White Fangs
Author: Christopher Golden; Tim Lebbon; Ray Lago
Date: 2013-12-22 05:00:00+00:00
Description: The world knows Jack London as a writer who lived his own real-life adventures. But there are some parts of his life that have remained hidden for many years, things even he couldn’t set down in writing. Terrifying, mysterious, bizarre, and magical — these are the Secret Journeys of Jack London. Returning to the Yukon with his love Sabine in an attempt to shed light on her mysterious past, Jack is accompanied by several werewolf pirates, and followed by their brutal ex-captain, Ghost. But that great, cold land has fallen under the shadow of a new, terrible threat –– great beasts that relish th
Publisher: Daring Greatly Corporation

The Secret Journeys of Jack London: White Fangs
by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon

Copyright 2013 by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, events, dialog, and situations in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the authors.

Cover illustration copyright 2013 by Ray Lago

Cover design by Lynne Hansen
http://www.LynneHansenDesign.com
http://www.LynneHansen.com

For more information about this book, contact: PubCRDG@gmail.com

Visit http://www.ChristopherGolden.com
and http://www.TimLebbon.net.

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive." — Jack London

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One - The Ghost

Chapter Two - Unwelcome

Chapter Three - The Void

Chapter Four - Blood by Moonlight

Chapter Five - Predators All

Chapter Six - The Stand

Chapter Seven - Nature Abhors

Chapter Eight - The Memory of Monsters

Chapter Nine - Caging the Dark

Chapter Ten - The Withering Land

Chapter Eleven - The Cold Dead

Chapter Twelve - A Day's Dark Journey

Chapter Thirteen - The Dying of the Light

Chapter Fourteen - New Journeys

About the Authors

Chapter One - The Ghost

A ghost haunts Jack London's sleep.

He feels it in his dreams, a looming presence just beyond his awareness, stalking him through the midnight forest of his subconscious. He cannot identify this brooding presence, though it shadows his dreams with the promise of pain. It might be Lesya, the forest spirit who had professed to love him and tried to force him to love her in return. It could be Ghost, the werewolf sea captain driven by his obsession with revenge. Or perhaps it is the accusing specter of his friend Jim Goodman, murdered far to the north in the Yukon Territory to which Jack is now returning.

Faceless, holding back, teasing him with its true nature, the spirit's foreboding mystery is worse than any truth.

Jack snaps awake and sits up, and the ghost slowly, hesitantly, recedes as the dark ship's cabin echoes back his scream. He clasps his chest and feels sweat. Why did nobody come? he thinks. Sabine, his love, has left her side of his bed cold. And the werewolves who are all that remain of Ghost's crew, and who are now his allies? After everything they have been through, surely a scream would have brought them running?

Jack slips on his boots and exits the cabin, walking along the deserted corridor as he searches for the stairs up onto deck. The Charon is a very different ship from Ghost's ship, the Larsen, much larger and built mainly of metal, and Jack has not been able to get used to it. Even three thousand miles from their battle with Death Nilsson and his crew, and within a couple of days' sailing of Dyea and the gateway to the Yukon, he still finds the vessel cold and alien.

Sometimes, it's almost as if he is not here at all.

He hears a shout from on deck. Immediately his hackles rise, and he slips the knife from his belt. What now? The remains of Ghost's crew — Louis, Maurilio, and Vukovich — have settled well with Death's old crewman the Reverend, and together they have managed to navigate the ship this far. There has been no sense of competition, no lingering grudges. Louis has taken the role of captain, but only asserts himself when the ship is in difficulties.

Jack cannot think of what might have gone wrong.

That ghost, he thinks, and as he runs along gangways and up a staircase, the looming shadow of his dream follows him up.

And there they are on deck, gathered at the stern and pointing, pacing, panicking.

"What is it?" Jack asks as he rushes to them.

Sabine turns, her long hair whipped across her face by the strong breeze. But even then he can see her hopelessness.

"Oh, Jack," she says. "It's the doom of us all."

Jack pushes gently past her and stands at the rail with his skeleton crew. The Reverend is praying in a language, and to a god, Jack does not understand. Maurilio jigs nervously from foot to foot. Louis grips the railing, teeth bared against the sinking sun. Dusk reflects from his golden tooth.

"The end, mon ami," Louis says softly. "How did we ever believe we could leave him behind?"

It takes Jack a few seconds to understand who he means, what it was that caused the ruckus that drew him up here . . . and then he sees Ghost. The big man, the werewolf pirate, the beast who believes himself above all other men, is swimming after their ship across open ocean. He pulls himself through the freezing waters with strong, even strokes, slicing waves and closing on the Charon with unnatural speed. For thousands of miles he has followed them. Pursued them, relentlessly. And it all comes down to this.

"Cannons!" Jack shouts, but the crew are already defeated. He turns to the young woman beside him and holds out his hands in an open plea. "Sabine! We can stop him!"

"I don't think so, Jack," she says, so softly. Even in despair she is beautiful. "I really don't."

Ghost strikes the metal hull of the ship and roars. There are no words, only an exhalation of rage and fury over what they have done to him.

"Thousands of miles," Jack says in wonder.

Ghost's hands close around the railing and he hauls himself up onto deck, spinning through the air, landing heavily on his feet and lashing out at Vukovich. The pirate is ripped nearly in two by Ghost's cruel claws.

The Reverend turns to run and Ghost is upon him in two steps. He grabs the tall man by the head and turns, swinging him against the bulkhead. Bones break and the Reverend falls.

Maurilio kneels before Ghost and accepts his bloody fate.

Louis tries to fight. Jack feels a pang of pride in this unwilling beast, this man taken and turned into something inhuman. Ghost stands massive and brutal — he has grown through his swim, and is now perhaps taller than any man who has ever lived — and he swats Louis aside with one heavy fist, crushing his spine.

Ghost growls at Jack. Every part of him promises pain, from his clenched hands to his bloodshot eyes. He is more of a monster than he has ever been, and this time Jack knows there will be no dance of intellects, and no debate about right and wrong and the extremes that lie beyond.

"I have moments to live," Jack hears himself say.

Sabine glares at him. "No, Jack!" she says. "No. No! You have to live forever! Because if you don't . . ." She trails off, and beyond her Jack can see Ghost staring at her beauty.

But the look in his bestial eyes is a thousand miles away from love.

"No, Jack! Wake up!"

Jack opened his eyes just as Ghost came for him, and everything he had been through was nothing to the fear he felt right then. He cringed back against the wall, hands held up to ward away his doom.

But Ghost was no longer there.

"Sabine," he breathed.

She sat on the edge of his cot, her weight a welcome reality. Sabine gazed at him with her lovely copper eyes, and he felt his fear abate.

"The dream again," she said.

Jack sighed as he nodded, letting his breath settle and his racing heart return to normal. The nightmare of imminent danger took longer to fade, and he knew it would never vanish entirely. He had been through too much for that.

"Sometimes I think we should have let the crew kill him," he said.

"You know you don't mean that," Sabine said, turning his face and kissing him softly on the lips.

Jack sighed again. She knew him so well. He reached up and traced his fingers along the line of her jaw, her coffee skin so soft that just touching her never failed to lighten his spirits.

"It's a beautiful sunrise," she said. "We're about to dock in Seattle. The others are up on deck already."

"Aren't they always?"
"I don't think they sleep well," Sabine said. "I'm not sure any of them have since Ghost turned them. Or since Death Nilsson claimed him, in the Reverend's case. The beast inside won't let them rest."

"But they're happier now that they're free," Jack said, thinking of the half-man, half-wolf creatures he thought of as his friends — or at least his allies. "Aren't they? You believe that?"

"I hope." Sabine stood from the cot and opened the cabin door. The sea witch turned back to Jack and gave him her smile. It was alluring and amazing in equal measure — she looked young and fresh and vital, and yet her eyes betrayed her incredible age. Even she doesn't know how old she is, Jack thought. The mystery and wonder of her made him love her more.

Jack slipped on his boots and jacket, slid his knife into his belt, and followed her from the cabin. The S.S. Kraken was a sister ship to the Umatilla, the vessel Jack had first sailed on to the Yukon, and from which he had been snatched by Ghost and his werewolf crew on his journey home. But unlike the Umatilla on his last journey north, the Kraken was half empty, its holds all but devoid of the goods and equipment needed to prospect for gold. The rush had faded almost as quickly as it had begun, and many of those on board the northbound vessel were due to disembark at Seattle.

Not Jack and his companions, however. They were bound for more distant shores.

Jack was glad to be on the move again. His was a journey as yet unfinished. Sabine's soul was unsettled, and though they had professed their love for each other, he knew that there was much she still needed to know. While she had been kept captive on board Ghost Nilsson's ship, the captain had referred to her as a sea witch, and there was a certain truth to that. While on the open water, Sabine could locate others who were also at sea, could even touch their minds with her own, and Jack had seen for himself how — through the sheer force of her will — she could influence the weather around her. Yet her connection to the sea was more primal than anything that could be classified as witchcraft. Sabine's fractured memory went back countless centuries, into a vague nothing-time that she could no longer recall. Jack believed that her power came not from witchcraft, but from something innate, that she must be some sort of water spirit or elemental goddess. He had met a woman like that once before — the forest spirit, Lesya, who had help him captive just as surely as Ghost had held Sabine.

If Jack was right, then Lesya might be able to shed some light on Sabine's true nature, unravel the intimate mystery of a past that so deeply troubled this woman he loved. If he was right, the voyage north was moving toward a revelation for Sabine, and perhaps an end to this part of Jack's journey.

But life, he knew, would never stop moving. He was keen to see what came next.

The Charon had barely made it to San Francisco. Death's ship had been damaged during the battle in which the werewolf brothers — Ghost and Death Nilsson — had at last resolved their differences. Death, the eldest, had been killed along with all but one of his crew, the Reverend. Jack and Sabine had enlisted the aid of Ghost's crew, and the werewolves had turned on their captain. Determined to prove himself something other than an animal — to prove himself human, instead of a beast — Jack showed mercy to the overthrown Ghost. They abandoned the werewolf on the shore of a small, deserted island. He'd had his vengeance on the brother who'd made him a monster, but would have no pirate plunder, nor any ship to captain ever again. They'd left Ghost with nothing.

Despite himself, Jack had felt a small speck of sympathy for the abandoned wolf. Ghost had been betrayed by his older brother, transformed into a monster, and then spent years trying to scour from his own heart any semblance of humanity or compassion, so that he would be heartless, merciless enough to murder his own brother when the time came. Now, with his brother dead, Ghost had nothing. But even with whatever tiny fraction of sympathy Jack felt for him, there was never any debate about bringing Ghost along. He was simply too dangerous. He would kill Jack and his former crewmen without hesitation or remorse. Sabine, on the other hand . . . Jack felt sure Ghost would have other plans for her. The scrap of humanity left in the former captain stemmed almost entirely from the feelings Ghost had for Sabine — a love the werewolf captain had tried to deny to all, himself included, but which had been evident in the way he looked at her, and the storm that her mere presence could create in his heart.

Jack and Sabine and the handful of surviving wolves had formed an uneasy alliance, using the damaged Charon to strike out east across the Pacific toward San Francisco — Jack's home. The vessel had been taking on water for the last three hundred miles of their journey. Worried that it would be recognized as a pirate vessel — the Reverend told them that Death had plundered at random all across the north and east Pacific — Jack had suggested that they make land in the ship's remaining lifeboats. Rowing away from the Charon had felt good, and watching it sinking into the ocean behind them, Jack had mused upon the souls that ship carried down with it. He only wished that the vessel's demise could bring peace to the many lives it had seen destroyed.

Their short time in San Francisco had been a strange experience for Jack. So much had changed for him since he had left for the Yukon that his mother had barely recognized him. He had placed the small bag of gold in her hands, and she had wept. He'd believed it had been from relief and gratitude, but later his sister Eliza told him that she had also been afraid. Jack had left as himself, but returned as someone different. It's like you've become larger, Eliza had said, unable to explain things better than that.

They had remained in San Francisco for the night of the full moon, when its power was strongest and the werewolves could not prevent themselves from transforming. Most of the time, they could change at will, and when they were in that monstrous form, they could still be reasoned with. But on the night of the full moon, they had no control — no reason. They were savagery unleashed, primal and voracious. That had been a terrifying time for Jack and Sabine. On board the Charon, they had been able to lock the wolves in the hold. In San Francisco, it had been a harder trick, finding a place where they could be locked away and would not be disturbed, and where their howls would not bring anyone out to investigate.

Jack had secured the use of an old fishing dock, owned by one of the men he used to poach oysters with, and the secure storage compartments in the small shack on the dock had been put to good use. The werewolves had given themselves over to incarceration willingly, and in each of them Jack had seen the hope that their curse might yet abate. It had been a constant source of discussion and debate on their eastward sea journey, and Jack had started to believe that with his help they might yet master the wild within themselves.

But they had been in San Francisco, where Jack's family and hundreds of thousands of other people lived. Nothing could have been left to chance. There might yet come a time when the wolves' humanity would be tested, but it would have to be far, far away from innocent people. That also meant that if they were to book passage aboard a commercial ship from San Francisco to the Yukon, they had to make haste to be sure they could complete their ocean journey before the moon waxed its fullest again.

Once they had recovered from their ordeal at Death's hands, they had left San Francisco and plied the waters northward, and now they were arriving in Seattle. Despite the menacing presence that haunted Jack's dreams, all was going according to plan.

As Jack and Sabine emerged onto the deck, Jack breathed in the scent of the wild ocean. He would never tire of it. Ahead of them, land bulked the horizon, and a haze of smoke hung over Seattle. The docks were already bustling, and even from this far out Jack could see vessels moving to and fro, tilting steam towers marking the progress of several larger ships leaving the dockside as the Kraken sailed in.

He followed Sabine to the bow, where the rest of their company waited. They were leaning on the ship's metal railing looking ahead at the coastal town, and as he approached them from behind, Jack had a flashback to his dream. Ghost's animal fury as he slaughtered the remnants of his mutinous crew. His manifest inhumanity.

Then Sabine closed her hand around his, and they stood beside Louis at the railing.

"Morning, mon ami," Louis said. "Last stop before the north."

"More will get off than get on here," Jack said. "The Kraken will be even quieter from here on."

"Good," Vukovich said. "I'm not one for company."

The Reverend was muttering quietly to himself, dark clothes making him a shadow, hands closed tight around the railing instead of pressed palm to palm in prayer. Maurilio and the big, brutish Vukovich looked on in silence. Jack wondered whether they were remembering ships that had come from here that they had plundered, and dead people whose home had once been Seattle. He hoped not. He hoped that his constant coaching was encouraging them to see the good in the world, and to deny unnatural appetites. The wild, he told them, should be something that they grasped hold of, not a power that held them.

Back in San Francisco, Sabine had taken the job of feeding them through their change. Jack had protested, but she had wanted him to spend time with his family. Your mother and sister need to know you again, she'd said. Jack had left the dockside building, knowing that four monsters dwelled and raved inside, and Sabine would be close to them all the time. He had gone home and spent a day with his family, telling them some of his stories from the north — but only some, because there was much he had sworn he would never tell. Even so, during their journey he had begun to spend more and more time writing in his journal, making notes about a version of the story he thought might make a fine novel, albeit without monsters and witches and other things in which ordinary people would never believe.

A gust of icy wind disturbed Jack from his reverie. Sabine had told him that their sojourn in San Francisco had been a success, and there was little that Jack could say against that. The wolves had survived their change without murdering anyone, and by eating beef and chicken thrown into their separate compartments in the old fishing shack by an attentive Sabine. But Jack's sense that they were heading toward something so much worse than werewolves loose in San Francisco allowed little chance to celebrate. Beyond Seattle, the world was wilder. And at the center of the wilderness of Jack's memories awaited Lesya.

Jack, Sabine, and the crew waited at the railing as the ship docked. Nobody spoke. Small talk was not something that the wolves indulged in, even Louis. The severity of their prior existence had pared life down to the basics.

As the Kraken nudged the dock and boarding ramps were lowered down, men and women hustled along the dock, and soon enough the ship's horn announced disembarkation.

"I don't see anyone waiting to board," Sabine said. "Maybe we'll have the ship to ourselves!"

"There are some remaining aboard," Jack reminded her. "A few hardy souls."

He leaned on the railing, enjoying watching the dock hands working below. The deck was alive with men moving crates and goods off the ship and passengers shuffling about, awaiting their turn to disembark. Others had come on deck just for the sight of civilization that the Seattle skyline provided — their last such view for quite some time, as they continued on their northward journey. Soon the first of the passengers started down the short ramp, and a couple of them staggered a little as they stepped onto solid land, finding their land legs again.

"I'm heading back to our cabin," Louis said. "I'm getting as much sleep as I can in a proper bed before we — "

"Ghost," Sabine whispered.

Jack's blood ran cold. It was as if she had reached into his dream and resurrected it. He saw her growing pale and grabbed her arms, fearing some sudden illness. Her eyelids fluttered, and she brought her hand up to her mouth and bit it.

"Sabine!" Jack said. "What is it?"

"I'm . . . I'm here, Jack," she said, suddenly leaning into him.

Beyond her, he caught sight of the rest of their strange pack. The four werewolves stood frozen, like animals caught in a sudden flash of light, ready to bolt at any moment. It was the first time he had ever seen Louis and the others afraid, and he wondered fleetingly what other than brutality he was taking away from them by trying to re-teach them humanity.

In their paralysis, all four of them — Louis, Maurilio, Vukovich, and the Reverend — were staring off to Jack's right, down over the ship's railing. Jack turned and looked down at the dock, to see what had so shocked them all.

Standing still amongst the bustle, like a rock in the center of a white-water stream, a tall figure regarded him. Jack's first thought was to wonder how it was that Sabine had not felt his presence, but of course he was on dry land, and she wouldn't have been able to sense him there.

This was no dream.

Ghost had found them.

Chapter Two - Unwelcome

"No," Jack said.

"Impossible," Louis breathed. Somehow his speaking broke the other wolves' paralysis. Vukovich and Maurilio each took a step back, and the Reverend's grip on the railing tightened, fingers turning white.

"Impossible, yes," Jack agreed, oddly pleased that he was not the only one seeing this. "And yet there he is." A part of him noted that he was accepting this much easier than he should. Perhaps seeing Ghost was chasing away his dreams, and rooting him back in reality at last.

"What do we do?" Vukovich asked.

"We wait," Jack said. Because Ghost was already moving, walking steadily up the boarding plank, even as crewmen carried crates down the parallel ramp and the last of the departing passengers filed off of the ship. The sailors and remaining passengers on board barely took any notice of him, but Jack and his companions could see nothing else, as if their world had shrunk to this one inexplicable moment. Their former captain's massive, muscular form was clad in trousers, a faded shirt and a light jacket, and he wore a thick growth of beard. He carried no baggage, only strolled up the plank as if he were merely a visitor, his gaze never leaving Jack's face.

No, Jack realized with a chill. Not my face.

Ghost was staring at Sabine.

It was as Ghost crossed the deck toward them that Jack realized what he, Sabine, and the wolves had become — they were a team. A crew. A pack. None of them turned and ran, though he was sure each among them would have valid reason to do so. Sabine shivered slightly where Jack rested one comforting hand on her shoulder. The Reverend had let go of the railing at last, and stood beside men who until recently had been his enemies. Though fear hung heavy in the cool morning air and the day's new sun, they faced the beast together. Nearby, two men laughed heartily over some shared joke, one of them puffing a noxious cigar, an arm around a young woman who might have been his wife or daughter. Jack wanted to scream at them to run, to cry out that the devil had come aboard, and didn't they know him when they laid eyes upon him?

"Good morning," Ghost said, his gaze flitting briefly from man to man. It rested slightly longer on Jack, the corner of Ghost's lip rising in the semblance of a smile. Then he settled on Sabine again. His eyes were cool and fluid, giving nothing away.

The sound of metal on leather made Jack glance left, where he saw that Louis had drawn his knife, and now held it down beside his leg, at the ready. He was a small man, but stocky and strong, and deadly in a fight.

Ghost stiffened slightly, his expression almost pained. He glanced around at the crewmen busy with their unloading and the handful of passengers still on deck. "Really?" he asked softly. "Among all these people? Would you have me change, and expose us all?"

"Louis," Jack said warily. "I don't think you need the blade."

"If not now, then later," Louis replied, his voice a low growled promise.

"Maybe not," Ghost said, as if he — this brutal survivor — had somehow become the voice of reason. "Perhaps tooth and blade can remain sheathed."

"No," Vukovich said, baring teeth that were growing sharper. "Now." He stepped forward, and Jack caught a whiff of the beast within.

Ghost smiled. That was what made Jack act. Not fear of being caught, or the chaos and horror that might ensue for all of them should a fight erupt here and now. It was Ghost's outright confidence that he would win that made Jack kick out his foot and trip Vukovich.

The Russian werewolf went down, snarling in fury, but as he tried to rise Maurilio knelt quickly beside him, muttering a plea for caution. A sailor at the top of the gangplank looked their way. Jack smiled and raised his hand, and the man looked away.

Could Ghost have killed them all? Jack did not think so. As ferocious a fighter as Ghost might be, Jack felt sure that he and the four werewolves, and Sabine with her magic, could defeat him, and that this time there would be no mercy. But how many would die in order to achieve that? Ghost could have snuck aboard, bided his time, and tried to kill them one at a time if vengeance was his purpose. Instead, he had approached them openly, and though his usual arrogance remained, Jack sensed no immediate menace from him.

So what did he want?

"Vukovich," Jack said, glancing around at the sailors who were already making preparations to depart. The cigar-smoking man and his young wife had gone. "Let's hear what he has to say."

"And get drawn in again," Vukovich said, his voice tired and resigned. Clearly Ghost's presence had taken Vukovich back to the darkest days aboard the Larsen and the hideous things he and the other members of Ghost's pack had done as a part of his crew. Ghost had handpicked each man for his crew and then infected them with the curse of the werewolf. He had turned them into monsters, and for that they had all hated and feared him, and they had served him.

They had thought Ghost lost to the mists of memory, stranded on that island, yet here he was again. Jack knew they would all need time to recover from this shock.

But they will! he thought. We will. Because everything has changed.

"This isn't your crew anymore, Ghost," he announced.

"Oh, I can see that," Ghost said, staring at Jack. "Captain at last, eh, boy?"

"The captain . . ." Jack looked past Ghost at the raised wheelhouse. "I suspect he's up there with his mate, busy plotting the course to Skagway."

Ghost's gaze flickered across them all again. Vukovich had stood, and though cowed, he glared back.

"This crew needs no captain," Louis said.

"That's what you all think," Ghost said. "That's what . . ." He threw up his hands, head tilted, smiling. "But where are my manners? Sabine, it is wonderful to see you again. And looking so . . . radiant."

"I cannot lie and say the same."

Ghost shrugged. "What adventures we had, eh? What stories we can tell. Together, this evening! I have a large cabin booked, big enough for us all. Six o'clock?"

"Ghost —" Jack began, but the big pirate was already turning away.

"Good!" Ghost said. "I'll order wine and fresh meat, and we can catch up on events. But now . . ." He yawned expansively. "If you'll forgive me, I've had a tiring journey. A long train ride overland." He glanced back and smiled, but it did not touch his eyes. "And before that, a swim."

He strolled away across deck, seemingly without a care in the world.

Sabine was breathing hard. Jack slipped an arm around her waist. She did not resist, but neither did she lean into him. She was watching Ghost, and Jack could not read her expression at all.

"Well," Louis said, exhaling noisily. "Well."

"We should have killed him right then," Vukovich said.

"You had a chance before, and you let him go," the Reverend said thoughtfully. For a man who had once been a part of Death Nilsson's crew, and a werewolf, he was unusually philosophical. "Monster he may be, but at the moment he does not seem like a monster bent on revenge."

"You can't imagine how deep vengeance runs in him," Maurilio observed, leaning against the railing now, looking off in the direction Ghost had gone. "All he thought about for years was revenge against his brother, Death. Nothing else mattered to him. Everything he did was to hone himself toward that moment. And none of us knew. He fooled us all. He's devious as a snake, single-minded as a shark."

"I don't know," Sabine said. She looked around at Jack. "Didn't you feel it, Jack?"

"Feel what?"

"Change."

Jack shook his head. Surprise, fear, and that maddening level of grudging respect that Ghost always commanded from him, yes. He had felt all those. But change? "I don't think he's a man capable of that."

"We shall see this evening," Sabine said.

"You mean . . . ?" Louis asked.

"Of course," she said. "We should take him up on his invitation. He's ordering meat, after all."

Still numbed with shock, they stood together on deck for a while, watching coal and other goods being loaded on board. They discussed the risks of going to Ghost's cabin, and agreed that Louis would find out which one was his in advance. They would take turns keeping watch — in pairs — to ensure that no trap was being set.

On some level Jack knew there was not. Ghost would not be so underhanded, because that would indicate weakness, and a fear that he could be defeated if challenged directly. But Jack had seen that the werewolf captain had no such fear. Ghost possessed supreme confidence, and if he had boarded this ship to fight them, the battle would already be over. Blood would have been spilled, bodies would litter the deck. Even now, Jack was hesitant to predict the result.

For the rest of that morning, he and Sabine remained on deck, relishing the sunlight. Questions troubled him, not least how Ghost had known where they would be. At noon the Kraken set sail again, and Jack was trapped once more aboard a ship with the woman he loved and the other man who so obviously loved her.

They had been sailing toward wilderness, but Jack was realizing that the wild was already with them.

The day wore on, and close to six o'clock Jack called a gathering in his cabin. It was cramped, and a deep, musky scent came off the men. It was a strange aspect of their condition; that they smelled like the wolf even when hidden in the guise of a man. This evening the odor was stronger than normal; the animal halves of their natures clung to them like their shadows, intimate and close, even when they could not be seen.

"We need to agree on something," Jack said, glancing around from face to face. Louis's ordinarily amiable smile was nowhere to be seen. With his dark skin, he seemed much like a sinister shadow himself. The thin, skittish Maurilio seemed unable to stand still. Vukovich stayed by the cabin door, as if he thought he might need to flee at any moment. Only the Reverend seemed at ease, the tall, grizzled man leaning against the wall like a gunfighter. After the time he'd spent with Death Nilsson, he'd grown used to the specter of imminent violence.

Jack searched their eyes. "If Ghost does anything threatening, we fall on him. If he even hints at violence, we attack."

"Yes," Maurilio said quickly.

Louis and Vukovich nodded. The Reverend offered no comment, but Jack could see agreement in his eyes. Still new to the group, he was cautious about discussing violence against the former leader of his new pack. Jack respected him for that; it was survival instinct.

"Sabine?" Jack asked. She had seemed distracted, as if she were waiting for something to happen.

"If there is trouble, I might be able to distract him," she said. "Now that we're back at sea." She sounded distant and uncertain, and Louis raised an eyebrow. Jack pretended not to notice.

"Good," he said. "Then let's go and see what Ghost wants of us."

They went into the depths of the ship to where he had booked himself a large, windowless cabin close to the bow. Louis and the others had kept watch on the cabin, and the door had not opened since morning. Ghost was inside, alone, and had been all day. Whatever his plans, they seemed to involve only him.

"Are you troubled?" Jack asked Sabine as they walked along metal corridors.

"Of course."

"But is there something more on your mind?" He held her hand and she squeezed back.

"Only the same as all of us," she replied. "Wondering what he wants. How he found us. And what his plans might be."

"His plans," Jack echoed, and his stomach tightened. "We survived him before, Sabine, and he was a lot stronger then."

"I'm not so sure," she said, almost talking to herself. "I'm not sure how such strength can ever be judged, or assumed."

They paused outside the cabin door and Jack raised his fist to knock. The door opened. Ghost blocked the opening, a huge shadow with flickering candles making the edges of his silhouette appear to dance.

"Right on time," Ghost said. "Dinner is already here." He swung the door wide and swept his hand before them. "Please, come in."

Jack, Sabine, and the ex-pirates entered the cabin of their nemesis. The air thrummed with expectation, heavy with the promise of violence. In Ghost's politeness Jack sensed the confidence and arrogance that defined the man.

"I suspect you have questions for me, Mr. London?" Ghost asked as he closed the door behind them.

"I'm not interested —" Jack began. But Sabine grabbed his arm.

"Jack."

And then Jack smelled it on the air — the rich tang of fresh meat, and blood, and the scent of the butcher. A feast of raw meat had been laid out on the small table: steaks, ribs, heavy joints, and delicate slices almost transparent in their thinness. Several small pools of blood lay around the table, and they dripped.

No no no, Jack thought, but as Sabine's fingers lessened their pressure he saw what she had already registered. This was beef. Not the long pork he had feared. Not human flesh.

The men were breathing heavily, the animal scent of fur richer than ever. Jack looked at each of them in turn and tried to project calm, and Louis and Maurilio nodded gently. Ghost had doubtless brought him and Sabine into such a setting on purpose.

"Prime American beef, slaughtered several days ago, hung, and now ready for my old crew to feast upon." Ghost turned the key in the lock. "Better than pelican meat, eh, Jack? Though still not as good as . . ." He shrugged and moved amongst them to the table.

Picking up a chunk of meat the size of his fist, Ghost brought it to his nose and inhaled, eyes half-closed. "Mmmm. Louis?" He offered the meat, and Louis half-raised his hand before lowering it again.

"I'll choose my own," the Frenchman said.

He's striving to be less than he was, Jack thought, watching Ghost. He's as big as ever, but he's trying to project less of his personality. Trying not to fill the room.

"How did you find us?" Vukovich asked, and when Ghost glanced directly at Jack, Jack's heart sank as he realized the answer.

Ghost had known that Jack would go home first, to bring his mother the gold he had found in the Yukon Territory. If he had been pursuing them all this time, he would have made San Francisco his first stop. And where would he have sought Jack there, except at his mother's house?

Jack felt suddenly weak, and sick. But he would not let Ghost see that.

"Did you kill them?" he asked softly, and the room froze. The Reverend, picking up a chunk of meat, paused with it halfway to his mouth. Maurilio stood by the door, one hand in his pocket grasping the blade Jack knew was concealed there. Sabine was beside Jack, where she had been since he'd rescued her and they had lived through the terrible conflict and slaughter on board Death's ship. Always by his side, and he by hers. Where they both belonged.

My mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, Jack thought, and he experienced a vivid, awful image of them lying slaughtered across his mother's bare kitchen floor.

"Of course not, Jack," Ghost said, and his hurt could almost have been genuine. "You'd suspect that of me?"

"I'd expect it," Jack replied.

The Reverend set down his meat, uneaten.

Ghost looked around the cabin at them all, then chuckled softly and sat down. "You've all got me wrong," he said. He tapped his chest. "There's a change here in this man. I'll not claim it's extreme. I'll not say I'm weaker because of it. But I had a long time to think while I was swimming. Many days, through good weather and foul. A few times I nearly drowned, but never once did I consider letting myself sink. And in all that time, I realized two things: that I have had my revenge; and that life goes on. For years I believed that once I had killed my brother, I would die as well. Without my hatred to focus me, what point would there be to living? But I was not content to stay on that island where you left me. And had I wanted to die, I could simply have stopped swimming at any time and allowed myself to drown. But I did not. I swam. And as I did, I realized that I must be swimming because there is a beyond, an after, and that's where I am now. Beyond and after Death Nilsson."

"A monster built for revenge wishes none against us?" Maurilio asked. But Ghost displayed some of his older self, and ignored his ex-crewman.

"Jack," Ghost said. "I tracked down your family, and visited. Merely two days after you had left them, it was. I told your mother what a good friend I was to you, and how keen I was that we meet again. And then your sister came in, and I met her too, and she seemed pleased that you have such a strong friend. They told me where they thought you were heading. Your mother had doubts, but Eliza . . . she seemed quite sure. Even though you left without telling them." He shook his head, mock stern. "Your own family? Leaving without letting them know where you were going? But Eliza knows you better than you think."

"And you did not harm them," Jack said, heart hammering.

"I did not." Ghost stared at him as he spoke, and Jack believed him. Ghost had no use for lies, and no need for them now. If he had killed Jack's family, he would have simply told him.

"You say you've changed," Sabine spoke up. Her voice was low, almost hesitant. But as she went on, Jack heard a strength growing there, and he knew this was what Sabine had come here to say. "You say you've had your revenge and moved on."

"I have."

"But you can't move on from what you were. You cannot wipe out a whole history of murder and abuse and violence, both physical and psychological. Nobody changes that much, Ghost Nilsson, brother of Death. And you, a man arrogant in his own god-like self-importance, least of all."

Louis chuckled. Maurilio tensed, drawing the long blade from his trouser pocket. The Reverend and Vukovich moved apart, away from the table so that the men were spread about the cabin. If Ghost did choose to attack, he would have to decide which man to take down first.

But Ghost exuded a strange calmness, as if he had barely heard the words.

"I have changed for you, Sabine," he said. "You are . . . my desire. My after."

Jack's thundering heart thumped at his chest. He felt a flash of rage. Ghost had eyes only for Sabine, though he knew that she and Jack were in love. He cannot simply pretend I am not here.

Before he could speak, Sabine addressed the former captain. "Nobody can own me, you least of all," she said. "I never wanted anything to do with you, Ghost. Not when I saw the first flickering of desire in your eyes, and not when I knew that you had begun to hate yourself because you could not scour such feelings from your heart. I could never feel anything but disdain for you. Leave us now. Take a boat, row back to shore. Save yourself the embarrassment of acting like a love-struck pup."

Anger flashed in Ghost's eyes, and then he looked only sad. He shook his head and looked down at his feet. "I have nowhere else to go."

"You want our sympathy?" Jack asked, aghast.

Ghost looked up again. This time, he was grinning. "No, boy. I want to go wherever you're going, and see whatever you're going to see. You'll need me. Trust in that. You will need me, Jack London. And Sabine, you, my dear, will want me."

They left him like that, sitting close to a table covered in raw meat, hunched over, a big man grinning past the rejection he had received, not only from Sabine, but from all of them. In that room that stank of blood, the meat remained untouched on the table. None of the men had eaten.

"You went there only to say that?" Jack asked Sabine.

"Why else would I have wanted to go to his cabin? To share food with him? No. I've seen him eat often enough. I wanted . . . to tell him what I thought, without fear of reprisal." She seemed so much calmer now, more at peace with herself than she had since they had left San Francisco. There was still much ahead of them, and perhaps Sabine would discover more about herself from the wood spirit Lesya. But for now she seemed content, and almost happy.

"You don't fear him?" Jack asked.

"I think I'll always fear him. Memories like that, of the things I have seen, are hard to shake. But with you and the others around, I feel safe. There is something changed about him. And I think without him even knowing, it's made him weaker."

I'm not sure about that, Jack thought. "You will need me, Jack London," Ghost had said. And Jack was struck with the awful fear that the captain might be right.

Chapter Three - The Void

The train labored up the mountain toward White Pass, hissing steam and clanking over narrow gauge tracks as it climbed the last of its three thousand foot ascent. Jack looked out the window at the wild terrain and the shadows amidst the trees, and he felt welcome. His visit to San Francisco had been brief and had not felt at all like a homecoming. That had troubled him a little, and made him wonder if his constant wanderlust had finally erased any sense of belonging that might have given him some contentment at returning to his mother's house. Now he knew that wasn't the case at all. It was not that he had come unmoored from the world, only that his mooring had changed.

This place was where he now belonged. He understood that for the rest of his life, no matter where he wandered, in his heart this would always be home. Here in the wild.

Yet still he felt unsettled, his thoughts filled with memories from the last time he had made the treacherous trek to Dawson. The ship had landed at Dyea then, and the climb — by foot or horseback — to the Chilkoot Pass had been so treacherous that many men turned back, surrendering their dreams of gold before they'd even made it beyond the mountain range. Packs and supplies had been abandoned beside the trail. Horses had died and men had collapsed alongside them. And after the horrors of the Chilkoot Pass there had been the rush to get up-river before the Yukon froze. The winter ice had come early that year, trapping Jack and his friends Merritt and Jim in a ramshackle traders' cabin until spring. Scurvy and starvation had threatened to extinguish their lives, but somehow they had survived. And when the river had melted that spring, they had made it to Dawson at last, many months after they had set out from Dyea.

Jack now knew that while he and his friends were struggling to survive that long, hungry winter in the great white silence, Sir Thomas Tancrede and Michael Heaney put men to work building the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad. In a miracle of determination, the railroad men had beaten the rugged terrain into submission with dynamite and sheer force of will, constructing bridges, blasting tunnels, and bolting down trestles that curved along the faces of mountain cliffs. One hundred and ten miles from Skagway to Whitehorse, and they had done it all in the space of two years.

Of course, even if the brand new rail line had been in operation two years earlier, when Jack had first come north, he wouldn't have been able to afford a ticket. Prospectors didn't travel to the Yukon Territory by rail — they trekked the Chilkoot Trail or went up through White Pass on foot. Or, if they had a little money, they traveled by ship all the way to the Yukon delta up north and sailed southward from there. Perhaps in the months to come the train would be more affordable and be seen by stampeders as an investment toward fulfilling their dreams, but at the moment — only weeks after its completion — it was still the province of the well-off.

Jack glanced around the carriage at the people travelling with them. These were not rich men. Rich men stayed at home and sent their minions into the frozen north to do their bidding. But by their dress and demeanor, it was clear they were men of some means, headed north not to put their blood, sweat, and tears into a hunt for gold, but to build and tend the businesses that would serve the prospectors. Why dig or pan for gold when, by building a hotel or a bar or a mercantile, these men could simply wait for the newly-discovered gold to come to them? There were a few women accompanying the men, and a trio of women at the front of the train car were clearly a madam and a pair of prostitutes in her employ. Jack knew this not only by their dress, but also how the other women on the train seemed to scorn their presence.

Jack wondered what the rest of the people in the car thought about him and his companions. Sabine wore a lovely dress of deep green that brought out the color in her eyes, but Jack and the four werewolves were dressed shabbily in comparison. Several people had openly surveyed them, clearly wondering how they had the means to afford passage on the train. Jack had given all the gold he'd managed to bring back from that first trip to the Yukon to his mother, but the others — the pack — had sailed the Pacific as pirates, with Ghost as their captain. They'd gathered plenty of plunder, and though they spent lavishly each time they returned to port, both Louis and Maurilio had been wise enough not to squander all of their money.

Jack did not relish the idea of benefiting from riches the crew of the Larsen had stolen from their victims on the high seas. But the men had insisted, and Jack had acquiesced because he had no wish to put Sabine through the hell of making the inland trek on foot. She already seemed . . . changed, weaker. It was a growing concern.

The train groaned and clanked and began to slow. Jack frowned and looked out the window, worried there might be some malfunction, but then he realized that the car was leveling out. They had reached the highest point of their journey — the top of White Pass — and the train seemed to take pause, its smokestack sighing with relief, before beginning its long descent.

Beside him, Sabine shivered. Jack glanced at her and saw that her eyes were closed. She had slipped into a light doze, her arms wrapped around herself, steeled against the cold. Yet the pale hue of her coffee skin suggested that something more than temperature was affecting her. Sabine looked unwell, and Jack was worried that she might be falling ill.

"She'll be all right," Louis said quietly.

Jack glanced at him. Louis and the Reverend were seating opposite him and Sabine, the two benches facing one another. Vukovich and Maurilio were across the aisle, facing toward the front of the train.

"You know what's wrong with her?" Jack asked.

Louis narrowed his eyes. "You know as well as I do, mon ami."

Jack supposed he did, though it was a troubling thought — Sabine was not entirely human. Somehow, her spirit was tied to the sea, and they were moving further from the Pacific with every moment. He wondered if Sabine had been this far from the open water.

"Do you think she'll feel better when we're on the river?" Jack asked.

"If I must guess, I would think yes," Louis replied. "But who can say?"

Jack glanced at the Reverend, but the tall, lanky man continued to gaze out the window at the panorama of the wilderness. Louis grunted and shifted on his seat, drawing Jack's attention, and he saw that the wiry little man had caught sight of something that troubled him. Jack turned to glance back along the aisle of the carriage, his skin prickling with alarm.

Ghost had entered their car.

The big man stood just inside the car, the door propped open behind him. He swayed with the rocking of the train, but Jack knew he had spent years on the sea and would not be thrown off balance. Ghost lifted his chin and inhaled deeply, his sense of smell telling him more about the people in that car than his eyes ever would. Unshaven, his hair unruly, he ought to have looked like one of the hobos Jack had ridden the rails with in his early teens. Instead, Ghost cut the perfect figure of the pirate captain — a man in charge, and yet somehow out of place here, cast adrift.

Ghost met Jack's gaze. The animosity between them lived and breathed as if it were its own creature, but it had streaks of respect and even fondness that could not be denied. Ghost had kept Jack alive on a vessel full of monsters because he had liked the philosophical, moral, and intellectual challenge that their conversations presented. Though Jack had caged the savage nature within himself, that wildness remained, restrained but never fully tamed. Ghost had seen it from the beginning. He had used Jack as a kind of mirror, a yardstick by which to measure himself, to be sure he had scoured the last sentiment from his own heart. In the end he had failed at that, but no matter what Ghost believed, Jack knew they were still opposites. The former captain could never be trusted.

Once they had made port in Skagway, Ghost had dogged their steps. They had made it clear they did not welcome his company, so he kept a certain distance without ever letting them get too far ahead of him. Determined to join them on this expedition despite their protestations, he had somehow acquired a train ticket. They had all watched in troubled silence as he had boarded the car immediately behind their own. Vukovich had suggested dragging him off the train and killing him there and then, but the same argument that had prevented them from attempting such violence on board the Kraken stopped them once more. Jack was trying to make men out of these monsters again, and such a display of violence would not only give them away, but would negate all the progress they had achieved.

As Jack glared at Ghost, willing the beast to leave them be and return to his own carriage, the strangest thing happened. Ghost smiled — a sort of chagrined, sheepish expression that was entirely unlike him — and seemed almost to laugh. He gave a cheerful sort of wave, turned on his heel, and exited. As the door swung shut behind him, Jack could see him make a small leap, crossing the gap between train cars.

Even after Ghost had gone, it was several moments before Jack realized he was hanging halfway into the aisle, twisted round in his seat and still staring. He righted himself, only to find Louis and the Reverend watching him curiously. Across the aisle, Vukovich and Maurilio were still facing forward; they'd not even noticed that Ghost had entered the car.

"What do you suppose he's up to?" the Reverend asked, pulling up his coat's dark collar.

"Nothing good," Louis replied. "Eh, Jack?"

Jack didn't answer. Ghost's behavior had stumped him at first. Cunning as he was, the captain had never been one for games. ''Only when Jack had allowed himself to imagine for a moment that the monster might be telling them the truth, that he might be seeking his own answers, did Ghost's actions begin to make any sense. Jack found that far more unsettling than the belief that Ghost wanted them all dead.

"What if it's all true?" Jack said at last.

The Reverend scoffed. "If he's anything like his brother — "

"But he's not," Jack said thoughtfully, glancing at Sabine's slumbering form beside him before looking back at the two werewolves. "He spent years trying to be more of a bastard, more of an animal, than Death, but he never quite succeeded. Now . . . well, you saw him. He doesn't know how to act. He's adrift. It's like he's tasting life for the first time, and trying to decide if he likes the flavor."

Louis and the Reverend were both staring at him.

"Can you really believe that?" Louis asked. "The man I met in New Orleans — the pirate who bit me, blooded me, turned me into a monster to serve him — you're saying you believe that man is having . . . what, a change of heart?"

Jack glanced out the window at the rugged terrain, certain they must long since have passed from the Alaskan territory and into Canada. Such boundaries meant very little here in the north. Despite the relative comfort of the train car, Jack knew that they had left true civilization behind when the S.S. Kraken had left port in Seattle.

"Jack?" the Reverend prodded.

Jack focused on him. Somehow he had persuaded these grizzled men, these weary, vicious beasts, to follow him. Though he had the wild in him, in the end Jack was only human, and one with a mere nineteen years upon this Earth. But Louis and the Reverend, and Maurilio and Vukovich, had been plucked away from their human lives and taught how to be monsters by the werewolf Nilsson brothers. They'd been made to believe they had no alternative other than monstrosity and savagery. Jack was striving to show them that there were other options, and that they could define themselves if they worked at it, and suddenly he was the human leader of a pack of werewolves who'd pledged loyalty to him and to Sabine.

