“MORNING.” THE GIRL’S voice was croaky, which probably had a lot to do with us being so close to the fire the night before. She offered me a watery smile that echoed many of the things I felt myself—uncertainty, doubt, and the effects of very little sleep.

“Hi.” I attempted my own weak grin.

Natalie, the latest victim of my need for solace, took courage from my grin and pressed her lips against my shoulder. Her eyes asked the question her lips refused to, “What happens now?”

It was the question I could never answer, at least not the way some of them had expected. The response was inevitably an answer I didn’t want to give. I hated letting anyone down, even a stranger whom I barely knew.

Despite that, every so often—when the guilt, or grief, or disgust became too much to handle on my own—I searched for the comfort that could only be found in the arms of another. Even if I was upfront about only wanting companionship for one night with no attachments, some women hoped I would change my mind after a night spent getting to know them. Maybe that assumption was right for some men, but for me it didn’t matter who the girl was—how pretty, or clever, or funny she was—it always started and ended the same way.

At first, I let everything go. My mind reacted to the attention I received, and my body responded to the touch of another. When that happened, my head and body took my heart captive and refused to allow it to guide me.

Eventually though, usually in one spectacular instant of self-hatred, it all came crashing down.

My heart, forever searching for the piece it missed—the part that I’d left with Evie—forced me to recall the perfect touch, the feeling of fire inside my veins, and a blaze in my heart. When that happened, the woman I was with, no matter how perfect or wonderful she was, would become substandard by comparison.

In that moment, it was over.

Even the most sensual touch couldn’t guide me back to a place where I held any real interest in enjoying the embrace of a stranger.

In an attempt to stave off that feeling for longer, I’d tried so many things with some of the women to simulate the warmth I craved—from adjusting thermostats to playing with candle wax. It never worked though; it was never enough to emulate the way Evie held my heart and blazed through my veins when we kissed. My mind tormented me with possibilities of how it would have felt to take Evie in my arms properly—to hold her like I’d held the random women I’d tried to forget her with.

It had been three days since I’d first met Natalie, and forty hours since she’d invited me back to her place for a nightcap. We’d spent the majority of that time wrapped up together.

We hadn’t been clothed at all in that time. In fact, the meals we’d shared consisted solely of leftovers from her fridge consumed together while sitting naked at the end of her bed. The alcohol had flowed freely, and we’d only napped together for as long as we could before need overtook us again.

“What’s on the menu this morning?” she asked with a delighted smirk on her face as she moved to hover over me.

As usual, my body reacted instantly to the surplus of nubile, naked skin at my fingertips and, for all intents and purposes, I was ready to respond to the signals she was giving me. Only my heart was finally fighting free of the hold my hormones had over it. It had taken almost forty hours this time—a new record. Yet it wasn’t enough. Not for the first time, I wished Evie hadn’t ensnared my heart so thoroughly, holding it captive in an unknown place—possibly thousands of miles away.

Ignoring Natalie’s advances, I dropped my head back down against the pillow. I should have known it was close to the end when I’d insisted on screwing her next to her open fireplace. With the heat of the flames licking at my skin, I had closed my eyes and pretended Natalie was someone else for precious seconds at a time. Squeezing my eyes tightly closed during the quiet lulls between her gasps of delight, I’d been able to imagine I was with the one I really wanted.

My fingers found their way into Evie’s hair; my mouth had pressed against Evie’s lips. For stolen moments of time, Natalie faded away to be replaced by the one I wanted more. It wasn’t fair to anyone. Not Natalie, not Evie, and certainly not me.

Unable—or perhaps unwilling—to notice my disinterest, Natalie kissed her way across my shoulder until she reached my neck. Her breasts pillowed against my arm, but the feeling no longer elicited any need or desire in me. I felt nothing—I was little more than an empty vessel incapable of feeling anything for anyone other than the one person I could never have.

I pulled away from Natalie’s embrace and reached for my pants. No matter how many awkward morning afters I’d endured in the six months since the first night I’d fallen into bed with a stranger, I never got used to them. Maybe it was because I didn’t bed women with the regularity that Eth did, or see it as the sport he seemed to. Somehow, he’d perfected the art of remaining friends—and had a network of useful contacts that sprung from his conquests.

