Unbound (22 page)

Ranger swished his tail back and forward in the snow, then wiggled onto his belly and crawled underneath the carriage of the station wagon. The engine was still ticking as it cooled down.

“What’s he doing?” Hall asked.

“I don’t know,” Wright said. “Wolves are normally skittish and frightened of people. I’ve never seen one act like this, not even a pet.”

The wolf scrambled out from under the car on the other side, and leapt through the door that Hall left open when he was retrieving the tranq gun. The back of the car smelt like warm leather and old blood but not rot, just the wounds of a hundred injured cats and dogs that had been bundled into crates in the trunk to be raced to the shelter. He scrambled through to the front to get away from a smelly patch of cat urine, and sneezed, because the front wasn’t much better. Stale cigarette smoke and fast food wrappers.

Barking and wagging his tail, he put his forepaws on the dashboard and gave Hall and Wright a significant stare.

“A lot of
dogs
don’t act like this,” Hall muttered. “You sure it’s a wolf?”

“Certain.”

The two men looked at each other for a long moment, before Hall glanced back at the wolf.

“He took my seat.”

Wright laughed, but it was a nervous sort of laugh – the kind of wheezy chuckle a man might utter after a brush with death, in the instant where he realizes that he will live after all. “Better put the tranquilizer away. Looks like we won’t be needing it after all.”

Ranger felt a churning sort of nausea that had nothing whatsoever to do with the movement of the car. He was not in the habit of getting carsick. He’d run away, and with every passing mile he got further and further from Tamarack. He didn’t want to go back, though. He didn’t want the responsibility of finding and stopping the killer.

They drove past a sign reading ‘
Welcome to Sevenfield. Please enjoy your stay.
’ There was a silhouette of a bugling elk with an impressive rack of antlers beneath the words.

Ranger had only been to Sevenfield twice, both times when he was very young, before the rogue god came crashing through Tamarack ending life as he knew it. It was on the other side of two mountainous ridges, north where Norfolk was southwest, and driving there from Tamarack took at least two hours on narrow, winding roads because those roads went around the mountains and not over, though as the crow flew it was less than thirty miles from one town to the next.

He could run. He could forget all about the world of werewolves and witches, fairies and sacrifices leading up to the assassination of gods on Solstices. He could live out his days as a wolf in the wilds of Canada, or perhaps he could go east, to Alaska. North further, then south, cross the sea ice in the dead of winter and move down into Siberia and on to join the radioactive wolves of Chernobyl. Some of them were distant relatives. He would have a place there.

He could go with these men, spend his days in a wolf sanctuary in Vermont, a safe distance from Tamarack and the demons there, and the god Cern, bound to be unbound any day now.

He
could
, it would be so easy, so
safe
, and it made him feel like retching.

Wright pulled up in front of a two-story brick building. There were dogs barking from somewhere out the back. Some had a whining note of joy overlaid with anxiety in their voices. Others were barking monotonously, boredly, as if they had nothing better to do but stare at the wall and make noise to amuse themselves. And there were a couple of voices that were mournful, pining, telling tales of loss and despair.

Hall got out of the back and came around to the front passenger door with a catchpole. Ranger felt a noose tightening around his throat, even before Hall had opened the door. He should throw his shoulder against the door, put Hall off balance, dash across the parking lot, across the street, and into the forest. He could see the trees on the other side of the expanse of tarmac, deep and shadowy, promising refuge.

He could go to Colorado. He’d be safe there, under the protection of Gaibhne.

The wolf sat in the front passenger seat and let Hall slip the noose over his nose. When Hall tugged on the pole, he hopped out of the car and followed him around the back of the brick building, tail tucked up under his belly and head held low. Wright followed behind them, humming quietly to himself.

As soon as they stepped inside, a veterinary nurse thrust a nylon muzzle over Ranger’s nose. He was led down glaring white hallways that smelled like disinfectant and beneath that sickness and pain and hundreds upon hundreds of other animals – cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, even rats and snakes. He could smell kibble and hay and medication.

When the wolf tried to pause, to listen, to see, to smell, to understand, Hall yanked on the catchpole, making him stumble forward.

The wolf was dragged into an examination not dissimilar to Doctor Payne’s. The man dressed in pale blue scrubs and a white lab coat, a stethoscope hanging around his neck, glasses perched on his nose, who Ranger assumed was a veterinarian, was nothing like Doctor Payne. He had to be twenty years older, and he smelled half-dead and like he hadn’t showered in a week. His wispy white hair stuck up in all directions. His pale, liver-spotted skin was wrinkled and sagging.

The vet’s hands trembled.

“Well,” the veterinarian murmured, his voice shaking as much as his hands. “This is the wolf from the highway? Looks like he came out worst in a fight with something a lot bigger. Bear, maybe.”

“Thought you could give him a quick look-over,” Wright said, from the back of the room. “See if he has a microchip. If he does, I’ll take him up to the sanctuary, and we can start getting things sorted out – see where he came from, decide where to go from here.”

