"How can you be sure?"
"Ann, always take the time to listen to the earth, taste the scents on the wind, take note of your instincts. I didn't take the time, and Leader paid the price. Yet if you listen, the elements won't steer you wrong."
Ann faced Jasha. "My instincts are fine, and they don't want you to go."
He was unabashedly naked, and he enunciated each word, speaking slowly, as if he feared she wouldn't understand him unless he did. "I have to find him. I want to interrogate him, make sure he is the only one, and put him out of commission."
"You're going to kill him, too?" The frigid air was suddenly much colder.
"My darling, softhearted Ann, do you realize that hunter lies dead in the forest because he made the mistake of trusting the Varinski?"
"I know." When she was cold to the core, how could her palms grow sweaty? "But I don't want you to kill anyone. What would happen if someone finds out?" Will you be like your father, unable to sleep without seeing the faces of the people you've murdered?
"I plan to disable the Varinski, take him back to the scene of the crime, and sic the sheriff on him. They'll put him in prison, the Varinskis will break him out, and he'll go home a failure." Jasha stood so still, she saw only the glint of his eyes. "But if I have to—I won't hesitate to take him out."
She understood Jasha. More than that, she agreed. If it came to a choice between Jasha and the Varinski, she wanted Jasha alive at any cost.
Perhaps the blood he'd put into her veins changed her. Perhaps it was love, and lust, and mating, that brought forth the savage within. Or perhaps Sister Mary Magdalene was right, and the mark on her back meant she was fated to evil.
"What about the other? Will you take his body back, too?"
"No. He's not all human, and I can't allow him to be found. I left him where the scavengers can find him."
She swallowed. But this was war. "I guess you'd better take me to the place you want me to hide."
He stepped forward, caught her face between his hands, and kissed her, a kiss that branded her, proclaimed to her she was his. Then he gathered the clothes and towels and swiftly led her straight up the hill. He moved silently, a mere shadow before her, and she knew if she weren't here, he would be a wolf. As soon as he left her, he would turn.
Once he stopped her. "You're warm. Sit down."
She wasn't warm, not really, but she knew why he wanted her to cool off. He didn't want her to give off a scent.
She truly was starting to think like a Wilder.
As they climbed, the vegetation thinned until they reached the upper tree line. Here the bones of the mountains stuck through the soft earth and the ground was nothing but windswept basalt. He took her to a crack in the mountain almost deep enough for a cave.
"Listen carefully.” He pulled a sleeping bag out of his backpack and unzipped it. "You need to stay under shelter. You'll be out of the wind, but more important, the Varinski becomes a bird. He has extraordinary eyesight. If he's a cat, he can hear everything and stalk like a shadow. But I think they sent a wolf. He'll catch your scent and after he's finished me off, he'll come for you."
"What do you mean, after he's finished you off?" She stood straight and stiff.
"There's always a chance I won't be the winner. He's not their best—they didn't send their best man after corrupt, weak, easy-to-fool me. But he is a Varinski, trained to kill, and he does it easily, without conscience." Jasha gestured her into the mummy bag and knelt to zip it up around her. "Would you rather your lover killed easily, or would you rather I doubted?"
"What a choice." She freed her arms from the bag's embrace, and slid her fingers through his damp hair. "Come back to me. Jasha, no matter what it takes, come back to me."
He kissed her greedily. In a rapid undertone, he said, "Keep still. Keep out of sight. Don't talk, don't snore, don't pray. Be part of the landscape, my darling, and I'll be back for you in the morning."
She watched as he loped down the mountain, and as he disappeared, she saw him crouch, hands and feet to the ground, and suddenly—he was a wolf.
Huddling down in the sleeping bag, she did exactly what he had told her not to—she held the icon pressed between her palms, and she prayed.
Prayed for the success and the soul of a demon.
She woke to hear laughter, if that discordant cackling could be called laughter. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew it wasn't Jasha.
And it wasn't.