“Natalie,” I said with a sigh. “I think we need to talk.”

 

AS I left Natalie’s apartment for the first, and last, time, the guilt over the way I’d ended it raced through my mind. She hadn’t taken the news as well as some, but it had definitely gone better than others. She hadn’t threatened me with castration or pulled a weapon on me at least. She’d known from the beginning that I wasn’t interested in anything more than a casual fling, and just like the others, she’d said at the beginning that she wasn’t either.

“It just felt like something had changed last night, by the fire,” she’d said as her tears began to fall. The sentiment echoed in my mind long after our conversation finished. The words twisted through my body, weighing down my limbs. It was as if I’d deliberately led her on and let her believe what I felt was love. I couldn’t tell her the reason for the change though. At least, not without risking hurting her further by explaining that what she’d felt had been nothing more than a weakened echo of my feelings for someone else.

It was the final straw though, the one moment that made me see how selfish I’d been. Regardless of whether I was upfront about what I wanted or not, it was wrong to want to find someone to screw away my guilt and self-hatred. The girls I’d been with deserved better than the broken man I’d become, and I deserved more than a meaningless fuck.

I made a resolution with myself to not fall into the trap again. From that moment on, I wouldn’t screw anyone until I actually felt something for them. Something, anything, even if it was little more than a shadow of the memory of Evie’s hold on me.

As I thought of Evie the guilt and pain worsened. I wondered where the hell she was and whether she’d found a place where she could be safe. Had she found someone else that made her happy, someone whose past didn’t add to the dangers she faced? Or was she destined to live her life within the shadows of the past like me?

There was one question that burned me more than any other.

Had I meant as much to her as she meant to me?

Could she have moved on already as if I was nothing more than a temporary love interest?

The fact that she might have been killed barely entered my mind, mostly because it was too painful to even consider, but also partly because I didn’t believe it was true. Somewhere in the depths of my aching heart was the certainty that she was alive. It was likely my own blind hope, but it gave me the peace I needed to not recklessly track her down and bring danger back into her life.

It wasn’t enough to stop me from keeping an eye on new cases logged into the Rain systems though, always dreading the moment another phoenix case crossed onto the radar. Whenever I checked that, I inevitably looked up the case file for both Emily and Evie—hoping that enough time had passed that the search wouldn’t raise any red flags in the system.

When I looked up Emily’s file, it was purely to examine her photos. It was uncanny how similar she looked to the one I missed, and it was easy to fool myself that it was a photo of Evie. Whenever I closed Emily’s file, I always looked over Evie’s to remind myself that despite the belief of everyone in the Rain, she wasn’t dead. Every time I read Eth’s debrief notes about how she’d leaped from the car into the river, I was reminded of her appearance when I’d seen her a few hours later—muddied but alive. When I read his assumptions about the water quelling the fire that should have destroyed her, I recalled the fire that claimed her father’s life.

It was dangerous to have such an interest in her, and I’d tried not to, but since the incident in New Mexico with the púca, my time with Evie had played on my mind that much more.

I’d even considered running another photo of Evie through the photo recognition software, but I couldn’t be certain that my actions weren’t being monitored. Although the hierarchy would probably frown upon my looking over the old files, they wouldn’t stop me as it wasn’t technically hurting anything and I hadn’t made a move to leave again.

It wouldn’t raise their suspicions about any possibility of Evie having survived. If they were watching and I ran a live search for Evie, it would tip them all off to the fact that she was still alive. As desperately as I longed to see Evie one more time, I couldn’t risk that.

Trying to push all of my emotions from my mind, I checked my cell phone to see if there was anything there that could take my mind off everything for a while.

Kenora, Ontario. Three days.

The message from Dad didn’t say what we’d be facing or how many of us would be needed, but I didn’t care. It was a distraction and that was exactly what I needed. The cycle I’d fallen into—rotating between using girls and murdering monsters as a distraction—was ridiculous. I knew that, but I hadn’t been able to think of any way to break free. At least, not in a way that didn’t involve hunting Evie to the ends of the Earth and endangering her life again.

Thoughts of a reunion, however impossible it may be, had been growing in regularity, and the desire I felt for one was enough to send a warm feeling racing through my veins, chasing away the cold dread.

