In the Barren Ground by Loreth Anne White Read Free Book Online Page A

giving her the chills, not just the howls. She could feel it—something right here. Watching them from the fog. Something heavy and silent and malicious.
    She swallowed.
    Van Bleek resumed his hike up the trail. Tana studied his hulking silhouette as he moved into the distance, trying to catch her breath, to recapture her calm, her control. The man moved with the quiet, coiled, watchful efficiency of a hunter, she thought. A predator himself—as if completely unafraid and in tune with this wild terrain. Tana didn’t trust people who had no fear. Fear was normal, a survival tool. She knew the wilderness, too. She could hunt with the best—had learned from her dad, on those occasions that he’d saved her from her mother and taken her with him, before vanishing for months again, years even. Tana knew fear. Of many kinds. And out here, she was keenly aware that she was a fragile human, with limited night vision, vulnerable against a pack of wolves working in concert from the fringes of darkness. Or any other animal that could see in the night.
    She started after Van Bleek before he vanished entirely into the mist, and she mentally channeled her thoughts onto the tasks that lay ahead. It bolstered her, gave her a renewed sense of purpose.
    Another ten minutes or so into the hike, and a small stone clattered noisily down the rocks to her right. Tana froze, breathing hard. Her heart thumped a steady whump whump whump of blood against her eardrums. Slowly she moved her head, panning her headlamp over the area where she’d heard the noise. But her beam was useless. It bounced back off the fog instead of penetrating it. The sense that something was out there, hidden just behind the wet curtain of mist, intensified.
    Another rock clattered down the slope. She jumped, and became acutely aware of her rifle and her 12-gauge pump action on her pack.
    “You okay down there?” Van Bleek called.
    “Heard something.”
    He ran his headlight across the slope. Twin orangey-red glows suddenly bounced back. Shit . Tana’s stomach jerked.
    “Bear!” she yelled, reaching for her shotgun. She shook free her gloves, put gun stock to shoulder, heart jackhammering. She curled her finger around the trigger. Mist swirled, and the hot orange orbs vanished.
    But it was still there. Just hidden.
    She sighted down the barrel at the spot where the glowing eyes had disappeared, her body anticipating the explosive impact of the bear. If a grizz charged now, she was toast. At this distance, with this visibility, she was unlikely to stop the animal before it was on her, even if she did place her slug just right. Stones clacked to her left.
    She swung her gun after the sound, sweat breaking out on her brow under her hat.
    “Can you see it?” she yelled.
    Van Bleek panned his light slowly across the slope again. Silence was suddenly suffocating. Bears were cunning predators. It could have stalked around behind them. Could be anywhere.
    Time stretched.
    “I think it’s gone!” Van Bleek called from above. Tana waited another moment, then reluctantly lowered her weapon and put her gloves back on. But as she did, out of her peripheral vision, she caught a shadow. She tensed, spun. Her movement caused her boot to slip on a layer of ice underfoot and she went down hard, smacking her elbow into rock. Pain speared up her arm, stealing her breath. Her gun dropped and slid down onto a lower boulder. Fuck.
    Van Bleek turned his spotlight on her.
    “You need a hand?”
    “I’m fine,” she snapped, blinking like a mole into Van Bleek’s beam. “Get that light off me so I can see.” She reached down to retrieve her shotgun, frustration riding her hard. She held onto that emotion, used it to beat back fear before it beat her. “Rocks are slick,” she said as she heaved herself back onto her feet under the weight of her pack. “Why don’t you aim that damn thing where the danger is instead of at me, huh?” Van Bleek was watching her, waiting for her to