Yes, he oriented himself through the rocking nausea that dogged him, that was down. So he had to…
Dylan braced his hands and feet against whatever sludge was all around him. He pushed himself in the general direction of ‘up.’ His shoulders jammed painfully on something. Dylan tasted sour bile in the back of his throat, and then he managed to squirm free and crawled out.
Cold and—Dylan sniffed his arms—greasy in the dark.
Dylan sat up, his body racked with violent shivers, and looked around. Ice and dark trees surrounded him. He could see what looked like a road in the distance, the snow illuminated by car headlights.
He swallowed, his mouth sticky, and turned to look at the pot he’d been in.
That made his brain creak with reluctance to go on. It was definitely the same pot from the farm, the sickly, salted smell of it the same, but now it was big enough for a man to crawl out of.
Dylan ran his hand through his matted hair. His fingers brushed something hard tangled in it, and he picked out a chunk of bone. He shuddered—not from the cold this time—and tossed it away into the dark.
“Sure,” he muttered to himself, mostly to hear something other than the wind and creak of trees. “Santa and six-foot-five elves I can accept. Waking up in a giant pot is where I draw the line?”
His breath fogged visibly in the air as he rubbed his forehead and tried to work out…
Dylan hesitated as he tried to decide what to focus on.Howhe got here, orwhereto go now.
The ‘how’he couldn’t even wrap his mind around. His best guess was that Somerset had decided to cut the argument short somehow, but he could not get from that to waking up in a pot.
It had involved a kiss. He remembered that. It had left him feeling sweet and breathless and… cold.
That was more of a distraction than a help in working anything out, though. He tamped down the chill fizz that filled the memory of Somerset’s lips on his.
So ‘where now?’it was. Dylan poked the pot with his foot. It rolled over and leaked lumpy grease from its innards. Whatever… it was definitely going to be easier on him if he didn’t use the word ‘magic,’ he realized… had gotten him this far, it was spent now.
He stood there for a moment. Now would be areallygood time to wake up from this coma. When nothing changed, he heaved a sigh and turned to crunch toward the road.
Oddly enough, the cold didn’t bother him. He’d felt cold since he woke up, but he wasn’t getting any colder. The dull ache of chilled bones might have even eased off slightly.
That was something, at least, because the rest of the trek was miserable. The snow spilled over the top of his boots and soaked his socks, the wet wool rubbing his heels and toes raw. And while he might not feel the cold too much, it still stung his throat and froze the dampness on the collar of his jacket as he breathed.
And hesmelled.The cold should have tamped down the aroma, but the boiled oats and grease smell of the woman’s hospitality lingered on him.
It wasn’t his biggest problem—people died in this sort of weather, Dylan had called time of death on a few of them—but it felt up there. Every now and again, he’d catch a particularly potent whiff and his stomach would turn.
He tried to ignore it—along with his brain’s accurate but unhelpful list of hypothermia symptoms—as he slogged toward the road. It took him longer than he’d have expected. Once he got there, his feet were still packed with snow as he limped along the broken concrete shoulder of the road.
Headlights broke over him as the big Ford truck came around the bend. Dylan stuck his thumb out and tried to look like someone who’d not murder the driver and steal the car. It wasn’t easy.
He got a glimpse of the driver behind the windscreen, a plump woman with a practical ponytail and bags under her eyes. Her thousand-yard stare was impressive. Her eyes didn’t even flicker toward Dylan as she drove by him.
The same happened with the next two cars, a Toyota and a Prius, respectively. A big man behind the wheel of a big rig—tinsel strung up around the windshield, a rubber Santa figure screaming into the void from where it was lashed to the grille—slowed down when they saw him. Something made him stop and roll the window down.
“There’s a gas station around the bend,” he yelled out the gap, jerking his thumb back the way he’d come. His radio was playing Christmas songs, Kirsty MacColl’s raspy soprano calling someone a scumbag. “It’s twenty-four-hour.”
“Could I get a ride back to Belling?” Dylan asked as he jogged over. He scrambled up onto the running board and hung onto the door handle. The warm air inside the cab made his face sting. “My car broke down, and I—”
The driver hesitated. Then he grimaced and shook his head.
“Can’t do that,” he said firmly. “I know better, lad.”
The window rolled back, cutting off Shane MacGowan’s heartfelt slur, and the truck pulled away. Dylan clung on briefly, hunched in against the snow, but good sense prevailed. He jumped down while he still could, running a few steps as the momentum shoved at him. The truck sped up until it disappeared into the dark and the snow.
“Fuck,” Dylan muttered as he pulled his hand down his face. He turned into the wind and headed toward the gas station.
His wallet had made it through the Wolf attack, the brief not-flight with Somerset, and Dylan’s trip in a pot. He pulled out some tens with blue-tinted fingers and shoved them over the counter.
