He lifted his hand and dragged the knife across his palm, splitting the skin in a long, clean cut. It took a second to bleed. Once it did, he clenched his hand into a fist a couple of times, smearing the blood, and then pressed it against the door. His thumb and index finger printed in smeary detail onto the door while the rest of his fingers were painted around the dash.
“That doesn’t seem likely,” Dylan said through clenched teeth.
Somerset tucked the knife away under his coat and shrugged. He headed up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time.
Left on the first step—apparently it was up to him if he followed or not—Dylan hesitated. In his experience, when things got weird, it was time to take yourself somewhere else. Not that things had ever gottenthisweird, but it should be the same rules.
All he had to do was go back through the door, call security, and ask for a throat lozenge.
He looked over the railing. Three other men, still wearing their Wolf Pack T-shirts, looked back up at him with eyes that flashed green as the light caught them. Slobber dripped from their mouths as they snarled at him and then started up the stairs.
The other thing Dylan knew from experience was that when you were out of your depth, follow the lead of the person who seemed to know what they were doing. He guessed that rule won this time.
He ran up the stairs after Somerset, his breath hot and painful as it scraped out of his raw throat. The soles of his boots scuffed on the concrete.
“Is this to do with what happened to your brother?” he asked raggedly.
Somerset glanced over his shoulder. His eyes were flinty. “Yes.”
That was it. Dylan glanced over his shoulder and nearly slipped again. He caught himself on the railing and wrenched his elbow.
“Are they drug dealers?” he asked.
That was what people had come up with to explain what happened to Somerset’s brother. If they were right… It didn’t make sense, but if Somerset said they were, Dylan could talk himself into believing that.
Hewantedto. It was the sort of explanation he could live with. That or…he’d hit his head last night. Maybe this was all some sort of hallucination.
Somerset snorted. “What sort of drugs are you taking?” he asked. “And can you get me some?”
Dylan’s knees felt spongy, and his hands were numb. He was still calm—for now—but he could feel the shock and fear gnawing at the edges of that brittle composure. He tried to keep his mind on the next step, on Somerset’s heavy boots as he climbed easily, but his brain kept wandering to the way the severed hand had tightened around his throat and the thorns that poked out above stained, lichen-lined teeth and jabbed bloody holes in the Wolf’s lips. Every time he thought about that, he could feel it nudge him a little closer toward panic.
That wouldn’t help, he told himself grimly. It was a shame Somerset had the coat on, the tall man’s ass would have been a good distraction.
He reached down absently and pressed his hand against his leg. The hard edges of the watch felt familiar, but it didn’t help to anchor him like it always had. It looked like his grandfather’s watch, but he couldn’t fool his brain into taking the same comfort from it.
Monsters didn’t want his grandfather’s watch.
He flinched as he allowed that thought to take shape. It didn’t nibble along at the edges of his control, it smacked right into the middle of it. Dylan tried to ignore it, but it was hard as the cracks started to widen.
“He asked me…” Dylan started to ask the question. He stopped halfway through and bit his tongue hard enough that he tasted fresh blood. If he asked that, it meant he had bought into whatever this was, and then he’d have to work by the rules of a world where that question made sense.
He didn’t want to do that.
“What?” Somerset asked as he stopped, a wall of bone and muscle on the stairs. He half-turned as he waited for an answer. “What did it want?”
Dylan looked over the railing again. The Wolves were closer now, only a flight behind. At the bottom of the stairwell, where the first Wolf’s broken body had been, there was just a bloodstain on the concrete. Even the hand was gone.
Fear clutched at Dylan’s throat the same way the Wolf had. The rough, panting breathing of the Wolves sounded very loud as they got closer.
He tried to push past Somerset to get moving again. It was like trying to budge a warm wall in a soft coat.
Dylan grimaced and gave up.
“He wanted to know where Santa was,” he said. It sounded even crazier to repeat it. Dylan made one last grasp at a normal world as he laughed nervously. “Maybe I should have sent him to the grotto.”
Apparently Somerset didn’t see the funny side. He narrowed his eyes and put one big hand on Dylan’s shoulder.
“He was looking for Santa?”
