White Fangs (17 page)

Jack stepped between Ghost and Vukovich, approaching Vukovich and standing close enough to smell the man's breath. "We're all in this together, Vukovich," Jack said calmly. "Each of us has made a choice to be here. But though we seem something like a pack, you stopped living by pack rules when you started following me." Several seconds ticked by with Jack and Vukovich eye to eye. At any moment the werewolf might strike, fingers elongating into claws, tearing out his throat — or trying — but Jack stared at him unblinking. "If you want to change that . . . if you want to settle this according to the laws of the pack . . . we can do that."

Vukovich blinked in surprise and uncertainty. Then he glanced away, sniffing a dismissal.

"You're not one of us," he said. "You wouldn't stand a chance."

"I've killed worse monsters than you," Jack said. He did not take his gaze from Vukovich, and after a moment the Russian turned away. Ghost looked on with what Jack thought of as a kind of dark approval, and it made Jack shudder.

He strode back to his wolf, which had watched the proceedings with a low, continuous growl of disapproval, ready to leap to Jack's defense. Its behavior confounded Jack.
Why would it threaten him at the same time as it wanted to protect him, unless . . .

Jack gazed to the hills to the northwest, and he knew.

"He wants us to turn around."

"What?" Callie said. "The wolf?"

Jack turned to look at them. "That's why he's come, to keep us from walking into danger."

Sabine looked stricken. "I can't turn around now."

"I know," Jack said.

He approached the wolf. This time it did not lunge toward him, though it continued its low growl and backed up a few steps as if guarding the hill beyond. Jack had not had a chance to completely attune his own spirit to that of the wolf and he did so now, reaching out and matching its breathing with his own, matching its heartbeat with his. Both of their hearts were drumming fiercely and Jack knew it feared
for
him.

"There, boy," Jack said quietly, kneeling and reaching out for the wolf. It sniffed his hand and nudged its big head against his neck, pushing against him even now. "We're going ahead. I don't want you hurt. I don't want
her
hurt. But we're going on."

He wondered if the wolf could feel his love for Sabine. If it understood. Then he rose, scratching at its ears, and he waved Sabine and the other onward.

This time the wolf made no attempt to stop them. It paced them, sometimes running ahead and other times searching stretches of woods and vanishing for a time before reappearing. Jack could feel its fear and grim sadness. Nevertheless, it meant to protect him and he was grateful.

Just over an hour later they came to the small stream Jack had promised, and a strange combination of emotions swept over him. He felt relief, for they would surely be safe in those woods ahead during the hours of darkness, but also a dark foreboding as he recalled the clamoring madness of the girl. Her father was Leshii, a woodland spirit who had traveled across the sea when Russian immigrants arrived in these harsh lands. He still lived, his essence in the trees and the earth of this particular forest range, but his power had faded over many years as fewer and fewer men who believed in him still lived in the region. Now he was only a whisper of a presence, able to exert his influence only sparingly. Sometime far in the future, when he was gone entirely, Lesya would be on her own, and Jack believed it was this knowledge that made her so desperate for companionship. Her magic was in these woods, and if she strayed far from there she lost control over her appearance and her influence over the trees and plants, just as Sabine weakened away from the sea. Sabine had spent many years luring men to her forest and testing them to see if they would be suitable mates . . . and cursing them when they disappointed her. As far as Jack knew, he had been the only man ever to escape her.

They might be leaving one danger for another, but still he welcomed the sight of that stream. Beyond it, Lesya's power ruled all.

Sabine let out a sigh of pleasure as she staggered toward the water. She fell to her knees and then slipped into the stream's rippling current, letting it wash over her despite the chill coming on as darkness approached.

The sun had dropped so low on the horizon that Callie had drawn one of her guns. The vampire hunter looked worriedly at Sabine, wanting only to move on. From everything Jack had told them, Lesya's would be the only safe place in these wilds come nightfall. The werewolves were on guard as well, all of them attuned to the eerie silence around them. A hawk cried in the distance, but it was far off, and they heard nothing else save the rustle of the wind in the trees of Lesya's forest, beyond the stream.

The wolf stood by Jack's side, but when Jack started toward Sabine, happy to see her even momentarily refreshed, it held back. Its legs stiffened as if it did not want to cross the stream.

Frowning, Jack looked at the wolf a moment. When he glanced back at Sabine, he found Ghost blocking his way. The broad-shouldered pirate had not been this close to him in some time and Jack was struck again by what an intimidating figure he was. Thick-necked and broad-shouldered, Ghost had arms solid as the masts of a ship, wide with corded muscle.

