Silence of the Wolf

Chapter 16

Out of range to call anyone on his cell phone, Tom quit attempting to get hold of Elizabeth and concentrated on tracking down the wolves stalking the livestock. He’d finally discovered what he thought was a lead: unfamiliar wolf prints in the snow leading into the woods near one of the farms. If he could just locate the wolves before the next snowstorm began… just a little bit farther. He didn’t want to lose the trail this time.

The biting cold whipped at his face as he trudged through the Rockies, rifle slung over his shoulder. He suspected the rest of his gray-wolf pack mates would return to their homes in Silver Town, seeking hot showers, hot food, and if they were mated or had a human female to snuggle up to, hot sex. Which made him think of Elizabeth. He wished she were here.

Snowflakes dusted the evergreens with a sprinkling of white powder as fat flakes slanted sideways and were captured on the wind. The snow crystals covered his white parka and melted away.

Some of his pack mates helping with the search had run as wolves. With the approaching storm, he wondered if he shouldn’t have also. Still, he was glad to have his rifle with him, and if he had to, he’d slip off to the family cabin about a mile away.

The wind howled through the trees, a ghostly, haunting tune, as he tried to listen for any other sounds—a howl from the wolves plaguing the farmers’ sheep and calves, or even his own people howling to say they had given up the search before it was too late.

The sun that had sparkled off the creeks and shone through the branches of the trees this morning had given way to mountainous blue-gray clouds that shadowed everything, muting the vivid colors and warning that the weather would worsen.

Almost as soon as Tom set his sights on the storm clouds above him, snow began to drift down upon his upturned face. The sudden snowfall got heavier with alarming speed, and Tom regretfully decided to give up the chase for the moment.

Despite the full-blown blizzard whipping about him, Tom loved the chilled air, the snow, the wind, and the sound of it as it shook the mighty firs. Yet he wished he were curled up somewhere warm with Elizabeth, her blue-green eyes challenging him—very much alpha—while she’d pretended to be a beta. He couldn’t quit thinking about the way she had kissed him and then wanted him to go further, as if she’d hungered for more. He damn well wanted more with her. But she had been upset afterward. What had gone wrong? He should have sat down on the bed, gathered her in his arms, and flat out asked what the matter was, instead of allowing her to get away with saying that it was nothing.

She hadn’t returned one of his calls. He couldn’t figure her out. Maybe that’s why he was so hung up on her.

After a little while, the cabin he and his brothers kept in the mountains came into view. Though they were a close-knit family, sometimes having a little more privacy in a remote cabin appealed. Especially in a town like theirs, where no secrets stayed secrets for long.

Tom paused just outside the door, contemplating the meager woodpile, when the distant sound of an aircraft engine in trouble caught his ear. A sputtering, and then the engine completely cut out. Silence for a heartbeat. Then metal and tree branches ripped in discord and a muffled bang followed. He stared in the direction of the mountains hidden in the blinding snow.

No explosion, no flames shooting into the air or bleak, gray smoke curling up through the forest that he could see. Just silence.

He swore under his breath and charged into the cabin, slamming the door shut against the blizzard. He couldn’t search for survivors in the middle of a blizzard as a human. But he hated to think what would happen if he found someone still alive and they panicked when they saw him as a wolf. Still, he had no other choice if he was to locate anyone still alive.

After ditching his clothes in a rush, he stretched his arms out, his body warming with the advent of the change, accepting the transformation, and welcoming it. His muscles and bones reshaped. Fur covered his skin in a warm pelt. The double coat would protect him from the frigid elements. He raced across the floor and dove through the wolf door.

Outside, the white bleakness obscured everything in a ghostly way. Whoever had chosen to be foolhardy enough to fly in this weather was out of their mind. Rich folks flying about in expensive private jets to see the spectacular Rockies, perhaps? Probably decided on a whim to witness the snow-covered peaks. Or maybe they didn’t understand the air density at this altitude, mountain winds, navigating the ridges, the problems with radio communications, or even hypoxia, which could lead to altitude sickness up there. Or how suddenly a storm could move in.

