Kiss of the Wolf

by Morgan Hawke

  The wolf sharing Thorn’s soul snarled in alarm, and the hair rose on her body. Something was not right with Max.

  Max eased up onto the next step. “They’re drawn to light and the smell of blood, you know.”

  She backed away toward her door. “Mr. Rykov?”

  He scratched the back of his head and gazed at her sideways. “You do have the package, right?”

  Thorn frowned. Should he know that?

  “No need for alarm.” Max came up the next step and waved a hand. The scent of copper drifted from him. “I was the one who brought it to the good American colonel, and he assured me that he had the best courier in the world right here in the house. Someone who could cross mountains in winter.” He lifted his chin and stared straight at her. “That could only be you.”

  Thorn froze. Something was wrong with Max, all right. His left eye was a mild ordinary brown, but his right was bright copper, shiny as a new penny, and completely inhuman in shape with an upward slant. It was the eye of a predatory animal.

  Max raised his left hand, and the scent of copper became overpowering. There were curved claws on his fingertips, and blood was smeared from his palm all down his forearm. He licked the side of his thumb absently. “Don’t you think it’s time you got dressed and started running for your life?”

  Thorn knew better than to turn her back on a predator. “Am I supposed to escape, Mr. Rykov?”

  Max stopped licking and sighed. “Actually, yes. That package really needs to get into American hands.” He waved his other hand down the hall. “Go get dressed. Oh, and I suggest climbing out the window and traversing the roof, seeing as I left the front door wide open.”

  Thorn stared at him. “You left the front door open? But those…things will get inside and kill everybody!”

  Max smiled, and this time his mouth was full of jagged teeth. “Oh, don’t worry about them.” His voice dropped to a low and inhuman rumble. “They’re already dead.”

  Icy sweat erupted all down her back. “They’re…dead?” Tom, Dick, Harry, Brentwood…Colonel Ives? “All of them?”

  Max nodded sadly. “Died in their sleep, every last one of them.” He rolled his eyes and waved a bloodstained hand. “Well, so to speak.” He frowned. “Brentwood and Ives gave me a bit of trouble….” He licked his stained palm.

  Anger burned away her fear. Murderer…. But she was not so easily killed. Thorn let the wolf rise under skin in a hot rush of power, stopping at the very brink of transformation. She fisted her hands to hide her lengthening nails. “If I may ask, Mr. Rykov…” She spoke carefully to hide the fangs in her mouth. “What are you?”

  He chuckled. “Why, my dear Miss Ferrell, I’m a wolf in human clothing.” He tapped his chin with a clawed finger. “I think they call us werewolves.” He smiled with a mouthful of jagged teeth. “Yes, I believe that was it; I’m a werewolf—just like you.”

  Thorn froze in complete shock. He knew she was a werewolf?

  His brows lifted. “My goodness, you look positively shocked.”

  Something smashed downstairs.

  Max turned and peered down the stairs. “Oh, dear, it seems we’re out of time.” He turned to her. “You better go make your escape while they’re busy eating.” He held up his hands. Both were stained with blood to the elbows. “And if you’ll excuse me, I really do need to use the water closet.” He stepped up the last stair and into the hallway.

  Thorn backed away from him.

  Max turned toward the water closet and kept walking. He entered and closed the door behind him.

  She bolted into her room, threw on her cream flannel shirt, and dragged on her other dungarees, shoving her boots and socks into her pack. She would need to use her clawed feet as well as her hands to go traveling across rooftops.

  Max was a werewolf. There were others, werewolves…like her.

  The wolf in her soul snarled in anger. Not like me. Not like me at all. There was nothing right or sane about something that killed and ate its own kind.

  Thorn stopped in the middle of shoving her arms into her coat sleeves. Max was eating…people?

  The wolf had lived in the remote wilderness for most of her life. She knew the stench of humans that ate humans when she smelled it.

