Wolf: A Military P.A.C. Novel (24 page)

Chapter 46 Michael

The desert wind rippled over four bodies. Each of them wore a sophisticated combat suit made more complex by the computer unit that interfaced with it. To anyone looking
, they would see nothing but the heat-baked air shimmering in the sun. And the drift of sand on the wind.

“What did the general say
?” Boyen asked.

“She didn’t believe him. Mom likes facts. Or she acts on logic, pure line
ar logic,” Ahmed answered.

Huer laughed. “Oh
, that’s good. We got info that tells us just where the bloody rebels are hiding their gold and you got Intel you can’t prove without giving away PAC. You told her it was a hunch. Didn’t you?”

“I looked her in the eyes
until she blinked.”

“I never could win that game with her,” Ahmed said. “Even when it was only a game. She just doesn’t back down. I’ve heard her called a stone cold bitch.”

“She didn’t back down, not really. But I got a yes. We need to verify my hunch,” Captain Scott said.

“Well
, we got a bloody S.R. telling our story,” Huer said, referring to the cameras that floated overhead and hooked into Captain Scott’s battle suit.

“And PAC is editing out our voices right now.”

“We got movement,” Boyen said.

Everyone went quiet.

Node One: Name, PAC. Primary Interface: Captain Michael Scott: Adapting. Primary Systems: Nominal. Organics Engine: online. Behaviour and Emotional files: Updating: Hunch: premonition, feeling; to push or shove; to assume a crouched or cramped condition. Cameras are bad. The General’s a stone cold bitch. Command Structure: Unchanged.

Michael hung from the cliff face. His grip slipping. A gash in his arm leaked blood down his body. Tears streamed from his eyes. His last vision was of White Bear digging
one set of claws into Felon’s lungs, and the other set deep into her flank. Faelon losing her forelimb. The pain of her cry an echo in his skull. She couldn’t have survived that much damage. Could she? She’d survived her throat being ripped out. So much damage though, so fast. And the limb, gone in the quick crunch of savage jaws.

His lungs heaved. His grip slipped more. It was actually PAC slipping. The glove that was his computer, and friend, had caught on the pointed edge of the rock, slowly riding up his hand, compressing his fingers. His grip was the material of PAC slowly wrinkling up under his weight. His other shoulder was weak, still crippled by the damage White Bear had done.

Every twist of his body left him with less of PAC’s meta-material wrapped around his hand. And PAC had been inert for the last half hour. Ever since he had repaired his hand. Michael heaved air into his lungs and forced back his tears. The motion sheered more of glove’s material from his hand. Almost over the curve of his palm. Much more, and he would drop to the rocks below.

“PAC
, reboot your biologicals. Do you hear me? Reboot. Damn it, PAC! Don’t you leave me too!”

The glove gave way. Michael scraped at the rock with his fingertips as he fell, grasped with hands that searched for holds in the weather-slick granite. Ice, snow, and debris rained down on his head as he tumbled. His knees struck the cliff face and he tumbled more, falling into the morning dawn and the ledge below. Thirty metr
es,—the slap of his body against the stone held a sickening crunch. He felt bones break and flesh shear away from the bone. His head struck, bounced, his neck cracked. He screamed. To Michael’s mind, it sounded like Faelon’s name. The last sound on his lips.

Node One: Rebooting. Temporary dissolution: Molecules; collision; Pattern formation. Cohesion. Searching. Power requirements: minimal function, below standard. Switching to alternative power functions. Piezoelectric Nano-filaments extending.

Node One: Reboot successful. Movement: none. Environment: Freezing. Wind velocity: three clicks per hour. Searching memory archives. Primary Interface missing. Profession, Army Captain Michael Scott. Initiate Self-destruct. Internal conflict. Abort. Adapt. Primary Interface Missing, Michael Scott: profession, writer. Initiate Self-destruct. Internal conflict. Abort. Adapt. Secondary Interface missing. Searching memory archives. Faelon, Profession: supernatural being, wolf, female human. Initiate Self-destruct. Internal conflict. Abort. Adapting. Secondary Interface missing. Internal conflict. Abort. Adapting.

Node One: survival imperative. Node One: survival without Primary or Secondary, Self-destruct Initiative. Memory conflict. Abort. Adapting. Survival Imperative, find Primary, or Secondary. Emotional update: Loneliness. Sucks. Command Structure: Changed: Node One Independent. Searching environment. Biologicals found. Flesh. Genus; Canis lupus, wolf; sand, minerals, other. Known. Alternative energy: protein. Mobility, low. Alternative Power requirements: High.

