Prologue

Under a winter-dark Alaskan sky, a wolf song carried clear and majestic into the night. The howl stretched long, a thing of pure, wild beauty that reached through the dense spruce of the boreal forest and climbed the jagged, snow-covered walls of rock that rose up along the icy banks of the Koyukuk River. When the wolf sent up his haunting call again, it was met by a discordant hoot of laughter, then a drunken voice that answered from across the flames of a small campfire.

“Ow-ow-owwoooo! Owwoooo!” One of the three guys in the group who’d come out to party tonight on this remote stretch of land cupped his gloved hands to his mouth and yowled another ear-grating reply to the wolf, which had since gone silent in the distance. “Hear that? We’re having ourselves a little communication right there.” He grabbed for the bottle of whiskey as it came around the small gathering to him. “I ever tell you I’m fluent in wolf, Annabeth?”

Across the campfire, a soft laugh blew out on a cloud of steam from within the deep hood of the girl’s parka. “Sounded to me more like you’re fluent in stuck pig.”

“Ooh, that’s harsh, sweetheart. Seriously harsh.” He took a swig from the bottle and passed the Jack Daniel’s to the next person in line. “Maybe you want I should give you a little demonstration of my oral skills sometime. I promise you, I’m extremely gifted.”

“You are such an asshole, Chad Bishop.”

She was right, but her tone said she didn’t mean it. She laughed again, a warmly flirtatious, feminine sound that made Teddy Toms’s crotch go all tight and hot. He shifted on the cold rock he’d claimed for a seat, trying not to make his interest obvious as Chad announced he had to take a piss and Annabeth and the other girl with her began to chat together.

A sharp elbow jabbed Teddy in the right side of his rib cage. “You gonna sit there and drool all night? Get off your chickenshit ass and talk to her, for crissake.”

Teddy swung a look at the tall, skinny guy sitting next to him on the rock and shook his head.

“Come on, don’t be such a pussy. You know you want to. She ain’t gonna bite you. Well, not unless you want her to, that is.” Skeeter Arnold had been the one who brought Teddy to this gathering. He’d also been the one who supplied the whiskey, something Teddy, at the age of nineteen, had only sampled once in his life.

Alcohol was outlawed in his father’s house—outlawed in the whole six-person settlement where he lived, in fact. Tonight Teddy’d had the bottle to his lips more than ten times already. He didn’t see the harm in it. In fact, he kind of liked the way it made him feel, all warm and loose inside. Grown up, like a man.

A man who wanted more than anything to stand up and tell Annabeth Jablonsky how he felt about her.

Skeeter handed Teddy the nearly empty bottle and watched him drink the last swallow. “I think I got something else you’re gonna like, my man.” He pulled off his gloves and reached into the pocket of his parka.

Teddy wasn’t sure what he had, and didn’t much care at the moment. He was mesmerized by Annabeth, who had taken off her hood to show her friend some of the new piercings that tracked all the way up the delicate shell of her ear. Her hair was dyed polar white except for a streak of bright pink, even though Teddy recalled that she was naturally brunette. He knew, because he’d seen her dance last spring at a strip club in Fairbanks, where Annabeth Jablonsky had been better known as Amber Joy. Teddy’s cheeks flamed at the thought, and the hard-on he’d been trying to ignore was now in full bloom.

“Here,” Skeeter said, giving him something else to think about as Annabeth and her friend got up from the campfire and walked down to the frozen edge of the river. “Take a drag on this, my man.”

Teddy took the small metal pipe and held its smoldering bowl up near his nose. A nugget of something pale and chalky burned in the bowl, emitting a foul chemical stink that wormed its way up his nostrils. He winced, sliding a doubtful look at Skeeter. “W-w-what is it?”

Skeeter grinned, his thin lips peeling back off his crooked teeth. “Just a little dose of courage. Go ahead, take a hit. You’ll like it.”

Teddy brought the pipe to his mouth and sucked in the bittersweet smoke. He coughed only a little, so he exhaled and took another drag on the pipe.

“It’s good, right?” Skeeter watched him smoke some more, then he reached out to take the pipe away. “Easy, dude, save some for the rest of us. You know, I can get you more of this if you want it—booze, too. For a price, I can get you whatever kind of shit you like. You need a hookup, you know where to come, right?”

Teddy nodded. Even in the most remote parts of the bush, folks tended to know the name, and the general business, of Skeeter Arnold. Teddy’s father hated him. He’d forbidden Teddy to hang out with him, and if he knew Teddy had sneaked away tonight—especially when they were expecting a supply delivery at home tomorrow morning—he would kick Teddy’s ass from here to Barrow.

“Take this,” Skeeter was saying now, holding the pipe out to Teddy. “Go and offer it to the ladies with my compliments.”

