Yes another one. This one has taken some research, and it is already taking off in its own direction, not what I had planned, so come along for the ride.

All the usual, I don't own X-Men, wish I did, I wouldn't have to work and I could write all the time. I'm not making any money off of this - please see the above statement.

On a camping trip, two worlds collide and have to fight an age old evil. Can they work together, or will his plans and dark desires destroy any trust, and will the evil of the Windigo overtake them all.

Chapter One - Roughing It

Janelle looked around the pristine clearing. It looked like the perfect spot to set up camp for the group. She was glad she'd agreed to come with her friend, Stacy, on this trip. She looked back at the group of teen-age girls behind her. Most of them were from broken or foster homes and had never even seen the wilderness until now.

"Are we stopping soon, Ms. Moore?" The lead girl, Amy, asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes." She could hear the moans of relief from the inexperienced hikers behind her. The girls dropped to the ground, some of them where they stood, others took advantage of rocks or logs on either side of the path.

"Five minutes rest, then we start setting up camp." Stacy said as she walked up to where Janelle stood. "Nice spot."

The two women were as different as night and day. Stacy was petite, with dark hair and flashing brown eyes, her creamy skin just darkened with out-door activities. Her native blood showed true in her long nose and high cheekbones. Janelle was plump, in her own words, too much flesh on her bones but it didn't hide her own unique heritage. Her Irish red hair, a gift from her mother's side of the family, had a mind of its own, and her almost black eyes made people look twice. She could be intimidating, when she rose to her full almost six feet in height, a gift from her Nordic father's side of the family, and it came in handy at work. Most of the guys on the force teased her about being built like a brick, especially in her vest, but she ignored them.

She walked around the clearing and picked her own 'home' spot. She dropped her back pack against the small pile of rocks she was going to use as the base for her shelter. This was a 'roughing it' camping trip. Only what you can carry in, so no fancy tents or heavy sleeping bags. These girls were going to learn to do it the hard way, and survive for a whole week in the Canadian wilderness.

It was late spring, so the weather shouldn't get too bad, and Stacy had an emergency radio to contact a ranger station if they needed help. She also had a GPS locator signal she could activate for rescue if they ran into any trouble. Other than that, no electronics, no fancy camping supplies, just living off the land. Janelle grinned as she surveyed the area. She had a nice tree with a low fork that was almost level with a Y formation in the rocks to set a roof pole into, and there were plenty of evergreens to make a sturdy structure to live in for a week. She dropped on the ground next to her pack, and watched as the girls looked around, grinning at the way they seemed completely lost.

This wasn't the first one of these trips she'd helped with. Stacy usually could rope her into taking a couple weeks vacation to help with one of these trips. She'd grown up in foster care, but was one of the lucky ones. Stacy's parents had taken her in, and worked to become her foster parents after her own parents were killed in a car crash. All she really knew about them was their names, and a few half burned pictures that had been in the car. It was Stacy's dad that taught her to track, and hunt, and fish, and camp and all the things that girls weren't supposed to do. Stacy's mom taught her how to can and preserve her own foods, how to grow her own garden and forage for edible foods in the wild. They'd both taught her the medicine path, and neither one of them had been surprised, or afraid, when her unusual abilities started to surface.

The guys on the force called her their bloodhound, and she didn't mind a bit, both her sense of smell and hearing were very keen, her night vision was better than using the goggles, and she had an instinct for trouble that all of them trusted, even the rookies after a few weeks. Her most unusual feature she mostly kept hidden, mostly because she'd had two Internal Affairs investigations when her twelve inch bone claws had slipped from between her fingers on a case. Her standing orders were to shoot first, if that didn't work, THEN stab them with the claws.

Her third gift was healing, of herself. There had been more than one occasion when she'd wished she could heal other people, and had to stand by and watch good friends die because some stupid punk got in a lucky shot. She couldn't take all the bullets, although she did try, especially to protect her partner.

Janelle shook her head. She'd promised herself not to think about that on this trip. Her 'vacation' was less voluntary and more enforced leave after the death of her partner, David.

"Ms. Moore?" She looked up. It was Tabitha, the one who thought 'outside' meant concrete.

"Yes?"

"What are we supposed to do now?" Janelle looked around the camp. They'd set themselves up in clusters of two or three, and at least someone had thought to start gathering firewood.

