Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega #1)(61)

He fell silent again as he led her up another ripple of land. Mountains looked so simple from a distance, just one long walk up and another down the other side. The reality was a series of climbs and descents that seemed to cover a lot of ground and still went nowhere.

They must have been running longer than she'd realized because it was starting to get dark. She shivered.

"Charles?"

"Mmm?"

"I think my socks must have gotten wet. I can't feel my toes." He didn't say anything, and she worried that he might think she was complaining. "It's all right. I can still go on for a while yet. How much longer until we get to the car?"

"Not tonight," he said. "Not if your toes are numb. Let me find somewhere that will give us a little shelter-there's a storm coming through tonight."

Anna shivered a little harder at the thought. At the tail end of a particularly long shiver, her teeth started chattering.

Charles put his hand under her arm. "A storm will be good. I heard bone go when you hit that wolf. If it isn't a phantasm of some sort, it'll take it a while to repair. A heavy snow and a good wind will keep it from picking up our trail."

He caught sight of something uphill, and it seemed to Anna that they climbed forever until they reached a small bench of land littered with downed trees.

"Microburst last spring, maybe," he told her. "It happens sometimes."

She was too tired to do anything but nod, while he waded through the trees until he found something he liked-a huge tree propped up by another, both of them leaning against a hump of land, creating a cave with an uninviting floor of snow.

"No food," Charles said grimly. "And you need food to combat the cold."

"I could go hunting," offered Anna. Charles couldn't. He had been limping badly for a long time. She was so tired she could have fallen asleep standing up, and she was cold. But she was still in better shape than he was.

Charles shook his head. "I'll be damned if I'll send you off on your own in this country with a storm waiting to unleash-not to mention a witch and two werewolves lurking about."

He lifted his head and sampled the air. "Speak of the devil," he said softly. Anna sniffed the air, too, but she didn't smell anything. Just trees and winter and wolf. She tried again.

"You might as well come out," Charles growled, looking out into the darkness below their bench. "I know you're there."

Anna turned around, but she didn't see anything out of place. Then she heard the sound of boots in the snow and looked again. A man stepped out of the woods about ten yards down the mountain. If he hadn't been moving, she probably wouldn't have seen him.

The first thing she noticed was hair. He didn't wear a hat, and his hair was an odd shade between red and gold; it hung in ragged, ungroomed tangles down his back and blended into a beard that would have done credit to Hill or Gibbons of ZZ Top.

He wore an odd combination of animal skins, rags, and new boots and gloves. In one hand he held the bundle she'd made of the things that had been in Charles's backpack, and her own bright pink backpack was slung over one shoulder.

He tossed them both toward Charles, and the packs landed halfway between them.

"Your stuff," he said, his voice at once hoarse and mumbly, with a healthy dose of Tennessee or Kentucky. "I saw her set the beast on you-which makes you her enemy. And along the lines of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' I thought I'd bring your stuff to you. Then maybe we could talk."

It hadn't been the man's scent that had clued Charles in that they were being shadowed, but a host of smaller things: a bird taking flight, the hint of a sound, and a feeling that they were being watched.

Once the stranger stepped out of the trees, Charles could smell him as he should have been able to for some time because the wind was favoring Anna and him. Werewolf.

Though he brought a peace offering and said he wanted to talk, his body language told Charles the other wolf was ready to take flight.

Careful not to look straight at him or move in any way that might spook him, Charles left Anna where she was and walked down to pick up Anna's pack and their ground tarp filled, he supposed, with everything that had been in his backpack. Without saying anything, he turned his back to the stranger and started back up the mountain.

It wasn't as foolish as all that because Charles kept his eyes on Anna and watched her face for any sign of attack. Then he deliberately cleaned the snow off the top of a log and sat on it. The man, he saw, had followed him until he stood where the packs had first landed, but he came no farther.

"I think it would be a good idea to talk," Charles said. "Would you join us for a meal?" He met the man's eyes, letting him feel the weight of the invitation that was just short of an order.

The man shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if ready to run. "You smell like that demon wolf," he rasped. Then he shot Anna a shy glance. "That thing's been killin' and killin' up here. Deer, and elk, people, even a griz."

He sounded like it was the bear that troubled him the most.

"I know," Charles said. "I was sent here to take care of the wolf."

The man dropped his eyes as if he couldn't bear to look Charles in the eye anymore. "Thing is...thing is...it got me, too. Infected me with its evil." He took a step back, wary as an old stag.