The Passion (45 page)

And yet there must have been a part of her that knew she would not see another spring, and even would be glad to die. There were matches in the inner pocket of the cloak, yet she did not build a fire.

When the second snow came she couldn't find any more berries. Sometimes she was feverish and coughed up bloody phlegm. She grew weaker every day.

And then one day she awoke to find a big red wolf standing over her. He had in his jaws a haunch of meat, which he dropped at her feet. He walked a little away and sat down, watching her. She closed her eyes again and drifted into a feverish sleep, but when she woke again he was stil there. She felt neither fear nor wonder, nor did it occur to her to try to run away. She was too weak to do anything at al , and the cough was worse.

And so it was as the hours passed. Once she awoke and he wasn't there. Instead, there was a pile of sticks on a patch of bare earth that he had dug in the snow. The next time she opened her eyes he had returned, and the pile of sticks had grown. And when night came and the wind began to rise she realized that she was no longer shivering; for the first time in memory she felt warm. The wolf was curled up beside her, his body heat radiating like a coal furnace. She fel asleep to the sound of his rhythmic breathing, and in the morning her fever had lessened.

At some point, she was never quite sure how or when, she began to understand the purpose of the sticks that were piled up in the circle of earth, and she remembered the matches. She roasted meat on a stick and, in a sudden frenzy of greed, pul ed off the hot flesh with her fingers, eating until she could hold no more. He watched her fixedly, and when she was finished he carried off the remainder to consume in private.

A series of days and nights passed in this fashion; she ate the meat he brought and consumed snow for water, and at night he kept her warm. The cough lessened; she grew stronger.

And then came the morning when she awoke and he was not there. For many hours she did nothing.

But what she felt was an odd and strangely disturbing sensation: loneliness.

She fol owed the tracks in the snow.

At the end of the day she arrived at the entrance to a rock cave whose solid wal s kept out the wind and whose temperature inside was a good twenty degrees higher than that outside. At the entrance of the cave was a pile of dry wood and two rabbits.

And so became the pattern of their days. Denis hunted and scouted for shelter, and Tessa fol owed mindlessly, gathering firewood when she thought of it, minding the matches. At night he waited for the bones she discarded, the cooked fat and charred flesh, with narrowed eyes and wet tongue. And when the wind howled and the snow fel , he moved into the circle of the fire, sleepy-eyed, and stretched out beside her. She slept with her fingers entwined in his fur.

And then came the morning when she awoke to find a human male, ful y naked, sitting beside her, looking down at her gravely.

"Tessa LeGuerre," he said, "talk to me."

When cal ed upon to explain to his reasoning mind why he had returned to her, Denis had a simple answer: A leader without a pack was nothing. It was instinct to care for the helpless in the midst of bounty, to conquer the enemy when chal enged, to demonstrate superior hunting skil s under harsh conditions; those were the rules of the pack.

And yet there was another, older and even more powerful instinct at work; painful to contemplate, incomprehensible, but undeniably there. He had built his life on the firm belief that a werewolf was meant to live as close to his nature as possible; that the only paradise worth having was one that was devoid of humans, in which a werewolf could live on the bounty of the land in wolf form for al of his days.

This was a basic tenet of the Brotherhood, an ideal they al worked for and never hoped to attain… yet suddenly Denis
had
attained it. He had a continent to himself. The nearest tribe of humans was so far away that even the strongest wind brought only a faint trace of the memory of where they once had been. And even with the snow piling up and the herds moving south there was more than enough game to fuel a single werewolf to his sleekest, strongest best throughout the winter.

Yet he sought out the company of the human. The smel of the fire, the taste of cooked meat—they lured him with the tantalizing memory of something long gone yet never forgotten. Even when he was not hungry, the smel of fat sizzling in the flame fil ed him with yearning. Even when he was not cold, the beauty of the fire enticed him. He brought the meat; she made the fire. Could the relationship between his kind and hers that had begun so long ago be summed up so easily?

And now he had resumed his human form. There was no reason to, he did not need to, but he
wanted
to. This was something else he could not have predicted, and did not entirely understand. That it was directly related to the human who shared this snowy plain with him was undeniable, and in many ways disturbing.

She did not answer him when he spoke, and though he had not expected her to, he was nonetheless disappointed not to hear the sound of her voice.

Perhaps that was al that he needed, al that he missed: the sound of another voice. Werewolves were not meant to live alone, and that was why exile was such a harsh punishment. Under such cruel conditions, even a human was better than no companionship at al .

Perhaps it was that simple.

He said, "You are a filthy human and your stench is making me il . I can tolerate your dul ness and your weakness, but I wil not share my sleeping quarters with someone so foul."

He lifted her in his arms like a bundle of rags and carried her out of the cave. His bare feet were as surefooted as a goat's on the slippery rocks, his naked skin barely prickling in the cold air. He approached the steaming springs, where greenery stil grew between the rocks and no snow clung and the temperature was as mild as spring. There he set Tessa on her feet and began to strip off her grimy clothes.

"Shal I tel you what kil ed most of your kind during the Black Death? A simple lack of soap. It is unfortunate for al concerned that that remedy was discovered before it was too late."

She gave no reaction, either to his words or to his actions. Her limbs were so pliable as to be almost boneless when he rearranged them to undress her, and her expression did not change. He looked into her eyes and saw absolutely nothing.

He led her to the pool with its misty covering of foggy steam and stepped down into the water, expecting her to fol ow him. When she did not, he caught her by the waist and lifted her in like a child.

Her skin prickled with the change of temperature, but she showed no other reaction.

