White Fangs (16 page)

Sabine gave a tiny gasp of shock and glared at him. "You mean for us to follow the vampires? To what end?"

"A messy one, if we tried it," Jack said.

Callie grunted in acknowledgement. "Maybe so. But that's why I'm here, ain't it? To hunt these bastards. We kill 'em in their lair, it's gonna save a lot of lives in Dawson and probably plenty of other places."

Ghost lifted his chin, nostrils flaring, regarding them all as if they were children or fools. "I wondered if they'd purposely left a trail for us, to lure us in, but I'm in no hurry to go after them. If the vampires come at us, I'll eat their black hearts, and if young Jack's attempt to rehabilitate me starts taking hold, I might even be willing to track and kill them myself. But we're here for Sabine first. Anything else is secondary."

Jack wanted to kill him, wished that Ghost were among the dead in the camp spread out below them. Sabine and Jack were together. In love. But Ghost would simply not cease his attempts to position himself as her man. Did he really not understand that Sabine had figured him out, that she and Jack both knew that his behavior was more closely tied to obsession than love? Ghost had only a passing acquaintance with morality. He had been helpful and amiable and almost gallant up to this point, but now cracks were beginning to show in his façade, and Jack's hope that he might be positively influenced began to fade.

"You're nowhere near human," Jack said.

Ghost gave a small laugh. "I thought we had established that fairly solidly in our past acquaintance."

"You understand what he's doing?" Jack went on, turning to Sabine, with Callie looking on. "He's been a monster so long he doesn't really understand the difference between right and wrong. He's just doing what he thinks you would expect of a good man."

Ghost continued to smile, but Jack could sense him bristling with a challenge. He turned in time to see the thickening of the hair on Ghost's face, the lengthening of his canines that turned his smile into a predatory grin.

The click of Callie's pistol echoed loudly around them as she cocked the hammer and pressed it against Ghost's temple.

"Your kind seems just as skittish around silver as the leeches," Callie said. "I ain't got enough ammo to deal with two kinds of monsters on this trip. Don't make me change targets."

Ghost's smile slid away. He didn't look at Callie, just kept staring at Jack.

"Bitch is going to regret that," he snarled.

Sabine slapped him, hard. Ghost roared and rounded on her. Jack shouted at him as Callie stepped back and leveled her gun, ready to fire. Alarmed by the noise, the other three wolves began sprinting toward the top of the rise, but they would be too late to help.

Ghost fumed, sniffed, and then shook his head, trying to contain his fury.

"Maybe the 'bitch' should pull the trigger," Sabine said. "Just in case."

Ghost flinched, as if Sabine had struck him this time. "You don't understand. You'll never live through this without me."

For the first time, Jack thought he saw actual pain — a sign of true humanity — in the monster's eyes.

"Why do you care?" Sabine demanded.

Ghost grunted, pivoted on one foot, and headed west, descending the rise in the direction of the tree line. As Louis and the other wolves joined Jack, Ghost began to poke around the woods, stepping into the forest and then back out again, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply.

"What's he doing now?" Callie asked.

"Trying to find the trail," the Reverend said. "See if their lair is nearby. The summer days this far north are long, but we have maybe four hours before nightfall. If we can figure out which direction would lead us to the vampires, we can go the other way. We can't be anywhere near them when the sun sets."

"We don't have a choice," Jack said.

They all looked at him. Even Ghost, with his wolf's hearing, paused in his efforts and turned to look up at them.

"Maybe you better explain that," Louis suggested.

In answer, Jack pointed. "Vampires or not, Lesya's part of the forest is that way, so that's where we're going." Sabine had been right that he had been keeping to the river for as long as possible, but he remembered the general terrain well enough. If they headed northwest, he knew that would eventually come to the hills and Lesya's territory.

They were all silent for several seconds, taking in the repercussions of that statement.

"We came up here to kill these vampires, keep 'em out of Dawson," Callie said, one gun still drawn and her free hand on the handle of the other.

Jack frowned. "We came up here to help Sabine find the answers she's looking for, if there are answers to be found. We deal with the vampires afterward."

Callie seemed to roll that around in her mind a moment, and then she huffed out a heavy breath. "As long as we deal with 'em."