His strange world kept spinning.

"I've learned that anything is possible," Jack said, glancing from one to the other. "And I'd like to think that Ghost can change. If I believe that's possible for all of you — and you know I do — then I must believe it for him. But does he want it? Ghost forged himself into a creature of evil and brutality as an act of will. To transform himself away from that, he must crave it."

Jack looked from Louis to the Reverend, but the answer came, instead, from beside him.

"Does it matter?" Sabine asked, her voice a quiet, sleepy rasp.

"Sabine?" Louis said.

The sea witch looked up at them, then focused on Jack, pushing the veil of hair away from her lovely eyes.

"Unless we're willing to kill Ghost, we can only ignore him," she said softly. "That does not mean we trust him. His true nature will show itself in time." She smiled, tired. "Now, shush. I'm sleepy. We should all rest while we can."

The three of them looked at her a moment, but Sabine ignored them, settling deeper into her seat and leaning against the window of the train. The rattling did not seem to bother her.

Jack glanced at the Reverend, whose brows were knitted in worry and consternation.

Louis exhaled, sinking down into his seat as though to follow Sabine's example. "I just hope that when his true nature does emerge, we see it coming."

Jostled awake by the motion of the train, Jack reached up to rub sleep from his eyes. Sabine had snuggled up tight against him and he had an arm around her. He wondered if he ought to have argued against her sitting beside the window, where the cold night air snuck in around the frame. In her years on the sea, Sabine had surely been much colder than this, but being away from the water was having a detrimental enough effect on her without the chilly fingers of the Yukon night wrapping themselves around her throat. He gazed at her sleeping profile, then kissed the top of her head. She would be all right, he decided. Sabine had lived uncountable years without Jack London to watch over her. A little chill would do her no harm.

Both Louis and the Reverend had also drifted off. Louis had curled up against the window, his face smooth and innocent as he slept, with no trace of the beast in evidence. The Reverend, though, reminded Jack of a sleeping tiger he had seen once at the zoo. His face twitched and his brow was knitted, perhaps stalking tender prey in his dreams.

A glance around revealed that many of the train's passengers were also napping, including Maurilio and Vukovich. Had the rail line from Skagway to Whitehorse been straight and flat, they'd have long since arrived, but with the precarious curves and long inclines along the route, the train never had the opportunity to build up any speed. Still, Jack thought they must be nearly there.

He turned to look at the landscape slipping by outside. Moonlight played amongst trees' branches and threw shafts of golden illumination into the deeply shadowed woods. As Jack relaxed into this picture, wanting to explore the terrain on foot and lose himself in the Yukon wilderness, something moved through the trees. Sitting up, alert now, he peered closer and saw a shape dart from cover, moving fast and low to the ground, parallel to the train.

A wolf.

Jack smiled and his chest filled with warmth, for this was not just any wolf. It was his wolf, the near-mystical beast that had been his companion and savior when he had last been this far north. He ought to have felt its nearness, because it had certainly sensed his return to these lands. Watching it now — its grace, primeval power, and the delight with which it seemed to lope across the landscape — he wondered if perhaps the beast was nothing more or less than his own heart set free to run.

Jack closed his eyes and reached out into the wild terrain with the senses that Lesya had taught him to use. It had been as if she had opened a door inside of him, and once he had walked through he could perceive the world in ways that other men never would. Now he felt a hare sleeping in its den, protecting its newborn brood. And there he sensed an owl taking flight, its eyes searching the ground below for something foolish enough to be out in the moonlight. As the train steamed on, he felt other creatures, touched on them for an instant, and then let his senses move on.

All except the wolf. Just as it kept pace with the train, Jack matched its heartbeat with his own.

He was elated. His wolf had come out to greet him, showing that this truly was where he belonged.

Then Jack felt another awareness that was neither the wolf's, nor the sleeping thoughts of the werewolves who had become his allies. And this was something he had known before.

He opened his eyes and looked around to see that Ghost had entered the train car again. The pirate loomed there, filling the passageway and blocking the door, but his attention was not on Jack. Ghost was staring at the window with a profound longing. And when Jack looked through the glass again, he realized that Ghost was watching the wolf running alongside the train.

Jack bristled, the small hairs rising on the back of his neck. This wolf was a part of him. If Ghost were to try to harm it, Jack would not hesitate to kill him. There would be no mercy. No second chances.

Sabine shifted uneasily against him, mumbling something in her sleep, and in that moment the wolf vanished back into the trees. He could still feel it there, racing along, keeping pace with them, but its attention had been partially diverted, for it had caught the scent of some prey. Jack pulled his thoughts away, releasing whatever hold he might have over the wolf. It should hunt and eat. He knew they would see each other again.

The back of his neck still prickled with the weight of Ghost's presence. But when Jack glanced back again, the pirate had once again retreated to the next car, leaving only doubt and mystery behind.

An hour after dawn, wagons carted trunks and crates from the train station at Whitehorse to the dock along the Yukon River. Several passengers were greeted by carriages to transport them, but the river was within walking distance, and most went by foot. Waiting at the dock was the stern-wheel steamboat that would carry them north to Dawson.

Jack thought that the railroad builders had made an error in choosing Whitehorse as their terminus. If they'd laid tracks all the way to Lake Laberge — the last bit of water to hold onto its winter ice every spring — they'd have gained a good couple of weeks' worth of business every year. The train could have been running long before the ice thawed enough for the steamboats. Though, at this point, he wasn't sure how much business the rail line was going to have. There must have been some sort of upper limit on how many people were going to make the trek north searching for gold, and he suspected that most of them had likely already done so.

Of one thing he was entirely certain; if the railroad and the steamships had been in place two years ago when he had arrived on the shore at Dyea with his brother-in-law, John Shepard, the man would never have given up so quickly on their quest. For better or worse, there were many who could never have made the journey to Dawson before who would be able to do so now.

Whitehorse was a sleepy little burg, barely a town at all. If not for the shops and bars amidst the small, drab homes, it would have looked as if it had been abandoned ages ago. But the dock had been freshly constructed, solidly built, and Jack marveled at its appearance. It was likely that employees of the railroad had built it, since most of the steamers plying the waters were independently owned, and he knew from experience that fierce competition would have precluded collaboration on something like dock building. They had done a good job this time.

The stern-wheeler had been tied to the dock, the powerful river rushing around her. Jack thought about the hell he and his friends Merritt and Jim had gone through on the Yukon River. He laughed out loud.

"What's funny?" Sabine asked, casting a bemused expression his way.

"Not a damn thing," he replied, still smiling. They'd almost died two years past, but now a man with enough money could travel to Dawson without much effort at all. All it had taken was the right motivation — rich men who didn't like the idea that poor men were getting their hands on gold they thought should be theirs. Now there was an entire industry in place to move people up north with less effort and better odds of survival.

Jack studied Sabine as they walked down a gentle slope toward the dock. Louis and the rest of their pack were ahead, laden with valises full of clothes they'd bought in San Francisco before departure, and Vukovich had taken Sabine's valise without a word. They had all noticed what a toll being away from the sea had taken upon her. But now, as they approached the river, she looked much improved. The light of confidence had returned to her eyes, the color to her face, and a certain vigor to her gait.

"Is it the river?" Jack asked.

Sabine glanced at him. She took a deep breath and let it out, as if relieving herself of a great burden that had sat squarely upon her shoulders. "I think it is restoring me."

"You didn't know that it would?" For just a moment Jack saw the depth of eons in her eyes.

"I'm certain I have traveled by river before. In my mind I can see the curves of the Danube and the rough water of some furious African torrent. But I don't really remember any of them. I have been on the ocean for so very long."

Jack let that echo in his thoughts as they walked with the other train passengers. No matter how he tried, it was impossible for him to truly comprehend the life that Sabine had led. Intellectually, he understood that she had lived for perhaps thousands of years, and that her memory deteriorated over time. But he could not imagine what such a life could contain. It fascinated and terrified him.

Yet that was precisely what they had come north to discover. If the forest spirit, Lesya, could help Sabine to define herself, or better yet to remember her long past, then the journey would be considered a success. Sabine would have the answers she so desired, the knowledge they had all come so far to help her discover. But Jack also wondered what impact such discovery would have upon Sabine, and on the love they nurtured between them. For so long she had been a sea witch, wielding a magic connected to the water, but she had lived as if she were an ordinary woman. A human being, more or less. If the full scope of her nature and history were revealed, would she still be able to love a man who was only a man?

The question troubled him but he had promised her this. He would fulfill that promise, and worry later about the cost.

A loud whistle split the sky — the steamboat was putting its passengers on notice that they hadn't time to tarry. Now that they were closer, Jack could appreciate the elegant simplicity of the ship, with the big paddle wheel at the back and the twin smokestacks that jutted skyward from its upper deck. With the white railings that ran along its three levels and the white wheelhouse sitting atop the pile, it looked more like a royal wedding cake than a ship. On the prow, bright blue paint spelled out the vessel's name — Fort McGurry — which Jack vaguely recalled as a trading post rather than a military fort.

When Jack and Sabine reached the boat, black smoke had already begun to plume from its stacks. Several dozen passengers were boarding, some of them already milling on deck while others moved up the gangplank. Crewmen oversaw the loading of supplies and cargo from wagons, while an officer stood at the bottom of the plank with a passenger manifest, making certain no one boarded who had not paid for the privilege. Louis waited for Jack and Sabine beside the officer, but the other wolves had already begun to board.

"You look better, cherie," Louis said, studying Sabine.

She only smiled as they told the officer their names, and waited patiently while he checked the manifest before waving them aboard.

"No second thoughts?" Louis asked as they walked up the gangplank, a glint of gold showing in his smile.

"None," Sabine said firmly. "It's time for me to solve my own mystery."

Louis arched an eyebrow and glanced at Jack. "A challenge we all face, eh?" Then he turned back to Sabine. "But don't forget what Jack's been telling me and the others: who you were doesn't matter nearly as much as who you're going to be."

Jack smiled and clapped Louis's shoulder. "Exactly."

He was happy that Louis and the others were exploring the possibility that they did not have to remain monsters. If people were truly forged only by their pasts, Jack would have had no chance at a life worth living. He'd been abandoned as an infant by his biological father and his unstable, distant mother had called him her "badge of shame." He'd been taught brutality in back alley brawls and by the foremen at the canning factory where he'd worked as a child, and seen it in a thousand ways as he tramped around America. His time in jail as a vagrant had showed him depths of human depravity and led him to aspire for the heights. The life he wanted for himself, he would have to build from nothing. He wanted to define himself, not allow his past to do it for him, and this was the lesson he was trying to impart to Louis and the others. And yet because they all knew their pasts, he understood Sabine's desire to uncover her own history. Mysteries such as hers needed illuminating if they were to be understood.

"And the devil appears," Louis said, his smile vanishing. His nostrils flared in distaste and his lips were set in a grim line. Though he still wore his human face, Jack could see the beast beneath.

"Ghost?" Jack said, not bothering to turn around.

"None other," Louis confirmed.

"Ignore him," Sabine said.

But as they reached the steamship's deck, Jack could not help turning to look back at the dock, where Ghost stood exchanging an amiable word with the officer checking the manifest. The temptation to hurry back down and tell the officer that he was about to allow a pirate captain on board was strong, but he'd been turning the situation over in the back of his mind. Ghost had said he had nowhere else to go, and that was probably true. Jack knew he would get on board one way or another.

As long as the pirate kept his distance, Jack was determined not to interfere with him.

"Jack?" Sabine said, touching his arm.

"We should all ignore him." He took her hand. "Come on. Let's stow our gear and then come back on deck. The last time I rode this river, I was just trying to stay alive. This time, I want to appreciate the beauty of the land."

Jack and Sabine spent most of the river voyage on deck, descending to their tiny cabin to sleep and visiting the small dining room for barely passable meals. Venison and potatoes were mixed in a stew for dinner to make them stretch further, and there were ham and eggs in the morning. The other members of their pack were used to bunking together, so the four former pirates shared a cabin with upper berths that pulled down like those Jack had once observed in a train compartment.

They saw very little of Ghost. He seemed barely there, as if he had become his namesake, haunting the corners of rooms and the far ends of gangways, until Jack came to believe that he was doing them the courtesy of avoiding them. In the time he had known Ghost, he had never before associated the word courtesy with him. The idea of a polite or respectful Ghost would take some getting used to.

Though there were several dozen passengers, Jack and his companions kept mostly to themselves. Some of the men on board were businessmen. Others were merely thrill-seekers with enough money that they hoped they could keep the dangers of the northlands at arm's length, and return home with stories of their courage in the face of the wild. After all he had seen, such men were absurd creatures to Jack, but he found them harmless enough. They did him the favor of ignoring him as thoroughly as he did them, and that was fine.

Jack's interest was piqued by the crew, however. It had become obvious within hours of boarding that something troubled them. A low current of unease seemed to run beneath every interaction he witnessed amongst the steamship's stewards and officers. Even the cook seemed agitated when Jack caught sight of him early on the morning after they'd departed.

Late in the afternoon of their second full day on the river, Jack and Sabine stood on the starboard side of the upper deck, watching a trio of hawks up ahead, beyond a curve in the river. The hawks were circling, and Jack imagined they must be intent upon some prey that hid in the woods along the riverbank.

"They're afraid," Sabine whispered.

For a moment Jack thought she meant the hawks, until he saw that her eyes were closed, and realized that she referred to the crew of the Fort McGurry.

"I wish we knew what of," Jack said.

Sabine let out a breath and opened her eyes, turning toward him with a gaze full of regret. "I'm sorry. At sea, I can see more deeply into hearts and minds, but on the river it's all quite muddled."

"Nothing to be sorry about," Jack reassured her, taking her hand. "Whatever it is, it may not concern us at all."

And yet he was concerned. Most ordinary men would never allow themselves to believe that werewolves existed, but Jack wondered if someone one board had realized that there were monsters steaming up the Yukon with them. Ghost and his crew had robbed and murdered up and down the Pacific for years. It wasn't impossible that someone had survived and recounted the tale. He had tried to put himself in a position to eavesdrop on some of the whispers among the crew, but thus far had been unsuccessful. And if it wasn't the wolves they feared, then the question remained: what had spooked them so badly?

"Try not to worry," Sabine said, now trying to reassure him. Her smile reached all the way to her copper eyes. "You said Dawson wasn't much further."

Jack nodded. "Forty miles or so, if I've gauged it right."

"Good. Then whatever is bothering them isn't ours to worry over anymore."

He knew she was right, yet he could not fight the uneasiness he felt, as if the crew's agitation was contagious. An ominous weight hung in the air.

As the steamer followed the bend in the river, black smoke pluming from the stacks and the paddle wheel slowly turning, Jack watched the circling hawks ahead and exhaled slowly, trying to clear his mind. The sky had turned a dusky blue, headed toward the indigo of evening. Night would be falling in minutes. He extended his senses, feeling for the birds. Closing his eyes, he focused on one of them, easing himself into its awareness, matching his pulse as best he could to the rapid thrumming of its tiny heart. He could feel the air around him as the hawk's wings sliced the wind, and the sensation of flying helped ease tension from his body.

"Jack?" a voice said, and it was not Sabine's.

Though Jack opened his eyes, he maintained his connection with the hawk, his senses open wide.

The Reverend stood in front of him, brow knitted in consternation as he stroked a hand over his unruly beard. Vukovich accompanied him. Jack had been reaching his senses toward the river bank, but now that he allowed himself to feel the men's presence as well, he understood how close to the surface their lupine nature had risen. The men fairly bristled with agitation.

"What is it?" Sabine asked.

The Reverend glanced at her. "Just wondering what the hell Jack's gotten us into."

"Meaning what?" Jack asked. "You knew what the terrain was going to be like up here. I warned you how remote it was. I thought you'd like the hunting."

Vukovich glanced over his shoulder at a member of the crew hurrying by in the fading light. The sun had already set, and all that remained were the hints of it over the horizon.

"That's not it," he said, his accent thicker than usual. "We talked to the cook. He likes his sherry this time of day and it loosened his tongue. We know what's got the crew spooked. They don't like making the run to Dawson these days."

"Why not?" Sabine asked.

"Rumors are flying from Dawson, up and down the river," the Reverend explained. "The word is that people have vanished."

Jack frowned. "People uproot and abandon Dawson every day. They come for gold and find only hardship. Some turn into drunks and others die, but a lot of them head for home. The life they've got here . . . why would they tell anyone they were leaving?"

"Don't you think people know that?" Vukovich asked. "There's got to be more to it. The cook says a preacher's wife was taken from her bedroom, and a half dozen men working a big claim disappeared from their camp. One man went to wash the dinner plates in the river and when he came back, they were gone."

"I've heard many such stories," Sabine said. "Most of it is superstitious nonsense, fearful gibberish attempting to explain oddities that have perfectly ordinary explanations."

"Yes," the Reverend agreed, giving her and Jack a steely look. "But you're a witch, Miss Sabine. And we . . ." he said, indicating himself and Vukovich, ". . . we are monsters. Jack fought the Wendigo."

"Said he killed the Wendigo," Vukovich muttered, glancing away.

"Is that what this is about?" Jack asked, looking about to make sure they weren't overheard. "You think this is the Wendigo?"

"The way I understand the legend, any man can carry the curse of the Wendigo," the Reverend said. "Maybe you killed one, but that doesn't mean there isn't another."

Jack shook his head. "Not this soon. What are the odds of that? The same curse falling on another man in the same place only a year later? And even if there were another Wendigo roaming the Yukon, there's no way it would have the stealth or intelligence required to sneak into some woman's boudoir and abduct her. If such a thing happened, it would have crashed through a window and eaten her, not to mention everyone else in the building, and kept eating until the folks in Dawson killed it, or there wasn't anyone left to eat. So no, not the Wendigo. Slavers, perhaps, more active than they were before. Bastards took me and my friends, and killed one of them. They're ruthless." I hope the bastards haven't touched Hal, he thought. But his young friend in Dawson was wise to the slavers' ways now, and Jack hoped he would be safe.

Silence fell amongst them. Jack breathed evenly, still touching the hawks, although they were a ways back along the river now. He felt rodents returning to their warrens and birds seeking their nests.

"Well," Vukovich said after a moment. "Something's got the crew spooked."

"The cook heard that a man was attacked by a polar bear," the Reverend said. "There's some talk about a killer — "

"A polar bear?" Jack interrupted. "This far south, and this time of year? That's ridiculous."

"We're only repeating what the cook told us," the Reverend snapped, bristling a bit.

"The last bit's the most important," Vukovich added. "A few days ago, one of the steamships nearly collided with a smaller boat that was adrift on the river. They found blood, but no one on board."

Jack glanced at Sabine. He felt sure from the look in her eyes that they were thinking the same thing.

"Pirates?" he asked.

"You have to wonder," Sabine agreed. "Men are sailing downriver with whatever gold they may have found."

Jack looked at Vukovich and the Reverend. Amazingly, particularly as they had been pirates themselves, it appeared that they had been so taken with tales of mysteries and monsters that it had never occurred to them that the most human of all explanations — greed — might be at the bottom of all of this rumor and superstition. Jack might have suspected Ghost's involvement — some new way to harry them — but he had been pursuing and then traveling with them, and could not have had a hand in this.

"Could be, I suppose," Vukovich allowed.

After another moment, Jack nodded. "All right. Well, let's just keep our eyes open. We don't have much longer until we reach . . ." Something hit him, a hollowness inside that bore terrible gravity, and he whispered his final word. ". . . Dawson . . ."

Alarm lit the Reverend's eyes and Vukovich crouched, looking around in search of some kind of threat. Sabine grabbed Jack's arm, squeezing his bicep.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Jack, what's the matter with you?"

Words had failed him, his thoughts devolving into a soft moan. He blinked and reached up to massage his temple, but his hands shook as he reached out further with his mind. Lesya had unlocked a wild magic inside him, or given him a sliver of her own that allowed him to make such intimate contact with the creatures of the wild lands. It alternately soothed and thrilled him whenever he was able to match his spirit with the spirits of the beasts around him. But this time, he'd touched something terrible and tainted. He'd been carrying on his conversation with Sabine and the two men while also letting his senses drift through the wild around them. And he'd encountered something . . . other.

"Jack, you're scaring me," Sabine whispered, clutching his arm even more tightly.

"Don't you feel it?" he asked her. "Down in the water?"

Sabine frowned, shaking her head. "I don't know what you mean. Other than the people on this ship and the fish in the river . . ." Her frown deepened and she turned to look over the railing into the dark water. "The fish."

"What about the fish?" the Reverend asked.

"The fish are gone," Sabine said.

The wolves began to change. They did not transform into werewolves, but anyone watching would have seen the subtle shift in their features. Their lips tugged up to show lengthening teeth and they both began to sniff the air, trying to find the scent of some enemy. Their eyes were cold and feral.

"Calm down," Jack said quickly. "The crew is skittish enough. If you give them a scare it'll be you they start shooting at."

The Reverend looked dubious, but Vukovich took a deep breath and nodded.

"Jack," Sabine said. "What is it, down there? What's scared off the fish?"

"I don't know," Jack said. "All I can feel is a kind of . . . void. But touching it gives me the chills." He reached back down and let his mind brush against the cold, hollow place that seemed to be moving back and forth beneath the steamer. Instead of the vitality he felt when he touched the spirit of an animal, this seemed like a hole in the world — a hole in the fabric of life itself, leeching any other vitality into it. His stomach twisted with a sudden nausea and he shook himself to clear his head, breaking contact.

"Try again," he said to Sabine. "I know your magic is different here, away from the sea, but this thing . . . Instead of life, feel for a place without it. An emptiness."

Sabine held his hands and nodded, closing her eyes. Jack glanced around to find that several passengers had gathered further along the railing and were watching them with wary curiosity. He ignored them.

"It's so . . . cold," Sabine whispered, her lips pressing together in a thin white line.

"You feel it?" Jack asked, glancing at Vukovich and the Reverend.

A small sound escaped Sabine's lips and then her head snapped back, her body jerking as her hands gripped Jack's painfully tight. Her eyes flew open wide and she began to shake.

"Sabine!" Jack shouted as her legs gave out beneath her and she collapsed to the deck, sliding partway beneath the railing so that her left arm dangled out over the churning river.

"It's . . ." she mumbled.

Jack knelt by her and pushed the hair away from her face, his heart racing with worry and fear, but all for her. "It's what, my love?"

Her eyes had been wide and unfocused. Now, though her body continued to be wracked with the spasms of seizure, she locked gazes with him.

"Hungry," she whispered.

Jack twisted around to shoot a hard look at Vukovich and the Reverend. "Go. Find Maurilio and Louis and get back here! Something terrible is going to — "

With a loud thump, something struck the hull of the Fort McGurry hard enough to rock the steamship in the water. Whatever was down there, filling that dark, lifeless void, it was strong.

And ravenous.

Chapter Four - Blood by Moonlight

Jack had never been afraid of water. He had lived close to it all his life, and it had always been a part of his world, whether sailing on it, fishing it, or using it as a means to travel. But now, looking down into that dark, fast-flowing river, with something below the surface that was darker than night, he was chilled to the core.

We need to keep out of the water, he thought. Whatever happens, we have to —

Another impact, and this one sent Jack and Sabine staggering against the bulkhead. Passengers were shouting and crying out in alarm. The Reverend and Vukovich were crouched down against the vessel's movements. Jack could see their confusion — they were ready for a battle, but there was nothing for them to fight.

"A sandbank," the Reverend called out. "Submerged logs. A sunken boat."

"I don't think so," Jack replied.

"Why not?" Vukovich asked.

"Because if it was something immobile, we wouldn't have hit it twice," Sabine said, climbing to her feet. As if in response there was another impact, but this was different. Jack felt the shock through his legs, and heard the unmistakable sound of splintering timbers.

"Both sides that time," he said. "The boat's being struck beneath the waterline." But by what? He was glad that no one asked, because there was no sane answer.

Maurilio and Louis burst through a bulkhead door and onto the deck, looking around frantically until they spied Jack and the others. Joined again, the men and Sabine seemed to take some comfort from being together. Jack realized that they had properly become a crew, and he felt a tinge of pride.

"Panic down below," Louis informed them. "Crew are running like rats."

"There's something in the water," the Reverend said. "Jack and Sabine sensed it, and then — "

"What is it?" Louis asked.

"I don't know," Jack said, "but we stay together."

"I agree," the Reverend said. "On deck. Ready to fight if we need to. Or jump."

No way I'm jumping in there, Jack thought, and as he shared a look with Sabine, he knew that she was of like mind. They had both touched on the alienness of the thing beneath the surface, and they had no desire to enter the water with it.

There came another impact from the stern, and a slapping, snapping sound. In the half-light Jack could see broken timber boards powering skyward, scattering across the rear half of the ship and splashing into the water.

"Paddle's gone," Vukovich said. "Now we're helpless."

The steamer started drifting. People were gathering on deck, some of them forming short lines as some half-hearted safety drills were implemented by the crew.

"We should get up to the wheelhouse," Jack said. He was thinking quickly, considering and discounting options, and the moves left open to them were depressingly few.

"Why?" Vukovich asked. "The boat's drifting."

"In case something comes out of the water —" Louis explained.

"If something comes out, we kill it," Vukovich stated firmly.

"While we don't know what it is, it's best to avoid a fight." Jack grabbed Sabine's hand and headed forward toward one of the narrow staircases that climbed the superstructure, and the others followed.

They passed a group of confused, frightened people, that Jack realized were three men and the three prostitutes Jack and the others had shared a carriage with on the train journey here. The madam was talking sternly, quietly, to her two employees.

"Stay away from the water," Jack said as they passed. The madam just glared back at him with a hard expression.

The drifting steamer had turned sideways on to the river's flow, and something struck it hard below decks once again, rapidly halting its progress down the river. The deck tilted to port, and Jack pulled Sabine down to the deck, scrabbling for purchase. The madam and one of the men fell against the wooden railing and flipped over, out of Jack's view. There were two splashes, and the sounds of them both surfacing and spitting water.

And then came more terrible sounds. Still out of sight, the man cried out once, then his voice drowned out as he was quickly pulled under. The woman screamed. She was dragged into view across the river's surface, and Jack could see water foaming around her, her arms waving uselessly.

She was pulled under suddenly, and the foaming water changed color. In the dusk, that color was dark. Jack had seen enough blood by moonlight to recognize its awful hue.

The two remaining women were crying, trying to pull themselves up the sloping deck away from the edge, when the vessel tilted even further. Jack grabbed one woman's hand, and she grabbed her friend's, and he didn't release her until she had a good hold on a doorway.

"Here, Jack!" Louis called. He'd smashed a window and was gripping the frame. Jack lunged for his outstretch hand and grabbed on, his finger's curling around the man's wrist, and Louise's long-nailed fingers fixing tight around his. Jack resisted the urge to wince at the grip — Louis was saving his life.

Sabine clasped his other arm with both of hers.

"Climb across me," Jack told her urgently. "Don't trust your feet. The deck is tilting more than you think." She did as he suggested, moving nimbly across his shoulders and reaching for the Reverend, where the tall man was holding onto a door frame. She held on behind him, looking across and down at Jack, and beyond him to the waters that held such mysterious danger.

"We need to get to starboard!" Jack said. "Up and over, or through the ship. Whatever way, we can't stay here."

"You don't think they can capsize the whole steamer?" Maurilio called back. He was further along the deck behind the Revered, he and Vukovich clinging to the deck with long claws sprouting from their tattered boots. You'll get noticed, Jack thought, but the idea was ridiculous.

"They?" Vukovich asked. "Who the hell are they?"

"That doesn't matter," Jack said. "They're strong, and seem pretty focused on killing everyone on board." He locked eyes with Louis, suddenly and uncomfortably aware of what he was describing. An ambush, a slaughter. These men with him — these more-than-men — were dreadfully familiar with such a thing. He glanced up at Vukovich and saw the big man's legs lengthened, his shoulders broadening, and his leathery face had deformed into a more exaggerated version of himself.

"Vukovich," Jack tried to warn him, but his words were stolen by the night.

"We can go this way," the Reverend called, indicating the doorway.

The sounds of chaos continued and increased all around them. The ship tilted even more, timbers straining and splintering and splitting, hull vibrating with forces it was never designed to withstand. A whistle sounded somewhere and was quickly cut off. Worried voices turned into startled cries as people slipped and plunged into the water, and then there were the screams, the splashes, and drowned cries as those who entered the river were quickly tugged beneath its surface. The river runs red, Jack thought, and though he could not see the blood in the poor light, he could surely smell it. Amidst all this chaos, he suddenly became certain of what would happen.

The tang of blood. The lure of meat. Others would smell it, too.

"Vukovich," he said again, louder. The big pirate looked at him, and the others looked at Vukovich. Jack sensed the precariousness of that moment, as unsettled as the perches they all held on to. Things could swing. The men who made his crew could revert, fall, plunge back into the dark seas of their past where meat was everything and the hunt was the life.

Vukovich quivered, his clothing bulging into unnatural shapes around his chest and limbs. "I smell . . . ." he began.

"You smell damnation," Sabine said.

Vukovich blinked, frowned, and with another slow blink he reverted back to being a man. Jack had often wondered at his history before Ghost had bitten and changed him. Now, when they were out of this he resolved to ask. He would ask all of them, because he realized now that though the future was theirs to mold, the past was important. It left a mark, and whether they wore that mark with pride or carried the stain of guilt could dictate how rich their futures might be.

"I'm fine," Vukovich stated. "Let's go. Follow me!" He leapt through the doorway past the Reverend, then reached out his big hand for Sabine take. She did so without hesitation, and he pulled her inside.

The skinny form of Maurilio went next, then the Reverend. Louis pulled Jack up to him, and the two men clung together for a moment, understanding that they should take this moment to pause. They looked into the river, then along the leaning deck at several other people attempting to hold on for their lives. Someone screamed. From elsewhere, a few hesitant gunshots.

"What are we up against here, mon ami?" Louis asked.

"I have no idea," Jack said. "What I sensed felt so . . . malignant and yet so lifeless."

"Something lifeless has no such hunger," Louis said. "I should know."

"Whatever is in there is nothing like you," Jack said.

"Nothing like I was," Louis corrected. "Although the urge . . . I cannot condemn Vukovich. I still carry the taint myself, and such smells . . ."

"If he can fight it, so can you," Jack said. "And if something emerges, we might all have to fight." Jack heaved himself through the doorway, and Louis followed.

The vessel was leaning at about thirty degrees, and they walked along the junction between the gangway floor and wall. The Reverend quickly kicked open another door in the wall above them, his natural understanding of vessels showing through as he followed his instincts. This gangway led across the ship, now sloping upward, and they climbed using the handholds of doorways and warped boards. The boat was under immense stresses. As Jack hauled himself up after the others, he could feel a thrumming through any timbers he touched. A more sustained volley of gunshots sounded from back the way they had come. Someone screamed. There were more splashes, and several hard, rapid impacts against the hull below the waterline. The air was split by a sound that made Jack's blood run cold — a terrible, rage-filled roar.

The memory of the Wendigo flashed through him, with its slavering teeth and inhuman build as he and it clashed in their final, momentous combat. But though that beast had also roared, its cursed voice had sounded wretched. The cry that rang through the boat now was of something reveling in what it did.

The bloodshed . . . the murder . . . .

Maurilio looked back at him, eyes wide. Jack almost smiled. A werewolf afraid? The smile never quite reached his mouth, because Jack could see that the others were not unsettled, but alert. The widening of their eyes was the first subtle blooming of their animal side.

"They'll take the whole boat," Vukovich said grimly. He was changing again, deep-buried urges flexing his muscles, shifting his bones. His grimace was one of pain, but Jack could also see that he was keen to let the animal take over.

And why not? Jack thought for a moment. If we need that, why not let it happen?

"Vukovich!" Jack yelled. They all turned to look at him. "You have control, as long as you're a man. If you let the beast back out, you lose that control. You might be able to fight whatever it is that's ambushed us, but when you come across a group of frightened people huddled in a cabin or you find a wounded man leaking blood, what then?"

For a moment, Vukovich's eyes were more animal than Jack had seen them for some time. Then he calmed himself again, nodding.

"But being a man feels so weak," he growled.

"Then you're doing it wrong," Jack said. "Reverend, is that the door onto the starboard deck?" He nodded ahead of them, up the still-sloping gangway.

The Reverend unlatched the door, let it swing inward, down toward them, and they all saw treetops and stars. Moonlight smeared inside, supplementing the weak lantern light.

"Won't we be safer here?" Maurilio asked.

"No." Sabine was already starting forward again. "In here we're trapped."

"And out there we're closer to the water," Maurilio said.

"We're assuming they can't leave the water?" Sabine asked. She was the first outside. The Reverend followed, then the others, Jack bringing up the rear, grasping the door's jambs and pulled himself up and out.

The steamer let out a tremendous groan. The whole vessel vibrated, boards popped, windows shattered with the strain, and then it fell back, smacking down onto the river and sending a huge wash across the rapid current. Jack held on tight, the shifting weight threatening to throw him across the narrow deck and over the starboard railing. As he checked that the others were safe — their shoes shredded, claws scoring across timbers as they struggled to defy the momentum — he heard and saw Sabine.

"Jack!" she cried, even though he was farthest from her. She stumbled backward across the deck, green dress billowing about her as she struggled to regain her balance. Her right hip struck the low railing, and The Revered leapt for her, his big hand barely brushing hers as she tilted overboard.

"No!" Jack screamed, and he let himself go, kicking across the deck toward the railing. He would go into the water after her, he knew. He would dive into that raging, blood-filled, horror-stricken torrent, draw his knife and fight whatever might be down there before he let anything hurt Sabine.

But before he reached the railing something dashed past him, pushing him sprawling across the deck and sending The Reverend staggering sideways. The shadow struck the railing and seemed to flow overboard, silent and graceful.

Jack reached for his knife, fearing that the things in the water were now boarding. That having disabled the vessel they had come on board to take their pick . . . and their fill. He had seen this before with the pirates, and he had fought back. He would do so again.

Even as Jack recognized Ghost's distinctive odor, the pirate captain swung back up on deck with Sabine grasped tightly to his side. He was sweating, his hair and beard disheveled, and his right hand clasped the railing so tightly that it had crumpled and splintered in his grip. He glanced around, eyes settling on Jack for only a moment. As the vessel settled in the water, he released Sabine beside him.

"I will never allow you to be harmed," he vowed.

Sabine was breathing hard. She backed two steps away from him, brushed down her dress, and looked over the side. She whispered, "Thank you."

"We're under attack," Ghost said, looking to the others.

"Really?" Jack asked, dripping sarcasm.

"Have you seen what it is?" Vukovich asked.

Ghost shook his head and grinned at Jack. "Perhaps Captain London recognizes the attacker from his earlier journeys."

"No," Jack said.

"Then we should —" Ghost began, but Jack cut him off.

"We will do as we see fit."

Ghost's grin remained, and he raised one eyebrow. A scream came from somewhere, splashing, and then a terrible howl than ended in something crunching. Ghost partly closed his eyes and breathed in, and Jack knew what he was doing. Relishing the blood, Jack thought. Even he, a human, could sense the taint on the air — opened insides, ruptured organs. The others . . .

The others were shifting from foot to foot, breathing heavily, and from one of them issued a low, gentle growl.

"Very well," Ghost said. He turned back to Sabine. "You'll always be safest with me." Before anyone could reply he was gone, sprinting along the deck and quickly becoming one with the shadows.

"Sabine?" Jack said. Though their love was strong and Ghost was a beast, he could not keep a hint of doubt from his mind. It was Ghost who had been there to save her, after all. Not Jack. "Sabine, I should have been — "

"It was my fault," she said. She came to him and grasped his hand. The way she looked at him could not be feigned and Jack was relieved.

"The wheelhouse," he said, while surreptitiously checking them all, and once again it was Vukovich giving him the most concern.

"I'm so hungry," Vukovich said, shaking.

Louis stepped forward and slapped his crewmate around the face.

Jack held his breath and waited for the violence — simmering close to them and surrounding the stricken vessel — to explode. But Vukovich stood firm and stared at Louis, putting one hand on the man's shoulder and squeezing.

"Never . . . do that again," he said softly. Then he smiled, and nodded his thanks.

They headed along the deck, pressed as far from the railing as possible. Jack kept glancing at the river. He expected to see the attackers reveal themselves, rising from dark waters in all their monstrous splendor, and though terrified, he was eager to see. This wildness was something he did not know. He had seen true horrors, and he would prefer to know what new terrors he faced.

"I wish they'd just show themselves," Louis said, echoing Jack's thoughts.

Maurilio agreed. "I want to see what we'll have to fight.".

They reached the external stairs that led up two levels to the wheelhouse. Climbing felt good to Jack, because it took them farther from the water.

"Listen," Sabine said as they reached the next level. They paused, Jack and Sabine in the lead, the others behind them. The river flowed against the steamer's hull, but the boat did not move. The ship's lights had gone out and the passengers' shouts had grown even more anxious and fearful.

"We're not moving," the Reverend said.

"Yet the boat is not trapped," Louis said. "We would feel the vibrations if it were. I think we're being held."

"But listen!" Sabine said again. They listened, and the night had grown quiet. No more gunfire, and no more screams. Jack closed his eyes, and when his other senses came to the fore he could still smell blood.

"Whatever is in the water has had its fill," Maurilio said.

"No." Jack shook his head. "They've simply taken the easy victims. If they want the rest of us . . ." He looked down over the railing at the river, and tried to see below its surface, to sense his way down. But he could not settle his thoughts. He was not too disappointed — he had no wish to touch on that void ever again.

"Perhaps they cannot emerge," Louis said.

"Or perhaps they will not," the Reverend said.

"We can only hope," Jack said.

"Could be they're just toying with us," Vukovich muttered. "Like prey."

Jack stared at him, hating the idea but fearing it might have merit. These wolves knew something about toying with their prey.

They climbed the steps and arrived at the wheelhouse. Every window was smashed by the abuse the steamer had suffered, and the door swung gently back and forth, creaking slightly. There was nobody inside. The wheel was stuck, and even Vukovich's strength would not shift it.

"I thought a captain would go down with his ship," the Reverend said.

"But this ship's not —" Sabine began. She was cut off by a series of shuddering impacts, transmitted up to them through their feet. Shards of glass remaining in the windows tinkled to the deck, and the wheel began to turn, the steamer drifting so that the view past the bow started to slowly shift. And then another, grinding impact, and the boat was still again.

"We're sinking," Maurilio said.

"How do you know?" Jack asked, and all four men looked at him. Of course, he berated himself They were sailors, with many more years on the water than he'd had.

"How deep is the river?" Sabine asked, and Jack was troubled that she could not tell. He shrugged.

"I suspect we will find out soon," Louis said. "We should stay here. Wait."

"For what?" Maurilio asked.

"For dawn," Jack said. "Unless we're forced to move, I agree with Louis. We're safest here, as far from the water as we can get."

"Until the water comes to us. And then we'll get to fight." With that pronouncement of doom the Reverend sat down, sweeping broken glass out from under him and resting his head back against the bulkhead. He sighed and closed his eyes, and Jack wondered what visions he saw.

"We'll take it in turns to keep watch," Jack suggested.

Louis chuckled. "You think any of us will sleep, mon ami?"

They milled around the wheelhouse, waiting for the night to pass and for daylight to show them what had happened. The steamer started listing to the right, and even Jack could sense the vessel slowly filling with water, the engine room and holds flooding, lower decks awash. He tried not to imagine what might happen to anyone left alive down there, perhaps thinking they were hiding from danger. Whatever had attacked them either could not leave the water, or chose to remain submerged . . . and once below water, those lower decks would be accessible through the rents in the hull.

Several times before dawn, they heard screams. Those hiding were slowly being hunted, found, and killed.

With dawn came more blood.

"It's caught between two rocks," Jack said. "Jammed there. And the force of the river is only pressing it harder."

"How many are there?" Sabine asked.

"Four," Jack said. "Perhaps five." It was difficult to tell, because the bodies had been so badly mangled. The others were staring at the rowboat, their expressions set grim. Jack hated to think how temptation must be torturing them. However, they were remaining strong, even Vukovich, and he felt a swell of pride for these once-monster, now men.

The rowboat they were looking down at must have set out from the stricken steamer while the attack was still underway. Perhaps those inside had hoped the confusion would hide their escape, or maybe it had been an act borne of desperation and terror. Either way, they had not gone far. Whether the slaughter had happened before the rowboat became grounded between rocks or after did not seem to matter. The people were torn and tattered, clothes ripped, eyes wide and disbelieving. Birds landed on the rowboat's gunwale, but strangely the carrion creatures did not seem tempted by the meat. Jack knew that was strange, and he tried probing toward those birds' minds to see what they saw, sense what they sensed. But perhaps he was too tired. In the water below them, and around the listing and stranded steamer, only silence.

"We should get ashore," Sabine said. "The daylight seems to have driven them away."

"Unless they're waiting," Jack said.

"I don't think so." She looked sadly at him, and Jack's heart almost broke. She seemed so lost and pained, and his effort to help her find herself had led to this. Chaos, danger, death. He did not feel responsible, but he did feel the weight of guilt. I should have been more afraid, he thought. I have been here before and it was terrible. I should have been more careful. Better prepared for the mysteries of this place.

But how could anyone have expected this?

"No one else is trying for shore," he said.

"Perhaps they're waiting for someone to lead them." She smiled, but it barely touched her eyes. So far from the sea, her only touch of water was this cursed river. Jack knew then that she was right; they had to reach shore and move on to Dawson. To stay here might prove to be the end for all of them.

"Something strange . . . ." Louis had been staring downriver at the stranded rowboat for some time.

"Yes," Maurilio said, nodding slowly.

Leaning against the timber railing outside the wheelhouse with Jack, Sabine glanced sidelong at him, frowning.

"Blood," Louis said.

"Of course there's blood," Sabine whispered.

"No." Maurilio turned slowly to look at them, hesitant to tear his eyes from the grotesque tableau. "There's not enough."

"Blood," the Reverend said. His voice was low and deep, a rumble that Jack was sure he felt through the decking. "Blood . . ." The Reverend was gripping the railing and staring at the bodies, and he suddenly seemed taller than before, thicker set. His brow protruded and his nose thickened. Across his cheeks and the backs of his hands, downy hair was turning thick and bristly.

"Reverend!" Jack said, surprised, because the man had seemed so in control up until now. "You've come this far!"

"And every step an agony . . . ." the Reverend said. His voice was as low and quiet as ever, but it seemed filled with a barely constrained rage that Jack had never suspected in him at all.

"Don't do this." Louis stepped forward, hands held out, and Jack expected a repeat of the slap he had dealt Vukovich during the night. But he was too slow. The Reverend lashed out and Louis went flying, bouncing from the wheelhouse structure and sprawling on the wooden deck at Jack's and Sabine's feet.

"Not now," Jack snapped, and it was not only fear for the Reverend. If he changed now, he would give them all away. Terrified, most of them probably now armed, the passengers and crew would not think twice about trying to undertake their own slaughter. And then the wolves would change and take them, murdering innocent souls and undoing every step they had taken toward humanity.

The Reverend leapt down the staircase to the lower deck, and Jack could see how he was still changing. He heard bones straining and cloth and flesh splitting, and as he ran the Reverend cried out, a pained and exultant shout. He ducked into a doorway and disappeared.

Maurilio glanced around in confusion. Jack and Sabine helped Louis to his feet.

"And now?" Louis asked.

"Now we leave him and run," Vukovich said.

Maurilio hesitated, ready to rush after the Reverend. "Leave him?"

"We can't just — "

A scream rose, high and loud. It ended quickly, replaced by the sound of something being battered against a wooden bulkhead.

"They're still here!" Maurilio said, beginning to panic. "Just waiting for us, around every corner! Maybe we're the last ones left alive, and — "

"Lost one of your dogs?" a voice called.

Ghost. Jack watched as the pirate captain emerged from the doorway the Reverend had disappeared through, dragging the Reverend, who was now a man again, behind him. Blood flowed from the human-shaped nose, and he was pushing with his feet, trying to stand. Ghost moved quickly and did not give him the chance.

