Ice (13 page)

I jerked my head away, realizing I was caught red handed gawking at them. Tom’s cold, amber gaze haunted me all the way back to Justin’s house.

That night after Charlotte and I finished talking on the Internet, Justin had gone to bed and I was still waiting for Kavick to come. My door was already locked and I was ready to jump up to greet him at my window any second. I had missed spending time with him and couldn’t wait for him to come. I was jittery with excitement, desperately trying to find something to calm my nerves, or to just help pass the time while I waited. I surfed the Internet some, and when I got tired of that, I read a book.

The hours ticked by and Kavick never showed. I finally went to bed, incredibly depressed, at three
in the morning.

On the next night, I waited anxiously, and also worried he wouldn’t show. I was concerned that he didn’t come the night before when he said he would, but I was hoping that something had come up again that prevented him from coming, instead of something more ominous, like the hunter.

I found myself eventually lying down…then curling up…then resting my head on my arms. Soon I was dozing off.

It was nearly eleven when I finally heard a loud noise that sounded like a thump and a scrape at the same time. I quickly darted up into a sitting position and looked to my window. I felt my eyes widen
in shock.

It wasn’t Kavick, but Tartok. My window had been forced up by his hand as he climbed into my room with ease. I was
gaping, speechless all the while, just watching him help himself. He was head to toe in black; black boots, black jeans, a black coat peeked out from underneath the black fur cape. His pale skin stood out dramatically against it all, just like Kavick’s, appearing as white as the snow outside. And there was that cold gaze I remembered. His eyes were like amber and, once again, he looked extremely unhappy.

“Where is my brother?” he asked me in an equally cold, demanding tone, seriously thinking I knew the answer to that question.

I struggled to find my voice. He was standing so tall and powerful, and was incredibly intimidating. I finally stammered in a low voice, “Uh…I-I don’t know. He said h-he was going to get his things….”

I then quickly reached under my bed and sat Kavick’s clothes and boots on the other side of me. I looked down at them as I waited for him to say something. I felt my face slowly turn red in the silence that followed as I realized just how inappropriate it appeared that Kavick had left his clothes in my room. I didn’t dare say a word, though, hoping he would understand since he was a werewolf-whatever-shape-shifting-person-thing, too.

When I finally looked up, Tartok was narrowing his eyes at me. “He didn’t say anything about where he might be?”

I quickly shook my head. “Wh-why would I know?” I asked in a little voice.

“Because he’s been here,” he responded immediately, like it was obvious.

I felt like an idiot again. That seemed like a perfectly logical reason to wonder if I might know where he was.

But that wasn’t a logical reason for the finger pointing and glare I got next.

“And he shouldn’t have been here in the first place. I thank you for helping my brother that day he got hurt by that bear, but he shouldn’t have come back and put you both at risk. Do you have any idea just what kind of danger he’s in and could have spread to you?”

I was stunned by the onslaught, and after a moment of getting my thoughts together, I nodded. “He told me about the hunter,” I said in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

For some reason Tartok stopped glaring at me then, but he still didn’t look very happy. His face was still hard and he was still standing in that powerful, intimidating way.

“He came back because he needed to hide for a few hours when the Factory was on fire,” I explained. “He said he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go and was hoping I would help him again.”

Tartok’s face changed at the mention of the Factory. His eyebrows furrowed for just a second. I continued in a slightly stronger voice to let him know I knew exactly what kind of danger I was in.

“He told me his brothers and his parents had been killed by the hunter.” I felt the old, pre-car accident Christine come back a little. I suddenly felt very outraged by his arrival and his attitude, but this time I wasn’t afraid to open my big mouth and offend him, either. “So, yeah, I know exactly what kind of danger I’m in, and you don’t need to tell me not to tell anyone because I’m not about to paint a target his back, or yours. Besides, my uncle would throw me in the loony bin if I started spouting off stuff about people turning into dogs and wolves.”

He then glanced at my door for a second and returned his critical gaze back to me. “That’s your uncle living here with you,” he stated flatly.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering why he was so curious.

“Does he have dark hair, beard, and a mustache?”

I felt my own eyebrows furrow at the set of strange questions. “No,” I said bewildered, but it sounded oddly familiar. “Why?”

“Just curious,” he said cryptically as he turned around. “Sorry about your window.”

I quickly stood up and said, “Wait! Were you wondering if my uncle’s the hunter?”

He hoisted his big black boot up o
nto my window sill that had snow caked on it, which was starting to melt. He looked over his shoulder at me and said dryly, “That’s exactly what I was wondering.” He seemed irritated by me.

“So that’s what the hunter looks like….” I thought about the description, strangely feeling like I had seen someone matching it. Suddenly I realized who it made me think of, but it couldn’t be true. “Do you have a name?”

“Hawkins is all I have,” he said, and once again I was gaping at him. He took his foot off my window sill and turned around to face me properly. “One of my people has been following him. He works at the Factory. Do you know him?” Now his eyes were narrowed again, noting the expression on my face.

That’s why he didn’t say anything about Kavick’s hair looking strange,
I thought in horror.

Somehow, it was all making sense. He knew so much about Huskies, and half of Kavick’s family were Huskies.

“I do,” I said in a daze of disbelief. “Doug Hawkins.”

I suddenly felt fear rush through me. Kavick was supposed to be here, but he wasn’t. His brother didn’t know where he is. Doug had met him in front of the diner the night before, asked his name, and even mentioned his father’s murder.

“Do you think the hunter’s gotten to him?” I asked horrified.

He looked a little surprised; maybe he didn’t expect me to be so worried about him. “That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m hoping that’s not the case, but I still need to find him before that happens.”

He looked down for a second and then turned back to the window. But, he just stood there. He didn’t climb through it. After a moment I heard him ask, “How well do you know this Doug Hawkins?”