Jack glanced at him but saw that Ghost was watching Sabine with undisguised longing. The water caressed her, soaking her clothes, revealing the outline of her body so that the picture she presented was unwittingly sensual.

"She'll never be yours," Jack found himself saying.

Ghost smiled, a low growl in his chest. "Not like this. True enough. But she's more a thing of nature than a woman, as much a wild thing as I am. When she meets your Lesya, she'll understand that. Afterward, she won't be able to settle for an ordinary man. She won't even see you as the same kind of creature anymore."

Fury burned in Jack's heart and he moved a step closer to Ghost, undaunted by the werewolf's size.

"She doesn't want you," Jack said with a quiet ferocity. "She doesn't want an animal. Find a she-wolf somewhere, if you're so desperate for a mate."

"Oh, Jack, you wound me," Ghost said, one hand across his heart, feigning offense. "What about all of your efforts to turn us into men? Does a man not long for love?"

"Love?" Jack scoffed.

They both sensed someone approaching and turned to find Callie close enough to have shot either of them if she'd been of a mind to. Her pistol was still drawn, but aimed at the dirt as she studied the two of them with growing impatience.

"Some men are born to be beasts, but man or beast, both of 'em are alive," she said. Then, with an angry look, she turned and spat before glaring at Jack and Ghost again. "What we face are dead, evil things. Man and beast are gonna hafta stick together. You two clear on that?"

Ghost glanced at Jack. "I'm clear. You clear?"

By way of answer, Jack left them standing there, going to kneel by Sabine where she lay in the river. He scooped water up in his hands and drank deeply.

"Dark soon," he told her.

The smile faded from her face. Laden with regret, she took the hand he offered and they rose together. Water poured off of her but Jack did not turn to see if Ghost was watching. He knew the monster would be, and he knew the covetous, hungry look in Ghost's eyes would set him off. If man and beast were going to stand together, Jack would have to try his best not to kill Ghost.

"Let's go!" Jack called to Louis and the other werewolves. The words weren't meant for Ghost, but he was one of them whether Jack liked it or not.

Jack's wolf hesitated until Jack sighed and crossed the stream without him. Only then did the beast hurry to catch up, leaping across the water. They trooped along together, entering the woods, and Sabine seemed somewhat rejuvenated. Jack wondered how long it would last.

The moment they crossed the line of trees and entered Lesya's forest, Sabine stiffened and let out a tiny gasp.

"Are you all right?" Jack asked.

She nodded. "I think so. I feel something here . . . something very old."

"Leshii," Jack said. "He's the spirit of the forest."

"There's not much of him left," Sabine said.

"No. There isn't." Even as he spoke the words, Jack realized that he could not feel Leshii at all. He'd always had a sense of some presence following his progress in these woods, even before he knew that Leshii was there in the trees and plants and soil. If Leshii was still here, his essence had faded even further in the past year.

"Not much else here, either, Jack," the Reverend said.

Jack knew he was right. The forest was quiet. As the last hour of daylight waned, in the thick of the trees it grew dark prematurely, but no night birds sang. Jack exhaled and reached out in search of something alive or, worse, the sickening dark absence of life that would mean vampires were close. He found neither.

"No," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "She's too powerful. They couldn't have . . ."

A profound dread gripped him and he picked up his pace. The trees did not bend toward him or shift to block their path. They were merely trees. Soon, the sun would set. Lesya's magic was to have kept them safe for the few hours of darkness, but he sensed nothing of her here.

"Jack," Louis called out, "are you sure — "

"Yes, damn you, I'm sure!" Jack snapped.

They all picked up their pace. If not for Sabine he would have bolted through the woods. Still, it was only minutes before they emerged from the trees into the clearing around Lesya's cabin, and Jack froze, staring at the structure. When he'd last been here, the cabin had been a living thing, all of the logs rooted together, and into the ground, still green beneath the bark and alive. Now he sensed that the dark cottage had changed. It was like any other: a dead thing, dusty, empty and abandoned. Nothing stirred there. Nothing lived. Weeds grew amongst the gardens Lesya had summoned into being around her cabin, nature reasserting itself.

The magic was gone. Lesya was gone.

And night was swiftly approaching.

"What now?" Sabine asked, coming to stand beside him. "Is she dead, Jack? We came all this way. I'm so sorry I've dragged you all into this, but . . . what if she's dead?"

Her voice cracked on the last word. She had put so much hope into this moment.

"There's still a little magic here," Jack said. "You felt it."

