In the Barren Ground
Read In the Barren Ground Online
Authors: Loreth Anne White
ALSO BY LORETH ANNE WHITE
In the Waning Light
A Dark Lure
Snowy Creek
The Slow Burn of Silence
Wild Country
Manhunter
Cold Case Affair
Shadow Soldiers
The Heart of a Mercenary
A Sultan’s Ransom
Rules of Engagement
Seducing the Mercenary
The Heart of a Renegade
Sahara Kings
The Sheik’s Command
Sheik’s Revenge
Surgeon Sheik’s Rescue
Guarding the Princess
“Sheik’s Captive,” in
Desert Knights
with Linda Conrad
More by Loreth Anne White
Melting The Ice
Safe Passage
The Sheik Who Loved Me
Breaking Free
Her 24-Hour Protector
The Missing Colton
The Perfect Outsider
“Saving Christmas,” in the
Covert Christmas
anthology
“Letters to Ellie,” a novella in
SEAL of My Dreams
anthology
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2016 Loreth Beswetherick
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of
Amazon.com
, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503936232
ISBN-10: 1503936236
Cover design by Jason Blackburn
Thank you once again, Pavlo, for unwavering support, and love, even in the dark deadline hours.
CONTENTS
THE HUNGER
And there carried upon the night wind an odor that was both fetid and fragrant. So subtle was this scent, that had Cromwell not noticed the queer change that came suddenly upon his Voyageur guide as the draft stirred the flames to brightness, he’d not have noticed it himself. But his man, Moreau, who was squatting in his furs before the campfire smoking his pipe, abruptly snapped his eyes toward the dark forest. It was then that Cromwell became aware of the gentle but malodorous scent. Moreau’s nostrils flared, as though he might be a creature of the woods catching the carrion stink of a predator upwind. And as the flames settled back to embers, Cromwell saw a look in the Voyageur’s dark face that deeply disquieted him. His man was scared, to the very quick of his soul . . .
~ Fort Resolution, 1849
The Reader closes the book and sits in silence for a while, like a shadow, just staring at the jars upon the shelf that contain the floating human heart and eyeballs. The Reader feels good. Powerful. For the Reader owns this Story now. The Reader likes, very much, the idea that a Story is alive—a dynamic dialogue between creator and consumer—an act of copulation. And an author can never claim his Story is complete until it has been read by a reader, and only then can the circle be closed. A Story can never remain static, either. For each new reader brings to the Story afresh his own unique set of past experiences, giving him a peculiar lens through which to conjure different emotions out of the very same words . . .
The Reader flexes a hand that is stiff and still stained with blood. The Reader holds all the power. It is the Reader who breathes life into these words on the page, makes them whole and tangible and frightening in the real world.
The Reader is in control . . .
CHAPTER 1
Friday, November 2. The Barrens. Two degrees south of the Arctic Circle. Day length: 8:06:38 hours.
As the sun cracked over the horizon a quiet befell the five occupants of the bright yellow AS355 Eurocopter Twin Squirrel, the words “Boreal Air” printed in bold black letters beneath the craft’s belly. They’d entered the land of desolation. Only the sound of thudding rotors reached into their earphoned cocoons of private awe. Selena Apodaca watched the trees unfolding below—black spruce, tamarack—growing more sparse and stunted the farther north they flew. Like grizzled old crones, the conifers bent and marched resiliently forward into the frigid winds blasting down from the arctic—the dwindling survivors of the dense boreal forests that lay farther south. Only to disappear. For soon there were no trees. Just whalebacks of scarred bedrock that bloomed with rust-red lichen and sphagnum mosses, muskeg bogs pocked with tussock, and silvery threads of river strung with beads of dark blue lakes.
A herd of migrating caribou suddenly lifted their antlers, alerted by the sound of the chopper. An invisible current seemed to spark through the herd. It exploded into two groups, half the animals splashing into a river and up the opposite bank. The rest cascading down an esker ridge.