“Pretty well.” I
could hear my voice shake a little. I was becoming more certain that Doug was the hunter and had gotten to Kavick with each passing second. “He trusts me. He’s even been offering to give me mushing lessons.”

He looked over his shoulder at me as he put his boot back up on my window sill. “Good, because I’m going to need to use you to get to him.”

I felt a little shocked by those words, but I was willing to help. I nodded my acceptance and grabbed my coat and gloves as he climbed through. I quickly slid my arms into my coat and slipped my gloves and boots on. I followed him out the window, falling awkwardly on my hands and knees while he simply stood there watching. He wasn’t nearly as kind as Kavick, who was always ready to catch me. The old me who had made herself known only briefly earlier almost reared her bold head back up. I wanted to say, “Did you have fun watching me fall? Anything you want to say? Maybe, ‘Are you okay?’ Hmm?”

But, I was too intimated by his cold, strange, amber eyes. I felt all the anger and confidence to spout off rush out of me as soon as I stood up. The way he stood, holding his head high, made me think he thought I was lower than him. I silently gulped and he turned his back on me. I could see that Kavick and Tartok were very different from each other, despite their identical faces.

I followed him out to the forest. We walked for a long time in the dark without ever saying a word. I was too scared to ask any questions, afraid that I might say something to incite his anger, or another glare and speech about how Kavick and I should never see each other again. I wondered just how much influence he had over Kavick and if he really could talk Kavick into never seeing me again. Maybe that was why he hadn’t seen me for a while. Maybe the “stuff” that came up was really his brother?

During the walk, I glanced up at the Northern Lights overhead from time to time, thinking of all the nights Kavick and I had spent out of the house. The stars twinkled and I began seeing designs in them. I remembered lying down with Kavick in the snow once as he guided my hand to trace something in the sky.

Kavick was like a little kid sometimes with the innocent things he would say, and the way he liked to run around and do cartwheels in the snow…he was a free spirit. If there was anything Molly had told me that was true, it was that Kavick had a care-free attitude.

Except for when it came to the hunter. I realized that if Tartok and I did manage to rescue Kavick (if he had been taken by the hunter, that is; I was still praying that he hadn’t and that Doug wasn’t the hunter) then it would be very easy for Tartok to convince his brother not to visit me anymore. He had already lost so many to the hunter, and the fact that I was so closely connected to the hunter only made it more dangerous. I could see Kavick in my mind turning his back on me, just like his brother had earlier, in order to protect me.

And then there was the most obvious outcome; Kavick hadn’t been taken by the hunter, but had been
killed
.

I couldn’t stand the thought, and quickly squashed it out of my mind before the tears fell out of my eyes.

After an incredibly long walk through the woods, we finally came out of the trees and stepped into a clearing. There was the back of an old yellow house in the distance, but what caught my attention most was the huge fire in the middle of the yard. There were logs here and there circling it, and there were four people sitting on one of them, staring right at me. They all looked surprised to see me, except the elderly man with long white braids hanging past his shoulders. The old man looked Native and just simply stared at me, not showing any liking, or dislike at my appearance. The others, however, gaped at me like I was an alien.

“This is the girl Kavick’s been seeing,” Tartok announced to them. I stood awkwardly beside him, not realizing I had been the talk of the pack. I noticed that the man sitting beside the two girls who appeared to be around my age, frowned, clearly not approving.

“No, she is not a Wolf,” Tartok added as if he assumed the others were wondering. He said it like it was a bad thing. I understood why they would; I’m an outsider who knows their secret. However, it didn’t keep me from feeling any less uncomfortable and unwanted.

The man who was sitting beside the two girls (probably their father since there was a strong resemblance) glared at me. His eyebrows shot down at Tartok’s words and he sniffed the air loudly.

“She’s human,” he confirmed disdainfully for everyone, as if Tartok might not be telling them the truth. He looked like he could spit on me at any second.

Despite the rude welcome, I introduced myself normally.

“Hel-hello…nice to meet you all,” I stammered nervously, trying to act as if nothing seemed strange and that everything was perfectly normal. “I’m Christine Birch, a friend of Kavick’s.”

Everyone looked shocked like before. I couldn’t figure out why. I noticed
Tartok glance before returning to the others.

“And, yes, she also knows our secret.”

That’s what all the shock was over. Oops. Guess I should have called him “Kevin”. But if I was going to help them with the hunter, it would be best if everything was out in the open.

That man who had glared at me looked even more perturbed than before, but the old man with the braids who looked far more Native than the others, just smiled meekly at me.

“Hello, Christine. We heard how you fought the bear to save Kavick and tended to his wounds. We thank you for saving one of our own.” His voice was deep and frail, his words were formal, yet warm. The gray haired man turned his glare to the old man beside him, but never said a word.

Tartok then spoke up and explained my presence. “I brought her here
, because she knows the man who we suspect is the hunter.”

“The Hawkins man Jonathan has been following,” the gray haired man said.

Tartok nodded and continued. “He trusts her. I assume no word from Kavick still?” Tartok’s face looked cool and collected, but something in his voice I couldn’t put my finger on gave it away that he was worried about his brother.

The girls looked solemn and shook their heads. The smaller one with lon
ger hair sunk her head in a somber way and held her side. I remembered Kavick telling me the day before in front of the diner how his friend Anana had been shot by the hunter. I wondered if this was her. She was thin and little with straight gray hair that fell to the middle of her neck. She had big, striking, yellow eyes. The girl beside her with short, boyish, gray hair had the same yellow eyes, as did the man that appeared to be their father, and the old man with the white hair. But, their eyes weren’t nearly as big and innocent like hers. The innocence reminded me a little of Kavick.