Changeling Dawn Page 6

  Stanton nodded. “Well then, she’ll be back in the sky before you know it. I’ll probably send her down to Sitka while she’s healing, though.”

  “Good deal.” The island community was the site of the Alaska Raptor Center. The place specialized in rehabbing predatory birds and Josh had sent them several over the past few years. He’d toured the facilities once and been impressed. There were large indoor flights where recuperating birds could strengthen their wings. Every effort was made to ensure that the wild birds remained wild, and he’d been lucky enough to witness the release of a fully recovered bald eagle. Josh hadn’t expected it to affect him so deeply as the bird soared up and over the forest clearing until it was only a speck in the sky. He had spent several years in Fish and Game, both before and after his service in Afghanistan, but sometimes he thought he’d like to change career paths, start rehabbing wildlife. The golden eagle had brought that feeling back to him. Maybe it was a sign....

  “You going to stay and help me work on this bird?” asked Stanton.

  “Wish I could, but no time today. I’ve got appointments in Tanacross and Slana, and then a wolf cub to pick up north of Chistochina.” Josh told him about Dr. Macleod’s call, expecting the vet to be interested in the wolf cub—after all, he probably hadn’t had one of those in the clinic before either. To his surprise, Stanton went to a yellowed map on the wall and followed one of the Copper River’s many tributaries, the Chistochina River, with his finger.

  “That woman digging around here?”

  Josh squinted at the spot where the vet’s finger had come to a stop. “Maybe about three, four miles from there. Why?”

  “Some mysterious environmental group’s built a fancy facility right in the middle of nowhere. No one knows who the hell they are or what kind of research is being done there.”

  Josh suppressed a groan. Any other day he would have humored his friend and listened patiently to his latest theories on government cover-ups and conspiracies, but shit, not today. “I didn’t hear about that one, but I got no time right now, bud. Why don’t you tell me about it over a beer at The Caribou? I’ll be back this way in a couple days.”

  “Fine,” said Stanton. “Go pick up your wolf and we’ll talk later. But Tark?”

  “Yeah?

  “You’re buying.”

  Josh made it back to base in fifteen minutes flat, and even managed to make a few phone calls. Radioed his plans to HQ as he loaded some boxes and another kennel into the chopper. Once again, he was grateful he’d persuaded HQ to take the rear passenger seats out—in this job, he needed every square inch of cargo space he could get.

  Fully loaded and fully fueled, he could count on three hours in the air, long enough to stop by Dr. Mackenzie Macleod’s camp before traveling further up the Copper River. The truth was, ADFG policy leaned toward letting nature take its course if possible when it came to orphaned animals. Knowing they were unlikely to rubber-stamp a special flight just to pick up a wolf cub, Josh simply planned it so that the Macleod camp would be on the way to an approved destination. He was concerned about the cub—and he definitely wanted to know more about the woman who’d reported it. Lucky for both him and the wolf, the tiny schools in Tanacross and Slana welcomed his impromptu lessons on wildlife. And he had a brand new presentation on brown bears to try out on them.

  Chapter Four

  Kenzie sat back on her heels and studied the layers she’d uncovered. With trowel, scoop, and brush, she’d managed to dig down a good eighteen inches in her latest square. Not bad for a morning’s work. Of course, being a Changeling helped—her physical strength allowed her to work at a pace that humans couldn’t match. Another excellent reason to work alone. She’d bagged and labeled soil and rock samples as she went along, depositing them in a tidy row along the edge of the dig. Her netbook was there too, and she was thankful to the gods of technology for inventing a nine-hour battery that she could recharge in her truck. Still, the little computer was shut down and bagged as well—she usually didn’t bring it at all because of the dust and dirt—in favor of her old paper notebook.

  A speck of black in the earth caught her eye and she worked the spot carefully with a brush. Could be carbon, perhaps evidence of a fire—

  The sudden throb of an engine erupted from the river valley and a bright blue and white helicopter hove into view. It swept low over her, the wind it created kicking up dust devils in the middle of her dig and sending string and stakes flying. Stop! Dammit, not again! The bright orange canopy that sheltered her screening area tumbled end over end and wedged itself in a tangle of legs and nylon in the bushes. Her notebook spiraled into the air and vanished from sight.

