The Passion (49 page)

The admission went through him like a cathartic, sharply painful but oddly liberating—and somehow inevitable.

He turned back to her and laid his hand against her face, stroking her cheek. Her face softened as his touch seemed to take away some of the pain, and in her eyes he saw understanding.

"Without you," he said simply, "I would be alone."

He lay down beside her, curling his body around hers for the warmth. He drew her head onto his shoulder and stroked her hair, and she nestled into his embrace. He stayed like that until she fel asleep.

After that she seemed to strengthen a little, or perhaps she merely gave the appearance of doing so for his sake. She ate more and kept more of it down. And after so many months of hoarding her words as though they were precious jewels, now, when she could least afford the energy it took to part with them, she always made an effort to talk to him. This was her gift to him, and he would not be so poor-spirited as to refuse it.

"Do you remember the day you came to me in the vineyard?" she asked once.

"I do."

"You were so charming."

"I have been told I can be."

"You took my breath away."

"I thought I frightened you."

"You did." Her voice was but a whisper, and her eyes moved over his face. "And… enraptured me."

He dropped his eyes. "I did it on purpose."

"I think I knew that."

"I told you many lies that day."

"I think I knew that, too."

"And many truths."

She was silent.

"I'm a different werewolf now."

"Is that good or bad?"

He looked at her. The honesty of the reply hoarsened his voice. "I'm not sure."

She took his fingers and wrapped them in hers, lightly, tenderly. He did not pul away.

The day came when he could delay no longer. "I have to hunt farther afield," he told her abruptly.

"Everything is gone here, even the squirrels. I don't know how long I'll be away."

He had counted the moons since they had come to this place and knew that for most of the world it was summer. But here in the high plains the last snow was stil weeks away, the return of the herds even longer than that. They could not stay here without game. But it had never been so hard to leave her.

Tessa nodded, unsurprised. "Which way wil you go?"

He hesitated. "North, as we've been going."

She seemed alarmed. "There are nothing but mountains to the north. Why?"

He shook his head curtly, unwil ing—or unable—to explain further. "I think there may be game there,"

was al he offered.

She was silent for a time. She lay wrapped inside the bearskin, her face turned to the fire, cradling her head on her arm. She said softly, almost as though she were thinking out loud, "I wonder sometimes…

If the wolves had accepted you, would you have ever come back to me?"

He thought about it for a moment. "No."

She tried to smile, but the effort seemed too great. It left her eyes exhausted. "Then I suppose I owe them a debt."

Neither of them could have guessed how deep that debt would be until Denis set off that night on the hunting trip that might wel take days to complete.

The night was clear and the ground hard-frozen; he set his nose to the north and kept his pace easy and ten miles or so out he caught the scent of the pack

—and with it, a fresh kil .

He would have fought them for it if he had to, and he let out a ferocious howl to let them know that. But he did not have to. They had abandoned the carcass of a caribou cow fresh and steaming, ready for him.

Denis gorged himself until he was dizzy, then tore off chunks of meat to carry back to Tessa. The remainder he buried, because he knew he would need it when he returned.

"They should never have left the kil ," he told Tessa, keeping his excitement careful y under control. "If we're hungry, they're hungrier. They should have fought me for it."

"Maybe they meant it as a gift for you," suggested Tessa. The scent of meat—real roasting meat as opposed to the bony rabbits and weasels he had been bringing home—seemed to have renewed her energy. "After al the kil s you shared with them—

maybe they remembered."

"Only a human would be so sentimental." He shook his head thoughtful y, turning the meat. "No, they would never have been so generous unless they could afford to be. And where did the big herd beast come from? They al should have fled south, and I haven't had scent of anything like this creature since the first big storm."

"What are you saying?" She sounded anxious.

He looked at her. "The wolves went north. I think it means I was right—there is game there. It's far away, Tessa, too far for me to tel now. But I have to go."

She was silent for a time. Then she said simply, "I'll tend the fire."

He found it two days later, fol owing the scent of the wolf pack and his own driving, inexplicable instinct.

He looked down upon a high mountain val ey, so deep it was sheltered from the searing winds and al but the worst of the snow, fed by a rushing stream that ran freely even in these temperatures. And it supported not one but several herds of large, contentedly grazing beasts who had only to scrape away a few inches of ground snow to munch their fil of the dried vegetation beneath.

By this time Denis was half crazed with hunger and for a moment wondered if his senses could be trusted. There was no logic in this, that a herd should grow fat and tame in a val ey above the clouds throughout the winter. Every instinct should have told them to travel south with the remainder of the game… just as it should have told the wolf pack to do the same. That the pack hunted here was undeniable; their scent was thick and their den was nearby. Sweeping his eyes careful y over the vast val ey, he realized that it was virtual y inaccessible from three sides, and that the narrow pass on the fourth side had been blocked off by a rock slide.

Anything larger than a wolf would have a great deal of difficulty getting in and out. The herds had not migrated here. They lived here, summer and winter, possibly for generations.

His instincts had been right. He had found Paradise.

He descended soundlessly, efficiently separated a straggler from the herd, and fil ed his bel y. The wolf pack did not interfere, nor did he expect it to. There was more than enough for al , and they would not risk their lives for one calf. For the first time Denis was glad he inspired fear in his brothers, even if it meant he would be forever separate from them.

There were no bones or scraps to leave for scavengers. Replete, Denis washed in the stream and drank his fil , then searched out a place to sleep.

