Total pages in book: 218
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 215412 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1077(@200wpm)___ 862(@250wpm)___ 718(@300wpm)
“Are you God?” I rasp past cracked lips.
“Yes.”
“Is this a social visit? Or are you on the clock?”
“I’m always working.”
“Answering prayers?”
“Sometimes I save lives. Sometimes I end them.” He sweeps his gaze to the river and returns to me. “Today, I’m your savior.”
“I thought you’d be bigger.”
“I thought you’d be more grateful.”
“No, really. I pictured less clothes. Maybe a tunic. Definitely sandals. But the snow pants are a solid choice. Nobody wants frostbitten nuts. Do you even feel the cold?”
“Do you?” He rips open my coat, exposing my river-soaked chest to the bitter wind. “You’re lucky to be here.”
Lucky? I don’t think so. I fought tooth and nail to get here, and now I want to go back. It’s becoming harder to form words and straighten my thoughts. None of this makes sense.
“You’re hypothermic.” A clinical melody sings through his voice as he rezips my coat. “We need to raise your core temperature. You’re losing heat.”
He talks like a doctor, like a minister, like a man with a plan.
Then he reaches for something, and for a second, I think he’s taking my picture.
A bright flash follows, and I close my eyes against it. More clicks. More flashes. Definitely a camera.
Is he cataloging a miracle? Or documenting a death?
He pulls a thermal blanket from somewhere behind him and kneels like a man in church, tucking the material under my shoulders and ribs.
I can’t lift my head. Or my arms. Opening my eyes is a struggle. “Am I dead?”
“You were.” He carefully removes his gloves, finger by finger, and touches my throat, checking my pulse. “You rose from the dead because of me. I raised you up by my mercy. My miracle. Remember that.”
Warmth blooms as his hands move over me with certainty, quick rubs across my shoulders, tucking the blanket tight, coaxing my limbs into stabbing pins and needles.
If I’m not dead, then… “Where are we?”
“The Brooks Range.”
“Where’s that?”
“In the heart of Alaska’s Arctic region.” He eyes my bloodstained sleeve and turns away to dig through a bag.
Alaska. I always wondered where we live. Now I know.
How far did the river take me from Hoss? Miles, if I had to guess, which equates to weeks this time of year. Too far to hike back.
Too far to be found by my brothers anytime soon. But they will come for me as long as I stay here, find shelter, and stay hydrated.
Should I tell the Almighty One about my stranded family? If he’s truly the Lord of All, wouldn’t he already know?
The breathing, pulsing, still very much alive instinct behind my ribs clenches. Not with hope. More like alarm.
He tapes and packs around the hole in my arm with sterile hands, iodine wipes, and folded gauze. Amid the pain, I focus on the wrongness in his practiced patience, on the carefulness that aims to own the moment. He’s too clean by miles.
If he’s God, couldn’t he just heal my wound with the touch of a shimmering, magical finger?
If he’s not God, what is he? A bush pilot? Off-grid trapper? Seasonal operator?
Except men who belong out here don’t have soft, manicured hands. They don’t wear knitted scarves and take pictures. And they sure as fuck don’t fold their gloves like clergy.
“Who are you?”
“Dr. Rhett Howell. And you, Wolfson Strakh, are mine. This will help with shock.” He moves a small vial into view.
I know the look on a man’s face when he wants to control a thing that refuses to be controlled. I see that look now as he plunges a syringe into the vial.
“Don’t.” I try to push him away, but the river stole my thunder.
“This is for you.” He leans close, breath warm and terribly calm. “To make you comfortable. To revive you fully.”
A wild, hungry thing snarls in my gut, and it’s far meaner than a doctor with a syringe. But before I can unsheathe its teeth and rip off his face, the needle enters my skin.
“Sleep now,” he purrs.
The cold curls into my chest and closes like a fist. I try to scream, but my voice is a bubble that pops.
My eyes slide closed on the quiet, awful certainty that I escaped one nightmare only to wake in a new one.
The night exhales a mournful hush that feels borrowed from a church. Pine leans into the wind as the little guest house breathes around us, a soft rib cage of wood and light.
The kitchen still smells like heat, lemon butter clinging to steam and the scent of dill floating in the air. The dinner Wolf made sits warm in my stomach, sending pulses of comfort through a body that clenches and shivers with arctic horrors.
He fed me before we started. Because he knew. That’s so him. Haunted, damaged, but so stubbornly protective that he would never let me follow him into hell on an empty stomach.