“He shouldn’t have a chip,” the vet said, pursing his lips. “He’s a
wolf
. Anyone with eyes can see that. Look at him. He’s not legal in this state. I don’t know a single colleague who would do something like that.”

“He’s got a collar, and a rabies tag, though,” Wright replied. “Someone did that. Don’t know if it’s still up-to-date, but you might take a look for us. There’s another tag, too. We didn’t look too closely at him while we were on the road. He’s a wild animal.”

“Get him on the table, then.”

Ranger let the veterinarian shine a little light into his eyes, inspect his ears, and even peer up his nostrils, narrating everything as he worked.

“Clear eyes, normal pupil dilation and contraction, no discharge. Clear nose. Minimal ear wax – ears do not smell yeasty. This wound on the left ear is old, it healed over years ago. Chest sounds good, heartbeat slow but regular. He’s extremely fit, this creature. A little on the lean side, but you might expect that in a lone wolf. These lacerations on his foreleg and flank are interesting. There is some evidence of recent infection, but the wound has drained now and is dry and healing. Someone lanced it, see? I’ll take his temperature just to make sure he’s well – he seems a little quiet.”

The wolf tolerated the icy thermometer being stuck somewhere he would really have preferred it did not go, and sat still while the details of the tags on his collar were read and recorded on a sheet of paper. The nurse held his shoulders while the vet ran some sort of scanner over the back of his neck. The scanner beeped, and the veterinarian made a thoughtful noise as he shuffled over to the computer terminal in the corner.

“He’s chipped, and registered,” the vet murmured. “He belongs to Lowell Devereaux, of Tamarack.”

“Not too far from here,” Hall said, then added: “Tamarack. Don’t hear a lot out of there. They’re covered by the guys down at the Norfolk shelter, but you don’t hear about them getting many callouts that far.”

“Give Lowell a call, would you, Rosa?” the veterinarian said to the nurse. The nurse nodded and left the room, presumably to make a phone call that would not connect because Lowell Devereaux was not in Tamarack.

Sure enough, she came back a moment later with the report that no one had answered. Someone checked the number on the tag on Ranger’s collar against the phone number associated with his microchip, and they discovered they were the same.

“Well,” Hall said, rocking back on his heels. “I guess you’ve got to take him up to the sanctuary, then. We can’t house a wolf here at the shelter.”

Wright agreed, and Ranger was taken back out to the parking lot and another station wagon, this one green and white. Hall and Wright wrestled him into a dog crate in the trunk, and Wright carefully removed the nylon muzzle. Then Wright said his goodbyes to the shelter staff, and they were on the road. Ranger poked the very tip of his nose through the bars of the crate and watched the scenery outside whizzing past through the back window for a time, as Wright took him further and further from home.

After a while, he found himself blinking sleepily. With a little difficulty, he moved to the very back of the crate – it was not particularly large, and while he certainly fitted inside, his ears brushed the top and he had to contort himself to turn around. There, he curled into as small a ball as possible, tucking his nose under his tail, and he went to sleep.

The wolf woke sometime well past dusk, feeling stiff and sore from being cramped up in such a small space, to the sound of the slamming of Wright’s car door. There came the crunching of boots on snow, and then Wright opened the trunk and peered into the crate. Ranger stared back at him over the fluff of his tail.

“Looks like you made the trip okay,” Wright said.

The air rushing in through the open trunk door was cold. Ranger could smell the dusty scent of snow, and the sharp tang of conifer, and beyond that blood. Hot, gamey blood, from a large herbivore. Cow, probably. Deer was subtly different, and sheep different again.
Meat
. It smelled good, and the wolf was hungry. He hadn’t eaten a bite since he’d fled from Tamarack, a full day ago now, and although wolves could go days without eating, could lose twenty percent of their bodyweight between meals, Ranger had become used to eating on a schedule.

He licked his lips. His mouth was dry. He’d had nothing but a mouthful or two of snow to quench his thirst since yesterday, too.

“Yeah,” Wright said. “It’s feed time.”

Ranger suddenly became aware of the smell of other wolves. Of soft growls and the occasional snarl. Of the sound of tooth scraping on bone and tearing flesh.

“Come on,” Wright said. He had the catchpole out again. There was a little gap in the door of the crate by the latch that he slipped the pole through. Obediently, Ranger slipped his head through the noose and held still as Wright tightened it, which Ranger suspected must be very odd behavior for a wolf because Wright wore a distinctly perturbed expression as he did it.

A young black woman with her hair all in braids came over, stamping her feet against the cold.

“This is the wolf from down in New York?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Wright agreed.

“He’s
big
. Look at his nose, all scarred up like that. I wonder what he ran afoul of?” She squinted at Ranger’s face, without getting too close. Ranger wagged his tail. “Tanner says to put him in the run next to Clover and Sheepy. He’s got to be quarantined.”

“Can do,” Wright agreed again.

“We get to name him, or does he have one already?” the black woman asked.

“The tag on his collar says he’s called Ranger.”