"I always told Tom he was crazy," the hunter said. "Checking his traps at night. But it was his favorite time."
There was a moment of silence for the dead man.
The younger cop broke it first. "I saw some wolf tracks back there."
"Wolf?" the older cop said. "You sure about that?"
"I can tell canine from ursine, Reed."
"He means there's more than one kind of canine out here," the hunter said.
"And I mean don't go jumping to conclusions," the older cop said. "Folks hear about paw prints near a dead body and they start crying wolf."
"My money's on a wolf-dog," the hunter said. "City idiots think it's cool to own a dog that's half wolf... until it turns out there's some wild beast in their pet pooch. Fancy that. Then what do they do? Let them loose out here and tell themselves they've done the humane thing."
"That'd explain the big canine tracks people have been seeing since the pack moved on. A wolf-dog got dumped here, started harassing the pack, scaring off the prey, so they left. If an animal's been raised by people, it doesn't fear them. It gets hungry? That big hunk of meat on two legs looks damned tasty."
As I backed up, Clay huffed in relief and circled in front to herd me to safety. Even being raised near people had never erased that gut-level anxiety that said a human in the forest was a bad thing. In this case, his instinct was right. If these guys caught a glimpse of a big yellow wolf right now, we'd be picking shotgun pellets from our butts for weeks.
I started walking away, my nose to the ground, skimming it like a metal detector. Clay watched for a moment, then made that rumbling noise deep in his chest, one that said he'd rather get as far from these humans as possible, but I had a point. He put his nose down and joined my search.
DOWNTIME
WE FOUND TRACKS about a half mile from the kill site. It looked as if the trail went in that direction, but we didn't dare follow it any closer--not until the people had left. I supposed they were waiting for the coroner or crime-scene techs. But whoever was coming was taking his time and I could still hear the men talking.
The tracks were definitely canine, as the young officer had said. While they seemed too big to be wolf, I won't say definitely too big, because wolves have been found weighing up to two hundred pounds. The average, though, is just over half that. These tracks were the size of Clay's, but the scent already told me we were dealing with a werewolf.
The trail was a few days old, the prints remaining only because the tree canopy protected this patch from the freshly fallen snow. I had to pace along it before my brain really latched on to the smell. Then I sat on my haunches and mulled it over, like a wine expert with a cork, trying to place the vintage. When it
didn't tweak a memory, I sniffed again. No match to anything in my mental file cabinet.
I glanced at Clay, who was sniffing another section of the trail. He lifted his muzzle from the ground and shook his head--no one he knew either. My dossiers document twenty-five werewolves currently living in the United States, but we weren't arrogant enough to believe that actually meant there were only twenty-five.
Mutts were always immigrating and emigrating, plus there were a handful that stayed under the radar. Keeping tabs on all of them was impossible. We really only tracked the troublemakers and the ones from the oldest werewolf families, like the Santoses and the Cains.
Still, in the Lower 48, we could say with some confidence that we knew most of the werewolves around--either by reputation or by scent. Up here in Alaska, though, we might as well be in another country. The only Alaskans we had in our dossiers were the Stillwells, and if Clay didn't recognize this scent, then it wasn't either of them.
We couldn't follow the trail back to the kill site, but we could take it the other way. We'd tracked it for almost a mile before it ended at a clearing. Inside, we found a piece of plywood and a wooden crate. A werewolf's winter locker--a place to Change in the mud and snow, and to store your gear. We had something similar, if more elegant, at Stonehaven.
This clearing reeked of scent and sweat, meaning someone was using it regularly. As I sniffed more, I realized it was more than someone. We had two distinct scents and possibly a third.
Shit.
Two or more werewolves, none the Stillwells. And as soon as they set foot in this clearing, they'd know there were two werewolves in town, one of them female.
Double shit.
I started backing out of their change-room, but it was too late. The moment I got within ten feet of the spot I'd left a scent that was sure to get their attention. Upon consideration, though, I decided that wasn't necessarily a problem. With the size of Alaska, finding two or three werewolves would be needle-and-haystack work. Now they'd be looking for us, which would make things easier.
As long as we'd already left our scents, we might as well take a better sniff around. We covered every inch of that clearing searching for remnants of the man by the lake, and found not a speck of blood or shred of flesh. That didn't mean much--the long run through the snow would be enough to clean off their feet--but it bore keeping in mind. It could also suggest a deliberate cleaning before returning to this spot. Maybe one of the mutts was a man-eater trying to hide the habit from his buddies.
Once we were sure we'd gotten all the information we could and had committed their scents to memory, we left the clearing. As I stepped out, I caught a movement in the bushes. I froze, blocking Clay. He nudged my hindquarters. I edged backward, scanning the woods. The only noise was the wind rustling dead leaves overhead. It was too quiet. Clay went still, knowing something was wrong.
I kept looking, ears swiveled forward, nose working. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Nothing to smell. Yet the forest stayed deathly silent. Clay nudged me again--now he was worried and wanted to get moving.
I slid from the clearing. Clay followed. We stood in the dense, dimly lit forest, looking, listening, sniffing, catching nothing. Then a bird called. Another answered. A squirrel chirruped and scampered over a branch overhead, dead leaves raining down. I shook one off my head, and I rubbed against Clay, grunting an apology for over reacting. He licked my muzzle and waited for instructions, ready to cede the lead now that any danger had passed.
We found the scent from the werewolves in human form, and followed it. It didn't go more than twenty paces before ending at a trail thick with the stink of mixed gas and oil. Snowmobiles.