Jack looked around, but could see no other eyes upon them. They're all hiding, he thought, and he could not blame the other passengers.

At the bottom of the ladder Ghost paused and looked up. His gaze rested on Sabine, and she glanced away, backing against Jack and grasping his hand in hers. Ghost shrugged slightly, then dropped the Reverend.

"You want to catch some bullets, let your natures free," he said. "You want to be hunted and blamed for this . . ." He waved a hand behind him, indicating the ship and the river. "Then let yourselves go, you dogs. Close your eyes and smell the blood." He did as he said, making a great show of breathing in, his big chest expanding and a grin splitting his face. "It's good. But it's wrong. Something so wrong, and we're not here for this. Any of us. Am I right, Sabine?"

Sabine looked away from him and did not answer.

"Jack?" Ghost said. "Am I right?"

"You're not wrong," Jack said. "But we're still our own crew, Ghost."

"Aye," Ghost said. "But lucky for you, I'm always less than a step away, eh?" He pulled the Reverend to his feet, clapped him on the shoulder, turned him and pushed him toward the stairs. The Reverend climbed, looking both sheepish and furious.

"Eh?" Ghost asked again. "Always less than a step away, Jack. Sabine. And soon you'll appreciate that. Now I'd say we need off this wreck. I've been — "

"We don't need your advice," Louis said.

"Well, Louis, I'm standing here talking to myself, then. Just musing upon my own options. If you don't want to hear, you'll need to close your ears or go elsewhere."

I do want to hear, Jack thought. Because he's as strong as any two of these men, and more intelligent than all of them together. He glanced and Sabine and she looked almost peaceful, the fear and sadness gone and replaced with something calmer. She was looking to the north. Perhaps she was already off this boat mentally, Jack thought, and travelling toward the revelations Jack had promised her.

"I've been down to the engine room, and it's flooded, the coal fires doused, paddle wheel shattered. And all around those lower decks . . . remains. A few dead people, but mostly just parts."

"And you didn't partake?" Jack asked pointedly.

"You're interested?" Ghost asked.

Jack shook his head.

"Whatever did this smashed holes in the hull big enough for five men to crawl through together," Ghost continued, his voice lower, face more serious. "Claw marks down there, and teeth. The strength to do that . . . . And the boat's grounded, sinking slowly into the river bed. Not going anywhere, probably ever again."

"You saw what did this?" Louis asked.

"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't," Ghost said.

Another game that the old Ghost would never have played. "We're leaving," Jack whispered, hoping Ghost would not hear from the base of the steps. "We knew that before this, and I've heard nothing to change my mind."

"Oh, I'm leaving too," Ghost said, as easily as if Jack had addressed him. "Just as soon as I've found something to eat." He turned and walked away, chuckling to himself, and it was only as he had his back turned that Sabine watched him go.

"You know we can't trust him," she said quietly. "You all still agree?"

"Oui," Louis said, as if it was a foolish question. The others nodded. The Reverend touched his chest and bowed his head, a silent apology that was accepted by all.

"Good," Sabine. "Because he's a monster looking for acceptance. And I think that makes him more dangerous than he ever was before."

The steamer had been driven aground with its stern closest to shore. There was no sign of Ghost as Jack and the others made their way there, but it was at the stern that they discovered some of the other survivors, arguing about what to do, milling aimlessly, and trying to overcome their fear with aggression and defiance.

The boat's captain was drunk, sitting on a pallet of belongings that had been dragged up on deck and grinning inanely at the proceedings. A mostly-empty whiskey bottle hung from his right hand.

"We should throw him overboard," Jack said, disgusted.

"One way of finding out whether anything's still waiting for us, mon ami," Louis said, and Jack knew he was only half-joking.

"You!" someone said. A short woman came forward, and by her manner Jack could see that she was used to being in charge. She wore her hair in a bun, trail clothes that had seen adventures for sure — loose trousers frayed around her heavy boots, a rough shirt, a leather waistcoat cracked and faded from exposure to the elements — and two pistols slung on her hips. Jack could see that the coach gun in her right hand had a stock smoothed by use, and she carried the weapon with a natural ease.

"Did you hit anything?" Jack asked as she closed on him, hand raised and finger pointed.

"Anything?" she asked. "'Course I hit somethin'. Water, darkness. Lump of rock, maybe. But I didn't see nothin' to hit nothin'. You, though. You all." She moved her hand slowly, pointing at Jack, Sabine and their companions. "I seen you fighting by the railin' last night. Just afore it happened. And there was somethin' wrong."

The captain chuckled, mumbled something none of them could understand, and took another swig of whiskey.

"We don't know any more than you," Jack said.

"Just that the crew were nervous," Maurilio volunteered. "Stories about people disappearing from around Dawson. They didn't like making this journey."

"What I hear, people have always disappeared around Dawson," she said, dismissing him. "It's that sorta place." She looked at the drunken captain, and for an awful moment Jack thought she was going to blast him with the coach gun. But she only snorted, dismissing him, and turned back to them.

"So, I was just tellin' the others here that we need off. Can't stay here scratchin' our asses when the boat's goin' nowhere."

"That's exactly what we're doing," Jack said. "Nothing to stay for, now. By my reckoning, we're maybe thirty miles from Dawson, hiking distance."

"I'd say thirty-five," the woman said.

"We don't need company," Louis said.

The woman looked at him, eyeing him up and down and frowning. What does she see? Jack wondered. He was used to these men, but when confronted with strangers he was always afraid that they would perceive something wrong about the ex-pirates. Something different.

"Neither do I, but I'm goin' the same way," she said. She nursed the coach gun across her folded arms, a silent threat.

"Jack." Sabine touched his arm and pulled him aside, nodding slightly at the others. "Safety in numbers?"

"Or perhaps the more of us there are, the greater the target," Louis said.

"Either way, we can't stop anyone else doing the same," Jack said. "Once these people see us leaving, more of them will be inclined to follow. They're a crowd right now. The one person who should be helping them is drunk."

"Cattle follow the herd," Vukovich said. Jack felt a momentary chill at his use of the word "cattle." It implied meat.

Jack nodded at the woman. "What's your name?"

"Callie King."

Jack looked around at the other passengers. Some were watching the exchange with interest, and some seemed too traumatized to do anything other than sit, or stand, or wait for night to fall again.

"So how do we get off this wreck, Callie King?"

Maurilio and Vukovich insisted on going first. The Reverend went with them, quieter than ever now, and Jack was not sure whether it was because he had almost lost himself, or because Ghost had beaten him down so easily. Ghost, in his human form, had beaten a werewolf on the change.

Jack had fought werewolves, but he had defeated them with guile and intelligence, never brute force.

Vukovich and Maurilio rowed, while the Reverend played out the coiled rope behind them. The river's current quickly caught the little rowboat — the only other boat left on the steamer — and dragged it downstream, but the two men pulled hard against the oars, gritting their teeth and allowing their unnatural strength to drag them across to the bank before the rope ended. With each splash of the oars Jack expected something to reach up out of the water and take them down, smashing the boat to matchwood and ripping the men apart, fooling everyone who had begun to believe that it was only darkness that would welcome attack. But they landed safely, hauled the rowboat ashore, then walked back along the bank, pulling the rope with them.

Once they reached a position upstream from the stranded steamer, the Reverend took up the slack and tied the rope to a thick tree. Raised from the river, the strained rope twanged when Vukovich grabbed at it, hissing spray into the air that gave life to three brief, beautiful rainbows.

Maurilio and Vukovich retrieved the boat and came across with it. As they nudged against the steamer, Jack, Sabine and Louis climbed down. But when the five of them sat there ready to haul themselves across to the bank, Jack saw the problem, and felt a pang of guilt. He looked up at the deck rail where Callie and several other passengers were gathered, watching them. Callie was frowning, glancing alternately from Jack to the river's surface and back again.

"One of you needs to come and bring the rowboat back," Jack said. "We'll be on our way as soon as we reach the shore."

Callie clapped the shoulder of the young man by her side. "Me and Skinny here will come, won't we?"

"Huh?" He looked surprised, and actually blushed at being noticed.

"What?" Callie said. "You thought comin' up here to find your fortune in gold would be easy?" She was japing, but Jack could hear the fear beneath her words, and something else as well. He thought she knew much more than she was letting on. He wondered whether it had been her pistols and rifle firing at their attackers the previous night, or whether she had been hiding away somewhere, knowing that bullets would have little effect and praying that she survived the night.

Callie nudged the man forward, and he grudgingly climbed down into the boat. She followed and then they were away, pulling on the rope and fighting the current all the way across. The Reverend held them steady while they disembarked, all but the young man.

"Back you go!" Callie said to him. "Go rescue some folks. They might even thank you."

The man did as he was told, and Jack, Sabine and the others stood on the bank with Callie slightly apart from them. Vukovich was wandering up and down the bank, looking at the muddy ground, and Jack could hear him quietly sniffing.

"Won't find no tracks," Callie said.

"How do you know?" Jack asked.

She shrugged, blustering a little. "Came from the river, didn't they?"

"Look at the wheelhouse," Sabine said, but Jack did not even need to look.

"Of course he's there," he said. "Come on. Let's head out."

With Ghost's eyes on his back, Jack walked away from the river and into the land he knew so well. The others followed, but he walked ahead for a while, alone. He hoped that soon his wolf would appear. He feared that they were all going to need its help, and its protection.

Chapter Five - Predators All

Jack kept a close eye on the river, one hand clutching his back-pack's shoulder strap and the other resting on the butt of the pistol jutting from his belt. Thirty-five miles across this terrain, lugging even just the supplies they'd agreed were vital, was going to be a hell of a slog. There was no way they were going to make it in a single day. And he had a feeling that nightfall would bring new troubles.

"You really think we'll be all right now that the sun's up?" asked a gruff, bearded man, as if reading Jack's mind. Tim Underwood wore fancy clothes, newly cut and tailored, but his carriage and manner of speech made it clear he was unaccustomed to wealth. Jack didn't have to ask his history to know that he was one of the few lucky ones — this wasn't his first trip to Dawson, and the last time he'd come, he'd returned home with plenty of gold.

The question had been addressed to Callie King, and she turned her wide blue eyes toward the man.

"Whatever came after us last night were gone at sunup, Mr. Underwood. Don't take a lot of imagination to think maybe the sun ain't their friend. But I can't make no promises about what kind of luck we're gonna have when evenin' rolls around again. Just be grateful for the long days this far north."

Underwood grunted and set about whispering to the two surviving prostitutes, who had joined up with them as they trekked north along the riverbank. Along with Jack and Sabine, the four wolves, Callie King, and other stragglers, their party numbered nineteen.

"I just don't understand why we're sticking so close by the river," one of the prostitutes, a red-haired girl named Maxine, loudly opined. She glanced continuously at the water and kept far to the left of the group, as if at any moment she might dart deeper into the woods like a frightened doe.

To Jack's surprise, it was the Reverend who answered. He seemed almost protective of the girl with the bright copper hair.

"There's a trail here, Maxine," the Reverend said, tall and dark-eyed, always with the mien of a stern minister. "The further you stray from the river, the harder going it'll be. And if you do find a trail deeper in the woods, it might some old Indian trail that doesn't lead toward Dawson at all."

Sabine looked kindly at Underwood and the prostitutes. "As Mr. Underwood can tell you, the river flows right through Dawson City. If we follow its course as long as we can, we're sure to reach our destination."

As long as we can, Jack thought. He glanced over at Callie King and saw her nod at the emphasis.

For the two hours since they'd set off, Jack had been focusing his senses outward. He had read about the meditations of the yogis of the Orient, and decided that he and they might in some ways be similar. With every inhalation, he cleared his mind, and with every exhalation he reached out into the wilderness around them again, paying special attention to the great river. He could sense the birds and fish, foxes and hares, and in the distance, a lynx. But there were none of those dark voids, those sinister absences of life that he had felt in the water during the night.

From time to time Jack glanced at Sabine. She walked closest to the water, its nearness keeping her strong. If they wandered too far from the river she might grow weak again, and he wanted to delay that for as long as possible. For the moment, he knew that she would be using her strange witchery to search the river, and so at least they would be warned should the monsters return.

Monsters, Jack thought. Strange how that word had evolved in his mind. He traveled with a sea witch and a quartet of murderous werewolves. Yet the witch was the woman he loved, and the wolves were trying very hard to be men again. He had come to the Yukon two years before to explore the wild within himself, and now Louis, Vukovich, Maurilio, and the Reverend were making their own journey into the wilderness, seeking humanity. It was a complex irony.

And what of that other monster, the worst he had ever known? They hadn't seen Ghost since they set off from the grounded steamer, and that suited Jack and his companions just fine.

"What happens when the sun goes down?" Maxine asked, picking up Underwood's question, and breathing hard from the effort of the hike, beads of sweat on her forehead despite the cool breeze and the shade of the trees. She wore heavy clothing in several layers, and Jack had refrained at suggesting she remove some. "If those things don't like the sunlight, what about the night?"

At first, nobody replied. Jack thought Callie King might even be biting her lip to keep her thoughts to herself. It solidified the suspicion he had that she knew more about their circumstances than she'd let on. Outwardly, she seemed a rough, almost masculine woman, and her speech sometimes implied ignorance. However, Jack felt certain that such appearances belied a fierce intelligence, and more knowledge of their predicament than she was letting on.

"We've got a lot of miles to cover and plenty of daylight yet to burn," Jack said, breaking the awkward silence. "Let's see how far we get by day's end, and worry about nightfall then."

It wasn't an answer any of them liked, but at least it got them moving. The threat of sundown hung over them and propelled them forward, and though they all carried some kind of pack and other supplies, whenever they paused nobody wanted to rest for long.

Fear helped them make excellent time.

Jack had hoped that they would encounter some familiar landmark that would enable him to gauge their distance from Dawson. But his last time on this stretch of river had been in a handmade boat that was fast taking on water, and then he and his friends had spent months trapped by ice and snow in a small cabin. They had barely survived, and were left suffering from symptoms of scurvy and malnutrition. Only now did he truly realize what a daze he had been in as they covered the miles to Dawson that spring.

"No idea at all, Jack?" Louis asked, his gold tooth glinting in the fading yellow light of afternoon.

"None," Jack replied. He reached his senses out into the woods and the river, and then glanced at Louis and the other wolves. They walked close together along the river bank. "But I don't feel anything resembling whatever that was last night. Could be we'll be okay tonight."

They looked at Sabine, who strolled by the water's edge. As if sensing their attention upon her, she turned and shook her head. "Nothing," she said softly.

"We must be getting close," Vukovich said hopefully.

"I don't think we've covered more than fifteen miles yet," the Reverend countered grimly. "It's slow going. We never should've let the rest of them tag along."

Jack glanced over at Tim Underwood and the little coterie of steamer passengers who seemed to have chosen him as their protector. As well as the two prostitutes they included one of the crewmen, and three men who'd been promised work in a hotel by a gentleman who'd invested plenty of money in Dawson. One of the hotel workers had brought his daughter, a quiet, yellow-haired girl of perhaps eleven. Dawson is no place for a girl so young, Jack thought, but that wouldn't matter if they never arrived.

"If we come under attack tonight," Jack said, "we have to do our best to protect them."

Maurilio growled softly. "Protect ourselves, you mean."

Louis gave him a vicious poke in the ribs. "That's the beast talking. Be a man."

Maurilio spun and glared at him, dropping the pack from his back. For a moment, the two men faced each other, nostrils flaring, lips curled back to show savage teeth. Jack glanced around anxiously and saw that Underwood and his group had all paused to watch the aggression unfold. He turned to look back at Callie King, who had been trailing twenty feet or so behind them for the last half dozen miles, almost as if she wanted to keep them in sight and didn't like the idea of anyone at her back. Now she watched curiously, but didn't seem at all surprised by the conflict.

"Boys," Jack said quietly.

"If those things come back tonight," Maurilio snarled, "it's going to be the beasts that survive."

He took a step toward Louis, but Vukovich grabbed his arm and held him back, and the Reverend did the same to Louis. Then Sabine stepped between them, reaching up to lay a hand on each of their chests. Gentle as she was, her eyes were full of all the storms of the sea.

"Gentlemen," she said, her voice firm. "You forget yourselves."

Louis sighed deeply and stepped back. A moment later, Maurilio did the same, shaking off Vukovich's touch.

"Walk," Jack commanded, falling in beside Maurilio, who hoisted his pack over his shoulder and began to march again. "I know you're skittish — "

Maurilio's eyes flared at this challenge to his courage and he glared at Jack. "You think — "

"Hush. I didn't say 'afraid.' You've got your hackles up. We all do, and for good reason. If the monsters return, could be you'll need to let the beast loose then, just to make it to the morning alive. What will be, will be. But if we fight amongst ourselves, that cuts down on all of our chances at survival, and I won't have it. Save it for whatever has mistaken us for prey."

After several more steps, Maurilio nodded.

But the Reverend had overheard, and he glanced at Jack and then Sabine. "They didn't come very far out of the water last night. Why are we so sure they can? Or do you think they were just toying with us?"

Jack watched Underwood tenderly helping Maxine and the other women maneuver around a massive felled pine.

"That's exactly what I think," he admitted. "I haven't felt any trace of them, but they'll be back when it's dark. And they'll be hunting for us."

"How can you be so sure?" Maurilio asked.

"Because they were hungry," Sabine whispered, just loud enough for them to hear. "It's all I could feel from them. Cruelty and hunger."

Jack reached out and took her hand and they trudged along together.

"Then we'd better get moving," the Reverend said.

Jack squeezed Sabine's fingers in his own. "You keep on," he said, glancing at the werewolves before kissing the back of her hand. "It's time I find out what Callie's been keeping from us."

None of them asked him what he meant. They had all sensed the reticence in the gun-toting woman.

As the late afternoon shadows grew longer and the sunlight began to glint from the rippled surface of the river, Jack knelt on the bank and brought handfuls of water to his mouth, drinking deeply. When he stood, he noticed that Underwood and the rest of his group had peeled off a ways into the woods, moving farther and farther from the river as the day crept closer to evening. That troubled him — the traveling would be harder, and Jack doubted distance from the water would make them any safer — but he had his own preparations to make for nightfall. And before he could prepare, he needed to know more.

"Thirsty work, all this lugging and trudging," Callie King said as she came up beside him.

"That's for sure," Jack agreed, shouldering his pack again.

Callie didn't stop, so he had to quicken his pace to catch up. When he fell in beside her, she said nothing more, and he felt sure that the woman was biting her tongue so as not to encourage conversation. Whatever she had on her mind, she had no interest in discussing it with Jack. But he was going to have to change her mind. He and his pack had secrets of their own, but he couldn't afford to let Callie hold onto hers any longer.

"Mr. Underwood seems to think we ought to put some distance between ourselves and the water now that night's closing in," Jack said.

The woman did little more than grunt as she hitched her pants, shifted the straps of her pack, and kept marching northward.

"You don't have an opinion?" Jack asked. "You don't seem to me the sort of woman usually lacking a perspective."

Callie cast him an amused look. "You're a sharp character, Mr. London. I knew that right off. I got a good eye fer that kinda thing."

Up ahead, Sabine walked side by side with Louis, and the others weren't far off. That was good. Jack felt sure that if trouble came again, they would all protect one another the way a pack should. Way off to his left he caught a glimpse of Underwood and one of the prostitutes. They tramped loudly through some underbrush, but in the dying daylight Jack couldn't make them out very well.

He studied Callie King, examining her more closely than he had before. The gun belt around her waist was well-oiled and rested perfectly, conformed by long familiarity to the shape of her hips. She wore two pouches slung over her shoulders and when anyone went near she covered them protectively. A knife handle jutted from its sheath at her hip, just behind her left gun holster. The way the handle glinted, even in the fading light, Jack could have sworn it was silver. He'd had some experience with silver knives. If the werewolves had noticed, they would surely have taken the knife from her already, killing her if they had to. Silver worked like poison in their blood; a wicked enough wound from that knife would be the death of any one of them.

Callie spun on him, her eyes cold and sharp as that blade. "Boy, if you've got somethin' to say, then you'd better spit it out. I ain't used to men's eyes lingerin' on me like this and it puts me in a fierce disposition."

As she'd turned, a chain swung out from around her neck. Jack only had a glimpse of it before it slid back into the open collar of her shirt, but it made him stiffen. A crucifix.

They stood toe to toe, gazing at each other in mutual suspicion. Callie had been quiet enough that no one stopped to watch or eavesdrop. Sabine and the wolves were forty or fifty feet upriver, and Underwood and the others were now lost to view. Only the sound of their clumsy progress through the forest marked their passing.

"Are you a religious woman, Miss King?" Jack asked. At the nape of her neck, her shirt was open enough to reveal a length of chain and the edge of the cross.

"Only as religious as I need to be," she said. "But I'll tell ya this much, Jack . . . I ain't your enemy. You seen some things. I can see that in yer eyes. I'll tell ya, you got a lot worse things to be afeared of out here in the wild than an old gal with too many weapons and not enough sense."

"What worse things?" Jack said. "See, I've got the feeling that you know a lot more about what attacked us last night than you're letting on. I'm not your enemy, either. We're out here together. If those things come hunting for us, we've got a lot better chance of surviving if we work together . . . and if we know what we're up against."

Callie scratched the back of her head beneath her hair bun and glanced off across the water as if she hadn't a care in the world, but Jack could see she was ruminating on his words. After a few moments she sniffed and studied him again, looking him over like a tailor or a mortician taking mental measurements for a future customer.

"There're things most people have trouble lettin' into their heads," Callie said. "In my experience, folks ain't fond of any information makes 'em change the way they see the world."

"I've run across some of those things myself," Jack said, studying her right back. "It might surprise you to learn just how it is I see the world."

Callie looked up along the riverbank, where Sabine had finally noticed that Jack was no longer following and had stopped Louis and the others to wait for him. The werewolves were gazing back at Callie with the same curiosity in their eyes that she had in hers.

"It might," Callie allowed. "But then again, might be there's not much you could tell me that'd surprise me. Your friends, for instance? Ain't one of 'em that's completely human." She turned a dark eye upon him. "But then I 'spect you know that already."

The rushing of the river seemed suddenly loud and the wind in the trees had turned colder. The long afternoon shadows extended their embrace, the daylight failing, and in that moment Jack realized that dusk had crept upon them with an uncommon stealth.

"Yeah," Callie said, with a smile that did not reach her eyes. "Maybe I ain't been exactly forthcomin', but then I ain't the only one. Truth be told, them boys you're with are a bit of a riddle to me. I got my guesses as to what they might be, but my guesses don't add up, cuz if I was right they'd have had us all fer breakfast, with not had much left over fer lunch."

"Miss King — "

She laughed. "I done told you already, Jack. Call me Callie. Specially if we're gonna be sharin' secrets." She nudged him forward, turning to resume walking northward. "Now let's get on after your friends. Night's movin' in. Won't be long till we're too busy tryin' to stay alive to swap stories."

"I'm coming," Jack said, hurrying to catch up with her, marveling at her long stride, especially after the day they'd had. "You need to tell me what we're up against. I swear I'll believe you. The steamer crew were talking about polar bears, but I know that's crazy. They don't come this far south. Even if they did, they wouldn't attack like those things did last night."

With a thoughtful noise, Callie furrowed her brow, adjusting her pack again. "Polar bears, huh? Could be, I suppose."

"What?" Jack asked, incredulous. He'd begun to believe she really had some kind of knowledge of the supernatural — at least of monsters — but if she thought they'd been attacked by polar bears, maybe he had simply let her bizarre ramblings persuade him of something that wasn't there.

"Well, they'd want to be somethin' powerful. And them bears are the strongest there is." Callie was moving even faster, hurrying to catch up to Sabine and the pack. She dropped one hand to the hilt of her silver knife, and that made Jack nervous. If she did know his companions were werewolves, what would her next move be?

"I don't understand," Jack said. Did she mean they were bears the same way Louis and the other pirates were wolves? Were-bears? Was such a thing possible? After he'd killed the Wendigo he had been forced to open his mind to a great many things he would never have dreamed could exist.

Callie frowned at him. "You talk real nice, Jack. Smart. You read books, I bet."

"Of course."

She snickered. "'Course,' he says, as if everyone reads 'em. They don't. But I'm wonderin' if you read one in particular, by a fella named Stoker."

Realization flooded Jack's thoughts. He had indeed read the book, published just a few years earlier, a novel by Bram Stoker about a bloodthirsty creature who preyed on the innocent, a thing from the darkest folk tales of the Old World.

"You think the things that came after us last night were vampires?" Jack asked. "That doesn't make any sense. They were in the water. And strong or not, whatever was down there was much bigger than a man."

Callie had one hand on the butt of a pistol and her other on the knife. She cast nervous glances right and left, her muscles tensing as the dusk deepened from gray to indigo and the first stars began to appear.

"I figured you fer a reader," she said, satisfied with her judgment. "But, see, Stoker took most of his ideas from old European legends. In them stories, vampires could turn into animals. A wolf or a bat or a rat. Some say spiders, too. I've run across 'em more than once and I can tell you, that ain't just a story. Seen it with my own eyes."

Jack tried to take all of that in.

"What is it?" the Reverend called back to him. Vukovich and Maurilio watched Jack and Callie approaching with wary expressions, standing slightly crouched, ready for violence if it became necessary.

The pack had sensed something in him, or seen the alarm in his face, but Sabine did not look at him; she hung her head as though the weakness she'd felt away from the water had returned. She had a hand on Louis's arm, and Jack worried that something had happened to her.

"You came up here looking for them," Jack said to Callie.

"Got a friend in Dawson — Len Truman — started up a mercantile last year. He got a message to me about people turnin' up missing and his suspicions in that regard. I did hear mention of polar bears."

"Vampire polar bears!" Jack said, shaking his head. "That's insane. It doesn't make any sense."

"You're thinkin' about it all wrong," Callie replied. "If them vampires in Europe turn into wolves, maybe that's just cuz they got plenty of wolves about. But let's say these bloodsuckin' demons can turn themselves into all kinds of animals? Now, let's say you got some vampires who were part of one of the local Indian tribes. Tiklit. Tigrit. Whatever they are. Don't ya suppose they'd be likely to turn into the kinds of animals they knew best? Up in these parts, what's stronger or more ferocious than a bear?"

Jack's head was spinning, but he couldn't deny that the rough-hewn woman had a certain logic to her argument. Truthfully, how could he debate the point when he was traveling with werewolves?

"I hope your friends are as wild as I think they are," Callie went on, drawing one of her guns. "We're gonna need all the help we can get."

They were about ten feet from Sabine and the wolves now.

Jack glanced at Callie. "You're that sure they're going to come for us?"

"Come for us?" Callie asked. "Hell, boy, I'd bet my last dime they're already here."

As Jack closed the last few feet between himself and his companions, he began to open himself up, to reach out with his heart and soul to whatever animals might be around him. As he reached Sabine, she looked up with fear in her eyes, and he knew he had no need to seek the monsters out. They were already here.

Off to the west, where Tim Underwood had led the other survivors, the night erupted in screams.

Maurilio was the first to break into a run, sprinting north along the river bank. Jack shouted for him to stop, but the wolves were skittish — they weren't used to encountering anything that might view them as prey — and once he'd bolted, the animal in Maurilio had taken over.

"Get him back here or he'll be dead," Jack snapped at Vukovich, who tore off in pursuit.

Jack took Sabine's hand, searching her eyes. "What do you feel?"

"There are two in the river, closing in," she said, her expression grim. The wind kicked up, rushing through the trees as her elemental magic stirred the air. Her power would be diminished so far from the sea, but it wasn't gone completely.

"I figure two more over that way," Callie King said, gesturing toward the thick pines from which screams still arose. "More than that, and I wouldn't lay odds on any of us seeing the sun rise."

Jack's skin prickled and his heart hammered in his chest. Here in the Yukon, he felt so much closer to the wild part of himself, and now he let it out — let it feel the wind and smell the river, and the vegetation, and the animal scents of the werewolves. The beasts within them might be more visible and harder to control than his own, but he still had a wildness inside.

Reaching out with his senses, touching nightbirds and sleeping hares, he found the two dark voids moving through the woods to the west. The pure malice and cruelty emanating from them caused him a stab of nausea, but he ignored it. His love for Sabine filled his heart. Keeping her safe was his first priority.

"Louis. Reverend," Jack said, turning to them. "We stay together." He gestured to Callie. "She's with us, and she knows more about what we're facing than we do. If Callie gives you advice, take it."

The screams to the west began to diminish. Jack knew that soon, the creatures over there would be coming for them.

"Let's move!" he said.

"Stay by the river," Callie said as they started to run. "Sabine, sing out if you feel them getting closer."

Sabine's eyes darkened. Her hair flew behind her as she ran, and she squeezed Jack's hand as if to let him know she was all right. Louis and the Reverend led the way as they hurried over the rutted, rocky bank, a dozen feet from the water. Jack scanned the trees, feeling for those dark voids, and he knew that Sabine focused her search on the water.

The Reverend stumbled over a jutting stone and growled as he righted himself. His jaws had grown more prominent, sharp teeth glinting in starlight. Something crashed through the trees off to the left and Jack frowned, only now sensing that one of the two on that side had gotten closer and was pacing them, lumbering through the pines and yet not attacking, as if enjoying their fear and the thrill of the hunt.

A roar split the night, but Jack knew it was not a true bear.

"What are they, Jack?" Sabine asked, though she glanced at Callie when she said it. "What's hunting us?"

Before he could answer he spotted Vukovich and Maurilio ahead. The two werewolves were half-transformed, facing one another with claws and fangs bared. Jack wished he had a club to beat Maurilio for his stupidity.

"Fall in, you idiots!" he shouted, running closer. "There are other monsters to fight!"

"I'll be damned," Callie said as she caught sight of the beast-men. Instinct made her lift her pistol and take aim at them.

"No!" Sabine shouted, letting go of Jack's hand and grabbing Callie's wrist. "They're no threat to you!"

Callie's eyes glimmered with rage, but she went back to scanning the river as Vukovich and Maurilio began to lope alongside the rest of them.

"That about what you guessed?" Jack asked her, clutching the hunting knife he'd taken from his pack.

"I've heard about all kinda strange critters in this world," Callie huffed, trying to catch her breath. "I just never figured to be partnered up with any of 'em."

If not for the echoes of the screams still lingering in the air, Jack might have smiled at that. They ran on, breath rasping, packs heavy on their backs, grunting with effort. They had knives and guns at the ready, but of all of them only Callie King seemed to wield those weapons with any confidence. She knew what she was facing. She had fought some version of this evil before.

"I smell something," the Reverend called out. "Smells like — "

"There!" Sabine shouted, pointing at a point in the rushing river even as she kept on running. "They're — "

A huge shape erupted from the current, water spilling off of it. Moon and starlight turned white fur to a pale yellow, but even in dark silhouette, there was no mistaking the bear. It roared and lunged toward them. Jack clutched his knife, knowing how pitiful a weapon it would be. Louis and Vukovich fired their pistols and the bullets struck home, thunking into dry flesh but not slowing the monster at all.

Sabine whimpered and Jack thought for a moment she might be afraid. Then he glanced at her and saw that she had been transformed. Her hair whipped in a wind that seemed to swirl only around her. The river began to surge and churn and crash against the monstrous bear, its red eyes bright with fury and contempt as it was dragged backward. It thrashed against the water and fought its way nearer.

Wispy clouds formed above the river. Sabine's witchery was limited here. Sparks of gold lightning danced in her eyes, and the clouds over the river lit up with electrical static. She reached toward the sky, but Jack could see the frustration in her face, because the true power of the elements was out of her reach. The lightning would not come.

Gunshots boomed out over the water. Jack spun to see Callie King standing boldly on the bank. She'd put her knife away and stood firing both of her pistols at the massive, red-eyed bear. Four shots, grouped in the center of its chest. The bear staggered, dark blood spilling from its wounds where the bullets had struck it. Then it slid into the water, vanishing beneath the river as the current dragged it away.

"That's what I smelled," the Reverend growled, turning his gun toward Callie. "The woman's using silver bullets!"

The werewolves all rounded on her, standing in a half-circle to face her. Vukovich and Maurilio were still half-transformed, while Louis and the Reverend wore the faces of men, but their monstrous, savage nature contorted their features.

"Damn right," Callie said. "And this silver just saved yer bacon, ya damn fool mutts."

"It's not over," Sabine warned. "There's another in the water."

"And two more in the woods," Jack added. He sensed them there, pacing, waiting. They'd been toying with their prey before, but now perhaps they were a bit wary after one of their own had been killed.

"Keep moving," Jack snapped at the werewolves.

They hesitated, but Sabine shouted at them to go, and this time they obeyed. Whether any of the people who'd followed Underwood were still alive, Jack didn't know. Perhaps he would have the opportunity to go back and check on them once the danger had passed.

As the wolfish pirates ran, they all glanced back at Callie every few moments, nervous about having silver at their backs.

"Polar bears?" Sabine said, running close beside Jack, her eyes still alight with the tiny crackle of lightning that danced inside them. "Those things aren't ordinary bears. The malice that burns in them — "

"Vampires," Jack said, glancing at her. "They can masquerade as animals."

"Like the werewolves," Sabine said.

"Nothin' like the werewolves," Callie put in, keeping stride with them, even as the wolves raced ahead. "These boys you keep company with, they ain't people anymore. They're beasts. Hungry, yeah. Wild. But vampires are somethin' else . . . They're evil, pure and simple. Anything pure'll hurt 'em — the sun, silver, even faith — 'cause all they got inside 'em is darkness and hurt. If there's a Devil, you better believe he put a little piece of Hell in each and every one of these things."

Jack said nothing. The time for words had passed. He let his heart match the rhythm of his boots on the earth, steadied his breathing, all the while watching the water and the trees and wondering where the next attack would come from. Ahead, he saw Vukovich crouch and drop into a long, loping run, half-man and half-wolf. The pirate was on the verge of fully shedding his humanity, perhaps thinking it would make him more effective in a fight. Jack wasn't sure about that. Guns and knives might not do much damage to a vampire without a silver component, but they'd slow an attack at least.

"There!" the Reverend called, pointing into the pines on the left.

A glimpse of white fur revealed itself in a gap amidst the trees, but it was gone in a blink. There had been a great deal of crashing about before, but now the two hellish things in the woods managed to move almost soundlessly, the only noise of their passing the whisper of a wind gust. A sick feeling continued to spread through Jack, a nauseating chill that coiled inside him like poison, and he wondered if this was what it felt like to be in the presence of real evil. He'd encountered madness and the supernatural before, but nothing like this.

Something splashed in the river and he twisted that way, but saw nothing.

"Toying with us again," Sabine said.

"Playing with their food," Callie muttered. "Giving yer boys a taste of their own medicine, I guess."

Of the four pirates racing ahead of them, Louis was the straggler, and he overhead Callie's comment. He snarled, revealing gleaming fangs as he turned to shoot her a withering look. His golden tooth shone in the moonlight.

"My patience with this game wears thin," he called back. "There are three of them and seven of us. The time for running is done."

"We run as long as these fellas give us room," Callie replied. She'd holstered her guns again to make running easier, and they shifted heavily with every stride. "Trust me, doggy. You don't fight these things unless you have to."

"Doggy?" Louis snapped. "Who are you calling — "

"Shut up, Louis," Jack said through gritted teeth. "Watch the trees."

He gave Jack a dark look. Even back on board the Larsen, when Jack was a prisoner, they had shared a certain amiable connection, an alliance. But no matter how rational Louis seemed, Jack had to remember he was not rational at all. His human face was only a façade. Jack might teach them to appreciate their human nature and to control their savagery, but the savagery would never be scoured from them. If he forgot that vital fact, he knew it would be at his peril. Right now, though, his only concern was keeping them all alive, and that meant staying on guard.

They kept running, expecting an attack at any moment. Trees whipped at their faces. Maurilio stumbled into the shallow edge of the river and leaped back out as if burned. Jack could sense the darkness pacing them in the woods, and Sabine confirmed the one in the water remained, churning upriver through deep water. Jack caught glimpses of white through the pines and that poisonous taint he felt in his heart seemed to sicken him further. He felt unclean. Scrubbing his skin would not be enough to remove the taint of the monsters.

"It's like they're herding us," Sabine whispered, her breath rasping with the effort of running.

Jack hadn't thought of it that way, and the idea blossomed into terror in his mind. He'd been thinking the same as Callie, that they were being toyed with. The vampires must know that Louis and the others were werewolves, or at least knew they were inhuman, and they were enjoying this torment — making the predators run in fear. What if Sabine was right? What if the devils were herding them? The question became . . . to what? Were there more of them ahead, lying in wait? Did a massacre await them further upriver?

"Callie," Jack said, huffing with effort, catching glimpses of white in the pines. "This is foolish. They'll just let us run all night and wait until we're too exhausted to go on. There's no way we make it to sunrise without having to fight."

The woman stopped running, and they all took a breath. She hocked something up from the depths of her throat and spat into the water, and when she spoke she did not look up at Jack. "I reckon you're right."

"Better to fight while we can still walk," Sabine said.

Callie snapped around to glare at her. "Didn't I just say that? I ain't stupid, missy. I was just hopin' a better option would come along."

"The cavalry's not coming, Callie," Jack said quietly.

The hunter sighed and drew her guns again. "Fine. It's pretty enough here by the river. Good a place as any to die."

Chapter Six - The Stand

The pause, the peace, seemed endless. Even the sound of the river receded for a while, and Jack thought that the land was holding its breath. Perhaps when these monsters were close, it always did.

He glanced at Sabine standing close beside him. She seemed more settled than she'd been since leaving the stranded steamer. The calm before the storm, he thought, and her eyes sparkled with the wild.

Beside her, Callie stood stern and determined, guns held down at her hips. She was breathing deeply, slowly, and if she felt fear, she did not show it. Jack had a sudden, piercing need to know her story, because perhaps somewhere and sometime it crossed his own. Then the attack came, and he had only an instant to hope he would soon be able to ask.

One of the beasts burst from the trees, strangely silent. The polar bear's mouth was open, visage as fierce and furious as any Jack had ever seen, but it did not growl or roar, and somehow its silence was more awful. More filled with a serious purpose. Its teeth glimmered in the moonlight. Its long, long teeth . . . .

Vukovich surged forward to meet the huge bear, and just as they struck face to face, Louis hit it from the side. Limbs lashed and slashed, bodies rolled, and at last there was noise as something roared in pain.

Callie raised her revolvers.

Silver bullets, Jack remembered. With Vukovich in the line of fire.

"No!" Jack said, and then they all heard the surge of water as another bear burst from the river. Jack turned in time to see the beast rise from the flowing waters like a nightmare carved from ice, fall upon Maurilio, and sink its impossibly long claws into his chest and throat. It pulled him back into the river, biting into his face as it went. It swallowed Maurilio's scream, and blood sprayed black in the moonlight.

Sabine groaned and went to her knees. Lightning thrashed. It arced across the sky above them in a sheet, but it must have struck the ground somewhere far away, if at all.

The Reverend was already splashing into the water after Maurilio. He was fully changed now, his wolfish shape bounding so quickly that he almost seemed to leap across the currents, colliding with the bear's shoulder and driving it onto its side.

Maurilio was still clasped in its mouth, but it freed its claws from his flesh to lash out at the Reverend. He was faster than the bear — this time, at least — and he swung up and around onto its back, opening his extended jaws sickeningly wide before plunging his face into the back of the bear's neck, gnawing, biting, shaking his head to tear skin and flesh.

Callie took three steps toward the river and raised her guns. The first shot went wide, and then Jack was behind her, knocking her aside and kicking at her wrists. One gun spun from her grasp and struck the ground.

"No!" he shouted. "You'll hit them!"

Callie turned on him, but she seemed calm and composed instead of angry. That's just what she intended, Jack thought. He barged into her, knocking her over and bending to pick up her dropped gun at the same time.

"Maurilio," Sabine breathed, and Jack looked up.

The Reverend was still clasped to the bear's back, slashing and biting at the creature that was at least six times his size and weight. Part of Maurilio was still jammed between the bear's jaws. But only part. His headless body had been flung aside and now lay across a rock protruding from the river, water crashing against it and foaming dark with blood.

In the polar bear's jaws, Maurilio grimaced his last.

Jack raised the gun, shouting, "Reverend!"

The Reverend did not even look up. He kicked himself away from the bear and landed in the water, and as the beast leapt after him Jack fired three times in quick succession.

Beside him, Callie had knelt and opened fire as well.

Several dark spots appeared across the Polar bear's shoulder and the side of its head, and it slumped forward into the surging waters, sinking out of view before surfacing again to be carried away with the flow. Jack could not see whether it still carried any part of Maurilio in its grotesque jaws. He's gone, Jack thought, and he was surprised to feel a pang of grief. Maurilio had been a monster, true, but one that was struggling to find his humanity. In death, perhaps all were equal.

The bear floated away in the grip of the river. With it went a stink that polluted Jack's thoughts, and a blight on the natural wilderness that made this place so challenging and so beautiful.

But it was not the only one.

"Two down!" Callie said. She sounded almost exuberant as she stood and hurried past Jack and Sabine, heading toward where Louis and Vukovich were fighting the other bear. She left Jack with the revolver, and he tried to remember whether it was the one she'd managed to fire from before he had knocked her aside. He might have three shots left, but he should only rely on two.

"One more still in the trees," Sabine said.

"Yes. Can you . . . ?" He did not finish, because already the breeze was whipping around her, and the light of elemental powers danced in her eyes. After a moment she frowned, and shook her head as a bolt of lightning struck somewhere distant from them.

"It's not easy," she said. Jack grasped her hand.

"It doesn't matter. Come on." He followed Callie toward the fight just as the Reverend emerged from the river, dripping blood and water and grinning a many-toothed grin as he pounced across the ground and leapt at the struggling polar bear. He clamped onto one massive front leg and bit, shaking his head again as he tried to cripple the creature.

Jack watched the tree line ahead of them, and behind, and also the river in case the fourth bear had circled them and was ready to attack from the water.

"Jack, there's something else," Sabine said.

"What?"

She nodded toward the trees. "Another fight."

Perhaps some of them have survived, Jack thought, and he wished Tim Underwood well.

The polar bear before them — the vampire polar bear, impossible yet horrifically real — seemed to have met its match in the three werewolves. It was far from beaten, but the brutal combat was fast, vicious, and bestowing injuries on both sides. The bear's hide was open in several places, dark and glimmering in the moonlight. Vukovich, the Reverend and Louis harried it whilst shrugging off their own injuries. Louis had been gored to the bone across his left shoulder, and Vukovich nursed a tattered right hand. Though the bear stomped and kicked, the Reverend held onto the beast's leg with his teeth and claws, digging deep with both to reach the ligaments and nerves whose slicing would render the limb useless.

Callie ducked left and right, looking for a clear shot. Because while the fight might be matched, none of the wolves could deliver the coup de grace. Jack was glad to see that this time, Callie was more aware of not hitting them. He wondered whether she was simply conscious of the number of bullets she had left.

She's got more in those pouches, surely? Now was not the time to ask.

If he called off the wolves in order to get Callie a clear shot, the last one in the bear's reach might be gored and crushed, killed.

"Sabine, can you confuse it?" Jack asked. Back at sea, during their escape from the Larsen and the battle aboard Death's ship, Sabine has touched on the minds of wolves to confuse or distract them. Now Jack asked her to do the same to a vampire.

She turned to him, face drawn, eyes wide and dark. He had sensed those soulless things out there, as well as her. Jack could understand how terrible it might be to touch their minds, rather than simply seek them out. He almost withdrew his question.

But Sabine only held his hand tighter and closed her eyes, and moments later the polar bear paused in its assault and looked skyward. Its blood-soaked mouth opened in a furious roar, and Vukovich took the opportunity to slash his unnatural claws across its throat.

Blood sprayed, darkening the ground.

The bear looked at Vukovich. Furious. Monstrous. The light dimmed in Vukovich's eyes as he realized he was next.

Callie fired, and her bullet shattered one of the bear's six-inch teeth and ricocheted into the night.

The bear's head snapped to the side, and the Reverend fell away from its leg, kicking himself backward from whatever he had sensed of the hot silver bullet.

