on her face, actually running backwards until the rest swarmed into her and she fell down a slope through the brush, mercifully lost to sight with the whole pack piling into her.
Still, the noise—thrashing and yelps of it—did not subside for some time.
After many minutes, when much of it did fade, a whole new commotion started: an explosive fight that sounded like it involved at least three wolves, so deafening, so hair-raising, it made the struggle with the bighorn seem like a quiet affair.
At least it did not last as long. Another squabble started, then a few more until only snarling remained.
Twilight faded to dusk. Aside from an occasional growl and faint wet, sloppy sounds, the night fell still.
An owl hooting nearby made me jump and discover I was freezing, hands and feet numb.
It took me ten minutes in the dark to find a bathroom spot and otherwise get ready for bed as well as I could. By the time I’d gathered brushes and disk and crawled into the sleeping bag I was shaking so violently I bit a sleeve of the shirt I was using for a pillow to keep from hurting my teeth.
An eclipse time.
Humans were predators.
Wolves were predators.
Both social beings, both lived in families and worked together. One killed things from afar with weapons, hopefully as quickly as possible. One killed with their teeth. And it took a very, very long time for a large animal to die by nothing but another large animal’s teeth, leaving behind suffering on both sides that are depicted in only edited versions on wildlife documentaries.
It wasn’t the wolves' fault. They were beautiful, important animals with as much a right to exist as any other—including human beings. But I wasn’t traveling with total wolves. I was traveling with shifters who could have figured out a way to pack enough food for all of us for a few days out if we’d tried. They hadn’t wanted to try. It had never even come up. They’d wanted to hunt.
Perhaps they had a right, in their own way, as a sort of wildlife hybrid, to do that as well. Yet I wished with every ounce of my being that I hadn’t had to see it.
Spiders were far from my mind tonight and I left the front flap of the tent unzipped, longing all the time for a sound barrier.
The squabbles died away before long, leaving only the gentle flowing water from the shallow stream. I thought I heard steps, wolves lapping, someone splashing, someone rolling on the dry ground.
Another owl, or the same one.
Someone trotted up to the tent in the dark. Vigorous sniffing around the flap to check that I was inside. I remained shivering, still seeing that scene of wolves and bighorn trapped together in a battle that was full of pain and stress and terror and an endless death.
I couldn’t see a thing now, not only from the dark, but the sleeping bag being pulled up over my face in a desperate effort to warm up. I only heard the zipper stretching back as the wolf shoved his way in. More steps outside and I was pretty sure I knew who they were. The two who would have first choice of the bighorn; being the only two who would have teamed up to defend their share, therefor fastest to reach the tent.
Sure enough, no sooner was one cramming himself into the place around my head and right side where I’d left the extra space, but another was following.
The first prodded into the opening of my sleeping bag, sniffing for my face. He reeked of blood and pine sap.
“No, Kage—stop it. You’re wet.” I fumbled blindly to unclip the Malamute sack so it fell off him onto my legs.
He quit pawing my bag and flopped down. Jason lay against my side. In seconds, the tent stunk of not only raw meat and viscera, but wet wolf. The space was meant for two people, max, and they were part on top of me, piled in like a basket of puppies. Still, I hoped they would warm me up.
It sounded as if they were still eating—much slurping and gulping—and I finally stole a look. The inside of the tent, with moon and stars beyond, was just shy of pitch dark. I could make out only the wolf shapes as black outlines, with Kage’s massive head looming a bit paler above me.
They were licking one another: Jason had a paw on Kage’s head as if to hold him in place while he licked across Kage’s muzzle and face like a lollypop. Kage was nibbling at Jason’s cheeks and throat as he could reach.
They were wet with blood on their jaws as well as water they’d plunged through. No night to burry my icy hands in a nice, warm wolf pelt.
Both well settled in their wadded up positions against me, each other, and the tent wall, slurping away as if at dessert, when another wolf trotted up. Someone else hurrying for a chance at the tent prize.
Licking paused as the two listened.
Kage growled—low, far back in his throat.
Jason, untroubled by the approaching invader, went back to licking his mouth. Kage’s head remained up, ears pricked toward the tent flap.
A huge head appeared in the opening. Again, it was only a deeper blackness on the night outside.
With a roar like a lion, Kage lunged into a sitting position, snarling savagely, his chest pressing Jason down as he menaced the shadow figure.
Jed growled back, softly, sniffed around that I was in there with them, then stalked away.
Kage settled once more and Jason sat up the better to reach all of Kage’s face and head with his tongue. Whining slightly, pawing him, Jason lavished even more attention on him for his heroic defense of the den.
I didn’t feel as charitable about it. However, they had been here first and it wasn’t like there was room for four. Jed also needed to get out and enjoy himself.
Still the slurping, the cold, the aromas, and that scene playing out again and again… It was going to be a long night. It was going to be a long camping trip.
