by TA Moore
“Gods and monsters,” Jack said softly, the attempt to convince himself the closest to a prayer any wolf could manage. “That’s what the Wild has brought back, not some old fish.”
He took another step, and the tone of the ice changed to a brittle note. Gregor reached out and grabbed his arm to drag him back to solid ground.
“If it is there, you’re only going to make it worse,” he said as Jack tried to jerk away from him. “It’s more like to miss one body than two.”
“At least I could fight it,” Jack snapped.
Gregor laughed at him. The monster hadn’t known to stop growing when it died. Its head was big enough to swallow a car whole, the spine that showed through its mud-and-kelp skin thick as Gregor’s shoulders. Even Gregor wouldn’t want to face that down, not in its own element, anyhow. Besides….
“The dog can take care of itself,” he said. Not an admission he’d make if Danny were there to actually hear him. There were lines he didn’t want to cross. “He did in Durham against Job, he survived Girvan, and he held his own against the Pack when he was a kid. I’d bet on him to reach the other shore before I would you.”
Jack yanked his arm away. “He shouldn’t have to.”
“Then he should have better choice in men.” Gregor smirked as Jack snarled at him. The hot pulse of the emotional poison faded into the background as he let himself enjoy the old simple pleasure of a dig at Jack. “Fine. Nick, is there anything in the loch?”
He glanced over at his mate as he asked the question and felt the odd tickle of pointless warmth in his chest. Nick’s bony face, all nose and personality, also pleased Gregor, but he hardly looked attractive right then. His nose was pinched with cold and his lips were chapped raw, his skin blotched red from the wind. Still Gregor had to bite a smile off his lips, like he’d just seen Fenrir himself cross the snow, as he looked at him.
Idiot, he condemned himself.
Nick cupped his hands in front of his mouth to blow into them and then hopped up to walk to the edge of the loch. He toed his boots onto the ice as he peered down into the murky depths. After a second, he flinched backward and Gregor caught him, hand braced against one lean shoulder. He glanced down into the loch and caught a dark glimpse of bone and the weed-patched memory of skin pushed up against—through—the ice.
“Still there,” Nick said after he swallowed. He gingerly shifted his foot back a step. “There’s not much of it left, not even hunger. It doesn’t want to live again. It just wants an empty lake. Mine. mine.”
His voice slipped away from him as he said that, the words wet and slippery in his throat. Gregor growled and tightened his grip of Nick’s shoulder.
Nick was his. Without Gregor’s wolf, Nick was all he had, and he already had to share him with a bird. A wet eel that couldn’t even terrorize children didn’t get to claim any more of him.
He dug his fingers down into Nick’s shoulder and willed the sharp, doctor’s wits back into vague black eyes. After a moment Nick blinked and rubbed his hand over his face.
“Can you make it leave Danny alone?” Jack asked, as though he had the right to ask Nick for anything after days spent filled with pointed mistrust.
Nick shook his head. “It’s not slain, just dead,” he said. “But the dead can’t hurt the living, not yet.”
Jack looked bleak. “Not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be,” Nick said as he turned up his collar and tucked his chin down into it. “Just true. The old loch monster isn’t what you have to worry about.”
“What is?” Jack asked.
Nick inhaled as though he needed to say the answer. If he did, it slipped away before he could spit it out. “I don’t know,” he admitted reluctantly. His scent, that distinct dusty sweetness, was cut through with the darker, fresh-carrion smell of his god. “Something older. Something worse. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming.”
“But not tonight,” Gregor said. He put his arm around Nick and tucked him into his side. “Let the dog prove its worth, Jack. Danny did well enough in Durham all those years, and you never gave him a second thought.”
They both knew that was cruel, not true. It still worked.
Jack curled his lip in a snarl and, after one last look for a dog’s head amid the ice and waves, he turned away from the loch.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “We take the long way. Give Da time to bake a cake to welcome us home.”
Gregor laughed, a low chuff with no humor in it. “Or gather the Pack to drive us back out.”
“One or the other,” Jack agreed with a shrug.
