They hadn’t stayed in the Whyte Plain for long. The Shadows had become more and more dangerous as of late. Not even Ansuya knew why. William couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the reason the Shadows seemed more agitated and more organized and twice as dangerous as they had been previously was because of what had happened over the course of the last two years. The City Under the Mountain had been sacked and burned and on top of that, the vampires had relearned the ability to dominate wolves.

  That little tidbit still gave him shivers. He thought about the old grey and his pack in the woods back in California. If anything had happened to them, he would never forgive himself. He had nightmares sometimes about the old grey attacking him. But instead of their first contest together, that night he first turned, the old grey had been controlled by vampires and kept coming at him, either ripping William’s throat out, or forcing William to kill him. Those nightmares always made him jerk awake in a cold sweat.

  “Hey, you awake?” Ansuya asked with a touch of concern in her voice.

  William shook his head, “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, I was just thinking about something.”

  “The old grey?” Ansuya asked.

  William stopped cold and stared at her. “How do you know about him?”

  Ansuya gazed deeply into his eyes, her gaze was not harsh, nor was it comforting, it simply was, in that almost disturbing way that she was able to hide all emotions even from the one place where your emotions were supposed to show. The windows to her soul, were well guarded it seemed.

  “You have cried out once or twice since coming into the desert. Mostly it has been startled yelps as you woke up. But once or twice before waking you muttered something about the old grey. Who is he?” Her voice was not condescending, nor was it maternal. It commanded obedience and respect. In this case William found that he was grateful to talk about his one-time rival from the animal kingdom.

  They were walking eastward across the desert. It was night, with stars thrown out against the blue-black curtain of night. The moon dominated the sky but she wasn’t yet full. The intense moonlight in the desert was enough to light their way and they had no trouble seeing where they were going.

  William told Ansuya about the grey wolf he had met and fought with the night he first turned in the forest. He didn’t know what the wolf called himself, so he had referred to him as the old grey. It just seemed to fit. He talked a little about why he was forced to leave, being guided by Aceso, which at the time he didn’t know was Aceso. And the guilt he still felt for abandoning his first pack, leaving them to those agents that came for him in the woods. The guilt and pain of what he may have brought down upon the heads of his pack weighed heavily on him, even now after all this time. They were animals and wouldn’t understand why whatever was happening to them was happening. He hoped they were ok, he really just wanted to know that they were ok.

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  Ansuya didn’t speak as William relayed his tale. When he was finished speaking, she looked up towards the heavens and the clear desert star filled sky. “If you want answers Will, I have none to give you. This guilt has been with you for a long while. I knew it was there, but only now do I know where it came from.”

  She looked over at him as they walked, “We are of nature, nature is cruel and sometimes very ugly. Humans don’t have a monopoly on cruelty. And you can’t save everyone, or everything. What difference does it make if one of your pack was killed by a gunshot or by falling down a mountain while it was chasing a deer? Does one leave the wolf more alive than the other?” She slowly shook her head, “We connect with and change the course of people’s and animal’s destiny’s just by interacting with them. Would you try to grip all the strings of fate in your hands and direct mankind through your will? Not even the Gods have that kind of power.”

  William glanced over at her as she spoke. He knew that what she was saying made sense. And he knew that she was correct. But that just made his guilt run deeper. If he had never gone to that forest, then his pack’s fate would have been directed by nature, not by him and what he was, and those that wanted him dead because of it.

  Ansuya gripped his shoulder. She held his eyes in hers, “If you had never gone to that forest, you might very well be dead. Its possible that the harsh conditions of living in those woods conditioned you to be able to withstand the extreme strain upon your body with your first change. Do you think your pack would want you dead? Would you rather be dead instead of the person you are now? There have been moments of happiness in your life and you have affected many people in the Mountain. You are a value to your pack now, as you were back then. Would you dare to tell me that those actions, those people’s whose lives you have altered, have honestly been mostly bad and regrettable?”

  William thought about saying yes. He wanted to. But he also knew that would be just sarcasm and self-pity. He knew that Ansuya knew the answer and he also knew that she really didn’t need an answer, he did however shake his head.

  Ansuya didn’t reply but walked silently next to him till they stopped. The sun was starting to light up the night sky and they knew that they had to wait out the heat of the day. They made camp and fell asleep.

  That evening the pack arose and set off again east into the desert.

  None of them knew exactly what they were doing, or where they were going. They knew that they were probably being hunted by federal agents as key witnesses to the incident that they had left in the port of San Francisco. Which is why they were traveling through the desert and not along one of the few high ways that cut across it. They didn’t want their journey impeded by some random state trooper spotting them and bringing them in for questioning.