Kelley Armstrong - 10 Frostbitten, WSZYSTKO

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Frostbitten
Women of the Otherworld Book 10
Kelley Armstrong
PROLOGUE
AS TOM WATCHED the moonlight reflect off the ice-covered lake, he had a reflection of his
own: the world really needed more snow.
Sure, people paid lip service to the threat of global warming,tsk-ing andtutting and pointing at
theglanciers receding right over in Kenai Fjords. But in their hearts, they weren't convinced that
a warmer climate was such a bad thing, especially at this time of year, late March, with harsh
months of Alaskan winter behind them, and weeks more to go.
But Tom liked snow. God's Ajax, he called it. Divine cleansing powder. When spring thaw
came, this lake and field would be one big swamp, nothing but mud and mosquitoes and the
decaying corpses of every beast that hadn't survived the winter. For these few months, though, it
was as pristine a wilderness as any poet might imagine.
A field of unbroken white glittered under a half-moon. The air was so crisp it was like sucking
breath mints, and the night so silent Tom could hear mice tunneling under the drifts and the
howling of wolves ten miles off.
Tom liked wolves even more than he liked snow. Beautiful, proud creatures. Perfect hunters,
gliding through the night, silent as ghosts.
The first animal he'd ever trapped had been a wolf cub. He still remembered it, lying in a halo of
blood on the newly fallen snow, lips drawn back in a final snarl of defiance, its leg half chewed
off as it had tried to escape. Even as a boy, Tom had respected that defiance, that will to survive.
When his dad had said the pelt was too damaged to sell, Tom had asked his mother to make him
mitts out of it.
He still had those mitts. He'd planned to pass them on to his son but… well, forty-six wasn't too
old yet, but there just weren't enough women to go around up here. Anchorage wasn't as bad as
Fairbanks, but when you were a trapper with an eighth-grade education, living in a cabin thirty
miles from town, you'd better look like Brad Pitt if you hoped to get yourself a wife.
Another wolf pack's song joined the first, and as Tom listened, he wondered whether one of
those was his pack, the one that used to run in this field. For twenty years, he'd been able to
count on pelts from them. Not many—he didn't trap wolves anymore, only shot them, being
careful to target the old and sick, like a proper scavenger should.
He'd hear them when he came to empty his traps, their howls so close he'd grip his rifle a little
tighter. They never bothered him, though—just let him go about his business.
He'd see their tracks, crisscrossing through the snow, and he'd find their kills picked clean to the
last bone. Now and then, he'd even catch a glimpse of them, silently slipping through the trees.
Once, on a winter's night just like this, he'd watched them playing out on the ice, even the old
ones tumbling and sliding like puppies.
But then, a few months back they'd left this little valley.
Now those distant wolf howls stopped, and when they did, Tom realized how quiet it was.
Unnaturally quiet. Folks talked about the silence of the Alaskan wilderness, yet anyone who
spent any time there knew it was anything but silent, with the constant rush of wind and running
water, the scampering of feet over and under the snow, the call of predators and the cries of prey.
Right now, though, Tom could swear even the wind had stopped.
And if you've been out here long enough, you know this, too—that true silence means only one
thing: trouble.
Tom lowered his pack to the ground and lifted his rifle, gripping it with both hands like a
Samurai with his sword. Not that Tom fooled himself into thinking a gun made him a warrior.
Out here he was just another predator, and a pitiful one at that.
When a shadow rippled between the trees, he held perfectly still and tracked it by pivoting
slowly, his rifle rising a few more inches.
The two worst mistakes you could make in the forest were complacency and panic. As hard as
he looked, though, he caught only a glimpse of a big shape, hunched onto all fours. Then it was
gone.
A bear? They rarely bothered with humans outside of cub season. And when bears took off, they
made ahelluva racket, especially when they had just come out of hibernation. Tom hadn't heard a
thing.
The hair on his neck rose as old stories and legends crept through his mind. There were parts of
this forest you couldn't pay some of the Inuit elders to hunt in. This wasIjiraat territory, they'd
say, the hunting grounds ofshapeshifters who took the form of wolf and bear, and protected their
land against all comers. Tales for children, Tom told himself. Old men trying to frighten the
young.
He took a step, his boots crunching in the snow. A shape moved in the trees, closer now, and
Tom brought his rifle all the way to his shoulder, gloved finger to the trigger.
Clouds slid over the moon and the forest went black. A twig cracked to his left and Tom swore
he felt hot breath on the back of his neck. When he spun, nothing was there.
He took one band off the rifle and fumbled in his pocket for the flashlight. It caught in the folds
and when he wrenched, it flew out and sailed into the surrounding darkness.
