16

Keys held securely in your mouth, you pad through the snow, under the dead winter trees, for maybe ten minutes. In the silence and darkness, you forget about Clay, the Bane, and the old pipeline as you pass through a twilight world of shifting shadows and gusting snow—the world as it was ten thousand years ago. Then you suddenly spill back out into the regular world, as if stepping onto a rectangular map laid out on a table. Trucks rumble down a county road; human silhouettes pass under fluorescent lights. The smell of diesel and fast food. One step takes you from the desolate wilderness into what passes for northern New York's civilization: a loading bay behind an Amazon fulfillment center.

It's past midnight and traffic on the nearby road is infrequent, so you lope easily across the street, careful to avoid cameras, until you spot Clay's rusted-out Chevy Astro. You stop in front of the Speedway's big glass windows, because you don't see yourself like this often: a titanic wolf, your bulk prehistorical and monstrous, with enormous canines and bright, clear eyes—intelligent eyes. In the relative darkness of the parking lot, you can't even see any blood on your fur, which is—

Inky black.

Gray.

Dappled gray-brown.

Silver.

White.

Brown.

Red.

Golden.

Blue-gray.

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