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Kade threw his head back and answered it.
Another wolf replied, this one markedly closer than the first. In minutes, the pack had moved in, inching toward him through the tight clusters of spruce. Kade glanced from one pair of keen lupine eyes to another. The alpha stepped forward from the trees, a big black male with a ragged right ear. The wolf advanced alone, moving as shadow across the pristine white of the snow.
Kade stood his ground as first the alpha, then the others, walked a slow circle around him. He met their inquisitive eyes and sent a mental promise that he meant them no harm. They understood, as he knew they would.
And when he silently commanded them to take off, the pack bolted into the thick curtain of the starlit woods.
Kade fell in alongside them and ran with the wolves as one of the pack. Elsewhere in the cold, dark night, another predator strode the frozen, forbidding terrain. He'd been walking for hours, alone and on foot in this empty wilderness for more nights than he could recall. He thirsted, but his need was not as urgent as it had been when he'd first set out into the cold. His body was nourished now, his muscles, bones, and cells infused with power from the blood he had taken recently. Admittedly, too much blood, but already his system was leveling out from the overfill. And now that he was stronger, his body revived, he was finding it difficult to curb the thrill of the hunt.
That's what he was, after all: the purest form of hunter.
It was those predatory instincts that pricked to awareness as the quiet of the woods he crept through was disturbed by the rhythmic gait of a two-legged intruder. The stench of wood smoke and unclean human skin assailed his nose as the dark shape of a man wrapped in a heavy parka materialized not far from where the hunter watched and waited in the darkness. A metallic jangle sounded with each step the human took, emanating from the steel chains and sharp-toothed clamps he gripped in his gloved hand. In the other hand was a dead animal held by its hind feet, a large rodentlike creature that had been gutted along the way. The human trapper trudged toward a small log shack up the trail. The hunter watched him walk past, unaware of the gaze that followed him with greedy interest. For a moment, the hunter debated the merits of cornering his prey within the confines of the tiny shelter versus indulging in a bit of sport among the trees and drifts outside. Deciding on the latter, he stepped out from the cover of his observation spot and made a low sound in the back of his throat--part warning, part invitation for the now-startled human to run. The trapper did not disappoint.
"Oh, Jesus. What in God's name--" Fear blanched his bearded face and rendered his jaw slack. He dropped his paltry prize into the snow at his feet, then stumbled into a terrified dash for the woods. The hunter's lips curled off his fangs with anticipation of the chase. He let his prey crash away some sporting distance, then he set off after him.
Chapter Six
Alex packed up her snowmachine and hit the trail with Luna on board in front of her about an hour before daybreak. She was still rattled from the town meeting the night before, and more than a bit curious about the stranger who'd apparently vanished into the bush as oddly as he'd appeared in the back of Harmony's little log church.
Who was he? What did he want in tiny, remote Harmony? Where had he come from when the recent snowstorm had left most of the interior cut off from all of the nearest major ports?
And why had he been the only person in the entire assembly last night who'd listened to her account of the footprint left in the snow out at the Toms place and not made her feel like she had lost her mind?
Not that any of that mattered today. Mr. Tall, Dark, and Mysterious was long gone from Harmony, and Alex had a sled packed with as many supplies as she could carry--bare necessities for a few of the folks she'd had to neglect when her plane run to the bush was cut short the other day. Now she had a scant three hours of daylight and just enough gasoline stowed on board and in the Polaris's oversize fuel tank to make the hundred-mile round trip.
She had no good reason to detour toward the Toms settlement about an hour into her drive. None, except the gnawing need for answers. The hope--futile as she feared it to be--that she might find some kind of explanation for the slayings that didn't involve bloodied footprints in the snow and memories dredged up from the pit of her own private hell.
As Alex steered the snowmachine onto the drifted-over trail that led to Pop Toms's place, Luna jumped off to romp in the fresh, glittering powder.
"Stay with me," Alex warned the eager wolf dog as she slowed her sled on the approach to the small cluster of dark wood structures.
Watching Luna's eagerness to race ahead brought on an unwelcome flashback to that awful moment three mornings ago and to the grisly discovery of young Teddy's body.
And, just like that day, Luna tore off now, ignoring Alex's calls for her to wait.
"Luna!" Alex shouted into the stillness of the early afternoon. She cut the gas on the snowmachine and leapt off, then huffed and waded as best she could through the deep drifts that had hardly slowed Luna down at all. "Luna!"
Up ahead several yards, the wolf dog ran up the steps of Pop's porch and disappeared inside. What the hell? The door was open, even though Zach had made certain everything was closed up tight before the bodies of Pop and his family had been taken away. Had the wind blown the door open?
Or had it been something more dangerous than an Arctic gale that swept through here in the time since the killings?
"Luna," Alex said as she drew closer to the log building, hating the small shake in her voice. Her heart rate started to jackhammer in her chest. She swallowed past her anxiety and tried again. "Luna. Come on out of there, girl."
She heard movement inside, then a creak and a loud pop as a floorboard protested the cold and the weight of whoever--or whatever--was inside with her dog.
More movement, footsteps approaching the open space of the door. Fear crawled up the back of Alex's neck. She reached around to the handgun holstered under her parka at the small of her back. She drew the weapon and held it in a two-fisted grip in front of her, just as Luna came trotting nonchalantly out to greet Alex at the bottom of the stairs.
And behind her, farther inside Pop's house, was a man--the dark-haired stranger from the back of the church last night. Despite the cold, he was dressed in nothing but a pair of loose blue jeans, which he was casually fastening as if he'd just rolled out of bed.
He held Alex's incredulous gaze with a calmness she could hardly fathom, looking for all the world like staring down the barrel of a loaded .45 was something he did every day.
"You," Alex murmured, her breath clouding in front of her. "Who are you? What the hell are you doing out here?"
He stood unmoving, unfazed, inside the main room of the house. Instead of answering her questions, he tipped his strong, squared chin to indicate her pistol. "You mind pointing that somewhere else?"
"Yeah, maybe I do," she said, her pulse still pounding and not entirely from fear now. The guy was intimidating, nearly six-and-a-half-feet tall, with broad, muscled shoulders and powerful biceps that looked capable of dead-lifting a bull moose. Beneath an unusual pattern of hennalike tattoos that danced artfully over his chest, torso, and arms in some kind of intricate tribal design, his skin had the smooth, golden color of a Native. His hair seemed to indicate the same lineage, jet black and straight, the close-chopped spikes looking as silky as a raven's wing.
Only his eyes gave him away as something other than pure Alaskan. Pale silver, piercing against the thick, inky lashes that fringed them, they held Alex in a grip that felt almost physical.