The absence of the plane’s engine hum ground on his nerves. A number of people had survived airplane crashes in the mountains. But without a way to keep warm, the cold would kill them if the crash hadn’t.

If he found survivors who were near death, the only way he could save them was to bite them and share his lupus garou genetics. Darien would have a fit if Tom took it upon himself to make a life-or-death decision and turn a severely injured person or persons they knew nothing about.

Changing someone could prove disastrous. Some just couldn’t accept being turned. What if Darien told Tom that the new wolf was his problem if the wolf became real trouble? Tom didn’t want to save someone’s life only to have to eliminate him later if he went rogue. Not only that, but the human’s family had to be considered.

Tom focused on the sounds in the wind, trying to discern if he could hear anything in the direction that the plane had gone down. If the plane transmitted an SOS, search parties would begin combing the area, bringing more aircraft, people, media, and problems once the storm let up.

Tom dashed through the snowy woods in his wolf form. He thought he knew the general vicinity to investigate, but he sniffed the air, listening for any sounds that could direct him more precisely toward the crash site.

A sweep of metal tapped against a tree a long way off. He bounded toward the sound.

Gouges in tree trunks, broken branches, and needled twigs littering pristine snow warned of the plane’s fatal path as he continued north.

No sign of bodies or—A fresh depression in the snowbank caught his attention. He loped to the spot and peered into the indent in the snow. A gun.

The notion that the flight was way off course, carrying the crew and pleasure-seeking passengers to their deaths, became something else.

Who would have carried a gun aboard a flight? Even a private flight?

If they were government agents, the place would be crawling with rescue teams in short order.

Tom circled the area, listening. Sniffing the air, he didn’t smell any blood or humans as the wind swept through the trees. The piles of snow were stacked so high on branches that they blew over and landed with a plop. A brown hare bolted out of a pocket of snow, startling him. Then Tom spied a section of plane: the tail ripped from the body, probably by force of impact with the trees. It was tilted on its side and stuck between two partially shattered trees, grounded in the forest floor forever.

No bodies anywhere, though. No luggage, no personal effects, nothing. He twitched his ears back and forth, listening for the soft moans of human passengers who might have survived the crash, but he heard nothing new.

He continued to search, finding a seat cushion. Several hundred feet from that, he discovered a man’s mangled body, jeans ripped to shreds. He had a bearded face, shaggy blond hair, and the stare of death in his fathomless black eyes.

Tom discovered another body still belted to his seat, neck broken. Another man, maybe the navigator or copilot, was facedown in the snow. Tom nudged his nose under the man’s body and flipped him faceup. This one was packing—a knife in his belt, a gun in its holster—and his appearance was as scruffy as the other two.

Drug runners maybe? Unless the guy had been undercover, although he didn’t look like a government agent or cop type. But he looked… familiar. One of the men hassling Silva at the tavern?

Tom searched for a while longer but didn’t find anyone else. He didn’t know which situation he had feared more: finding no survivors or finding someone terribly injured.

The wind-driven snow covered everything in its path, giving the plane and its crew and passengers a cold, white burial. Deciding there was nothing else he could do, Tom bounded back the way he’d come, through the snowdrifts and past the tail of the plane embedded in the ground, intent on reaching his cabin… when he smelled blood. Coyote blood.

Elizabeth was sure she’d died and gone to hell.

Except it was far too cold for that. Pain shrieked through her head, her shoulders, back, legs. She touched her forehead and found her fingers red with blood. She didn’t think she’d broken anything, just had cuts and bruises. And just when she’d been feeling a hundred percent, too.

Beyond frustrated, she brushed her hair out of her eyes and surveyed the landscape. She couldn’t see the plane from her vantage point in a snowdrift at what looked like the bottom of a hill. The last thing she remembered was the sound of metal ripping away from the plane, but she didn’t remember the crash. She decided she must have been thrown from the tail before impact.