Sabine slumped to the ground and vomited, and Jack knelt with her, still holding her hand while he brought up his gun on the other hand. But good shot though he was, Louis was still clasped to the rolling, biting, roaring bear, and the Reverend and Vukovich quickly rejoined the fray.

"Damn!" Jack shouted, frustrated and terrified at how this would end. Already Maurilio was gone, torn apart and left to the watery wild. The others were hurt. Perhaps a wound dealt by another unnatural creature would eventually kill them. He didn't know, and probably neither did they.

Every instinct urged him away, but Jack let go of Sabine's hand and moved forward, closer to the fight. If only he could get a clearer shot. If only —

Callie darted past him and leapt at the bear. Her hand glinted silver, and as she lashed out and the bear screeched with pain and fury from the wound she dealt, the three wolves released their enemy and flinched back from the weapon Callie bore.

It will fall on her and rip her to shreds, Jack thought.

As if his thoughts were prophecy, the bear lunged for her. Callie dove out of the way, dropping her knife as she rolled beyond its reach, but now the bear loomed over her again, and this time it would not fail.

"Hey!" Jack snatched the blade from the ground. The bear twisted toward him, blood streaking its fur and its already viscous mouth yawning and bristling with teeth longer than any bear should have. Drawing its attention from Callie, Jack stood within its shadow, crouched down with the blood-smeared silver knife in one hand, borrowed gun in the other.

"Jack!" Sabine said. "Shoot!"

As the bear roared and reached for him, claws ready to rip, Jack fired his last two bullets. The first missed, but the second stuck its leg.

The beast twisted away, voice thundering with unimaginable pain, rolling and thrashing across the ground. Then it stood and ran for the trees.

"Don't let it get away!" Vukovich growled, his voice only half-human. He ran after it, Louis and the Reverend making to follow.

"No need," Callie said. "Bastard's done for."

As she spoke, the bear struck a tree fifty feet from them, reared up, and fell onto its back in the undergrowth. A cloud of pale dust burst into the air where it had fallen. "Gone," Callie said. "Back to the stuff we're all made of."

"None of us is anything like that thing!" Sabine said, her disgust evident.

Callie sighed, then turned to Jack and Sabine and smiled. "You'd be surprised," she said. Her smile turned sad and her gaze because distant, miles and years away. "I was."

Jack appraised the wolves to see just how badly they were hurt. They had quickly regrouped, pulling close to Jack, Sabine and Callie, ready to face the final beast's attack. They were bloodied and torn, each carrying wounds. Yet they each exuded a strength and ferocity that Jack could not help but respect.

Callie moved away from them, back toward the river.

"They're no enemy of yours," Jack said, but Callie did not even glance at him. Her eyes were fixed on what the three men had become. She was rooting in one of her chest pouches, her frown deepening. Counting bullets, Jack thought. And not happy with how many she's got left.

She held her left hand out for her silver knife and Jack returned it to her.

"The last one," Callie said. "If your . . . friends can hold it down, I'll finish it." She holstered her gun moved the knife to her right hand.

"I don't think the last one is there anymore," Sabine announced. She was swaying where she stood, weakened by her efforts and perhaps by what she had touched upon in that monstrous bear's consciousness. Jack reached for her arm, but she shook him off. "I don't think it's there."

Jack tried to probe outward with his own senses. But his heart was thudding, his ears throbbed, and he could not concentrate.

"I think —" Louis growled, and then the night was broken by a terrible scream. It started as a roar and rose higher, louder, before being suddenly cut off and leaving them in a more dreadful silence.

Something was moving toward them through the trees.

"Jack," Sabine whispered, "I know it!"

The shape burst from the trees and ran at them, and already Jack knew what was to come. The wolves — senses heightened, blood boiling with the fight — spread out and readied themselves for an attack. Callie stood firm, the knife in her hand, her determination in the face of this new threat admirable.

As Ghost ran toward them, Jack found Callie rising even higher in his estimations.

Their old captain stopped twenty feet from Jack and Sabine, the three surviving, bleeding wolves covering him from the sides. He was grimacing through a mask of blood. He held something behind his back, and from the bulging of his arm and shoulder muscles, Jack knew that it was heavy.

"The last of your friends," Ghost said, and tossed it at them. A polar bear's head, flesh ragged where it had been ripped and hacked from its body, thudded to the ground and bounced toward Jack. With each bloody bounce it seemed to shrink instead of appearing larger, yet Jack took several steps back.

"'Ware the blood!" Callie said.

The head rolled to a stop. It stared up at the moon, mouth slightly open, long teeth receding even in death, one eye swollen almost shut as it reverted to human. The skin was dark, hair long and unbraided. Jack looked down on the face of a man, and for a shocking moment he thought that Ghost's laughter issued from the dead Tlingit Indian's mouth.

"There are no more," Sabine said softly. She was staring at Ghost.

"Not close, at least," Callie said. She stepped forward, still holding the silver knife, and nudged the head with her foot. Jack looked away. The head looked so wrong, like it could have never been part of a living, breathing man with dreams and ambitions. Unnatural dreams, he corrected himself. Bloody ambitions.

The three wolves were slowly reverting back to human form, watching Ghost as they did so.

Ghost looked back the way he had come. His clothes looked whole and untorn, his body big but not deformed. Had he really fought and defeated that thing in his wholly human form? Jack did not know, and truly the answer frightened him.

After the burst of violence and blood, the scene was suddenly peaceful. No night-creatures called from the darkness — shocked or scared into silence, perhaps — and there was only the sound of the river and their own heavy breathing. Ghost remained looking back into the dark spread of trees from where he had emerged. Vukovich glanced over his shoulder at the river, and the vague shadow of Maurilio's beheaded body still caught on the rocks. Sabine moved close to Jack, and he could sense her exhaustion. He hoped she held no guilt, and he was about to turn to her and say so when Ghost spoke at last.

"Your beast aided me, Jack."

Jack knew immediately what he meant, but still he asked, "My beast?"

"The wolf. Your wolf." Ghost looked back at them, and his smile was oddly soft. "More a wolf than any of us ever were, that's for sure. A proud beast, and strong. It jumped at the monster's throat as it went for me when I fell." He seemed almost shocked that a creature as mighty and as mysterious as Jack's wolf had come to aid instead of attack him.

"It must have seen something worth saving," Jack said.

Ghost came closer and looked down at the head, staring up from the ground between them all. "Either that or it wants them all dead."

"Any right thinkin' thing, man or beast, wants all of them dead," Callie said. She was still holding her knife, Jack noticed. Standing before him, she was looking directly at Ghost. Jack wished he could see her expression, because he had never seen her so still. Like a dog on the hunt, or a rabbit frozen in the gaze of a dreadful predator.

"The other passengers are all dead," Ghost said, pointing back over his shoulder with his thumb. "They put up a scrap, but not much of one. And there wasn't much they could do. Only one of them armed, and they went for him first. Then the others. Played with them a bit." He looked up and caught Callie's eye, stared right back at her. Jack had been subject of Ghost's glare on many occasions, and he respected Callie for not backing down at all. "You don't often see animals playing with their prey like that. The hunger was there, for sure. I could smell their hunger from where I hid, watching. But they were enjoying it, as well."

"You didn't help them," Callie said.

Ghost smiled, hands held out. "There was no one there I wished to save."

"Just what the hell are you?" Callie asked.

"Ghost is mostly like the others," Sabine said, loud enough for them all to hear.

"No," Callie said, "he ain't."

Ghost laughed and walked toward Louis, paused in front of him, then did the same to Vukovich and the Reverend. He was smiling and pleasant, not at all threatening, but none of the men backed down. The air rang with old violence, the threat of something new was distant, and seemed to Jack unlikely. When Ghost at least reached him and Sabine — passing Callie without a glance — Jack knew that things had changed.

Before, the journey had been about their final aim. Sabine was the one, the reason, and although Jack's venturing back to the Yukon might also lay some of his ghosts to rest, it was Sabine's great history and deep mystery they had come here to solve. On the way, perhaps, the wolves would discover more about themselves, and in the wild would find themselves more a part of the world.

Now it was as much about the journey as the final destination. Maurilio was gone, torn to shreds by a monster that left a blank space in the soul of the world. Vampires had hunted them, and would perhaps hunt them some more. They had to survive long enough to reach Dawson, and from there Jack was unsure where fate would take them.

Ghost, he now understood, was an inextricable part of their future. Perhaps he always had been, from the time Jack had dreamed of him swimming after their ship. Their paths had always been destined to cross again. Fighting that destiny had perhaps been the wrong path.

"Ghost," Jack said, and he heard Sabine's sharp inhalation. She can hear my acceptance, he thought.

"Mister London."

"You've been following us."

"For longer than you think, Jack."

Jack stood his ground before Ghost's imposing presence. The wolves were panting, and as they reverted fully back into their human guise, there were gentle sighs of pain as they examined their own wounds. Now there was also a sense of confidence about the group that had been absent before. On the steamer, sighting Ghost every now and then, they had been waiting for something to happen. When the vampire polar bears had attacked, their main aim had been escape and survival. Instead they had fought back, and proved themselves a capable team. Maurilio's loss was sad, but Jack knew that the others would view it as an acceptable sacrifice. They had proved themselves against monsters larger than them, more powerful, and easily more terrible.

Ghost's help had not been requested, and yet he had taken one of the beasts single-handedly, with no distraction, and no silver bullets or blade.

"It's perhaps twenty miles to Dawson," Jack said. "Callie, will there be more?"

"Perhaps," she said, still clasping the knife. "Four will be a great loss to them, but they're not things that'll retreat to lick their wounds."

"They'll be out for revenge," Louis said, staring at Ghost. "And we all know the madness revenge can bring down."

Ghost raised an eyebrow but did not reply.

"We go as fast as we can," Jack said. "My guess is about seventeen miles, maybe five or six hours. By the time the rest of their . . . pack, or whatever it is, discovers what has happened, we'll be in Dawson."

"And what then?" Sabine asked. "What if Dawson . . ." She trailed off, the inference obvious.

"Dawson's prepared," Callie said, but did not elaborate. "Jack's right. Stayin' here's a fool's game. We need to move on as soon as we can."

"We should check the others, see if there are survivors," Sabine said.

"I told you, no survivors." Ghost's voice was light but deep. Jack though he was enjoying this.

"Then we should use the dead for meat," the Reverend said. "Our blood is up. We've expended energy fighting."

Jack and Sabine glanced at each other. Jack felt the familiar revulsion, and yet he also acknowledged the wolves' need for sustenance. Sabine frowned at his hesitation in replying, but as she opened her mouth to object, it was Callie who spoke.

"No," she said. "That meat is tainted."

"With their vampire blight?" Vukovich asked.

Callie nodded.

"But you know very well what we are," the Reverend said.

"No matter," Callie said. "Perhaps it won't turn you into . . . somethin' else. Maybe you'll eat it an' still find you can bear the sun, and a cross pressed against your skin. But that which they've bitten or fed on carries their own dark taint. I still can't quite figure you out, but I'm pretty sure there's somethin' good in you, as well as something bad. That won't last if you're touched by what they are."

"They're nothing," Jack said, thinking of what he had felt. "They're shadows on darkness. You're all much more than that. Even you, Ghost."

"Even Ghost," Sabine said. It was a pained acceptance, and Ghost's eyebrows raised in surprise, his face slackening with pleasure. It might well have been the first time Jack had ever seen Ghost lose himself just a little, and it gave Jack pause.

"So we move out, together," Jack said.

"You'll have me with you?" Ghost asked.

"Rather you were with us than behind us," Callie said bluntly.

"Ghost," Jack said, "meet Callie. I think you'll like her."

They moved off, Vukovich and Louis scouting ahead, Ghost following them, then Jack and Sabine. Behind them came the Reverend and Callie, silent in the darkness. The river flowed beside them, innocent of the terrors that had emerged from it and the violence that had been wrought upon its banks. It carried present to future mindlessly and timelessly. Jack breathed in its scent and listened to its music, and it calmed him as he walked, and went some way to settling his mind.

Because he knew that their flight, and perhaps their fight, was far from over.

As they followed the river, the forest came to life again. Night creatures called — hunting, stalking, mating, or simply relishing the dark — and Jack took this as a good sign. Back at the scene of the fight and slaughter, the forest had fallen silent in awe and horror at what had been visited upon it. Perhaps those vampire Tlingits, shape-shifted into the most powerful of beasts, always carried silence with them, and thought that the world sang only with their own roars and the sounds of their victims' cries.

With the forest alive around them now, those dead things could be nowhere near.

Jack was filled with questions which he suspected Callie King could answer. Where did the vampires come from? He had seen the Tlingit Indian's head, but were there others from other tribes, and black and white men and women from the flood of gold prospectors? Had they been vampires for a long time? Had they always been here, or had they moved in from a different area? The north, perhaps, as could be witnessed by the fearsome shape they chose to take?

Jack suspected Callie had a closer connection to the vampires than anyone else. How did she know about them, and what was her story? He had seen it in her face as she confronted them, and in her eyes when the fight was over. In the aftermath she had been somewhere else, more distant than any of them could see by simple moonlight.

But now was the time for survival, not questions. As they moved swiftly through the trees, Jack knew that this wilderness had changed much since last he was here.

Though he was constantly aware of Sabine by his side, the sound of the river and the smell of the wild air inspired memories of the last time he was here. Then, he and his friends Merritt and Jim had fought their way along the river until winter froze them in. Their journey had been a trial that almost killed them, and it was their determination and friendship that had kept them alive. That, and Jack's wolf protecting him out in the great white silence as he had lain there unconscious, smothering him with the torn corpses of fresh kills to keep him warm. His journey with his two friends had continued, until Jim's brutal murder at the hands of the slave runners.

Jack's blood went cold at the memory. He no longer felt culpable for Jim's death — Merritt had made sure he saw the truth, and that truth held no blame for Jack — but he still bore a tremendous rage for the men who had steered events that way. Jack had come here then to make his own story, and those men had stolen his control. Jack had fought his way from beneath their influence, and he and Merritt had triumphed in the end.

This time he was returning to Dawson seeking the truth of another story — that of Sabine, his love, and a beauty who might have lived forever. And already their tale together was being influenced from outside once again. The vampires cut their own narrative with tooth and claw, and the color of this story was red.

And then there was Lesya. She was a part of his story, but she was also something that might link him and Sabine together forever. For a moment, before the battle, he had considered that she might be responsible for the beasts that had attacked the steamer and which stalked them through the forest. After all she had controlled the Wendigo, , the wretched and terrible monster that Jack had faced the last time he was here. But Lesya was a tree spirit and a friend to the forest, and those vampire monsters were friends to nothing.

Only to darkness, Jack thought, and he looked between the trees to where moonlight did not penetrate. Only to death. He remembered the screams of Tim Underwood and his party as they were stalked, taken down, murdered — the women, with their nervous smiles, and the little girl, whom Jack had known had no place out here in this wild land.

Darkness and death were his new enemies, and he swore that he and Sabine would face them together.

They only stopped once to drink; then just as Jack sensed they were nearing Dawson, Callie called a whispered halt. She moved on ahead of them all, passing Vukovich and Louis where they had lessened their lead. She moved silently through the forest, and Jack realized that dawn was smearing the hilly eastern horizon, hazing its way through the canopy and showing them the way. It was such a different light from the moon; more alive, almost breathing. He breathed his own sigh of relief, and beside him Sabine sank to her knees and relaxed.

"Dawson is close," she said, and Jack nodded.

"Can't you smell it?" he asked. For the past few minutes he had sensed wood smoke and sewage, the latter even though the river would be carrying it away from not toward them.

"I'm too tired to smell anything," she said.

Jack knelt beside her. "Are you all right? Really?"

"Tired from the journey, and weak from being on land," she said. "It seems that since meeting you I'm learning more about myself every day."

"We can rest in Dawson. It's far from a peaceful place, but at least it'll be safer than this."

"From them?" she asked wearily.

"With us there, yes," Ghost said. He had closed on them from behind and now stood silently a dozen steps away. That's the first time he's used the word "us," Jack thought, but he was too tired to commence word games with Ghost.

Callie returned, and the woman seemed suddenly tense again. "There are traps," she said. "Pits, spikes, trip-wires . . . . You'll have to all follow me, step where I step, move where I move. Understand?"

"Hunting traps?" Vukovich asked.

"Yes. For them. The people of Dawson know how to slow them down, at least." She turned and started walking, then paused and looked back over her shoulder when none of them made to follow.

"Something wrong?" she asked, looking around at the wolves.

None of them liked to receive orders, less so since ridding themselves of Ghost as their brutal captain., but they had begun to look at Jack as their pack leader. If they were going to follow instructions from anyone, it would have been him.

He had hesitated, but he did not want his pack to think he did not trust this woman. Callie was not being superior. Any suspicion Jack might have had that she would intentionally lead them into a trap had vanished during the night. There was much to Callie that still intrigued him, but treachery was not her style.

"Lead the way," Jack told her.

When Callie started out again they followed her, away from the river and up a gentle wooded slope. In several places she paused to point out a trap — deep holes with rope netting laid across them, and branches and dead leaves camouflaging them almost perfectly from view. At one point they found a pit that had been uncovered, and Callie held back for a moment, looking up at the hazy dawn sky and drawing her knife.

Louis stepped past her, throwing her a golden smile. At the edge of the hole he crouched down to look in, then stood and turned back.

"Moose," he said. "Big one." Jack saw a glint of hunger in Louis's eye, and suspected each wolf smelled blood on the air. However, they all tempered their reactions. Callie moved on, and Jack gave Louis a grateful nod.

They crested a small rise, and before them lay Dawson, cradled within the embrace of a wide river bend. It was larger than Jack remembered, a haphazard sprawl of buildings spreading inland from the river, following the easier contours of the land and seemingly constructed with little or no thought to the layout of any connecting streets or paths. Only the buildings at the river followed some sort of uneven order, as if the first settlers had soon been overrun with those too eager to build and expand. Smoke rose from a dozen chimneys and scores of open fires. At the riverside, boats bobbed against rough docks, and great piles of belongings and provisions were strewn along the shoreline.

The main differences, though, were the structures now built around the settlement's extremes. In some places a tall wall made of timber and rock bracings ran for forty feet or more, crowned here and there with small open platforms. In other strategic places sat fortified square buildings, offering a good line of sight across the river's plain and into the trees beyond. These structures had wide, thin openings, and though from this distance he could not make out any gun barrels, he was certain they were there. "Dawson's prepared," Callie had said. Rather than comforted, Jack felt chilled at what he saw — a settlement under siege.

The sun burned clouds above the eastern hills as Dawson came awake. It was here that Jack called them to a halt, looking down on the place he had last visited almost two years before.

"This was a lawless place when last I was here," he said. He was aware of Callie watching him, and wondered what she thought of this young man traveling in the company of people who she perceived of as all slightly inhuman. "But that doesn't mean any one of us has to succumb to the wild."

Ghost smirked. Jack caught the expression but looked down into Dawson, pretending not to see. The big man was still a mystery to Jack, and perhaps he always would be. A man like him — a thing like him — wore mysteries like a cloak.

As they approached the edge of the forest that opened onto the river's flood plain, a voice called out.

"Hold it right there! Hands away from your weapons. Keep still, and no sudden moves, if you don't want a face full of shot."

Jack froze and looked around, trying to see where the voices came from. Callie was ahead of him, head turning left and right, scouring the undergrowth all around them. It was the wolves who looked up. Smelled them, Jack thought, as he too looked up into the tree canopy.

Ropes were wound around several trunks, stained to match the bark's color. Higher up, partially hidden by the lowest boughs, sat nests of sticks and leaves. They reminded Jack of the coverings over the pits they'd passed recently, but these were there to hide something else entirely.

"Who's there?" the voice called. Jack turned a little, trying to place where it had come from. He wondered how many people spent their nights up there, keeping watch and ready to raise the alarm should any things approach through the woods. And he wondered also whether this was a concerted response from everyone in Dawson, or the activity of an industrious few. The walls and look-outs he'd seen around the town must have taken some effort to construct, but there must still be those whose sole intent was gold.

"Callie King," the woman called out. "Up from South Dakota to pay a visit to Len Truman. You folks have a problem he reckons I might know something about."

"That right? How do we know you ain't part of the problem?"

"It's daylight, ain't it?" she shouted, short-tempered. Jack glanced at Sabine, and they shared a nervous smile.

"Who're the others?"

Callie turned around and looked at them all — Jack, Sabine, the wolves, and Ghost. Jack sensed a tension in the wolves, .

"Friends," Callie said easily. "We bin through it, last night. Seen four of 'em bloodthirsty bastards off, with the help of these folks. And . . ." She scratched her head, and seemed suddenly contrite. "And other than Ghost, the only name I know fer sure is Jack London."

"Jack?" a different voice said from the trees.

"Who's that?" Jack said. Thirty feet away, close to Louis, a roped untangled itself from a tree and flapped around as a shape descended.

"Jack London!" the boy shouted. He jumped the last few feet and darted past Louis, sparing him a curious glance and then rushing across to Jack. At first Jack did not recognize Hal Sawyer, and when he did he was shocked at the change. The boy had become a man, and picked up some scars in the process.

"Hal!" Jack said. "It's good to see you!"

"What are you doing here?" Hal asked. "Didn't you find enough of Hell before?"

Jack held Hal's upper arms and sighed deeply. "Let's get us all into Dawson," he said. "Then it's food and a drink for us, and before we rest, I'm sure you've got a story to tell too."

"One I barely believe." Hal whistled. Several more ropes whipped and waved away from trunks around them, and their reception committee descended to escort them into Dawson.

Chapter Seven - Nature Abhors

Once the day had truly begun and people were out and about, Dawson didn't seem much changed from the town Jack had left behind. The air was filled with the noise of construction — hammers pounding and saws cutting — and the smell of sawdust mixed with the heavy, fermented odor of stale beer that wafted out of the saloons they passed as they walked through town. But this was a fleeting illusion of normalcy and it vanished as Jack looked more closely at the work going on around him. Watchtowers were being built at the edges of town, rising above every other structure. A trio of carpenters were hard at work making coffins out of pine boards — grimly producing as many fresh pine boxes as they could manage, to keep up with demand. Guns were everywhere, and the eyes of the people of Dawson had a haunted look, despite the sun crawling slowly across the summer sky.

Dawson City was under siege.

There were other indications of the fear that ruled the streets. Jack knew that nearly everyone in town had come to the settlement hoping either to strike gold or to build a business that would thrive on the gold of others. But Jack saw not a single band of prospectors heading out of Dawson to their claims. Given that not working their claims might be perceived as abandoning them, the only thing that could keep such men from the quest for wealth would be mortal terror. They feared for their lives.

Hal had already told him as much, but seeing the quiet pall of dread that hung over the town made it real.

"I still can't believe you're here," the kid said, shaking his head as he accompanied Jack, Callie, Sabine, and the wolves through town. "I'd say I can't believe you made it here alive with the demons out there, but after what you've already survived, I'm not real surprised."

Jack glanced over at Louis, Vukovich, and the Reverend. They walked skittishly, eyeing the people of Dawson warily — that many frightened humans with weapons would be quick to violence if they knew what kind of monsters walked among them, no matter whose side the wolves were on.

"We didn't all survive," Jack said gravely.

A shadow passed over Hal's features. "I'm sorry to hear it. But that seems to be the way of things up here nowadays."

"You said 'demons,'" Jack observed. "Is that what people think they're guarding against?"

Hal scraped a thoughtful hand over the fuzz on his young chin. "There's lots of guesses, mostly in whispers, but 'demons' is what you hear the most." He lowered his voice. "I haven't told a soul about you and the Wendigo, but after what you told me, it ain't hard for me to believe in demons, Jack. Prospectors have been found slaughtered in their camps. Folks go out hunting for gold and never come back. In the last couple of months, we've had more than thirty people — mostly women and girls — go missing in the middle of the night, and some men have turned up dead in the mornings, pale as ghosts, wounds in their throats, but hardly any blood around 'em at all. If you've got a better name than demons for things that can do all that, I'd be glad to know it. Especially if you've got any sense of how to stop 'em."

"I don't," Jack said, but he gestured off to his left, where Callie walked with Sabine. "But Callie over there, the one with the guns and the determined look . . . I'd be willing to bet she has a few ideas that might help you. The things that hunted us in the dark are called vampires, Hal. And though she's not as direct with information as I'd like, seems to me she came all the way from South Dakota to Dawson for the sole purpose of killing them."

"Well, then, I suspect Dawson's gonna give her a hell of a welcome."

Hal had changed. Jack still thought of him as a kid, but at sixteen he'd begun to fill out and was nearly as tall as Jack himself. His delight at seeing Jack again had made Hal seem boyish at first, but now a grim light glittered in his eyes and he had a knowing air that suggested he had seen things that had stripped him of any remaining innocence.

Jack threw a glance over his shoulder. Ghost hung back, following them, alternating between gazing after Sabine and studying the town with open curiosity. He behaved as though he was invulnerable, with none of the caution in evidence in the behavior of the other wolves. To Jack's left, Callie and Sabine spoke quietly, and Jack was grateful for Callie's presence; Ghost seemed less inclined to haunt Sabine with his attentions with Callie at her side.

Don't make this end in blood, Jack thought. We've got other monsters to contend with.

As if Ghost had heard his thoughts, the hugely muscled captain met his gaze and smiled. Jack faced forward again without acknowledging him. He and Ghost had made it a habit of sparing each other's lives, and now that the monster seemed willing to explore the small bits of humanity left within him, Jack would hate to have to kill him. But if Ghost's obsession with Sabine threatened her in any way, he would kill his former captain without a second thought or a moment's remorse — or die in the attempt.

"Truman's Mercantile is just ahead," Hal said, pointing out a two story structure. They were three blocks from the river, on a side street that hadn't existed a year ago. There still wasn't much to Dawson, but it was growing . . . or it had been, until the vampires had come.

"I don't know why Mr. Truman didn't just call it a hardware store," Hal went on. "I've been in a fair few of 'em, and there's no doubt that's what he sells."

The construction was recent, but seemed more solidly built than most of the structures around it. Len Truman had spent the money and taken the time to have the work done properly. Even the fancy lettering on the sign above the front door spoke of the care he obviously put into his business. Jack knew that many saw opportunity in Dawson, but Len Truman didn't seem like a fly-by-night sort. He'd decided to make a life here, and when horror and fear had thrown their shadows over the town, he had reached out to Callie King. Jack still didn't know her whole story, how she came to know so much about vampires and how to kill them, but obviously Truman did.

Louis caught Jack's attention as they reached the front of the store and pulled him aside for a private exchange.

"You don't need us for this, mon ami," he said, gesturing toward Vukovich and the Reverend. "We'll go on to the hotel and sort out rooms. Also, the idea of a bath is very appealing. Even more appealing is the idea of Vukovich taking a bath. A cloud of stink follows him everywhere."

Louis grinned for a moment, and Jack thought his gold tooth had never looked more mundane than it did in Dawson, where the population usually lived and breathed for gold.

"Thanks, Louis," Jack said. "We'll be along as soon as soon as Callie's had a talk with Mr. Truman. Maybe you could make sure they've got a room for her as well?"

"But of course," Louis replied. His gaze shifted toward Ghost. "Does he worry you? Should one of us remain here?"

Ghost paid no attention to them. He already stood on the stoop of Truman's Mercantile, curious and impatient. The presence of vampires had apparently fired some interest in him, and Jack was not surprised. Ghost had decided to try to put his past predations behind him, but now he had discovered new prey — something he could kill without fear of compromising whatever attempts at humanity he might be making.

"He'll behave," Jack said, and he felt certain of it.

He and Ghost had been in a war of the psyche since the moment of their first encounter. Jack had defeated him, but Ghost still lived. If the sea wolf decided he'd had enough of searching for a new way of life, his first attack would be psychological, Jack was certain, not physical.

"If you're sure . . . ." Louis said, though he cast a suspicious glance at Ghost.

"Go on. Wash up. Get some rest if you can," Jack told him.

Louis needed no further encouragement. He signaled Vukovich and the Reverend, and the three former pirates trudged back to the main street and turned right, heading for the Dawson Hotel. What little they'd salvaged on their trek from the sunken steamer hung from their backs. Jack wasn't worried. Once they left Dawson and went north, the wolves could hunt to their heart's content, and Jack had survived with nothing but his wits in the wild before. It was Sabine that concerned him. They would have to stick to the river's edge for as long as they could manage it. When they eventually had to turn their path away from the water, he feared she would become too weak to travel far. Since her real limits had yet to be tested, he hoped she would find some way to carry on.

"Are we just going to stand here, Mr. London?" Ghost called to him.

"Well, I ain't," Callie said. She hitched up her gun belt and stepped up onto the stoop.

Ghost grinned as he went to open the door for her, almost a gentleman. His grin vanished as he discovered the door was locked.

"It's not open," Ghost said, glancing at Hal as if accusing him of some crime.

"That don't seem right," Hal said. "Though it is early, yet."

"Doesn't the store keep regular hours?" Sabine asked. Even wan and tired, she was still radiantly beautiful, a brightness amidst the grim gray mood that enshrouded Dawson.

"A lot has changed these past couple of months," Hal said. "Who knows what's regular anymore? But the Trumans live above the shop. The steps are just around back. Unless you want to go to the hotel first and come back — "

"Son, I been on boats and trains and in the backs of trucks, and I killed weird Eskimo vampire polar bears to get here and speak to Leonard Truman, who promised me a fair bit of money and the sport of killing more of the evil bloodsucking bastards what took my husband from me. I ain't in the mood for a bath or to rest my pretty head on a comfy pillow." With that, Callie marched off the stoop and around the back of the store, leaving the others, to follow.

"Well, then," Hal said, smiling. "I guess we're waking the Trumans." He hurried after Callie.

As Jack and Sabine pursued him, Ghost fell in beside them. "I like her," he said.

"Of course you do," Sabine said quietly. "She's hunting."

As Hal first knocked and then rapped loudly on the door at the top of the rear stairs, Jack mused that they would present quite a sight to anyone glancing out a window at their motley company. He and Ghost were unshaven and wild-looking and through the grimy glass of the Trumans' residence, Callie would look like a shapely and especially well-armed mountain man. So it did not surprise him when Hal's knocking drew no immediate response.

Jack watched the window curtains for a telltale twitch, but nothing seemed to stir inside.

"It's quite early," Sabine said. "Is there a church in Dawson? Perhaps the Trumans are at worship."

Callie snorted. "Len may've changed a bit since he got himself hitched, but the man never set foot across the threshold of a church. Might burst into flames if he did."

Considering the threat they faced, the joke fell flat, and when she'd thought about it a moment, the humor drained from Callie's face.

"Can you sense anyone?" Jack asked Sabine, but she only shook her head, a haunted look in her eyes, and he realized how foolish the question had been. Her magic, whatever it truly was, only allowed her to touch the minds of those on the water, and they'd left the river behind.

"Knock again," Jack said, though Hal had already done so several times.

Hal frowned deeply. "I don't think anyone's — "

The thunk of the lock being thrown back made them all flinch — all except for Ghost. The door drew inward as if pushed by a breeze, but only wide enough for a pale, thin face to peer out.

"Go away, boy," the woman said, her gaze flicking anxiously from Hal to Jack and the others. Skittish and wary, she closed the door an additional inch.

"Belle, we need to speak to Len," Hal began. "The store isn't open. Is he sick or something?"

The woman gave a single nod. "Or something. He isn't well enough to speak with anyone. Just go away, son. I'll tell him you sought him out."

She began to push the door shut, but Jack stepped up beside Hal and thrust out a hand to stop it closing all the way.

"Mrs. Truman, open the door," he called. A snuffling sound made him turn and he saw Ghost sniffing at the air, frowning at whatever scent he'd picked up.

"This ain't right," Callie said, one hand on a pistol as she jockeyed for position behind Jack and Hal on the landing. "Mrs. Truman — Belle — it's Callie King, here. Len sent for me to come on up here to Dawson. He's hired me on to help with the trouble brewin' round here."

"I know who you are." The woman's voice was dry as the rustle of old paper. "He was wrong to ask you. You're not wanted here. Now . . . please . . ."

This last was almost a sob. Jack began to slacken pressure against the door, thinking they would have to discuss how to proceed. With a low growl, Ghost pushed through them and shoved the door open with one hand, his great strength knocking Belle Truman sprawling onto the wooden floor.

The pale woman whimpered as she scrambled out of the rectangle of sunlight that reached through the open door. A chill rippled up Jack's spine as he studied her. Back against the wall of the sitting room they'd entered, Belle slid up to stand, half-turned from them, clad in a thick cotton nightdress speckled with droplets of dark red. Only one eye peeked out from the veil of unkempt gray hair that fell across her face, and it regarded them with some combination of fear and revulsion.

"Get out," she rasped.

Sabine started toward her, and Jack could feel the empathy radiating from her. He put out an arm and prevented her approaching the woman. "Wait."

"She's ill," Sabine protested.

"I've seen this a dozen times," Callie said quietly. "Trust me, she ain't sick. At least not the kinda sick you mean."

"At least . . . close the door . . ." Belle Truman said sadly, slumping in defeat. She hugged herself and shuddered, unable to meet their eyes.

Ghost slammed the door just as hard as he'd knocked it open. He sniffed the air in the second story residence.

"Belle, where's Len?" Hal asked, glancing warily around the sitting room.

The woman began to speak, then swooned a little and only the wall was holding her up. She put a shaking hand over her mouth and began to cry in silence, tears trickling down her cheeks. Jack had seen grief far too often in his life and he recognized it, but there was more than sorrow in Belle's anguish. She seemed to want to bolt or to scream, and the way she avoided their eyes spoke of dreadful shame. Her hand slid away from covering her mouth to rub at her throat.

Belle whispered something Jack didn't catch.

"What's that?" Hal asked.

Ghost growled softly. "She said, 'he was so hungry.'"

Jack had a terrible feeling she didn't mean her husband. He glanced at Ghost. "Go have a look."

"You giving me orders now, Jack?" Ghost asked. "Now that you're captain, I mean?"

"There's no ship," Jack replied. "No captain. You want to stay with us, you do your part."

Ghost tilted his head, then gave a small shrug as if he found this eminently reasonable. He strode swiftly from the sitting room, every step full of animal power.

"I don't have to search the rooms," he called back to them. "I could smell him as we came up the steps."

A moment later Ghost returned, carrying the corpse of a slender man in his mid fifties. Len Truman's throat had been torn out, but the ravaged flesh was curiously blanched. Blood had spattered his nightshirt, but far less than there ought to have been.

"He was still in bed," Ghost said. "That's where it found him."

Nobody asked him to clarify that statement. The circumstances of Len Truman's death were clear. A vampire had murdered Len Truman while he slept. Jack studied the late merchant's wife and took two steps toward her.

"No," she whispered, shaking her head, as though she feared he might strike her. But Jack knew it wasn't violence she feared. Not now.

"This is damn inconvenient," Callie said. "I came all the way up here. If I don't get paid, I got no way to pay my way home."

Sabine shushed her and approached Belle Truman, who flinched at first but then allowed herself to be touched. Grim-eyed, Sabine removed Belle's hand from her neck and turned her slightly so that the gloom filtering through the curtains revealed two small wounds on her throat, crusted over with dried blood.

"Why didn't it kill her?" Sabine asked, glancing at Callie.

"Some they kill. Some they just sip at for a while, get 'em weak and confused. Does somethin' to their minds, bein' taken that way, like they got some kinda enchantment on 'em," Callie said. Then she glanced at Jack. "But it'll be back. No question. Once they get a taste, they might take a little at a time, but eventually they take it all. It ain't just blood they drink; it's life."

The tears had begun to dry on Belle Truman's face. Jack thought he saw a flicker of hope there, and for a moment he believed she felt relief that they had come to her aid. Then she met his gaze and the defiant animosity in her eyes made him realize his mistake; it had been Callie's words that gave her hope. Now that she'd been touched by the vampire — blooded by it — she yearned for its return. Something about the process had begun to corrupt her already.

"Get out," she said, her voice flat and terse.

"We've got to get the sheriff," Hal said. "Jack, will you go? I don't want to leave her."

Jack nodded. He had no idea how much of the vampire's evil influence and power its infection might have given Belle Truman, but Callie was there with her silver bullets and her expertise. If danger arose, she would handle it. He almost asked Sabine to come along just to keep her away from Ghost, but then he noticed the way that the werewolf was staring at the ragged wound in Len Truman's throat. He held the corpse like a precious child, but gazed at that wound with a diabolical hunger.

"Ghost, why don't you come with me," Jack said.

The former captain shot a dark look at him. "Afraid you won't find your way back?"

"Put the body down and come with me."

Jack glanced at Callie, who sensed the tension between them and slid a hand to rest on the gun at her right hip. Ghost saw it, too, and knew what kind of bullets were in that gun.

"You're not fast enough, woman," he snarled. "Trust me."

But he dropped the corpse of Len Truman to the wooden floor, where it hit with the crack of breaking bone, and stepped over the dead man as he strode to the door without looking back.

"I'll be quick," Jack said, his eyes meeting Sabine's before he hurried after Ghost.

He caught up to the hulking monster at the bottom of the stairs but said nothing as they walked out to the main street. When Jack turned right, leading the way toward the sheriff's office, Ghost laughed softly.

"What's funny?" Jack asked.

"You," Ghost said, shaking his head in amiable amusement. "You can't make me human, Jack. And you can't tame me."

"No," Jack agreed. "Though I do wonder if you can be civilized."

Ghost did not respond. When Jack glanced at him, he saw that the monster's expression had turned contemplative, as though he wondered the very same thing.

When Jack had last been in Dawson, the sheriff had been a man named Forster, an unwashed lout with a bad mustache, skin like leather, and body odor powerful enough to kill hawks flying overhead and cause them to plummet, dead, to the street. Expecting the beady-eyed Forster, Jack felt distinct relief when he and Ghost entered the jailhouse to find a new man wore the badge. A single glance told him a great deal about the current sheriff. Five foot seven, he'd have been a couple of inches taller if not for the curve of his back that put him in a permanent slouch. Perhaps fifty, he had thinning hair but a much more impressive mustache than his predecessor's. His gut was of ample girth, as if he'd never let a plate of food pass with taking his toll upon it, yet instead of making him seem ridiculous, his barrel-shape only leant to an overall air of formidability. Jack had seen arms as thick as the sheriff's before, but only on dockworkers in Oakland and San Francisco.

"And who might you be?" the sheriff asked, glancing around from where he'd been hammering a nail into the wall, presumably to hang a framed painting that rested on top of his desk.

Jack thought about offering his hand to shake, but the sheriff held a hammer and nail, and anyway didn't seem much interested in formalities.

"I'm Jack London," he said. "This is Ghost Nilsson. It's my second trip to Dawson, sheriff, but Ghost is a newcomer. We just arrived with a small group — all that's left of the passengers who came upriver with us on the Fort McGurry."

The sheriff grimaced, looked like he might be about to curse loudly, but fought the urge. His knuckles were white on the handle of his hammer.

"I'm guessing you weren't hit by bandits or pirates," the sheriff said.

Jack saw Ghost smile at the mention of pirates, but fortunately the monster said nothing.

"I think you know exactly what attacked us," Jack said. "They stalked us through the night, killed most of our companions. We were lucky to make it to Dawson alive."

"Lucky don't even cover," the sheriff said, stroking that long, thick, drooping mustache. "Miraculous is more like it. But you're wrong, Mr. London. Lots of whispers in Dawson about what's out there . . . what sneaks in here at night . . . but know what it is? Not me."

"There's more," Ghost said, his voice a low rumble. He seemed to be sizing up the sheriff. For all the breadth of Ghost's shoulders and the thick cables of his muscles, Jack thought he saw respect in Ghost's eyes.

"Isn't there always more?" the sheriff asked, finally putting the hammer and nail back on his desk and facing them fully, ready to do his duty, whatever it might be.

"A woman in our party, Callie King, was hired by Len Truman to come to Dawson to try to help with your . . . pest problem," Jack explained. "Seems she's encountered this sort of thing before and Truman knew it. Our first stop was his store, which was still locked up tight. We checked on the Trumans upstairs and found Len dead and his wife . . . unwell."

"Son of a bitch," the sheriff said, shaking his head sadly. Jack saw a flicker of suspicion touched his eyes and he studied them both a little more closely, lingering on Ghost. "How do I know —"

"You don't," Ghost said sharply. "But we left others behind with Mrs. Truman, including a boy named Hal Sawyer, who is a friend of Jack's. If his word means anything to you, he'll vouch for us. If not . . . you can try to arrest us."

The sheriff bristled at the challenge in Ghost's tone. Ghost grinned, as if hoping the man would decide they were murder suspects and attempt to put them in jail, and for a moment Jack thought the sheriff might do just that, not because he had any real reason to suspect them of a crime but because he was the kind of man who wasn't used to anyone riling him up on purpose. One of the rules Jack lived his life by was very simple. He'd learned it on the street at the age of nine, thanks to a bully who'd coveted a baseball glove Jack had found in the attic of the house where he and his mother and sister were living.

Don't poke the bear, the bully had said, unless you're ready for the teeth.

Jack had knocked out several of the bully's teeth that day, but that hadn't diluted the wisdom of the words. The problem here was that the sheriff thought he was the bear. A lifetime of reinforcement had made it natural for him to make that assumption, but today it could maim or kill him.

"Look, sheriff," Jack said, stepping between them. "We're not a part of this. The only reason we're involved is because we were on that steamer with Callie King and wanted to see her safely to her destination. But we'll go back to the Trumans' place with you and answer whatever questions you have. After that, a bath and a meal would suit us both. I know he nights are short up here this time of year, but this last one felt like forever."

The sheriff seemed mollified by this. He looked thoughtful a moment and then nodded. Resting one hand on his gun belt, he thrust out a hand. "Walrus Killebrew."

"Pleased to meet you, Walrus," Jack said, shaking his hand.

"My momma named me Walter, but some folks think Walrus fits," Sheriff Killebrew said, arching an eyebrow. "Best if you keep your thoughts on that to yourself." He glanced at Ghost. "What about you, sir? Where did you come by your name?"

Ghost shook his hand, both men taking the other's measure again.

"I should be dead," Ghost said. "But somehow I'm still here."

"Fella, I wake up every day thinking the same thing," Sheriff Killebrew replied, giving Ghost's hand a firmer shake before letting it go.

A strange, grudging respect seemed to have formed between them like a temporary truce, though Jack thought both men would be keeping an eye on each other. Sheriff Killebrew turned to Jack and gave another thoughtful pause.

"I said I don't know what they are . . . these things," the sheriff said. "But there's at least one man who thinks he knows. I guess Hal will have told you lots of folks in Dawson blame the Indians. There's talk the Tlingits have called demons down on us 'cause we're stripping the gold from their ancestral lands. But there's a fella named Kikono — kind of a medicine man type for the local Tlingits — who has an interesting story to tell."

"And what does he say?" Ghost asked, scratching at his beard, blue eyes haunted with curiosity.

"Ask him yourself," Sheriff Killebrew said, gesturing toward the door behind him. "He's back there in a cell."

"For what crime?" Jack asked.

"For his own damn protection," Sheriff Killebrew explained, exhaling to release a stress Jack hadn't realized he was carrying. "Scared as people are, half the town thinks killing Kikono is a grand idea — thinks maybe he's the one brought these demons down on us to begin with."

"You don't believe that?" Ghost asked.

Sheriff Killebrew smiled. "Up till a couple of months ago, the most trouble Kikono ever caused in Dawson was getting so drunk he'd slip off his stool down at the bar. He's a crazy old man, but he's nice enough. The only demons he's been raising are the ones in the whiskey bottle."

Intrigued, Jack nevertheless worried they'd been gone too long and Sabine and the others might begin to wonder what had become of them.

"Shouldn't we head over to the mercantile first?" he asked.

A sad, grim look passed over the sheriff's face. "Another few minutes ain't gonna make Len Truman any deader."

"I remember you," Jack said.

The old Tlingit Indian had glanced up at the sound of their approach and a shard of memory had flickered across Jack's mind. He could picture the guy in the saloon, telling stories about all of the myths and legends of his people, trying to warn the stampeders who'd arrived in Dawson in search of gold that they might find things out in the wild that they hadn't come looking for. He had never known the man's name. Everyone had referred to the man as "the crazy old Indian" or simply "the drunk," though the latter was less specific, as there were many drunks in Dawson; it was, after all, a place of heartbreak and failure.

