Cold Mercy (Northern Wolves)

by Sadie Hart

  His fingers went numb with the sudden cold. Ice sluiced through his veins until Bay was certain that if he opened his eyes and breathed out a harsh puff of air, he’d see his breath in white plumes. Muscles aching and twisting, Bay rolled, almost as if he were in a fitful sleep, and then his eyes blinked open and he was staring at his dresser, and above it the square, ugly mirror.

  A white wolf stared back at him.

  Holy shit. Stunned, Bay stood there, raw amazement filling him. He blinked but when his eyes opened again the beast was still there. The animal cocked his head when Bay did. Green eyes, not the soulless pits of the woman and her wolves in the forest, stared back at him. His eyes. A whine slid out of him in a rush. Shit.

  And suddenly, standing on his creaking bed, looking around the room, Bay knew this wasn’t the first time he’d woken as a wolf in his bed. Night flickered through his mind, each one with the ravenous pull of his stomach dragging him towards the forest looking for food. But right now, he just stood there, the monster surprisingly placid.

  He’d been right. Maybe he could control it. Maybe he just needed to let the monster stretch his legs in controlled settings. A little excited, Bay bounded off the bed and padded towards the kitchen, his nails clicking over the tile. He paused at the kitchen door, wondering for a split second how he normally got out of the house when the wolf lunged, taking the handle it its mouth and twisting. The door opened and the beast wormed its way out of the house, instantly shaking like a dog fresh from bath the moment the cool air touched fur.

  Bay sat there frozen in the monster’s head, almost scared to move. He should have known he wasn’t alone, not completely. Surely it wasn’t Bay the man who woke up starving in the middle of the night, it wasn’t Bay who’d stood there and watched that woman kill without doing anything. But when he’d changed moments ago, he hadn’t felt the beast’s presence.

  Not until just now.

  It was as if there was something—no, someone—else in his body, but the being didn’t think like a man. Images flashed through their shared consciousness, feelings and emotions, scents. But no words. Confusion niggled at the back of the monster’s consciousness. The wolf seemed uncertain of why it was awake, and probably more importantly, why Bay was with it.

  Bay eased back into control, almost as if he was slipping back into the driver’s seat of his own body and he felt the wolf’s consciousness acquiesce, though with a slight twinge of curiosity. They’d never shared bodies before. This was as new to the wolf as it was to Bay. Where do you normally go? Bay asked, only to be met with silence in his head. Confusion prickling down his spine.

  Apparently, even in his own head, communication wasn’t going to be his strong suit. With a snort, his breath white as it swirled in the air around Bay’s muzzle, he trotted towards the woods, stretching his legs and getting used to the new muscles. There was so much power in this body. As a man he was strong. Years of working with wood had lent him an athletic form and muscle, but it was nothing like the sinewy strength woven through the wolf. He moved easily, his long strides swallowing up the ground with little effort at all.

  Bay mentally pulled back and the wolf seemed to take over, habit and curiosity winning out and suddenly the animal was loping along, Bay taking in the scenery as they went. Snow covered trees blurred by until he heard the frenzied barks of dogs, excited by the ring of childish laughter filling the air. Instantly, Bay lurched back into control and veered closer to the sound, careful to stay along the tree line.

  He held the large, white body low as he crept closer.

  Eden.

  A pair of adults worked on corralling a handful of kids while Eden dragged out a small sled, smaller than the one she’d left for him to fix. The dogs leapt against their chains, most jumping clear off the ground in barking fits of excitement, no doubt eager to be the ones let loose to pull the sled. The wolf took an involuntary step forward before Bay halted himself, but he felt the shiver of bloodlust in the wolf as they watched.

  The scent of warm flesh, of beating hearts, blood just under the skin, it filled him and wormed its way into his stomach. Hunger settled in his gut like a stone, aching. A faint presence, nothing like the devouring hunger the beast woke with every night, but it was an ache that demanded food nonetheless. And the monster would just as well take a kid as it would a deer.

