by TA Moore
This time Jack let go and dodged back on three legs, his foreleg hitched up as he waited for the shoulder to knit.
“Danny said the Pack would come!” Bron yelled, frustration and disbelief in her voice. “Where are they?”
She reached up and grabbed one of the denuded branches from the tree that Jack had hit. It snapped off in her hands, frozen and heavy, and she swung it like a bat at the monster.
Jack snarled in frustrated reproof at her as the monster lost interest in him and turned back to her. He wanted to distract it from her. Bron showed him her teeth in unrepentant response and swung again. The monster grabbed the branch out of the air, sank its teeth into it, and shook it violently. Bron managed to hang on but ended up on her knees with a gash in her shoulder where the branch had caught her. One of the pups—Shauna—had changed her skin, and the lanky yearling wolf yapped shrill and angry as it bounced forward.
She, at least, had enough respect to back off when Jack growled at her, but her ears stayed pinned and her needle-sharp puppy teeth bared.
“Bron!” Danny yelled, his voice cracked as he pitched it to carry over the storm and the fight. He was in front of the house, lanky frame barely visible through the angry flurries of indignant snow. “Get over here.”
“What?” Bron yelled back as she let the monster have the branch and staggered back “Why?”
It was Shauna who listened. The young wolf shot between Bron’s legs, fluffy tail clamped between her legs, and made a beeline for Danny. Even from this distance, Jack could see Danny’s horror in the way his body flinched. The monster hesitated, pointy head swung between Bron and the pup. Then, like the sight hound it was built to resemble, it went after the prey in motion.
Jack snapped his teeth at Bron, growled a wordless command for her to stay, and went after the monster. He stripped chunks of flesh from its haunches, the splintered bone of its leg visible through its stitched-together skin, but he couldn’t catch it.
It strained its neck out and snapped a divot from Shauna’s back leg that made her yelp a high-pitched puppy whine that caught in the back of Jack’s brain.
Danny darted forward. He grabbed Shauna by the scruff just as she reached the steps into the house. Her heavy, dark-furred body dangled from his fist, and he tossed her aside like a football. The monster twitched its head to follow the arc of its prey’s body—and maybe there was still enough of a being there left to be surprised—and crashed into Danny. They tumbled over each other and kicked up snow in grubby arcs as they wrestled in front of the house.
“Get it into the fire!” Danny grunted as he landed on his back, hands locked around the monster’s throat as it snapped at him. “It won’t heal as fast.”
That could work, Jack supposed. He slammed into the monster with his full weight and sent both of them crashing through the blistered front door and into the flames. Fire singed his fur and blistered the pads of his feet. The smoke was sharp in his throat and eyes, but maybe Surtr remembered who’d set him loose. It was the monster who caught. The blond strings of what was left of its hair flared, and the naked, drum-tight skin blistered and scorched as the fire hit it.
Again, something of the person the monster had been scraped out of its throat as it screamed in panic. It writhed away from Jack, still lamed on that ruined leg, and fled blindly into the house. The charred floor gave way under it as it ran, and it fell with a whinny of miserable confusion, into the hot, red flames that filled the basement.
The house shuddered and groaned around Jack, the floor under his scalded paws rolling like a ship’s deck. It could have been cracked stones and weather, or it could have been the low, grating laugh of Surtr. This might not be his time yet, but he’d gotten at least one god-thing to burn.
Jack clamped his tail and backed out of the flames. The bitter cold outside was almost a comfort as it hit him and stole the heat from his burns.
“Are you okay?” Danny asked as he dropped to his knees next to Jack. There was blood on his arms, freckled skin raked down to raw meat as he slapped out the charred spots on Jack’s fur. “Jack?”
Jack pawed at his stinging muzzle and then leaned his weight against Danny’s shoulder. He smelled like blood, smoke, and fear… but still home. Shauna crawled over and put her chin on Danny’s foot, her sides fluttering as she breathed raggedly.
“Mam’s on her way,” Danny said, staunchly hopeful. “The dogs are holding their own.”
