“You don’t have to check on me.”
Val scowled. “I’m not going to let anything happen to Mani’s sister. Not on my watch.”
Lacking the energy to argue, I merely nodded and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. Val snatched my wrist. “Wait a minute. If you’re giving out kisses, I’ll be more than happy to take you home.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea.”
“You give me all kinds of ideas.”
Hormones and alcohol often gave me ideas, too, but letting Val have his way seemed like the wrong one at the wrong time. I pulled my wrist free from his grip. “Good night, Val.”
He exhaled a defeated sigh and pushed the door open for me. “‘Night, Solina.”
I stepped out into the cool evening. A glacial breeze from Resurrection Bay caught the loose strands of my hair and sent them dancing. I stopped and inhaled a deep breath of briny sea air, an antidote to the tipsy side effects of the beer. The door closed behind me, and the bar noise fell to a dull thunder, leaving me alone to relish the nighttime quiet.
“Leaving so soon?”
Startled, I spun around to find Aleksander Thorin standing in the shadows at the corner of the bar. “You scared me,” I said and laid a hand over my skittering heart.
Thorin stepped closer and shoved a cell phone into his hip pocket as if he’d recently finished a call. A nearby street lamp illuminated him, and his long, pale hair was incandescent. “It seems I’m stepping on your toes at every turn today.”
“No. You’ve been perfectly… nice.”
Thorin huffed. “Nice?”
What did he want me to say when the truth was that I found him intimidating and tactless? “I think it’s the jet lag. I feel like I’m dead on my feet.”
“Val isn’t giving you a ride?”
“He’s having a good time. I didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, Mani’s place is just down the street. I can walk.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I would feel better knowing you got home safely. Mani would want us watching over his sister.”
I held out my hands in surrender. “All right. If you insist.”
“I do.”
I shrugged and started down the sidewalk. Thorin fell into place beside me. His presence unnerved me in an inexplicable way. He exuded a quiet self-assurance most people my age didn’t possess. Of course, Thorin wasn’t quite my age. I glanced over at him. He was in his early thirties, maybe. Six or seven years older than me, if I had to guess. He was informal in jeans, work boots, and a Carhartt coat, but he wore his casualness like a disguise, a costumed attempt to convince people he was unassuming, laid-back, harmless. It was about as believable as a lion wearing bunny ears.
“How long do you plan to stay in Siqiniq?” Thorin asked.
“Long as it takes.”
“Long as what takes?”
I shoved my hands deep into my jean pockets and bunched my shoulders. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what business is it of yours?”
“Mani was one of my best people. He was with me from the beginning of my business. His death hurt us all—broke everyone’s heart, but we’ve started to recover. I’m worried your being here will be like tearing the scab off a slow-healing wound.”
I stopped and crossed my arms over my chest. Exasperation buzzed through me. “Do you think I came all the way up here because I was worried about maintaining the status quo?”
Shadows hid Thorin’s expression, but indignation rolled off him in palpable waves. “It’s more than status quo that I’m worried about. Your presence here is bound to attract attention—and not in a good way. Whatever evil found Mani is likely to come after you as well.”
“That’s my problem, though, isn’t it?” I said and started down the sidewalk again. I kicked up my pace. Thorin stayed back, letting me have my distance, but he shadowed me until I reached the safety of Mani’s apartment. Thorin’s concerns about stirring up Mani’s troubles were not unique. I had worried about the same thing as I deliberated over the decision to come to Alaska, and I hoped the results would prove worth the risk.
In spite of, or possibly because of, my jet lag, I slept uneasily. Images of Mani’s murder haunted me—as they had almost every night since his death—calling for vengeance. Hokey as it sounds, a vision of my brother’s murder had come to me the same night he was attacked. In the dream, Mani’s killer hid behind a mask—a wolf panting hot, carrion breath. My brother’s blood dripped from his fangs.
I had suffered that dream countless times since that first night, especially whenever I was exhausted or frazzled. After a day of cross-country travel and Thorin’s lush party, I was both of those things, mixed with too many beers and shots of crappy tequila. And because my transition from consciousness to sleep happens like a slowly descending escalator rather than a plunge from a cliff, I can’t always discern delusion from reality. It probably happens that way for everyone, but the difference is that most of my dreams come true.
Tonight the nightmare was visceral, vivid and almost impossible to escape. I woke up screaming. The walls surrounding me were Mani’s, the same walls from my nightmare, and while some small part of me knew I was awake, my panic insisted I was still in the dream, the wolf was nearby, and he was coming for me. I rolled out of bed, clutching the bedclothes to my chest, and backed into the corner. My knees gave way, and I sank to the floor, shaking and gasping for breath.
When no blood-crazed beast lunged at me from the shadows, I allowed myself to believe it was the same bad dream as always. After a couple of deep, steadying breaths, the worst of my terror drained away. I wiped a fist across my eyes, as if the gesture might rub away the last of the lingering images. Then I rose on wobbly legs and stumbled to the kitchen. In the refrigerator, I found several bottles of water. I grabbed one, snapped the lid, and guzzled. The cold pierced my sinuses, but I ignored the pain and emptied the bottle in a few desperate gulps.
Given enough time, the words and visions in my nightmare would distill into random flickers and vague images. They always did. Maybe my subconscious dealt with debilitating terror by locking it somewhere deep down inside. Only at night, in sleep, could my nightmare fully escape.
But no matter how much I repressed the details, one thing always remained. One obsession fastened itself to my psyche and burned there no matter the time of day, whether I was awake or asleep. Mani’s killer spoke in a low, growling voice, and in his final words to my fading brother, he said: “I have swallowed the moon; my brother shall swallow the sun. The beast will rise and swallow the world, man and god.”
Chapter Three
Half awake, bleary eyed, and still in my pajamas, I sat on Mani’s sofa and clutched a mug of scalding coffee. The pale light of early morning stole through the living-room window and gave the space a spectral quality. Across the room, a pile of Mani’s belongings stared at me, issuing a silent challenge.
Initially, my parents had insisted on hiring a moving service to box up everything and ship it home for us to sort out there. Mom and Dad wanted nothing to do with Alaska and often behaved as though the last three years of my brother’s life hadn’t happened. They swallowed the unfairness of his death and their own impotency like some sort of inevitable, bitter pill. They wanted me to do the same, kept telling me to “let it go.” They almost had me convinced, too; I was never a risk taker. But the nightmares refused to relent. The more I tried to ignore them, the more they persisted. The dreams strained my rationality and took a toll on my well-being. My work suffered, my relationships –the few I had—fell apart. Do something, I had said to myself. Do something before you lose yourself completely.