"Lot of good it did your wood sprite, or whatever the hell she is," Callie muttered.

Jack's thoughts and pulse were racing. They were all watching him, waiting for him to tell them what to do next. Even Ghost, though he knew Ghost only watched with amused curiosity, as if Jack were someone else's science experiment and his own life weren't also on the line.

The only one not watching Jack was the wolf, which stood at the edge of the clearing, sniffing the air and watching the deepening darkness amongst the trees warily, on guard. It had tried to stop them. Jack did not want it to die with them.

"The cabin," Jack said. "It's our only chance if the vampires come. We'll block the door and get what weapons we can. We'll hold out till morning — it's just a few hours — and then we'll hunt them down where they sleep and destroy them all. Maybe they took Lesya. Maybe she's still alive."

"You think we'll live long enough?" Vukovich asked.

"If there aren't too many, we'll be all right," Jack said. "We've already proven we can kill them."

"If there aren't too many?" the Reverend repeated. "But we
know
that their camp's close to here."

Vukovich glanced anxiously at the trees, then up at the darkening sky. "We don't know that they'll come. Why would they, unless they know we're here?"

"They'll know we're here," Callie said, drawing her other pistol, holding them both now, though the last gasp of sunlight had not breathed away. "They'll smell us."

Confused, conflicted, Jack paced around Lesya's once-lush gardens, looking for wild fruits and vegetables, while the others approached and entered the cabin. Sabine stood outside the door and watched, and he could not help feeling a piercing guilt as he thought of his time here with Lesya. She had bewitched him for a while, before her madness had come to the fore. Now even thinking about her felt something like betrayal.

But Jack could not deny his own mind. Seeing this place as a dead, forlorn memory saddened him immensely. He could have never been happy here, but for a while he had been content. Lesya had nursed him back to health after his journey north and his abuse at the hands of the slavers. For a little time, this had been home.

A\What a wonderful, amazing place it had been. Plants that had no right growing there, blooming and ripening at a time when the rest of the land was held in a snowy embrace. Trees that marked the boundary of the clearing like sentinels standing guard. And the cabin, made from living wood and formed into just the home that the wood-spirit Lesya had wanted to lure in the man she so desired. For a while she'd believed that Jack was that man. Then he had fled her madness, and standing here now, he thought perhaps he had left a little of himself behind.

"What happened to you, Lesya?" he whispered. "Dead? Gone?" The overgrown weeds and ruined gardens swallowed his voice, and there was no reply. He smiled across at Sabine and she inclined her head toward the cabin. Jack nodded. But even then he dragged his feet, reluctant to enter the place that would inspire so many memories.

He could see that it was dead. He wondered how different its interior would now feel.

"Jack," Louis said from the cabin's open door. "There's enough in here for us to block the door. But you need to be inside,
mon ami."

Jack held up the shotgun from the stampeders' camp. "Be there now." He turned and looked at the woods surrounding the old garden. The shadows beneath them were deepening, and he remembered his flight through the trees, pursued by Lesya, steered by Leshii the old tree spirit, until he had come to that terrible ravine. There he had seen Lesya's past victims, men whom she had lured here and then discarded when they did not satisfy her desires . . . . He shivered. It felt like he was being watched.

Jack's wolf emerged from the trees and paused a dozen steps across the clearing. In a sudden, startling display of its primeval power and strength, it raised its head and howled at the falling dusk.

From deeper in the forest came sudden sounds of crashing undergrowth and cracking branches, and Jack's blood ran cold at the memory of the Wendigo chasing him through the wild. But this was no Wendigo and the sounds came from many directions.

"Stop scratching your ass and get in here!" Callie called. Jack turned and ran for the cabin.

Sabine slipped inside just before him. "There's nothing to be scared of, Jack," she said, and he was not sure whether she meant inside, or out.

Callie slammed the door behind him and searched for a brace or lock, but there was neither.

"She had nothing to protect herself from," Jack said.

"Bed!" Louis said. He and the Reverend dragged the bed across the wooden floor to the door, tipping it on its side and bracing it across the opening. Louis slapped the wood. "Might hold." He did not sound confident.

With the seven of them in the cabin it felt full, and as Jack glanced around, trying to place himself in the here and now instead of the past, the coldness of the cabin struck him. Before, it had been a living, vibrant place, touched by Lesya's startling vitality and the brutal kiss of the wilderness. Now it was dead. It repulsed him, and for a crazy moment Jack thought he'd rather be out there facing to danger beneath the wide open sky than trapped in here, where death held sway.

