Wolf Hiding (A Wolf in the Land of the Dead Book 2) (2 page)

The stranger was heading up the track to the den. Nowen waited until his broad back was turned completely away before she rose to a crouch and slipped off her perch. She hit the rough earth of the path as quietly as a leaf falling and started up after the man. She was barefoot, taking each step with caution, aided by the wolf’s natural grace and stealth. Parts of the wolf bled over into the human and vice versa, giving her cause on more than one occasion to wonder if the line she drew between her two halves was really as definite as she wished.

The opening to the clearing, a small space where two rock formations almost met, was just ahead, and Nowen was a little amazed that the stranger had been able to make it through the gap before. Right now he stood in front of the pink-tinged granite with his hands on his hips, as if he were waiting for something.

She stalked up behind him. He was shorter than her by at least four inches but looked strong, with wide shoulders and muscular arms. However, he seemed completely oblivious of his surroundings, and she and the wolf were in rare agreement that it was a wonder this man was still alive in this harsh new world.

Nowen leaned in close to the stranger and poured as much menace into her words as she asked “Who the hell are you?”

Chapter Two

The blonde man yelped and swung about so fast he lost his balance and fell. He landed in a sitting position on the ground, and Nowen took the opportunity to move in closer. She loomed over him, her arms crossed, as she asked again “Who the hell are you?”

His reaction was surprising. He screamed and raised his hands. “Oh shit, don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!”

Nowen frowned in confusion. His fear was true and obvious.
So why is he here?
“Then don’t make me repeat myself.” she said.

He peered at her with worried ash-grey eyes in a broad and unlined face. “My name is Anton.” His words were hesitant, his voice flat and accent-less.

“Did you leave that note?”

“Yes.” The fact that Nowen had made no move toward him seemed to be restoring his confidence. He lowered his hands and sat up straighter.

She speared him with a glance. “Why? What do you know about me?”

“I know you’re a werewolf.” Anton shrugged awkwardly. “Or, whatever you call yourself. Can I stand up?”

Nowen curled her upper lip but nodded and stepped back, allowing him to rise to his feet. He slapped his palms on his pants and looked around the clearing. “Tell me what you know.” she snarled.

“Well, it’s kind of a long story.” Anton grinned sheepishly. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, first clasping them together in front of and then behind himself. Finally he settled for tucking them under the jacket still knotted around his waist. “Ok, I live near Loveland, Colorado. I was on summer break from college, just spending time at home with my mom, when all this shit with Flux broke out. Our little suburb was small enough that we weren’t hit too badly, but I remember one night when the crazy Kaminski brothers down the street from my mom’s place started torching some vacant houses. They were running through the neighborhood shouting that the dead people were hiding in the empty homes, and they needed to be burned out. But mostly we all just sat around in our living rooms watching the news or getting together outside and talking about what to do. Some of the people on our street started leaving, like Mr. Milano who just packed up his family in the middle of the night and left, but didn’t take his dogs. Those damn things rampaged through the neighborhood and even bit Mrs. Tagliacci before someone shot-”

“Get to the point.” Nowen’s razor-sharp words interrupted the young man’s rambling speech, and now that she was looking at him directly she could see just how young he was. His attitude, his body language, the over-eager look in his eyes -
basically just a big pup.

Anton gulped loudly. The slight smile faded from his face and he blinked rapidly, his pale lashes flickering over his ashen eyes. “Right, right. Sorry. Anyway, after a few months there were just a few of us left on our street. It was a cul-de-sac, and in a new development, so there weren’t that many people there to begin with. All of us, fifteen people in total, pooled our food and water and went on gathering raids together, stuff like that. It seemed safer to stay where we were as long as possible, instead of going into Fort Collins or Denver. We made it through the winter ok, although we had to go further and further away for supplies.” He paused and looked down for a moment. “Those damn...
things
...never seemed to go away. Even when it got cold.” Anton looked back up at Nowen, his despair plainly written on his face. “Some of us didn’t make it. Those of us left had to decide whether to stay or go. We knew hitting the road would be dangerous, but we were running out of options. And then, like a dream,
they
appeared.”

“Who?”