But there was no doubt—it was his relative. Like a child out to spook his friends around a campfire, he held a flashlight under his chin.
He had Jasha's bone structure, and Jasha's golden eyes. He had scars, too—a scar across his eyelid, and one from his ear to the edge of his lips. It split his mouth, and his smile, into a lopsided monstrosity. In a heavily accented voice, he said, "Look at -what I've found. Cousin Jasha's little toy."
The mummy bag kept her warm. It also kept her arms trapped by her side, and rendered her worthless in a fight.
But what was she going to do? Slap at his face? Call him a brute? She had no defense against him. No defense . . . except her wits.
So she gathered them, and slowly sat up. "Jasha said you were one of the best, and he was right."
"Not like that other fool, that singing bird, that deformed thing that's never human." With great thoroughness, the Varinski cleared his throat and spit on the ground. "He must have been easy to kill.”
"Yes. He was nothing compared to you. You've tracked us, you fooled Jasha, and you found me."
She'd hit the right note, for the Varinski preened. "I volunteered for this mission, and before we left, my father took me aside and explained he had to send two hunters to keep old Yerik happy, but he trusted me to make the kill. Of all his sons, he trusted me the most."
"I'll bet he has a lot of sons, too," she said in a tone of admiration.
"My father has thirty-four sons." The Varinski struck his chest. "I have eight sons."
"Already? Surely you're not even twenty-five!"
"Twenty-nine, but I went out on my first woman raid when I was twelve." He squatted before her and showed her a grin that displayed rotting teeth, missing teeth, and a malicious, stupid pleasure in cruelty. "I should make a son on you."
She pulled the knife from her holster on her leg. "I would like that, but doesn't that leave your back vulnerable?"
The Varinski glanced behind him into the darkness. "You think your lover will come for you? No.
He is down below, looking for me while I rape his woman." He placed the flashlight on the ground and reached for her.
And from above, Jasha leaped on him.
The Varinski's head slapped the rock hard enough to crack a normal man's skull, but this guy was a demon and a dumbshit, which must make him practically indestructible.
Ann struggled to get out of the sleeping bag, scrabbling for the zipper and, when she couldn't budge it, stabbing the bag with her knife. While she fought the ripstop nylon and mounds of fiber that insulated the bag, she could hear the smack of flesh against flesh, and hear the Varinski curse in snarling Russian. When she finally freed herself from the sleeping bag and stood on her feet, she grabbed the flashlight and shone it around in time to see Jasha bend the knife in the Varinski's hand back on him and say, "Tell me what you know.”
The Varinski spit in Jasha's face.
Jasha grinned, and although he had all his teeth shining whitely, the effect was just as gruesome as the Varinski's evil smirk. "A boy's defiance. A piddly bit of fear in the face of death." He bent the knife back farther until the point touched the Varinski's windpipe. "Tell me what they told you."
The Varinski writhed on the ground. His gaze shot toward Ann.
"Don't look at her. She can't save you. She is mine.
My mate. She cares only for me, and hopes I kill you. In fact"—Jasha stopped smiling and pierced the Varinski's throat until the blood wet the ground—"I hope you don't cooperate. I hop
e I get the pleasure of gutting you and watching you writhe in agony as you die."
Ann leaned against the stone, glad for the support, glad for the cool air, yet keeping her flashlight shining into the Varinski's eyes.
He struggled again.
Jasha pressed the knife harder.
Rapidly the Varinski said, "They told us where you did business, and they told us to use the woman to find out where you hide when you disappear. And we did."
"Then what?"
The Varinski growled.
The knife bit deeper.
"We knew we hadn't found the family, and we knew that was what my father and the other elders wanted."
"How many of you are there?"
"Ten!"
"Two.” Ann said. "He told me before. There were only the two."
"Good." Jasha smiled, and his teeth looked longer and whiter than ever before. "Whose idea was it to put the homing device in the arrow?"
