“Hoo, boy,” Storm breathed. But to Harper’s delight, he never wavered, never stopped clicking the shutter, setting off the flash. “What the hell is it?”

“Felis concolor, my boy,” she cheered, unrestrained. “Oregonensis, judging by its size and Bergmann’s Rule. The puma, the panther, the cougar—the catamount, I think you call it in your part of the world—which is its natural element, by the way, from Vancouver to Patagonia.”

“Swell,” said Storm. The thing growled down at him as the flash went off again. “So what’s it doing here?”

“I really couldn’t say. Probably trying to decide whether to devour the venison—or us.”

At which—as the camera flashed once more—the monstrous brown cat reared and snarled, fangs bared to the weather, one claw raised as if to swipe both humans from the face of the earth. It could do it too, they could see that. Even coiled as it was for a muscular spring, it was clearly a long and ponderous thing, and knew its business. It could cut them from the planet like cookies from dough. It would leave nothing but Harper- and Storm-shaped holes in the material of existence.

“Foof,” said Storm. “Any wisdom in running away here?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Of course, it does prefer a leap of ambush to the running chase.”

“Well, there you go …”

“But it can leap twelve meters.”

“Foof.”

“The question is,” Harper said, “can it scent the bait in all this weather?”

It could; it did. But it took its own sweet time about it. It stretched the moments to the breaking point. Feinting at the two of them with its claw again. Rearing, looking gigantically down. Only then, finally, leisurely, insolently, did it lengthen itself and arch, did it stride, with one baleful backward glance over one shimmering shoulder, along the top of the wall toward the venison. Storm followed its surefooted progress with his camera, Harper with her bright eyes and throaty chuckle. There was another second of enormous, flowing movement, another huge shift in the snow-lanced dark. As swiftly as that, the white mound on the far wall was ravaged, the venison was plundered—and the creature had leapt away into nothingness.

The camera dropped from Storm’s trembling fingers, fell to the limit of the strap around his neck and dangled down around his belly. Harper, her limbs loosening at last, pushed her dragon head and shaft together, sliding the tapered blade back into its oaken sheath. The call of the wind, the patter of the falling slush returned to them—it was as if the volume of the surrounding world had been shut off for the length of the confrontation.

Storm and Harper turned to each other, dazed.

“So,” said Harper after a long moment. “You were saying?”

“Huh?”

“You were saying you came to England because you wanted to see … To see what?”