Teddy gaped. “You mean, t-take it t-t-to Annabeth?”

“No, stupid. Take it to her mother.”

Teddy laughed nervously at his own awkwardness. Skeeter’s smile stretched wider, making his narrow face and long razor-hook nose look even more buglike than usual.

“Don’t say I never did you no favors,” Skeeter said as Teddy palmed the warm pipe and shot a glance to where Annabeth and her friend stood talking together near the frozen river.

He’d been looking for some way to strike up a conversation with her, hadn’t he? This was as good a chance as any. The best chance he might ever get.

Skeeter’s low chuckle followed Teddy as he began to make his way toward the girls. The ground felt uneven beneath his feet. His legs seemed rubbery, not totally in his control. But inside he was flying, feeling his heart pounding, his blood racing through his veins.

The two girls heard him approach with the crunch of the ice and stones underfoot. They turned to face him and Teddy gaped at the object of his desire, struggling to come up with just the right thing to say to win her over. He must have stood there staring for a good long while because both of them started to giggle.

“What’s up?” Annabeth said, a quizzical look on her face. “Teddy, right? I’ve seen you around a few times, but we haven’t really had a chance to talk before tonight. You ever go to Pete’s tavern down in Harmony?”

He lamely shook his head, working hard just to process the idea that she had actually just said she’d noticed him before tonight.

“You should come in sometime, Teddy,” she added cheerfully. “If I’m working the bar, I won’t card you.” The sound of her voice, the sound of his name on her lips, almost undid him on the spot. She smiled at him, revealing the slight overlap of her two front teeth that Teddy found utterly adorable.

“Um, here.” He thrust the pipe at her and took a step backward. He wanted to say something cool. He wanted to say something—anything—that might make her see him in some way other than a backwoods Native kid who didn’t know squat about the real world.

He knew things. He knew plenty. He knew Annabeth was a good girl, that deep down she was decent and kind. He knew that in his heart, would be willing to stake his very life on it. She was better than her reputation, and she was better than any of the losers she was hanging out with tonight. Probably even better than Teddy himself.

She was an angel, a pure and lovely angel, and she just needed someone to remind her of that.

“Okay, well, thanks,” she said now, and took a quick hit from the pipe. She passed it to her friend, and the pair of them started to turn away from Teddy in dismissal.

“Wait,” Teddy blurted. He sucked in a breath as she paused, looked back at him. “I, um, I want you to know that I … I think you’re really beautiful.”

Her friend stifled a laugh behind her gloved hand as Teddy spoke. But not Annabeth. She wasn’t laughing. She stared at him without speaking, without blinking. Something soft shone in her eyes—confusion, maybe. Her friend was snorting now, but Annabeth was still listening, not mocking him at all.

“I think you’re the most amazing girl I’ve ever seen. You are … you’re amazing. I really mean that. Amazing in every way.”

Shit, he was repeating himself, but he didn’t care. The sound of his own voice, free of the stammer that made him hate to talk at all, shocked him. He swallowed and took a fortifying breath, prepared to put it all out there for her—everything he’d been thinking since he saw her dancing on the poorly lit, run-down stage in the city. “I think you’re perfect, Annabeth. You deserve to be respected and … and cherished, you know? You’re special. You’re an angel, and you deserve to be honored. By a man who will take care of you and protect you and … and love you—”

The air next to Teddy stirred, carrying the stink of whiskey and the spice of Chad Bishop’s overpowering cologne. “K-k-kiss me, Amber Joy. P-p-please! Let me t-t-touch your p-p-perfect t-t-tits!”

Teddy felt all the blood drain from his head as Chad strode over to Annabeth and wrapped his arm possessively around her shoulders. His humiliation compounded a hundred times to witness the sloppy, tongue-heavy kiss Chad slapped on Annabeth’s mouth—a kiss she didn’t reject, even if she seemed less than welcoming of it.

When Chad finally let her loose, Annabeth glanced at Teddy, then gave Chad a weak shove of her palm against his chest. “You’re retarded, you know that?”

“And you’re so damn hot you m-m-make my c-c-cock—”

“Shut up.” The words were out of Teddy’s mouth before he could stop them. “Shshut the fuck up. Don’t … don’t speak t-t-to her like that.”

Chad’s eyes narrowed. “I know you ain’t talking to me, asshole. T-t-t-t-tell me you’re not standing there, asking me to k-k-kick your sorry ass, T-T-Teddy T-T-T-Toms.”

When he started to lunge forward, Annabeth put herself in front of him. “Leave the poor kid alone. He can’t help the way he talks.”

