“We have to try,” Alpha said firmly. “I think this is our fate, Lucky—to live here and grow our Pack. That’s what the Spirit Dogs want for us. We must become stronger, not weaker, until it’s impossible for any other dog to suffer as Whisper did.”
Storm’s ears twitched at the mention of the gray dog.
“Poor Whisper,” Twitch muttered.
“He was such a good dog,” Lucky agreed. “So eager to please. It’s cruel for a dog like that to have been taken from us.”
“Whisper always had a good heart,” Twitch said. “When I was a Lone Dog out in the forest, I’d just lost my leg and I was desperate for a Pack, something to belong to . . . I found Terror’s Pack, and I thought he was going to kill me on the spot. He even had the others baying for my blood. But Whisper talked him down.”
Storm’s ears pricked up at this. She’d always had the impression that Whisper was too scared of Terror to even breathe in his presence, let alone convince him to spare a dog’s life!
“How did he manage that?” Alpha asked, echoing Storm’s thoughts.
“He told Terror I would be more . . . amusing . . . to keep in the Pack for a while. After a few days, I’d proved myself capable, and I think Terror forgot all about my leg. He just saw me as another one of his Pack, another dog to manipulate and frighten. It was a bad life. But it was a life, and I owed it all to Whisper.”
“I wish the pups had waited a few more days to come,” Alpha said. “I was glad to meet them, of course, but I feel as if I never had the chance to mourn Whisper properly. I wish I’d known him longer, and better. He was a Good Dog.”
Storm rolled over onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart ached, like the slowly healing wound in her hind leg.
I still don’t know for certain how he died—or what things I do after I’ve fallen asleep. I have to get to the bottom of all this, but until I do, I won’t let myself put the other dogs in danger.
She sat up straight, dragging herself away from her position of comfort and forcing her eyes open.
I mustn’t sleep too deeply. I must get to the truth.
I owe Whisper that much.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Storm sat up on her hind legs, leaning against the trunk of a tree at the edge of the camp, and watched the sky get lighter and lighter. The Sun-Dog would begin his journey across the sky any minute, and Storm would be waiting to greet him, just like she had been the previous day, and the one before.
She could hear dogs starting to stir in their dens—the hunters scrabbling and the Patrol Dogs snuffling, and even the faint squeaking yaps of the four pups. Down by the pond, three dark shapes moved against the bright grass, coming toward the camp. For a moment, though she knew that they were dogs, Storm couldn’t pick out their individual shapes. Then she blinked and the fog in front of her eyes cleared, and she could see that the dogs were Daisy, Thorn, and Beetle.
“Good morning,” Daisy panted, as they trotted past Storm and into the camp. “You’re up early.” She cocked her head just slightly as she said it, one ear lifting in curiosity.
“It’s a lovely morning,” Storm said, and gave Daisy what she hoped was a reassuring blink. It’s all right. I haven’t been sleepwalking.
Daisy seemed to accept this and followed the others into the camp with her tail wagging.
“Let’s eat,” she said to the other two, “and then I’m going straight to the den.”
Storm turned to watch the Patrol Dogs as they approached the prey pile and began to pick out their ration of leftovers from the previous night. They would take enough to replenish their strength, and the rest would be shared between the other dogs when they awoke. In fact, she could see the new patrol getting up, stretching, and preparing to leave the camp—Breeze, Ruff, and Rake would be going out next. They stood close to the three night Patrol Dogs, but they didn’t speak, not even to ask if there was anything to report, or to say good morning.
Strange, Storm thought, as she watched them. I never noticed before . . . Alpha’s Pack and Twitch’s Pack don’t really talk very much. It’s not that they’re snapping or growling at one another. They’re all good dogs—they’re just not talking.
She knew that sometimes when the Packs worked together, arguments broke out—especially after Whisper’s death—but surely it couldn’t be a good idea to let the patrols split themselves up like this?
Does Alpha know? Should I tell her?
No, that was a foolish idea. Storm stretched out, arching her back until it gave a satisfying crunch. Nobody asked my opinion. I’m sure it’ll be fine.