Ghost approached and shoved him gently back against the wall.

"No time for dreaming now, Mister London! Anything you know of this place that might help, tell us. Anything about the building that will give us an advantage, we need to know." Ghost stood before him, and the others paused in their work, watching.

"It used to be alive," Jack said softly. He caught Sabine's eye.
She's come all this way for nothing
, Jack thought, but he realized instantly that was wrong. She was wide-eyed, excited, and seemed better than she had on their walk through Lesya's abandoned forest. Sabine had already found something. It glimmered in her eyes, and seemed to light her skin with a weak dusky glare.

"Alive?" the Reverend asked.

"The walls," Jack said, running one hand over the cabin's walls. "The floor. They weren't cut and placed here, they grew. Dead now." He peeled back a sliver of bark from the wall and the wood beneath was dry, hard. "But the building is rooted to the ground. It'll be strong as old trees. The only weak points are the windows and doors."

"Good," Ghost said, nodding. "That'll make it easier."

"Movement out there," Callie said. She stood close to one window, pistols drawn with barrels resting on the window's small sill. She tapped the glass, and the sound seemed incredibly loud.

"Four hours till sunrise," Vukovich said. "Maybe five." He shook his head, betraying his pessimism.

"That's nothing," Ghost said.

Sabine came to Jack's side and pressed close, looking around the cabin. "Something is still here," she said. "Giving me strength. It's a constant whisper in my mind, though I can make no sense of it."

"Don't try to," Jack said. "Leshii was mad when I was here last. Now, his daughter dead or gone, perhaps he'll be worse."

"Yes, there's grief," Sabine said. "But it's not for something dead."

"What do you —?" Jack began, but Callie interrupted with two words that seemed to chill the very air of the cabin.

"They're coming."

The atmosphere inside the cabin changed. They fell silent, and in that silence Jack and Sabine could hear the familiar, sickening sounds of creaking bones and flexing flesh, as the men who were werewolves started to show their wild side. Callie stood close to the window, guns held ready.
How much ammunition?
Jack wondered. Surely she could not have much left. Her pack was by her feet, bulky with the dynamite she'd collected at the stampeders' camp. He doubted that could do them any good now. They'd have to be outside to throw it, and outside . . .

Jack looked out from another window, and saw. The polar bears — pale yellow in the dusky light, huge, fearsome — paced the clearing in decreasing circles. Instead of charging they were taking their time, sniffing out dangers and ensuring that the cabin was surrounded.

"Why don't they just come?" Louis growled, his voice deepened and distorted by the changes in his jaws. He stood at the other side of the cabin where a smaller window looked out toward the woods there. The Reverend crouched close behind Callie, Vukovich leaned against the bed blocking the door, and Ghost prowled the cabin, looking through alternate windows and trying to get a full picture of the situation outside.

"Trying to scare us," Ghost said. "Taking their time, making us sweat."

"We should take the fight out to them," Vukovich said.

"That's what they want," Callie said. "They smelled us, don't mean they know who or what we are."

"They're too strong to be so cautious," Vukovich said.

"That's partly
why
they're so strong," Jack said. "Strength isn't all about muscle. Right, Ghost?"

"True enough," Ghost replied, "but muscle helps."

"I can't see the wolf," Callie said.

"Over there, to the north," Ghost said, and Jack knew where he meant, because he had seen it too.

"What's it doing there?" Sabine asked.

"Watching," Jack said. It troubled him more than he could say that the wolf was standing back. It had warned him not to come — had faced up to him and almost threatened him — but he had ignored that warning. Perhaps now it had come merely to see him die. "Just watching."

"Enough talk," Callie said. "That one with the scarred flank's come closer and closer, so . . ." She trailed off, knocking the barrel of her gun through the window beside her.

Through the glass, Jack saw the result of the sharp, loud noise. The polar bears — he'd seen six of them pacing, and feared there might be more hiding in the trees — paused as one, turned toward the cabin, noses raised as they sniffed and heads tilted as they listened for more.

Callie fired twice, and the bear closest to the cabin reared up on its hind legs, its scream so high that it could have been human. It tumbled onto its back and squirmed, shrinking as it died.

"First blood," Ghost growled.

The other bears charged the cabin as one, from five different directions.

Their night of hell began.

Callie fired twice more, but Jack did not see any bears go down. He could see two through his window, storming through the overgrown garden and closing rapidly on the cabin. One veered off toward another window, but one came directly for where he stood, its mouth agape and blood streaking the fur across its face and down its chest. The beast's teeth were too large for its mouth.