"Mine!" the Varinski said. "I'm the one who shot it into your shoulder, knowing you would run home to your mama. I'm the one you should fear."
Jasha laughed and leaned back. "You're not very smart, are you?"
In a flash, the man on the ground was gone, and a wolf stood in his place. The beast leaped at Jasha.
Ann screamed.
And the two wolves met in the air.
They tumbled down the mountain. The sound of their snarling broke the ethereal silence, shattering the silver stars into cold, indifferent shards. Ann ran after them, knife in one hand, flashlight in the other, not sure what to do but sure she would do something.
The flashlight caught glimpses of them as they tumbled. She saw the glint of teeth and heard the deep-throated growls.
They dropped, disappeared over a ledge. She ran toward the drop-off and shone her light down.
Two men were there, two human men.
Only one was alive.
Chapter 24
Jasha stood over the Varinski's still body. He looked up at Ann. Blood dripped from a slash across his throat. Using a fireman's hold, Jasha picked up the body. As he headed into the darkness, he called, "Dawn's coming. Walk downhill. I'll find you."
Whatever that meant.
Ann looked around. She stood on the roof of the world, with nothing around her except giant boulders and the black night sky filled with blisters of stars. The breeze blew, so fresh and thin the air barely filled her lungs. No bird, no wild animal, stirred. No pale ghosts drifted on the wind. She was alone as she had never been in her life.
She brought the bad people. She always brought the bad people.
Maybe so/ but Jasha killed them. With Jasha, she was safe, and all of her prayers had been answered.
The life she'd known in California seemed long ago and far away. Everything up here was too big. Life-shattering. She could almost see the shards of her former life scattered around her. With Jasha holding the brush, the colors of her dreams had changed from pastels to bolds.
What was she going to do?
She couldn't run away. She had to stand here on the top of the world and face her fate.
Scraps of the sleeping bag flitted past her on the wind, waking her to the responsibilities of an environmentalist in tine midst of one of the world's last remaining untouched wildernesses. She caught the scraps, thrusting them into the intact bottom of the bag. Before she put it into the backpack, she checked the zipper. Nylon jammed it; no wonder she'd had to slash her way out.
As the sky was lightening, she made her way down the mountain, moving north. She didn't know where she was going. It didn't matter; Jasha had said he would find her, and he would. She worried about him, off to create a crime scene: the murder of one hunter by another, then the death of that hunter by a wild-animal attack. Yet she had no doubt he would succeed.
But she wished he were with her.
What an idiot she was. Yesterday, she'd been a pacifist, concerned about the death of every living creature. Then she watched Jasha fight for his life. Now she didn't care that he had killed; she wanted only to know that he was alive and well . . . and hers. When he found her, she wanted to shake him for frightening her, then hold him while he slept, and, when he woke, make love to him as he had made love to her—with the kind of impatience that couldn't wait for permission.
Her feet hurt, and the summer day beneath the trees had turned unexpectedly hot. The cotton briefs had to go, and she discarded the boots and the three layers of socks with a sigh of relief.
She'd always considered herself clumsy; after hiking in boots two sizes too big for her, she would be positively dainty in her own shoes.
She stripped off the camouflage shirt and tossed it over the boulder. She shucked the pants, too, without a thought to who might be watching. Because Jasha had taught her to sniff the air, to listen to the wildlife, no one could sneak up on her without her knowledge.
She slid the underwear down her thighs, taking her time, relishing the wash of air across her skin... . Without turning her head, she asked, "You're all right?"
Jasha stepped out of the trees. He was naked. He had bathed nearby, and he was wet, his body still glistening with drops of water. "Yes."
She stepped out of the underwear and leaned her spine against a tree, and smiled at him. Smiled, for the first time, with full knowledge of her sexuality. "Show me."
He came to her, a fierce rush of fury and passion. He claimed her with a kiss, and she allowed him his moment.