  Thorn felt her gorge rise. Cannibalism…. She shoved it down and buttoned her coat. Never mind the dead things that might be down two fights of stairs, Max was just at the end of the hall. She shoved her hat on her head and tied the string under her chin. She didn’t bother braiding her hair; there wasn’t time. She had to get out of there before Max decided to eat her. Yes, she was a werewolf, but he was the same, only nearly twice her size. There was no way she could take him in a fight.

  Not the same. The wolf within sneered in derision. Disconnected. Out of balance.

  Thorn agreed. Max was definitely not balanced. Only the insane ate people. She jammed her arms into the straps of her pack. Why would anyone want to eat one anyway? People tasted nasty. She’d bitten enough of them to know.

  She went to the window and pushed up the bar to open the shutters. The window was a simple framed piece of glass with a hinge on one side and a latch on the other. It was fairly small, too, but she could go through it. However, the snowstorm still raged just beyond the glass.

  She winced. Great. She unlocked the window latch and pulled open the small circular window. Snow blew in, driven by the wind.

  She looked down. People shambled along the narrow street. Snow stuck to their faces, their bare feet, and their bare arms. The snow should have melted on contact with their skin. They couldn’t be living; they had to be the dead. Her heart stuttered in her chest. The dead…walking.

  Thorn closed her eyes and took a deep breath, sifting the wind for a scent. She couldn’t smell anything beyond the cold.

  She shoved farther out the window, gripping the snow-encrusted sill. Never mind them! There was a huge werewolf that ate people at the end of the hall. She needed to find a way to get her ass up on that roof. She twisted around to look up. The roof’s edge was right there, within easy reach, but the roof’s pitch was incredibly steep—and covered in snow. She would definitely need claws and strength to get up there, never mind walk across it.

  She closed her eyes and let the wolf rise, but slowly. She needed the wolf’s strength but didn’t want to lose the human shape that would allow her to climb. Muscle bunched and expanded. Her shirt tightened in the arms and shoulders. The pale thin hair all over her body lengthened and became more like fur. Her hands and feet changed in shape and grew hard pads. Her nails extended and hardened into true claws.

  She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She could see as if it were full daylight. She wrinkled her nose. The scented soap she’d used earlier smelled a hell of a lot stronger and somewhat nasty. She could actually smell the fat and the lye used to make it.

  Her waist-length hair, blowing in the breeze through the window, had gone from pale brown to silvery white. She readjusted her hat to suit her taller pointed ears and then scrubbed the roughened heel of her hand over the slight ruff along the edge of her jaw. There were three buttons on the seat of this set of overalls. She opened them and eased out her tail and then shook hard to settle the light fur that had grown all over her body. In this form, her fur wasn’t near thick enough to run around naked, but it would make nice insulating layer under her clothes.

  The commode flushed down the hall. She was out of time.

  Thorn shoved her head out the window and twisted around to grab the eaves above her. Her claws sank in, and the wood shingles crunched. She pushed with her feet braced on the windowsill and pulled with her claws, dragging herself up onto the snowy roof.

  She clawed her way to the peak on the roof to look. She couldn’t see much; her wolf eyesight was somewhat nearsighted, and the blowing snow wasn’t helping. What she could see was the next roof over.

  The wolf within assured her that the jump to the next building would not be difficult.

  Thorn
bolted down the opposite slope and leaped, her body stretching out to cover the distance. She hit the side of the next roof, her toe and finger claws digging into the snow-covered shingles to keep her from sliding. She climbed to that roof peak and ran down the side to launch herself at the next roof, and the next…

  Her other half had been right. The jumps were almost ridiculously easy. She wasn’t worried about getting lost—her wolf soul knew exactly which way she needed to go—the question was, were there enough roofs to get her there?

  She had lost count of her jumps when she finally hit a snag. The next roof was on the other side of a fairly wide street. It was too far to jump. Worse still, even if she made it across to the house, the damned thing was made of brick, making it a real bitch to climb.