"Well, I'd suggest building some sort of shelter." She realized that they were losing light and should follow her own advice.

"With what?"

"Trees, sticks - whatever you can find."

Tabitha scratched her head and looked around. "I just don't see anything."

Janelle chuckled. "Watch me." She stood up and unfastened the hatchet from her backpack. She walked a short way back along the trail where she'd seen some long straight limbs that had fallen to the ground. She cut several to the length she wanted, and with Tabitha's help pulled them back into the camp. Everyone of the girls were staring at her as she showed Tabitha how to take the thickest of the poles and wedge it into the Y of the tree and the Y formation in the rock. She then took some of the smaller poles and laid them, leaning against the thick crossbeam pole, so that the formed the basis for an angled wall. Tabitha followed her back along the trail and helped her as she gathered smaller limbs with fresh green leaves on them, and then, from the bottom up, layered them on her wall formation until she had a fairly watertight roof.

By the time she was finished, most of the others were working to varying degrees of success on their own shelters. One of two of the girls had been smart enough to pack light weight tarps, and were able to put up a decent waterproof shelter fairly quickly. The ones that had packed more make-up and clothes, were struggling with trying to build a lean-to like hers.

Stacy was moving from group to group, helping or offering suggestions or admiring the work. She finally dropped on the bed of pine needles that Janelle was working on building up.

"Well that got them moving." Stacy said.

"For now. As long as the weather holds, its just a teaching exercise anyway." Janelle said as she dropped one last armload of pine needles under her roof and dropped onto the pile.

"They're here to learn. Learn to survive, learn to rely on herself, and the team around her. Thank you again for coming this time. I know things were rough."

"I needed to get away, and helping the kids always makes me feel like I'm making a difference, especially after something like this." Stacy draped an arm around her shoulders.

"So what's for dinner, O' Great White Hunter." Stacy teased her. Stacy never could get the tracking and hunting thing down, even though she was the one raised by her Native American parents all her life.

"I've got trail mix...its your turn to bring in the big game." Janelle laughed.

"Oh no, you promised to teach tracking this time, remember."

"Tomorrow."

"We need food - tonight."

Janelle grumbled, but reached for her backpack. It was a good Swiss Alpine pack with several compartments including a bottom one that just fit her collapsed hunting bow and scope. She quickly fitted the pieces of fiberglass together, fitting the cams in place at the top and bottom, and strung it with practiced skill. She opened the long custom compartment on the back and pulled out several long hunting arrow shafts. She quickly fletched and tipped them with small hunting tips. She wasn't after deer, today. She didn't want her large barbed tips for a couple rabbits.

"Fine, I'll go see if I can get some rabbits or something. If not, they were told to pack food for the first night." She grumbled, but secretly was looking forward to a little time away from the gaggle of cackling geese that any group of teen-age girls turned into with any free time on their hands.

She walked back down the trail, then cut back into the forest. She'd scented several different rabbits on the way in, and silently followed her nose in that direction, She spotted a brace of them in some brush across a stream, and with two quick shots pinned them both to the ground, dead. She didn't even take them off of the aluminum shafts of the arrows, just used those to carry them back to the stream bed where she pulled a small knife from her belt and quickly skinned and dressed the animals. She was rinsing her hands in the water when she noticed the large boot print in the bed of the stream. It was fairly fresh, or the edges of the impression would have worn away in the fast moving water.

It was a fairly well known hiking trail, and they certainly weren't the only ones at the ranger station leaving maps of their planned route through the area. She shrugged, her gut wasn't telling her there was any danger, so she wrote it off to another hiker in the area.

She filled the small collapsible water bottle she carried in a small pouch on her belt, the girls needed to learn how to purify water for drinking, might as well start them now. She knew they had canteens still full of treated city water, but out here those wouldn't last long. She marked the stream in her memory as a water source and headed back to camp, her brace of plump rabbits ready to go over a fire.

There were six girls and the two older women in the group, and a quarter of a rabbit would make a nice dinner, with whatever supplies the others thought to bring with them. Starting tomorrow it was live off the land, so they'd better enjoy the luxuries now.

