Frostbitten

IJIRAAT

WHAT STOOD BEFORE me was neither wolf nor bear, but a freakish mixture of the two. A foot shorter than the bear, it had the same wide skull, brown fur and massive body. But its pointed ears and long snout were all wolf, and its fur-though longer and shaggier than mine-was wolf fur with a thick coarse overcoat.

It looked like Hollywood 's version of werewolves, post-Wolf Man era-a massive beastlike thing. But that wasn't what had stopped my attack dead. It was the eyes. Blue eyes as human as ours when we changed. When I looked into them, I knew Lynn Nygard's tales of Ijiraat were right. Only this wasn't a man that shifted into either wolf or bear-it was a blend of all three at once.

The beast stopped a few steps short of me and curled his lip back in an experimental growl. Like the bear, he was curious yet wary. I met his gaze, neither backing down nor returning the growl, but doing the same as I had with Tesler-standing my ground and keeping eye contact.

The beast paced one way, then the other, his gaze still locked with mine. He lumbered like a bear, but his movements were quicker. His shaggy fur made him look heavier than he was. He still had a good hundred pounds on me, though, and little of it was winter-stored fat. Though I could tell by scent it was the beast Clay attacked, the only signs of injury were a few patches of missing fur and already-healing wounds.

He stopped to get a better look at me. Our paths had crossed often enough that he wasn't confused by the sight of an oversized wolf draped with shredded clothing and reeking of human scents.

He leaned forward and sniffed me. When I didn't attack, he leaned forward some more. I moved and he fell back, but I only turned sideways and let him sniff me, the same way I would with a fellow werewolf. Because that's how I had to treat this. No matter how hard my heart pounded, I couldn't let the fear show.

As he sniffed, I gnawed-as casually as possible-on the rope holding my foreleg aloft.

He sniffed my flank. Then he sniffed my hind quarters. When he spent a little too long back there-and when his nose brushed where I didn't want to be brushed-I was so intent on the rope that I reacted the same way I did when a werewolf got a little too interested in that end of me. I spun, snarling and snapping.

The beast jerked back, grunting as if to say "What'd I do?" I grunted back… then sat. He prodded my hindquarters. I stayed sitting. When he prodded harder, I growled.

He chuffed, his eyes narrowing, head tilting one way, then the other, considering. Another chuff and he turned his back on me and started walking away, grumbling as if thoroughly offended by my lack of interest.

I returned to my rope-gnawing, and the moment I did, I heard the thunder of running paws. Before I could turn, the beast leapt onto my back, hind paws still on the ground, forepaws cinched around me. Male mounting position.

I didn't panic. This wasn't the same as Tesler's rape attempts. To a wolf, this was simply a sexual overture, and had to be answered much the same as any unwelcome attention-with a very quick and firm "not interested."

I pitched forward, out from under him, and twisted around as far as the rope would allow, then threw in a few serious growls for good measure. His eyes lit up like a puppy that's been swatted and thinks it's an invitation to playtime.

He dove at me and nipped my front leg, then pranced back, jaws open in a very canine grin. When I didn't react, he chuffed in disappointment… and tried mounting me again.

I warned him off. He thought it was foreplay. I ignored him. He tried to mount me. I warned him off… and so the cycle went. I suppose I should have been a lot more concerned about this scenario, but he gave no sign of tiring of the game or forcing himself on me. So I kept playing… while sneaking nips at the rope on my foreleg, fraying it strand by strand.

Finally, with a yank, I was free. The beast backed off, but only to get a better look. Then he chuffed, as if pleased with this new development. When I pulled on the leg rope, he leapt in and, with one chomp, snapped it. And, ungrateful bitch that I am, I took off.

That didn't bother him in the least. He simply interpreted this as step two of the canine seduction game. First, she rebuffs you. Next, she runs away. Finally, you catch her. And then? Well, that's when the real fun starts.

So he chased me. I wasn't concerned. He may have had the muscle, but I had the speed. Only I didn't count on one thing. Okay, make that two things.

One, he was a little more invested in winning this chase than he'd been the night before. Two, I was battered and exhausted. I didn't make it far before he caught up and leapt onto my back. I let my legs give way, dropped and rolled, snarling and slashing. He yelped as my teeth sunk into a healing wound on his neck. Then a roar echoed through the night and I turned my head to see another beast-a bigger one-charging straight for me.

I scrambled up, stumbling out of the way, my legs skidding like a day-old fawn's. But the new beast wasn't running at me. He hit the smaller one in the side and knocked him flying.

My first instinct, naturally, was to get the hell out of the way while these two battled it out. When I'd lunged to the side, though, I'd twisted my already-tender, formerly bound foreleg. So when I tried to lope gracefully into the sunset, it gave way and I sprawled into the snow.

As I pushed up, I heard a yelp and looked back, not to see a roiling beast battle, but the smaller one cowering as the larger one cuffed him across the head, growling as if to say "What the hell did you think you were doing?" Like a father swatting his misbehaving kid…

I gawked for another moment. Then the older one looked my way and I realized I was staring when I should have been running like hell. So I took off.

