Author's Note: Monster Nation is now listed as "in stock" on Amazon. You might check that out--just click on the link over to the right. While you're there you could help me out by writing a nice reader review (assuming you read it!). Also, if you've preordered it, or if you order it now, email me and tell me you want the new chapbook. Please specify that you want the chapbook for Monster Nation. The chapbook for Monster Island is still available to anyone who bought that book, too. Thanks!--Dave

A duck slid in on the wind and flapped to a landing on the perfect mirror surface of the lake. Thick velvety ripples of black water hurried away from its body as it cruised serenely along. The breeze off the water made the quaking aspens rattle and shiver.

Chey’s weapon swung through the air and sighted on the duck as if the handgun were mounted on ball bearings. It felt like her arm didn’t move at all. She’d trained long and hard so it would feel like that.

“Remember,” Fenech said, “you have to be close.”

“I know. You told me already,” she said, slipping the gun into her back pocket. She had seven bullets and she wasn’t about to waste any, though she was pretty sure she would only need one. Or maybe two.

“Silver’s different from lead,” Fenech went on. Once he got started you had to just let him go until he wound down. “It’s soft enough but its melting point is way higher. A lead bullet partially liquefies as it passes through the weapon. In its semi-liquid state it can be twisted around by the rifling in the barrel so when it emerges from the muzzle it’s actually spinning on its long axis. The spin is what gives a bullet its accuracy. Silver bullets don’t melt when you fire them so they don’t spin. At more than twenty meters you’re unlikely to hit the side of a wood buffalo.” He smiled at his own jest. “So you need to be close.”

“Close,” she said. “Got it.”

His smile deepened a little. Turned warm. In his own way he really could be affectionate, even caring. “How are you?” he asked. “It can’t have been easy getting this far. You look great, though.”

She nodded and bit her lip. How to tell him? Would he freak out? Would he shoot her on the spot?

“You know I always thought you were crazy for wanting to hike in like this.”

“It was the only way,” she said. “My cover story was that I was completely lost and near death. I had to look the part—well enough to fool somebody who’s lived in these woods for decades.”

“Have you seen him yet?” Fenech asked. She hadn’t said much in her message. He had no idea what had happened to her. “Did you make contact?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I made contact. He has a cabin about two kilometers from here in a little clearing. He lives there with another guy, a Dene Indian named Dzo.”

She’d thought the pilot of the helicopter was asleep. When she mentioned Dzo’s name, however, he let out a little grunt of humor.

“Something amuse you, Lester?” Fenech asked, a cockeyed grin on his face.

The pilot sat up a bit. His eyes were hidden under deep, pouchy lids but they sparkled when they met Chey’s gaze. “That’s probably not his real name, is all,” the pilot said.

Fenech turned halfway around. “It’s not a common Dene name?”

The pilot shrugged. “In North Slavey language, that’s the word for the musquash. The, you know, you call it the muskrat down south. Little furry thing. It’s like if your name was Chipmunk.”

“Is that so. You know Lester’s a pretty funny name where I come from.”

The pilot shrugged again and closed his eyes, done with the conversation.

“Bobby,” she interjected, “let’s worry about that later, okay? I made contact. I made really bad contact. There’s been a complication with the plan.”

Fenech’s face hardened and he nodded. He was ready to hear it.

“He scratched my leg with one of his claws. While he was a wolf.”

He looked down at her leg, concern growing across his face. “So you need medical attention? We’ll fly you out of here right now,” Fenech offered.

She shook her head. “No, Bobby, you don’t understand. He scratched me, and that’s all it takes. I’m one of them now.”

She swallowed painfully. There was a thickness in her throat she didn’t fully understand.

“I’m a wolf, too, now,” she said, and watched him take a step back, just like she’d known he would. His face stayed perfectly still but his eyes widened a little.

“Oh, boy,” he said. he brought one hand up and scratched at his spiky hair. “Oh, boy,” he said again. “Alright. So we scrub the mission. I mean, we need to move forward but not—not like this. I know some guys I can bring in.”

“You’re going to call in the Mounties on this?” she shouted. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Not exactly. Not any official police,” he said carefully. “Just some guys I happen to know. I mean, that’s what I wanted to do in the first place.”

“No,” Chey insisted.

“No?” he asked, and it was an actual question. “Because it looks like maybe you’ve screwed this up. In the worst way possible.”

“No,” she repeated. “This is my operation. I fucking deserve it.”

He couldn’t very well argue with that. He looked like he was about to try, though, and might have started in on her again if Lester the pilot hadn’t cleared his throat just then.

“If you two are at a good stopping place,” he said, “you might notice we’ve got guests.”

Fenech and Chey swiveled in unison to look down the side of the lake. Dzo’s rusted truck was moving through the trees down there, its windshield catching sporadic winks of sunlight as it rumbled through the shadows.

Powell leaned out of the driver’s side window and shouted her name. The soft syllable flapped around in the tree tops and echoed off the surface of the lake.

“Chey,” he yelled again. “I just want to talk to you, that’s all,” he called.

Chey muttered a curse and turned to look at her handler, but Fenech’s eyes were invisible behind his sunglasses. He was smiling but she had no idea what that meant.

“When you said you made contact,” he told her, “I assumed that meant you’d set up a position and had him visually. I didn’t think you’d been properly introduced. Does he know about me? Did you tell him you already had a boyfriend?”

“I had no weapon at the time. I needed to get close. I did what I had to.”

Powell jumped out of the truck. Maybe he’d spotted the helicopter. He came loping around the side of the lake and then stopped twenty meters away. He looked more confused than anything. “Chey,” he said, closing the gap. Ten meters. Eight. “Chey, you can’t leave me now. You know that.”

“Bobby,” she said, “I’d like you to meet—”

“I don’t want to meet him. You know what I want,” Fenech said.

She nodded and drew her weapon. Powell was six meters away. She sighted on his forehead.

“Chey?” he asked.