Wild Sign (Alpha & Omega #6)(23)

When his voice trailed to a halt, Anna glanced at Tag’s face in the rearview mirror and saw him reconsidering.

“I guess I did tell Samuel about it once,” he said sheepishly. “And Asil.” He made a humming sound, and his voice was very cold when he finished, “And Sage.”

Sage had betrayed them all in a thousand small ways before she died. It would be a while before they quit flinching at just how thorough that betrayal had been.

“What is the bowl?” Anna asked to change the subject—though she really did want to know.

Charles shook his head. “I don’t know, and I’m not sure my da does, either. Something powerful that belongs here and not on my father’s bookshelf. My uncle—my mother’s brother—and Da had a rousing argument or six about the bowl. I think if he, my uncle, hadn’t died so soon, he’d have talked my da into letting him bring it back. To them.”

“So it sat on his bookcase,” Anna said.

Charles nodded and gave her a smile. “Da couldn’t bring it back. The Sasquatch avoid him. This was a good way for Da to honor my uncle and get something out of it in return.”

“He might have been a little clearer in his instructions, then,” grumbled Tag, stretching out on the backseat again. “What if I’d taken it to the Karuk tribal elders and given it to them instead? That was what I intended if I couldn’t find Breeze’s people.”

“It would have worked out,” said Charles comfortably.

“You know,” said Tag conversationally, “if I had known how much Anna mellows you out, I would have gone on a road trip with the two of you a long time ago, Charles.”

Charles growled—but they all knew he didn’t mean it.



* * *



*

ANNA THREADED THE Forest Service road like a grandmother, wincing at every scrape on the car’s paint. The road split, the right fork going to a campground with showers, lavatories, and other camping amenities. Next to that campground sign was a fire danger warning sign proclaiming extreme conditions.

In this area, at the tail end of a very hot and dry summer, the fire danger was real. There were active fires in Oregon, just over the border—which was why Charles had not considered hiking in from the Oregon side, though it might very well have been a shorter way.

They took the left fork, and seven miles of rough going later, the road ended at a second campground, this one much less friendly. They drove by several campsites to take an isolated one, far from the primitive toilets.

As soon as Charles got out of the SUV, he could tell the campground was completely empty of ecotourists. The first campground had been full of RVs and bright-colored tents, and it seemed odd this one was deserted. It was the middle of the week and the fires in Oregon might have given people some pause about camping so nearby—he could smell the smoke on the air here even more strongly than he had at Tag’s friends’ business.

He took a deep breath and smelled nothing unusual.

Tag gave him a look as Anna buried herself in the back of the SUV. “Uneasy?” he asked.

“There’s no one else here,” Charles said.

Tag nodded. “It’s isolated, and we’re at the end of camping season. From here on out, campers chance snowstorms and rain. But I’d guess it’s the warning sign we drove by on the way here.”

Charles frowned at him.

“Bear,” said Tag. “Yesterday a ranger found a bear nosing around this campground because someone tried to bury their garbage instead of hauling it out. They advise people not to camp here unless you have an RV.”

Charles snorted. “You wouldn’t get an RV in here.”

“And if you did, you might not get it out,” agreed Tag.

One mystery solved, Charles helped haul camping things out of the SUV.

“Do we need to set up the tents?” Anna asked when Tag started to pull his out. “There’s a lot of daylight left. We might even be able to reach Wild Sign before dark.”

By Charles’s reckoning they were a little over forty miles away as the crow flies. If this area held true to other mountains he’d been over around here, their actual path might be sixty miles or more. If they had been hiking on foot, it would have taken them a couple of days, but on four feet—Anna had it about right.

“No,” he said. “We’ll make camp here today and leave it up while we head in.” He looked into the woods and lowered his lids, letting his senses roam out around them. “I don’t think arriving at Wild Sign as night falls is our best plan. There is no urgency—whatever happened to those people happened months ago, and whatever we need to deal with up there is probably not the only thing roaming these woods.”

“Like the bear,” said Tag.

A grizzly could kill a werewolf or two, but generally left them alone. Charles wasn’t worried about bears, and neither was Tag. These mountains had an uncanny feel—and however guardedly friendly Ford had been, Charles did not want to confront a Sasquatch out here unless he absolutely could not avoid it.

They ate sandwiches and made camp. Anna and Tag played double solitaire, which seemed to engender a lot of yelling, mock grumbling, and laughter. Charles read for a while, then put his book aside, stretched out a bit, and closed his eyes.

Waiting to head out until morning had been a practical decision. But sitting on a camp chair with his feet up on a stump, pretending to be asleep, Charles felt a contentment that had nothing to do with the possible dangers they were going to be facing tomorrow, though it was true Brother Wolf gloried in the adventure.