“YOU GREW up here?” Nick asked as they rounded the far end of the loch and started up the hill, away from the shore and into the Pack’s territory.
Wolves hunted where they pleased, of course, but this was where they slept. Old crofters’ cottages, some still thatched while others had been roofed with uneven shale slates, were scattered haphazardly across the property. Some were tucked into the shadow of Da’s old stone box of a cottage, while others had been dragged stone by stone up past the boundary line of what man believed the Old Man owned and into the thin spaces where the Wild was easy to touch.
Usually there was a dirt track to follow, worn through the grass by heavy-footed hikers and runners who lapped the loch in their expensive trainers. Sometimes Gregor had kept pace with them in the trees, arrogant in how easily he could have caught them if he wanted.
Of course, he still could. His wolf was gone, but he was still more than most. It wouldn’t be effortless.
“That’s why it’s called home,” Gregor said. He hesitated for a second as he heard the words and fumbled for something to soften them. It wasn’t easy. Harsh words came easier to him, and if it kept people at arm’s length, that didn’t concern him. It was only Nick he wanted to keep close, but his tongue couldn’t seem to learn that lesson. “Or did you think I just walked out of the Wild a man?”
It was meant to be a joke, but it came out like a sneer. Gregor scowled to himself and swallowed the spiny ball of an apology. He wanted to be kinder to Nick, to say the right things and be gentle sometimes. If he couldn’t, he’d rather no one knew he’d tried.
Nick laughed raggedly and stopped to push his hair out of his face. He pulled absently at the knots matted around his ears. “I just learned that my crazy grandmother wasn’t crazy, just an evil wolf prophet who wanted to sacrifice me to a bird,” he said. Despite everything the old bitch had done, there was still something like grief in Nick’s voice. “So, I’m trying not to make any assumptions.”
“We were both born and raised here,” Jack said impatiently as he dropped back into pace with them. “We’re wolves, not Sannock or something from a story. We can walk the Wild, but we don’t belong there. This is our world as much as it is yours—as it is man’s. It’s just that they wouldn’t share.”
“Now neither will we,” Gregor finished for Jack, the old lines of the catechism one of the few nearly as satisfying to say as to howl.
Nick looked around at the spare white lines of the frozen countryside and hunched his shoulders. “I was born and raised in Glasgow. The first time I left the city, I was eighteen and going to look at universities. The idea anyone grew up here?” He waved his hand at the wide, empty space between the loch and the horizon. “That’s stranger than the Wild and the Sannock combined.”
The only city Gregor had ever been in was Durham and then only when it was frozen to a near standstill under that first lash of winter. It hadn’t troubled him—the streets and houses were a different sort of hunting ground to the moors and buried dens he was used it—but it was no place to live. The tarmac had been rough under his feet, and everything smelled-sounded-tasted of humans and human things, as though they thought they could keep the Wild at bay if they drowned it out. It was somewhere to pass through, not somewhere to stay.
Was that how Nick felt up here? The thought unsettled Gregor for a moment, but he shrugged it away. It was the end of the world, the wi
nter of blood and fang, and where Nick wanted to live could wait until they knew they were going to live.
They’d have to decide one day, though. “Maybe the city is why your gran is crazy,” he said.
Nick absently rubbed his chest through his coat. It was the scar on his stomach, sliced under his breastbone. Gregor had one that very nearly matched, although his was still raised and new even after the rest of his injuries had patched themselves together.
“Whatever she is, that’s who she was before Glasgow,” he said. “If anything, I suppose, it started here.”
Gregor went to disagree but then held his tongue as he realized they both had a point. Maybe Rose had already been ruined when she started on the long trek to Glasgow, but the seed hadn’t been planted here, on Da’s land. He’d only allowed Job to stay in the shack behind the house, and the rest came and went as need. They certainly hadn’t been made here… that was somewhere else.
“It’ll end here too,” Jack said bluntly.
Nick sighed but didn’t argue. He looked mostly tired and cold as the wind sapped whatever protection the bird had given him.