They weren’t, but Jack appreciated Danny’s view of the world. It took a dog or a human to lie that stubbornly to themselves. Jack pawed his nose again—the blisters itched—gave Danny’s face a quick lick, and threw himself back into the fight.
If Shauna had been a bit faster, Danny’s plan would have worked. The monster’s own bulk would have carried it straight into the fire without help from Jack. He headed for the heavyset, bulldog-shaped thing as it pinned Millie to the ground. The dog made a weirdly alien sound as the heavy, twisted head dropped. Jack went between a prophet’s legs, threw the snarling woman in the air for the dogs to pile on as he landed, and darted in to grab a mouthful of the slack folds of flesh that hung from the monster’s throat. It split under his teeth but stretched rather than tore as he snarled and shook it like a rat.
“… gro… oof,” the thing grunted as it threw its head back. It almost sounded like words. Jack hoped it wasn’t. He loathed the monsters, instinctive as the hackles that pricked at the smell of him, but whatever they’d been before didn’t deserve to know what had happened.
He let the folds of musty flesh drop, blood and fluid wet on the skin as it dripped out slowly, and went for the stomach instead. There was more mass to this monster than the other one, muscle layered over muscle in knots that threatened to split its skin, so it wasn’t as limber. It shook its head and lumbered around to snarl at Jack. Blood and flesh were clotted between its broken fangs.
Millie was still alive. Jack could hear the rattle of her breath, and that was all Jack could buy her. He lunged in and snapped at the monster’s face. The flattened features, eyes puffed out over slab cheeks and nose flattened over its broad mouth, held more of the human than the other monsters. Jack set his teeth in that snot-wet snout and tore it open. The monster screamed, reared up onto its bowed back legs, and slapped Jack off like a bug. The splintered bone claws that poked out of its paws raked his ribs open to the bone.
With a grunt, Jack landed in the snow. He made himself stagger up onto his paws, each breath a stab of pain down his bloody side, and growled a challenge at the thing. It squealed and rubbed its ruined face into the snow. As it looked up, a bloody frost crusted around the hole he’d left on its face. The blood-rimmed bulge of its eyes glittered with spite as it lumbered toward him.
“Wolves!” someone yelled, panic in their voices. “The wolves are here.”
Shauna’s da, a sable-brown wolf big even in the dire-sized pack, went through the chain-link fence instead of over it. It came down on top of some of the prophets who were still human-shaped, and the rest of the Pack trampled them underfoot as they stormed the prophets’ den.
It didn’t take long. Kath, sleek-furred and silver-gray, went for the hamstrings. The prophets who dropped behind her, enraged or screaming, she left for others to clean up. It had been a hard winter, the Old Man was still lost, and not all the Pack had fallen in behind Kath. Some of Lachlan’s wolves weren’t there, and the ones that had traded camps had torn ears and chunks of fur missing. If the prophets had rallied, ghoulish and alien as they pulled patched and rotten wolves over their bones, they could have made a fight of it.
Maybe not a long one.
They didn’t. Prophets were cowards and killers, oathbreakers and perverts. A few of them had hammered their flaws into horrors, but without a Rose or Job to rally behind or kidnapped children to hide behind, the prophets weren’t suited for conflict. Even magic and stolen skins couldn’t change that.
They broke and fled on lame feet, the ripe stink of carrion trailing behind
them whether they fled into the storm or into the Wild.
Jack snapped and snarled at the bulldog to keep it hemmed back from the fight. His ribs were broken, sharp against his lungs as he twisted and jumped, and the vision in one eye was smeared gray and red from a claw that had scraped down his face. The bulldog had signs of wear too. Thick strips of flesh hung from its shoulders and gut, left to bleed as the monster’s body repaired more important injuries to throat and bone. He’d ripped off a strip of muscle from its cheek on the last pass, thick as gristle between Jack’s fangs, and the grotesque jaw hung stroke-slack on one side. Tendon and skin writhed like worms as the prophet’s curse worked blindly to reshape the monster into something that killed easier.
Gray and black fur blurred through the compromised vision in the corner of Jack’s bad eye. He thought it was backup and wasn’t sure if he was grateful or resentful that they thought he needed it. Then the wolf barreled into him, breath sour as rancid cheese, and they tumbled over each other as sharp fangs tore at Jack’s ears and thick ruff.