"I don't think we're going to have much choice," Jack replied grimly.

"All right." Sabine gestured into the woods. "Now that we've got that settled, lead the way."

Jack started down the slope to the northwest with Sabine and Callie immediately behind him. Vukovich, Louis, and the Reverend followed them, the three werewolves talking quietly together. They skirted to the left of the murdered gold-rushers, but came within a dozen feet of the dead woman dangling from the tree. Jack could not help glancing at her. Now that he could see behind the veil of her hair, her dead eyes stared at him, wide with terror and sorrow, haunting.

Ghost lingered off to their left as if hesitating to follow.

"You sure I shouldn't put some silver in him?" Callie asked quietly.

Jack held his breath because he
wasn't
sure. Ghost's presumed intimacy with Sabine made him furious and he was beginning to think any pretense at rehabilitation was only that. However, as arrogant as Ghost was, it was just possible that he could be right — Sabine might not be able to survive this journey without his protection. He was the strongest and most ferocious of them all, by far.

Sabine apparently had no such worries. "Not just yet," she answered Callie quietly, knowing full well Ghost would be able to hear her. "But there may come a time."

Callie laughed softly, breaking the tension. "Well, you just let me know."

Sabine held Jack's hand tightly, but she would not lean on him. They ought to have been moving more swiftly. If they assumed that the vampires sheltered somewhere not far from the slaughter they had discovered, then any direction would get them further away from the monsters if they moved fast enough. The trouble was, Sabine knew that she was slowing them down. Jack could feel her frustration and injured pride every time she stumbled or had to stop to catch her breath. He could help her up, but she refused to let him
hold
her up. Several times she had suggested they travel on ahead to Lesya's wood, that she would make her own way and find them there. Jack had been pleased that none of them had even acknowledged these suggestions.

They'd been hiking low hills, through copses of woods, and stretches of rugged terrain for over an hour, and the further from the river they ranged, the more Sabine's radiant sheen dimmed. Jack noticed something new as well — she looked older. Not by much, especially when compared to what he imagined her true age to be. But there were tiny crinkles at the edges of her eyes that hadn't been there before, and weariness gave her an air of age.

As they moved up a familiar rise — Jack remembering fleeing over these very hills in his flight from the Wendigo that had first driven him into Lesya's protective embrace — Sabine caught the toe of her boot on a rock and fell to her knees. When Jack went to help her up she waved him off, taking a moment just to breathe.

He knelt beside her. She turned her face away as if she were ashamed.

"I'll make it," she said. "I just need a moment."

Pushing her hair back from her face, Sabine took one more deep breath and got herself up, swaying before she managed to steady herself. When she glanced down at Jack, still on his knees, a tired smile spread across her face.

"Come along, my handsome man," she teased. "Unless the journey's too much for you."

"I love you," Jack said softly. He knew she understood the unspoken words, how he wanted to rage to see her suffering so.

"And I you."

Jack glanced toward the crest of the rise. Callie and Ghost stood with Louis, watching them with expressions that ran the gamut from curiosity to disdain to worry. Vukovich and the Reverend were looking west, down the hill on the opposite side.

"Then let them go on without us," Jack said. "They can find Lesya and bring her back here, to you. We can get your answers and then go back to the river . . . and then to the sea."

"Or she might just kill them all," Sabine pointed out.

"We've always know that was a possibility," Jack said. "We're banking on her being intrigued by you and not killing us — "

"She won't kill you. She loves you."
Jack frowned. "How can you not have understood this? She never loved me. She just doesn't want to be alone and she needs a man with enough of the wild in him to live the way she lives. Wild enough to stay with her. Someone untamed."

"You've got that in you," Sabine said, taking his hand as he rose to his feet. "I've felt it in you. You've told me as much."

"But I've mastered it. This isn't where I belong."

"No," Sabine agreed. "You belong with me. I won't risk all of this being for nothing. We go on together."

She clutched his hand and led him up the last few yards of the slope. Heavy with worry for her, Jack went along. Callie and the wolves said nothing — not even Ghost — as they all started down the other side together toward a stretch of forest that spread out from the base of the hill.

"How much further do ya think, Jack?" Callie asked.

