Well, it wasn’t exactly haute couture, but he hoped it’d keep him from having to dine on rats or carcasses for another day.
He hiked throughout most of the night, lucking out that the skies stayed clear enough for him to easily pick his path in the moonlight. He also passed more bilberry bushes and snacked when he did. Water was a bigger concern for him, but fortunately he was able to find plenty of clean-tasting rivulets and little streams to slake his thirst.
Not long before daylight, he topped another rise, shimmied up a tree, and looked around.
Nothing. Well, lots of things, but nothing human. No cell tower lights, no indications of traffic, no lights in houses—nothing. Just miles and miles of dark land—mostly wooded, a few natural glades here and there. Nothing resembling pasture or farmland.
Shit.
He found himself a dip between two large trees where a third had fallen and created a natural den. Stripping, he spread his clothes out on the fallen tree and then shifted and crawled into the hole. He didn’t want to sleep all day, but between his hunger and exhaustion, he needed the rest.
Peyton startled awake at some point, lifting his head. Nearby, a ground squirrel was creeping up, no doubt drawn by his berry-filled socks. When he let out a low warning growl, the rodent turned and scampered.
Well, that’s not the wake-up call I ordered.
He climbed out of his den and stretched, shaking himself. He thought the sun was past its zenith, but it didn’t look like he’d slept too late into the afternoon. After shifting back and relieving himself, he washed up in a nearby stream and dressed.
At least it wasn’t ungodly hot—or ball-shivering cold—and it didn’t feel like rain in the immediate forecast. Orienting himself with tree shadows, he set off once more.
It was difficult not to think about home, Gillian and Adair, and how sick with worry Gillian had to be.
I hope Ken can keep Dewi reined in.
The last thing he wanted was for anyone to come after him. He’d already revised his plan in his head. Instead of finding a population center—in this stretch of nothingness the chances of that were somewhere between zilch and nada—he’d find someone. There had to be farmers. When he found people, he’d shift and watch, stay hidden until he could approach one of them and then overtake them with his Prime powers to get information. Maybe steal a phone and a vehicle. At least get some directions out of there.
And some damned food, because the berries were starting to give him the trots.
He felt reasonably certain he wasn’t anywhere close to where he was abducted. The terrain around Bodø looked nothing like this.
As the elevation slowly dropped, Peyton remained on the path of least resistance, figuring that eventually he’d stumble across a larger stream or river he could follow and hopefully find people. Or maybe a boat he could commandeer.
He spent the remainder of the day hiking, occasionally chiding himself for letting his mind drift as he walked. He didn’t do all of this just to get recaptured because he was daydreaming about a steak.
Or about taking a long, hot shower with Gillian and making love to her.
His luck with the weather lasted until dusk, when the sky turned overcast and thickening mist increasingly reduced his visibility. The wind died down as daylight waned, but that meant the mist coalesced until even he could barely see more than fifteen feet in front of him. And the cloud cover meant he wasn’t able to take advantage of moonlight.
Goddammit.
He tried to press on, but the ground started to rise again and he kept encountering obstacles like rocky ravines or sharply ascending rock walls that he didn’t want to risk for fear of hurting himself. He also thought he was hearing things, like the occasional animal noise, perhaps dislodging a rock, but he also knew mist and fog could play hell with acoustics. Especially so when he was completely unfamiliar with the land.
The other disconcerting development was that he occasionally smelled…something odd. Not a fresh scent, and no discernible tracks he could pick out on the rocky ground.
It was too degraded for him to tell for certain if it was animal or human, but he had come across various animal scents throughout the day.
Maybe it’s time for me to find a hole for the night and wait until morning.
He was just about to do that when he heard another noise, behind him, like a pebble bouncing off rocks. Fighting the urge to call out, he held his breath and slowly turned, his ears tuned, nostrils flaring. He also picked up a couple of good-sized stones from the ground. It’d been years since he’d pitched baseball in high school, but he knew from playing with Trent’s kids that he still had pretty good aim.
He sensed…something.
A presence.
Whatever it was stayed out of range, and the still air meant he had no clue if it was up- or downwind of him.
Moving slowly, he kept his steps light and deliberate, avoiding loose stones as best he could in an attempt to put distance between him and whatever “it” was. He was starting to think large animal, possibly even a non-canine predator, because a creeping feeling of being stalked began to set in.
Then he remembered the carcass he’d snacked on, and if that scent remained on him he might be laying a clear trail for a large predator to hunt him. Besides, if it were his captors, they would have likely rushed in and tranqued him again. They had a helicopter—it was also likely they had night-vision goggles or thermal cameras that’d let them see him. But even with his wolf senses he was currently disadvantaged in both sight and hearing.