Node One: Deploying Piezoelectric Nano-filaments: Length, various. Polarizing atmospheric differential.

The groan that left Michael’s body was lost in the high
-keening wind that whistled around him. The windswept rock ledge he rested on was cold; it dug into his back and limbs in ways that were uncomfortable. One leg was twisted under his body. He tried to move. Though he had the muscle strength and his limbs worked, he felt locked to the ground.

Then he understood. His clothes had been shredded
in the fall, baring the skin of his back in places. The same way Faelon’s body would have grown around his shirt when her throat had been ripped out by the black wolf, his had grown around the protuberances under his body.

He moved his legs
. They were free, mobile under him, though the bones ached as if they had been broken and were only freshly healed. The energy leaked from him as if the exertion was too much. He rested, took a breath and then several more, gathering his legs under him, his knees bent and his feet flat to the ground. When he felt ready, minutes, hours later, he didn’t know, he lifted his buttocks from the ground and threw one shoulder over.

He screamed. The sound cut through the wind, tore a hole in the world around him. Met
res away, though, the sound was lost, as if he didn’t exist.

Flesh ripped, a sickening tearing, the way
cloth would, after left on a frozen plain, though this was warm and sticky from the blood that flowed over his skin. He held himself there, unable to rest, to lower his body to the ground, or he would have to do this all over again. To scream into the wind and lose himself to the pain all over again. The way he had lost Faelon, and PAC.

He took a breath and with the same inhale drove his left leg against the rock, pushing his body over, his arm swinging to help. His left hand scrabbled at the rock, reaching, grasping for any protuberance that would give him a handhold. He found one at the end of his reach and pried his fingers against it, welded them to it, with the strength born from Faelon’s saliva and his near death. He screamed again as his right shoulder left the ground and his flesh pulled from the rock it had grown around. He gasped, and a whimper of pain, the way a dog
’s might, left his lungs. Then he collapsed.

Node One: Name, PAC. Piezoelectric Nano-filaments deployed: Polarization build up imminent. Environmental conditions: Twenty-kilometr
e winds; insufficient mass; Nano-filaments; deploying adhesion method. Velcro. Nano-filaments; acquiring alternative mass: Protein; hair; blood. Successful.

Michael crawled to the rock wall of the cliff, away from the ledge that he had been so close to bouncing over after he had fallen. He searched the wall in the dense wind and swirl of snow. Blinded
, he groped along until he found an indent. He followed and felt it curve away from him, into the rock face. Though it wasn’t a cave, it tunnelled a few metres into the rock wall and curved to the right for another half metre or two. It offered him shelter, a place where his natural body heat had a chance to gather. Out of the wind, he had a chance to heal, to gather his strength.

He felt lost without the potency of his friends, Faelon and PAC. He drew the loneliness into himself, afraid to lose even that, the way he had
after his mother’s death all those years ago.

Chapter 47 Faelon

Seasons passed for Faelon and her sire. Hunting was good. So was the fire that kept them warm at night when her sire chose to be a man. They worked in cooperation, the way wolves did, making life easier for both of them. Still, she saw the sadness in his eyes. Faelon remembered her bitch’s scent, understood the need that went with it, the whine that stuck in her throat when she remembered. But the pain that went with those actions was almost gone for her. Not so for her sire. He still lost his thoughts to the hours and the days, sadness heavy in his voice and eyes. When he sank that low, only a nip to his skin would pull him from his despair. Then he would remember the living for a few days.

The next cycle of his depression, the mountain rumbled, the noise filling the air as dust and rocks started bouncing around them. Faelon barked
, but her sire didn’t feel the earth or hear the sound that jumbled over them. She bit him, hard, and he yelped, becoming aware. Finally.

A rock thumped against her side and she jumped. The breath knocked from her as dust spread into a haze and she lost sight of her
sire.

She coughed as the cloud spread, rocks bouncing from within the dark shroud of falling dirt and debris. Eventually it settled. The sun climbed high the next day before she found him. The scent of him anyway. Buried under rock taller than she, the spaces between them too narrow to fit her body
. She barked for his attention. Scrambled with her claws until they bled raw. Her body ached with the effort, until she couldn’t move. Then she slept.

The sun passed overhead twenty times before she gave up. The rock around her whole, undamaged by her claws or her teeth. And the dirt she had managed to move turned to mud in the rainy season.