The brush crackled to his right now. He spun again, finger still on the trigger, and this time he
saw a faint shape. He was about to fire when he thought of Danny Royce. Another trapper,
Danny had been spooked by shadows in this same valley just last summer and he'd fired his gun,
only to find that he'd shot some kid, a wild-haired teen, probably a hiker or camper. Danny had
buried the body and no one ever found it, but Danny hadn't been the same since—not sleeping,
drinking too much and talking too much, blabbing his story to Tom like a sinner at confession,
swearing the boy's ghost was stalking him. Tom knew the only thing stalking Danny Royce was
guilt, but still, the story kept him from pulling the trigger.
The shape had vanished. Tom held his breath, scanning the woods for any change in the
shadows. Then he saw it, at least twenty feet away now, a huge shape between two trees. The
cloud cover thinned enough for the moon to glimmer through and he could see the shape, too
pale for a bear.
Tom hunkered down as slowly as he could, and with his freehand, he began feeling around for
the flashlight. He allowed himself one glance at the ground and saw it there, dark against the
snow. He scooped it up. His finger found the switch. The click sounded harsh against the silence.
Nothing happened. He whacked the flashlight against his thigh and tried again. Nothing.
Something landed on his back, hitting him so hard that at first he thought he'd been shot. He lost
his grip on the rifle. A blast of hot breath seared his neck, and a weight pinned him to the snow.
As the thing flipped him over, the flashlight bounced off a tree and flicked on just when fangs
tore into his throat. Tom caught a glimpse of yellow fur and glittering blue eyes, and his last
thought was That's not one of my wolves.
MESSAGE
YOU CAN'T HELP someone who doesn't want to be helped. And you really can't help someone
who runs the moment you get within shouting distance, making a beeline for the nearest train,
plane or bus terminal, destination anywhere as long as it takes him hundreds of miles from you.
As I chased Reese Williams through the streets of Pittsburgh—the third city in two days—I had
to admit I was starting to take this rejection personally. I don't usually have this problem with
guys. Sure, at five foot ten, I'm a little taller than some like. My build is a little more athletic than
most like. I don't always put as much care into my appearance as I should, usually forgoing
makeup, tying my hair back with an elastic and favoring jeans and T-shirts. But because I'm a
blue-eyed blonde, men usually decide that they can overlook my deficiencies and not run
screaming the other way.
Sure, if they found out I was a werewolf, I could understand a little screaming and running. But
Reese had no such excuse. He was a werewolf himself, and considering I'm the only known
female of our species, when guys like him meet me, they're usually the ones doing the chasing…
at least until they realize that's not such a good idea if they'd like to keep all their body parts
intact.
I'd lost Reese when he'd cut through a throng of rowdy Penguins fans heading off to a game. I'd
tried following him through the drunken mob, but the Pack frowns on me cold-cocking humans
for grabbing my ass, so after enduring a few unimaginative sexual suggestions, I retreated and
waited for them to move on.
By then Reese's trail was overlaid and interwoven with a score of human ones. And the air here
already stunk, the city core entering construction season, the stink of machinery and diesel
almost over whelming the smell of the Ohio River a half mile over. There was no way I was
picking up Reese's trail at this intersection. Not without changing into a wolf in downtown
Pittsburgh… another thing the Pack frowns on.
When I caught up with him two blocks later, he was being sucked in by the glow of a Starbucks
sign, presumably hoping for a populated place to rest. When he saw that all the seats inside were
empty, he veered across the road.
Reese ran into one of those office-drone oases typical of big cities, where they carve out a store-
size chunk of land and add interlocking brick, foliage and random pieces of art in hopes of
convincing workers to relax there, enjoy the scenery, listen to the symphony of squealing tires
and blaring horns and imbibe a little smog with their lattes.
After a dozen strides, Reese was through the tiny park and veering again, this time to a sidewalk
beside the lot. Headlights appeared, blinding me, then dipped down into an underground lot.
Reese grabbed the barrier and vaulted into the lane. I raced over to see the automatic door below
closing behind a van… with Reese running, hunched over, right behind it.
I did a vault of my own and ran down the incline, reaching the bottom, then dropping and rolling
under the door just as it was about to close. I leapt to my feet and darted through the dimly lit
garage, hiding behind the nearest post. Then I strained to hear footsteps. For almost a minute, the
van engine rumbled on the far side of the garage. It quit with a shudder and a gasp. A door
desperate for oil squeaked open, then slammed shut.
Hunched over, Ihopscotched between the sparse parked cars. Ahead I could hear the van driver's
heavy steps thudding as he walked the other way.
A door creaked and a distant rectangle of light appeared. The door hadn't even clicked shut
when Reese darted out from his hiding space, his boots slapping the asphalt as he ran.
I kicked into high gear, no longer bothering to hide, but he was too close to the stairwell. I was
almost at the closed door when it flew open again, and I narrowly missedbarrelling into a
middle-aged man.
"Sorry," I said as I tried to brush past him. "I was just—"
"Running for the exit because you're afraid to walk through an underground lot at night?"
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