He fol owed his nose to a narrow opening in the earth and was amazed to find, after he had gone a few dozen yards, that the tunnel widened enough to al ow him to stand up on al fours, and that it seemed to go on for an incalculable distance.

Curiosity overcame his fatigue, and he fol owed the tunnel for some time, noticing that it gave way at intermittent intervals to chambers on either side—

and noticing something else, something so incredible, so utterly astonishing, that it was a long time before he dared to believe the evidence of his senses. And when final y he came to understand that it was, in fact, so, the excitement was so intense that it almost stopped his heart.

The smel of the place was ancient and moldy, layered with rock dust and rodent excrement, tiny dried skeletons and dark, damp earth. Yet woven into it al , so deep and so old it seemed to be emanating from the very rock core itself, so deeply buried that not even the sensitive noses of the wolf pack would have recognized it, was the faint but unmistakable smel of werewolf.

Chapter Thirty

Denis lost no time in returning to Tessa, barely pausing to rest or feed, and completed the journey in half the time. As he had feared, her condition had worsened in his absence, and he had been able to carry none of the rich red meat from the herd beasts with him to fortify her. Instead, he roasted a rabbit and made her eat it while he told her what he had found.

"We have to go there," he said. "It's a hard journey, but there's shelter, and water and more game than we can possibly eat. It's not so cold there, either, and I suspect hot springs. There's even green stuff beneath the snow, and salt in the high rocks. And trees—so many trees we need never search for firewood again."

She listened to him with big eyes. "Werewolves,"

she whispered, "in this wild place. But I thought there were none of your kind here, and that's why you were sent here."

He shook his head impatiently. "They're gone now, and whenever they were here was long, long ago.

But the tunnels and caves they left wil serve us wel , and the game, Tessa. No more hunting. No more cold."

She looked at the flames for a long time, and at the ice wal s of the only thing that stood between her and death by exposure. Denis thought she would refuse to come. He wouldn't have blamed her if she had.

She said, "How far?"

He was not certain whether to feel relief or dread."Far," he said.

After a moment she nodded, and squared her shoulders bravely. Stil , he thought she never would have attempted the journey had it not been for the promise of the caves built by werewolves at the end of it. And he knew, as she surely did, that the chances of her surviving the trip to see those caves were very slim indeed. But it was the only chance she had.

The journey that had taken Denis hours to complete at top speed in wolf form took days with Tessa. He was forced to remain in human form for most of the journey, both to conserve energy and to assist Tessa. The weather, for once, did not plague them; the cold was not too bitter, and for one entire day the snow did not fal . Denis fol owed the trail he had marked with caches of meat, and at night they slept in tunnels carved out of snow. When Tessa became too weak to walk, he carried her.

Determination, and nothing more, took them across that mountain. Denis, in his bare human feet, negotiated slick passes that even native goats found chal enging, holding Tessa in his arms like an infant or carrying her on his back. When the trails became too steep Tessa crawled, using her clothing to pad her arms and knees. They had no energy to waste on conversation, and soon had none to waste on rational thought. Denis fol owed his instinct. Tessa fol owed Denis.

And when at last they reached the val ey floor, there was no exultation, no relief. Denis led her to a cave entrance that was large enough to accommodate their human forms, and they crawled inside a little way out of the wind. There they col apsed from exhaustion and slept, ful y sheltered from the elements for the first time in weeks.

It was days before they were recovered enough from the trauma of the journey to appreciate the destination—days in which the energy required to build a fire or make their way to the stream to drink was almost more than the results were worth; days in which Denis, now reverted to wolf form, slept tightly with fast shal ow breaths and rose only to kil and eat and in which Tessa, righting chil s and stiffening limbs, forced morsels of half-raw meat into her mouth for the sake of some dim memory about something she wanted very much to see. And gradual y she grew strong enough to remember what it was.

If she hadn't found the piece of knotted wood near the entrance of the cave, however, it might have been weeks, even months, before she thought to explore her surroundings on her own. When she used the wood knot to stir up the embers of the dying fire, it caught immediately with a high bright flame, and when she lifted it from the fire the flame burned evenly, casting light toward the darkest corners of the cave. She was surprised to realize the room was bigger than she had at first thought, and when she moved toward those dark corners they seemed to give way to other tunnels. She glanced at Denis, who slept in wolf form close to the fire, but he did not stir. She moved cautiously forward.

There was an archway in the far rock wal that did not look as though it had been carved by nature, and it was tal enough for her to pass through without stooping. She swept the torch careful y before her and il uminated another chamber—a chamber which, she realized as her eyes adjusted, had a light source of its own.

The light was a dim, diffuse circle as it trickled down from a network of chimney holes through the rock overhead, and beneath it was a large circle of stones where a cooking fire might once have been laid. There was enough rubble on the floor to provide weeks' and weeks' worth of dried firewood, and there were elevated stone shelves for sleeping.

Scattered throughout the debris were stone bowls and tools with sharp ends, hammered metal pots for cooking and curved spoons carved from hard polished wood. Tessa's eyes went hot with tears as she surveyed these simple implements of civilization, as she thought of what they would mean. She picked up one of the metal pots and held it to her chest, feeling weak with wonder and strong with anticipation. A place to sleep that was away from the cold ground, a cooking fire with a chimney to draw smoke, and pots to make stews and bark teas… these were the building blocks of hope, the possibility of the future.