  She hunched down and stared through the falling snow at the ragged people shambling along the street below her. They were definitely dead. She shivered hard.

  If she couldn’t get up on the next house, she’d have to run for it. Her fastest speed was on four legs, but four legs did not work properly in human clothing. If she took off her clothes and later reassumed her two-legged form, she’d have to take the time to get dressed again. In full wolf form she wouldn’t even feel the cold, but the fur on her half-human body was not near thick enough to keep her from freezing.

  Her tail switched back and forth in annoyance. Damnit, what should she do? Either she had to take off her clothes and hope she could stay out of their reach all the way to the far end of town or find a quick way onto the next roof. Maybe she could outrun them on two legs until she could get back onto a roof?

  Behind her, an eerie howl echoed in the night. The fur all up her spine and across her shoulders rose. That sound was not from any dog, and it certainly wasn’t a wolf. It had to be Max. She looked back. Her scent trail across the snowy roofs was probably as obvious to him as red paint on a white dress. There was no doubt in her mind that he would follow it.

  Shit! She slammed her fist onto the roof by her foot. The shingles crunched. This whole assignment had been one circus-freak act after another! She looked down at the road and then up at the house directly across from her. She had to do something. She could not stay where she was.

  The eerie howl echoed again from a lot closer.

  Max was definitely on her trail. She was out of time. Thorn looked down at the street. There was only one shambling figure, and it was in bad condition, partially blackened, as though some of it had burned. She looked left and right. She didn’t see any others beyond this one.

  Thorn hunkered down for a long jump. She really, really did not want to go down there, but she didn’t have a choice. To get to the other roof, she still had to go down first. She launched off the roof and landed smack-dab in the middle of the road, rolling in the snow. She lunged back onto her feet and pelted for the house on the other side.

  A weird howling moan sounded behind her.

  Thorn did not want to know what it was. She hopped over the low stone wall into the garden and made for the house’s windows. If she could get ahold of the windowsills, she could climb….

  A loud report blasted from the house. She jumped to the side and looked up. A window shutter was open, and someone had a gun pointed at her.

  She rolled away from the gun’s sight and pressed her back against the garden wall. Shit! Now what?

  That weird moan sounded again.

  A gun blast hammered in her ears, and something wet exploded far too close.

  Thorn didn’t bother to look. She bolted around the house to the back and headed for the wall and the next house. From what she could see, it was clapboard. She could claw her way up, as long as the wood wasn’t too rotted. She hopped up on the low wall and faced three dead things only an arm’s length away.

  Their mouths opened, their arms lifted…

  Thorn yelped in complete fright and jumped off the wall, launching right over their heads. She landed against the side of the house, claws first, and dug in. Her heart beating in her throat, she scrabbled her way up the side, scoring the hell out of the house’s wooden siding.

  She made it up onto the snowy roof and rolled onto her back, panting for breath. God in heaven, that was way too close.

  Groaning, she rolled onto her hands and clawed her way up the snow-covered shingles onto the roof’s shallow peak. Her eyes opened wide. She’d somehow found her way onto a long line of two-story row houses. No jumping, at least for a while. She frowned. There seemed to be dark spots on some of the roofs in the distance, but her wolf eyes couldn’t quite make out what it was.

  She sighed. No matter, it was running time. She got up onto her feet and started down the line of roofs.

  7

  In the blowing snow under churning clouds, Thorn lifted her head and looked out from under the brim of her hat down the line of roofs. The icy wind slashed against her cheeks. The wolf sharing her soul was insisting that they were drifting off course. By following the curving line of row houses, they were slowly but surely heading away from where she had originally entered the town. Sometime soon she’d have to leave this set of row houses to get back on track.

  She rose to her feet and looked behind her. Sporadic and hysterical barking echoed in the night, but she hadn’t heard Max’s eerie howl in quite a while. Not that she was complaining. It would have been nice to think she’d lost him, but she couldn’t see how. Her barefoot trail in the snow should have been easy to follow, if only by scent. It was more likely he’d found something more interesting to chase. Hopefully it wasn’t human. She trotted down the line of roofs.