He led her deeper, until the water swirled over the jagged sharp point of her hipbones, over her sunken bel y, up to her ribs.

Such spontaneous pools of volcanical y heated water in the midst of subarctic regions were a phenomenon with which Denis was familiar from his homeland, and of which he had learned to take advantage whenever he could. There were few sensations more exquisite than gliding into a pool of heated water when the snow lay al around, breathing the thick steam, lying back and letting the heat seep into the muscles and the heavy minerals restore the soul. He had been fol owing the scent of these springs for days.

He had spent some time brewing a simple soap from an emulsion of fish oil, bark and ashes, and packed it into a pouch made of deer hide. He scooped out some of the soap with his fingers now, and worked it into a lather between his hands.

Briskly he spread the suds over her shoulders and her breasts and her arms, over her hips and her thighs and between her legs. She stood with her eyes lowered and her arms loose at her sides, neither resisting nor assisting him.

He grew impatient with her and turned to attend to his own toilette, scrubbing his body with the soap, lathering his hair, ducking under and letting the gentle eddy and currents of the spring carry the bubbles away. He sank down onto his knees, lost in the fog, and let the steam warm him to his very marrow. He al but forgot about Tessa.

But when he rose to leave the pool, her outstretched hand stopped him. Puzzled, he looked at her, and then he realized she was reaching for the pouch of soap.

He took the pouch from the ledge and gave it to her, and stood there as she waded deeper into the water then sank down, dipping her hair back to wet it. She began to work the soap through her hair. It was absurd, how much pleasure it gave him to watch her perform such a simple task as washing her hair. He actual y smiled.

"And so, little human," he murmured, "the taste of cooked meat, the smel of soap… perhaps this is al that separates us from the beasts after al , and what lures us back to ourselves when we stray too far."

She stayed in the pool for hours, washing herself over and over again. Denis built a large fire and washed her clothes and his robe, then spread them out to dry. Then he went to hunt.

He brought down a boar and skinned it with his teeth, restraining his appetite in memory of the fire and the way fat tasted when crisped near the bone.

He left the head and the entrails for the scavengers and severed the thick shoulders for the night's meal, burying the remainder deep in snow close enough to the entrance of the springs so that he could guard it, yet not so close as to deliberately attract danger.

He returned to Tessa in human form, for reasons he could not entirely explain. She had dressed and kept the fire going. Her hair was clean and dry around her shoulders, though it was thinner than it had once been and had lost the gloss of health. The human smel of her, only faintly redolent of sickness and pain, was not so annoying now. It was, in an odd way, almost comforting.

Without a word she took the meat from him and arranged it on heavy sticks over the fire. She worked awkwardly with one arm, using the twisted hand of the weaker one to balance and steady her work, but she was efficient. He soaked in the hot pool, and his robe was warm and dry when he emerged. They ate together, plucking meat off the bone with their fingers while the color of the fire danced across their faces.

Denis said, tossing his bone into the fire when he was done, "How I would dearly love a bottle of Devoncroix Cabernet, for which my brother is so justifiably renowned." He watched her careful y for a reaction. There was none. "And salt. I miss salt.

Perhaps I'll find a deposit before long. What about you, human? Is there anything you miss?"

She continued to push smal pieces of meat into her mouth, her eyes on her work.

"Nothing from the world you left behind?" he prompted. "Pretty gowns, glittering stones, handsome human men in white gloves bowing over your hand? No? Ah, wel , perhaps you're right. It's al so boring, isn't it? I don't blame you for being glad to leave it behind."

She didn't even glance at him. He smiled dryly.

"That's what I've always disliked so about humans.

You al talk too much."

He left her not long afterward to hunt again, and slept beside her that night in wolf form near the embers of the dying fire.

And so they developed a new rhythm to their days.

Tessa returned obsessively to the pool, washing herself, washing her hair, again and again. Denis did not try to restrain her, knowing that eventual y whatever it was of which she was trying to cleanse herself would be washed away—and wondering idly whether it was the memory of civilization or the ravages of the wilderness she was trying to erase.

In the warmth of the springs she grew stronger, and the cough lessened, and a faint color returned to her cheeks. Sometimes while he slept during the day she would go out and search for green things beneath the snow, digging up roots and savories which she would simmer over the fire with water and chunks of meat in a section of rotted log that she had hol owed out to make a bowl. Denis cleaned rabbit skins and cured them over the fire, then showed her how to line her boots with them to keep out the cold, and to wrap her hands in the fur when the wind blew.

More and more Denis would join her in the evenings in human form, wrapped in the cloak that smel ed like her, and sometimes he would talk. He talked about
Otel o
, the Verdi opera he had seen while he was in Paris, and the scene in
Gisel e
that always took his breath away. He talked about brandies he had tasted and wines he loved and books he had read. He talked mostly for the sound of his voice and the comfort of his thoughts and he began to think, after a time, that she was actual y listening.

But there was always a certain disappointment to hear nothing but silence in response.

Sometimes he slept beside her in wolf form, though most of the time he hunted at night, scouting the territory, sniffing the wind. He knew they would have to move soon, yet he delayed tel ing her as long as he could.

And then one night as they finished off the last of the Arctic hares he had cached, Tessa suddenly went stil , staring beyond his shoulder at the break in the rocks that shielded the springs. And she spoke.

"Who is it?" she whispered.

Denis was so surprised that it was a moment before he related any significance to the words; before he thought to turn around and look at what she was staring at. A shaggy Arctic wolf sat silhouetted in the moonlight not fifty feet away, watching them. He had known the wolf was near, of course, but he had not realized she could see it. He almost smiled when he determined what she thought, and what had shocked her out of her long silence.