Kikono frowned, studying Jack's features as Sheriff Killebrew unlocked his cell and swung open the door.

"I don't know your face," Kikono said, "but you feel familiar, like I should know you."

"My name's Jack London."

The old man paused, his contemplation written in all the deep lines of his leathery countenance, and then he shrugged. Whatever thought or memory he'd been chasing, he'd given up on it. When Jack and Ghost entered the cell, though, Kikono frowned even more deeply. He sniffed the air, then held up a hand. "You stop there," he said to Ghost.

"Me?" Ghost asked, amused.

Kikono looked at the sheriff. "It would be even better if he were outside the bars, or behind his own."

"You know this fella?" Sheriff Killebrew asked.

"No," Kikono said, eyeing Ghost sternly. "I know his breed."

"He's all right," Jack said, though they all must have heard the way his voice wavered uncertainly. "We're all friends here."

Kikono smiled at the absurdity of that. "Why are you here?"

"A lot of people died around us last night," Jack said. "The things that killed them looked like polar bears. One of 'em lost its head, and then it looked like a man. A friend of ours calls them vampires. The sheriff says you know what they really are."

Kikono sniffed and nodded. "I have heard the word 'vampire.' It is as good a word as any. They are old spirits. Evil. They slip through the cracks in the world and prey on the people. The blood spirits find a way into the people as they do into the world, and they wear the bodies of the people like shirts, but they are not the people. Once many Tlingit were bitten by them . . . taken. For many years, they were kept at bay, eaten or killed or driven into hiding in the stones of the earth by their fear of a greater evil, a man cursed to be a monster."

A knot of ice formed in Jack's gut. He heard Ghost grunt and glanced over to see that the huge pirate had become more alert, head slightly cocked, eyes peering incisively at Kikono.

"The Wendigo," Ghost said. "You're talking about the Wendigo. It kept them away from this area?"

Jack held his breath.

"Yes," the old Tlingit said, dark wisdom and sadness in his eyes. "The Wendigo. The cursed man. It killed many men and women and children itself, of course. It kept mostly to its own territory, but now it is gone. The blood spirits — what you call vampires — they know only hunger. Now they have the freedom to kill as many as they can, feeding on the blood of some and tearing out the spirits of others to make them hollow . . . to make room for more of their kind to come into our world."

A terrible weight rested on Jack's shoulders. His stomach twisted in revulsion. He had killed the Wendigo himself, destroying a monster . . . only to make way for an even greater evil to spread its wings.

Ghost must have read his mind. The former pirate captain clapped him on the shoulder. "You know what they say, Mr. London. Nature abhors a vacuum."

If he'd had one of Callie's guns in that moment, loaded with silver bullets, Jack might happily have shot Ghost Nilsson dead. Instead, all he could do was turn away from the grinning pirate and stride from the cell, and then from the jail.

It seemed there were always more monsters to kill.

Chapter Eight - The Memory of Monsters

Every time I bathe, it's to wash away the memory of monsters.

Jack sat in his iron bath, in his hotel room, in the haunted town where his experience of monsters had begun. The Dawson Hotel had burned down six months previously, Hal had told him, and he was glad. It had been there that the slave drivers had captured him and his friend Merritt, and mortally wounded their friend Jim. Human monsters, true, but they had been so affected by the savagery of this land that Jack wondered whether they had been a little more — or a little less — than human. From them to Lesya and the Wendigo, and after that, his long sea journey with werewolves.

And Ghost. The most human of beasts, but perhaps the greatest monster of all.

"Because he's intelligent," Jack whispered. His voice sounded loaded and heavy, breaking the silence of his room with deep pronouncements. "Because he's a monster with aims beyond tending his hunger, and his base needs." Ironically, it was Ghost's humanness that gave that monster the possibility of change.

Jack sighed, letting the muck and filth of their journey soak away from his skin. He washed and laid back, eyelids drooping even though it was daylight outside. He could have slept forever . . . Close his eyes and let reality bleed away, welcome in dreams of home and family and those rough, innocent years he had spent as a child trying to be a man — stealing oysters, working in the tannery, riding the railroad . . . Travelling many miles in search of himself, when he was always close at hand.

With adulthood and adventure had come real responsibility. Jack sighed as the guilt washed in again. In what had been the greatest fight of his life, he had killed the Wendigo. It had been an inevitable confrontation, and it was only afterward that he had considered the ramifications of what he had done. In slaying the beast, he had ended its wretched hunger, and freed the region of its unnatural stain. How many men, women, and children had he saved, who would otherwise have fallen victim to its urges? He could not count, nor would he ever know. He had sailed away from the Yukon content in his actions, even pleased that the Wendigo itself could at last find peace. He had not for one moment guessed that the Wendigo's death would have doomed so many more to something worse than death, if what Kikono said was true. And Jack had no reason to doubt the old Tlingit.

The guilt was a cool seam through his soul, though he was sure no one would condemn him. Ghost's reaction to the scenario only served to anger Jack more. As they had walked back toward the hotel together, pausing at the store to collect Sabine, Ghost's constant chuckling had set Jack's nerves on edge. Sabine had asked what was wrong, but Jack had waved her away. It was not something he could bear to discuss in Ghost's presence, not when the big pirate would only revel in Jack's predicament. He would see it as a weakness in Jack, whereas Jack viewed his own guilt — consuming and painful though it was — as the greatest mark of his humanity.

"We'll always be so different," he said.

Someone knocked at the door.

Jack climbed from the bath and wrapped himself in a towel. "Who is it?"

"Me." Sabine's voice was low and urgent, and Jack moved to the door to let her in.

She stood in the hall, the vision of every good thing in his life, her smile filled with love and her eyes reflecting his own sadness.

"Ghost told you," Jack said.

Sabine nodded. "I know you're too strong to believe any of this is your fault."

"Really?" Jack asked.

Sabine stared at him, eyes unwavering. "Are you going to ask me in?"

Jack stood back and held the door open, and Sabine entered. She had already bathed — her hair was lose and shimmering in sunlight shining through the window, and he caught a hint of perfumed fragrances.

"I do feel guilt, Sabine," he said, sitting on the bed beside her. "I was a younger man then, in experience more than years. I fought and killed the thing without any thought as to — "

"Don't for a second talk of consequences!" Sabine said sharply. "Vying with Fate is a fool's game, and I won't let you enter into it now, Jack. Not after everything we've been through together, and knowing now what you went through on your own beforehand. The present makes up its own mind, and if you'd known then what you know now, would you have done any different?"

"Of course!"

"Really? Would you? With the beast coming at you, craving the taste of your flesh and bones? And with Lesya chasing behind?"

Lesya. The mention of her name gave Jack pause, and the solidity of their cause gave him something to hold on to.

"I can't say," Jack finally admitted. "What ifs and maybes are as nebulous as dealing with Fate."

"Sweet Jack," Sabine said, and she leaned forward and held one of his hands in both of hers. "Sometimes I see such weight on your shoulders."

"I manage," he said, smiling.

"You can only do your best," she said. "Your friend Hal knows the truth, yes? Yet I didn't hear any blame in his voice, or see it in the way he treated you. He looks up to you, not down at you. He sees the truth."

Jack nodded.

"You can't fight every monster," Sabine said. s she leaned in close and planted a soft kiss against Jack's cheek, he sat up straighter, eyes wide.

"Not every one, perhaps," he said. He stood and paced to the window, looking out along one of Dawson's rough streets and the rougher people inhabiting it. At the edge of the town he could see several people bustling around one of the watchtowers, and even though it was barely past midday there was already an air of frantic anxiety pervading the place. People rushed instead of strolled. Even the drinkers sitting on a large porch outside a tavern seemed to be drinking quickly, afraid that things would change before they saw the bottoms of their glasses.

"Jack?" Sabine asked.

"What's happening here is linked with my crossing paths with Lesya in the past," Jack said. "Who's to say that won't be the same in the future?"

"I'm not sure I understand."

Jack was energized now, and he dressed quickly, still wet from his bath.

"We're heading back out into the wild to find Lesya," Jack said. "To do that with any degree of safety, and any hope of success, we have to know everything we can about the vampires. I've got a plan." As he strapped on his knife, it crossed his mind that he should try to procure a silver blade before they left Dawson again. "They're a part of what happens next, like it or not. If I get even the slightest of chances, I'll do what I can to kill them all."

"Everything we've done is pointless!" Hal said. "All the defenses I've helped build, the towers and fences and pits. The look-outs in the trees. All of it pointless if they can just . . ." He shook his head and took another drink. Last time Jack had seen Hal, he'd been a young boy not used to liquor. Another mark of his adulthood, Jack thought grimly, brought on too soon.

"Not pointless at all," Callie insisted.

"How the hell d'you figure that?" Hal asked.

Jack could sense a panic rising in Hal. "Callie knows what she's talking about," Jack said.

"One of those things got into Dawson last night!" Hal said. "Past all our best defenses, got in to kill Truman and bite his wife and now she's . . . she's what?"

"She's someone to be visited again," Jack said. He looked around the table at the others, glancing from face to face looking for understanding. In the bustle of the tavern, where dozens of people drank and ate and sang with a barely concealed desperation, their large table stood out as an oasis of calm and contemplation. Sabine was watching him with concern. Louis, Vukovich, and the Reverend nursed their drinks, faces unreadable. Callie was nodding slowly, one hand holding her glass on the table, the other splayed on her thigh. She rarely had both hands far away from her guns or her knife.

Whether or not some of the others understood, it was Ghost who voiced it.

"She's bait," he said. "Bitten, and infected with whatever curse the vampires have. I smelled it on her just as surely as I smelled death on her husband. Now she's waiting to be visited again. Drunk from."

"And tonight, we'll be there waiting to catch the beast and question it," Jack said.

"Jack . . ." Sabine said warily.

"We need to know," Louis said, nodding sagely. "How many there are, their intentions, their strengths and weaknesses . . . ."

"Weaknesses?" Vukovich asked.

"Every living thing has a weakness, man or monster," Jack said. Ghost chuckled, but no one acknowledged him.

"More than that," The Reverend said, "we need to know where they camp. Where they spend the daylight hours."

"Yes," Jack said. "If everything we've seen, everything we've heard from Dawson, is true, then they only come out at night."

"We've never seen one moving in the sunlight," Hal confirmed. "But the way you're talking here, Jack, sounds like you're planning a war."

"Not at all," Jack said, but he glanced aside, tapping his fingers on the table and realizing that was exactly what it sounded like.

"Know your enemy, eh, Jack?" Ghost said.

"Know your enemy," Jack said, nodding, not looking at Ghost. He could feel the big man's infuriating smile. "Our aim remains what it was the moment we started on this journey — Lesya, her secrets, and her possible links to Sabine. The other aims that have come about during the course of the journey . . ." He nodded to Vukovich and the Reverend, smiled at Louis. "Well, that's going well, and I'm pleased to say I've found new friends. But we've lost enough already. So the fewer surprises between us and Lesya, the better."

"It's inhuman," Hal muttered. "Using her as bait. She's lost her husband already, and now you're going to lay in wait for a monster to come and feed from her."

"It ain't inhuman," Callie said.

"Then what is it?" Sabine asked quietly.

"Survival. She ain't human no more, honey." She smiled at Sabine, but it did not touch her eyes. With everything she had likely seen, Jack wondered whether she could ever smile for real anymore. "She ain't as much a monster as them, but gettin' there. Truth be told . . . after we catch the beast, we'd do her a favor to end her own sufferin'."

"You'd murder her?" Hal was aghast.

Callie shrugged. She had no answer for him, because none was needed. Jack could see Hal gradually acknowledge the truth of things, and his respect for the young man grew by the moment.

"So that's it," Jack said. "We'll meet here again in six hours, get ready. Meantime, we've got a journey into the wild to prepare for. We lost everything when the steamer went down, so Hal, I'd sure appreciate it if you could help us restock."

"Dawson's an expensive place nowadays," Hal said, evidently pleased to have something else to discuss. "You got the money?"

"No problem there," Louis said.

"Good," Jack said. He was feeling an urge to move away, retreat to a place where he and Sabine could be alone. He was also sensing that this might be their last chance to do so for quite some time. There were things they had to discuss, and he was concerned for her. Though they were still close to the river, she seemed more strained than ever, her expression one of forced well-being rather than tiredness. He had to ask her how she really was, because the answer might affect their onward journey just as much as whatever they might learn tonight.

Hal stood to leave, glancing back at their table as he stood in the doorway. "So who's with me?" he asked. "I like to spend as much time in the daylight as I can."

The three Wolves went with Hal to restock equipment and supplies for their imminent journey onward. Callie went her own way. Ghost too drifted off, and Jack was pleased to see him go. Hand in hand, he and Sabine walked out into the sunlight and headed along the street, down toward the river. The docks were quieter than he had expected. Few vessels had made it along the river.

"Sabine —" Jack began, but she cut in immediately, squeezing his hand tighter as she spoke.

"Jack, I'm fine," she said. "I'm very tired, and my soul aches because I've never been this far from water. There's the river, yes, but that feels . . . tainted. And a river can't be compared to the sea. That's my real home. I'm afraid, too. Scared that I've come so close to perhaps discovering more about myself than I've ever known, and that we might be stopped at the last minute by those things. Stopped . . . or killed."

"We won't be killed," Jack said, but Sabine waved the comment away as if it had little importance.

"Don't you see what a tragedy that would be?" she asked. "To come so far, and potentially know so much. My history is a storm. I want to see through it, so that everything is clear. To discover that these things are in the way . . ." She sighed heavily, and her fears made Jack realize yet again how different she was from him. Death did not scare her, but losing the chance to discover herself did. That made her somehow purer than him. Whatever she might be — wherever she had come from — truth was more important to her than anything right now.

"I swear they won't stop us," Jack promised. "Look at us! See what we've done! Nothing can get in our way."

"You're so sweet," Sabine said, smiling and pulling him along beside her again. But even as they started walking again, Jack recognized the doubt in her voice. For the first time ever, she had sounded like a wise old woman talking to a child.

In a way, she was.

Jack silently vowed, yet again, that he would do anything for Sabine. She was his life now. Whatever they might face, he would be her truth.

In the end, they agreed upon the simplest plan.

Ghost had wanted to use guns and nets, Vukovich and the others suggested they use their own powers to partially change and attack the vampire at its own level, and Jack and Sabine had contrived a series of signals and diversions that would edge the vampire into a trap. But it was Callie who had silenced them all and settled the final plan.

"It'll be in its human form," she had said. "To get into Dawson unseen, it'll have to be. Fast, quiet, it'll move like a shadow. Bullets might slow it, but more likely they'll only piss it off. And it'll smell danger. Simpler we go, further we are from it, more likely it'll be we catch it."

"So what are you suggesting?" Jack had asked.

Callie had told them.

Now they waited, as the sun skimmed the horizon across the river and darkness settled itself over this dark land once again. Jack, Sabine, and Louis were in an abandoned house thirty feet from the two-story store. Vukovich, the Reverend, and Ghost were hiding in a wood shed behind the house, their view of the external staircase leading up to the sick woman's home just as clear. In both hiding places, the end of a strong rope was knotted and looped, ready to be grabbed and pulled when the moment was right.

Callie was out on her own, and she had told no one where she would be. She had simply slipped away from the others like a shadow herself.

They waited silently, and none of them passed comment as night descended across Dawson. Taverns remained open, and the sounds of merriment were even more desperate and frantic than they had been during the day. It seemed that those who chose to defy the mortal danger visited upon them — and there was no point trying to remain silent and unseen from these beasts — were living every moment as if it were their last. Jack had a healthy appreciation for their intentions, because he had always believed that the purpose of life was to live, not simply to exist. But drinking, singing, and gambling were not ways to live your last. What he and the others were doing was the way. Striving to go forward, to survive; not simply to give in and go out with a bang.

There were far fewer people on the streets. They walked in small groups, and faint starlight glimmered from gun metal on most of them.

There was a half moon. That was good. Jack knew that the wolves could change at will, but anywhere near a full moon would make them much more skittish.

"Did you hear that?" Louis asked.

"What?" Jack held his breath, and sensed Sabine doing the same beside him. She had been probing out toward the river, in case an attack came from there, but she reported that the waters flowed dark, cold, and empty.

"Gunshot," Louis said. "Very distant."

They fell quiet and listened again, and from way out beyond the edge of town came a more sustained volley of gunfire.

"It's begun," Jack said. He thought of the men and women up in those clumsily constructed watchtowers, nursing guns that would only prick the vampire polar bears and annoy them even more. Dawson survived, and that was testament to their resilience, and perhaps effectiveness. But there was also Truman's horrible death, and the shadow of a woman that was all that remained of his wife.

Callie had suggested that she would not be the only vampire amongst them.

"I can't tell how many there are," Sabine said.

"Only one that concerns us this night," Jack said. They watched the store, looking for shadows where there should be none and movement that betrayed their target. What if they don't leave shadows? Jack wondered. Nature doesn't rule them, so perhaps they in turn can bend it? He closed his eyes and tried to ride the currents of nature in his own way, sensing out into the darkness to connect with any creatures out there. But it seemed that at night, even the wildlife of Dawson sought sanctuary in deep holes or pits.

Louis sniffed. Froze. Sniffed again, a longer, deeper inhalation.

"What?" Sabine whispered.

"Something dead," Louis breathed. "Yet . . . undead."

They watched the shape emerge from a darkness none of them had noticed before. It drifted, its movement sickeningly graceful. Jack caught a hint of long flowing hair, bulky shoulders, long limbs that on a normal person might have meant a fast runner or an athlete.

"A woman," Sabine said.

"A woman monster," Jack corrected her. "It changes nothing. Louis?"

"Nothing is changed," Louis agreed.

"Well, then," Jack said, taking up the end of the rope that snaked out of the door. They had taken care to hide it carefully where it crossed the muddy road. "Hold on with me. And now it's all down to Callie."

Chapter Nine - Caging the Dark

'Ware my signal, Callie had said. So the three of them sat there holding the rope, and Jack knew that in the woodshed Ghost, the Reverend, and Vukovich would be doing the same with theirs. Whatever signal Callie had planned would start a fight that could well end with one or all of them dead.

The Tlingit vampire woman reached the base of the staircase and paused.

No! Jack thought. He closed his mind and glanced away, afraid that she could hear his thoughts, sense the nervous tension in the air. To his relief she started climbing toward the landing and door at the top, and the hot red meal promised her within.

The door opened. The vampire paused halfway up the staircase.

Callie stepped out onto the landing, a shotgun nursed in her hands.

The vampire crouched and hissed, such an animal sound, and Callie gave her both barrels in the face.

"Pull!" Jack shouted. He, Sabine and Louis tugged at the rope and it sprung up from the street, flicking mud into the night as it tensed around one of the staircase's supporting legs. The other rope did the same as the others pulled, and two legs gave way almost instantaneously. Where they had sawn through the supports earlier, the wood cracked and splintered, parting to spill the vampire down into the mud.

Callie leapt from the landing into the mess of broken wood, landing astride the thrashing vampire's chest.

"It'll tear her to pieces!" Louis shouted. Jack thought so too, and he was watching for the woman changing shape, becoming one of the beasts they had fought the night before. But Callie was quick, and knew what she was doing. Pistol already in her hand when she jumped, she fired three times down at the struggling shape.

The vampire's hissing changed to a high-pitched shriek of pain.

"To me!" Callie shouted.

"Come on!" Jack said. They dashed from the house and across the street, carrying wound ropes for binding the fallen thing.

The vampire was waving her arms and legs amidst the splintered remains of the staircase, knocking wood aside, her face a mess of raw flesh and buckshot, and steam seemed to be rising from both hands.

"You've killed it?" Louis asked, looking at its hands.

"Silver?" Jack asked.

"Shot off some fingers," Callie said. "Silver's not left inside, so it'll be a slow enough death for us to get what we want."

The vampire shrieked and hissed, her eyes rolling up in the ruins of her face.

Jack's heart beat fast as he and the others helped bind the beast, a mixture of shock and excitement giving him a clarity he had only experienced a few times before — fighting the Wendigo, fleeing Lesya, tackling a werewolf. Ghost was grinning as they went about their task, and Jack glanced at the others quickly, pleased to see that the wolves were maintaining their human forms. Vukovich's hands looked larger . . . his shoulders perhaps even broader . . . but he looked at Jack and nodded, and Jack gave him a smile.

Together they had captured the monster. Now it was time for the next part of their plan.

"Will it talk?" the Reverend said, standing back and looking down at the pained thing.

"Oh, it'll talk," Callie said. Her certainty was chilling.

"And the woman?" Jack said, nodding up at the doorway now leading onto a barely supported landing.

"Ill. Bound. She's not our concern right now." Callie grabbed the end of a rope and started pulling. "So you gonna help me?"

Jack glanced at the second floor windows, then everyone grasped a rope and pulled. Together they dragged the screaming vampire across Dawson's fear-filled streets to the jail.

"So it's . . . what? Burnin' to death?" Sheriff Killebrew stood back from the bars, hands on hips to prevent himself from shaking, and his huge mustache twitched slightly as he chewed over what had come into his world.

"Shot some fingers off with silver bullets," Callie said. "I was careful not to leave any inside it. If I had, then yeah, it'd burn. And good riddance."

"Poison," Kikono said. He was still in the neighboring cell, pressed back as far as he could into the corner, but standing upright and remaining dignified in the face of this horror. Jack had a huge respect for the old Tlingit, and wanted to ask the sheriff to release him. Right now though, they had other concerns.

The bound vampire had worked herself into a sitting position against the wooden cot. Smoke rose from both hands, filling the gaol with an acrid stench that turned Jack's stomach. She shook, but her cries of pain had ceased, and between strands of long, hanging hair Jack could see a grotesque smile on the Indian woman's face. Her lips quivered. Her teeth were deformed, enlarged, and had slashed her lips to ribbons. No blood seemed to flow, and the damage wrought by the shotgun blast seemed already to have started healing.

The ropes were tied tight, though, and Callie had slipped a noose around her neck that contained a thin silver chain. She said it would prevent the vampire from changing into anything else — like a polar bear. Dragging her across town, they had all hoped that were true.

"So it's dyin'," Callie said. "Yeah, good. But we got things to ask it first. An' you're gonna help us."

"Me?" Kikono asked. Then he nodded, answering his own question. "Me. Of course. She is . . . old." He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "One of the old ones first touched by the blood spirits. If she still bore any humanity, perhaps she and I would be related. But she has long since ceased being human."

"Human, animal, damned vegetable, can you speak to it?" Callie asked.

Kikono muttered something under his breath and the vampire's head twitched sideways. She sneered, and spoke. Jack tried not to back away at the sound of her voice, but the Sheriff gasped and stood a shuffling step back against his desk. She sounds like nothing that should be, Jack thought. It was as if her voice was made of sharp shadows.

Kikono nodded once, slowly. Then he spoke some more in his own language, firmer and harsher, drawing shapes in the air before him with both hands.

The vampire hissed a single word, then spat. Smoke rose from her hands and curled around her head, like ghost snakes.

"She is very old," Kikono said. "Her language is basic, but has roots in my own. I understand. And she tells you to . . ."

"To what?" Jack asked.

Kikono glanced at Sabine. "I hesitate to translate with the lady present."

"We can trade insults all night," Callie said. "Ask the thing where its camp is? How far do they travel? How many of them are there?"

"I am not sure it will be willing to listen to —" Kikono said, but Callie silenced him, and made everyone's blood run cold, when she pulled her gun and shot the vampire through the thigh. The vampire shrieked as a haze of flesh and smoke splashed across the dusty cell floor before her. She leaned back against the cot, writhing as the touch of silver coursed through her body.

"Callie," Jack said. He took no comfort from seeing this monster tortured, felt no pleasure at her pain. The others remained silent, the wolves and Ghost guarding the two doors, Sabine close to Jack's side.

"Ask it," Callie said.

Kikono asked. The vampire seemed not to hear, hissing in pain. Then she spoke, and Jack watched Kikono's reaction, the proud Tlingit listening to words spoken by a travesty of what an ancestor had become.

"It begs to be killed quickly," Kikono said.

"An' I'll do that if it tells what we want to know," Callie said, aiming her revolver again.

Kikono spoke once more, his voice level and surprisingly calm, the vampire shivering, her head down and hair hanging across her damaged face. She held one hand over the wound in her thigh, and smoke rose from them both.

The vampire looked up, hair swinging away from her face to expose the shotgun wounds. They had already healed over, raw flesh now dry and covered with knotted, ridged skin. Her eyes were wide — pain or surprise, Jack did not know. She started talking. Her voice was as dreadful as before, a song of decay that might melt the flesh of those listening.

"Their camp is thirty miles away, in a limestone cave to the north of a place they call the Spirited Trees," Kikono said. "I believe I know where she means. She mentions something about the Wendigo, and haunting its domain. She says they are legion. She says they are as many as people in the world, because they will eventually take everyone."

"I like her ambition," Ghost said dryly. "But I think Mister London might be right, vampire hunter. I think perhaps — "

The vampire's talking, her hissing, her shrieking in pain, her writhing, her moaning, all merged into a final, terrible chuckle.

Then she moved.

For Jack, everything changed between one blink and the next, impossibly quickly, each instant loaded with the potential disaster to come. His first instinct as the vampire moved was to shove Sabine behind him. As he did so, the cursed Tlingit tensed, ropes snapping from around her limbs and body, smoking hand reaching up and tearing the silver-wired noose from around her neck.

On one side, Jack saw Callie lifting her revolver. To his left, Ghost crouched down and began to growl.

The vampire changed. The sound accompanying the transformation was hideous — cracking, groaning, crunching, wetness, a roar from her distending mouth and an awful scratching from the huge claws bursting from her feet and injured hands and scoring the floor. She grew, and the sudden change was disorienting. Jack fell back against Sabine, both of them leaning against the wall, and then someone was shooting.

The Sheriff had his gun drawn and was firing even before Callie was ready to shoot. Bullets impacted across the polar bear's side, and then it thrashed around in the confined cell, smashing the cot against the bars.

The cot shattered, showering them with splinters and shards of wood. Callie's gun discharged and then she fell before Jack and Sabine, hands going up to her face where blood was already blooming around several thick splinters protruding around her eyes.

"Silver!" Jack shouted, but his voice was drowned by another gunshot from Killebrew.

The three wolves spread across the room, keeping their distance from the cell.

Jack looked for Callie's dropped gun, but it had skittered away somewhere, or was hidden beneath pieces of the shattered cot that had powered between the bars.

The polar bear roared, impossibly loud in the confined space, and planted its paws on the cell bars. They're still smoking, Jack had time to think, and then the bear heaved itself forward, bars creaking and bending, one of them cracking with a sound louder than a gunshot.

"Out!" Jack shouted, but there was no time to move.

With a glance at Sabine, Ghost was at the bars, half-changed, fur bristling along his shoulders and down his thickening arms, claws slashing. But the bear simply reached out between bent bars and dragged Ghost through, into the cell with it where no one else could reach.

Ghost shouted in surprise as his head clanged from a bar, and his shout ended in a fading groan.

I'm going to see Ghost die, Jack thought, and the idea was amazing and impossible, and terrible. In that moment Jack would have risked his own life to save Ghost, and he had no idea why.

But there was no need. Another three gunshots rang out and the Polar bear flipped back against the cell's rear wall, its mouth going wide for one final roar that it never uttered. As it slid slowly down to the floor it changed, shifting back to the Tlingit woman with more terrible cracks and creaks of bones changing shape, flesh transforming. She was dead before the change was complete, and smoke rose from the new wounds across her chest and throat.

"Damn," Sheriff Killebrew said. He was kneeling beside Callie, one hand on her shoulder to steady himself, the other bearing her dropped gun. He kept it aimed at the woman. The stillness felt loaded with a threat of more violence, and it was several moments before Ghost stood up in the cell and started brushing himself down.

Killebrew's aim shifted to Ghost. The Sheriff stood as well and backed away from Callie, from them all, until his back was against the wall beside Kikono's cell.

"Just . . ." Killebrew said.

"Thank you," Ghost said calmly. "If you hadn't done that, I would be dead."

"You would be dead," Killebrew said, staring at Ghost in confusion, blinking quickly as if to remove a memory from his eyes.

"Good shooting," Jack said, trying to calm Killebrew's nerves.

"Yes, mon ami," Louis said from by the side door. "Excellent, Sheriff."

Sheriff Killebrew stared at Ghost, and when Callie gently took her gun from his hand, he did not resist.

Ghost climbed through the cell's bent bars, slipping through easier this time than he had going in. Going in, he was almost as monstrous as that thing, Jack thought, and he knew that the Sheriff was not a foolish man. He had lived a life, seen things, and now he had seen so much more.

"We're truly in your debt, Sheriff," Jack said. Kikono started talking in his own language.

"Speaking to the memory of his ancestor," the Sheriff said, perhaps glad for the distraction.

"Then we should leave him in peace," Jack said. "There's no more danger here."

"No more," Killebrew said.

Ghost nodded his thanks to the Sheriff once again and then left the cells, followed closely by the other wolves. Jack and Sabine helped Callie pick the splinters from her face and went to leave, supporting the brave woman between them.

"Jack London," the Sheriff said suddenly. "I think I remember that name now. While back, before I was Sheriff. There was talk of a London taking on one of those bastard slave drivers in a saloon."

Jack shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing.

"Seems trouble draws itself to you," Killebrew said.

Jack offered a gentle smile, and looked through the bent bars at the dead Tlingit. "Seems you might be right," he said. And it's far from over, he thought. He had no wish to enter into conversation with the Sheriff. Their immediate plans, and their destination, had to remain secret. The Sheriff had seen incredible, ghastly things that night, but there were still some things that could never be explained away.

The Sheriff touched his hat, and Jack nodded and left the cells. In the older man's eyes he had seen respect, but also something else. He thought he was looking at a damned man, Jack thought. Disturbed by the idea, he left the jailhouse to join the others standing under a twilit sky, listening to a silence that had fallen over Dawson.

Dawn was coming. Their time to move was here.

Horses were skittish around the wolves, Jack had learned, so everyone would have to carry their own packs. Hal had arranged as much as he could given the time constraints, and Jack was more than impressed with what his friend had managed to procure. Packs, food, water canteens, sleeping rolls, blankets, tools, some new boots and clothing — much of what was needed for a long hike into the wild.

As they met up with Hal in the storage huts behind their hotel, and quietly sorted through their new equipment in readiness for their dawn departure, Jack was more and more troubled by the vampire's revelation. If the monsters had their camp so close to Lesya's forest, then what of Lesya? Had she gone to ground in the face of their unnatural curse? Or had she fled?

Jack wasn't sure she could flee, as he had assumed the forest to be her prison as well as her home. Her father — so much older than her, and so much more connected to the soul of the land — had been keeping her confined there. But there was no saying what might have happened since the vampires had come so close, drawn by the Wendigo's death to start preying on the settlements they had previously feared approaching. No saying what they had done to the tree spirits.

Jack only hoped they could find her, otherwise their trip here might have been wasted.

Ghost sat to one side, sharpening a new knife that Hal had handed him. Vukovich, the Reverend, and Louis were examining the kit, loading their packs with what they thought they might need and discarding everything else. Jack knew they would travel light. He and Sabine remained close, saying little but aware of each other's presence.

Callie stood outside, leaning on the rifle that Hal had managed to procure for her, looking past the hotel and into the wild hillsides beyond the small, ramshackle town. Her head was tilted slightly, but Jack had seen her eyes. She was seeing something and somewhere else. Soon, if she did not tell them what and where, he would have to ask.

"Jack," Hal said, before turning and walking around the side of the hotel without saying more, and without looking back.

Jack smiled as he followed the young man, remembering the first time he had seen Hal. Then, the young man and his mutt had been threatened by William and Archie, the cruel and spiteful slavers who had preyed on the weak and defeated of Dawson to steal them away, and force their captives to pan for gold. Jack and his friends had rescued Hal and gained his confidence, but the man he followed now seemed so different. It saddened Jack that Hal had been forced to grow up so quickly, finding adulthood in a shadow of monsters' influence over Dawson.

Hal paused by the main street. It was coming alive now that dawn lit the wooded hillsides to the east, Dawson's residents animated and relieved at surviving another night.

"What is it, Hal?" Jack asked.

"You can't go." Hal's voice was flat, almost empty.

"We have to," Jack said. "We didn't come here to — "

"But you're leaving us to this!" Hal said. "You've seen what we're against here, and you and your friends can handle yourselves. I know I helped you kit up, but I was hopin' you'd decide to stay. I'm learning things I never thought I would, Jack, and discovering truths I thought were your domain. You can all help us. You have to help us. 'Cos I don't know how much longer Dawson can survive."

"Hal, we didn't come here for this," Jack said again. It felt harsh, but the truth carried weight. Sabine was Jack prime concern.

"Yet you've walked into it," Hal said, nodding across at the jailhouse. "So what do you know?"

Jack was sure none of the others had mentioned what had happened. "The Sheriff?"

"Walrus and I are friends," Hal said. "I'm sorta . . . a deputy. 'Cept he doesn't have a badge for me to wear, and says I'd be too young anyway."

"What we learned doesn't matter," Jack said, but even as he spoke he realized that it did matter, more than he had acknowledged until now. Because though his aim was always Lesya, he traveled with powerful werewolves and a vampire killer. The vampires' camp was so close to where he was leading the others.

"I hate that you're going," Hal said simply. "I ain't gonna ask to go with you. Not because I know you'll say no, but because I belong here. I won't abandon Dawson to its fate."

"And neither will I," Jack promised. "I'm leaving, yes. But I left before. And that time I destroyed something that was hunting prospectors and made the wilds a safer . . ." He trailed off, because he knew that was not true. Guilt pressed in again.

Hal did not reply, but sighed and leaned against the hotel's side. "I thought for a while I wanted to go with you," Hal said. "Thought we could hook up an' go into the wild together, hunt these things, find their camp an destroy them there, during the day, while they're asleep or hidden away, or whatever it is they do when the sun's up." He turned to stare at Jack then, eyes blazing. "But you're traveling with . . ." He frowned, searching for words and truths that eluded him. "You're human, aren't you Jack? Just tell me you are, at least?"

Jack could have tried explaining, telling Hal about the pack and Ghost, and his love for Sabine, and why he had promised to bring her here to find her answers. Instead he only nodded. He grasped Hal's shoulders and squeezed.

"I am, Hal. I'll be back, and when I do I'll tell you everything. I promise."

"You can't promise that," Hal said. "Not now. Everything's changed, and nothin's real anymore." Hal shrugged Jack's arms from his shoulders and walked away. Without turning back he said, "I hope I see you again, Jack." Then he was gone, walking along Dawson's main street toward whatever fate awaited him.

Jack felt wretched. Weak dawn light warmed his skin, but he was cold inside. I will be back, he thought, but he knew also that Hal was right. A promise like that was one he had no right making.

In the wild, anything could happen.

As Jack approached his traveling companions, he only said, "We're ready to leave." Sabine nodded and smiled, clearly enthused at the idea that they were moving closer to her destiny. The wolves were expressionless, but Jack recognized their desire to leave this place and taste the wild again. Ghost did not even look up, but carried on sharpening his blade.

"Not quite yet," Callie said. "There's unfinished business."

"What do you mean?" Sabine asked.

"Friend who called me here's dead," Callie said. "An' his wife . . ."

"His wife," Jack said, voice flat, "bitten, and used."

"Dyin'," Callie corrected. "And then she'll rise again as one of them an' add to the town's curse."

"So what do you propose?" Jack asked

Ghost chuckled. "She wishes to murder the woman."

"Ain't murder," Callie said. "Not when she's already dead."

"But she's up and walking," Ghost said. He stood and sheathed his new knife, rubbing his hands together, and Jack saw that he was enjoying this. Playing with people's lives, toying with their thoughts and emotions — that was Ghost's food, and the fuel to his staggering, skewed intellect. "She opened the door to allow us in, and she seemed sickening, true. But she's breathing and moving, and still you wish to slice her throat."

Callie faced Ghost, swinging the rifle across one shoulder and resting her other hand on her pistol. "You move too," she said. "An' talk, grin, wallow in others' discomfort. Don't make you any more human."

Ghost raised an eyebrow, and Jack caught his breath. There it was: Callie's first overt observation of Ghost's mysterious, inhuman nature.

Ghost only laughed and turned away.

"Callie . . ." Jack began, but she shook her head.

"My mind's set," she said. "An' I'll do it alone. It's a favor to Truman, God rest his soul. He wouldn't want his wife's soul left wanderin'. Just . . . wait for me. Won't take long."

She walked away, disappearing around the corner of the hotel and leaving silence in her wake. Sabine and Jack looked at each other, but neither could speak. In the face of such horror there was nothing to say.

Chapter Ten - The Withering Land

Jack had been a wanderer since he'd learned to walk, partly because his heart had always been unsettled, but also because so many of the paths he'd taken had been through territory he had never wanted to cross again. If he'd made a list of these places, this riverside trail north of Dawson would have topped it.

He had been a slave here, on the journey northward. He had seen men murdered by the Wendigo, and later — on the return trip — he had nearly died at the cursed creature's hands himself. But he had survived. He had escaped Lesya's ancient power and her shrieking loneliness, and he had killed the Wendigo. He had faced the wild beast inside his own heart and had, if not tamed it, at least mastered it. Jack London had chosen humanity, and he had left the blood and brutality and the magic of the ancient forest behind him. While it was true that when he had finally sailed for home he had never planned to stay there for long, he had certainly never intended returning here.

Yet here he was, trekking along the bank of this tributary snaking north from Dawson all through the long hours of the summer sun, heading back into the forbidding wilderness where he had faced horror and wonder and Lesya's yearning, this time with new monsters to fear. No, he thought. Not just monsters. Evil. Callie had said it, and he believed it. Lesya and the Wendigo might be creatures of magic, but they were living things. They had been ferocious but not cruel, and did not fit neatly into humanity's notions of good and evil. The werewolves might have rejoiced in the hunt, but they were beasts; their only cruelty had been of the petty, human variety.

The vampires were sinister creatures unlike anything Jack had faced before.

It helped his conscience to think of that. If he could not have thought of them as evil and cunning and . . . other . . . his guilt over killing the only predator capable of stopping them would have gnawed at him so fiercely that he might have faltered in his purpose. The image of Belle Truman as he'd first seen her lingered in his mind. She had been under the influence of the vampire, her flesh and blood and soul tainted by the creature's bite. Callie had estimated that Belle had perhaps another night and day, even without any further leeching, before she succumbed to the dark influence of the vampire — her husband's killer. According to Callie, who had seen the process more than once, Belle would be in anguish as she withered away, if the vampire didn't finish her off first.

Her body's gonna give up on her, Callie had said. And when she breathes her last breath, the evil that thing put inside her's gonna drive her soul out, leavin' her mind trapped inside a monster's body. That's the horror of it, Jack. I've seen it in their eyes, right up close. Part of who that woman used to be is gonna be stuck in there, like a prisoner in her own body, unable to stop herself from the killing and from drinking the blood of innocent folks. And part of her's gonna like it. If we kill her now, might be we can save her that. It might not be too late for her soul to find its way to Heaven if we set her free. But once she's dead, she's damned to Hell, both her soul in the afterlife, and whatever sliver of her mind is left behind in her hungry corpse.

The words had haunted Jack enough that although he could not force himself to take part, he also could not bring himself to try to stop Callie when she had gone to hasten Belle Truman's death. He knew it had been a mercy, but it felt like a dark deed. And he'd had his fill of such things.

All through the long hours of the day they had trekked northward, stopping only for a brief and meager meal and to refill their canteens from the river. Louis, Vukovich, and the Reverend took the point, scouting ahead several hundred yards, always on guard for any sign of attack despite Callie's assurance that the vampires would not come out into the direct sunlight. Callie followed them, the previously loquacious woman keeping to herself, perhaps haunted by the deed she had committed. It seemed that with every day that passed since he had first come to Dawson two years before, Jack was forced to expand his understanding of what the world contained. Right and wrong weren't as clearly defined as they once had been, nor were man and beast. This morning, he'd had to consider carefully what constituted cruelty, and mercy.

Exhausted and hungry as the sun slid across the sky toward summer evening, Jack knew they had come far enough that they should begin striking westward to seek out Lesya's forest. Sabine looked pale and drawn, and it troubled him to think what effect moving away from the river would have upon her. He walked beside her, mentally urging her to lean on him though she seemed determined to make her own way.

From time to time Louis would drop back and check on them, and Sabine would insist that she was fine in a clipped tone that told a different story. Jack did not question her and neither did Louis. They had come all this way to find Lesya and discover if she could help Sabine sort out the mystery of her own origins, and they knew she would not turn back now.

Of Ghost, they saw little. He trailed them, watching their flank for any threat, but Jack thought he had other things on his mind as well. Despite his arrogance, Ghost had become a rudderless ship of a creature. His brother was dead and Jack thought maybe he was lost as to what his purpose might be in life. His bluster about wooing Sabine had seemed hostile at first, but now Jack wondered if it weren't simply the only way he could explain to himself what he was doing here with them. The other wolves, his former crew and pack, were attempting to relearn what it meant to be human, and he thought Ghost might be absorbing some of that search for redemption simply by being with them.

He wasn't going to push the issue right now, though. If there was a whole tribe of vampires out here in the wild, they would need Ghost's strength and ferocity. Jack had not wanted to admit it to himself, but with every mile they traveled from Dawson, and with every minute that ticked toward nightfall, he might have chosen a very bad time to try to tame a bunch of werewolves.

"This is difficult for you," Sabine said, her voice soft rasp.

They were walking along the river and as he glanced at her, she stumbled on a stone. He caught her before she could fall, steadying her and then taking her hand. Her question went unanswered for half a minute before Jack took a breath and glanced at her.

"Bad things happened here."

"The camp where the Wendigo attacked the men who'd enslaved you?" she asked. "It was nearby?"

He considered lying, but the love in her gleaming eyes stopped him. "We passed it a while back," he confessed.

"What?" Sabine said, her brows knitting. "How long?"

"An hour, I'd guess. Some of the stakes were still in the ground, where they tied us up. And the saddle where I carved a bit of a memorial on the way back."

She came to a halt, staring at him in confusion. "You're trying to protect me. But you can't help me with this and keep me safe at the same time."

Jack looked away. Sabine might not remember all the millennia of her life, but still she had great wisdom and knew enough about the human heart. Of course she understood what he was doing.

"I just thought if we stayed by the river until the last possible moment — "

"If you can't find the way purely by instinct, we're going to need Louis and the others to find a trail to Lesya's part of the woods. Her trail or the Wendigo's, or yours, Jack. And those trails are more than a year old. If you get us lost, we're going to have to hike all the way back to that point and start again."

Jack exhaled. "I won't get us lost. We can strike west from here and I'll be able to sense her. To feel her place and the power around it."

Callie had paused, and now started back toward them. "What's the hold up, you two? If we're going to stop a bit, we ought to let your crew know."

"We should head away from the river now," Jack announced as the vampire hunter approached them, leather gun belts creaking on her hips. "Can you catch up with them and bring them back here?"

Callie frowned, studying them, understanding that there was something else going on between them but wisely not attempting to intrude. None of them had talked much over the course of the day, and it was not a time for intimacy. She turned and hustled along the river, moving quickly despite her heavy clothes and the equipment she had neglected to set down.

Jack felt a presence behind him, and he glanced downriver to see Ghost emerging from some trees and striding toward them.

"Well, which way?" Sabine asked. "If you can sense her, Jack . . . which way?"

Jack smiled at her tone. "You're not actually jealous, are you? You realize that she tried to keep me prisoner as some kind of slave husband."

Sabine ran a hand along his arm, meeting his gaze. "I just don't like the idea that you're connected to anyone but me."

Knowing full well that Ghost was approaching, Jack lifted her chin and gave her a gentle kiss on the lips. Sabine sighed with contentment, but still Jack could see how exhausted she was being this far from the sea.

The faster they found Lesya, the better.

Jack closed his eyes, ignoring Ghost's arrival at the river's edge, and reached his senses out into the forest to the west. He searched at first for some trace of Lesya's wild magic, the thriving power of nature that bloomed uncontrollably around her home. Instead, he felt only hollowness, as though the magic of the land had vanished. Even the ordinary nature of the wild seemed withered.