  No. The word was more an emotion, a hard, fast rebuttal that had the wolf cowering back inside him. They are not food.

  Bay wasn’t sure the animal understood, but the wolf no longer tried to creep closer. Instead, they stood there watching as Eden grabbed one of the dogs and led the black and white husky towards the sled, the dog half dragging her to its harness. Eden laughed, her blonde falling away from her face. The cold had left her cheeks rosy, her lips swollen, and Bay wanted nothing more than to kiss her. Next time, he decided. Next time he’d have the balls to kiss her goodbye.

  Yours? Bay startled. The word was an impression more than an actual word, but slowly, he and the animal were working out a way to communicate. The wolven head cocked and Bay had the sudden sensation of looking out through those eyes again, eyes that didn’t quite seem like they were his, despite the fact that he was in this body too.

  He felt the flicker of interest as the animal looked over Eden.

  Something primal stirred between them. Male. A dog barked and Bay watched as Eden turned to pet one of the others trying to claw its way free of its chain and he felt the burst of warmth that filled the wolf. Ours.

  Hunger gave a painful twist in the animal’s belly, but the wolf showed no interest in hunting by Eden. Eden, her dogs, the people by her—they were no longer considered food but things to be protected. Pack.

  Instead the wolf took a step back towards the forest, and Bay let it. He imagined a deer, woolly with a winter coat, and the wolf gleefully trotted through the woods, the musky scent flitting through their shared consciousness as the monster turned its attention to legitimate prey.

  Images of deer running, fresh blood, the scent of fear, it all drifted through his mind as they ran. Bay let the wolf’s memories fill their mind until the tension still lingering in his heart finally eased. The wolf had never hunted another human.

  Then a large ruddy-colored deer bolted from behind a tree and the wolf took over, leaving Bay alone to his thoughts in the back of the creature’s mind. A hint of coppery blood hit his taste buds, warm flesh steaming under the animal’s mouth, and the wolf bent his head and began to feed.

  Chapter Six

  Bay blinked awake. Snow drifted down over his face, his muzzle half hidden by his tail. Startled, he jerked his head up, fear coiling through his muscles. He was still a wolf. He hadn’t shifted back. He’d thought the shift was automatic—something that happened with sleep, or revolved around sleep. Something. Confused, Bay glanced around, trying to get his bearings. His memories felt sluggish, and then the wolf seemed to stir, calm in the midst of Bay’s panic, until a sweet voice slithered out of the forest.

  “Come to me.”

  Bay shivered as the voice crawled through his fur, sinking teeth into his muscles. The wolf instantly wanted to go, launching into a trot, but Bay struggled vainly to hold back, momentarily confused. What the hell? Then an image of the woman with raven hair formed in his mind and he knew with a twist of fear exactly where he was going.

  Her black, black eyes seemed to stare at him from his memory and she smiled. Her lips smeared with blood and then there was the sudden pang of hunger in the wolf’s belly. Violent, starving, and the animal whimpered for a second before the pain eased—and Bay could feel the woman feeding off of the wolf. Finally, his memories from earlier in the day slipped back to him. He remembered the wolf gorging on the deer, until drowsiness and a full belly eventually had lured the beast to sleep.

  So this was the bloodlust each night. The wolf fed and hunted until it was sick each night just to appease her. Only his full belly from a day of hunting kept the roaring hunger of the woman at bay. But
what did she need so much food for? Bay felt her curious mental probe, the surprise that flickered through her.

  “Your name?” The woman asked, and he heard her voice out loud, carried along through the trees and on the winter wind and soft birdsong, it seemed to sprout from the frost itself, and Bay had the sudden feeling that no normal person could hear it. He hunkered deeper into the back of the wolf’s mind, trying to let the beast take complete control, but she seemed determined to lure him out. “The winter wolves are mine. So you are mine now, too. Give me your name.”

  Something inside him, something that was still more a part of the man than the wolf, dared not to answer her. The beast wanted to belly crawl to her, whine, and lick at her face. Soothe her anger. But the man in him recognized evil, knew all too well what danger could lie in the unknown. It was best not to answer. Laughter floated through the trees around him, smug with a victory she didn’t have.