Maybe everyone was right. Maybe her hold over me is something more sinister than just simple desire.

Before I could over-examine every minute of the time I’d spent with Evie, for perhaps the fiftieth time, I dialed Eth’s number to see whether he knew anything more about the assignment. I hadn’t seen him in almost two weeks, not since we’d spent a week freezing our asses off camping near Mount St. Helens in Washington, trying to find a tribe of skoocooms spotted in the area. Since then we’d all been on R&R, waiting for confirmation of our next case.

“Get your ass out of bed,” I said before he’d had a chance to say anything more than a sleep-muffled greeting.

“What time is it?” he muttered. The sound of the phone being shifted crackled in my ear and then his voice came back onto the line. “You do realize it’s not even nine yet, don’t you?”

“Did you get the text from Dad?”

“Dude, I only answered your call because I thought it might be an emergency. Which it’s clearly not, so I’m going to go now.”

Before he’d even given me a chance to respond, he’d hung up. I didn’t want to call Dad; he and I’d still had a relationship that could only be called tenuous—it had been like that between us ever since they’d found me in Charlotte. Instead, I called Lou.

“To what do I owe the pleasure? You haven’t fallen for a sasquatch have you?”

Even with so few words, she was able to piss me off. If I could have reached down the phone and slapped her, I probably would have. It was a reminder why I liked to be teamed with Eth—at least he put up with my shit.

“What’s in Canada?” I asked rather than biting back over her sarcastic remark. She’d been Dad’s favorite for years, long before I’d screwed up, so I knew she’d already have the inside track.

“A wendigo.”

“Why are we needed then? That’s not exactly a priority case.” The words had already left before it struck me as a little strange that a wendigo would even be active in February. It should have been in hibernation. For the creature to be hunting during winter, it meant that it mustn’t have gathered enough prey to last through the winter. It was rare, but it did happen on occasion.

“This one is. It’s slipped through the net of five local teams and the death toll keeps rising.”

Useless fucking morons. A wendigo could be a slippery creature, but so long as you kept your wits about you and had the right tools, they were a relatively simple beast to kill.

“Fine. Tell Dad I’ll be there.”

“I’m not your damn secretary. Tell him yourself.”

“Whatever.” I hung up before she could get under my skin any further.

Every time we saw each other lately, it descended into a slinging match about how terrible a person I was for leaving the family and developing a conscience. How I’d broken our father’s heart, even if he’d never show it. That I was the one responsible for all the various fractures that had torn our family apart. I was sick of the bullshit and blame, but I didn’t know what else I could do about it either. She was still my sister; they were all still my family. Even though sometimes it felt like they hated me, I knew it was only my actions they disliked. It still sucked though.

I’d learned it was easier to avoid facing my sister when I could and that we definitely didn’t work well together.

Understanding there was no point hanging around and waiting for Lou’s attitude to change or for Eth to put his dick back in his pants long enough to arrange anything, I decided to book my own flights and just meet everyone else in Canada. If nothing else, I could get a jump-start on the research we’d need to find out why the wendigo was hunting so early—or late, depending on how you looked at it—and exactly how it was able to evade capture.

A little over a day later, I was jogging on a snow-covered track alongside the highway in Canada. I was miles away from the town, and heading farther away. None of my family were in Kenora yet, and I couldn’t stay cooped up in the motel just waiting for them.

Even though I’d told myself I was heading up to Canada early to get a head start on the research, the moment I’d booked into a motel, all I wanted to do was escape. I wanted the freedom of not having to feel—the freedom only burning lungs, aching legs, and a pounding heart would give me—so I’d changed into a pair of sweats and an old T-shirt. Because of the cold winter, I pulled on my favorite hoodie to keep me warm until my blood started to pump.

I headed north until I hit the Kenora bypass, and then I followed that road. Even though I had no destination in mind, my body itched with the need to be . . . somewhere. When my feet hit Dufresne Island, I left the road and headed into the trees. The conifers swallowed up the road behind me after only a fraction of a mile.

I was alone.

Stopping for breath, I leaned forward against one of the evergreens and ignored the dread I felt that I’d soon have to head back to the motel and tell my family I’d arrived.

