White Fangs Read online

  "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 wou
ld 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.