Confused, he began to reach out to the animals of the wood, searching for a bird or bear or fox whose essence he might be able to sense had been influenced by Lesya's magic . . . but he found none. He could reach further — and there must be animals near enough — but in the immediate vicinity, all of the wildlife had abandoned the woods and the river.

They've fled, Jack thought. Even the Wendigo had not driven the animals away, so this had to be something else.

"The animals are gone," he whispered.

"Perhaps the animals have good sense," Sabine said.

"Here!" someone called. Jack, Sabine, and Ghost all turned north in the direction of the shout. A small rise in the riverbank blocked their view, but a moment later the Reverend appeared on the rocky hill and beckoned.

"Come here," he said, now as quiet as he ever was. Jack had been shocked to hear the quiet man shouting. "You need to see this."

"What is it?" Sabine asked, her voice carrying along the river.

The Reverend looked grim, crouched, ready for a fight, as he called back a single word.

"Death."

When Jack crested the rise he had to blink several times to clear the ghost of memory. For a moment, he thought he must have wandered into the past like the hapless fool in some old fairy story. The gold stampeders had been camped near the river and the evidence of their efforts — supplies and packs and shovels and the pans they used to sift the river bottom for gold — were scattered about as though a small tornado had touched down amongst them and left the surrounding wilderness unscathed. The bodies were broken, tossed about like rag dolls in the hands of a tantrum-prone child. Limbs were twisted and snapped; some had been torn off. An arm lay half in the water, pale fingers appearing to twitch as the river tugged at them. A woman hung from the jagged branches of a nearby tree like a discarded puppet, her long, wheat-blond hair a veil hiding most of the damage done to her face.

"Son of a bitch," Jack rasped.

He took a step backward and shook his head. Despite the tableau of death arrayed before them, this was not the same kind of carnage wrought by the Wendigo when Jack had last been in this part of the world. There were dried brown spatters of blood on trees and rocks and soaked into the ground, but nowhere near enough blood for this many people. And while some had been mutilated, they hadn't been torn open the way the Wendigo would have killed them.

The corpses were fish-belly white, save for two black men whose skin had turned a chalky gray. The blood had been drained from them. The Tlingit vampire tribe had slaughtered them.

Ghost stepped up next to Jack. "A shameful waste of meat," he growled quietly.

Jack narrowed his eyes but did not rise to the bait — for he was sure that was what it was; Ghost trying to get a rise out of him. Louis, the Reverend, and Vukovich were down amongst the dead, picking through the remains of the camp to see if there was anything salvageable in the supplies. Jack knew they weren't looking for survivors; one look made it clear there were none. Instead, he imagined they were looking for coffee, and the triviality of the search made his stomach churn. Still, he supposed he ought to be grateful that none of them looked at the dead in the same manner as Ghost — as a potential meal.

Sabine came up behind him. She took one look at the murder scene and turned away, going back down the rise so as not to have to look too closely. Perhaps it weighed on her, he mused, the thought that they were putting themselves in the path of the vampires on her behalf. Or perhaps she found comfort being at the water's edge.

Callie had a scavenged shotgun over her shoulder as she trudged up the rocky mound toward Jack, Sabine, and Ghost, leaving the massacre behind. She set down a few items she had found and tossed the shotgun to Jack. He caught it, frowning.

"It ain't loaded with silver shot, but it might buy you a couple seconds if the time comes you need 'em," she explained.

Jack nodded his thanks, holding the shotgun tighter than necessary.

"An' there's this," Callie said, tapping a box with her toe. "We don't shoot them all, we can blow 'em up."

"Dynamite?" Jack asked. "You ever used it?"

Callie only raised her eyebrows at him, a silent, Of course. Perhaps one day he would ask her where, and when. She shrugged the pack off her back and started loading it with dynamite sticks.

"Did they leave a trail we can follow?" Ghost asked.

Sabine gave a tiny gasp of shock and glared at him. "You mean for us to follow the vampires? To what end?"

"A messy one, if we tried it," Jack said.

Callie grunted in acknowledgement. "Maybe so. But that's why I'm here, ain't it? To hunt these bastards. We kill 'em in their lair, it's gonna save a lot of lives in Dawson and probably plenty of other places."

Ghost lifted his chin, nostrils flaring, regarding them all as if they were children or fools. "I wondered if they'd purposely left a trail for us, to lure us in, but I'm in no hurry to go after them. If the vampires come at us, I'll eat their black hearts, and if young Jack's attempt to rehabilitate me starts taking hold, I might even be willing to track and kill them myself. But we're here for Sabine first. Anything else is secondary."

Jack wanted to kill him, wished that Ghost were among the dead in the camp spread out below them. Sabine and Jack were together. In love. But Ghost would simply not cease his attempts to position himself as her man. Did he really not understand that Sabine had figured him out, that she and Jack both knew that his behavior was more closely tied to obsession than love? Ghost had only a passing acquaintance with morality. He had been helpful and amiable and almost gallant up to this point, but now cracks were beginning to show in his façade, and Jack's hope that he might be positively influenced began to fade.

"You're nowhere near human," Jack said.

Ghost gave a small laugh. "I thought we had established that fairly solidly in our past acquaintance."

"You understand what he's doing?" Jack went on, turning to Sabine, with Callie looking on. "He's been a monster so long he doesn't really understand the difference between right and wrong. He's just doing what he thinks you would expect of a good man."

Ghost continued to smile, but Jack could sense him bristling with a challenge. He turned in time to see the thickening of the hair on Ghost's face, the lengthening of his canines that turned his smile into a predatory grin.

The click of Callie's pistol echoed loudly around them as she cocked the hammer and pressed it against Ghost's temple.

"Your kind seems just as skittish around silver as the leeches," Callie said. "I ain't got enough ammo to deal with two kinds of monsters on this trip. Don't make me change targets."

Ghost's smile slid away. He didn't look at Callie, just kept staring at Jack.

"Bitch is going to regret that," he snarled.

Sabine slapped him, hard. Ghost roared and rounded on her. Jack shouted at him as Callie stepped back and leveled her gun, ready to fire. Alarmed by the noise, the other three wolves began sprinting toward the top of the rise, but they would be too late to help.

Ghost fumed, sniffed, and then shook his head, trying to contain his fury.

"Maybe the 'bitch' should pull the trigger," Sabine said. "Just in case."

Ghost flinched, as if Sabine had struck him this time. "You don't understand. You'll never live through this without me."

For the first time, Jack thought he saw actual pain — a sign of true humanity — in the monster's eyes.

"Why do you care?" Sabine demanded.

Ghost grunted, pivoted on one foot, and headed west, descending the rise in the direction of the tree line. As Louis and the other wolves joined Jack, Ghost began to poke around the woods, stepping into the forest and then back out again, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply.

"What's he doing now?" Callie asked.

"Trying to find the trail," the Reverend said. "See if their lair is nearby. The summer days this far north are long, but we have maybe four hours before nightfall. If we can figure out which direction would lead us to the vampires, we can go the other way. We can't be anywhere near them when the sun sets."

"We don't have a choice," Jack said.

They all looked at him. Even Ghost, with his wolf's hearing, paused in his efforts and turned to look up at them.

"Maybe you better explain that," Louis suggested.

In answer, Jack pointed. "Vampires or not, Lesya's part of the forest is that way, so that's where we're going." Sabine had been right that he had been keeping to the river for as long as possible, but he remembered the general terrain well enough. If they headed northwest, he knew that would eventually come to the hills and Lesya's territory.

They were all silent for several seconds, taking in the repercussions of that statement.

"We came up here to kill these vampires, keep 'em out of Dawson," Callie said, one gun still drawn and her free hand on the handle of the other.

Jack frowned. "We came up here to help Sabine find the answers she's looking for, if there are answers to be found. We deal with the vampires afterward."

Callie seemed to roll that around in her mind a moment, and then she huffed out a heavy breath. "As long as we deal with 'em."

"I don't think we're going to have much choice," Jack replied grimly.

"All right." Sabine gestured into the woods. "Now that we've got that settled, lead the way."

Jack started down the slope to the northwest with Sabine and Callie immediately behind him. Vukovich, Louis, and the Reverend followed them, the three werewolves talking quietly together. They skirted to the left of the murdered gold-rushers, but came within a dozen feet of the dead woman dangling from the tree. Jack could not help glancing at her. Now that he could see behind the veil of her hair, her dead eyes stared at him, wide with terror and sorrow, haunting.

Ghost lingered off to their left as if hesitating to follow.

"You sure I shouldn't put some silver in him?" Callie asked quietly.

Jack held his breath because he wasn't sure. Ghost's presumed intimacy with Sabine made him furious and he was beginning to think any pretense at rehabilitation was only that. However, as arrogant as Ghost was, it was just possible that he could be right — Sabine might not be able to survive this journey without his protection. He was the strongest and most ferocious of them all, by far.

Sabine apparently had no such worries. "Not just yet," she answered Callie quietly, knowing full well Ghost would be able to hear her. "But there may come a time."

Callie laughed softly, breaking the tension. "Well, you just let me know."

Sabine held Jack's hand tightly, but she would not lean on him. They ought to have been moving more swiftly. If they assumed that the vampires sheltered somewhere not far from the slaughter they had discovered, then any direction would get them further away from the monsters if they moved fast enough. The trouble was, Sabine knew that she was slowing them down. Jack could feel her frustration and injured pride every time she stumbled or had to stop to catch her breath. He could help her up, but she refused to let him hold her up. Several times she had suggested they travel on ahead to Lesya's wood, that she would make her own way and find them there. Jack had been pleased that none of them had even acknowledged these suggestions.

They'd been hiking low hills, through copses of woods, and stretches of rugged terrain for over an hour, and the further from the river they ranged, the more Sabine's radiant sheen dimmed. Jack noticed something new as well — she looked older. Not by much, especially when compared to what he imagined her true age to be. But there were tiny crinkles at the edges of her eyes that hadn't been there before, and weariness gave her an air of age.

As they moved up a familiar rise — Jack remembering fleeing over these very hills in his flight from the Wendigo that had first driven him into Lesya's protective embrace — Sabine caught the toe of her boot on a rock and fell to her knees. When Jack went to help her up she waved him off, taking a moment just to breathe.

He knelt beside her. She turned her face away as if she were ashamed.

"I'll make it," she said. "I just need a moment."

Pushing her hair back from her face, Sabine took one more deep breath and got herself up, swaying before she managed to steady herself. When she glanced down at Jack, still on his knees, a tired smile spread across her face.

"Come along, my handsome man," she teased. "Unless the journey's too much for you."

"I love you," Jack said softly. He knew she understood the unspoken words, how he wanted to rage to see her suffering so.

"And I you."

Jack glanced toward the crest of the rise. Callie and Ghost stood with Louis, watching them with expressions that ran the gamut from curiosity to disdain to worry. Vukovich and the Reverend were looking west, down the hill on the opposite side.

"Then let them go on without us," Jack said. "They can find Lesya and bring her back here, to you. We can get your answers and then go back to the river . . . and then to the sea."

"Or she might just kill them all," Sabine pointed out.

"We've always know that was a possibility," Jack said. "We're banking on her being intrigued by you and not killing us — "

"She won't kill you. She loves you."
Jack frowned. "How can you not have understood this? She never loved me. She just doesn't want to be alone and she needs a man with enough of the wild in him to live the way she lives. Wild enough to stay with her. Someone untamed."

"You've got that in you," Sabine said, taking his hand as he rose to his feet. "I've felt it in you. You've told me as much."

"But I've mastered it. This isn't where I belong."

"No," Sabine agreed. "You belong with me. I won't risk all of this being for nothing. We go on together."

She clutched his hand and led him up the last few yards of the slope. Heavy with worry for her, Jack went along. Callie and the wolves said nothing — not even Ghost — as they all started down the other side together toward a stretch of forest that spread out from the base of the hill.

"How much further do ya think, Jack?" Callie asked.

"Terrain all looks the same to me," the Reverend said. "You really know where we are?"

"I think we stay out of those woods," Jack replied. "We head that way ."He pointed northwest, where small, craggy hills were dotted sparsely with trees that looked like bent old men who had survived too many Yukon winters. "Miles to go, still, but we'll come to a stream. Beyond that, Lesya's forest."

Ghost grunted and started northwest without further consultation. "He seems sure to me. Let's get this done before it kills her."

He clearly meant Sabine, but he did not so much look at her as he set off. The rest of the group followed, descending the hill at a steep angle that was difficult for Sabine to maneuver. With the woods to their left, they reached the foot of one hill and started toward the next rise. Moments later Louis halted and sniffed at the air. Jack tensed. Ghost only paused, nodding in approbation as he glanced toward the tree line.

Jack followed Ghost's gaze and saw it there, in the shadows the trees threw in the evening sunlight.

His wolf.

"Well, well," Ghost said.

"Friend of yours?" Callie asked.

"Yes," Jack replied, before he realized she had been talking to Ghost.

"Friend enough," the former captain said. "The beast saved my life. But for Jack's benefit, not my own."

What could Jack say to them? Only Sabine knew of his connection to the wolf, this creature that sometimes seemed more phantom than animal. It was his spirit totem, tied in some way to the essence of himself, and it had saved his life more than once on his first visit to the Yukon. But it had rarely been so bold about revealing itself to others.

He'd been so distracted worrying about Sabine that he had ceased paying attention to the wildlife in the area, or the dark voids of vampires nearby. Now he felt some of the weight of fear for Sabine float from him. Though the wolf usually only manifested in dire moments, its presence lifted his spirits.

"Keep going," Jack said. "I'll catch up." The others moved on, Callie keeping close to Sabine's side, Ghost and Vukovich in the lead. But as Jack broke off from the group to greet the wolf — reaching out with his senses to welcome it, and to search the woods beyond for any threat — the animal bolted northwest. In seconds, it had overtaken them all and stood in their path.

When Ghost and Vukovich did not slow their pace, the wolf began to growl, teeth bared, hackles raised.

"What the hell's this, now?" Callie asked.

Jack ran, passing Sabine and the others, overtaking Ghost and Vukovich, and as he approached the wolf it shied back from him, snarling. He skidded to a halt, surprised.

"It's me," he said, reaching out a hand. So majestic, so beautiful, though smaller than any werewolf it was the most powerful beast Jack had ever seen. They had found each other in the wild, the wolf had saved him, and the last thing it wished for him was harm.

Yet now it growled, and stalked a step closer to Jack with its teeth bared.

Vukovich darted by, the transformation from man to wolf rippling through him so that he was half one and half the other. His growl was deep and monstrous.

"No!" Jack shouted, and behind him Louis was also shouting, calling his crew-mate back. But Vukovich's blood was up. He advanced on the wolf, and the two began circling each other.

His emotions in turmoil — anger at Vukovich, fear for his wolf, confusion at why the animal seemed suddenly malevolent toward him — Jack rushed at Vukovich. He kicked the transformed man in the hip, trying to spill him to the ground, but Vukovich was fast and supple. He twisted away from Jack's kick and lunged as if to attack.

"Jack!" Sabine shouted. The wolf struck Vukovich in the side, driving him aside from Jack and down to the ground, teeth gnashing, claws slashing.

Oh no! Jack thought as Vukovich reared up, his own jaws widening into an unnatural gape. Suddenly Ghost was there, picking up Vukovich and hurling him aside. Vukovich twisted in the air and landed on his feet twenty steps away, but remained crouched down. He hesitated to attack, knowing that Ghost could easily best him.

"I said the wolf saved my life!" Ghost snarled. "You want to kill and eat Jack, that's fine with me. But you don't touch the wolf."

As Vukovich reassumed his human form and his lupine characteristics receded, Louis approached and slapped him across the face, cursing him in rapid fire Creole French. The Reverend stood back from the fray, watching warily. He seemed mostly concerned with Callie, and what she would do with her silver bullets now that she'd seen just how monstrous her companions were, but the vampire hunter only seemed to nod and take it in. For now, Jack thought.

Jack stepped between Ghost and Vukovich, approaching Vukovich and standing close enough to smell the man's breath. "We're all in this together, Vukovich," Jack said calmly. "Each of us has made a choice to be here. But though we seem something like a pack, you stopped living by pack rules when you started following me." Several seconds ticked by with Jack and Vukovich eye to eye. At any moment the werewolf might strike, fingers elongating into claws, tearing out his throat — or trying — but Jack stared at him unblinking. "If you want to change that . . . if you want to settle this according to the laws of the pack . . . we can do that."

Vukovich blinked in surprise and uncertainty. Then he glanced away, sniffing a dismissal.

"You're not one of us," he said. "You wouldn't stand a chance."

"I've killed worse monsters than you," Jack said. He did not take his gaze from Vukovich, and after a moment the Russian turned away. Ghost looked on with what Jack thought of as a kind of dark approval, and it made Jack shudder.

He strode back to his wolf, which had watched the proceedings with a low, continuous growl of disapproval, ready to leap to Jack's defense. Its behavior confounded Jack. Why would it threaten him at the same time as it wanted to protect him, unless . . .

Jack gazed to the hills to the northwest, and he knew.

"He wants us to turn around."

"What?" Callie said. "The wolf?"

Jack turned to look at them. "That's why he's come, to keep us from walking into danger."

Sabine looked stricken. "I can't turn around now."

"I know," Jack said.

He approached the wolf. This time it did not lunge toward him, though it continued its low growl and backed up a few steps as if guarding the hill beyond. Jack had not had a chance to completely attune his own spirit to that of the wolf and he did so now, reaching out and matching its breathing with his own, matching its heartbeat with his. Both of their hearts were drumming fiercely and Jack knew it feared for him.

"There, boy," Jack said quietly, kneeling and reaching out for the wolf. It sniffed his hand and nudged its big head against his neck, pushing against him even now. "We're going ahead. I don't want you hurt. I don't want her hurt. But we're going on."

He wondered if the wolf could feel his love for Sabine. If it understood. Then he rose, scratching at its ears, and he waved Sabine and the other onward.

This time the wolf made no attempt to stop them. It paced them, sometimes running ahead and other times searching stretches of woods and vanishing for a time before reappearing. Jack could feel its fear and grim sadness. Nevertheless, it meant to protect him and he was grateful.

Just over an hour later they came to the small stream Jack had promised, and a strange combination of emotions swept over him. He felt relief, for they would surely be safe in those woods ahead during the hours of darkness, but also a dark foreboding as he recalled the clamoring madness of the girl. Her father was Leshii, a woodland spirit who had traveled across the sea when Russian immigrants arrived in these harsh lands. He still lived, his essence in the trees and the earth of this particular forest range, but his power had faded over many years as fewer and fewer men who believed in him still lived in the region. Now he was only a whisper of a presence, able to exert his influence only sparingly. Sometime far in the future, when he was gone entirely, Lesya would be on her own, and Jack believed it was this knowledge that made her so desperate for companionship. Her magic was in these woods, and if she strayed far from there she lost control over her appearance and her influence over the trees and plants, just as Sabine weakened away from the sea. Sabine had spent many years luring men to her forest and testing them to see if they would be suitable mates . . . and cursing them when they disappointed her. As far as Jack knew, he had been the only man ever to escape her.

They might be leaving one danger for another, but still he welcomed the sight of that stream. Beyond it, Lesya's power ruled all.

Sabine let out a sigh of pleasure as she staggered toward the water. She fell to her knees and then slipped into the stream's rippling current, letting it wash over her despite the chill coming on as darkness approached.

The sun had dropped so low on the horizon that Callie had drawn one of her guns. The vampire hunter looked worriedly at Sabine, wanting only to move on. From everything Jack had told them, Lesya's would be the only safe place in these wilds come nightfall. The werewolves were on guard as well, all of them attuned to the eerie silence around them. A hawk cried in the distance, but it was far off, and they heard nothing else save the rustle of the wind in the trees of Lesya's forest, beyond the stream.

The wolf stood by Jack's side, but when Jack started toward Sabine, happy to see her even momentarily refreshed, it held back. Its legs stiffened as if it did not want to cross the stream.

Frowning, Jack looked at the wolf a moment. When he glanced back at Sabine, he found Ghost blocking his way. The broad-shouldered pirate had not been this close to him in some time and Jack was struck again by what an intimidating figure he was. Thick-necked and broad-shouldered, Ghost had arms solid as the masts of a ship, wide with corded muscle.

Jack glanced at him but saw that Ghost was watching Sabine with undisguised longing. The water caressed her, soaking her clothes, revealing the outline of her body so that the picture she presented was unwittingly sensual.

"She'll never be yours," Jack found himself saying.

Ghost smiled, a low growl in his chest. "Not like this. True enough. But she's more a thing of nature than a woman, as much a wild thing as I am. When she meets your Lesya, she'll understand that. Afterward, she won't be able to settle for an ordinary man. She won't even see you as the same kind of creature anymore."

Fury burned in Jack's heart and he moved a step closer to Ghost, undaunted by the werewolf's size.

"She doesn't want you," Jack said with a quiet ferocity. "She doesn't want an animal. Find a she-wolf somewhere, if you're so desperate for a mate."

"Oh, Jack, you wound me," Ghost said, one hand across his heart, feigning offense. "What about all of your efforts to turn us into men? Does a man not long for love?"

"Love?" Jack scoffed.

They both sensed someone approaching and turned to find Callie close enough to have shot either of them if she'd been of a mind to. Her pistol was still drawn, but aimed at the dirt as she studied the two of them with growing impatience.

"Some men are born to be beasts, but man or beast, both of 'em are alive," she said. Then, with an angry look, she turned and spat before glaring at Jack and Ghost again. "What we face are dead, evil things. Man and beast are gonna hafta stick together. You two clear on that?"

Ghost glanced at Jack. "I'm clear. You clear?"

By way of answer, Jack left them standing there, going to kneel by Sabine where she lay in the river. He scooped water up in his hands and drank deeply.

"Dark soon," he told her.

The smile faded from her face. Laden with regret, she took the hand he offered and they rose together. Water poured off of her but Jack did not turn to see if Ghost was watching. He knew the monster would be, and he knew the covetous, hungry look in Ghost's eyes would set him off. If man and beast were going to stand together, Jack would have to try his best not to kill Ghost.

"Let's go!" Jack called to Louis and the other werewolves. The words weren't meant for Ghost, but he was one of them whether Jack liked it or not.

Jack's wolf hesitated until Jack sighed and crossed the stream without him. Only then did the beast hurry to catch up, leaping across the water. They trooped along together, entering the woods, and Sabine seemed somewhat rejuvenated. Jack wondered how long it would last.

The moment they crossed the line of trees and entered Lesya's forest, Sabine stiffened and let out a tiny gasp.

"Are you all right?" Jack asked.

She nodded. "I think so. I feel something here . . . something very old."

"Leshii," Jack said. "He's the spirit of the forest."

"There's not much of him left," Sabine said.

"No. There isn't." Even as he spoke the words, Jack realized that he could not feel Leshii at all. He'd always had a sense of some presence following his progress in these woods, even before he knew that Leshii was there in the trees and plants and soil. If Leshii was still here, his essence had faded even further in the past year.

"Not much else here, either, Jack," the Reverend said.

Jack knew he was right. The forest was quiet. As the last hour of daylight waned, in the thick of the trees it grew dark prematurely, but no night birds sang. Jack exhaled and reached out in search of something alive or, worse, the sickening dark absence of life that would mean vampires were close. He found neither.

"No," he said, shaking his head in disbelief. "She's too powerful. They couldn't have . . ."

A profound dread gripped him and he picked up his pace. The trees did not bend toward him or shift to block their path. They were merely trees. Soon, the sun would set. Lesya's magic was to have kept them safe for the few hours of darkness, but he sensed nothing of her here.

"Jack," Louis called out, "are you sure — "

"Yes, damn you, I'm sure!" Jack snapped.

They all picked up their pace. If not for Sabine he would have bolted through the woods. Still, it was only minutes before they emerged from the trees into the clearing around Lesya's cabin, and Jack froze, staring at the structure. When he'd last been here, the cabin had been a living thing, all of the logs rooted together, and into the ground, still green beneath the bark and alive. Now he sensed that the dark cottage had changed. It was like any other: a dead thing, dusty, empty and abandoned. Nothing stirred there. Nothing lived. Weeds grew amongst the gardens Lesya had summoned into being around her cabin, nature reasserting itself.

The magic was gone. Lesya was gone.

And night was swiftly approaching.

"What now?" Sabine asked, coming to stand beside him. "Is she dead, Jack? We came all this way. I'm so sorry I've dragged you all into this, but . . . what if she's dead?"

Her voice cracked on the last word. She had put so much hope into this moment.

"There's still a little magic here," Jack said. "You felt it."

"Lot of good it did your wood sprite, or whatever the hell she is," Callie muttered.

Jack's thoughts and pulse were racing. They were all watching him, waiting for him to tell them what to do next. Even Ghost, though he knew Ghost only watched with amused curiosity, as if Jack were someone else's science experiment and his own life weren't also on the line.

The only one not watching Jack was the wolf, which stood at the edge of the clearing, sniffing the air and watching the deepening darkness amongst the trees warily, on guard. It had tried to stop them. Jack did not want it to die with them.

"The cabin," Jack said. "It's our only chance if the vampires come. We'll block the door and get what weapons we can. We'll hold out till morning — it's just a few hours — and then we'll hunt them down where they sleep and destroy them all. Maybe they took Lesya. Maybe she's still alive."

"You think we'll live long enough?" Vukovich asked.

"If there aren't too many, we'll be all right," Jack said. "We've already proven we can kill them."

"If there aren't too many?" the Reverend repeated. "But we know that their camp's close to here."

Vukovich glanced anxiously at the trees, then up at the darkening sky. "We don't know that they'll come. Why would they, unless they know we're here?"

"They'll know we're here," Callie said, drawing her other pistol, holding them both now, though the last gasp of sunlight had not breathed away. "They'll smell us."

Chapter Eleven - The Cold Dead

Confused, conflicted, Jack paced around Lesya's once-lush gardens, looking for wild fruits and vegetables, while the others approached and entered the cabin. Sabine stood outside the door and watched, and he could not help feeling a piercing guilt as he thought of his time here with Lesya. She had bewitched him for a while, before her madness had come to the fore. Now even thinking about her felt something like betrayal.

But Jack could not deny his own mind. Seeing this place as a dead, forlorn memory saddened him immensely. He could have never been happy here, but for a while he had been content. Lesya had nursed him back to health after his journey north and his abuse at the hands of the slavers. For a little time, this had been home.

A\What a wonderful, amazing place it had been. Plants that had no right growing there, blooming and ripening at a time when the rest of the land was held in a snowy embrace. Trees that marked the boundary of the clearing like sentinels standing guard. And the cabin, made from living wood and formed into just the home that the wood-spirit Lesya had wanted to lure in the man she so desired. For a while she'd believed that Jack was that man. Then he had fled her madness, and standing here now, he thought perhaps he had left a little of himself behind.

"What happened to you, Lesya?" he whispered. "Dead? Gone?" The overgrown weeds and ruined gardens swallowed his voice, and there was no reply. He smiled across at Sabine and she inclined her head toward the cabin. Jack nodded. But even then he dragged his feet, reluctant to enter the place that would inspire so many memories.

He could see that it was dead. He wondered how different its interior would now feel.

"Jack," Louis said from the cabin's open door. "There's enough in here for us to block the door. But you need to be inside, mon ami."

Jack held up the shotgun from the stampeders' camp. "Be there now." He turned and looked at the woods surrounding the old garden. The shadows beneath them were deepening, and he remembered his flight through the trees, pursued by Lesya, steered by Leshii the old tree spirit, until he had come to that terrible ravine. There he had seen Lesya's past victims, men whom she had lured here and then discarded when they did not satisfy her desires . . . . He shivered. It felt like he was being watched.

Jack's wolf emerged from the trees and paused a dozen steps across the clearing. In a sudden, startling display of its primeval power and strength, it raised its head and howled at the falling dusk.

From deeper in the forest came sudden sounds of crashing undergrowth and cracking branches, and Jack's blood ran cold at the memory of the Wendigo chasing him through the wild. But this was no Wendigo and the sounds came from many directions.

"Stop scratching your ass and get in here!" Callie called. Jack turned and ran for the cabin.

Sabine slipped inside just before him. "There's nothing to be scared of, Jack," she said, and he was not sure whether she meant inside, or out.

Callie slammed the door behind him and searched for a brace or lock, but there was neither.

"She had nothing to protect herself from," Jack said.

"Bed!" Louis said. He and the Reverend dragged the bed across the wooden floor to the door, tipping it on its side and bracing it across the opening. Louis slapped the wood. "Might hold." He did not sound confident.

With the seven of them in the cabin it felt full, and as Jack glanced around, trying to place himself in the here and now instead of the past, the coldness of the cabin struck him. Before, it had been a living, vibrant place, touched by Lesya's startling vitality and the brutal kiss of the wilderness. Now it was dead. It repulsed him, and for a crazy moment Jack thought he'd rather be out there facing to danger beneath the wide open sky than trapped in here, where death held sway.

Ghost approached and shoved him gently back against the wall.

"No time for dreaming now, Mister London! Anything you know of this place that might help, tell us. Anything about the building that will give us an advantage, we need to know." Ghost stood before him, and the others paused in their work, watching.

"It used to be alive," Jack said softly. He caught Sabine's eye. She's come all this way for nothing, Jack thought, but he realized instantly that was wrong. She was wide-eyed, excited, and seemed better than she had on their walk through Lesya's abandoned forest. Sabine had already found something. It glimmered in her eyes, and seemed to light her skin with a weak dusky glare.

"Alive?" the Reverend asked.

"The walls," Jack said, running one hand over the cabin's walls. "The floor. They weren't cut and placed here, they grew. Dead now." He peeled back a sliver of bark from the wall and the wood beneath was dry, hard. "But the building is rooted to the ground. It'll be strong as old trees. The only weak points are the windows and doors."

"Good," Ghost said, nodding. "That'll make it easier."

"Movement out there," Callie said. She stood close to one window, pistols drawn with barrels resting on the window's small sill. She tapped the glass, and the sound seemed incredibly loud.

"Four hours till sunrise," Vukovich said. "Maybe five." He shook his head, betraying his pessimism.

"That's nothing," Ghost said.

Sabine came to Jack's side and pressed close, looking around the cabin. "Something is still here," she said. "Giving me strength. It's a constant whisper in my mind, though I can make no sense of it."

"Don't try to," Jack said. "Leshii was mad when I was here last. Now, his daughter dead or gone, perhaps he'll be worse."

"Yes, there's grief," Sabine said. "But it's not for something dead."

"What do you —?" Jack began, but Callie interrupted with two words that seemed to chill the very air of the cabin.

"They're coming."

The atmosphere inside the cabin changed. They fell silent, and in that silence Jack and Sabine could hear the familiar, sickening sounds of creaking bones and flexing flesh, as the men who were werewolves started to show their wild side. Callie stood close to the window, guns held ready. How much ammunition? Jack wondered. Surely she could not have much left. Her pack was by her feet, bulky with the dynamite she'd collected at the stampeders' camp. He doubted that could do them any good now. They'd have to be outside to throw it, and outside . . .

Jack looked out from another window, and saw. The polar bears — pale yellow in the dusky light, huge, fearsome — paced the clearing in decreasing circles. Instead of charging they were taking their time, sniffing out dangers and ensuring that the cabin was surrounded.

"Why don't they just come?" Louis growled, his voice deepened and distorted by the changes in his jaws. He stood at the other side of the cabin where a smaller window looked out toward the woods there. The Reverend crouched close behind Callie, Vukovich leaned against the bed blocking the door, and Ghost prowled the cabin, looking through alternate windows and trying to get a full picture of the situation outside.

"Trying to scare us," Ghost said. "Taking their time, making us sweat."

"We should take the fight out to them," Vukovich said.

"That's what they want," Callie said. "They smelled us, don't mean they know who or what we are."

"They're too strong to be so cautious," Vukovich said.

"That's partly why they're so strong," Jack said. "Strength isn't all about muscle. Right, Ghost?"

"True enough," Ghost replied, "but muscle helps."

"I can't see the wolf," Callie said.

"Over there, to the north," Ghost said, and Jack knew where he meant, because he had seen it too.

"What's it doing there?" Sabine asked.

"Watching," Jack said. It troubled him more than he could say that the wolf was standing back. It had warned him not to come — had faced up to him and almost threatened him — but he had ignored that warning. Perhaps now it had come merely to see him die. "Just watching."

"Enough talk," Callie said. "That one with the scarred flank's come closer and closer, so . . ." She trailed off, knocking the barrel of her gun through the window beside her.

Through the glass, Jack saw the result of the sharp, loud noise. The polar bears — he'd seen six of them pacing, and feared there might be more hiding in the trees — paused as one, turned toward the cabin, noses raised as they sniffed and heads tilted as they listened for more.

Callie fired twice, and the bear closest to the cabin reared up on its hind legs, its scream so high that it could have been human. It tumbled onto its back and squirmed, shrinking as it died.

"First blood," Ghost growled.

The other bears charged the cabin as one, from five different directions.

Their night of hell began.

Callie fired twice more, but Jack did not see any bears go down. He could see two through his window, storming through the overgrown garden and closing rapidly on the cabin. One veered off toward another window, but one came directly for where he stood, its mouth agape and blood streaking the fur across its face and down its chest. The beast's teeth were too large for its mouth.

"Back!" he said to Sabine, grabbing her jacket and taking two steps back from the window. He raised the shotgun and realized how terribly ineffective the weapon was. Callie had silver bullets, the wolves had tooth and claw. Jack had only the shotgun, a handful of cartridges, and a passionate determination to get through this attack. The unfairness of it all struck him. As the bear impacted against the cabin and thrust its head through the window, he swore that they would survive.

Roaring, Jack blasted the beast at point-blank range. Its head flipped back against the window's upper frame, then it looked at him once again, growl deformed by the results of the shotgun's blast. Claws scrabbling against the ground below the cabin window, it shoved itself forward, forcing itself into the opening even though its body was far too large.

Jack was fumbling with the shotgun, trying to take deep breaths to calm himself as he reloaded, when Ghost stepped past him and attacked the bear.

"Jack!" Sabine warned, pulling him back. Because Ghost was as neither of them had seen him since their time upon the Larsen. Changed, enlarged, engorged, animalistic, and yet his lengthened and hair-covered face still bore the grin they both recognized, and which Jack was certain would accompany him until death, and perhaps beyond. Ghost was changed but still totally in command of himself, and he tore into the trapped bear without mercy. He knocked one huge paw aside and slashed at it. The bear swung its other paw and Ghost staggered, only preventing himself from falling by anchoring himself with claws buried deep in the vampire's flesh.

"Callie!" Jack called, but Callie had her own problems. Another bear was at her window, halfway into the cabin, and had snagged her clothing with its claws. The Reverend was at it, teeth and claws flashing and sending a haze of blood-spattered fur across the cabin's interior. Vukovich was beneath the bear, one of its heavy paws pressing him down onto the cabin floor and crushing him.

Behind them, Louis was at the smaller window, engaged in a similar battle.

Jack loaded the shotgun and aimed, waited, then fired when the bear swung its leg and smashed Ghost against the bed blocking the door. The gunshot blasted the monster's knee and its leg flipped down, useless. It roared — anger, not pain.

Ghost and Jack shared a brief glance, and Ghost's set grin was chilling. Cut and bleeding, he was enjoying every moment of this. In his eyes Jack saw the man he had always been, not the werewolf he had changed into, and that more than anything convinced Jack that Ghost would never change.

He had no desire to change. The monster suited him well.

Another gunshot, and the bear above Callie slumped down dying, the front half of its body inside the cabin almost totally covering Vukovich. The Revered tugged Callie away from the twitching, smoking vampire, and as it began to shrink back into who and what it had once been — a Tlingit, old skin worn and marked — Vukovich stood, lifted the body away from himself, and tried to jam it in the window opening.

The corpse was snatched quickly away, and moments later another polar bear rammed itself at the opening. The timber frame splintered and crumbled as it started pulling itself through.

As Callie aimed, she slipped on shredded fur and put a bullet in the roof. She hit the ground, dropping one gun, and smacking her head against the floor. She remained down, groaning.

The bear lashed out and scored its claws across Vukovich's wolfish face. He fell back.

"Ghost!" Jack shouted. Ghost glanced briefly at Sabine, then tried backing away from the window. The bear he was fighting was tattered, shredded, jammed in the window opening, and he took precious seconds extracting his claws from the creature's flesh.

"Hurry!" Vukovich shouted through torn lips. He was on his feet again, ducking and twisting as he tried to avoid the bear's heavy paws. The vampire was almost in.

It'll kill Vukovich first, Jack thought, then it'll stomp on Callie, crush the life from her, and face up to Ghost.

But Ghost was free, and he leaped across the room, launching himself twelve feet and landing splayed across the polar bear's back. Just as it fell from the window opening and fully into the cabin, Ghost grabbed it around the head and pulled as hard as he could.

"Vukovich!" Ghost hissed. Vukovich swung his hand in a low arc and opened the bear's throat. Blood flowed, but not much.

"Jack," Sabine called out. "There are others moving around the back."

Jack glanced that way at where Louis struggled at the smaller window. No bear could get in that way. There was the smaller rear room, with its door bolted and barricaded. Perhaps there was a weakness that they'd sensed there, or maybe they were simply going to scratch and barge their way through the solid wooden walls.

Sabine cried out. Jack spun, lifting the shotgun and firing at the ruined bear still jammed in the window. It was hauling itself through with its broken forelegs, determined, furious, and the wildest thing Jack had ever seen. His shot struck its head and shattered a portion of its skull, but even then it came on toward them.

Sabine moved behind Jack, sliding across the floor scant feet from where Ghost and Vukovich struggled with the smaller bear that had gained access. She hauled the still-groggy Callie back out of harm's way, grabbing for the gun in her hand. Even barely conscious, Callie held tight. Sabine whispered in the woman's ear, then stood with the gun held in both hands. She aimed past Jack and fired.

The bear in the window shuddered. Then it started screaming, thrashing even harder than before, and a swathe of raw flesh across one shoulder started to bubble and smoke.

"Bullet went through!" Jack shouted. "Shoot again!"

Sabine tried, frowned, looked at the gun, then shook her head. Out of bullets.

The bear was done for, and Jack realized that this slow, painful death for the cursed Tlingit would benefit them more. It might take longer to shrink down back to its original form, to shed the curse and become in death what it had once been life, and that would block the window for longer.

Ghost still held the smaller bear's head, and now Vukovich was hacking at its throat with his knife. Jack turned away. Sabine knelt beside Callie. A strange silence fell over the cabin, punctuated only with the gruesome sounds of Ghost and Vukovich beheading the polar bear and rolling its head into the corner.

Jack looked down, and the dead eyes of a young Tlingit woman stared back. He thought he caught a deep, soul-wracking sadness in her gaze, but it might have been the light.

"Gone," Louis said. He stepped back from his window, still facing it in case the attack resumed suddenly. When Jack looked at Sabine he saw a slight relaxing to her shoulders, and she nodded to him that Louis was right.

"Toward the trees at the back of the cabin," she said. "They're gathering there. There are . . ."

"What?" Ghost growled. He was lifting the headless body, readying to fling it back through the window from where it had come as something different.

"There are more," Sabine whispered. "On the way, even now. The woods feel dark."

"How many more?" Jack asked.

"I cannot count," Sabine said.

Behind Jack, the wounded bear had breathed its last, and bones groaned as it found its original form once again. He looked at the woman he loved, the sea witch come here to discover her history. He looked at the injured vampire hunter, holding her head as she sat up slowly, and at the werewolves who had fought the vampires for their own lives, and the lives of others.

Ghost alone allowed his wolfish form to slip, and he was no less magnificent as a man.

Jack London had a brief moment of clarity, wondering how it had come to this and why such amazing, yet terrible things continued happening to him. Then his vision clouded, and the world began to tilt. He felt wetness across his chest. He fell.

Sabine caught him and kissed him as it began to grow dark.

"He's not too bad," a woman's voice said. Callie, Jack thought. "The cut's not too deep. Lost a bit of blood, but — "

"But haven't we all?" The other voice was a man's, and for a moment Jack could not place it. Then he recognized Louis's voice, distorted by the man being half-changed to his wolfish side.

He opened his eyes and looked up, and it was Sabine who smiled down at him.

"Jack," she said.

"You all right?" he asked. His throat was dry, sore. A dull pain throbbed across his chest as he spoke, and breathed.

"Yes," Sabine said. "Try to sit up." She leaned down and got one arm under Jack's shoulders, and as she pulled he pressed his face against her neck. He loved the smell of her skin. If only the two of them could be together somewhere safe. But safety had been absent from the moment they met.

Jack looked around the cabin. Ghost and Callie stood at one smashed and splintered window opening, Vukovich and the Reverend — half-changed, broader and more muscular — at the other. Louis stood close to the shattered smaller window, his back against the wall, looking across the cabin at Jack. He nodded, his distorted face grim. Jack nodded back.

"How are we?" Jack asked.

"You've only been down for a few minutes," Sabine said. "The bears have withdrawn, but . . ."

"Still out there," Ghost said. "I smell them as well as you sense them, Sabine." He glanced over. "Good to have you back, Mister London. This is no time to sleep on the job."

Jack touched his chest, feeling the wadded cloth that had been tied across his wound. He started to shake, and a cold flush went through him. He looked at Ghost and the other werewolves — their inhuman forms, longer teeth, and their curses plain for all to see.

"Callie?" he said.

"I'm fine," she replied.

"Callie?" He pressed both hands to his chest, and though Sabine was beside him he could not look at her. Not with the fear he carried; not until he knew.

Callie turned and appeared to instantly recognize his fear. She's seen it so many times before, Jack thought. She shook her head and smiled.

"The bite," she said. "That's what does it. I'm not sayin' I understand why or how, and I'm not sure it can be understood. But yer safe, Jack. You caught a claw, and only just. I cleaned the wound as well I could. You're safe."

Jack sighed in relief and let Sabine help him stand. He was still a man, still human. He could never wish to be anything else.

"Load your gun, Jack," Ghost said softly. "I smell them moving."

"Yes," Sabine said. Jack saw that she was now holding one of Callie's revolvers, and he was pleased at the trust that displayed. They were all here together and they would survive together. We will.

"However many there are, they can only attack two or three at a time," Jack said. Blood coursed through him, warming him. A flush of intense confidence flowed with it, and though he shook his head at its foolishness, he grabbed it. "Louis, nothing can get through your window. If one attacks, just keep it occupied until Callie or Sabine can get there to finish it." He walked to the bed propped on its side against the front door, leaned against it. Still solid. "We can hold them off," he said.

"Of course," Vukovich said. He facial wounds were healed, leaving only knotted scars behind.

"Yes," the Reverend nodded.

"Hold 'em off or not, I'm just enjoyin' killing them," Callie said.

"Good," said Jack. "Callie, how much ammunition — "

"They're here," Ghost said.

From silence to chaos in a moment, the bears launched their fresh attack upon the cabin. Their cunning started to show through when the front door began shuddering in its frame, thudding again and again as a beast struck it on the outside. The bed rocked, wood cracked, and Jack knew it would not be too long before the door gave way under such an assault. If the wood of the cabin were still alive its flesh would be damp with sap, the wood itself flexible and able to withstand such an assault. But this wood was dead.

There was an impact from above, and Jack looked up at the roof. Scratching, clawing. He could not quite locate it, and he caught Louis' eye and nodded upward. Keep watch!

The windows remained free, offering only open views out across Lesya's moonlit garden. Shadows dashed here and there, but Jack could see nothing clearly. He aimed the shotgun at the window closest to him, shifted the barrel toward the door, then back to the window. He only had a handful of cartridges left, and firing through the bed and door would have little or no effect on the creatures assaulting the outside.

"Callie!" he shouted. The woman was hesitating, gun held before her, standing several steps from her window. Ghost was beside her, hulking and ready to attack whenever a bear tried to come through.

"I can't see nothin'!" Callie said. "An' if I get too close to the window to shoot around at the door — "

"Are they that cunning?" Jack asked, and Callie's frank glare was the only answer he needed.

"They'll pluck her through the window and tear her apart," Ghost said. He nudged Callie. "If they do, make sure you drop your gun inside."