I’ll just enjoy a few more minutes out here first.

Under the peace and quiet of the trees, it was easy to imagine a different world. One where I hadn’t been raised in a family who wanted to destroy the girl I loved. I turned to rest my back against the trunk of the conifer and allowed thoughts of Evie to fill my mind.

For the first time in forever, I chose to forget the guilt that always rushed through me when I thought of her. With the perfect moments we’d shared running on repeat through my head, I closed my eyes and relived it all. Hidden away in an unspoiled corner of the world, I was with her again, if only in my mind.

“Hey stranger,” her voice whispered in my ear. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, Evie,” I choked out. “So much.”

Once I let her in, truly let every memory and desire overtake me, I longed to start running again and keep going—never stopping until I found her. I knew it was useless, but that didn’t stop me from imagining what I might do with her, and to her, if it wasn’t.

So many of the unique experiences I’d encountered during my flings came flooding back, but I imagined Evie in the place of the random girls I’d been with. A groan of desire mingled with heartbreak escaped from me.

I was fully engrossed in a number of different fantasies when a low, graveled growl nearby reverberated through the forest. My eyes snapped open, and all images of Evie were flushed instantly from my mind. The sound wasn’t an entirely natural one. It hadn’t come from an animal, of that much I was certain. Strengthening the nerves that the memories of Evie had frayed, I fell straight into survival mode.

My gaze traveled around the forest, assessing every area with the tiniest glance and trying to find anything that was outside of the ordinary. A too-fast flash of gray between the trees stilled my heart before sending it pounding straight into my throat.

Although I couldn’t see any details of the creature because of its rapid movement, I could fill in the blanks from memory. The face of a wendigo was enough to give most people nightmares, but for me it was nothing more than a mask of evil—something that marked it as a monster that deserved death. It was what distinguished it from the creatures like Evie.

Because a wendigo was impossibly fast and inhumanely strong, I had no chance of fighting the thing off alone. Worse, I had nothing on me that I could use to destroy the beast. Even my usually ever-present gun was back at the motel so that I could go on a proper run and not have to worry about the holster rubbing and chafing. Not that it would have mattered much fighting against a wendigo—the only thing a bullet would do to such a creature was piss it off.

Trying to keep track of the rapid movements of the rail-thin beast that was circling around me, I reached my hand into my pocket and slipped out my cell. Lifting it slowly, I pressed the call button, knowing it would redial the last person I’d spoken to. Because the only people I called with that particular cell were my family, I knew I’d have one of them on the line in almost no time. Whether it would be in time for me, given the fact that they weren’t even in Canada yet, would remain to be seen. There was still a whole day before Dad’s deadline. I could only hope that at least one of them had decided to come early like I had.

Despite foolishly wandering into the hunting ground of a wendigo—possibly even the one that had evaded capture for so long that we’d been sent to investigate—without the required weapons, I wasn’t a complete idiot. The members of my family were the only ones that I could trust to get me out alive, and they would if there was any possibility to do so. Even if they arrived too late for me, by calling them I would at least give them a good idea of the hunting ground of the creature.

Once more I wondered about the possible reasons for the creature hunting in the winter. It was likely that the beast had simply ravished its supply of live humans for winter quicker than it anticipated. Possibly it didn’t create a store for some reason.

Either way it most likely meant that the thing was hungry—or at least, hungrier than usual given that they were renowned for being insatiable. If the beast was seeking an immediate meal rather than prey for storage, the situation was immensely more dangerous for me. There was little I could do about it either way, the end result was the same—it needed to be destroyed.

“What now?” Lou’s voice came down the line.

Fuck! I cursed inwardly as I recalled that her number was the last I’d dialled. Not wanting to risk drawing the wendigo’s attention if I hadn’t already garnered its interest, I didn’t reply.

“Clay?” she asked with a voice ringing with concern.

Just as I would have if the situation had been reversed, she had to know that there was only one reason I wouldn’t have responded to her quip in some way—even if it was just to tell her to fuck off. The lack of a response was a clear sign I was in danger. She bit out a few choice cuss words before fumbling with the phone, no doubt to place it between her head and her shoulder to free up both her hands.