The sky grew even brighter, and Storm found herself blinking more and more, trying to clear the strange gritty texture from the corners of her eyes. Her paws felt hot and sore—she had gone hunting yesterday, and despite her exhaustion she had felt more alive than ever, pounding over the grass as if the Wind-Dogs were with her. Keeping herself awake last night had been hard, but the wobbly feeling in her legs was almost pleasant when it came with such an intense feeling of triumph.
Storm had stayed awake for two days and two nights, except for snatched moments of sleep here and there, and she hadn’t gone walking in her dreams, or done anything without being aware of it. She felt as if she was perfectly in control of herself, contained somehow, almost as if the rest of the world could not even touch her.
She felt a rumble in her stomach, stretched again, and headed for the prey pile. I haven’t been out patrolling all night, she thought, but I’ve been protecting the Pack, in my own way.
Daisy, Thorn, and Beetle had finished eating and gone into the patrol den. As Storm passed the shady, enclosed space she could hear the scuffling of their pawsteps as they trod their sleep circles, ready to settle down. She felt a small pang of envy, but put it out of her mind. She didn’t need sleep—she just needed something to eat, and she would be fine. . . .
The Sun-Dog was rising and the light was changing, even as she walked across the camp toward the leftover prey. The great bright dog leaped into the sky, and the streams of light and shadow leaped with him. Between the trees, the sharp light and deep black shifted around, and Storm saw . . . a dog.
A dog who could not be there.
She was tall and sleek, her pointed black ears like shards of broken clear-stone. Her eyes were points of light that held Storm frozen to the spot with dread.
It can’t be. Blade is dead!
But Storm could see her, could see her eyes blinking, her dark shape outlined against the shifting patterns of light between the trees. Storm’s stomach churned and the camp seemed to tip up under her paws, almost like a new Growl of the Earth-Dog. . . .
And then she blinked and Blade was gone, and the Earth-Dog was still once more. Storm stared into the trees, panting fast, her chest tight with worry. But there was nothing there.
“Storm, are you all right?” some dog barked, and Storm forced herself to tear her gaze away from the spot where she had seen—had thought she’d seen—the Fierce Dog Alpha. Snap looked from Storm to the trees, and Storm could see in the small female’s eyes that she wasn’t seeing anything out of the ordinary.
“Yes, fine. Just thinking. Sorry.” It was the Sun-Dog playing tricks on me, Storm thought, looking away. That’s all. He knows I’ve been thinking about Fierce Dogs and bad dogs, and he tried to scare me. But it won’t work.
Blade was dead, defeated by Storm and her Packmates, drowned in the frozen river.
Storm went to the prey pile and sniffed among the scraps, her teeth almost closing on the remains of a scrawny squirrel, when she smelled something that made her recoil, blinking hard.
“Yuck!” she whined. “What is that?”
Something was wrong here. Something rotten was in the prey pile.
It was happening again.
She tried to fight back the urge to panic. Maybe whoever did it last time didn’t think we got sick enough. Maybe they want the whole Pack to go down. To weaken us . . . or kill some dog.
S
torm forced herself to lean forward again, to nose at the prey, turning over the squirrel and the piece of mouse underneath it. The smell grew stronger as she dug down, but she couldn’t find any rotten prey like the rat that was buried last time—there was just something wrong. The smell was sweet and sickly and foul all at the same time, and it was all over the prey she’d been just about to gobble down.
We didn’t tell any dog, she thought, stepping back, her vision swimming for a second. We didn’t tell anyone about the rat, and now it’s happened again. Stupid! We should have told the whole Pack. Why didn’t I think that this might happen?
She was backing off, sniffing hard, trying to clear the smell from her muzzle so that she could run to the bone pile and search for the bad prey that had done this, when her hind legs struck something soft, and she stumbled.
“Watch out, Storm,” said Lucky kindly. “With those big paws of yours, you could tread a smaller dog into the ground—” His eyes met hers and he stopped. “Storm, what is it?”
“The prey . . .” Storm whined. “There’s something wrong with it.”
Lucky stepped forward and sniffed the prey pile, recoiling with a shudder. “What is that?”