Again, I only made it a few steps before the crunch of paws in the snow sounded behind me, now in stereo as they both gave chase. This time, though, two things let me pull into the lead. One, Junior knew he wasn't going to get any "reward" with his father around, so his heart was no longer in it. Two, with double the muscle pursuing me, I seemed to find a final reserve of strength.

When we'd gone half a mile and neither sped up nor slowed down, the huff of their steady breathing told me they weren't giving it their all, and I realized they were letting me pull ahead.

They were wearing me out, the same way we did with deer, letting that first panicked burst of energy drain them. Behind me, the bigger beast grunted and I looked back to see him stumble a little, as if his paw had caught a root. It didn't trip or slow him down, but it was a reminder of his position-at my left flank. And the young one was at my right. They weren't using the old run-your-prey-to-the-ground trick. They were using the old drive-your-prey-

Oh, shit.

I hit the brakes and made a hard right. I caught the younger one off guard and zoomed past him as he was still executing his own skid and twist maneuver. But the older one was better prepared and stayed right on my heels. From the crashing of bushes behind us I knew I'd narrowly avoided exactly the trap I'd anticipated-a third beast lying in wait ahead.

How many were there? Was it a pack? An extended family? Where did they live? Out here, dangerously close to civilization? How did-?

I shut off my brain and poured that energy into my legs. As I ran, I caught a whiff of a fourth beast, its scent blowing straight into my face, and I realized they'd boxed me in with a rear guard, too.

I tried to veer, this time plunging into the forest, hoping to escape that way, but the older one was too close behind and as soon as I slowed to turn, he grabbed my rear leg and wrenched.

I fought, all three legs scrabbling in the snow, scraping it away to dirt, desperately trying to find traction. But he had me tight, and from the pressure of his fangs, I knew I wasn't getting away… not with the bottom half of my leg intact.

When I stopped struggling, he gave a yank and my forelegs splayed out. I thumped belly-first to the ground. He dragged me back into the clearing. Then he let go.

I got up to find a beast at every compass point blocking my escape. They just stood there watching me, no expression in their matching blue eyes. Only the youngest moved, shuffling with youthful impatience, looking from one elder to the next, waiting for them to get on with it. After a moment, two of the older ones started casting the same looks at the third. He was the biggest, and also the oldest, judging by the gray spicing his dark fur. The Alpha.

After studying me, the Alpha grunted. Then he stretched his forelegs out, his back legs following, his head dropping between his shoulder blades. It was a position I knew well and when I saw it, my heart started hammering.

The beast began his Change. I should have expected that. But I didn't. The bigger shock came when I saw what he Changed into.

I remembered my first-year anthropology course, when we'd been discussing Neanderthal man. The professor had taken a sketch of one and put him in a suit to prove that, despite the popular perception of them as inhumanly primitive, he could have walked down Wall Street without turning any heads. Sure, he might have gotten a few caveman jokes in his lifetime, but no one seeing him would scream "Oh, my God, it's a Neanderthal" any more than people seeing us in wolf form scream "Oh my God, it's a werewolf." We looked close enough to the norm to pass for it.

When this guy completed his Change, he reminded me of that sketch. Well, minus the suit. He was naked, of course, but in his case… let's just say that he had a lot of hair where men normally have hair, so nakedness wasn't really an issue.

He seemed slightly shorter than he had been in beast form, a few inches shy of seven feet. He had a thick beard and shaggy hair, a popular look among backwoodsmen everywhere. If someone bumped into him in the forest-presuming he didn't normally run around naked-he'd just look like the kind of guy who spent most of his life in these woods and ventured to town only for necessities.

He had the classic Neanderthal features-a heavy brow, sloping forehead, large nose and presumably a receding chin, though that last was hidden under his beard. The hair in general did a good job of masking the less gracile facial features. Despite his height he had an almost squat appearance, powerfully built with short legs and forearms. Something about Neanderthal adaptations to cold flitted through my brain-one of those stray bits of academia you study so hard that it never quite leaves.

"You come with us," he said.

His voice was gruff, almost a growl, and he spoke with the slightly halting inflection of someone whose first language wasn't English. When he spoke again, I thought it was a word in his native language-a barked command to the others. Then I realized it really was a bark, two quick guttural sounds with an inflection like speech.

The other two elders clearly understood, grunting and nodding.

The younger one paid no attention. The Alpha turned his gaze on him and said what sounded like "Eli." The youngster grunted grudging agreement.

The Alpha crouched, then Changed back to beast with a speed and ease that left me sighing with envy. I guess a long and torturous transformation is the price we pay for Changing more completely between human and wolf form.

When the Alpha finished, I looked at him with fresh eyes and realized that what I'd mistaken for bearlike features were really human-his bulk, the longer fur, the rounded head, the ease with which he stood and walked on two legs. They didn't change into a wolf-bear hybrid, but a wolf-human one.

One of the elders nudged my flank hard, telling me to get moving. I set out behind the Alpha.