I heard the sound of her fingers tapping against a keyboard at a rapid pace.

“You stupid ass, you went up there alone,” she hissed after a moment. She must’ve tracked my signal.

The sound of her cell hitting the desk as she raced away from it echoed in my ear. She left the call open—no doubt so that the trace would remain active in case I was dragged away to another location.

Knowing I’d done all I could do to warn my family where I was and that they would arrive as quickly as they could, I locked my cell phone screen and slipped it into the pocket on the front of my hoodie. I ran through my options for evading the hunting wendigo.

I wasn’t certain whether it had spotted me or not, but either way, my scent would draw it before long, especially since I could feel the remnants of sweat from my run cooling rapidly against my skin in the frozen winter air. My rapid heartbeat was sure to be another dead giveaway.

Sticking close to the trees, I picked my way back toward the road. By the time I’d taken three steps, I’d lost track of the monster. Another flash of gray moved ahead of me, and I stilled. A few yards in front of me, the creature stopped and then stood to its full height.

From my position, every inch of ashen flesh was clear. The creature’s skin stretched too thin around thickened bones. A little over seven foot, the emaciated frame of the beast appeared to tower higher than that—so high in fact that it didn’t seem possible for it to be able to remain upright with so little bulk to hold it together.

It was an illusion of course, because fine, wire-like, banded muscles twitched and rippled as the creature moved. It shifted forward and sniffed at the air before turning to look right at me. Eyes void of all life and sunken too far into their sockets stared in my direction. For a moment, I could have sworn the damn thing smiled—if that was actually possible with its decayed lips and twin rows of dilapidated teeth.

Without letting the creature out of my sight, I retreated with creeping steps, only stopping when my back smacked against a tree that blocked my path. With a deliberate slowness, like a cat playing with a mouse before going for the kill, the wendigo stepped closer to me. In that moment, I wished I’d brought something that could create fire—the wendigo’s one weakness.

The thought brought Evie back into my mind. If she’d been there with me she could have given us both a decent fighting chance against the foul thing. I brushed my hands over my face as I began to accept the fact that I was going to die. Only I didn’t want to die without seeing Evie one more time. I wanted to live, but I had no weapons, no hope of outrunning the monster, and no way to escape.

If I was indeed a goner, there was no reason not to say goodbye to my family. I reached into the pocket on the front of my hoodie to retrieve my cell, but my hand brushed against something else instead. Something small and plastic.

A lighter.

The last time I’d worn the hoodie was when Eth and I had gone camping. The lighter must have been left in there since then. I gripped it between my fingers and felt real hope for the first time since the growl had pulled me from my thoughts.

The lighter would’ve been through the wash, and there was no guarantee that it would have survived the treatment.

All I had was hope it would still work.

A working lighter in my hands was as good as a gun—if not better considering what I was up against. The beast was right in front of me when I whipped my hand out of my pocket and flicked the lighter. It sparked and . . . nothing.

Fuck.

I flicked the lighter again. Once more, it sparked but there was still no flame. The hope I’d started to believe in faded away. A giant arm, tipped with sharpened claws, reached for me, and I ducked out of the way at the last second, dropping the lighter as I tried to flick it a third time.

Twisting to avoid another super-fast attack from the wendigo, I leaped toward the ground where the lighter had fallen, clutching at a branch on a tree for support. My other hand fumbled in the snow-covered bracken for the lighter. Once I had it between my fingers, I flicked it once more. Mercifully, a tiny flame burst from the end.

I rolled over onto my back, holding the small flame in front of me like a beacon and then pressed the end of the branch against it. The wood sparked and spat as the fire initially refused to take.

The wendigo backed away from the flame, and I could see it assessing other ways to attack. Pulling myself to my feet carefully, brandishing the burning branch like a weapon, I tried to shift the wendigo away from me. In response, the wendigo moved to one side and lunged forward, no doubt to force me farther from the road. When it was closest to me, I stabbed at it with the flame-covered stick. Knowing I didn’t have long before the wendigo realized that the fire wasn’t quite sufficient enough to cause lasting damage, I moved toward the road as quickly as I could.