  As she heard the copter settle to earth somewhere by the river, Kenzie scrambled on her hands and knees to gather her scattered sample bags, her tools, and whatever else she could find. Even her netbook was lying on its back in its plastic bag like a packaged turtle. Fuming, she swore to file a complaint against the idiot pilot right after she kicked his ass from here to next week.

  Suddenly a large hand bearing her flyaway notebook appeared in front of her. She snatched the wrinkled pad and bounced to her feet, opened her mouth to unleash a tirade—and closed it again.

  “I’m really sorry about your site,” said Josh Talarkoteen. “I hope I didn’t damage anything.”

  “You? You did this?” Her brain switched back on. “Dammit, I’ve got an archaeological dig here.” She waved at the scene behind her. “My grid is ruined and my equipment is scattered. What the hell were you doing?”

  “I saw your camp up there on the knoll but I didn’t see you down here. I was looking for wolves, hoping to find the pack that the cub might belong to. Look, let me help you put things back together and you can tell me about your wolf.”

  Kenzie’s first impulse was to tell him not to bother, that she’d pick up her own damn stuff without any help from him. But he was already gathering string and tools so she simply joined him.

  Last of all, they wrestled the canopy out of the bushes. The orange canvas didn’t look so obscenely new anymore, but the legs were bent and battered. Josh frowned at it, then set to work. She shrugged and went back to camp to get more string, hoping she had enough for another round. Maybe this site just wasn’t meant to be gridded... .

  She returned to find the canopy set up almost exactly where it had been before. The legs were fairly straight, although she didn’t miss that one was splinted with a tree branch and duct tape. The overall effect was strangely pleasing—the silly thing finally fit in with the rest of her stuff. “Thanks. I’m, uh, sorry I yelled at you.”

  “Sorry I buzzed your site. Truce?”

  “Truce,” she said and offered her hand. “I’m afraid it’s dirty.”

  He grinned as his own engulfed it. “It’s a working hand. My Gramma Kishegwet says that makes it beautiful.”

  She couldn’t help grinning back. “Yeah? Then I think I like your gramma.”

  “And me?”

  “The jury’s still out, buddy.” She showed Josh where she’d last seen the cub, although she doubted it would reappear anytime soon after the noisy arrival of the chopper. He walked the area and quickly found a few incomplete tracks. Kenzie was impressed—for a human, he was unusually adept at reading the forest floor.

  “I think you’re right,” he said, crouching over the prints.

  “This cub is maybe five or six months old—much too young to survive on its own. I didn’t see any wolves from the air, so its pack may have moved on. Strange that they didn’t track him down.”

  “Her. I’m pretty sure it’s a female, although I haven’t gotten very close to her.”

  “Her, then.” He straightened, but continued to study the ground. “You know, this cub’s size is unusual for this time of year.”

  “Why?”

  “Do the math. This far north, most wolves don’t mate until April. After that it takes 60-plus days until the pups are born. Then they spend the first two months of their
life in the den.”

  “It’s July.”

  “Exactly. So the pup is small, but not small enough. It shouldn’t be this old yet.”

  “Maybe its mother mated out of season? I heard it was a mild winter.”

  “They’re not usually affected by the weather. Now if food was unusually abundant, that might have had an effect.” Abruptly he pointed to a faint line of bent grass stems running parallel to the path she’d made between her camp and her dig site. “The cub may have headed in that direction. Mind if I take a look?”

  “No, go ahead. If you don’t need me, I’ve got a dig to straighten out.”

  “Sure. I work better alone when I’m tracking, anyway.” He headed into the trees, and she stared after him for a long moment, before sighing and unrolling the string.

  Josh Talarkoteen had a very fine ass.

