Page 103 of The SnowFang Storm

I shifted the boxes. “That’s where I want to go.”

He rocked back and forth from toe to heel. “Not a friendly place this time of year.”

It wasn’t a friendly place any time of the year, especially if you were a werewolf.

“Why is there a problem now?” Hamid asked, annoyed.

Terry shifted around, fingers working in his pockets. “Must have missed something, I thought we were going somewhere else.”

His eyes roved between Hamid and me. He knew. He was just trying to decide which one of us was the werewolf. I shifted my doughnuts. “There’s no mistake. Like I told Hamid, they’re my family.”

Terry still didn’t relax. “Family can still be outsiders.”

I shoved the boxes at Hamid to hold, then dropped my farce of pleasant human. I hadn’t come this far to end up having some glorified bus driver get in my way. “I’m expected at a meeting with my Aunt Spring. I’m going no farther than the airstrip. You’re being well paid. Now if you want to keep my family convinced you’re nothing but a flying bus, stop asking questions. You do like being able to play dumb, don’t you?”

He nodded, very slowly, and eyed Hamid. “They know he’s coming?”

“What does it matter? Both of you just hang back and don’t get involved.”

Terry continued to hesitate, even at the offer of an unaware human bodyguard as a meatshield. He told Hamid, “There’s a whole clan of them up there, and they really don’t like outsiders flying in for anything other than in-season hunting, and even then they don’t like you. Family from outside the clan is even less welcome. Especially rich city cousins.”

“So I’ve been told,” Hamid deadpanned.

Terry actually laughed. “Yeah, right. I doubt you know anything. Mrs. Mortcombe, I don’t think you know what you’re going into.”

I headed off towards the plane. Only one way to find out, and at this rate, those doughnuts would be sugary frozen pucks. “Considering my grandparents make me call them by their first names, I’m sure I know what I’m going into.”

Terry harrumphed and stomped after me. “No one else would be stupid enough to fly you out there. I just need the damn money.”

“For what?” I asked without pity.

“Child support or jail. Jail might be better.”

“My cousin isn’t going to do anything to you. Fly the bus and play dumb.”

“Who’s your cousin?”

“Alan.”

He breathed out a big puff of white fluffy air. “Who the hell are you?”

“Who is Alan?” Hamid interjected.

Terry swore again. “The goddamn big boss out there. All those crazy bastards do what he says like it’s gospel. Don’t fuck with any of them, guy. Hunters who go missing out there aren’t lost, if you get what I mean. Just hang way back and do what the woman says, else they’ll kill all of us. Hell, they might kill all of us for breathing their air.”

“Then you won’t have to pay that back child support,” I said dryly.

“Who are you to Alan?” Terry asked.

I looked him dead in the eye. “My name is Winter. I’m the daughter of Rodero and Autumn, and sister of Jerron. Alan is the one who steps aside when Rodero walks by. I am papered purple up and down, backwards, forwards, and I’m also the head of my own little family back east. So do you want to pay that back child support, or make me late for a meeting?”

Hamid shifted the boxes again and his eyes narrowed a fraction.

Terry decided making me late would be significantly worse for his overall health.

The plane was a little single-prop four-seater, which didn’t bother me, but Hamid’s inner ear apparently didn’t appreciate small aircraft that much. I’d even flown little two-seaters before. Not legally, of course, but my crazy ex-neighbor believed all the local kids should know how to fly a plane for the zombie end of days. Not if, but when, the undead crawled out of their graves craving brains. He had no idea I was a werewolf, and probably just as well, since it’d only validate in his mind that the humans hadn’t landed on the Moon either and aliens gutted cows to incubate alien-human hybrids.

Hamid managed to not throw up on the ninety minute flight, but he was more than a little green.

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