"Terrain all looks the same to me," the Reverend said. "You really know where we are?"

"I think we stay out of those woods," Jack replied. "We head that way ."He pointed northwest, where small, craggy hills were dotted sparsely with trees that looked like bent old men who had survived too many Yukon winters. "Miles to go, still, but we'll come to a stream. Beyond that, Lesya's forest."

Ghost grunted and started northwest without further consultation. "He seems sure to me. Let's get this done before it kills her."

He clearly meant Sabine, but he did not so much look at her as he set off. The rest of the group followed, descending the hill at a steep angle that was difficult for Sabine to maneuver. With the woods to their left, they reached the foot of one hill and started toward the next rise. Moments later Louis halted and sniffed at the air. Jack tensed. Ghost only paused, nodding in approbation as he glanced toward the tree line.

Jack followed Ghost's gaze and saw it there, in the shadows the trees threw in the evening sunlight.

His wolf.

"Well, well," Ghost said.

"Friend of yours?" Callie asked.

"Yes," Jack replied, before he realized she had been talking to Ghost.

"Friend enough," the former captain said. "The beast saved my life. But for Jack's benefit, not my own."

What could Jack say to them? Only Sabine knew of his connection to the wolf, this creature that sometimes seemed more phantom than animal. It was his spirit totem, tied in some way to the essence of himself, and it had saved his life more than once on his first visit to the Yukon. But it had rarely been so bold about revealing itself to others.

He'd been so distracted worrying about Sabine that he had ceased paying attention to the wildlife in the area, or the dark voids of vampires nearby. Now he felt some of the weight of fear for Sabine float from him. Though the wolf usually only manifested in dire moments, its presence lifted his spirits.

"Keep going," Jack said. "I'll catch up." The others moved on, Callie keeping close to Sabine's side, Ghost and Vukovich in the lead. But as Jack broke off from the group to greet the wolf — reaching out with his senses to welcome it, and to search the woods beyond for any threat — the animal bolted northwest. In seconds, it had overtaken them all and stood in their path.

When Ghost and Vukovich did not slow their pace, the wolf began to growl, teeth bared, hackles raised.

"What the hell's this, now?" Callie asked.

Jack ran, passing Sabine and the others, overtaking Ghost and Vukovich, and as he approached the wolf it shied back from him, snarling. He skidded to a halt, surprised.

"It's me," he said, reaching out a hand. So majestic, so beautiful, though smaller than any werewolf it was the most powerful beast Jack had ever seen. They had found each other in the wild, the wolf had saved him, and the last thing it wished for him was harm.

Yet now it growled, and stalked a step closer to Jack with its teeth bared.

Vukovich darted by, the transformation from man to wolf rippling through him so that he was half one and half the other. His growl was deep and monstrous.

"No!" Jack shouted, and behind him Louis was also shouting, calling his crew-mate back. But Vukovich's blood was up. He advanced on the wolf, and the two began circling each other.

His emotions in turmoil — anger at Vukovich, fear for his wolf, confusion at why the animal seemed suddenly malevolent toward him — Jack rushed at Vukovich. He kicked the transformed man in the hip, trying to spill him to the ground, but Vukovich was fast and supple. He twisted away from Jack's kick and lunged as if to attack.

"Jack!" Sabine shouted. The wolf struck Vukovich in the side, driving him aside from Jack and down to the ground, teeth gnashing, claws slashing.

Oh no!
Jack thought as Vukovich reared up, his own jaws widening into an unnatural gape. Suddenly Ghost was there, picking up Vukovich and hurling him aside. Vukovich twisted in the air and landed on his feet twenty steps away, but remained crouched down. He hesitated to attack, knowing that Ghost could easily best him.

"I said the wolf saved my life!" Ghost snarled. "You want to kill and eat Jack, that's fine with me. But you don't touch the wolf."

As Vukovich reassumed his human form and his lupine characteristics receded, Louis approached and slapped him across the face, cursing him in rapid fire Creole French. The Reverend stood back from the fray, watching warily. He seemed mostly concerned with Callie, and what she would do with her silver bullets now that she'd seen just how monstrous her companions were, but the vampire hunter only seemed to nod and take it in.
For now
, Jack thought.