Her head pounded as if a jackhammer drilled into her skull, and she was freezing fast. Heat could kill a body deader than a stiff board, but cold… She knew she needed to move, but since she was walking in blizzard conditions with no visibility and no way to determine depth, she’d tumbled down a slope.

Cold, cold, cold!

As a wolf, she could protect herself from the bitter conditions. But as a human in handcuffs and dressed, she couldn’t shift.

Her jeans were in ribbons, snow clinging to every inch, her sweater not much better. The wound on her forehead wasn’t bleeding as fast now. Her freezing skin helped to slow the bleeding, but she would be a Popsicle before long.

She forced herself up, stumbled, fell, and planted her bloody forehead against the snow. “Ah,” she groaned, the ice-cold snow burning her skin. She pressed her cheek against a chilly mound of accumulated flakes. Breathed the wintry air into her lungs, burning them in the process. She wasn’t a quitter. She remembered the steaks she’d bought on sale at the butcher shop. The bloody steaks! And she wanted them!

She had to be hallucinating or out of her mind or something. She wasn’t even hungry. Willing herself to get to her feet, she trudged through the ever-deepening snow, filling her boots with the cold, wet stuff.

Freezing, she groaned. Then she heard metal slapping in the wind. And propelled herself toward the sound.

Heart racing, Tom stopped, sniffed the air, searched his surroundings, and listened.

The wind wreaked havoc with his attempt to locate the scent of blood. He backtracked. Smelled it again. Faint. Circled. Nothing. He circled again, in a wider path this time.

There. Just a whiff of blood on the wind.

The scent of a female red wolf… blended with a female coyote. Elizabeth’s scent. It couldn’t be. His heart pounding, he lifted his nose again, sampling the turbulence. South. Toward the cabin. Smoke from his chimney mixed with the slight bloody scent. The scents swirled in the wind and shifted again. He stared in the direction of his cabin.

Nothing in the white blanket of snow revealed itself.

He raced in circles, widening his search to locate her, to rescue her.

He couldn’t find tracks. If she had any sense, she would turn into her wolf self. She would most likely head toward the smell of the smoke from his cabin. If she smelled it.

He smelled blood again. He dug at the snow and found the blood already buried under a fresh layer of snowflakes. She’d been here. Recently. He began his search again. She’d headed away from the cabin, not toward it.

He howled. No response.

The wind whipped the smoke from the chimney around so much that she must be disoriented. Or the cold was making her lose her sense of direction. She must not have turned into a wolf. Why hadn’t she? Too injured? That thought made him sick with worry.

He darted through a stand of firs, stopped suddenly, turned his head, and saw her. Staring back at him, blood dripping from a gash in her forehead, she watched him. Her clothes fluttered in snow-covered ribbons. Her cracked lips parted. She sank to her knees.

Elizabeth. His heart slammed into his ribs.

He focused briefly on the handcuffs on her wrists. What… was going on?

He let out a frosty breath, then headed straight for her. Only one thing to do.

Using his teeth, he grabbed one of the dangling pieces of her shredded jeans’ fabric and tugged at her to follow him. If he could get her close enough to his cabin, he’d leave her, change, dress, and come back for her. If she could last that long.

He tugged all the harder to make her move as fast as she could, and he huffed out loud to encourage her to follow him before it was too late.

She stumbled in the deep snow, barely able to make any progress.

She tried to get up, tears freezing on her cheeks. Tom looked back at her, worried, not angered that she couldn’t keep up. He couldn’t shift and take her to the cabin in his human form without dressing in warm clothes.

He returned to her, nuzzled her face, and attempted to get her to her feet, but she couldn’t move. She wasn’t going to make it.

He hesitated for only a second, then dashed off.

“No,” she moaned, the word barely slipping out on the stiff breeze.

Tom had never run as fast in his life as he did now, racing to get to the cabin, his mind sorting out just how quickly he could jerk on his clothes. Well, shift first. No, get into the cabin first. Hell. There was no planning this. He would do what he had to do as soon as he arrived.