Teddy wished he could disappear. All the confidence he’d felt a minute ago with her vanished under Chad Bishop’s taunting and Annabeth’s wounding pity. Nearby, he heard Skeeter and Annabeth’s friend joining ranks with Chad. They were all laughing at him now. All of them mocking his stutter, their voices smashing together, ringing in his ears.

Teddy turned around and ran. He jumped on his snow-machine and cranked the starter. The second the old engine sputtered to life, Teddy opened the throttle. He gunned it, tearing away from the gathering in a state of misery and fury.

He never should have gone with Skeeter tonight. He never should have drunk that whiskey or smoked that shit in Skeeter’s pipe. He should have stayed home, should have listened to his father.

That regret intensified as the miles fell away behind him and he neared home. Some five hundred yards away from the cluster of hand-hewn cabins that most of his family had lived in for generations, Teddy’s anger and humiliation gave way to a knot of cold dread.

His father was still awake.

A lamp burned in the living room, the glow from the curtained window reaching out to the surrounding darkness like a spotlight. If his father was up, he had to know that Teddy wasn’t home. And as soon as Teddy walked in, his father was going to see that he’d been partying. Which meant Teddy was in some pretty deep shit.

“God-d-dammit,” Teddy muttered as he killed the snowmachine’s headlight then steered off the main trail and cut the engine. He climbed off and stood for a minute, staring over at his house while he let his drunken legs get used to holding him upright.

Nothing he said was going to get him out of trouble. Still, he tried to come up with a reasonable excuse for where he’d been and what he’d been doing the past several hours. He was a grown man, after all. Sure, he had a responsibility to lend his father a hand where he could, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a life of his own outside the settlement. If his father gave him any shit about that, Teddy would just have to set him straight.

But as he got closer to the house, his courage began to desert him. Each careful step he took crunched loudly in the snow, amplified by the utter stillness that hung in the air. The cold swept down the collar of his parka, adding a chill to his already trembling spine. A bracing gust rolled through the center of the group of homes, and as the icy wind hit him full in the face, Teddy felt such a deep sense of dread, it made the hairs at the back of his neck rise.

He paused, glancing around him. Seeing nothing but moonlit snow and the dark silhouettes of the forest, Teddy continued on past his father’s log-cabin shop that supplied the family and the handful of other folks scattered in the surrounding region. He peered ahead, trying to determine if there might be a way for him to sneak into the house unnoticed. His breath sawed in and out of his lungs, the only sound he could hear.

Everything seemed so quiet. Lifelessly, unnaturally quiet.

It was then that Teddy stopped walking and glanced down at his feet. The snow beneath his boots was no longer white but dark—nearly black in the moonlight, a huge, horrific stain. It was blood. More spilled blood than Teddy had ever seen in his life.

There was more a few yards away. So much blood.

Then he saw the body.

To his right, lying just near the edge of the tree line. He knew that large shape. Knew the bulky heft of the shoulders beneath the thermal undershirt that was ripped and dark with more blood.

“Dad!” Teddy raced to his father and knelt down to help him. But there was nothing to be done. His father was dead, his throat and chest shredded. “Oh, no! Dad! Oh, God, no!”

Horror and grief choking him, Teddy scrambled to go find his uncle and two older cousins. How could they not know what had happened here? How was it possible that his father had been attacked like this and left to bleed in the snow?

“Help!” Teddy screamed, his throat raw. He raced next door and pounded on the jamb, calling for his uncle to wake up. Nothing but silence answered. Silence in the entire cluster of cabins and outbuildings that squatted on this tiny parcel of land. “S-s-someone! Anyone! Help me, p-p-please!”

Blinded by tears, Teddy raised his fist to bang on the door and scream again for help, but he froze in midmotion as the door drifted open. Just inside lay his uncle, as savaged and bloody as his father. Teddy peered into the darkness and saw the broken forms of his aunt and cousins.

They weren’t moving. They’d been killed, too. Everyone he knew—everyone he loved—was gone.

What the hell had happened here?

Who—or what—in God’s name could have done this?

He drifted into the center of the settlement, numb and disbelieving. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real. For a split second, he wondered if the shit Skeeter had made him smoke had caused him to hallucinate. Maybe none of this was happening. Maybe he was tripping out, and seeing things that weren’t true.

It was a desperate, fleeting hope. The blood was real. The stench of it coated his nostrils and the back of his tongue like thick oil, making him want to heave. The death all around him was real.

Teddy sank to his knees in the snow. He sobbed, unable to contain his shock and grief. He howled and punched the frozen earth, despair engulfing him.

He didn’t hear the approaching footsteps. They’d been too light, as stealthy as a cat. But in the next instant, Teddy knew he wasn’t alone.

And he knew, even before he turned his head and saw the burning glow of a predator’s wild eyes, that he was about to join his kin in death.

Teddy Toms screamed, but the sound never made it past his throat.