  Pain lanced through him and his mind flayed open, the day flashing before his eyes. Smuggler greeting him with kisses on his cheek. Eden laughing while she sat at his table, the quick quirk of her smile. Bay, Eden said with a laugh and the memory died away.

  “Bay,” the hidden woman murmured. “Come to me.”

  The wolf started to run and despite Bay leaping to the forefront, he couldn’t stop the animal. Not now. He struggled and fought, tried to imagine himself as a man, tried to force the change, and while the animal’s muscles twitched and ached, heating as his body started to try and shift, one sharp word from the woman in the forest and Bay lost his battle. The wolf bolted straight towards her.

  They raced across the forest, past Eden’s house and up the trail towards the heart of Mercy Pass. The zig-zagging mountain crags were slick with ice, but the wolf knew them intimately. Each stride was born of habit, created by night after night of racing over the terrain. The wolf darted along a road and suddenly Bay knew where they were going. He saw the shattered stump of the tree he’d rammed his car into last winter.

  He’d been driving home with a blizzard coming in, the road already slick with ice. Bay had taken a corner to fast in his hurry and had lost control.

  There, on the broken and jagged stump, sat a woman dressed in white. The sheer gown offered no protection at all from the cold, but she looked unaffected. As if the freezing wind toying with her hip-length hair was a summer breeze on a hot day. She couldn’t be human, but she was real. Not a figment of his imagination, not some guardian angel—

  “But I did save you,” she said, and her bloody lips twisted into a pout. “You would have died that night, Bay Hollister.” Surprise jolted through him and she grinned, bouncing buoyantly on the stump despite its jagged appearance. She leaned towards him, a dribble of red trailing down her chin. “I remember you now. You woke me.”

  Woke her? What the hell? Bay strained to back away, but the wolf kept trotting towards her, only to lay his head in her lap. Her hands framed the furred face and tilted his head up to stare down into his eyes. “So scared,” she murmured. “So confused.”

  Her thumbs trailed over the soft fur below his eyes, stroking. Bay lurched back into control, shoving the inner-wolf aside as he lunged, teeth snapping dangerously close to her face, but she held his head as if he were nothing, simply pushing him backwards.

  “Now that’s not nice.” Her soulless black eyes narrowed on him. “Then again, you fought me all last year. You were nearly useless to me. I had to waste so much energy forcing you to my side. You tried to leave me to die even after I saved you.”

  Her fingers turned painful against his head and his jaw ached under the pressure. He remembered all of the visits to the shrink, the talks of mind over matter, controlling his dreams. The various drugs he’d taken to help knock him out at night, the anti-psychotics. But this time, he also remembered staggering out of his house on four paws, slumping into the snow some nights, too exhausted to go further. He remembered hunting and eating, but being too tired to come to her, despite her shouted commands over the forest.

  He’d do it all again this year and the next and the next. He wouldn’t be some slave.

  “You left me,” she said again, and the wolf wanted nothing more than to tuck his tail and whimper.

  Bay snarled at her instead, revealing a line of white teeth. But when her hand fisted over the fur behind his ears and she leaned her face close to his, those eyes eating at his soul, his resistance started to fade. “You fight, but you can’t win. You’re mine.”

  The words sang through him, filling him until the animal had pushed him aside and Bay lay hunkered in the back of the wolf’s mind, as if tied there by invisible chains. He struggled, but the monster was now in control again. He had the feeling the animal thought he was stupid for making her mad, for challenging her dominance.

  And so once again, Bay was helpless in his own body.

  Though this time at least, he got to see everything.

  Wolves poured out of the shadows left by the trees. Each one as white as the snow they walked on. Black eyes stared out at him from all of them, as empty as the pits that glowered down at him from the woman in front of him. “I’m Morrigan. Your Queen. Bow to me.”