  Hours passed—she had no idea how many. It got colder, and the snow showed no sign of letting up. Dangerously unstable roofs with burn holes became more frequent, and progress down the line of row houses slowed to little more than a fast walk. Thorn’s bare hands had started to tingle, even with the extra protection of the coarse pads, and her feet were definitely getting numb. She shoved her chilled hands in her pockets, but there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about her bare feet. And she was getting hungry.

  A long, loud steam whistle sounded.

  Thorn skidded to a halt and suddenly realized she was only one house from the end of the row. She had run out of roofs.

  And she was way off course.

  She scowled. She’d meant to get off this row of houses before she’d gotten this far. Damnit….

  She walked across the last roof and crouched on the edge. A broad cobbled thoroughfare wide enough for six vehicles stretched before her, bordered by a monstrous brick wall. Beyond the wall, left and right, as far as her eyes could see, were acres and acres of monstrous brick, steel, and glass factories soaring four to twelve stories high with a forest of tall smoking chimneys.

  The open countryside was just beyond. She needed to find a way past the wall and through those factories.

  She looked down the side of the building she stood on and spotted a windowsill below her and another below that. Getting down wouldn’t be difficult, but it would be a solid four-foot run from then on. There was no way in hell she’d be able to climb up on top of those factories.

  Thorn looked up the broad snow-covered road. She squinted, trying to see through the swirling snow. Nothing moved, living or dead. The only sound was the hushed whisper of wind-driven snow. She nodded. All right, time to find a place to change out of her clothes.

  Thorn trotted back along the roofs and started looking for a burned house with some of the second floor still intact.

  Four houses back, Thorn crept close to the edge of a blackened hole in a roof to peer within. The wood under her feet trembled and squealed alarmingly. Right up against the brick wall, one whole room on the second floor was still there. She eased back, away from the hole. She couldn’t jump down from there. Attempting to go through the crumbling hole could collapse the whole roof. She went to the side of the building and looked over the edge for the room’s window. Luckily the glass was already smashed out of it.

  Her claws crunch
ing deep into the roof shingles, she eased backward down onto the windowsill and then into the small room. The floor was gray with ash, but it felt pretty stable, compared to the roof, anyway. The room’s door stood wide open onto a half of a blackened hallway with only the top of a staircase intact. She smiled grimly. Unless those dead things could jump straight up almost an entire story, she was pretty safe to change.

  Thorn peeled out of her clothes, rolled them up tight, and tucked them into her pack as fast as she could. It was seriously cold. Shivering hard, she shoved her arms back into the pack’s straps and then crouched down. She closed her eyes and opened her soul to her wolf side. The delicious warm rush of shifting muscle and thickening fur arched her spine, drawing a deep groan from her chest. The heavy winter coat was a very welcome addition. Already halfway there, it took only two breaths to complete her change into the long, elegant silver wolf.

  Twisting sharply, Thorn shook her body from nose to tail, stretching her muscles and settling her fur under the pack. Her stomach clenched and rumbled. She really needed to eat. If she was lucky, someone might have left a goat or a calf in a shed somewhere.

  Her nails clicking on the bare boards, she trotted over to the window and set her forepaws on the windowsill. She stuck out her head and looked but didn’t see any movement. The factory machines and the rushing wind were the only sounds she could hear. The only thing she could smell was the charred wood of the building she was in.

  She took a breath and then launched through the window, landing smoothly on the snow-covered street.

  Movement exploded all along the edges of the street. Tangled humps covered with snow rose relatively upright and lurched toward her on twisted and rag-covered limbs.

  Thorn froze, and the fur all down her spine lifted.

  Dozens of dogs, short-coated, floppy-eared mutts and lean, red-furred wolf breeds, lunged out from under the buildings. Barking insanely, they rushed at the moving dead things.