"You worship spirits?"
"Why would I do that?" He wasn't crazy or stupid-and a man had to be one or the other to go out looking for spirits. "All that would do is get me more work-and my father gives me more than enough work as it is."
She frowned at him, so he decided to explain. "Sometimes they help me out in this or that if I ask, but more often they have something they need done. And there aren't as many people who hear them as there used to be-which means more work for those of us who do. My father keeps me busy enough for three people. If I were seeking the spirits out in daily conversation, I wouldn't have time to tie my shoes. Samuel spends a lot of time trying to figure out where spirits fit into Christianity-I don't worry about it so much."
He thought he was going to have to remind her to finish her food, but she stared at her bag for a bit, then took another bite. "What do you do if they ask you to do something wrong?"
He shook his head. "Most spirits are more friendly or unfriendly rather than good or evil." And then, because the odd urge to tease her was still strong, he added, "Except for the brain-sucking spirits who live around here waiting for silly hikers to camp under their trees. Don't worry, I'll keep them off of you."
"Jerk," she told her sweet-and-sour chicken, but not like she was bothered.
Somewhere out in the darkness a wolf howled. It was a long way off, a timber wolf, he thought. Twenty years ago there hadn't been any wolves to howl, but they'd been making steady progress back down into Montana from Canada for a decade or more. The sound made him smile. His father worried that there was no more room in this tame planet for predators, but he figured if humans had decided to allow the wolves back into their rightful place, they could adjust to werewolves given enough time.
* * * *
Walter found the dead man, dressed in hunter orange, propped up against a tree. From the looks of him, he'd fallen from the rocks above where a game trail snaked along the edge of a short cliff. One leg had been broken, but he'd managed to drag himself a few yards. Probably he'd died of the cold a few days ago.
He must be the reason all the searchers had been hiking through the woods. He must have gotten turned around because no man with any sense would have gone hunting this far from a road without a pack animal of some sort. It was so far from where people had been looking that the chances of anyone finding the body were somewhere between slim and none. By spring there would be little left to find.
He thought about burying the body, but he'd have to dig through eight or ten feet of snow and another six of frozen ground. Besides, he didn't have a shovel with him. The dead man's feet were the same size as Walter's, so he took the boots as well as the gloves and parka-leaving behind the orange vest. Leaving the hunter's gun was a more difficult decision, but ammunition was hard to come by, and he had no desire to advertise his presence with gunfire.
He bowed his head and began a prayer. It wasn't a very good prayer because the only one he could remember was the prayer he'd said before bedtime as a kid. But he focused on it, because it was helping him ignore the beast inside him that saw the hunter as meat. It was hungry, and it didn't care where the meat came from.
He was just finishing the prayer when the demon howled. He felt an answering growl rise from his belly, a challenge to his enemy. But he held the sound to himself. He knew about stalking evil...for a moment he was back in the war with Jimmy, sliding from shadow to shadow as they approached their commander's tent. The sobs of the village girl hid their approach.
For a moment he saw Jimmy's face as clearly as if he stood beside him again. Then he was back in the present standing over a dead man-a frozen corpse whose neck he'd sliced with his knife, just as he had the CO's all those years ago.
That little girl had never told anyone what had happened, though he and Jimmy had waited on pins and needles for several weeks. They could have killed her, too-but that would have made them as bad as the CO. Officially, he'd been killed by a sniper. He and Jimmy had snickered a little about that. Most snipers don't use knives.
He bent down and picked up the body. He couldn't let it be found with a knife wound. He'd take it somewhere a little more off the usual game trails.
He carried the corpse a mile or so and set it gently beneath a thicket of Oregon grape. He licked his lips and tasted blood. Startled, he glanced down at the body and noticed that the neck wound had been cleaned, the skin around it glistening just a little from saliva.
He grabbed a handful of snow and wiped off his mouth, torn between hunger and sickness-though he knew he couldn't have swallowed much because the corpse had been frozen through.
He walked away as quickly as he could manage without running.
* * * *
"Anna?" Charles finished zipping together the sleeping bags.
She didn't answer him. She'd shed her coat and boots, then climbed back on the rock. She stood barefoot, her wool socks in one hand.
If they'd been somewhere else, he'd have believed that she was enjoying the view, but they were tucked in the trees, where all she could see was more trees. She wasn't so much looking out as not looking at the sleeping bags and him. As soon as they'd finished eating, she'd started shutting down again.
The temperature had dropped ten degrees when the sun went down, and it was too bloody cold for her to be standing around barefoot and coatless. Werewolf she might be, but frostbite still hurt like sin.
But he wasn't going to get her into the bags without force or coaxing. He took his own boots off and stuck the socks into his pack. He took out two fresh pairs of socks and stuck them in the bottom of the sleeping bag, so they'd be warm tomorrow morning.
He'd packed an extra blanket, which he shook out and wrapped around his shoulders. Then he walked over and hopped up on the rock next to her. There wasn't a lot of room, but he managed to stand shoulder to shoulder with her.
"My cousins courted their women with blankets," he told her without looking at her. She didn't say anything, just pulled her toes up and curled them together for warmth.
"It's called a snagging blanket," he said. "One of them would go up to the girl he was courting and slowly stretch an arm out-" He held on to the corner of the blanket and put his arm around her shoulders. "And he wrapped the blanket over her. If she didn't duck away, he'd snag her close." He tugged, and she took a step sideways until she was tucked under his arm with the blanket snug around them both.
"A snagging blanket?" There was amusement in her voice, but her body was still stiff.
Wolf, he thought, but not completely. If he hadn't been looking for it, he might not have smelled the distinctive scent of her wolf intermingled with the perfume that was Anna.