Faelon let the sound drip from her throat, as tangible as the blood that had trickled from her severed limb. She was unable to stop the small whimpers of pain that came with each sway of her body as it hung from White Bear’s mouth. Her body ached. And her heart. Michael was gone. She had seen him fall from the cliff. Her needs had been fulfilled; putting her hind leg into his trap had worked, but those were pale emotions compared to not having his company beside her. His drive had shown her what love—a word PAC had supplied—really meant. Animals didn’t love, but she wasn’t just an animal. And Michael was her mate. Her only one. The single male that had been suitable for her. Unlike the black wolf.

The Naklétso had wanted that. How rageful would their cubs have been?

White Bear was here now, the reek of mountain ash still on him. The hide that covered him unable to hide his smell. She knew what hate was now. If she were ever free long enough, she would kill White Bear. Attack him, as she never had, even if it meant her death. No, that was wrong. That was the Naklétso thinking for her. Making her rage. Her instincts were telling her another thing. She had to run, leave this place. Her natures were warring with each other again. But it was the only way. She had cubs to defend. Michael’s gift.

Her right forelimb had stopped bleeding
, but pain throbbed through it as if the flesh that used to be there had survived. It itched and tingled as well, like maggots writhed beneath the skin trying to force their way out.

Blood kept choking her as it leaked from her throat. Every time White Bear shifted the grip of his teeth or lurched forward with his massive bulk.

Why did he want her alive?

Faelon didn’t understand.

Chapter 48 White Bear Dying

The mountains of Johnston Valley echoed with the noise of a storm. Thunder rolled over the trees and stone, lightning showing in the spaces in between.

A fist pounded on White Bear’s door.

The interruption surprised him, astounded him actually. He had no friends. His family was dead, lost in the Witchery Way, and he was valleys away from any kind of civilization. The trapper and his son hadn’t shown up in years, and they were up and over the far ridges. He wound his way through the house, the scent of Mountain Ash heavy in the air. It settled the spirits that haunted him. He opened the door. Wrapped in the heavy furs of civilization, a pair of eyes screamed at him. They held no peace, and no fear.

“Teach me the Witchery Way.”

“You’re insane.”

“Grief does that.”

“If you know this much, you know the price.”

“There’s another way. Without invoking the Yeii.”

“Impossible.”

“Let me show you. We can learn from each other.”

White Bear still blocked the door
, but his eyes were bright for the first time in years.

White Bear dropped his prey in the snow. The chant running through his mind was purifying his body and spirit for the ritual needed in the next three days. But he was tired, his age catching up to his exertions
. Though the magic helped. Before the wolf could heal, he pierced her lungs with his claws. Again. She still tried to scramble away. Back the way they had come, away from him. Toward the dead body of her lover.

He took a deep breath and shook out the skin and muscle of his huge body. It rippled like a wind had shuffled through it. He bit at the snow
, taking mouthfuls of ice that melted with the heat of his body, refreshing him. Giving him strength. He couldn’t eat in this time of prayer but water was allowed, just.

The wolf moved again and his huge paw swatted her, thumping her into the ground. He finished drinking
, then picked her up in his jaws again and walked off with her swaying beneath him. Her back paws dragging through the snow.

He finally made the cave that was the last home of the Yeii, the Yeenaaldlooshii, and Estsá-assun, and Etsáy-Hasteén. He dropped the wolf from his great jaws into the sand painting he had created. A white background surrounded by the rainbow Yeii to protect what was within
. A black border surrounded everything, waiting to be sealed. Several bowls of coloured sand were placed in the farthest corner.

He changed form
. The bearskin he was wearing stank with sweat, the fur was matted and dirty, and ice crystals clung to it, melting in the slight change from outside to inside. From its place on the ground, he picked up the Rowan staff that he had carried with him when he hiked through the mountains. The same one that had changed Faelon’s form when she was struck by it, and later when she had bitten the wood and ingested the mountain ash into her body, had slid her all the way into her human form. Simon Werheald had done it. Mixed the Yeii and a human to become a Skinwalker. And it had carried through to his children. Did he keep his promise?

“What are the symbols?”

The wolf in front of him growled, defiant as ever. He hefted the club in his hands and swung before Faelon could move away. He struck again and again, each time demanding the information, the symbols that would let her draw on the Yeii without a sacrifice, let her change from animal to human. If he knew those he could change things, fix the mess magic had made of his life. If the spirits didn’t need a sacrifice, he could change the price. Faelon reared up and White Bear moved the staff to block her attack, her teeth falling on the staff and her bite marring its surface.

Her body rippled with the change.

White Bear screamed, “Tell me!”

“NO
!”

“You will, Faelon. Just wait."

He closed the border with a fistful of black sand and bone ash before the wounded human could escape.