Snow covered the cabin, the wolf door buried. Not having any choice, Tom shifted in the icy snow, threw open the human door, and slammed it shut. He tugged on his clothes, jammed his feet into his boots, pulled on his parka, a ski hat, and gloves, then grabbed a wool blanket and ran back out into the snow.

He swore he’d never reach Elizabeth in time. Not as slow as his progress was while trying to run through the deep snow. No wonder she couldn’t make any headway, being petite, barely dressed, and injured on top of that.

When he was close enough, he thought he saw her struggling to walk in his direction, but he couldn’t believe his eyes. He expected her to be lying in the snow, half buried before he reached her. She hadn’t given up. She’d actually made it several more feet. Good. He tried to move more quickly but couldn’t. It just wasn’t physically possible to travel any faster through the deep snowdrifts. Her eyes widened a little when she lifted her head from watching her footfalls, following his trail, to see him. He couldn’t even smile. The situation was just too grave.

When injured victims saw help arrive and quit the struggle to survive, thinking they were now safe, they died. She needed the adrenaline rushing through her blood, keeping her alive. She needed to keep trying, as if he wasn’t coming to her aid.

To his relief, she trudged forward, but then she fell.

He thought he heard a choked sob. The disquieting sound made him feel as though an ice shard had stabbed him through the heart.

“I’m coming,” he said. “Don’t quit, Elizabeth!”

She struggled to get up, but she couldn’t make it.

He was beside her before she could lift her head to try again. “Don’t give up,” he growled at her, angry at the weather, at the plane, at her if she succumbed to the elements before he could get her to safety.

He dragged his coat around her, intending for her to wear it, and remembered too late about the handcuffs. He cursed and grabbed the blanket, wrapped it around her, then the coat, and zipped it, folding her into it like a protective cocoon. He pulled the hood over her head and tightened the drawstrings until the fake gray fur fit snuggly around her small face, nearly covering it.

She stared up at him with her blue-green eyes filled with tears and a look of gratitude. Her dry cracked lips parted, and he was certain she tried to say, “Thank you.”

“Don’t… give… up,” he said urgently, harshly. He lifted her into his arms and made the long trek back to the cabin. Her body was ice cold, but the parka and blanket and his body heat would help to warm her.

Carrying her made the journey nearly impossible as he tried to make headway through the knee-deep powdery snow. He knew the direction to go, even though he couldn’t see the cabin.

“What happened?” he asked, not wanting her to go to sleep and never wake. He needed her to talk to him. To get this close to the cabin and lose her now… he couldn’t think of that.

“Plane crashed,” she murmured, her words slurred.

Not good. “Elizabeth, listen to me. Stay… awake. I’ll have you to the cabin in just a few minutes. I’ll have a warm fire blazing in the fireplace in no time. I’ll get you some hot tea and chili—if you can manage.”

“You…” she said weakly, straining to look at him, to watch his expression.

“Yes?” he responded, encouraging her to speak, to stay awake until he could get her to the cabin and ensure she would be okay.

“…will… warm… me,” she said hesitantly, rasping out the words between clenched teeth, in pain, shivering.

“Yes, yes, I’ll warm you.”

“You’ll… be…”

He looked back down at her, his feet trudging through the deepening snow. He had to hear what she had to say, even if she didn’t make any sense. He really didn’t expect her to make any sense. Not as hypothermic as she had to be. But he was glad to hear her speak about anything.

“…naked,” she finally got out.

He raised both brows, unable to prevent the curve of his lips, the first time he’d managed to smile at her. “You… mean us? Together? Naked?” He suspected the warmth of the fire, hot tea sliding down her throat, and being bundled in blankets and anything else he could wrap her in would do the job, if he could just get her out of this blasted cold weather. Lying with her naked? Yeah, he’d damn well like that, but he didn’t know how badly she might be injured.

She smiled. And that one little smile sent his heart skittering.