The creature hissed and spat, before pulling itself up to its full height and releasing a growl. Its foul breath washed over me, reeking of death and decay. I stepped closer to the freeway, closer to freedom, and then the creature disappeared. I followed the flash of gray as best I could, before it became impossible to trace the blurred figure. I spun on the spot, trying to find it again. The little flame I was holding sparked and smoked as it consumed the branch and moved closer to my fingers.

When I thought I spotted the wendigo heading away from me, I made a break for the road. I ran as quickly as I could, knowing that if I escaped, I’d be back within a day or two, properly equipped and ready to kill the fucker. The speed of the wind rushing past the branch snuffed the fire, and I was once again defenseless.

I threw the stick away, hoping the sound and scent would distract the wendigo long enough for me to break free.

Using every bit of speed I could muster, I ran toward the freeway.

Before I could take another step, the monster was in front of me again, roaring at me and sending another wave of foul-smelling breath over me. I lifted the lighter and simultaneously flicked the switch with my thumb to light it as I sidestepped the creature. It seemed to anticipate my movement though and shifted in time with me, reaching out a clawed hand and striking my arm, forcing me to drop the one weapon I had. I ducked under the next blow, but the third struck my side, tearing through the hoodie and into my skin. The claws continued into the pocket, tearing it in two and sending my cell phone falling to the ground.

Ducking to grab the cell, I held my finger on the panic button shortcut on the home screen as I rolled away from the wendigo’s next strike. As the app came to life, the loudest, most ear-splitting noise imaginable blared from the speaker. It wasn’t a permanent fix, but it had the effect I’d hoped it would on the sensitive hearing of the wendigo.

The beast shrank away from the sound, and I used the split-second advantage I’d gained to race the rest of the way to the freeway. Knowing that even the presence of other people wouldn’t keep me completely safe, I leaped in front of the first car that passed and climbed inside the instant they pulled up.

The moment I arrived back in the motel, I called Eth’s mobile.

“Fucking hell, man, how are you still alive?” he asked before even saying hello.

“You know me,” I tried to quip, but the fear over just how close I’d come to dying alone in the Canadian wilderness still rang in my voice and made the jibe fall flat. “I’m just lucky.”

“When Lou called around to let us know you were up in Canada and that she thought you were hunting the wendigo alone, we all thought you were a goner for sure.”

I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see me. Their doubt pushed away the remnants of the fear. “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence. I’d be perfectly capable of handling a wendigo on my own you know.”

“Well you haven’t exactly been bringing your A game lately. The fact that you’re up there right now with no back-up just proves it.”

“First, I didn’t come here early to hunt the wendigo. I came to do some research, but I needed to burn off some steam first.” While I spoke to him, I made a makeshift bandage out of an old shirt. The wound on my side was large but not deep. It probably needed stitches, but I could deal with that once I was back in the States.

“So you went to hunt the wendigo to blow off some steam?”

“No, I went for a run to blow off steam.” I rubbed the right side of my temple. This talk with Eth was becoming as tedious as some of the conversations I’d endured with Lou. “I must have just stumbled across its hunting ground.”

“Sure,” he said with a sarcastic edge. He was skeptical whenever Lou or I located a monster before him, refusing to believe us when we said we just felt an unexplained pull in that direction.

“When are you guys coming?” I asked. “We’ll have to deal with this thing sooner rather than later, I think it’s got my scent now.”

He sighed and muttered something under his breath that could have been, “Of course it does.”

“I’m on my way to the airport now,” he said audibly. “Dad and Lou are already there, we’re all flying in together.” Something like, “Like we should have in the first place,” followed in a mumble and then, louder, he said, “We’ll be there in a few hours. Just hang tight ’til then.”

I grabbed their flight details and jotted them down on a motel branded notepad. In return, I gave him the name of the motel I’d booked into and my room number.

After I’d hung up, my exhaustion sank in. I was tired all the time, and I knew why. I was tired of fighting against what I felt for Evie, of fighting with myself to believe that what we did was always the right thing, and of fighting my family to get even a smidgeon of the respect I deserved despite what they thought of me. There were too many pieces inside of me battling for control, and I’d never find peace until one of them was able to win.

But which one would?

Sick of it all, I leaned backward with a sigh, falling heavily onto the bed.