The Barren Lands.
It was a primordial place, Selena thought—the last, vast, uninhabited frontier of the North American continent, still being formed in front of her eyes in slow geologic motion. Oblivious to insignificant mankind.
An old caribou bull struggled, lagging behind his herd, and she wondered if he’d survive the night. This place was as hostile as it was breathtakingly beautiful, and winter was relentless. Already it lurked like a dark, constant shadow along the horizon, coming a little closer each day, and the air was turning brittle—the ice of the tundra creeping down from the north.
Marcie Della, one of the elders of the Twin Rivers First Nations community, had told her that this land was called the
hosi
—the treeless place. And that it was no-man’s-land. Marcie was one of the remaining few who still knew the old names for some of these lakes, and where the “dreaming places” lay—sacred areas where terrible visions would afflict travelers who dared rest weary limbs there. Marcie also told of a cadaverous creature of the cold—a hateful shape-shifter that lived in the tundra winds and snows, a wolflike thing whose hunger for human meat and whose rage could never be sated. She had a name for this thing that meant “the spirit of lonely places.”
“It doesn’t get old, does it?” Selena jumped at the sudden intrusion of the voice in her headset. She shot a glance at Raj Sanjit, who was strapped into the seat beside her. His liquid black eyes met hers. His breath condensed into clouds around his face—even inside the chopper it was frigid. He grinned. “It’s like we’re entering a kingdom where everything is sacred, don’t you think? And that we ought to hold a special passport that admits us, or else we shall be punished by death.”
Selena wasn’t sure what to make of this oddly maudlin comment from her teammate. She glanced at Veronique and Dean, their fellow wildlife biologists seated with their K9s to Raj’s left, to see if she was once again being mocked for her newfound fascination with the lore and locals of this place. The light of mirth twinkled in Veronique’s eyes, but her features remained studiously benign. Dean looked hostile. Irritation snapped through Selena.
During these last few weeks of their university co-op, she’d been getting on fine with her crew, in spite of Dean’s earlier, unwelcome sexual advances. Now it seemed he was back to his brooding. He looked away and stroked the head of Buddy, the black Lab pressed between his knees. Selena’s gaze went to the other K9, Pika, an Australian shepherd lying patiently at Veronique’s boots. Both animals were scat sniffers, trained to search specifically for the feces of wolverine—the elusive “death eater” of the north—now extinguished almost everywhere else in North America. Once collected, the scat samples were shipped back to a lab at the University of Alberta where DNA and other markers told scientists about the existing populations and health thereof. They’d been doing this all summer as part of a massive environmental study required of WestMin Diamonds before the territorial government would consider approving an open-pit mine at the south tip of Ice Lake.
Selena and Raj were focused on the local grizzly bear populations, but they were collecting DNA old-school style, with bait and wire traps designed to snag the hair of
ursus arctos horribilis,
which in turn was also sent to a lab for analysis.
As Selena opened her mouth to snap back a retort, the voice of their pilot, Heather MacAllistair, came through their headsets. “Looks like the storm might hit before the day’s out.” She pointed a gloved hand toward a black band on the horizon, and cast a glance over her shoulder, eyes invisible behind mirrored aviator shades. Her hair hung in a thick blonde braid down the center of her back. “You guys equipped for an overnight or two? Because if that keeps coming at that speed, I might not be able to get in for the scheduled pickup.”
Sunset today would be at 4:21 p.m. Heather was slated to meet Selena and Raj for pickup at 4:00 p.m.
“Yeah, we’re good to hunker down if the weather hits,” Raj said. He turned to Selena and said softly, “You good?”
She nodded, but her nerves jangled. This was their last week. She was due back at school before the end of November, where she was working on her master’s. But the sight of that storm brought a strange foreboding. Perhaps it was guilt. She pulled her backpack closer between her knees, as if to guard the secret she had hidden in there.