"Ghost," Jack said, exasperated. The crashing continued. Vukovich and the Reverend braced themselves against the upright bed, but with each impact they were forced a few inches across the floor before pushing back. Once the door was ripped away, the bears would be inside in moments.

Jack took a step closer to his window, edging to the side to see the attacking bears without moving too close. But the darkness confused his vision, and he would be shooting at shadows.

No. There was only one way.

"Here," he said, lobbing the shotgun at Sabine. Surprised, she caught it from the air, and Jack plucked the revolver from her other hand.

"Jack?" Louis said from across the cabin, but Jack was already turning and pressing himself to the window, splintered sill spiking his stomach as he leaned forward and out, gun held before him. He turned right and aimed. Six feet away, two vampire polar bears were taking turns battering at the door. He fired four times. One fell and thrashed on the ground, the other rolled several times and then ran, screaming, leaving a trail of smoke that caught the moonlight and looked almost beautiful.

Jack hauled himself back inside, knowing that the attack could come at any moment. The open windows had been left this time as a trap, and he could only hope that the speed of his attack would have thrown them. His belt caught on the splintered window sill. He tugged, but could not move. From his left, the pounding of feet. Something growled.

His skin chilled as he turned that way and tried to aim across his body, but the bear was too close, its gaping maw suddenly swallowing the whole world, and Jack only had time to close his eyes and hope that Sabine was looking away.

Something grasped his legs and he was being dragged backward, a ripping pain scoring across his stomach and chest, and he smelled the bear's foul, dead breath, a miasma of warm rot across his face and neck. Jack retched as he struck the cabin floor and a shape stepped over him, silhouetted against the window only briefly before the bear struck from the other side.

Vukovich screamed, but it was a roar of fury. Jack rolled onto his back and brought the gun up to bear, but Vukovich filled the window, slashing with his cruel claws, his wolfish head darting here and there as he bit again and again at the monster struggling to force itself inside to claim the prize it had been denied.

"Vukovich, down!" Jack shouted, but the werewolf's blood was up. The change was complete, and Jack could sense Vukovich reveling in the release the change gave him.

"Down!" Louis shouted.

At first Jack thought that Vukovich was shouting something in Russian, but in fact the noises were animalistic growls and screeches of combat. As the bear wrapped one huge paw around his back and pulled, Vukovich roared. The bear tugged harder. The werewolf's head struck the window head, his legs and lower body pressed against the sill, and the bear hauled again until Vukovich was bent back at a horrible, unnatural angle. Bones crunched. Then he was through, and there was a terrible, fearsome flurry of movement as the bear shredded its victim.

The shotgun roared above Jack. "I think I got him," Sabine cried out even as the smoke cleared around her. "I think I got Vukovich. I think . . . before it . . . I think I got him."

Jack stood, and the two of them backed away from the window. He turned and looked at the others, expecting some condemnation but seeing only respect, even on Ghost's face.

"I killed two," Jack said. "Callie, how much ammunition left?"

Callie came and handed Jack her revolver, then took his and started reloading. "Not much," she said, non-committal. "Make every shot count."

"More," Sabine said softly, and the assault on the door started again.

"Vukovich saved my life," Jack said. Everyone heard his voice above the impacts. No one answered. It was not a moment for quiet contemplation, but action. Later, if they survived, they might make time to think.

The assault continued for two more hours.

The bears broke through the front door, smashing the bed to splinters, and Ghost and the Reverend fought the invaders off. Ghost used a spear of wood to stab at the first bear that entered, and the beast fell beneath the attack and died. Callie's surprise was no less than anyone else's — she had never thought to use such basic weapons against these monsters. From then on, everyone not bearing a firearm armed themselves with a sturdy length of wood from the shattered bed, stabbing and probing for the vampire's weak spot. It was only Louis who managed to repeat the success, allowing a smaller bear to trap itself in the window he guarded before thrusting his weapon up into its chest from underneath. "The heart!" he shouted as the beast shriveled before him, but his delight and triumph faded at the sight of the dead Tlingit child.

"It's older than you," Callie said, surprising Jack with her effort to console the half-werewolf.

The scratching at the roof continued, until several massive impacts ended with a huge bear falling into the cabin amid a shower of roof shingles and splintered wooden purlins. Ghost was on it immediately, but the bear batted him aside and stood, shaking itself upright, shoulders as high as a human's head.

Jack shot the beast in the mouth as it turned upon him and Sabine, and it slumped down dead. As it reverted to its smaller, more pathetic form, the Reverend fell upon it and beheaded it.

Two more bears attempted entry through the windows. Callie shot one, but the other made it inside, darting across the cabin and pinning Louis to the rear wall. Jack felt a tug of fear as the beast opened its mouth to bite — Louis had become a friend, and he had no desire to see another friend die — but Sabine had slinked to the rear of the cabin. Her shotgun blast removed the bear's lower jaw, shot also peppering the left side of Louis's face. As the vampire reared up so high that its head cracked a roof member, Jack shot it twice in the chest.

It fell, dying. The air inside the cabin stank of smoking flesh and despair. Jack turned away as the Reverend set to work with his knife once again.

As suddenly as it had begun, the attack halted. Jack listened for the bears' retreat but heard nothing. Fearing another trap he urged everyone to stay away from the broken entrances to the cabin.

Ever defiant Ghost kicked aside the remains of the bed and the front door, stepping through the ruins to the outside.

"Sun on your face," they all heard him say. "Breeze in your hair. Close your eyes in this wild place and you can have the sea. All that's missing is the movement, and the smell of brine."

Callie went next, and when she leaned back in and gestured that all was clear, the others followed.

Dawn smudged the forest to the east, and darkness was being chased into its daytime hiding places. Underground, perhaps, Jack thought fancifully. In caves and holes, beneath the roots of trees, in hollows dug out for the specific purpose of hiding.

This, Jack knew, was where they would find the vampires. Looking around at the others, he knew they were all thinking the same way.

With daylight, it was time to take the fight to them.

They searched for Vukovich's remains, but the vampires had left nothing of the pirate behind. Ghost seemed peculiarly subdued, and Jack left him to wander back and forth across the garden. He could not believe that the old captain mourned a former crewman, but there was something on the man's mind. Jack knew better than to ask what.

They gathered their equipment together and assessed the ammunition situation — five shotgun cartridges, and Callie grew pale as she tipped her last dozen silver bullets into her hand. As the others salvaged what they could from the ruined cabin, Sabine drew Jack away.

They walked until they were among the remains of one of Lesya's gardens. Fruit trees and bushes had gone wild but now hung dead, some of them trampled by polar bears during the night's conflicts.

"What is it, Sabine?" Jack asked. She had been quiet since emerging from the cabin, but he had known that all was not quiet for her. The frown, the tilted head, the distant stare . . . she was listening, and he dreaded to know what he heard.

"A madness," she said. "It's . . . terrible. All through the night it was there, but at a distance. Like a thunderstorm coming across the sea, I could sense it and smell it, but it was not quite here. But now, it is. He is."

"Leshii," Jack said.

Sabine nodded, still frowning. "His thoughts are distant and troubled, but directed at me. I know that most certainly. He's trying to talk to me, yet he can barely understand himself. It's just . . ." She shook her head, sadness obvious.

"Yet you seem stronger," Jack said.

"Something about him is rejuvenating. I can't say what . . . this feels nothing like the sea, that place which feeds me. Perhaps it's because . . ." She looked at Jack, frank and unafraid. "Because he and I are alike."

"Perhaps," Jack said. He felt the need to hold Sabine, and she did not pull away. She was talking about things he could never know or truly understand, and he felt a distance between them that neither could influence, however deep their love.

"Jack, he talks of Lesya," she said. "And I think you know what things he says."

"That she was taken by them."

"Yes. But she went searching. Left this place looking for them, intending to . . . use them? Leshii's words are confused here. His thoughts are jumbled, so deep, many of them so vague that they're not even echoes. But he's firm about what happened to his girl. He calls her that." Sabine smiled in wonder. "Someone so old, talked about by someone even older, and called a girl."

"She went looking," Jack said, and he thought perhaps he understood. He had denied Lesya her beast when he killed the Wendigo, and when the vampires moved in she had gone searching for another beast to replace it, to guard against the vampires. Such lack of understanding on her part surprised him, but she had made mistakes before. Perhaps she'd lived a whole existence of mistakes.

"So we go and get her," Jack said. "If she's still with them, and still alive, we go and bring her back."

"And if she's become one of them?" Sabine asked.

Jack's face fell, and it felt as if his whole body suddenly weight too much for him to hold up. He closed his eyes, and the flesh wound across his chest throbbed with sudden pain. "I can't imagine," he said softly. "I just can't,,,."

"So we go," Sabine said. "We go and see."

"Of course. We've come this far." They held each other, and Jack was pleased when Louis announced that they were ready to leave. He'd had more than enough of this dead place.

They left Lesya's domain and passed through the ravine where her previous victims were entombed. The last time Jack had been here, those poor men were trapped in the living trunks of trees, alive themselves in some terrible, parasitic form. Their blood was sap, or the trees' sap was blood, and they had rolled their eyes at him in mindless agony as he'd rushed by.

Now Lesya's past conquests were dead as well. Several trees displayed the petrified faces, half-faces, or limbs of men trapped within them, while others seemed little more than deformed trees, shaped by knots and broken branches. Jack looked in silence, as did the others. He was glad that no one asked him who or what these things were. He thought perhaps everyone was starting to understand.

Ghost was the only one to touch a tree. He ran his fingertips thoughtfully across one grained face, grunted, and then walked on.

Leaving the shallow ravine hand in hand with Sabine, Jack felt a brief shudder passing through the woman he loved.

"He begs us," Sabine said. "To bring her back. Jack, Leshii is begging us."

"He knows we'll do our best," Jack said. He was keeping his own senses reigned in. He had no wish to touch on Leshii's mad mind, and he moved faster toward the edge of Lesya's old domain.

Louis appeared before them, emerging from a dense wall of trees. "We have their trail," he said simply.

"Then let's go get 'em," Callie said. "Daylight's wasting."

The vampire hunters moved out together.

Chapter Twelve - A Day's Dark Journey

Jack and the others followed the stream that marked the edge of Lesya's forest northward. Whatever spiritual contact Sabine had made with Leshii seemed to be rejuvenating her, and she displayed a vitality that had not been in evidence since they had first begun their inland trek. Following this running water, meager stream though it was, could only have helped.

Jack and Sabine walked side by side, a rich intimacy filling the space between them. On any other day they might have held hands, but after the bloodshed and terror of the previous night, they wanted to be prepared for attack. Everyone was tense. The day had begun with hazy clouds obscuring much of the sunlight, but patches of blue sky showed through now, and there was no hint of rain. From her long experience, Callie was certain that the vampires could not come out during daylight hours, but that did not make them feel safe. None of them could exhale today. They were marching into the vampires' den.

Callie and Ghost led the way. Callie proved herself an adept tracker, finding the tracks of polar bears and humans alike — both left by the undead "leeches" she had come north to hunt — and gleaning much from the broken vegetation along the stream's path. Yet even without her help, they would not have lost their way. It had quickly become clear that Ghost had the scent.

He frequently ran ahead, outpacing Callie, dropping to his hands and knees now and then to sniff the soil. When they transformed into wolves, there was a savagery to the others that made them beasts, but Jack had never seen Ghost give himself so completely to the animal part of himself. Once, he would have been too proud to root in the dirt for a scent, but now he forged ahead with single-minded determination.

"He has forgotten himself," Sabine said, as they crossed the stream, following the vampires' trail.

"Maybe," Jack said. "Or maybe he's finally accepting the animal he really is."

A splash behind them made Jack turn and he saw that Louis and the Reverend had come up closer than he'd realized. The thoughtful look in Louis's eyes made it clear that he had heard Jack and Sabine's conversation.

"Louis," Jack began, "just because Ghost is an animal — "

"Mon ami," Louis said solemnly, "we have no illusions. We are not ordinary men."

The Reverend walked through the stream with his gaze downcast, tall and grizzled and ominous. When he looked up, Jack saw that his eyes were full of a sad wisdom.

"Neither are we ordinary beasts," the Reverend said. "We are both. Perhaps you think us knowing this means you failed, but that's not it. You helped us see that we can choose how to live, and choice is everything."

The four of them were walking together, now, and Jack looked ahead again, watching Ghost's hulking form move along the river. Even standing, he seemed now to lumber more than he had before.

"Ghost made his choice long ago," Louis said.

Sabine shook her head. "I disagree. For most of his life, he believed the choice was between monster and man. He believed that 'beast' was the same thing as 'monster.' Now he is acknowledging a third choice — one that is perhaps more pure."

Silence followed her words as Jack, Louis, and the Reverend let that observation simmer in their thoughts. Jack wasn't sure what to make of Ghost, now. During the night, he had seemed to embrace his monstrous side, to relish the killing and bloodshed and the heat of battle. But this morning Ghost had seemed distracted, and the longing glances he had directed toward Sabine ever since they had reconnected with him in Portland had ceased completely. It was as if he had forgotten that she was his sole reason for being here.

Jack could only wonder why.

As they walked, a strange sensation shivered down the back of Jack's neck. It took him a moment to realize that the feeling was fear . . . but not his own. Curious, he glanced over his shoulder and saw his wolf skirting the shadows of low brush at the river's edge. As their eyes met, Jack felt a wave of grim trepidation roll over him. He faltered, stumbled, and for an instant that fear was his own.

"Jack?" Sabine asked, searching his face for some hint of his trouble.

"I'm all right," he said. "I'll trip over my own feet if I'm not careful."

She smiled, unconvinced, but didn't push him for a more honest answer. Jack was glad. He would not have known how to properly express the fear that clenched at his heart — was it the wolf's, or his own? If the wolf was so afraid of what lay ahead that it followed on behind, unwilling to join them but unable to leave Jack entirely to his fate, wasn't that reason enough to feel terrified?

Throughout Jack's life he had encountered moments when he was able to lift the veil of normality and witness the secrets of the world; the sometimes frightening, sometimes inspiring spiritual and supernatural truths that other people either could not or would not see. He knew that ghosts, magic, and witchery existed. There truly were such things as curses, and there existed beings possessed of ancient power who had survived into modern times on the periphery of human society. He had embraced those truths and relished the journeys that led to such discoveries. But though some of the things he had encountered were full of menace, they had never seemed truly evil to him. Even the accursed Wendigo had been more a beast than a monster. Jack had explored the shadows of the world and been excited by what he'd found, but now he had discovered that there were things darker than shadows, and deeper than night.

The wolf felt it, too. They would both rather have been anywhere else.

Jack would have turned back and thought himself smarter for it, if not for Sabine. So they went on. He understood his reasons and Sabine's, and even Callie King's, for she was driven by vengeance and hatred of the vampires. But Ghost, Louis and the Reverend were another story. He had led Louis and the Reverend on a quest that had already cost two of their former crewmates their lives, so why should they continue? Just to prove themselves men?

Jack knew it was much more than that. They continued on this quest not because they'd given their word or because they wanted to aid Sabine. The werewolves marched deeper into vampire territory because they relished the chance to fight real evil. Real monsters. For so long they had thought of themselves in those terms that killing vampires made them feel, for a while, at least, more like ordinary men. Full of fear, and hope, and fragile ambitions for the future.

They trudged up a ridge that ran northwest away from the stream. Ghost had paused at the top of the ridge, but Callie had continued onward. Louis, the Reverend, and Sabine followed Callie, but Jack frowned and hesitated beside Ghost. The former captain inhaled deeply before scanning the stream off to the right and then the higher ridges ahead.

"Something troubling you?" Jack asked, wondering if Ghost had sensed some unexpected menace.

"Why did she want you, Jack?" Ghost asked.

"Wouldn't you be more interested in why she didn't want you?"

Ghost glanced at him, real confusion in his eyes, as if he truly hadn't understood the reply. Then a gentle smile crawled across his features. Jack thought it might have been the most unguarded emotion he'd ever seen on the wolf's face, a kind of amused calm that held no deeper significance.

"I didn't mean Sabine," Ghost said. "I'm talking about Lesya. She used her enchantments to control the Wendigo, to drive men into her forest and her arms. I saw all of those men trapped dead inside trees. I gather Lesya thought you might be different. What was she looking for? Why did she want you?"

"I think she wanted someone who could live with her in the wild and be happy," Jack said. "Someone who could know and love her for what she was. Those who failed in that, she chose to punish."

He expected Ghost to mock him for his sentimentality, but instead the monster nodded sagely, a strange light in his eyes.

"This modern world doesn't have a lot of room left for unique creatures," Ghost said. "We're all meant to be the same. But we're not, are we, Jack? We're not like everyone else."

The others were moving ahead, working their way back toward the stream and the limestone cliffs that rose in the distance.

"No," Jack said. "We're not."

Ghost nodded. He understood that it had cost Jack something to admit that they shared a connection, even if that connection was that neither of them could truly fit in with the rest of the world.

"It doesn't make us brothers," Jack went on. "It doesn't make us friends."

Ghost turned somber. "Agreed. But it doesn't make us monsters, either." He turned and started down the ridge, following the route the others had taken. "It sounds to me like someone needs to tell your Lesya that."

"She's not 'my' Lesya," Jack said, setting out after him.

"Well, then," Ghost said, without glancing back, "isn't that the definition of 'wild?' A creature which belongs to no other?"

The vampires' trail did not lead back to the stream after all. Callie led them along a natural path, perhaps carved by shifting ice in an age when the land had been covered, toward an imposing cliff that rose beside the stream. The path was concealed, a slash in the face of the cliff between a lower ridge and the crest far above. Ascending along that broad ledge, Jack watched Callie closely, noticing that her attention seemed split equally between Ghost and the trail ahead. He wondered if she had exhausted her tracking skills and was now relying on Ghost's sense of smell.

Soon, Jack knew, they would come to the caves mentioned by the vampire they'd killed in Dawson's jail. Only a fool would go in, knowing what waited inside, the vampire had said. Maybe it was right, but if Lesya was still alive and prisoner of the vampires, none of them would turn back.

Dust rose from the path as they trudged upward. Jack could see the stream far below, diminishing to a thin silvery line as they climbed higher, at least five hundred feet above the surrounding landscape now. Louis and the Reverend had begun to sniff the air just like Ghost, and tension rippled through them.

"We're getting close," Jack said quietly. "Do you need to rest?"

"No," Sabine said, glancing at the sky. "I feel better than I have in a long while. Besides, there's only hours of daylight left, and if there's killing to do, it's best done before nightfall."

Jack checked the position of the sun and was surprised to see that Sabine wasn't far off in her estimation. Though the summer days in the Yukon sometimes seemed to last forever, they had managed to use most of the sunlit hours in their travels, stopping several times for a brief respite and a bite of jerky or a tin of cold beans. Jack thought they had perhaps four hours until sunset.

"We know they don't like the daylight," Jack said, "but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll be sleeping. The caves will be dark."

"Yes," Sabine agreed, without breaking her stride. "But considering the other option is going in there after sunset . . ."

She arched an eyebrow and glanced at him, and Jack couldn't help laughing. It might have been something akin to gallows humor, but it felt good.

When Callie shushed them, any trace of amusement fled. Jack and Sabine looked ahead to see that they had reached a place where the trail narrowed. It was really more a ledge than any kind of path, and now it canted to the left, following a jag in the stream far below. They had all paused, regarding Jack expectantly. He touched Sabine's arm once for luck and comfort and hurried past the Reverend and Louis, and then past Ghost and Callie, to peer around the sharp edge of the cliff wall.

The cave mouth was high and narrow, like a knife-wound in the limestone cliff. Nothing indicated that it was occupied, no ward had been posted to hold off potential intruders, but Jack shuddered at the sight of the shadows within and a ripple of nausea went through his gut. The chill came from within. This close to the vampires, there was no need for him to reach out his spirit to feel the dark void of their presence.

A loud click made him spin in alarm, reaching for the knife at his hip.

Callie had cracked open one of her pistols, checking to ensure it was fully loaded and in good working order. She had a dozen silver bullets left, six for each gun, and Jack had two shells filled with silver pellets in the shotgun slung across his back, ammunition Callie had found while digging through her pack. They could kill a fair few vampires between them, and the werewolves could handle a few more . . . which might have been a comfort to Jack if they'd had any idea how many of the damned things were inside the caves.

Or maybe not, he thought. Knowing the number might not be a comfort at all.

"Jack," the Reverend said. Jack turned, and the wolves were all looking at Sabine. She had a hand to her forehead and had lowered her gaze, her eyes roving as if searching for something lost.

"What is it?" Jack whispered.

Sabine looked at him with those searching eyes, and he saw the tiniest bit of hope there. "She's alive. I can sense her in there. Like something . . . warm."

Jack took a deep breath, nodded grimly, and turned to Callie and Ghost. "That's it, then. We go in as swift as we can without being stupid — "

"You mean just being here isn't stupid?" the Reverend asked. But he was only making noise out of fear, like whistling in the dark. His expression was determined.

"Reverend, you and Louis stay out here and set the dynamite," Jack went on. "Do it right. If we don't blow the cave mouth so the collapse blocks them in, we might as well just turn our guns on ourselves."

He turned to Sabine, and she must have seen his intention in his gaze.

"Not a chance, Jack," she said. "I'm coming with you. She's in there. I can feel her, and that means she can feel me. We'll give each other strength. I've come too far to sit out here and wait."

Jack felt as if a fist were clutching his heart. "It just doesn't sit right with me."

"I love you," she said softly, the moment intimate despite their audience, "but I don't need it to sit right with you. It's what's going to happen."

Jack uttered a sound that was half laugh and half sigh, then turned to Ghost and Callie. "Are you ready?"

Ghost was breathing deeply, sniffing the air, and Jack wondered for the first time whether it had been the vampires' scent he had been tracking or Lesya's.

A low growl escaped Ghost's lips. Jack didn't think he was even aware of it. When he spoke, he revealed the sharpness of his teeth. "Let's go."

Jack had been wearing the shotgun strapped across his back. Now he slid it off and cradled it in his hands. Sabine had no weapons, but the air around her seemed to crackle with electricity. Whatever strength remained in her, she would use it. She drew a long knife that Callie had given her, but Jack wished that he still had the silver blade from his time on the Larsen. He would rather she carried that. If she hadn't demurred, he would have given her the shotgun, but she'd insisted that he could do more damage with it than she could.

The Reverend unpacked the lamp, tipped oil from a small bottle, and lit it. He turned the knob, dimming the light to a soft glow. They needed to be able to see in the cave, but didn't want to announce themselves any more brightly than necessary. When the Reverend was done, he stood and handed the lamp to Callie, even as Louis got to work unpacking the dynamite from his leather pack.

"Boys," Callie said, glancing at Louis and the Reverend, "ain't no way for us to know how ugly it's gonna get in there. If we come runnin', you'd best be ready to light the fuse and blow the hell outta that cave."

"We'll go as fast as we can," Louis promised.

"See you do," Ghost growled.

Jack took a long breath, and then led the way around the corner and across the open ground toward the cave. He didn't exhale till he reached the entrance.

He slipped quietly into the dark, where evil waited in breathless silence.

The stench of rotting meat wafted from the depths of the cave, growing stronger as they moved deeper. Jack had led the way at first, but as the darkness encroached he let Callie slip in front of him, the lamp held high in her left hand to light the way. In her right she held a gun, but Jack figured if they had to fight their way out of the limestone cave, they were as good as dead. He peered into the shadows, dismayed that the light didn't reach further. The lamp shone brightly enough, reflecting off of the sheer walls of the cave, but somehow its illumination never touched the blackest corners or stretched very far ahead.

Ghost brought up the rear. Once upon a time, Jack would never have turned his back on Ghost, but their fates had become more intertwined than ever. They might have been opposite sides of a mirror — dark and light reflections of one another — but if the mirror shattered, it would be the end of them both.

They moved in silence, though Jack felt sure that if they were awake, the vampires would hear even the lightest footfall.

And the leeches would smell them.

Chilled to distraction by the thought, he almost collided with Callie as she stopped short, holding the lamp up to the cave wall. When he saw what the light revealed, all other thoughts were driven from Jack's head. He didn't know enough about the inland Tlingit tribes to know if their ancestors had used cave paintings to record their history, but that was precisely what they were looking at now.

Not the Tlingits' history, however.

The vampires'.

They had moved perhaps sixty feet into the gently sloping cave, the foul meat stink growing stronger than ever. They were far enough inside the cliff now that they had left the reach of the sun far behind, and here was what Jack imagined to be the true entrance to the vampires' lair. The walls on both sides were painted with images that bridged the gap between pride and horror — figures on horseback, men fighting with knives, huge white bears tearing a human figure apart, a large man holding a woman in the air above him and drinking her blood as it poured from a wound in her chest. And more. So many more.

The images were crudely drawn in a brownish tint that flaked at the touch — the vampires had used blood to tell their story. Callie moved the lamp around too quickly for Jack to get more than flashes of most of the hideous images, but he noted the presence of animals other than the bears. This would not have troubled him save for one rudimentary painting that showed a hawk tearing at the face of a man on horseback. He wondered about that hawk, and what it meant. He didn't like the implications.

If the vampires could fly after them . . .

Louis, he thought, you and the Reverend better be ready with that dynamite.

Sabine touched the small of his back. He relished the contact, but also got the message. Tapping Callie, he gestured for her to move along. She might like to learn more about the vampires — they were her prey, after all — but outside the cave the precious hours of daylight were dwindling. Jack figured they had two and a half hours before sunset.

Something shifted in the darkness behind them and Sabine and Jack turned, guns at the ready, only to see Ghost's golden eyes reflecting back the lamplight. Somehow, though he maintained his human guise, in the quiet closeness of the dark cave he seemed more like a monster than ever. Jack was glad to have this monster on his side.

Callie lost her footing. Without a free hand to catch herself, she went down on her knees on the jagged limestone floor. Jack heard a muffled grunt and watched as she hung her head, fighting back the pain. He took her arm and helped her up, thinking what a miracle it had been that she hadn't reached for purchase and accidentally shattered the lamp against the wall. If the vampires had been awakened by the noise, Ghost was the only one who might have a chance of making it out.

"Son of a bitch," Ghost whispered.

Jack swung around to glare at him for breaking the silence of the cave, but then he saw the fear in Ghost's eyes at the same time he heard Sabine make the smallest of sounds in her throat. He turned back in time to see Callie lowering the lamp to illuminate her trouser legs, and the dark patch of blood blooming on one knee.

Determined, sure now that their fate — whatever it might be — was already written, Jack took the lamp from Callie and handed it to Sabine, so that Callie could draw her other pistol. He hated putting Sabine in the lead, but there was nothing else to be done.

Sabine did not hesitate. They moved forward, less worried about being quiet than before. If the scent of Callie's blood did not rouse the vampires, the scuffle of a boot certainly would not. Another twenty-five feet ahead they came to a fork in the cave, but a bit of exploration revealed that the left path led nowhere, and when they retreated and started along the right-hand path, the smell of dead things grew stronger. Another half dozen steps, and they found the first vampire.

It lay curled in a fetal position against one wall of the cave, leaving just enough room for them to step past. The Tlingit man was as still as death, but there was a potential about his pose that promised pain and darkness.

Jack shuddered, a profound dread clutching at him. He had been so focused on the moment, on every step and the silence around him, that he had shut out the awful weight of malice in the air. His senses were recoiling from the presence not just of this creature, but of others sleeping deeper. Now that he had allowed himself to feel it, the repulsive taint of evil that filled the caves dragged at him.

Sabine started to make her way around the sleeping vampire. Gripping the shotgun tightly, Jack followed.

A minute or so later they began a steeper descent along an even more jagged path, and the cave began to widen. The stillness made Jack want to scream just to break the silence. Picking his steps carefully, he peered into the dark corners. The cave broadened so much that the lamp's weak light barely reached the walls, and yet Sabine picked up her pace. Jack knew that her sense of Lesya's presence must have grown stronger.

The ceiling rose out of sight as they entered the vast cavern. Darkness crushed down on them, its weight palpable, and the horrors it hid exuding dreadful menace. Sabine paused and lifted the lamp higher, trying to angle the light, and Jack stiffened when he saw the glint of white fur.

All around the cavern.

Jack blinked and took a step back, bumping into Callie as he frantically tried to count the motionless, unbreathing polar bears sprawled on the floor, on ledges, and in corners. There were dozens — dozens! — and other vampires besides. Some of the dead things had been wearing the faces of men when the sun came up and pushed them into this bizarre dormancy. There were other animals, too. All told, there must have been forty or fifty of them.

There were also corpses. They ranged in stages of decomposition from days old to leathery decay, and they were the source of the stench.

Sabine took a few steps forward, lamp held up. Some of the vampires still had their eyes open, but they stared dull and lifeless, unseeing. For just a moment, Jack wondered what the hell he had been thinking, coming here . . . wondered if Sabine had enchanted him in some way far more profound than how Lesya had used magic to manipulate him. Then he saw the profile of the woman he loved, the exhaustion and fear in her expression — and the hope as well — and felt ashamed.

Angry with himself, he started forward, passing Sabine, searching for a path through the vampires and their victims. When he heard movement ahead, a kind of scratching noise, he froze again. If the vampires were truly dormant there should be only one reason for sounds coming from ahead of them. Jack turned to Sabine and beckoned for her to hurry with the lamp, and when she reached him and held it up, they found the source of the strange sound.

The slender, nude female figure lying at the center of the cavern looked like nothing human. Surrounded by a quartet of pale Tlingits who would return to dark life the moment night fell, she seemed for a moment to have been carved from wood and decorated with vines and leaves. But Jack knew better. The bark-like patterns on her skin, and the small shoots, leaves and flower blossoms on her flesh, were no fanciful ornamentations. Nor were the vines that had grown from her arms and legs and belly mere artful fakery.

This was Lesya, daughter of the spirit of the wood. If Sabine was a sea witch, Lesya was surely some sort of forest witch. In her own forest, where her power was greatest, she maintained an illusion of humanity, but away from that center of power she could not hide her true appearance entirely. And the vampires had been feeding on her, drawing her power for themselves.

One of them had his cheek laid across the meat of her calf, puncture wounds showing clearly that he had been drinking of her blood when sunrise had pushed him into hibernation for the day.

Jack, Sabine whispered, but her voice was in his head. He turned to see that she had begun to weep, her face filled with both longing and empathy.

He glanced at Ghost, gestured with the shotgun, and together they picked their way around the dead and the undead, careful not to crack bones beneath their boots, moving as fast as caution would allow. So focused and wary was he that he was almost upon Lesya when he saw that her eyes were wide open. She was staring at him in silence, pleading for rescue.

Jack aimed the shotgun directly at the heart of the vampire who lay across Lesya's leg. Ghost knelt to examine the vines that had sprouted from her prone form and saw they were stuck to the floor of the cavern, wound in amongst bones and the vampires' rotting victims. He shot Jack a questioning glance, and with a nod Jack urged him to action. They were running out of time.

All around them, the vampires remained motionless, not so much as the twitch of a finger or the ruffle of polar bear fur to indicate that they were anything other than eternally dead.

Ghost hesitated. Jack watched his nostrils flare and lips peel back in a silent, fang-baring snarl as he prepared himself to act. Then the once-pirate slid his hands beneath Lesya and lifted her, gently at first, and then with more force, tearing and snapping vines whose motion disturbed bones and skulls with a dry, chuckling clatter.

Callie swore beneath her breath, moving in a circle, pistols at the ready. Ghost rose behind her with Lesya splayed across his huge arms, and he stared down at the strange creature they had come to rescue. Jack could not make out the look in his eyes.

As Sabine held the lamp high and Ghost started back through the cavern, Jack began to smile. This was going to work.

They hurried back the way they had come, less concerned now about the noise of their footfalls. Jack's heart thundered in his chest and his hands were gripped so tightly around the shotgun that his knuckles hurt, but still a kind of elation began to rise in him. If Louis and the Reverend had done their job correctly, they would blow the entrance to the tunnel and trap the vampires inside. Even if the monsters could dig their way out, it would take hours at the very least. By then they would be back in Lesya's forest, where her power and strength would be restored. It might even be morning by then, and they would have bought themselves an entire day to get back to Dawson and begin to prepare the people there to take their fight to the vampires.

These thoughts filled his head as he rushed through the narrowing cave, watching his footing as best he could in the shadows and the lamplight. Callie was right in front of him, Sabine ahead of her, and Ghost led the way with Lesya in his arms. He caught a glimpse of her in the jumping light, saw her weakly raise a hand to trace sharp branch-fingers along Ghost's cheek.

That touch distracted Ghost. It was the only explanation Jack could imagine for what happened next. Ghost stumbled over the vampire they had first passed on the way in, a heavy boot slamming into the undead Tlingit's side. He lurched forward, twisted as he fell in order to protect Lesya, and crashed to the cave floor.

Sabine froze, with Callie and Jack behind her. She held the light up, and all of them watched as the vampire began to stir.

No, no, no, Jack thought. They'd come so far!

"Sabine, go!" Jack said in an urgent whisper.

Lamp firmly in hand, she stepped over the vampire. It lolled its head back and inhaled deeply, catching her scent even though it was not fully conscious. Then it opened its eyes, grinning horribly, its mouth was impossibly large.

Callie bent low and shot the leech point blank in the temple with a silver bullet, blowing blood and black, ossified chunks of brain out the other side of its skull. The shot was loud in the cave, echoing off of the walls, and Jack knew that if a kick from Ghost had woken this one, the gunshot might well wake the others.

"Run!" he snapped.

Showing his inhuman strength, Ghost rose to his feet as if Lesya were no burden at all and bolted along the cave, his footfalls loud. But noise no longer mattered. Callie and Sabine followed as quickly as they could without stumbling, and Jack raced after them, glancing over his shoulder, ready at any moment to turn and fire his silver buckshot into anything that might already be pursuing.

The light ahead brightened sooner than expected, and Jack narrowed his eyes against the dimming sunlight. He heard Ghost snapping at the Reverend and Louis, and then Sabine adding to the chorus. He saw Callie spilling out of the cave mouth ahead of him, saw her turning to aim both guns back inside, right at him. Behind him came shuffling, and then a roar that grew into a furious cacophony as the vampires they had woken barreled up the cave's throat.

Jack burst from the cave, turning sharply to stand beside Callie, expecting at any moment the glimmer of white fur from within. He glanced to his right at Louis.

"Light it, damn it!" Jack shouted.

"It's lit!" the Reverend called, and only then did Jack see him off to the left of the cave mouth, beyond Callie, a flaming brand still in his hand.

Sabine grabbed his wrist and tugged him after her, and then they were all running. The lamp crashed to the stony ground behind them and shattered, forgotten as they fled down the cliff-side trail in search of cover. Just ahead was the corner they'd come around when they'd first spotted the limestone cave, but as they ran, Sabine faltered, the weakness of the past days finally catching up with her. Jack bent, lifted her over his shoulder, and kept running. With him carrying Sabine and Ghost carrying Lesya, it was Callie who reached the corner first and turned to shout at them to hurry.

Jack heard a roar behind him. It rose into the air with such strength that he knew the vampires must be at the cave mouth. He turned and saw one of them there, the polar bear's huge form silhouetted in the shadows inside the limestone cave. But it did not emerge. The cave mouth was still bathed in the fading daylight and the monster could not venture out. It began to shrink, transforming before his eyes into a thing of evil, like a man but not a man. Its red eyes glared from the darkness, pale skin ghostly.

It looks so hungry, Jack thought.

The dynamite exploded, knocking Jack backward. He slammed to the ground and Sabine spilled from his shoulder, sprawling on the stony trail. The next roar came not from the vampires but from the cliff itself, as countless tons of limestone gave way and the cave collapsed in upon itself. The ground shook, dust boiled through the air and caught the setting sun, and boulders bounced over the cliff edge and down toward the stream. The sound was muffled in Jack's ringing ears as they scrambled to their feet and stood there, swaying, with Sabine leaning her head against his shoulder.

Callie began to whoop in celebration. Jack stared at her for a moment, then began to laugh. He turned toward the others to share their victory, but behind the settling rocks and the explosion's echoes was another sound.

Another roar.

"Son of a . . ." the Reverend began.

They all stepped out from behind the outcropping and looked up above the sealed cave entrance. Forty feet up the cliff face was another dark slit in the limestone. The roar turned into a cry that was half caw and half screech, and then the largest hawk Jack had ever seen swept out into the air, curving around and drifting straight for them. A second hawk followed, both of them uttering that shrieking, furious cry.

Jack had seen the blood-inked cave paintings of the Tlingit vampires. He knew what these were. There was another way out of their lair. He swore loudly, raised the shotgun, and took aim, even as Callie did the same with her pistols, waiting for the right shot.

Then he saw the flames.

"Callie," he said, "wait."

The hawks were on fire, their feathers igniting in the sunlight. In seconds they were crashing to the stone path, turning from birds to undead men even as their bones blackened and their flesh turned to ash.

"We've got maybe an hour and a half before the sun goes down," he said urgently, still looking at the smoldering ruins. "We have to get Lesya back to her forest. They caught her far from home, where her magic couldn't protect her. We get her back there, maybe she can keep us alive."

"There were dozens of 'em in there!" Callie said. "Once the sun goes down, out in the open, we're dead."

"Jack's right," Sabine said. "If we can get her to her place of power, she can protect us. And I can help."

"It took us three times that long to get here," the Reverend said.

Ghost laughed, his voice rough as gravel. "Well, at least we got a head start. Let's make the best of it."

They ran, knowing that in order to survive they must outrun the night.

Chapter Thirteen - The Dying of the Light

They ran for their lives. Down from the cliff face, across the ridge, splashing through the stream, stomping across marshy ground they ran, aware with every step that the dying of the light would bring down death upon them.

The Reverend and Louis took the lead, scouting ahead for any dangers that might hamper their escape. Callie brought up the rear. She had waved them all on ahead, and with a glance Jack knew what she planned — she would be the first to face the monsters. She had come all this way, spent so long hunting and killing them, and in a way she had been waiting for this for years.

Ghost carried Lesya, Jack and Sabine following behind. "We have to survive," Sabine said.

"We will."

"We have to!"

Jack glanced sidelong at his love, but she was looking ahead at Ghost and Lesya. There was a longing in her eyes that Jack was not sure he had ever seen before, and it took him a few moments to realize why. Sabine's eyes looked so old. Her beauty was a constant, but the look in her eyes as she gazed upon someone who might be a sister to her carried the weight of every unknown decade she had existed. Ghost bore someone who could shed light on Sabine's past, and explain so much to her that she had never been able to understand.

Jack understood. But even though it was everything he had wanted for Sabine since the moment they set sail for the north, it scared him.

What will she find out? he wondered. What will it all mean to me? There was a note of selfishness there, perhaps, but he felt at ease being selfish about his love. They had come so far together.

Lesya had barely stirred since they had left the cave. Ghost strode on, seemingly immune to tiredness, his strong legs eating up the land even though he carried her weight across his arms. Jack sometimes drew close enough to see her open eyes, but they seemed to be staring skyward, lids lazy and eyes weak and watery. He feared that the vampires had drained her so much that she might never recover, and that her powers would be so weakened that she might never speak again.

He also feared that other, unimaginable thing — that she might turn. Back in Dawson, Callie had executed her friend's wife, certain in the knowledge that doing so would save the poor woman from eternal damnation. Here they were now, running with a woman — a creature — who had been fed upon by the vampires for an unknown period of days, even weeks.

Perhaps she's turned already, Jack thought, and her strange powers protect her from the touch of sunlight, or her bark skin, or that unnatural affinity she has with Nature . . . . The vampires they had met before were monstrous and incredibly strong. How much worse would Lesya be in vampiric form?

But before starting on their flight back toward Lesya's forest, Callie had given the unconscious woman a cursory examination, then shaken her head. She had seemed unconcerned, and for now Jack would accept that.

For now.

But he would keep watch.

"You seem stronger than ever," Jack said to Sabine.

"I don't think I've ever felt so strong," she agreed. "Being so close to her . . . perhaps it's my own excitement, knowing how much I might soon discover. But it's as if our strength complements each other."

"She doesn't seem very strong right now."

"Don't let appearances deceive," Sabine said. "I think . . ."

"What?" Jack prompted as she trailed off.

"I think perhaps there's more life to her than she's showing."

They were running through a forest, following a rough path worn by wildlife, or perhaps trodden by generations of Tlingit Indians as they trapped and hunted, living their lives in concert with the wild.

"She likes being carried," Jack said slowly.

"She likes being carried by Ghost."

Jack spied Louis some way ahead, atop a small rise and looking back to gauge their progress. When he saw that they were all running their best he waved them on, then dipped down the other side of the rise. This landscape was covered with hidden places — trees and wrinkles in the skin of the land; twisting rivers and sudden ravines — and when the time came, Jack supposed they might be able to hide away from the vampires. Put up a fight. Make a last stand.

But even if Lesya was more awake than she portrayed, they were still far from her forest. Against the many vampires he suspected would come after them, in a multitude of forms, none of them would last very long out in the open.

"We will survive, Sabine," Jack said. "Because I love you, and I want you to have what you've missed for so long."

"My history," she said, almost breathless.

"I want to share in it," Jack said.

"Of course," Sabine said.

They ran on, cutting through the forest and making good progress. Jack was thirsty, but they did not stop for a drink. Food would have given them energy, but it would also take time to halt and eat. Every minute counted and went some way toward ensuring their survival. And every one of them was determined to survive.

Lesya trailed parts of herself that seemed eager to merge with the forest. Her hair was countless creeper tendrils, and her limbs sprouted leaves that, when they had fled the cave, had appeared almost autumnal. Now they were greener and carried a shine. The luster of life, Jack thought. He remembered his time with Lesya, and the strange affection that had hung between them — hers for a man who understood the wild in a way most men never would, and his for something extraordinary and beautiful. Her madness that had come between them had been stronger and more final, but for a time there had been . . .

Love? Not compared to what he felt for Sabine. But perhaps something strong and intense. To think of it now was almost a betrayal, but in Sabine's eyes he saw the same entrancement. Even carried in the arms of a man-beast, Lesya was the center of their group.

As Jack watched, one of Lesya's arms swept up and she traced a stick-finger across the underside of Ghost's bristly jaw. He looked down at her and smiled. It was pure and honest and open, not the confident grin Jack had seen on his face before. This was the true smile of Ghost, and Lesya might have been the first person to ever witness it.

"Sabine . . ." Jack said.

"I know," she muttered. "It can only help us. They're both strong, in their own ways." She reached out and grasped Jack's hand, and awkward though it was, they held hands for a few steps.

"Come on!" the Reverend shouted from ahead, paused halfway up a steep slope. He seemed troubled, and Jack looked back to see Callie closing on them.

"What?" Jack asked.

"Run," Callie said.

"Is it them?" Sabine asked.

"It will be." She drew closer and they ran together, bounding up the slope toward where the Reverend and Louis waited. Ghost reached them first and turned, looking back over the treetops the way they had come. His face grew grim. He looked at Jack, then Sabine. Something about him had changed, and it took a moment for Jack to see what.

Ghost's constant humor at the folly of those around him had melted away. Now, he had found something to survive for, too.

Jack and Sabine turned, and Sabine let out a small groan of frustration, and fear.

"Sunset," Jack said. The sun kissed the western horizon, bleeding across hilltops. "Callie?"

"They'll try to come right now," she said. "It'll burn 'em, maybe kill some of 'em. But dusky sun is filtered, and weaker. Whatever . . ." She shrugged, as if resigned. "Quarter of an hour, they'll all be out."

"And we have a ways to go," Jack said softly.

"They'll never let us go," a voice said. Jack's heart jumped at the pure fury in Sabine's voice, but when he glanced at her, she was looking back at Ghost.

Jack looked as well. Lesya had raised her head and was staring into the weakening sun.

"They've stolen enough of me," the tree spirit said. "If they draw close again, there's something I request of you." Lesya caught Jack's eye. "Kill me, my Jack London."

"I don't know if I can," he said.

"I'll tell you how."

"That's not what I meant." He was shaking. Sabine grabbed his hand, and that meant the world.

Lesya looked up at Ghost again, who was staring down at her in some kind of wonder. "Then, my wild man, I'll tell you instead."