“A miracle. This group of people, driving down the road, looking like something out of Mad Max in two big-ass Humvees and a couple of enormous trucks with metal plates all over them. Georgia Faust, my mom’s next-door neighbor and a former soldier, had been out by the highway searching the cars for stuff when these people came by. She brought them back to our street.”

Against her will Nowen found herself interested in Anton’s tale. Now she asked, “And none of your people were concerned at all about these newcomers?”

He stared at her blankly. “Why would we be? Georgia had talked to them and we trusted her, what with her having been in the army and all. They stayed with us for a couple of days, and told us about Heaven.”

“What?”

“Oh, no, no, not like the bible Heaven, or anything. See, these people are a search party. They’re from a new place being reclaimed from the dead for us, the living. It’s up north. It’s called New Heaven, and they’ve got military there, and technicians, and doctors, and they’ve already got electricity back. And the leaders have sent out search teams to bring anybody back that wants to live there!” As the young man spoke his face grew brighter and brighter until it almost glowed. His eyes didn’t seem to see her but looked past her at a wonderful vision for his gaze only.

Nowen snorted. “And you believed them?”

“Yes, of course. Look, they could have killed us all, or forced us to go along, but they didn’t. They shared their food and water with us. They even gave us some of their medical supplies. This whole thing is on the up-and-up.”

Her momentary interest was waning. The young man’s story of a paradise for humans was wishful thinking at best, a horrible lie he’d been told at worst. Either way, it didn’t matter to her. “You haven’t told me how you know what I am.” she said.

“I heard it from someone.”

Her forehead wrinkled in consternation. “Heard it? From who?”

“A girl the New Heaven people had picked up a couple of days before they found us. Her name was Zoe.”

Nowen froze. The image of an angry young woman with purple-and-green streaked hair flashed through her mind. “Zoe.”

Anton nodded. The sun was falling toward the horizon and painting the rocks a soft reddish-orange, and with the approaching night the wind had sprung up. He shivered and hunched his shoulders, shoving his hands further into his pockets. Absently Nowen wondered why he didn’t just put on his jacket. “Yeah, Zoe. Evidently they found her sitting in a pick-up truck on the highway near Longmont. She seemed pretty out of it every time I saw her.”

“What did she say about me?”

“Well, the second night the New Heaven guys - New Heavenites? - were there our group and theirs were just sitting outside, sharing stories of what we’d seen since the Flux started. So this chick, Zoe, told about what had happened to her and these people she was with in some place called...Tile Sidie or something.”

“Tie Siding.” Nowen said.

“Yeah, that. Some of the stuff she was saying sounded like what other survivors rescued by the New Heavenites had said. Crazy guys kidnapping or killing people, destroying settlements; you know, scary shit. So we’re all nodding and listening and then...then she starts talking about a strange woman who’d joined their little group of prisoners. Tall, black hair, yellow eyes, looked like an Indian, mean and cold-blooded. Got some of these prisoners killed, too.”

Nowen closed her eyes for a moment as rapid-fire pictures flipped through her head. Standing in a junkyard as a slight man with pale, pale, ice-blue eyes told her to kneel and beg for a life to be spared. Not her life, but that of the young man with dark skin and dark hair that kneeled next to a dead man, the first victim of the maniac with the cold eyes.

Dropping to the dead grass and begging, never moving her gaze from that of the young man’s.

A crack of thunder and the warm blood splattering across her face as the young man’s body fell forward.

Anton was still speaking, and she dragged her eyes open and focused on his words.

“...and they ended up at an overrun refugee center, and that’s where Zoe saw this strange woman change into a wolf. When she told us that, we all just looked at her like she was crazy. She started screaming that it was true, all true, and that we couldn’t trust anyone. One of the New Heavenites took her away, to calm her down, I guess.”

The reality, the meaning, of Anton’s words finally sunk in, and Nowen struggled with the sensations of anger and despair that swept over her suddenly. She glared at him, her mouth twisting into a snarl. “And that’s how you know what I am?”