"Back!" he said to Sabine, grabbing her jacket and taking two steps back from the window. He raised the shotgun and realized how terribly ineffective the weapon was. Callie had silver bullets, the wolves had tooth and claw. Jack had only the shotgun, a handful of cartridges, and a passionate determination to get through this attack. The unfairness of it all struck him. As the bear impacted against the cabin and thrust its head through the window, he swore that they would survive.

Roaring, Jack blasted the beast at point-blank range. Its head flipped back against the window's upper frame, then it looked at him once again, growl deformed by the results of the shotgun's blast. Claws scrabbling against the ground below the cabin window, it shoved itself forward, forcing itself into the opening even though its body was far too large.

Jack was fumbling with the shotgun, trying to take deep breaths to calm himself as he reloaded, when Ghost stepped past him and attacked the bear.

"Jack!" Sabine warned, pulling him back. Because Ghost was as neither of them had seen him since their time upon the
Larsen
. Changed, enlarged, engorged, animalistic, and yet his lengthened and hair-covered face still bore the grin they both recognized, and which Jack was certain would accompany him until death, and perhaps beyond. Ghost was changed but still totally in command of himself, and he tore into the trapped bear without mercy. He knocked one huge paw aside and slashed at it. The bear swung its other paw and Ghost staggered, only preventing himself from falling by anchoring himself with claws buried deep in the vampire's flesh.

"Callie!" Jack called, but Callie had her own problems. Another bear was at her window, halfway into the cabin, and had snagged her clothing with its claws. The Reverend was at it, teeth and claws flashing and sending a haze of blood-spattered fur across the cabin's interior. Vukovich was beneath the bear, one of its heavy paws pressing him down onto the cabin floor and crushing him.

Behind them, Louis was at the smaller window, engaged in a similar battle.

Jack loaded the shotgun and aimed, waited, then fired when the bear swung its leg and smashed Ghost against the bed blocking the door. The gunshot blasted the monster's knee and its leg flipped down, useless. It roared — anger, not pain.

Ghost and Jack shared a brief glance, and Ghost's set grin was chilling. Cut and bleeding, he was enjoying every moment of this. In his eyes Jack saw the man he had always been, not the werewolf he had changed into, and that more than anything convinced Jack that Ghost would never change.

He had no
desire
to change. The monster suited him well.

Another gunshot, and the bear above Callie slumped down dying, the front half of its body inside the cabin almost totally covering Vukovich. The Revered tugged Callie away from the twitching, smoking vampire, and as it began to shrink back into who and what it had once been — a Tlingit, old skin worn and marked — Vukovich stood, lifted the body away from himself, and tried to jam it in the window opening.

The corpse was snatched quickly away, and moments later another polar bear rammed itself at the opening. The timber frame splintered and crumbled as it started pulling itself through.

As Callie aimed, she slipped on shredded fur and put a bullet in the roof. She hit the ground, dropping one gun, and smacking her head against the floor. She remained down, groaning.

The bear lashed out and scored its claws across Vukovich's wolfish face. He fell back.

"Ghost!" Jack shouted. Ghost glanced briefly at Sabine, then tried backing away from the window. The bear he was fighting was tattered, shredded, jammed in the window opening, and he took precious seconds extracting his claws from the creature's flesh.

"Hurry!" Vukovich shouted through torn lips. He was on his feet again, ducking and twisting as he tried to avoid the bear's heavy paws. The vampire was almost in.

It'll kill Vukovich first
, Jack thought,
then it'll stomp on Callie, crush the life from her, and face up to Ghost
.

But Ghost was free, and he leaped across the room, launching himself twelve feet and landing splayed across the polar bear's back. Just as it fell from the window opening and fully into the cabin, Ghost grabbed it around the head and pulled as hard as he could.

"Vukovich!" Ghost hissed. Vukovich swung his hand in a low arc and opened the bear's throat. Blood flowed, but not much.

"Jack," Sabine called out. "There are others moving around the back."

Jack glanced that way at where Louis struggled at the smaller window. No bear could get in that way. There was the smaller rear room, with its door bolted and barricaded. Perhaps there was a weakness that they'd sensed there, or maybe they were simply going to scratch and barge their way through the solid wooden walls.

Sabine cried out. Jack spun, lifting the shotgun and firing at the ruined bear still jammed in the window. It was hauling itself through with its broken forelegs, determined, furious, and the wildest thing Jack had ever seen. His shot struck its head and shattered a portion of its skull, but even then it came on toward them.