There was a wall and a gate. A Beware of Dogs sign had lived there longer than Gregor had, the red letters updated every spring when hikers appeared. Some of the wolves had curled their lip at it in protest, but it was easier than the police turning up to look into reports of “large, unleashed dogs.” Someone had scratched the cold, faded letters out with a rock so it read war of Dogs.
Nobody was there to either greet them or chase them back to the lowlands. But Danny had been here. His scent hung thick and salty on the air—blood and fear.
It was Gregor’s turn to put his arm out in front of Jack.
“Find out what happened first,” he said urgently. Blood and fear meant Danny was alive. The dead might want and fear—that was Nick’s preserve—but all they smelled of was meat and rot. “Then you can kill whoever is involved.”
Jack pressed against his arm for a second, all heavy muscle and a hot swell of smoky anger that had its own weight. Then he took a step back.
“Since when are you the voice of reason?” he asked grimly in a thin attempt to use humor to hold himself back. Words had always been more useful to him than they had been to Gregor.
Gregor snorted. “Trust me, I don’t like it either,” he said. “But the dog has always made you stupid.”
Jack glanced at Nick, who’d climbed onto a rock to peer up the hill. The black tails of his coat flapped around his legs as he stretched onto tiptoe. “Pot and kettle, brother.”
It wasn’t the same. “I—”
“There’s someone coming,” Nick interrupted.
Gregor and Jack turned at the same time. The door of the house lay open, a flicker of firelight bright and unsteady behind, and a dark shape, hunched against the wind, picked its way down the path.
“That’s not Da,” Jack said.
Gregor snorted. He’d lost his wolf, not his eyes. Da was twice the size of whoever had just left the house, half-wolf even when he was human. But the Old Man had always done his own dirty work. Even if he’d washed his hands of his only living sons, he’d still come out to teach two… to teach a lesson to a wolf that trespassed.
“He’s not alone either,” Gregor said. He tracked shadows through the darkness, wolves in their winter coats with their ears flat to their heads as they skulked stiff-legged between the cottages. “I don’t smell the prophets’ monsters. You?”
At one time he wouldn’t have had to ask. He’d spent more time as the wolf than Jack, kept the sharpness of his nose and his fangs. That had faded quicker than he’d imagined.
Jack shook his head once, the muscles in his jaw tight as he clenched his teeth. They both stepped away from the gate at the same time and ended up back to back in the middle of the path. Nick hesitated for a second as he glanced between them and the strange wolves, and then he stayed perched on the rock. He shifted his weight to get better purchase on its icy angles as the first wolf reached the gate and leaned against it. The hard-frozen wood creaked dangerously under his weight and the thick coat of frost melted under his fingers.
“Lach,” Gregor said. Recognition relaxed his muscles and loosened the hard set of his jaw. They’d been… not friends exactly. Allies. Even if the Wolf Winter hadn’t pressed the issue of succession, Numitors never died of old age. There’d been fault lines since the twins were inked with their first rank. Lachlan Givens had always been on Gregor’s side of it, and even if that had changed, he wasn’t wolf enough to be a problem. “We need to talk to the Old Man.”
One of the wolves jumped over the wall in one fluid leap, all thick fur and muscle. Gregor felt that same tug of bitter envy he had when he saw Danny change his skin for fur. It was as sour as anything the prophets had left to fester in his wounds, but it didn’t come from anywhere but him. The wolf—lean and gray with streaks of black in its ruff—circled around Nick with interest. She pinned her ears flat to her skull and wrinkled her lips back, all gum and teeth as a snarl gargled up from her broad chest.
“Ellie,” Jack murmured her name in Gregor’s ear. That was enough for Gregor to put a past to the wolf. They’d come up from Hull and fought for her place in the Pack. Most of the time Gregor didn’t think much of the Southern wolves—even if they could fight, there was a softness to them—but she’d impressed him.
Then. He thought less of her now as she feinted for Nick’s legs. Her teeth clacked shut an inch from his ankle, baffled in the flapping tails of his coat. Nick flinched in surprise and then kicked out sharply. The toe of his boot caught Ellie in the nose, and she stifled a yelp as she jumped back. Blood dripped from her nose onto the snow between her feet. She shook her head and pawed at her nose, eyes still focused on Nick.