The chopper banked sharply and Heather lowered her bird over the WestMin exploration camp—a tiny huddle of canvas tents, yurts, and Quonset huts of galvanized steel, plus a drilling station, an ore-processing shed, and an airstrip of scarred earth.
The few men dotting the camp looked up as the chopper buzzed over. One waved. Another made a crude sign. A dog on a chain lunged and barked. Heather opened her side window, and flipped a gloved finger at the men. One made a jerking-off motion in response, and she laughed before banking her Twin Squirrel out over the ruffled water of Ice Lake. She aimed for the north tip where she would drop off Selena and Raj.
“Look.” Heather pointed suddenly. “Three o’clock. Wolves.”
Four of them.
Canis lupus
. The gray wolf. The largest member of the wolf family. Paws as big as a man’s fist. The carnivores loped single file right along the water’s edge. The lead wolf was black. A huge specimen. He was followed by a white one, and two smaller animals with pelts of mottled gray.
Selena turned in her seat to watch the wolves as they flew past. But she leaned suddenly forward as something else caught her eye—a movement up on the ridge. She squinted, trying to make out what she’d seen, but the low-angled light glancing off iced rocks blinded her.
“What is it?” Raj’s voice came through her earphones.
“I . . . thought I saw a man. Wearing furs. He disappeared behind that boulder there.” She pointed.
“Fur?” Raj leaned over Selena, trying to see. “Maybe it was a bear, because there’s no quad, floatplane, or any form of transport in sight.”
“Maybe he’s like us—going to be picked up later. Some hunter. Or geologist.”
“In fur? Yeah. Right.” He wiggled his thick black brows at her. “Going bush are we, Selena? The old lady’s stories about monsters getting to you, are they?”
She cursed softly and turned away.
At the north tip of Ice Lake, Heather brought her Squirrel down and set the skids gently atop the spine of an esker. She kept the rotors going. She was on the clock—had several more crews to fly out of Twin Rivers that day.
Selena said her thanks, removed her headset, opened the door, and climbed out with her pack and shotgun. Raj handed down the rolls of fine wire, stakes, and two jerry cans of bear lure they’d need for the day. He hopped out himself. They ran in a low crouch, the downdraft snapping hair against Selena’s face and drawing tears from her eyes as the Twin Squirrel took off.
Selena shrugged into her pack as she watched the chopper shrinking to a tiny yellow speck before simply disappearing into the endless sky. Her gaze went to the band of black weather that seemed to loom larger and closer now that they were on the ground. Usually she measured size in relation to her own body, but out here, the reverse seemed to apply. Out here she measured herself in relation to the sheer size and scope of everything else. And in the Barrens, she was tiny. Irrelevant to geography and time.
“At least there’s no blackfly swarm today,” Raj said, securing the rolls of barbed wire and the bundle of stakes to his pack. They got to work, covering ground quickly.
As was their routine, Raj hammered in stakes while Selena unraveled and strung a single strand of wire between the stakes at a bear’s shoulder height. Both remained vigilant for wildlife but it was Selena who insisted on carrying the gun. She felt that Raj’s attention tended to wander, while she remained ever conscious of the fine line between being a scientist or being prey. Drawing a mask up over her nose and mouth to avoid the stench, she uncapped one of the containers of bear lure and began pouring a blackened sludge of rotted moose blood, fish guts, and vanilla over a pile of dead sphagnum moss at the center of the wire enclosure they’d just created.
Ursus arctos horribilis
would be attracted by the pungent odor as it carried down the valley. Unable to resist, the bears would go under the wire to investigate, snagging tufts of hair on the barbs in the process. She and Raj would return one last time this season to remove, bag, and document the clumps of hair. Selena stilled as a shadow passed over them. She looked up. Gyrfalcon. North’s America’s largest and most powerful. It wheeled silently in the air high above them. As she watched the bird, another movement entered her peripheral vision. Her gaze shot to the ridge. Her heart kicked. A man. On the cliff. Dead still. Watching them.
