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A gunshot answered from somewhere not too distant, somewhere in the woods beyond.

There was a sudden crash in the frozen bracken outside. Then a steady, fleeting beat of animal footsteps—several sets—racing near the mouth of the cave.

Wolves.

The pack split up, half running to the right of the cave’s entrance, half darting to the left of it. And behind them by only a few seconds, the sounds of human voices, armed men in dogged pursuit.

“This way,” one of them shouted. “Whole goddamn pack ran up this ridge, Dave!”

“You men take the westerly path,” a thunderous voice commanded in reply. “Lanny and I’ll take the ridge on foot. There’s a cave up this way—good chance one or more of the mangy bastards are hiding inside.”

The buzz of revving engines and the stench of burning gasoline filled the air as some of the men sped off. A few moments later, outside the cave’s mouth, in the daylight that barred the only route of escape, the silhouettes of two people holding long rifles took shape. The man in front was large, with a barrel chest and broad shoulders and a belly that might have been muscular in younger years but had since turned to flab. The man with him was a full foot shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter, a timid creature with a thready voice.

“I don’t think there’s anything in here, Dave. And I’m really not sure it’s a good idea for us to split off from the others …”

Confined to the shadows, the cave’s sole occupant shrank back behind a wall of jagged rock—but not soon enough.

“There! I just saw a pair of eyes glowing inside here. What’d I tell ya, Lanny? We got one of those goddamn bastards right fucking here!” The big man’s voice was eager with aggression as he raised his weapon. “Shine that flashlight and let me see what I’m shooting at, will ya?”

“Uh, okay, Dave.” His nervous companion fumbled the task, clicking on the beam and sending it in a shaky bounce around the floor and walls of the cave. “Do you see it anywhere? I don’t see nothing in here at all.”

Of course he didn’t, because the glowing gaze the larger man had seen just a moment ago was no longer low to the ground but looking down on the pair of humans from where the hunter now clung to the rock ceiling above their heads, poised over them in the dark like a spider.

The big man lowered his weapon. “What the hell? Where the fuck could it have gone?”

“We shouldn’t be here, Dave. I think we should go find the others …”

The big man took a few more steps into the cave. “Don’t be such a pussy. Give me that light.”

As the smaller man reached out to hand it over, his boot caught on a loose rock. He stumbled, went down on his knees with a yelp of pain and surprise. “Oh, shit! I think I cut myself!”

The coppery proof of it rose up in a sudden olfactory blast. The scent of fresh blood drilled into the predator’s nostrils. He breathed it in and hissed it back out of his lungs through his bared teeth and fangs.

Below him on the floor of the cave, the nervous little man’s head jerked upward. His stricken face went slack with horror under the alien, amber glow of now-thirsting eyes.

He screamed, his voice as high and curdled as a human girl’s.

At the same time, the big man wheeled around with his rifle.

The cave exploded with a sharp crack of gunfire and a blinding flash of light as the predator leapt from his hold on the rocks overhead and launched himself at the pair of humans.

Alex couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so deeply or so uninterruptedly. Nor could she recall ever feeling quite so spent and sated as she did after making love with Kade. She stretched beneath the fluffy pile of blankets and sleeping bags on the floor, then rose up on her elbow to watch him as he added more wood to the fire in the cabin’s little pipe stove.

He crouched on his haunches, the thick muscles of his back and arms bunching and flexing as he pivoted to place another log in the stove, his smooth skin bathed in the warm amber glow of the firelight. His short black hair was a bed-rumpled