  The wolf dropped his head, but out of the corner of his eye, Bay could see every other wolf drop its head too. Were they all like him? Human? The man last night, did that mean he was alive? Her hand touched his cheek, sliding under his chin as she lifted his head up by his muzzle. Morrigan leaned in, blood dripping from her smile as she met his eyes. Pride evident in the curve of her lips.

  “You are all mine now. That is all that matters.”

  So he was right, then? They’d all been human once? But who?

  One by one the wolves crowded closer, her long fingers stroking through their wintry fur. He watched as they cringed under her touch even as they wiggled closer, both terrified of her and craving her affection. She seemed to grow stronger with every touch, her face slowly becoming less gaunt, and all the while, her lips bled and bled. Red droplets struck the snow, staining the ground beneath her.

  She was feeding from them, Bay realized.

  When the last of her wolves slunk away, one brushing up against Bay as they crowded in behind him, Morrigan turned and laid one bare palm against a tree. She seemed to shudder and a small moan slipped from her as her body rocked under some invisible force. A crack ripped through the forest and Bay startled, feeling the wolves shuffle behind him, the air around them suddenly uncertain.

  Sulfur touched his nose and he breathed in the sharp scent, tasted it against his tongue. Another crack, like lightning across the sky, and bark splintered under her touch. A jagged line ripped its way down the tree trunk, ice and bark breaking loose and tumbling to the ground. Morrigan leaned closer, blood still dribbling from her chin as she blew softly on the opened tree.

  It jerked, wood and bark shivering slightly, and a predatory smile slid over her face. “Wake,” she whispered and Bay felt the rumblings of magic around him. Like the wind it lifted the hair down his back, bristled in his tail fur, but more than that, he could see the black tendrils of magic dancing out from Morrigan’s skin. Tasting over his nose and he flinched backwards, but not before he felt the electric sizzle jolt through him. Then the tendrils reached out and touched the tree, sinking inside. “Come to me.”

  Her voice slithered through the air, much like it had earlier and Bay whimpered against the pull of it in his gut. The wolf wanted to slink forward on its belly and grovel at her feet. The others did so without any hesitation at all, but this time Morrigan wasn’t talking to them. Her attention was focused on the tree, the split wood now writhing with long black worms.

  Bay watched as the tree shuddered again, bare branches crumbling away into ash, until there was nothing more than a huge stump. Then the bark twisted and crystallized, like ice forming over the shell, and he watched as the tree took shape. A long, crooked nose, a gaping maw, huge spindly limbs. He’d seen caricatures of creatures like this in mythology books.


  A troll.

  A low vibration sounded in the creature’s throat as it towered over them, its body suddenly gaunt and he could count every rib along the its side, every knobby protrusion of the monster’s spine. Bay felt himself hunker down into the snow, hoping to blend in, the wolf’s need for survival suddenly kicking in. One taloned hand reached out for another wolf and the animal yelped, trying to dart away, when Morrigan laid a hand on the troll’s wrist.

  “No. They are all mine.”

  “Morrigan.” Her name rolled out of his mouth, long and drawn, and the troll grinned down at her. “About time you wake me.”

  He snorted, a glob of ice shooting from his nose, and Bay winced, dragging himself backwards in a half-crawl. She gave him a bloody smile. “Feed yourself, Svell, the wolves belong to me as always.” She glanced back at the wolves tucked behind her, several now growing confident enough to stand. Hackles rising down their spines. “My wolves have fed me well tonight.”

  She said the last with her gaze on Bay. Instantly, he thought of the fresh-killed deer and all the nights before, the bloody dreams, the hunts. God. It’d all been to feed her. To give her strength. To do what? He almost didn’t want to know. His stomach roiled at her smile, knowing damn well she knew what he was thinking. Knew he’d figured it out.

  He thought of the man last night, bloody as she’d sucked him dry.

  Nothing about Morrigan felt right. Evil and darkness leeched off her in waves, pulling at him, tainting him, and he stared up at the troll towering behind her, the long-fingered claws and jagged teeth. Nothing about that troll looked safe. Another monster. One he’d helped her make. She said he’d woken her the night he crashed? Had all this been because of him?