“Something rotten,” Storm answered, without thinking. Before she could say any more, a plaintive whine split the air. It was coming from the Patrol Dogs’ den. Storm spun around and bounded the few steps from the prey pile to the den just in time to see Daisy step outside on unsteady paws. She looked up at Storm with huge, watery eyes.
“Oh, Storm . . . I don’t feel well at all. . . .”
Storm could see that she was sick. The little white dog was panting hard, and her ears couldn’t seem to keep still. She was twitching from nose to tail.
“What’s going on?” said Bella’s voice, hollow with fear. “Is it—is it back? The sickness?” Storm looked over her shoulder and found the other Pack Dogs starting to gather around, worry and disgust in their faces.
“There’s something bad in the food,” Lucky said. He turned to face the other dogs, standing between them and the prey pile. “Be careful, stand back.”
“It must be from yesterday’s hunt,” Bruno muttered. His voice rose as he went on. “The hunting party must have brought back prey that was sick. Why didn’t any dog smell it? Who knows how many of us might get sick this time?”
Storm bristled at his accusing tone. That’s just what a dog would say if they had planted the bad prey here. She stopped herself from saying it just in time. It wouldn’t help Daisy for her to start throwing accusations around too. Instead she looked at Lucky, willing him to respond. He had been on the hunt along with her, and Mickey, and Twitch. . . .
“No, we would have scented it,” Twitch said firmly. “We’ve been so careful—after the last time, we’ve been keeping alert for signs of sickness. We checked it all, and it was good prey.”
“Twitch is right,” Lucky agreed. “Nothing we brought back yesterday smelled like this does.”
Bruno still seemed dissatisfied. His ear flicked and he looked right at Storm. “Maybe some dog wasn’t as careful as the rest of you,” he said.
Mickey let out a low growl, his black-and-white tail swishing low against the ground. “If something was wrong with the prey we brought last night, why aren’t we all sick now? Why didn’t any of us smell this? Some sick creature must have crawled into the prey pile and died overnight,” he added. “That’s the only way it could have gone this bad this fast.”
It’s not the only way. Storm looked for Arrow in the crowd of anxious dogs. He was standing beside Bella, steadying her as she kneaded the ground with her paws, but his eyes were searching the faces of the dogs nearby. They finally fell on Storm’s.
What can we say? What will the others say if we come out with our suspicion now—that there’s a bad dog in the camp, sabotaging our food?
Lucky had scolded her like a puppy when she had tried to suggest that a dog killed Whisper. Even when the Pack had listened to her ideas and discussed them, they seemed to have dismissed them.
If I try to tell them, they’ll just call me a troublemaker . . . and if Arrow says something, they might just turn on him and say he did it himself.
Daisy whimpered again, and Storm turned away from Arrow and the other dogs and bent her head to the small, sick dog, giving her a soft, tentative lick on the ear.
“I think I’m sick too,” said Thorn, who had come to the entrance of the patrol den but couldn’t seem to walk any farther. She lay down, with her nose just poking out into the sunshine. “I feel so . . . weak. . . .”
Moon scrambled past the others, past Lucky and Storm, to lie down with her muzzle beside her sick pup’s. “It’s all right,” she murmured. “You’re going to be all right. Beetle, are you in there?”
Thorn’s litter-brother took a few hesitant steps out of the patrol den, but he didn’t seem stiff or dizzy—just frightened.
“I’m here,” he said. “I don’t feel sick.”
“Beetle, did you eat after you came in from the hunt?” Storm asked urgently.
“No,” Beetle said, in a small voice. “I wasn’t hungry. . . . Daisy and Thorn were both hungry, but I wasn’t, and now . . .”
“You see?” Mickey snapped, turning to Bruno. “It was only the morning prey that was sick!”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Lucky said, though Storm didn’t think that he sounded entirely convinced about that. “We can’t stand here arguing about it! Mickey, Dart, take all the prey—carefully—and bury it. Not in the bone pile—somewhere far away from camp.”
“Yes, Beta,” said Mickey, and bravely stepped forward to pick up the bad food in his jaws. Dart came a little more hesitantly, her flanks shuddering and her tail between her legs, but she picked up the remains of the mouse and followed Mickey out of the camp at a scrabbling run.
