He might go tell Aunt Ellen and Uncle David what he was doing if Cormac left him behind.
After a moment, he said, “Sure.”
Ben rushed to grab coat, knit cap, and thick work gloves.
Let him come along. If he couldn’t hack the trip, he could always turn around and go back home. Wasn’t Cormac’s business, as long as he didn’t get in the way.
The air was the crystalline freezing that only a clear winter night could produce. Cormac breathed it in and let its sharpness urge him on. Only way to keep warm on a night like this was to keep moving.
Also, he half wanted to see how quickly Ben dropped back and complained about not being able to keep up. But he didn’t. His wiry frame gave him a long stride to match Cormac’s.
“Your folks are going to kill you for coming outside,” Cormac said.
“I don’t care. They don’t know anything. Haven’t had an asthma attack in three years.”
They’d walked out of sight of the farmhouse when Ben said, “What’re we hunting?”
Cormac looked at him, wondering again how much he knew. Decided he didn’t care. If Ben didn’t know what was out there, he would by morning. “What killed my dad. Full moon’s when they come out.”
Ben turned the collar of his coat up around his jaw and walked beside Cormac, determined to keep up with the taller boy’s easy stride. Their boots crunched on dry prairie grass and occasional crusts of snow. The air was searing cold, and their breath came out as fog.
God, why did he feel like such a little kid around Cormac?
Eventually, they reached the foothills and the first of the pine trees that became the forest that covered the mountains. The full moon was high, the air crisp and silent. They moved quickly enough that Ben didn’t get cold.
He wondered if he should have brought a gun, too.
A song broke the night, a high-pitched note that held long, then sank into nothing.
Cormac stopped Ben with a hand on his arm. “Hear that?”
The sound had made his gut turn and his hair stand up. The thing that made it might have been far away, or watching them from the stand of trees a hundred yards off. Lots of animals lived out here, between prairie and mountain. Deer, elk, fox. Didn’t see most of them most of the time. They knew how to hide, but they had ways of letting you know they were there.
“Coyotes?”
Cormac gave him a brief, pained look. “Wolf.”
He knew Cormac was right, but he argued anyway. It made sense to argue. “There aren’t any wolves around here.”
“No, there aren’t.” He looked around, eyes narrowed, studying the world. Ben looked, too; he didn’t know what he was looking for, except the shapes of his own fears. The shadows were so black and stark. He could see far, but the landscape wasn’t familiar or friendly. He was the invader here, waiting for the attack that would have to come.
The wolf howl sounded again and was cut short. The tone of it echoed.
Ben wanted to suggest that maybe they go back to the house. But he wanted to see what Cormac was going to do.
There wasn’t a wind for them to walk down of. On such a clear, still night, their scent would just float, and every sound they made thundered.
Cormac went to a stunted tree that had ventured onto the plain. It stood about four feet high and had only a few gnarled branches with spiky tufts of pine needles. He opened the paper bag he’d brought and pulled out something wrapped in butcher paper. From the wrapper, he removed a sizable piece of beef, raw and dripping. He must have taken it from the fridge. Mom was going to be livid.
He stabbed the meat through the end of a branch, then crumpled up the paper and stuffed it back in the bag. “Come on,” he said, and nodded to a stand of trees fifty yards off. Ben followed, looking over his shoulder at the meat, wondering what would come to the bait.
They hunkered down in the shadow of the trees and waited. Now, Ben started to get cold. It seeped into his hands and feet first, then numbed his ears and nose. Cormac sat as still as a rock, not complaining, so Ben didn’t dare thump his feet and clap his hands to warm them. He felt a cough tickling his lungs and swallowed it. He didn’t need to cough. He wasn’t going to catch pneumonia.
He couldn’t stop his teeth from chattering. He tightened his jaw and wondered how Cormac could stand it. But then, Cormac had a reason for being here and the will to stay. Some family gossip said an animal had killed Cormac’s father. But Cormac had shot dead the man who murdered him. So which was it?
“How long we going to wait?” Ben finally asked in a tense whisper.
“All night. Don’t worry, it’s not that cold. You won’t freeze.”
“I’m not worried,” Ben said. “Just bored.”
“Be quiet.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“Shh!” He never took his gaze off the tree with the meat.
Ben tried to see inside his cousin’s thoughts. “Is all this ’cause of your dad? I thought you already got what killed him. Don’t see much point in this unless you just like shooting things.”
What Ben really wanted was for Cormac to break. To get angry, shout, scream, cry, anything. His face never changed. His cold gaze kept staring out.
Then Cormac licked his lips. “My dad taught me how to do this. We went out every full moon. It’s what he did. He taught me, and now I have to do it myself.”
He put his gloved hand in his pocket, took it out fisted around something. He held his hand open to Ben. A bullet lay in Cormac’s palm. Ben picked it up, held it to the moonlight, rolled it between his fingers. It shone, luminous and otherworldly. Silver.
Cormac was either crazy or he was right.
The part of hunting that most people couldn’t stand was the waiting. Dad’s business had been taking people into the back country, equipping them, guiding them, holding their hands so they could bag an elk or eight-point buck and take the trophies and stories back to their corporate boardrooms. High-end outfitting. They didn’t have to like their clients—Cormac didn’t, most of the time. Self-centered, heads up their butts. Treated Cormac and his dad like they were backwoods hicks. And they didn’t understand waiting. Sometimes the best way to find your quarry was to sit still and wait for it. Know where they like to go, then park there and make yourself part of the landscape. The rich playboys wanted their kills
The attitude showed a severe lack of respect for the animals. They didn’t understand—they couldn’t, with only five days in the wilderness, with someone else pitching the tents and cooking their meals—that the smarter the animal, the harder the kill. The greater the challenge.
Dad taught him that these were the smartest animals out there. Hunting them was an art. Cormac could wait for it.
His cousin surprised him. Didn’t fidget, didn’t complain. Showing him the bullet had shut him up. At least he was smart. Seemed to be patient, too. Might make a good hunter.
Ben must have thought he was clever, trying to see through him like that. His words couldn’t touch Cormac, though. Wasn’t anything he hadn’t already thought of. He didn’t have nightmares about what happened, because he’d already seen his fears with his waking eyes. He’d already killed them. Nothing else could get him now. Especially not Ben.
This—this was just what he was supposed to do. His mission, handed down from father to son for four generations. Sacred trust, Dad had called it.
Cormac kept his gaze soft. Wouldn’t do any good to focus on the bait; his vision would close down to that one spot and he wouldn’t see anything approach. He relaxed and took in as much of the land around him as he could, all the hills and trees, all the shadows that something could hide in, watching for that flicker of movement. The moonlit world was bright, but a kind of filtered brightness. The colors were all drained to black, white, charcoal, and deep blue.