"I think I got it," McKendrick said breathlessly with his back pressed hard against the door. "Winged it, at least."
Veitch wasn't so sure. Anna and Tom waited anxiously in the centre of the room; it was apparent from their faces they had been as disturbed by the howling. McKendrick and Veitch looked at each other, but it was the older man who finally gave voice to what they were both thinking.
"It was a wolf, I'm sure of it."
Anna shook her head furiously. "You're Joking! There haven't been wolves here for centuries."
"But this was once their homeland," Tom mused. "Perhaps they've returned."
"With the forests," Veitch added.
"How?" Anna asked. "That's crazy!"
McKendrick went to the window and peered out cautiously. "Crazy things are happening all the time these days," he mumbled.
"Are you sure it was a wolf?" Tom said pointedly. "Not a man?"
Veitch knew what he was implying. "Bit bigger than normal, but nothing out of the ordinary."
Anna looked at them both curiously, but said nothing.
"If you did hit it, we might be able to track it at first light. Follow the blood," Veitch said confidently. "It would be easier if we could see the bleedin' thing. We don't stand a chance out there in the dark."
This seemed like the most sensible course of action, so while Anna retired to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, the men sat by the fire, slowly feeling their heartbeats return to normal.
McKendrick retired an hour later, and while Tom dozed fitfully in a chair in front of the fire, Veitch attempted to make up a bed on the floor in one corner. Anna helped him, talking animatedly in a hushed voice.
"Sorry if I'm rattling on," she said with a giggle. "It seems like ages since I've had a body to talk to. Apart from my da', that is."
Veitch lay back on the collection of cushions with his arms behind his head. "He seems like he's got it pretty much together now. He's a tough bloke. Bit of a no-nonsense life he's got going up here. Maybe it's time to get back to your life."
She looked wistful. "I don't know. I can't be selfish-"
"You've got to be, sometimes. Otherwise you can just give up your life to all these responsibilities everyone throws at you. They'll never stop."
She stifled a yawn, then lay down next to him, staring up at the ceiling. "That sounds like a lot of sense. Right now. But then I'll catch him looking at Mum's photo and crying when he doesn't think I'm around-"
"Don't you get lonely?"
She turned to look at him with her deep, dark eyes. "Sometimes."
He rolled on to his side and propped his head with his arm. "You look like you like big fun. You're gonna go stir crazy in this place after a while."
"Sometimes I think I already have." She shrugged. "You know how everybody needs something in their lives they believe in? Well, this croft is Dad's thing. For all the blood and sweat that goes into it and the poverty that comes out, he loves it. He'd die if he moved away. It looks boring, bleak, hard. But then you get up on an autumn morning to see the dawn slowly moving across the mountains in orange and brown. And you hear the wind across the hillsides on a winter's night, almost like it's a real person."
"So what do you believe in?"
"Right now, looking after a man who raised a bairn while managing to keep body and soul together in a place like this. He's sacrificed for me. It's the least I can do in return. The very least."
Veitch rolled back, his expression faintly puzzled, vaguely troubled.
"And what do you believe in?"
That question troubled him even more. "Still looking for it, I reckon."
She leaned over and gently touched the tattoo on his forearm; her fingers were cool, the contact hot. "Tell me about these." She smiled with mock lasciviousness. "Do they go all the way down?"
Before he could reply, the door to the bedroom swung open and McKendrick glared out. "Anna! To bed. Now," he hissed.
She smiled at Veitch a little sadly, but there was nothing else to say.
The gale picked up during the night, whistling in the chimney and clattering around the eaves. Veitch woke repeatedly, reminded of Anna's description of the wind as a real person; at times he was convinced he could hear an insistent voice, warning or challenging. Over near the dying embers of the fire, Tom grumbled and twitched in his sleep. Veitch checked his watch: 3 a.m. Shouldn't be too long until dawn.
A rattling ran along the length of the roof. He sat bolt upright in shock an instant before he realised it was still the wind. He wouldn't be surprised if half the tiles were off come morning. He lay back down, but the rattling sound came back in the opposite direction.
His instincts jangled. Slowly he raised himself on his elbows and listened. It didn't sound like the wind at all. It sounded like there was someone on the roof.
A shower of soot fell down the chimney and the fire flared. His attention snapped to it, but his mind was already racing ahead. The resounding crash against the front door had him to his feet in an instant; it was so hard he thought it was going to burst the door from its hinges.
Tom staggered to his feet, still half asleep. "What… what in heaven's name…?"
Veitch ran to the window and peeked out. A large grey wolf which looked, in his state of heightened tension, as big as a Shetland pony, was hurling itself at the door. With each impact, the hinges strained a little more. Veitch struggled briefly to make sense of the wolf's unnatural actions before jumping back and yelling, "McKendrick! Bring your gun!"
But the crofter was already half out of the bedroom with his shotgun, looking dazed. "You better see this," he said.
Veitch ran into the bedroom. Anna was sitting up in a Z-bed, trying to make sense of what was happening. The curtains had been dragged back and outside Veitch could see several sleek wolves circling, all as big as the one battering the front door. The rattling on the roof echoed again; at least one of them was up there too.
"There must be eight or nine of them!" McKendrick said in disbelief.
"Have you got another gun?" Veitch snapped. The crofter shook his head.
Cursing, Veitch ran back to the living room and scrambled for his crossbow, suddenly aware of how feeble it really was. He barely had time to load a bolt when the door burst open and the wind howled in; the curtains flew wildly. The wolf struck him full in the chest with the force of a sledgehammer. He went down, winded, and then it was on top of him, jaws snapping barely an inch from his face. Its meaty breath blasted into his nostrils, its saliva dripped hot on his chin. He could barely breathe from the weight of it.
He forced his face to one side in desperate, futile evasion, anticipating the enormous power of the jaws stripping the meat from his skull. And then the strangest thing happened: deep in his head he felt an uncomfortable tickling sensation, like a dim radio signal on the end of a band. Slowly he found his face drawn back round until he was looking deep into the wolf's eyes, golden with the cold circle of black floating at the centre; they drew him in until he was lost in a gleaming intelligent soup, at once alien, yet a part of him.
The terrible spell was broken with the sound of smashing glass. Another wolf burst through the window and sprawled in the centre of the floor before righting itself. And then the rest of the pack was inside, circling low and fast. Tom tried to fend one off with a wooden chair. The wolf played the game for a second, then suddenly unleashed its jaws in a frenzied snapping that turned the chair to splinters in an instant.
From the corner of his eye Veitch could see his crossbow where it had fallen. Slowly he crept his hand spider-like along the floor towards it; it was already loaded, so he could put a bolt through the wolf's head with just one hand.