“I’ll take another hunting party out right away,” Lucky said, “to replenish the prey pile. And we’ll move it, in case the sickness is in the ground on this spot. Bruno, you can join me—perhaps then you’ll believe that we’ve checked the prey properly,” he added, with an edge in his voice.
Bruno stood up straight, but his ears twisted back at the same time, and he couldn’t quite meet his Beta’s eyes. Storm was comforted to see that he at least seemed a little bit ashamed.
Lucky looked around at the other dogs. “Bella, if you’re up to it, and Snap, why don’t you come too? We’ll take Twitch as our scout dog.”
Storm waited to hear her name, but Lucky didn’t go on. She blinked, surprised and disappointed. Her aching paws itched to go for a run, to get her heart beating and stamp down the rising tide of exhaustion that lapped at her legs all the time now. “Beta, don’t you want to bring a few more hunters?” she asked. “I could—”
“No, Storm,” said Lucky. Storm cocked one ear—Lucky hadn’t even let her get her request out before he’d cut her off. “I want you to go down to the river and gather the long grasses that grow there—Moon says they helped settle the sick dogs’ stomachs last time.”
“Grasses?” For a moment, Storm wasn’t sure she had heard him right—she heard a buzzing noise in her ears, like an angry fly had landed on top of her head. It wasn’t that she minded helping Sunshine out with her chores, when it was needed—but surely Lucky had made a mistake? “But I can hunt, and Omega—”
“Omega will have plenty to do tending to Daisy and Thorn,” Lucky said sternly. “More to the point, I don’t want to send her to the river. Not when I can’t guarantee she’ll be safe from the foxes or the coyotes. You can look after yourself.”
Storm dipped her head in understanding. It wasn’t the same as catching prey, following their delicious scents across the meadows and through the forests until she could outrun or outwit them, killing them with a quick, clean bite to the throat . . . but it would mean a run down to the river, at least.
The hunting party gathered, and the rest of the dogs started to split up and wander away, either joining their sick Packm
ates or crawling back to their dens. Storm gave Daisy another encouraging nudge with her muzzle, and when she looked up, Bruno was the only dog still looking at her, suspicion lingering on his face.
“You shouldn’t question your Beta, Fierce Pup,” he muttered, and Storm blinked at him in stunned annoyance. Was he really going to lecture her about this? “Better be careful to gather the right plants—your recklessness could lead to dogs getting more sick, you know?” He turned away, not waiting for a reply, and followed Lucky toward the edge of the camp. Storm could only watch him go with her jaw hanging open.
What did I ever do to you? Storm wondered. A strange pulsing sensation was starting up between her eyes. Most of the other dogs have accepted that Fierce Dogs aren’t to blame for everything that goes wrong—why can’t you?
Storm grabbed another mouthful of grass between her jaws and tugged, her paws slipping slightly on the muddy bank of the river. The grass held firm for a moment longer, and then with a sucking, tearing sound it ripped free of its roots, spraying mud up into Storm’s face.
Storm dropped the damp grass onto the growing pile by her side, blinked, and shook her head hard to try to throw off the mud droplets.
It’s not a punishment. This isn’t a punishment. I didn’t do anything wrong. Lucky sent me because he trusts me. Because he knows I’ll come back safely. It isn’t a punishment.
It really felt like one, though.
Storm picked up her pile of wet, muddy grasses and trotted farther upstream, looking for a few more clumps to pick. Despite her annoyance at being sent to do this job, she wanted to do it well. She couldn’t help thinking of poor Daisy and Thorn, wondering if she could have stopped them from getting sick in the first place. If only she had noticed the rotten prey earlier. Or if she had been brave enough to tell everyone the first time the prey had been tampered with . . .
She also didn’t want to have to make two trips.
Storm sniffed and nuzzled through the grasses on the bank, looking for a bunch that she could get her jaws around, but as she walked she suddenly found her head had drooped and her eyes were almost closed. She wrenched her head up and made herself open her eyes. She couldn’t sleep now. The sick dogs were relying on her.