  From beneath the broad umbrella-like leaves of a devil’s club bush, Anya eyed the man as he picked his way slowly through the camp. She’d been so scared when the helicopter came, scared that it was those men again, the mean ones who had taken her mother away. This man was different. He wasn’t like her, and not like the woman who worked in the dirt, but he wasn’t like most humans either. He smelled good, smelled like the forest. He seemed ... safe.

  But he couldn’t be, could he? She’d heard them talking about her, and knew he was looking for her. Bad things happened to Changelings when humans found out what they were. Her father had been a Changeling just like her, and when she was very little, he had been killed. By humans. That’s why she needed to be a wolf, stay a wolf. As a little girl, she wasn’t very fast or very strong. As a wolf, she was both. Her mother had told her that if she ever got lost, she should let the wolf inside her take care of her until her mom found her again.

  She wished her mom would find her soon.

  Kenzie painstakingly scraped away another layer of dirt. The string that marked the grids was back in place, although it had obvious knots and splices in it. The metal stakes weren’t very straight either, but as long as nothing heavier than a mosquito tripped over them, they would hold. She hoped. She needed them in order to document the site properly, but hell, she’d use spruce root and twigs if she had to. The site was already proving interesting.

  So was Josh Talarkoteen, if she was honest about it. Two days ago he’d had to leave without finding the cub, but he’d returned each morning since. Kenzie hadn’t seen the little wolf at all, but Josh had managed a fleeting glimpse. Most people would have gone charging after the animal, but he had simply sat down where he was and pretended he didn’t see it. Kenzie was impressed with the man’s intuition, his desire to approach the cub on its terms.

  Too bad he’s human ... She brushed away the thought and tried to work, but her focus evaporated when Josh came over.

  “I couldn’t get my hands on a live trap,” he began. “We don’t have a lot of them and they’re in big demand at this time of year. There isn’t one in any of the local offices that isn’t being used. They can fly one up from Southeast at the end of next week, but that’s too long. So I’m going to have to use a dart.” He opened his hands to reveal a large black handgun with a wood grip.

  Kenzie felt her breath catch in her throat and immediately tried to tamp down her reaction. He was too perceptive not to notice, however.

  “It’s air-powered so it’s bulky,” he explained. “Looks a lot worse than it is. I got enough of a look at the cub to get a good weight estimate, so she should be fine.”

  “I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. Can’t we wait for the trap?” Her voice caught on the word trap and she swore inwardly. Her past was poking at her with a sharpened stick.

  “Dr. Macleod—Kenzie.” He knelt at the edge of the dig next to her. “The cub’s too skinny. It can’t wait until next week. It’s weak and it may hole up somewhere and die before we can find it.”

  “We could feed it, put out food for it. Keep it going until we get the live trap.”

  “It’s in danger from more than starvation. Think about it—it’s amazing that a predator hasn’t snatched it by now. If we’re going to save it, we need to do it now.”

  She took a deep breath, then another. Put a hand to her head. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I just, well, I’ve had some bad experiences and now I have a thing about guns and traps and such.” And that was a whole lot more than she’d intended to tell him or anybody else, but it was all too easy to talk to Josh Talarkoteen. She’d have to be more careful around him.

  “I’m going to see if I can come up with a rabbit. The cub needs to eat and we need bait. Is that going to be a problem for you?”

  “No. Not at all.” Her feelings had nothing to do with squeamishness. In fact, she should have thought to Change to her lupine form and hunt something for the little cub herself. But that would have made it dependent, and it wasn’t fair to turn a wild animal into a pet. “In fact, I’ve seen some snowshoe hares over by that tall stand of spruce.”