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He watched her clean the rabbits in the stream. She hadn't picked up a scent or sign or if she had, she'd ignored it. He admired her skill with the rabbits, One shot each and they didn't even know what hit them. Clean kills, both of them. He'd been planning on those two for his own dinner later on, but after watching her, conceded she earned them. He could see the camp site as well, with the noisy little frails and their fire built way too big. Someone needed to teach them, if you are in the woods, you build small fires, just enough to cook your food or keep you warm, there was no need to light up the area for miles.

She walked back into the camp, and he could hear the loud noise from the frails. His ears couldn't or didn't want to differentiate the sounds, to him it was just noise. Just as he turned into his well camouflaged cabin he caught a strange scent. It was death and decay and something else, something evil - and he of all people knew what evil smelled like. It was moving, the scent was faint and he hoped it stayed away. He had his own plans for the little group around the fire, although the hunter might make him revise his plans a bit, and he didn't want competition for his prey.

He looked down at the sharp claws on the ends of his fingers as they grew slowly, in anticipation of hot blood under the surface of soft skin. Those frails were stupid to camp near his home, now they belonged to him.

He closed the door tight behind him, and only after making sure every crack was sealed did he turn on the small device in the corner. The bluish light from its screen was the only illumination inside the room. He quickly punched up the hidden cameras at the ranger station, and reviewed their plans. He had one week before anyone came looking for them, well a week and maybe a day before the realized they weren't just late. One week to stalk his prey, to satisfy his hunger.

It was almost time to move from here, a nice animal mauling of a group of campers would leave his mark here for a while. He had three jobs waiting, but something had kept him here far longer than he planned.

When he'd fallen from the Statue, and into that river, all he could think about was getting home, safe. Someplace to heal, to return to his roots, to hunt and be an animal again. That had been nearly seven years ago. He'd avoided the battles, the war over Mutant Rights, and now it was safe to go back, but something kept him here.

He caught that scent again, or maybe he imagined it. It was faint, very faint. He didn't know why, but it sent a shiver down his spine and filled him with an emotion he laughed at in others - fear.

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She caught a strange scent on her way back to camp, it smelled like a rotting corpse that had been left too long in a hot enclosed space. She looked around for any dead animals, but the scent was so faint she couldn't even get a direction from it. It just seemed to permeate everything for a moment, and then was gone. She shook it off, although she looked over her shoulder the rest of the way back to camp.

"The Great White Hunter is back." Stacy yelled as she walked into camp. She grinned and held up the two rabbits.

"Enough meat for everyone tonight. Tomorrow we really start roughing it." She glanced at the few things the girls had piled near the fire. A couple cans of pork and beans could be put back for emergencies. Someone had actually brought a 'camp seasonings' kit, a small round canister with salt, pepper, and other assorted spices in it. There were several bags of trail mix, and other snack foods. The rest was mostly canned vegetables and other staples that would be good with what she had planned for dinner. Someone had brought a small camp pot, so she set two of the girls sterilizing water while she made spits for the rabbits.

"So what is the plan for tomorrow?" She asked Stacy as she leaned back, occasionally turning the spits while Amy and another girl named Kira put together some of the canned vegetables so everyone could have a little with their meat.

"Improve the camp, and I'll take them out two at a time for some tracking lessons. I'll try to get something for dinner tomorrow. The trail mix and stuff will work for a breakfast." Janelle grabbed one of the rabbits and cut into one thigh. The meat was tender but done to the bone. She checked the other one, and pulled them both off the spit and onto a flat rock someone had found and cleaned up for a work space. She cut the animals into quarters and everyone grabbed one.

She watched these girls, most of them hadn't seen a tree outside a park or a cage in their entire lives. Some of them were abused, all had neglect issues and self esteem issues, but somehow, she and Stacy were going to show them that there was more to life than ducking for cover and moving from one man to another to try to find some sense of self worth. Tomorrow she'd start teaching them to track, to understand the forest, and through that knowledge, understand the world they lived in better.

She picked the last of the meat off her own quarter of rabbit, and stood up and walked to her shelter. She looked around the camp one last time. The girls were exhausted, she could hear soft snores from one of the tarp shelters already. Stacy nodded to her and Janelle nodded back. Stacy had the first watch and would wake her when it was time to take the second. Just because they were out in the woods didn't mean they weren't taking precautions.

A/N Going to say this now - it will be explained later in the story (as long as it goes the way I want to and doesn't go off on its own tangent) but no Janelle is NOT related to Wolverine in any way shape or form other than the simplicity of a shared naturally occurring mutation.