His first suspicion—always read—was that it was Gregor, but even if Jack’s brother had his wolf, Gregor wouldn’t try to kill him now. It would be a fair enough fight when that happened.
Lachlan.
The mouthful of fur that Jack ripped from Lachlan’s throat was dry and matted. It stuck to his tongue and the roof of his mouth, annoying and scratchy. Lachlan landed on top of Jack and used his weight to pin him down.
Snow hung between them like smoke as Lachlan peeled his lips back in a snarl, teeth dull against the bright red of his mouth. His breath was hot enough to steam and more even.
There was something wrong with him. Jack wasn’t sure what exactly, half-blind and his brain fogged with blood lust, but he didn’t question it either.
A massive paw swung out of the snow and slapped Lachlan off Jack’s chest. The huge wolf yelped like a puppy in surprise as he was flung into the air. Then the monster screamed, and the sound gargled out of its loose throat as it lumbered after Lach. Bad wolf or good wolf, it didn’t matter. The prophets might have twisted their monsters into caricatures of the wolves, but they couldn’t tell them apart.
Jack huffed out a wolf laugh, and his bloody tongue dangled out of his jaws as he rolled onto his feet. He shook himself and quickly ducked his head to scrape his paw over his eyes and peel away scabbed blood and dead flesh so he could see—more or less—again. There was still a taint of pink to the world, and the cold burned his face, but his peripheral vision was back.
His legs trembled with exhaustion under him. Whatever reserves he’d scraped together since Rose peeled his skin off were gone. He shook his head and found more from somewhere as he went after the monster.
It was easy to track them. Blood and a trail of churned, stained snow. Until it wasn’t.
The trail stopped cold, between one step and the next, and the scent filtered away on the wind, just like the site of Job’s bloody slaughter back in Durham, where he’d stepped away from guilt and into the Wild.
Footsteps crunched behind him, and Danny nearly ran into him as he dashed through the snow. He stumbled to a halt and crouched down next to Jack. His breath steamed on his lips as he gave Jack a concerned look and then turned his attention to the straight line division between there and gone.
“Was that Lachlan?” he asked as he put his arm over Jack’s shoulders. His fingers twisted in the thick hair of Jack’s ruff. The gesture pulled at the fresh wounds hidden under the mats, but Jack ignored that. It was worth the discomfort to be able to lean into the embrace and sigh out his weariness.
He folded his wolfskin away and knelt in the snow, naked and stippled with ruined ink and fresh bruises. Blood scabbed his skin over almost healed injuries. Danny hissed in concern as he gingerly prodded at the edges of the deep punctures bruised into Jack’s shoulders.
Without the wolf, the simple pleasure of the embrace fanned out into something more complicated. Familiar and sweet, a dull hint of desire twitched under the dull weariness of the fight It was layered over with need and fear and, unfair though it was, anger.
“Saved by a dog,” he heard Bron’s voice hiss inside his head. “I’ll tell everyone that.”
Let her.
“It was him,” he said. His lip curled in contempt. “The new Numitor that was.”
Danny rubbed his hand over his face, and his nose wrinkled as he squinted. “He couldn’t do that,” he said. “Lach could hardly touch the Wild.”
Jack snorted and pushed himself to his feet. “And prophets used to be toothless, and monsters were for stories,” he said. “It’s the Wolf Winter, Danny, things change.”
He offered Danny his hand and hauled him up out of the snow.
“No,” Danny said. “You don’t get it. Lach couldn’t touch the Wild at all without another wolf’s tail to chase. Why do you think he hated me so much? He was practically a dog. He only made it as a wolf by the skin of his teeth. The Wild’s not gotten strong enough to change that. Has it?”
Probably not. Not here, where the skin of the Wild was shot through with the dead flesh of the Sannocks’ prison.
“Maybe,” he said. There was something there—woven in with the certainty that there was something wrong with Lachlan—but Jack couldn’t pin it down. Either he didn’t want to look at it, or he didn’t want to admit he needed Danny to tie the threads. He shrugged it off and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Back at the prophet’s den, he heard a thin, territorial howl challenge the drone of the wind. “The rest? Your sister?”