  Jeez, the man was efficient. She didn’t hear a thing, but it wasn’t long before she scented the gamey tang of rabbit. She looked up in time to see him carrying a big brown hare by its enormous hind feet, and laying it near the bushes at the far end of clearing, about 50 yards from her dig. It was downwind of her, and her inner wolf reacted with interest. She wondered what Josh would say if she told him she caught rabbits—not to mention much larger game—on a regular basis. She’d bet that would raise his eyebrows a little, then wondered why the idea of rattling his calm demeanor was so appealing.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Josh plant himself in a stand of alder across the clearing, no doubt deliberately ensuring she was out of the line of fire. This was a man who would be careful of such things, a man who protected those around him. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she did. Kenzie lay on her stomach on the ground, reaching down into her first square and working a tiny spot with the point of a trowel. She didn’t want to think about Josh right now and she especially didn’t want to watch what was going on. Besides, if she acted naturally and did what she normally would do, the cub wouldn’t be suspicious, would it? That was all she could do to help. She just hoped the young wolf wouldn’t pick up on how much she was having to quell a rising sense of panic. It wasn’t a cage, it wasn’t a pit, but the little creature was walking into a trap just the same.

  The breeze picked up. Even leaning down into the earth, the gently moving air brought her the essence of the freshly killed rabbit. She scented the hungry cub approaching it. Knowledge suddenly shot through her like lightning, certain knowledge that the scent was all wrong....

  “Stop!” she yelled, springing to her feet even as the echo of the gun lingered in the air. She ran, covering the ground at inhuman speed, her inner wolf a hairsbreadth from breaking free. Josh hadn’t moved and she shoved him roughly aside, looking frantically around for the cub.

  “Where is she? Where is she? Did you shoot her?”

  “No.”

  The sheer relief brought her mind a moment’s clarity. Her inner wolf was frantic, in full protective mode, and if she didn’t get a grip, she was going to Change right in front of this human. She whirled on Josh, fully intending to release some steam by reaming him out—

  Her voice dried in her throat as she realized he was furious. No, far beyond furious—the fire-bright anger radiated from him. Barely held in check, its sheer energy overwhelmed and extinguished her own as a backfire quenches a forest blaze.

  “You didn’t tell me it was a child,” he said tightly.

  “I didn’t know, I didn’t—” Stunned by his perception, she faltered, unsure of what to say and realizing she’d already said far too much. “How?” she demanded at last.

  “My people are Tahltan. I knew you were a shapeshifter as soon as I met you. I can see it in your aura, sense it. I never got close enough to the cub to tell until it was almost too damn late. I had my finger on the goddamn trigger, for Christ’s sake. Do you think I would have d
arted the poor thing if I’d known it was a kid?”

  Tahltan ... Kenzie had heard legends about the Stikine River tribe, but she’d never met a member of it. It was true then, that they recognized Changelings! She hoped like hell it was also true that they were ancestral allies to her kind. Because Tahltan or not, this man was 100 percent human and he not only knew what she was, but what the cub was. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know either. The cub—the child—always stayed downwind of me. I wouldn’t have called you, wouldn’t have bothered you at all if I’d suspected what she was.” Her keen eyes spotted a slender muzzle amid a distant stand of huckleberry bushes. “You’re certain she’s all right?”

  “Better than I am, that’s for sure.” He took a deep breath, rubbed the back of his neck which made his hair fall loose around his shoulders. Most of his anger seemed to dissipate. “Do you have any idea who she is?”

  She shook her head. “I’m new to the area. I had no idea there were any other Changelings here.” Suddenly the cub dashed from its hiding place. Kenzie was about to follow, but Josh seized her arm. As strong as he was, he wouldn’t have been able to hold her if she hadn’t felt what he was feeling—that there was no point in terrifying the cub further by chasing it. Instead, she watched the little wolf disappear into the forest beyond.

  “Now what?” she wondered aloud. “I can’t leave her out there by herself.”

  Josh’s hand released her arm and rested on her shoulder instead. “We. We can’t leave her.”

  She turned to look at him. “This isn’t your responsibility. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”

  “I’ll let you know when I think my time’s been wasted. And that’s a kid out there, so it damn well is my responsibility. I’m not leaving.” Anger flashed briefly in his black gaze, and she was reminded of sheet lightning on a moonless night. It didn’t frighten her. He was pissed because he cared. But there was something behind the anger that puzzled her—pain.