Chapter 11
I had plenty of time to think of lucid dreaming as I lay awake, though no luck actually doing it. In fact, I never dreamed at all that I could remember. I didn’t get enough sleep for it.
After an hour of his grooming exchange with Jason, Kage got up and climbed over me. I thought he was going to rip the tent apart in his efforts to settle against me on the left but, after much struggle, we came to rest with my sleeping bag like the filling in a wolf taco. I did finally warm up, yet still didn’t sleep.
It was a sort of waking and sort of merely opening my eyes many hours later to the first tentative bird calls. Still dark out, but a bird other than an owl was awake and I couldn’t think of a single reason to pretend I wasn’t any longer.
I couldn’t get up, as it turned out. Jason, stretched along my side like an otter going down a slope, was mashed into me and crushing the whole length of the sleeping bag zipper below him. Kage, on the other side, also flattened me into Jason. I had as much wiggle room as a leg in a cast.
I liked to attribute the headache, total body soreness, and general lack of sleep to this, although they probably weren’t to blame for most of it. More likely the previous day, the hard ground, and dehydration.
I couldn’t even extract an arm.
“Jason?” I whispered.
His ear twitched in front of my nose.
“Jay?
Can you move?”
He shifted a quarter inch and sighed.
“Jason?” I nudged him with my shoulder and he finally lifted his head.
He looked around in the dark tent, then yawned in my face. His breath was appalling—gory dog breath—and I flinched.
“Goddess—that’s gross—”
He thumped his tail and tried to make it up to me by licking my face. Fortunately, he thought better of it at the last second and only licked his own nose, darting his muzzle toward me before withdrawing.
“I can’t get up.”
He wagged his tail more at this, as if in sympathy, then rested his head across my chest, nose in Kage’s ruff—ready to go back to sleep.
“Jay? I can’t get up because you’re lying on my sleeping bag. That’s why you need to move.”
He lifted his head again. So did Kage. Both seemed to be considering this.
“Holy crap, what is it you’re having to think about? Just get up!” I wasn’t whispering any more.
Kage licked my ear.
“Kage!”
He withdrew, the back of his head against the nylon wall as he stared at me, apparently offended.
Someone was stirring outside by the time Jason finally heaved his carcass off my sleeping bag.
That dark head poked into the tent flap.
Kage growled.
“Don’t you start. In fact, get out. Both of you. All of you.” I sat up, shoving at Jason.
He stumbled outside, trying to stretch as he went.
Damn, it was cold. Sharp cold. A sort of cold that shouldn’t be allowed in August.
I pulled on the shirt I’d been using for my pillow, then started after the rest of my clothes. I had on long underwear and socks to sleep in. I would end up having to stop on the trail and totally change later if I kept all the layers on now, but I wasn’t about to take off either tops or bottoms. I pulled on another shirt and hat while my teeth chattered.
“Kage, get out. I can hardly move.”
He rolled on his back, exposing his white belly, waving forepaws at me that were the size of my splayed hands.
Another pang: in the stress of last night I’d forgotten to fill a bottle with cold water and coffee grounds to steep overnight.
Sitting up in the sleeping bag, I turned on a little flashlight and managed to put together a bottle. I could tend to the straining and breakfast after a few hours on the trail. Cold water to see me through the morning until then. Despite the ordeal of having a pee out here, I was going to have to make a better effort about drinking enough—certain this was a dehydration headache, just the sort Nana used to lecture about in the high desert.
Kage stopped slapping me when I absently rubbed his chest, then pawed at me again until I repeated the petting and he lay still. Then I noticed what was happening.
“Don’t do that.”
Ready? Yes. Bottle and packed up. Just the bag, mat, tent put away, then trail. Other than having to climb all the way from that bag to get my frozen jeans and shoes on.
Goddess, give me strength.
I took a breath, unzipped the bag more, and scrambled to finish dressing while Kage watched, still on his back.
“Okay.” Teeth chattering, breathing fast, I got my shoes tied while my hands shook. “Are you going to change?”
Kage sat up, leaning into me, licking at my neck.
“Quit it. You stink.” I raised my voice to carry. “Someone needs to change for the backpack. And help with the tent.”
Kage sniffed happily in my hair, standing up and filling the whole space, mashing me back into my bag. His tail swished across the nylon wall.
“Why don’t you change to express your feelings? Instead of flattening people?” I shoved his face out of my hair, turning onto my hip to clear the sleeping bag so I could roll it up. This did no good at all since Kage was now standing on it. Having a mighty good time too. While Jason stood in the flap: returned to participate in the fun.
It took us twenty more minutes to get on the trail in the first gloomy light of dawn, no thanks to my bedfellows, who showed no sign of wishing to change. It turned out Isaac, Zar, and Andrew were curled up together beside the tent, surprising me, but I supposed they’d been bright enough to know they needed company after being wet and exposed to the cold last night.