Then, grabbing his arms, she pushed him away and down on the flat surface of the stone. Looking down at him, she saw long thighs, splayed to brace himself, a flat belly, and an erection stirring and rising. She also saw his face, stark with anguish and with need.
Only she would fill that need. Only she could.
She stripped off her silk undershirt, then bent over him, pressing her fists on either side of his chest. "I was worried about you."
Worried? Only now, with him here, would she admit that she'd been frantic.
He pushed his dark, damp hair back with his fingers. "You shouldn't have been."
"Why not?" She looked into his eyes, her lips only a breath away from his. "Because fate has been so kind to me? Because since the moment I left California, I've been in control of my life? C'mon, Jasha! I've learned the truth, and I've learned it the hard way. Life is driven by the struggle between good and evil, and in the end, the only thing we can hope to have is this minute, and each other." She covered him with her body, and pressed her lips to his.
His head fell back, resting on the rock. He let her kiss him as she wished, exploring his mouth with her tongue and her powerful curiosity—she wanted to see what he liked.
From the tensing of the body beneath hers, she guessed he liked it all.
When she pressed more kisses on his cheeks, his chin, his chest, he gave a husky groan. "Are you going to teach me a lesson?"
"Or two." She kissed his ribs, his belly, and caught his erection in both her hands and rubbed him, up and down.
"You remind me . . . you remind me what life is." His anguish had become the anguish of need and glory.
"Let me remind you how good it can be." She took his erection into her mouth, wanting desperately to drive him as mad as he'd driven her that night in the tub, as he had last night... as he had every night since the day she'd met him. His skin was cool and damp from his bath, but beneath that, heat burgeoned up with each stroke of her tongue. She loved the ridges and silken textures. When she took him as deeply as she could, his hips rose, and he groaned and reached for her.
She lifted her head and swatted his hands away. "You've had your turns. This is my time."
His hands hovered as if the temptation to take over could not be fought.
She glared. "My time," she repeated.
He fell back. "You're going to kill me.”
"I hope so," she said fervently, and took him in her mouth again.
He writhed as she stroked his thighs, ran her hands over his hips, laid he
r palms flat on his belly. And she loved the power, loved having him at her mercy.
But she couldn't restrain herself forever; the stored-up adrenaline compelled her, and pleasuring him made her flush with warmth and damp with passion. Lifting her head with a gasp, she climbed onto the stone, her knees on either side of his hips, and slowly took him into herself, possessing him as he had possessed her. She was still tight, and he was still large, but he was wet from her ministrations, and the tug of flesh against flesh sent sensation in sharp jolts along her nerves. She had no patience; she wanted him all the way inside right now, and sharp cries broke from her as her body opened to him.
He cupped his big palms around her thighs, supporting her, massaging her, while beneath her he held himself perfectly, desperately still. He didn't take over, but she saw his eyes, and he wanted to. Oh, my God, he wanted to.
Where were the soft and delicate desires she used to imagine?
Perhaps someday . . . but now passion was savage, sharp, demanding. She had him contained, but that wasn't enough. She danced the primitive, desperate dance with him, rising and falling over the top of his prone body, her knees pressed into the rough, warm stone. The sun beat down on her head, and lit every glorious ripple of his chest and belly, his stubbled chin, the dark fall of his damp hair against the pale granite.
He was alive. She was alive. Only that mattered.
"Please, Ann." His hands hovered above her chest, almost touching.
Placing her palms over the backs of his hands, she pressed them to her breasts.
He cupped them, kneaded them, taking pleasure, giving pleasure.
In return, she stroked her hands across his chest and over his shoulders, until both moaned in unison. They came together, a great cataclysm that shook the mountains and toppled the last of her resistance.
She wilted down on him, exhausted with passion and the joy that pulsed through her veins.
She loved Jasha; she longed for the moment when he would Jove her, but even if that day never came, she would always love him.
That afternoon, Jasha led Ann over a rise—and spread out before them lay Puget Sound, with islands dotting the dark blue water and a bank of fog backing out toward the ocean.