“Wiping up the prophets who couldn’t run,” Danny said. He pulled a befuddled face. “Still pregnant.”
Jack could have told Danny then, but he didn’t. Something like jealousy caught painfully at his ribs. It would have been so easy for Gregor. His brother could have had what he wanted and what he loved. Instead Jack would have to give up one or the other and then live with it.
It wasn’t fair, but that wasn’t new. He also didn’t have to deal with it just yet.
“We should get back,” he said. A crooked smile twisted his mouth. “Before they think it’s over.”
He started to limp back on scorched feet, blood still hot on his thigh where Lach had raked him during their brief scuffle. Danny edged over and unselfconsciously tucked himself under Jack’s arm and cupped his hand around Jack’s hip, fingers callused and familiar.
It was easy. He was Jack’s.
“I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known you’d get hurt,” Danny said. “Mam said it was bad, but you and Gregor are the Old Man’s sons, and—”
He was cold, shivering as he thought too much about the wind that nipped at his skin. Jack wasn’t sure if the body pressed against him was there to hold him or steal his heat. He didn’t mind either way.
“Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to,” Jack said.
They limped back into the aftermath of the fight. The fire had finally given in to the inevitable and guttered—just embers and black smoke as the storm dumped snow down on it. The bodies of the prophets who hadn’t escaped lay where they’d fallen. Snow already covered their bodies in a white blanket, stained with faded pink as it soaked up the spilled blood.
Ellie was on her knees in the middle of the wolves, the back of her neck scruffed unkindly in Kath’s thin, bony hand. One of the dogs—the stranger—was yelling a protest, but the dogs’ help in the fight had already been forgotten. The wolves snarled and cuffed him, eager to get him to shut up or go away. On the outskirts, the rest of Lachlan’s wolves watched sullenly.
Shit.
He pulled himself away from Danny and squared his shoulders as he stalked across the bloodstained snow and dirt.
“Let her go,” he said.
Kath tightened her grip instead. “She’s the prophets’ lapdog.”
Ellie writhed in the painful grip on her neck. “Fuck you,” she spat. “Lach was Numitor.”
“I’d sooner have a goat,” Bron said with a contem
ptuous curl of her lip. “What sort of wolf would follow the likes of Lach?”
“Everyone did,” Jack said, his voice harsh. “Kath. Connor. Tom the dog. Maybe for different reasons, but the prophets had you all on a string. If you want her to pay for that, you’ll be accountable too. Let her go.”
Kath studied him with hooded, dark eyes. Then she glanced past him to where he’d let Danny fall back.
“You the Numitor now?” she asked dryly. “Here to give us all orders?”
Kath had always believed that it was best to rip the plaster straight off. The pain would have to be faced eventually, so why not make it clean? It was a wolf way to be, but Jack had spent too much time with prophets and humans over the last few months.
“I’m the Numitor’s son,” he said. “And if he contradicts me, then do what you want. Until then, let her go.”
She did. Ellie rubbed the back of her neck and gave him a grateful, thoughtful nod.
Jack felt the Pack settle in around him, the structure of it clear as glass as he was folded back into the hierarchy. Just like that.
“What now, then?” Hector asked from the back. He didn’t mean immediately, but Jack decided to take it that way.
“We go back to the Old Man’s,” he said. “And work out what to do next. This isn’t over, and I am done with being prey.”
Someone howled, sharp muzzle thrown up to the sky in defiance, and a low mutter of agreement rolled through the Pack. It felt good for a moment, heady as a draft of the prophets’ poison drink.
Then he looked over at Danny—always the last person he looked for at the end of a fight—and Danny dropped his gaze in polite submission. Jack’s stomach sank with it, because he supposed he’d made that decision.
Jack was the Old Man’s son, and the only thing he’d ever wanted was to take Da’s place one day. He’d been willing to kill his brother for it, because he knew he’d be the chosen one. Everyone had.
It didn’t matter that he’d changed his mind. Who else was going to step up and lead the Pack through the Winter?