Jed, crazily enough, was the one who changed and was nearly dressed by the time I emerged from the tent, scrambling to get the only coat we’d brought for them and his shoes on as he shivered.
I didn’t comment. If all went well, we’d actually be able to talk today. But I didn’t care much about that just at the moment.
With everything packed and the party finally getting underway, the five wolves in fur hopped across the stream and vanished into the brush and gloom. They were returning to the bighorn for breakfast since it would be a while before they ate again.
Jed and I set out—they would catch up—and headed back for the trail we’d come in on, north and east. Joining this just as the first rays of sunlight emerged, we turned left, northwest to follow the mountain path once more uphill. Not for long, though. We were so high up now the trail was becoming broken—up, down, sometimes level. Anyway, I didn’t need to do the talking with my crushed lungs. Jed was the one who needed to talk. If only I could come up with a magic conversational opening.
Chapter 12
We started with last night.
“Find anything of interest?” I asked once I was warming up and able to strain the coffee into another bottle with the milk for my breakfast—disposition much improved by this and the sun.
Jed, on the trail behind me, gave a noncommittal grunt and I looked around.
“Any … bears?”
“Bear traces…” He shrugged.
“No shamans?”
“Might have been a shifter track, but…” Trailing off and shaking his head.
I turned to face him. “What?”
“Something old, faint. Zar and I covered thirty or forty kilometers last night. I don’t know how far Andrew and Isaac went. Plenty of coyote, many deer and elk. We scared up an elk herd. Bears … I don’t know. Some old trail. Weeks, could be months. We couldn’t follow it.”
“No certain shifter?”
He shook his head.
“Well, it’s something.” I continued on the level but narrow, rocky trail. “Good work spending so much time scouting after a long day.”
“Zar’s sure they’re out here.” His tone was grudging, like he hated to bring Zar up.
“Me too. I wish I could be more help. You’ll find them without me, though.”
“You did find them. Got us here.” He sounded even more annoyed. “Wouldn’t be here at all without you.”
“Don’t remind me. I’m still not convinced we’re doing the right thing, creeping along on this investigation while full phases pass us by.”
“Doesn’t matter as long as we find them.”
“I hope you’re right.”
I noticed how he dropped pronouns so often to start his sentences, just like Kage. Some of the others now and then, but Kage was particularly guilty of this. It made me think, not for the first time, of the two cousins growing up together—best friends for most of their lives.
So many things I would enjoy talking to Jed about. Delicate ground.
I drank from the weak coffee and glanced around at him again. “Jed? What did you think was interesting last night? Anything in particular?”
It took him a minute to answer. “Rousing up those elk…”
“Fun?”
“What about total wolves?”
“Give us a couple days. Let’s see what happens with the search first. You know … I’m not sure if you’re wanting to sniff them, or actually meet, but they might not care for you. You don’t smell like them, Jed. You’d probably scare them if you run into any.”
He said nothing and we walked on for several minutes in silence.
I was starting to sweat and, before long, c
alled a brunch break to change my clothes and build a sandwich.
I changed among some pines, then sat out with Jed in the sun on a range of rocks off the trail and over a vista looking back into the valley east and a little south.
I spread a thick layer of peanut butter on two slices of bread, squeezed on a honey packet, then sliced a whole banana onto this. I pressed the two together, then spread more peanut butter on a third slice and passed this to Jed, who sat in turns watching me or looking away as if just noticing he was watching.
“That’s your food.” But he took it, rolled it up, then watched me eat for a minute before taking a bite.
I almost said something, told him he didn’t need to eat slowly, but stopped myself.
“Did you get any sleep?” I asked.
Another shrug.
“We’ll make camp early tonight. I didn’t sleep and I know you all were up most of the night too. By morning, if we still haven’t turned up anything, it will be time to start the loop back. We’ll have some downhill today. There’s supposed to be a trail west and I hope it’s marked because the map is not doing me much good. No danger of getting lost out here, right? No matter being off a trail? If I said right now to take us back to the van, and you were in fur, you’d go right there?”
He nodded.
I chewed and sipped the cold coffee, headache much improved. The rest of me … not so much. If I’d been sore yesterday, now I felt steamrollered. My back and shoulders in particular crying out. My backpack wasn’t even that heavy—unless worn on an uphill climb for a full day and morning.
The silence was becoming weird. Jed ate his bread roll in a record four bites, then went on watching me eat or awkwardly looking away from me as if catching himself at it. There wasn’t even anyone else around, the five wolves dispersed somewhere in the now stunted forest and rocky landscape around us.
“So…” I was down to a few bites left. “I hoped sometime you’d tell me more about what it’s like to be in fur. How’s it been here with all the new scents?”
Moonlight Journey: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 6) Page 8