Selena rose slowly to her feet, shielding her eyes against the glare.
“Raj,” she said quietly, “on the cliff.”
He glanced up, also wearing his mask.
“Over there.” She pointed. “Someone’s watching us.”
Raj squinted into the sun, then opened his pack, took out his binoculars. He focused his scopes into the sunlight. And burst out laughing.
“What!?”
“Inukshuk,” he said, cackling even louder. “Whooo hooo. The stone man is coming to
get
yoooo, Apodaca,” he said.
She grabbed the scopes from him. He was right. It was an inukshuk—made from slate-gray tundra rocks stacked one upon another to form the image of a man. The longer arm of an inukshuk pointed down toward them. Selena panned the binoculars slowly across the rest of the ridge. “I swear I saw something move,” she snapped.
She’d felt it, too. A sense of being watched. The same eerie sensation had been dogging her back in the village for the last few weeks. But she could see nothing up there.
She handed the scopes back to Raj and repositioned her 12-gauge pump action shotgun so it was within easier reach on her pack. Flagging their most recent trap on their GPS device, they set out to cover more miles and lay more traps. Some time around lunch they heard a helicopter nearby. Then the world fell silent again. It was around 3:30 p.m. when the sky suddenly turned black. The temperature drop was instant.
Dense fog rolled in from the lake and tiny snowflakes materialized in the cloud. They donned merino-wool hats. Selena zipped her jacket up to her chin and drew her hood over her hat. She disliked the way the hood and fur ruff dulled her awareness. It made her feel vulnerable. Disquiet began to hum inside her.
Another few miles into their hike and the snow started coming down heavily, settling fast on the ground. Visibility was near zero. Wind whipped and moaned through rocks. Tension twisted in Selena. She kept glancing up at the top of the cliff, but it was hidden by fog. They reached a slight basin near the rock face, and halfway across it, Selena stopped and took off her gloves to check her GPS. This was the place. This was where he’d said she must do it.
Ahead of her, Raj halted, waiting for her to catch up.
“Go ahead,” she called. “I’ll just be a moment.”
It was their unspoken signal for a bathroom break. Raj hesitated, then moved forward, cloud swallowing him almost instantly.
Selena set down her gear. Hurriedly, she fumbled to open her pack. She removed the bag inside, emptied the contents into the snow. She then took a second bag from her pack, and did the same a little closer to the cliff face, allowing parts of the contents to fall between big rocks. Her mouth was dry. Her hands trembled.
A trickle of stones down the cliff face suddenly made her freeze.
She looked up, listened.
Just wind. Making a soft susurration in the rock formations. It sounded like words
. . . Sssin . . . ssssave you . . . sssssave Selenaaa . . .
Snow whirled in a sudden gust around her. Wet flakes touched her face. Her heart boomed against her rib cage.
Marcie Della’s words slithered through her brain . . .
They are shape-shifters, part wind, part wolf, part man . . . merciless with hearts of ice. They come on the breath of winter . . . fly at you like a sudden, screeching storm . . .
She shook herself. Marcie’s stories
were
getting to her.
The wind whispered again . . .
ssssave you, Ssseleeena
. . . and with the sound came a strange smell. So subtle she could barely detect it. She snapped around to face it, search for it, drawing air deeper into her nasal passages with sharp sniffs. She caught it again. Sweet. Yet putrid.
Then she heard it. Another clatter of rocks.
Sweat prickled her skin.
Something was definitely up there. Very slowly, her eyes fixed on the spot where she’d heard the rocks, Selena reached for the gun on her back. She clicked off the safety.
She aimed blindly at the spot. Fog thickened. Snowflakes grew fatter. Fear, raw, rose up her throat. She waited for the warning huff of a grizz, the swipe of a clawed paw against earth.