He stared at her, his eyes widening as he took in her anger. “Yes. I mean, I didn’t believe her, but she seemed so sure that -”

Brusquely Nowen cut him off, lunging forward and wrapping her hands around his shoulders. She pulled him close, lowering her face to his. His eyes were enormous ashen ponds, and she could smell the fear coming off him in waves. “And that’s all you know? You don’t know anything about who I am? You have nothing for me, nothing at all?!” As her anger grew her voice dropped lower, the words shaping into something akin to a growl. She felt stupid, thinking that this man, this
human
, could be the one to finally crack open the door to her identity. And then she felt foolish, for even caring about who she’d been.
Isn’t that what I’ve been telling myself? That it’s better not knowing, not worrying? Or have I just been lying to myself all this time?

Nowen couldn’t handle everything that she was feeling and thinking. Her mind whirled around like a mad animal trapped in a cage, and she took her confusion and hate out on the man standing before her. She tightened her grip and heard his collarbones creak under her assault. When she spoke this time her voice cut the air like claws through fragile skin. “I should just kill you where you stand. I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, goading the wolf in her den, but you are messing with something you know nothing about.” It took a great effort to release him, to drop her
claws
hands and step away. “Leave, now, and never return. Or I will kill you.”

Anton’s harsh breathing drummed in her ears as she turned her back on him. The sun was sitting on the horizon, and the sky overhead was streaked with gold and orange clouds. Nowen drew in a breath of clean, pine-flavored air and starting walking down the path, her bare feet leaving no mark.

“Wait!” the anxious cry came from behind her. She didn’t stop. The night was fast approaching and even as she walked she could feel the bones in her body straining to change. Ribbons of black fur began to spiral up her legs.

“I need your help!” Anton cried.

“I don’t care!” Nowen spit out through a mouthful of sharp teeth.

“Please!” The crunch of footsteps on twigs came to her.
The fool is following me. Fine. I’ve had enough of humans. Let’s show him what happens when you poke a wild animal.
The fine bones in her hands popped and cracked as they began to lengthen. More teeth sprouted from her gums as her face began to change, her nose and mouth stretching forward as her skull shrank.

“Please! I need your help!” The human’s voice was all desperation and despair. The sound of footsteps paused. For a single moment there was nothing but silence. Then he spoke.

“You’re not the only one.”

Chapter Three

“Tell me everything.”

“Again?”

“Again.”

Anton sighed and looked down at the chili can in his hand. He ran a finger around the metal edge, collecting a few bits of meat that he sucked down. He dropped the can carelessly next to the fire pit and leaned back.

The night wind soughed through the tree tops, sending the flames dancing and casting crazy shadows around the clearing. The yipping of a coyote, several miles away, made the wolf anxious to run, to hunt, and Nowen pushed those desires down with difficulty. She placed her own can of chili on the ground next to her. She had only picked at the food, finding the taste of the meat and beans oily and unpleasant. The same could not be said for the man seated across the fire pit from her. She watched as he took a pull from a water bottle before he finally looked at her again.

“Ok. The leader of the group of New Heavenites who came to our neighborhood was called Isaac. He’s the one that told us of the settlement and invited us to come live there. He had a pet, a dog that was with him always. It was a gorgeous dog, big German Shepherd-looking thing, with pure white fur. The dog had weird eyes, though - one blue, one green.”

Nowen closed her own eyes as Anton spoke, visualizing the scene as he described it.

“The night that Zoe talked about the werewolf, my group smiled and laughed, ‘cause it all sounded completely insane. Isaac’s gang, though, didn’t. I was sitting next to him, and when Zoe mentioned you, he straightened up and tensed like he’d been stabbed with a fork. The rest of his people all looked very intense, too. Hell, even the
dog
looked interested!” Anton paused and took another drink of water.

“And then?” Nowen said when she felt the pause had gone on long enough.

“Well, not long after that out little party broke up. The New Heaven guys were moving out first thing in the morning. I’d had a little too much to drink, so I just stayed in my lawn chair and dozed off. Sometime later I woke up. I heard people talking quietly, nearby. I was still really drunk, so I just sat there and watched. Isaac and Zoe came from around one of the Humvees. Isaac was talking to her, asking her about the wolf-woman. He looked
really
interested. His dog was with him.” Another pause and Nowen opened her eyes and looked at Anton. He was staring into the fire, and when he started speaking again his words were strong but his voice was distant.