A storm followed the wolves through town. Snow piled high against cars and the sides of buildings, and ice cracked the windows with brittle gunshot retorts. It worked in the Yule Lads’ favor, since they’d grown up ankle deep in fresh fall. The Kallikantzaroi were less accustomed to it, and as they shed their mortal glamor for their true forms, their hooves didn’t have much purchase.
But there were still too many of them.
Somerset clenched his teeth against the nagging pain in his head as he put the stocky Kallikantzaroi in a butcher’s apron into a chokehold. The man kicked and swore, but eventually his body went limp.
Somerset let him drop into the snow and reached up to pull the butcher’s knife out of his shoulder. He wiped the knife on his jeans and looked at Jars.
“Could have helped.”
“Didn’t want to.”
Jars leaned on the cracked ax he’d taken away from another Kallikantzaroi as he leaned over to look for tracks. He brushed away the fresh fall of snow with the side of his foot to uncover the crushed pawprint.
“We’re close,” he said.
Somerset grabbed a handful of snow and shoved it under his jacket, the crust of ice packed against the shoulder wound.
“Not close enough.”
They started out of the alley and had to stop, frozen in place, as they heard the crunch of hooves on snow.
“This way!” a voice yelled, thin and nasal. “I saw them.”
“They went down Main Street!” someone countered.
The mob dithered for a moment as they tried to decide and then split. A handful of them went left, and the rest ran straight on.
Somerset and Jars looked at each other, shrugged, and fell in behind them.
It turned out that the “they” wasn’t the other Yule Lads. It was the wolves. The two of them were at bay in front of the town’s bank…but the wolves had no problem with killing the Kallikantzaroi. Bodies lay scattered on the ground, twisted from the transformation,their blood staining the snow like grease. The pack leader snapped the neck of the last of them and tossed him aside, the limp body taking out a snowman constructed on the bank lawn.
“I can smell you,” the pack leader noted as he wiped his hands on his shirt. “Peppermint and blood. Yule Lads.”
“You know,” Somerset said as he walked forward, “we don’t need to fight. The Kallikantzaroi aren’t your friends…you can see that now.”
The pack leader just shook his head. He looked worn down, weary in a way something born from storm winds and fear shouldn’t be capable of.
“Wolves don’t have friends,” he said. “We have the pack and the hunt and the kill. To bemore? It hurts.”
Somerset wrapped the loose links of the chain around his hand. “So will this.”
The wolf showed his teeth, thorns twisted through enamel, and lunged forward. Somerset caught him, and they tussled, their footing uneven in the snow that turned to slush and mud as they staggered back and forth. Both of them fell into a parked car and crushed the door. The alarm went off on impact, lights flashing as the horn blared.
The wolf picked Somerset up by the shirt and tossed him into the road. Somerset hit the snow-covered concrete and skidded on the ice. He rolled over and scrambled back to his feet. The wolf hit him before he could get his balance. They both hit the dirt again, rolling around and rabbit-punching each other like the sort of idiots Somerset had to throw out of the bar at the end of the night.
It was undignified, but it kept the wolf’s attention where Somerset wanted it.
At least it did until Jars’s shout rattled the street. Windows shattered, and the sudden cacophony of a dozen car alarms filled the air. The snow seemed to stop for a moment as it was blown back into the storm.
It sent Somerset and the wolf tumbling down the street like a couple of fallen leaves. Somerset grabbed a streetlight on the way past, while the wolf crashed through a plate glass window into a toy shop.
Somerset shook his head to clear the ringing and looked around to check on his brother. The wolf was on the ground, ribs twisted and splintered from the impact. The wizened body of the person it had been tied to originally lay half out of the wolf on the ground. Jars grabbed at the broken ribs and hacked at them, ripping the connective tissue of ivy apart to get at what was inside.
“No!”
Somerset turned to see the pack leader leap back through the broken window. Chunks of glass were embedded in him, glittering in the net of roots and tendrils that stitched him back together. He shook himself, powdered bits of glass shed into the snow, and bolted across the street. Somerset intercepted him before he got there. They tore into each other in the middle of the road, brutal and desperate.
For a second, as Somerset twisted the wolf’s arm until he heard green wood tear, he thought he had the upper hand. Then he felt the wind tug at his hair and blow cold across the back of his neck to make him hackle. He looked as the last two wolves raced silently out of the snow.