Jack's wolf ran with them. He could sense it somewhere just out of sight, and perhaps that was where it had always been. Even when he was out at sea with Ghost and the sea wolves, maybe the wolf had been out of sight somewhere inside, guiding and advising as much as it could so far from its spiritual home in the north.

Ghost glanced aside twice, and both times Jack knew why. He sensed the wolf as well.

Jack probed out with his senses as they ran, but touching on the wolf did not comfort him as much as it should have. The beast was as scared as all of them. The wild was no longer king out here, because evil ruled the land.

Just as Lesya raised her head and looked forward expectantly, and Jack sensed the barren expanse of her forest somewhere ahead of them, a gunshot rang out.

Jack and Sabine skidded to a halt and turned back. Callie stood in a shooting stance. Falling toward her, leaving a trail of sparks and wispy smoke, was a huge hawk. It struck the ground ten steps from Callie and thrashed its wings, feathers blending to skin, beak fracturing and melting into a sharp face. The man stilled, and Callie turned and ran.

"The flyers," she said. "They're quickest. There'll be more. Run. Run, Jack! Run, Sabine! I'll hold back and —" She said no more, interrupted by the cries of terrible, unnatural birds from back the way they had come.

Jack and Sabine ran. Ahead of them Ghost was bounding across the plain, heading for the stream that would lead them to Lesya's forest. The Reverend and Louis waited for them, and as Ghost approached they both broadened, flickering with fur as they allowed the change that would aid them in the fight to come.

"Go on!" Jack said, waving to them. The shotgun felt heavy in his other hand, eager to be fired. Even with only two cartridges, the weapon was precious.

The werewolves ignored his plea and came toward him and Sabine, loping on all fours and then leaping past them to stand with Callie. They were guarding the retreat.

"How far?" Sabine asked.

"Close," Jack said. "Three miles?" They moved on in silence, and it was Sabine who stated what they both knew.

"Not close enough."

Another gunshot. Jack glanced back to see a flaming shape falling earthward trailing burning feathers. Callie was a fine shot, but even if each of her ten remaining bullets found its mark, there would be many more monsters flying and bounding past their dead, smoking brethren.

The Reverend and Louis reached Callie, guarding her flanks as she backed across the plain. Dusk was truly settled now, the sun little more than the horizon's memory. In the distance Jack could hear the vampires' evil roaring.

"I won't let them take you, Sabine," he said as they ran together. "Not like they took Lesya."

"I don't think it's their intention to take any of us," she replied. "Listen to those sounds. It's murder on their minds."

"But you're special," he said. They splashed across a narrow stream, and he heard Sabine's sigh as water splashed across her feet.

"Jack, everyone is special," she replied. "And you more than most. I'm different, that's all. More than human, or perhaps a little less than. But you . . . you're remarkable. If you don't see that . . . if the truth of it eludes you . . . then tell me . . . I'm wrong."

She sounded so earnest that Jack could not respond. He absorbed her words, and grinned back at her. There was no ego in his acknowledgement, simply an understanding. Everyone was unique and different — Ghost, the Reverend, Louis, Callie . . . . Those whom he had seen die, as well as the things he had killed himself. The world was filled with wonders, and that was why he strove to seek them out. Since he was a child he had sought to live, not simply to exist, and every single step had led here.

With Sabine, running through the wilds with evil on their tail.

Jack did not want to die, because there was a world of adventures still awaiting him. But if he did die now, at least he would go knowing he had already lived a good, full life.

Three more gunshots. Jack and Sabine paused and turned back, and Sabine exhaled heavily when she saw what was coming for them.

Surging from the woods, splashing and leaping across the stream they had crossed only minutes before, came the vampires. The dusky light was good enough to see them clearly, and Jack wished it was not. Several polar bears thundered through the water, and hawks drifted above them, barely flapping their wings. There was also a wolf, though one far more bedraggled than Jack's. Two mountain lions crouched down in the stream, several foxes darted, and other creatures came with them, vampires in animal form, larger and more savage than the animals whose shape they mimicked. Perhaps behind them were vampires still presenting themselves as human, but their bodies were not built for such speed. Jack feared the battle would be over before those monsters arrived.

"Oh, Sabine," Jack breathed. Behind them Ghost was still running, and he was muttering something under his breath, promises punctuated by every footfall. You shall not die, you shall not die . . . . In the face of such horror, Jack found the brutal captain's words to the wood witch unbearably moving.

Callie shot one of the mountain lions from forty feet. The creature flipped in the air and splashed down in the stream, growing pale, shrinking as death took it back to its shriveled, pathetic form. She fired at a charging polar bear, but the bullet only nicked the creature's ear, sending it into a raving frenzy that only made it more dangerous.

Louis took it from the left, and the Reverend from the right. One held it down, the other opened its throat and snapped its neck. It was already shrinking as they turned away, and Jack had never seen them so majestic.

"Come on!" Ghost roared behind them. He was standing atop the gentle slope, and Lesya seemed to be squirming in his arms, thin, pale branches arcing out from her body and caressing the air. Her head was still lowered, however, and Jack could sense her weakness.

"You go!" Jack shouted. He turned to Sabine and, quieter, said, "You too."

"No, Jack!"

"She's everything you came for," he said. "Everything you've lived for all these years."

"No," Sabine said. "That's you. If I lose her, I can go on living in mystery. I lose you . . ." Her eyes were wet, face set in determination. "I don't think I'd go on another moment."

Callie was running uphill, the two werewolves at her side. She looked tired and sweaty, but behind her tiredness Jack could see that she was thoroughly alive. This was what she was meant to do.

"Can't kill 'em all!" Callie said as she came closer to them. "Run!"

Sabine grasped Jack's hand and pulled, and together they followed Callie toward where Ghost was already disappearing over the ridge. Jack heard conflict behind him and he looked back as he ran, knowing what he'd see but unable to not look.

Louis and the Reverend were embroiled in the greatest fight of their lives. They leapt, slashed, bit, jumped, rolled, ran, kicked, sometimes together, sometimes alone. Monstrous creatures came for them, and changing things fell away from them, reverting to their original state — Tlingit Indians, trappers, gold prospectors, men and women and children. The two werewolves were like forces of un-nature, and each time some monster came at them they changed it back to what it should have been. Human, and dead.

Louis took a bite to the shoulder from a fox, and he spun around, flipping the creature down across his leg and breaking its back. Still it snapped at him, teeth clacking shut again and again, until he plunged his claws into its pelt and ripped the broken creature in two. He turned to the next attacker without even acknowledging the ugly blood-gushing wound on his shoulder.

The Reverend seemed to dance. In his wolfish state he was taller, thinner, even leaner than his human guise, and he flowed across that hillside, never engaging an enemy for more than a moment before moving on to another. He bit and slashed and gouged, then slipped away to do the same again, drawing monsters after him and away from Jack and the other. He was dealing violence and pulling it along with him, and Jack paused and raised his shotgun in an instinctive desire to help.

"Look!" Callie said. "Off to the left!"

There was Jack's wolf again, streaking in to the fray with teeth bared and pelt flowing. Jack connected with the animal in such a natural way that it was almost like breathing, and he growled with the wolf, felt its strength, and sensed it casting fear aside. There was a story to its fear, a history. It was one born of anger, because it had been furious at these beasts — these travesties of nature — for some time. Furious at their tainting of the land, and even more enraged at its own inaction. Instinct had ensured its survival, but by not combating the vampires it had felt itself lessened.

Now, watching its unnatural brothers tackling the monsters, the wolf had found its cause once again. Smaller than most of the vampire beasts, its rage carried it through — teeth gnashing, claws rending, jaws clamping shut on necks and crushing vertebrae until heads hung limps and lifeless. The werewolves saw the wolf, and Jack sensed them drawing encouragement from its natural state. This was nature fighting back against the evils wrought upon it, and Louis and the Reverend found themselves on the side of righteousness.

"We must go," Sabine whispered into his ear, and Jack knew that she was right. Painful though it was, he felt his wolf urging him to flee also, not in words or images, but with a pressing intent.

They ran for their lives, and Jack began to feel that he had been running forever.

The sounds of battle continued behind them. With every few steps Callie glanced back, and several times she paused, aimed and fired, bringing down a vampire that had escaped to come after them. Jack always slowed when she did, bringing his shotgun to bear in case she missed or ran out of bullets. How many left? he wondered, but he did not ask. He did not really want to know the answer.

"She's almost there!" Sabine said. Jack looked ahead, searching for Ghost and Lesya but unable to see them in the dark. Moonlight painted the landscape, but down beneath the trees shadows hid the truth.

"Is she stronger?" Jack asked. "Is Ghost still carrying her?"

"I think so," Sabine said. "But she's . . . getting ready."

"Ready for what?" Callie asked, breathless. She glanced back, ran on.

"Ready to get back home," Sabine said.

"And we have to be there when she does," Jack said.

He thought of Louis and the Reverend as he ran, and wished them well. He could hear the screams and roars and growls falling behind them, and any one of them could be one of the wolves' death-calls. He felt back for his own wolf and sensed its ferocity. It was relishing the fight, releasing pent-up frustrations that channeled through its teeth and claws. Shadows fell all around, and in his mind's eye Jack saw them changing form.

The wolf howled and bled, but pain could not touch it.

"I'll tell it to let them come," he panted. "When we're there, I'll let the wolf know. Maybe they can survive. Escape."

Neither Callie nor Sabine answered. They all knew the chances of seeing the wolves alive again.

Following the stream, it was not long before Jack began to recognize the shape of the landscape — how the hills sat around them, the weight of the land, the shadows of trees and the twinkling of the stream. He knew that they were very, very close.

Come to us, he thought, connecting with the wolf and hoping that the others would see it leaving. We're there, leave the fight and —

Callie shouted in surprise and fired three times. Sabine uttered a short, sharp cry. Jack turned to see a polar bear was bearing down on Callie, one giant paw already swinging around with wet claws promising a killing blow. Callie had stumbled onto her back and now held only one gun, and Jack could hear the click, click, click of its hammer on empty chambers like a death rattle in the night.

He fired the shotgun from his hip and a smudge of darkness opened across the bear's head and shoulder.

Callie rolled aside and the dying vampire fell where she had been lying. She quickly cast aside her empty gun and snapped up the one she had dropped. She broke it open, glancing up at Jack wide-eyed.

"Three," was all she said. Jack knew that "Thank you" could wait until later.

"This way!" Jack said. The three of them ran along the course of the stream, then Jack took them left across the shoulder of a low hill, heading for the dark shadows of what he knew to be the extremes of Lesya's forest. He had once run away from this place in fear for his life, and now the opposite was true.

He only hoped that Lesya's powers had not been drained too much.

"Oh, Jack," Sabine said. He glanced around, breath held in his throat as he expected to see the vampires bearing down upon them. So unfair, to be taken so close to potential safety.

But Sabine was smiling instead of frowning, her moonlit eyes reflecting wonder.

"What is it?" Callie asked, weariness smoothing her voice.

"She's home," Sabine said. "Lesya is home. Leshii breathes thanks, though I think he'll soon be too far gone even for that. And now . . . everything has started to change."

They entered the forest together, the darkness welcoming them in. Jack probed back and sensed his wolf running toward them, its body battered and torn but still filled with vigor. It was alone.

"What the hell . . . ?" Callie said, unable to complete her sentence because there were no words large enough.

The forest was alive.

Through that final, incredible onslaught, there was no sign of Ghost. But Lesya was everywhere. Jack could feel her life-spirit flooding through the forest, touching everything previously sickened and bringing it back to ebullient life. He knew that Sabine could feel it as well. At their time of direst peril, he had never seen her so filled with wonder.

In this final battle there was little place for humans. Even Sabine acknowledged the greater powers at play, and she allowed Jack to lead her deeper into the forest, until they found shelter beside a large rocky outcropping from where they could hear, and sometimes see. Callie knelt beside them, nursing the gun that contained her last three silver bullets. Jack knew that she craved to use them — that the killing of the monsters and releasing of their cursed souls was far from over for her. But the stakes were totally different now. The vampires had met their match.

Jack hugged Sabine to him as the forest and vampires clashed.

They heard the unnatural creatures entering the forest. They surged in, snapping branches, trampling undergrowth, and it was only moments before the first of them let out a hideous shriek. Jack saw a shadow being flung aloft by a flexing, creaking tree, and then the larger shadow became many smaller ones as other trees reached to join in. Objects pattered wetly across the forest floor.

Branches whipped at the air and sometimes met flesh. Boughs groaned as they moved. The roars of fury became growls of consternation as the vampires found their routes blocked, the forest shifting and transforming around them. Jack recalled his attempted flight through these woods, and how he had been steered and controlled by the landscape around him, and how to begin with he had not understood. These vampires might understand, because they had been attempting to bleed Lesya's power for some time. But understanding would not help them.

He had once thought of Lesya as something of a monster herself, but no more. He did not have to be like Sabine to sense how right this was, and sharing a glance with Callie, he knew that she understood as well. This was nature versus evil. This was what was allowed, fighting what should never have been. Lesya was the purest spirit of the wilderness, and she was stamping out the stain of the vampires.

More growls and screams and confused cries. More impacts as things were held aloft and torn apart.

Then Sabine said, "There she is," almost breathless with wonder. Jack and Callie looked in the direction she indicated and Lesya was there, glorious and exultant in her natural form at last. She had been taken and held against her will, tortured perhaps, and maybe damaged too much to truly find herself again. But now her anger gave her power, and she marched through her domain proud and amazing.

Moonlight bathed her in purity. The size of a tree, her arms were sweeping limbs sprouting with shiny green leaves, the very image of rebirth. Her body was bark-covered, yet malleable enough to twist and turn to her desires. Her legs stomped across the landscape with a surety born of ancient familiarity, and her face . . .

Her face was one that Jack London knew so well, and had seen in his dreams ever since he had first set eyes upon her. Though far from her human form, Lesya retained features that Jack would always recognize, and fear and respect in equal measure.

She glanced his way. Blinked. And her face cracked open into a wooden grin that Jack could not help but mimic. Sabine laughed beside him, and even Callie lifted her face to the sky and chuckled. LLL

"We're going to make it," Sabine said. Her voice was filled with relief. Jack knew that she was already thinking beyond this fight, to when she and Lesya might meet properly and sit to talk, and find their ways into each other's lives and histories.

Jack's wolf appeared from the shadows, limping toward them. It glanced at Sabine, paused, and tilted its head. Then it came close to Jack and lay by his side, allowing him to touch its head and feel his way across its wounds. Its pelt was wet with blood, but he could feel the strong beating of its heart. It panted, but proudly. And watched.

Lesya strode back and forth through her forest, snapping up vampire beasts and lifting them high. Some she tore to shreds, mangled human parts tumbling back down. Then Jack saw something that made him shiver, and gave the grin she had granted him a manic edge.

Some vampires she impaled high in the trees. Pinned there against the moonlit sky, their agonized silhouettes squirmed — bears, a cougar, and three men whose thin limbs looked pathetic against the infinite heavens.

"Glorious," a voice said, and Ghost jumped down from the rock behind them. He landed beside Jack's wolf and knelt there, big hand resting on its back, but he spared not a glance for Jack and the others. He only had eyes for Lesya.

"She's torturing them," Sabine said.

"Yes?" Ghost said, still not looking.

"Yes," Callie said. Jack was not sure how to read her voice. Satisfaction, or disapproval?

"We have no idea what they did to her," Jack said, surprised that he wanted to defend Lesya's actions.

"I do," Ghost said. "I know." His voice was low, heavy, filled with anger and something else that Jack could not place for a while. "They bled her and kept her trapped in their caves like an animal. They taunted her. They promised to keep her alive, and never let her go. So yes. She's torturing them."

He respects her, Jack thought. At last, the beast has found someone — something — that he considers on his own level. He glanced at Sabine, only to discover she was already looking at him, eyebrows raised.

Soon the violence died down, and within half an hour the only sound was Lesya's footsteps, light and delicate for something so huge. Then even they died down, and moments later she appeared to them as Jack had first seen her. Naked, beautiful, eyes still filled with the wild, the forest spirit came toward them and knelt on the damp ground.

"Dawn," she said, her voice like a hand across rough bark, "and it will be over."

Jack looked up at the tree canopy. He could see three shapes up there, struggles lessening but their silhouettes still moving against the constant sky. He knew there were more. When dawn came, the last of the vampires would meet their end.

"All of them?" Ghost asked.

"All but three cowards that fled north," Lesya said. She glanced at Callie then looked directly at Jack. "A polar bear, a cougar, and a hawk. Injured, but not dying."

"They'll never come back," Ghost said firmly.

"Not in a human's lifetime, perhaps."

"Lesya," Jack said. Her name felt strange on his lips.

"Jack London. You left me."

"I value my freedom."

"I would have given you such wonders." She glanced at Sabine, said to Jack, "And are you not still a prisoner?"

Sabine stood, proud, defiant. "At least I don't try to force Jack to stay with me."

"And who are . . . ?" Lesya began.

Jack saw Sabine's eyes go wide. She stiffened, and Lesya did the same.

He saw the glimmer of a tear on his loved one's cheek.

When Lesya stood again, her eyes also glittered.

Crying without a sound, the two women came close, reached out their hands, and almost touched.

When dawn arrived, the treetops erupted in flames and screams. Those vampires impaled up in the canopy by Lesya's wilder self first shook and cried out, then smoked, then burst afire as dawn's early light kissed their cursed skins and pelts. As they exploded into unnatural flame and writhed where they were pinned, Jack could see their bodies deforming back to their original states. The vampires died halfway back to human, and he supposed there was some comfort in that.

He would never know the pain of the vampire curse, and for that he would be forever grateful.

They watched together, apart from Sabine and Lesya. Those two had disappeared into the forest alone, and no one had sought to accompany them. Their need to connect with each other had been so obvious, and as they'd left Ghost had sat down beside Jack.

While they had waited for dawn Jack, Ghost, and Callie had all remained silent. The wolf lay sleeping. Jack had sensed something between him and Ghost that confused him through those hours of darkness, and he had spent some time thinking back to their time together on the Larsen. Those bad memories offered no clues.

As the last of the canopy fires guttered out as the charred remains fell to the forest floor, Jack realized what that feeling was. The tension was gone. The almost palpable barrier between him and Ghost had melted away into the darkness, and in its place was the open space of potential that existed between all human beings. Jack knew from experience that sometimes that space was filled with love, sometimes hatred, sometimes violence or indifference. The air between Jack and Ghost was empty, a blank slate waiting to be written upon.

Jack sensed that there was nothing left to write. Their story was almost over, and as he glanced sidelong at Ghost, he was almost sad.

"New day," Jack said.

"Aye, Mister London."

Jack smiled at Ghost's use of his first mate name. Then the smile slipped when he thought again of Louis and the Reverend, and the sacrifice they had made. Several times through the night he had heard movement and hoped it was them, but no one had materialized from the shadows. He suspected it was merely Lesya's forest shrugging itself back to life once more.

"They fought as wolves and died as men," Ghost said quietly, again appearing to read Jack's mind.

"And you find value in that?" Jack snapped. The captain he had known would have laughed at the sacrifice, scoffing at the idea that such glory might be worth more than a continued, wretched existence.

Ghost sighed softly, but did not reply. Jack supposed that was answer enough.

"And you," Jack said. He examined Ghost in the dawn light. Relaxed though the big man was, he had only half-reverted to his human form. Thick fur lined his arms, neck, and cheeks, clotted with dirt and mud. His large hands bore curved, deadly claws. His face was elongated, still recognizably human yet possessed of a wolf's unmistakable contours. Perhaps this was his new normal.

"I've reached the end of one journey," Ghost said.

"Killing your brother, Death Nilsson, wasn't the end?" Jack asked.

"No," Ghost said. But he did not elaborate.

The wolf suddenly growled, leaping to its feet and readying for a pounce. Callie stood up quickly, stepping forward and raising her gun.

Jack stood with her. He had one cartridge left. It's daylight, he thought, but he could not ignore his wolf's caution.

Movement ahead of them, through the trees.

Ghost took in a deep breath, then chuckled softly as he let it out. He sounded almost happy.

Louis emerged from around a burnt tree ahead of them, pausing when he saw them and then moving onward once again. He almost back to fully human, and nursing wounds that would have killed any lesser man. His left leg had been gored so badly that Jack could see bone. His chest was a mass of cuts, and his face was swollen and bruised from some terrible impact. Through it all his golden tooth caught the dawn and gleamed, his grimace turning into a pained grin when he saw them.

"Aren't you . . . going to . . . get breakfast, Jack?" he asked. Twenty steps from them he collapsed onto his front, and by the time Jack had dashed to him, Louis was moaning in delirium.

"The Reverend?" Jack asked.

"Gone," Louis said. He grew still. "But he took plenty with him. You should have seen him, Jack. He really found himself just before he . . . he . . ." Louis closed his eyes and slipped into unconsciousness. His breathing was ragged but his heart beat strong.

"A brave man," Callie said from behind Jack.

"Yes," Jack said, nodding. "A man."

"I can help him," a woman's voice said. As he turned around, Jack was unsure who he would see. There was something of both of them in that confident note, and the way the voice seemed to sing slightly out of synch with reality.

Both women stood up on the rock, but from her expression he could see that it was Lesya who had spoken.

"Then help," Jack said.

Lesya nodded, and both she and Sabine descended. Sabine came directly to Jack as Lesya tended the fallen man, and he saw a contentment in her that set a glow in his heart.

"It was all worth it," Jack said, a statement more than a question. Sabine's warm smile and grateful nod was the only answer any of them required.

Chapter Fourteen - New Journeys

Jack watched his wolf race off into the deeper forest and part of him felt as if he were running alongside. He knew he might well see the animal again, but even if he did not, it would always be there, just out of the corner of his eye, and in the thunder of his own heartbeat. The wolf would move from pack to pack, finding a mate here or there, tracking a meal or picking a fight. Forever restless, eternally a wanderer, it would search wild hollows and precarious peaks, until at last it had explored the last primal place in the world, or died in the trying.

I am with you, Jack thought, as the grey tail of the wolf vanished in the shadows of the pines. His heart was full.

"A courageous animal," a voice said.

Jack had sensed Ghost approaching but ignored him, not willing to allow his private farewell to his wolf to be interrupted. Now he turned and nodded, unable to prevent a smile from crossing his lips. Ghost had changed. Somehow, giving himself fully over to the beast within him had calmed his soul, and though his hair was shaggy and his chin covered in bristles, he looked more human.

"Not 'noble,' Ghost? You wouldn't allow him that dignity?" Jack asked.

Ghost stared into the forest where the wolf had gone. After a few seconds he nodded. "All right. 'Noble' it is."

"So you believe in nobility at last?"

As Ghost turned toward him, the old pirate's face was shaded by pines, making it difficult for Jack to tell whether the upturned edge of his mouth indicated a smile or a snarl.

"I'm not fit for the way the world is changing, Mister London," Ghost said quietly, gazing again into the trees. "I know what you want to hear from me. Louis and the Reverend proved your point. The curse of the werewolf made them monsters, but you were right; that didn't mean they had to choose to be beasts. The Reverend died with honor. And Louis . . ."

Ghost took a deep breath and let it out, finding it difficult to speak the next words. At last he nodded to himself, as if his heart had given him permission to go on. "He's a good man," Ghost said. "All the better in that he has crossed every civilized line and delved into the freedom of savagery, and he has chosen the more valiant path."

Jack stared at Ghost in shock. "I wouldn't have thought, even now, that you would admit such a path exists."

Ghost walked to him and put a hand on his arm, squeezing firmly, gaze locked with Jack's. The ferocity in his eyes was not cruel, but it held a certainty that could not be denied.

"You were right about some things, Jack . . . but not everything. Some men aren't meant for civilization. You wanted to show me that I could live as a man, to tame the beast in me, and I confess to you that I wondered if such a thing were possible, or even preferable. But now that I have met Lesya, that I see in her eyes another truly wild spirit, I know that even before my brother made me a monster, I was never meant to be a man."

Jack gave a small nod. "Lesya has been searching for a wild man."

"A beast," Ghost agreed, nostrils flaring with pleasure. "And now she has found me. But I will not allow you to pretend, Jack."

"I don't take your meaning," Jack replied.

"Of course you do. Why else would she have worked so hard to lure you here and to keep you?" Ghost said. "Lesya and her father — nearly vanished from the world though he may be — are ancient things. They are of nature, of the wilderness, in a way almost nothing is in these modern days. She wanted a wild man, and she thought it might be you, Jack. There's a reason for that."

"I'm no beast," Jack said, a chill running up his spine. Somewhere far off in the forest, his wolf howled, but Jack did not know if it was in farewell or in accordance with Ghost's words.

Now Ghost smiled in earnest and released his hold on Jack's arm. He leaned in, his breath hot on Jack's cheek as he growled a whisper. "We're more alike than you'll ever admit, my friend. If you refuse to admit that, you will wander the rest of your life trying to find a place to fit in, but you will never feel settled. You'll never be at home."

Anger rippled through Jack. He felt the heat rushing to his face and he opened his mouth to reject Ghost's words, only to find he could say nothing.

The snapping of a small branch made both of them spin quickly around, on edge after so many violent clashes, but it was only Callie approaching. She stood by a tree, a heavy pack on her back, pistols hanging from her hips. Jack had felt a weight lift from him when morning had broken, but the same familiar expression of grim determination was etched on Callie's face. Her hunt wasn't over.

"We're ready to go, Jack. If you're comin', let's get along," she said.

Jack hesitated, still feeling as though something remained unsaid between himself and Ghost. But when he looked at the wild man, he knew that was only an illusion. They understood each other perfectly.

He started back toward Lesya's cottage, Callie falling into step beside him.

Ghost did not follow.

Jack adjusted the straps of his pack as he trudged eastward along a ridge, the sun warm on his face. In his mind, he could practically hear the music of the little trio that sometimes played in the bar in Dawson — jaunty banjo, jangling piano, and sad, weeping harmonica — and he wetted his lips with his tongue, thinking about the whiskey that would go along with the music. He had no interested in staying very long in Dawson, but he looked forward to getting back there, to the noise and stink and general unruliness of people. It was said that absence made the heart grow fonder, and Jack knew that was the case here. Once he'd spent a few hours amongst them, he'd be longing for the wild. But at the moment, he wanted a steak and a drink and the sound of music, even poorly played.

Up ahead, Callie led the way along the ridge, with Louis following close behind. The gruff, rough-hewn woman was a damn fine tracker, but it didn't hurt to have a werewolf at her side, sniffing out the trail of their quarry if she became stumped for a minute or two. Sabine strode along about twenty feet behind them, with Jack bringing up the rear. He watched Sabine, enjoying the way she moved and the blowing of her hair in the wind. The time spent with Lesya had restored her to full vigor and her beauty in that state left him breathless. There were other changes in her that went beyond that invigoration. Whatever secrets Lesya had shared with her had brought a lightness to Sabine's step that had never been there before, and now, when lost in her own thoughts, she had an ethereal quality about her, as though at any moment she might take flight for the heavens. In those moments, Jack wanted to reach for her, to kiss her and love her hard enough to hold her down. Most of the time when she smiled at him, his concerns abated. But from time to time she glanced at him with a sadness in her eyes that gnawed at his gut.

At a break in the ridge, where a rock-fall had left a gap, Callie and Louis paused to sort out some confusion over the direction of the vampires' retreat.

"They can't have gone too far in just a few hours of dark," Callie said. "If there ain't a trail, we just go on in this direction till we hear tell of some folks done in by bears or drained of blood, and we'll find 'em."

While Louis explored the gap in the ridge and Callie called out encouragement, Sabine turned and walked back to Jack, smiling.

"This could take a while," she said.

Jack nodded. "No doubt. And I admit, I'm impatient. I'm surprised you're not. I thought you'd be in more of a hurry to get back to the sea."

"Oh, I am," Sabine said, but her gaze shifted off of him as she said it, and he knew there was something she wasn't saying. Renewing her smile, she stepped up and gave him a gentle kiss. "You didn't say goodbye to Lesya."

Now it was Jack's turn to look away. "You two were talking and I didn't want to interrupt. Anyway, what would I have said? She wanted to keep me as her prisoner, once upon a time. Then she tried to kill me. We're not the best of friends."

Sabine gave a small shrug. "She wouldn't have tried to keep you there this time. She's got Ghost, now, and he's willing."

"More than willing," Jack said.

"She did ask me to thank you for her," Sabine went on. "For rescuing her."

"We all did that."

"Yes, but you had an excellent reason not to, and you did it anyway." Sabine kissed him again, and spoke in a whisper. "You're a good man, Jack."

They pressed their foreheads together, resting there a moment with him inhaling the cinnamon aroma of her skin. They had rarely been closer or more intimate. So why do I feel as if she's drifting away?

"You're not going to tell me what Lesya said? About your past?" he asked.

Sabine's eyes glittered,. She touched his face, running her palm over his stubbled cheek. "Not just yet. But soon enough. I promise."

The way she looked away that time, he wanted to stop her and tell her it was all right. That whatever she had to tell him might be something he didn't need to hear, that she should keep it to herself and just keep looking into his eyes and touched his face and kissing him. But he didn't stop her. The recent part of Sabine's life had been all about others using her for their own ends, trying to turn her into something they envisioned instead of helping her define who and what she was. He wouldn't be a part of that.

"Come on, you lovebirds!" Callie said. "We're movin' on."

Sabine took Jack's hand and the two of them made their way along the ridge.

"I'm sorry, Callie," Sabine said, "but I'm afraid this is where we must part. Jack and I are headed for Dawson, and the city's southeast of here. If you're headed north — "

Callie put a hand over her heart, a sad expression on her face. "Don't say another word, darlin'. I may be rough around the edges, but that don't mean I ain't a tender soul. I ain't never handled goodbyes well."

The woman threw her arms around Sabine and their embrace was almost comical. Then Callie turned to Jack and held out her hand. Jack shook it, feeling both the strength and the sincerity in Callie's grip.

"It's been a real pleasure knowin' ya, Jack."

"You, too, Callie," he said, surprised at just how deeply he meant it. "I'm not going to forget you any time soon. I'm sorry we can't continue on with you."

She waved that away. "Don't be foolish. You got to get your lady back where she belongs. We had, whaddayacallit, shared purposes for a while, but this was always my hunt. Safe travels to both of you."

Callie glanced at Louis. "What about you, Frenchie? You goin' back to Dawson, or you gonna help me finish this batch of devils?"

Louis grinned at Jack and Sabine, his gold tooth glinting in the sun. "Why not?"

"Are you sure?" Jack asked, frowning with concern. "Staying out here in the wild — "

"Don't worry, my friend," Louis said. "I'm not going to forget what I've learned. It's a part of me now. And the best way for me to remember I'm not a monster is to hunt the real ones."

"Safe journeys, then," Jack said.

"And to you, mon ami," Louis replied, bowing low. When he rose from the bow, he met Jack's gaze and his eyes were kind. Human. "Once Ghost had made me a monster, I never thought I would have another friend. It's been my pleasure, Jack."

Louis extended a hand and Jack shook it.

"And mine," he replied. "Truly."

Jack might have said more, but Sabine took his hand then and led him away. When they had managed to descend the treacherous ridge, aiming toward the southeast, where they knew they would come upon the river, Jack glanced back. But Callie and Louis were already gone.

They spent a night beneath the stars, making camp beside the river. Jack caught fish and fried them in a small pan he'd had stowed in his pack and then they lay down together and listened to the wind and the rushing water. Sabine fell asleep long before he did, and Jack propped himself on one elbow and studied the peaceful beauty of her face, wondering where she went in her dreams.

In the morning they continued their trek, entering Dawson early. They found the sheriff at his breakfast table, his wife pouring him a cup of coffee to go with his eggs, sausage, and toast. Jack and Sabine spotted this domestic scene through the window as they walked up to the front door, and they were hesitant to break it up. Now that Jack had returned to Dawson, the romantic sheen had been stripped off the notion of music and whiskey in a bar full of hopeless dreamers and gold-stampeders. He loved and hated the Yukon in equal measure, and wanted to put it behind him.

When he knocked, Sheriff Killebrew called for them to come in. Jack tried the door and found it unlocked. As he pushed it open, he saw Mrs. Killebrew standing anxiously by the stove with a heavy cast-iron skillet in her hand. Walrus had a mouthful of egg and sausage, but his right hand was under the table. Jack figured he had a gun under them, aimed right at them, but the moment the sheriff recognized them, he let out the breath he'd been holding.

"All right, Martha," he said to his wife. "They're all right." The sheriff arched a bushy eyebrow and set his heavy gun on the table beside his plate. "Surprised to see you alive, though. That mean we don't have to worry about bloodsuckers anymore?"

"There were three left," Jack admitted. "But Callie King and our friend Louis are still after them. By now, chances are good they're all done for."

Walrus grinned. "Now that is a cause for celebration." Flecks of egg dotted his mustache. He leaned back in his chair and glanced at his wife. "Martha, if we've got enough breakfast to go around, cook it up for these folks. I expect making the world safe from monsters works up a mighty appetite."

The whistle of the riverboat made Jack squeeze Sabine's hand more tightly. They were standing near the dock with Hal Sawyer, who'd come down to see them off. Jack could feel Sabine's excitement, but the melancholy within her had not abated, and neither had his quiet concern for what awaited them next.

"You'll write me?" Hal asked. "I have a feeling you have a lot of adventures ahead of you, and I don't want to miss a one of them."

"Course I will. We'll both be writing quite a bit from now on, I'd guess."

The boy Jack had first met two years before had become a young man. Hal's face had thinned out, his profile becoming more angular, and he needed a shave. He wore a hat tilted to one side and he had filled out enough that Jack doubted much trouble would come his way in the future. Once upon, Hal had needed Jack's help to keep from getting beaten up in the streets of Dawson, but no more.

They'd spent the previous evening talking over dinner and drinks in a quiet corner of the bar. Word had spread all through the day that the monsters who were the cause of their terror were dead or being run to ground, but people were still nervous and afraid. Folks gave Jack, Sabine, and Hal their space, and so Jack and Sabine had told Hal what had become of Lesya and Ghost, of Callie King and the werewolves.

Hal had listened with rapt attention, as he had when Jack had regaled him with tales of previous journeys. Afterward, as usual, Jack had sworn him to secrecy, but he'd been surprised by Hal's reply.

"I won't breathe a word," Hal had said, with a sly grin. "I plan to tell my own stories from now on. I got a new job, writing for the newspaper."

Jack had cheered him and they had all toasted to Hal's new job and his future success, but it had gotten Jack thinking. He'd been remiss in recent months, not taking nearly enough time to write in his journal, which was foolish because if anyone had ever had a story to tell, it was Jack London. The thing was, he didn't just want to recount his adventures. He wanted people to feel what it was like to be in the wild, or out at sea with a brilliant, savage man like Ghost as master of your fate. There were other things that concerned him as well. He saw the dreary, soulless lives of the people who'd come to Dawson and failed to find gold, and it reminded him of the hoboes and itinerant workers he'd met before his first trip to the north. He knew he wanted to do something for them. They needed someone to speak up on their behalf.

He'd spent the night contemplating all of this — when he wasn't distracted wondering when Sabine would finally tell him what she had learned from Lesya — and now the time for departure had come.

The riverboat blew its whistle again.

"Jack," Hal said. They shook hands, and then embraced, clapping each other on the back. "They're your stories to write, but you should write 'em. People should know about the things you've done and seen. The monsters and the dark things that are out there."

Sabine kissed Hal on the cheek. "Nobody would believe him, Hal. You know that. Ordinary people want ordinary lives. They tell themselves there are no such things as monsters because they need to believe that."

Hal frowned, but nodded. "I guess you're right."

"It's okay, Hal," Jack said. "There's a lot more to what I've learned about the world and about myself than just the monsters. I'll write about those things. And one of these days, after I'm gone, you can write down all of the other stuff."

"Don't talk like that," Hal said. "You'll be around just as long as I will."

A hush fell over them after that, for none of them seemed to believe it. After a few moments Jack gave a nervous laugh.

"Ah, well. Look me up if you ever get down to San Francisco," Jack said, shaking Hal's hand one last time before he and Sabine hefted their packs and started down the dock toward the riverboat.

"You won't be there," Hal said quietly.

Jack arched an eyebrow, looking back. "What's that?"

"You won't be there. You'll never be happy staying in one place, Jack. It's your blessing and your curse." Hal raised his voice to be heard. He wore a sad smile when he said it. "You got something in you that's gonna be restless forever."

Jack tried to think of a reply to that, but could not. After a few more steps he just shrugged.

"Guess so," he said.

Sabine urged him along as the riverboat let out a longer whistle, warning of its imminent departure, and they started to run for it.

Sabine kept her secrets until they were on the open sea.

Jack enjoyed the time he and his love spent together as the steamship made its way back downriver. They talked about their adventures — how they had met, their time on the Larsen, Ghost and his fate, and the vampires that had revealed to them the true meaning of evil. Jack spoke of his family, and Sabine could only listen, because she had none. She told him about what the sea meant to her, and he liked to believe that he had some understanding. Her eyes glazed a little when she spoke of the sea — as if she were somewhere else — and he suspected the same happened to him when he spoke of the wild.

They talked about things that had happened in the past, and spent lighter, sweeter moments discussing the present — their feelings for each other, the time they had together on that steamship journey, and speculating on what Louis and Callie, or Ghost, would be doing at that moment.

One thing they never discussed was the future. Jack tried, once, and Sabine turned away and sighed. "Oh, Jack," she said, "can't we just live in the moment for a while?" That said so such more than Jack really wanted to know.

The moment when the present inevitably met the future arrived on their first evening on the open sea, after they had left the river behind and made their way once more to the coast, where they boarded the southbound ship, the Prospero. He had been dreading it, though he knew it must come. He shivered as Sabine took his hand and walked him along the deck, and closed his eyes when she turned to him, sadness simmering in hers.

"Jack," she began.

Jack pressed his finger across her lips. "Just a little while longer," he said. She smiled and leaned into him, and together they watched the sun sinking into the sea. The sunset was sublime. It could have been a moment meant for them, though Jack had become certain that it hid a future lacking in something precious to him.

"So tell me," he said, as the last of the sun smeared across the horizon like the sky's spilled blood.

"Lesya told you of her own lineage," Sabine said.

Jack nodded. "That she had a human mother, and that Leshii is her father."

Sabine nodded, her eyes somehow upon him, but also not. It felt to Jack as if she saw through him, into some ancient, primal age he could not imagine — as if she were both here in the present with him and somehow, at the very same time, wandering that primeval world.

"Leshii is even older than I am," she said. "He is precisely what Lesya claimed, a forest spirit. A wood god. In ancient times there were many like him, distant cousins, and as Man began to populate the world, they worshipped such creatures. In Greece they were always female, and called dryads. Though her mother was human, Lesya would be one of these.

"And then she told me of my lineage, Jack. Things I had always . . . felt, or suspected, but could never put a name to. She told me that there are many elemental spirits in the world. She is a forest spirit, and I . . . I am something of the water. A water spirit! Lesya believes I am a Nereid, one of the three thousand daughters of Tethus and Oceanus, who were Titans of myth."

"You're no myth," Jack said. "And, elemental, yes, but you're no spirit, either."

He gathered Sabine in his arms to feel the flesh and blood of her, and she relaxed in his grip, slumping down and letting him take her weight.

"Perhaps not, but that spirit is inside me. It's what drives me! Everything she told me makes sense, and it's like . . . I'm discovering myself again anew. It's why I have always lived near the sea and for the sea. I fade when I am taken from water, as you saw when we traveled inland, Jack. Lesya begins to fade when she is taken from the parts of the forest where she has rooted herself. I'm lucky in that respect. There is no one part of the sea, just . . ." She pulled from Jack and looked down again. The sea was giving her comfort, and Jack felt a momentary pang of jealousy. She needs me, not the ocean! But he also realized how foolish that idea was. He was just a man, after all.

Sabine turned to stare at him, and Jack caught his breath at the intensity of her expression. She was pinning him there with her glare. She blinked, but he could not look away.

"There are many other spirits," she said. "Some of them Lesya has knowledge of, and a few she claims to know. There are so many more that are probably like me. Haunted, conflicted. Confused. Feeling that there's . . . something more." Sabine smiled, but it was loaded with withheld truths. "I was lucky to find her, and I have you and the others to thanks for that. Those still living, and those who died. She and I are not quite sisters, but we're inextricably linked by history." She paused

"What else?" Jack pressed. "She told you so much more than that, I know."

"Do you, Jack?" she asked. And for the briefest moment her eyes went wide, and she seemed terrified for him. "Do you really know?" she whispered.

"I know you're keeping something from me."

Sabine sighed. "Things not meant for human ears," she said. "But Jack, you have always heard the call of the wild. And that wolf — your wolf — chose you."

"You're leaving, aren't you?" he asked.

"I was never meant to exist as an ordinary, human woman," she said. "That's why Lesya revels in what she does, what she is. I have always fought against my nature. I want to be . . ."

"You want to be free," Jack said. He smiled, held her arms, pulled her toward him. He was filled with a sudden sense of overwhelming good cheer, the sort of flush of contentment that leaves as soon as it arrives. I will see her again, he thought. I will always love her. How lucky I have been. How lucky I am.

Sabine kissed him, and it was the sweetest kiss ever, touched by the dusk and promising so much more. "Many spirits," she whispered in his ear, and when Jack blinked he experienced a momentary memory of his wolf, loping through snow and dashing between trees. It could have been an element of his own spirit, given free rein to revel in the wild that he so sought. "And some of them," she said, "live in the hearts of men."

"Sabine?" he asked, blinking. "Do you mean . . . ?"

She shushed him with a finger across his lips. Then she shrugged off her dress and stood naked before him, silencing him with her beauty.

"You're so right, my sweet Jack," she said. "We will meet again." She slipped sideways, and before Jack could reach for her she was over the railing. He caught a shimmer of silver across her legs, glistening with a sheen of oily scales, and then she entered the water without a splash. The sea closed around her, and Sabine was gone.

Jack grabbed the railing and watched, hoping that she would rise for one last goodbye. But there was only the sea.

He stood there until it was fully dark, and then he walked slowly back to his cabin. His emotions were mixed. Sadness hung heavy, but it was countered with a deep, rich love that absence could not touch. He was tired, but knew that he would not sleep.

I'm flesh and blood, he thought. Not a spirit. And as he settled on his cot and took out his heavy journal, readying to put into words all those adventures he had lived and the things he had seen, his final thought was, Not yet.

As long as he lived, he would truly live.

His journey had only just begun.

- THE END -

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Of Saints and Shadows, The Myth Hunters, The Boys Are Back in Town, and Strangewood. He has also written books for teens and young adults, including Soulless, Poison Ink, and The Secret Journeys of Jack London, co-authored with Tim Lebbon. His current work-in-progress is Cemetery Girl, a graphic novel trilogy collaboration with Charlaine Harris.

A lifelong fan of the "team-up," Golden frequently collaborates with other writers on books, comics, and scripts. He has co-written three illustrated novels with Mike Mignola, the first of which, Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, was the launching pad for the Eisner Award-nominated comic book series, Baltimore. With Thomas E. Sniegoski, he is the co-author of the book series Magic Zero and The Menagerie, as well as comic book miniseries such as Talent, currently in development as a feature film. With Amber Benson, he co-created the online animated series Ghosts of Albion for the BBC.

As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies The New Dead, The Monster's Corner, and British Invasion, among others, and has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays, and a network television pilot. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at http://www.ChristopherGolden.com.

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TIM LEBBON is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He's had almost thirty novels published to date, as well as dozens of novellas and hundreds of short stories. His most recent releases include the bestselling Into the Void: Dawn of the Jedi (Star Wars) from Del Rey/Star Wars Books, Coldbrook from Arrow/Hammer, and the Toxic City trilogy from Pyr in the USA. Future novels include The Silence, and an official Alien tie-in novel Out of the Shadows. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Awards.

20th Century Fox acquired film rights to The Secret Journeys of Jack London series, and he and Golden wrote the first draft of the screenplay. A TV series of his Toxic City trilogy is in development with ABC Network in the USA, and he's also working on new screenplays, both solo and in collaboration with Stephen Volk.

Find out more about Tim at his website http://www.timlebbon.net.

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