“Yeah, well, you should have done as he said, then,” Lach said. He met Gregor’s eyes for a second in blunt challenge and then glanced away as he lost his nerve. To save face, he pretended to check the positions of the other wolves. “One of you was exiled, one of you ran away, and the Numitor said we didn’t need either of you. This isn’t your pack anymore.”
“Pack or not, he’s still our da,” Jack said. “We want to see him. And my dog.”
Lach skinned his lips back in an expression that had more of wolf’s snarl to it than a smile. “Yeah, well, you ain’t the wolf prince anymore, Jack. You better get used to wanting and not getting, especially where that dog is concerned.”
A growl trickled out through Jack’s teeth, a thin warning that the wind peeled off his lips. Maybe Lach even missed it. That would explain why he was stupid enough to stay where he was and keep that stupid sneer on his face.
“You sure that’s a fight you want to pick, Lach?” Gregor asked. He stooped down and grabbed a handful of snow. It crunched in his hands as he wadded it into a hard-packed ball and the pricks of cold jabbed under his nails. He winged it at Ellie as she stalked a step closer to Nick, her tongue bloody as it poked out between her fangs. The ball caught her in the side, and she yelped a high-pitched yip of shock as the impact knocked her off her feet. She landed hard in the snow, breath knocked out of her. “And leave him be. If anyone’s going to eat him, it’ll be me.”
Nick laughed. The cackle of real, gleeful humor cut through the cold and tension like wire, and everyone stopped to stare at him. He swallowed hard. The corners of his mouth twisted in an apologetic smile.
“Old joke.”
One of the wolves still behind the wall panted out a laugh between white teeth as they got it. Lach’s face darkened and red smears colored over his cheekbones as his control of the situation started to slip. He’d always been the sort of wolf that thought he was butt of every joke—one reason he’d never liked Danny—and that obviously hadn’t changed.
“We don’t like smart-mouthed strangers around here,” he snapped at Nick and then glared around at the wolves as though to remind them of that fact. His point made, he turned his attention back to Jack and Gregor, his eyes hot w
ith spite and old grudges. “And we don’t like beggars at our gates either. You’re not wanted here.”
Our gates.
Two wolves climbed up onto the wall and crouched on the stones. Thick winter coats obscured the lines of their bodies, but there were fresh scars on their snouts and legs. Another wolf that had usually picked Gregor’s side—Jamie, who was nearly as old as the Old Man but barely above a dog in the pecking order—only had half a ragged ear left on the side of his head. It might grow back, it might not, but for now it was a flap of scar tissue against his skull.
Gregor breathed in and felt the scar on his stomach tug at still-tender skin. It took… effort… to scar a wolf.
“What have you done to my pack?” Jack asked as he took in the same evidence.
The old rivalry hunched Gregor’s shoulders, a sore point even more tender than the slow-to-heal injuries the Prophets had sliced into him. That he had no grounds to challenge Jack’s claim now only stoked his resentment.
No wonder he hated Jack.
For the first time, Gregor wasn’t sure if that was his thought or leakage from the infection. He swallowed the bile that stung the back of his throat. It hadn’t even been the right question. Gregor’s voice scraped like sandpaper as he asked, “Since when do you speak for the Numitor, Lach?”
Lach nervously licked his lips and looked away. He checked the position of the Pack around him, weighed his support, and then squared his shoulders.
“I don’t,” he said and lifted his chin defiantly. He dropped his voice to a rough imitation of the Old Man’s bass rumble. “The Old Man’s dead and gone, and this is my Pack, my territory. I’m the Numitor of the Scottish Pack now.”
Gregor snorted.
“The fuck you are,” he said. The competition to be the head wolf of the Pack had been his and Jack’s birthright. It galled Gregor that he’d have to cede the position to Jack, but he’d die to defend his brother’s right to it over someone like Lach Givens. “And if the Old Man was dead, the Wild would have rung with the news.”