The dog didn’t want to do it, but Gregor was right. It could run better than it could fight.
It gave Jack one quick, longing look and then took off after the not-dead Fenrir.
The cold was a two-edged sword as it ran. It numbed raw wounds but stiffened bones, dredged up the dregs of its last reserves, and pushed itself to go faster. It stumbled over a dead Sannock in the snow, human flesh torn apart to reveal lichen and stick bones underneath. The Sannock parts were already half dust, brittle and crumbling as the Wild fastidiously picked them out of the world. That meant something to Danny too, and the urgency of his thoughts was a distraction.
Something bad was going to happen. The dog could see the knots of Danny’s thoughts as it pieced together, but it couldn’t chase the trail down to thewhy. That didn’t matter. It knew what mattered.
Bron’s pup. Jack. Distance from the slaughter behind it.
The dog shook its head in annoyance. It would give Danny his skin back if what he thought was so important. Otherwise that part of it needed to let the dog be until this was done.
It didn’t help. Danny’s worry picked nervously at the edges of the dog’s mind no matter how it tried to ignore it. On the snow ahead of it, a gray shadow, distorted by the wind and the dim moonlight, kept pace with him.
The reek of the place hit the dog’s nose before it saw it—a low cairn stacked up on a hill, ringed by scrubby trees and gorse. Dead dogs flapped from trees like flags, flayed paws staked to the frozen trunks. The hackles on the back of the dog’s neck stood on end as it felt something brush in and around it. Cold, not-there noses sniffed at its wounds, and teeth clicked silently—but he still knew—next to its ear. The dog swallowed the whine in its throat, clamped its tail between its legs, and sidled closer.
Rose lay on top of the stones. Her scrawny legs were spread, another hide laid over her thighs and groin. It was filthy with blood. The few prophets she had left gathered around and chanted guttural prayers as they rubbed grease over her stomach and up along her scarred thighs. Under the draped hide the baby squalled, and Rose braced both hands on her swollen stomach and pushed down.
Fresh blood spilled into the stone, and the baby slipped after it, into the greasy hands of a prophet. Bron’s pup, small, blind, and red as a skinned rabbit as the prophet passed it to Rose. She laid it on her breast, and it squalled as it turned its screwed-up face away from the slack nipple presented.
Something else squirmed and wriggled in her stomach. It didn’t need any encouragement to find its way out as it clawed at the thin membrane that wrapped around it. Rose grimaced at the pain and clutched the baby to her chest. She thrust her hand into her old stomach and hauled out a wet, unfinished thing that was all bones and spider limbs. It opened its mouth and croaked a tea-kettle hiss through razor-sharp teeth.
She gave it a hard shake and tossed the thing at one of the prophets. With Bron’s baby clutched in one arm, she scrambled up onto her feet.
The dog…needed… to understand the stale-penny stink of Danny’s panic in its throat. It knew it was about the pup, and it had promised.They’dpromised Bron. Kath.
If the Wild didn’t like it, the Wild could fuck off.
Danny tumbled face-first into the snow. He scrambled to his feet and regretted it. The dog hurt but it didn’tthinkabout it, but Danny could feel the damage and work out how long it would take to heal… if it healed. He was a dog, not a wolf. With him, some things just patched back together good enough.
“It never works,” Danny muttered to himself as he scraped snow from his eyes. “I was wrong.Newisn’t enough.Wolfisn’t enough. It killed Nick, getting the bird stuffed in him.”
The realization was still all knots and threads in his brain. He knew he had to stop Rose, but he hadn’t picked it apart to understand it yet. Or why he’d thought he’d do better—naked and half-blind in the storm—than the dog would. He staggered toward the hill anyhow, slowed down by the thick drifts that the dog had sailed over.
He remembered the taste of dead sheep on his tongue and the long nights he’d spent out with Hector during lambing season. Wolves were useless for that. The sheep would rather run off a cliff than come to a wolf’s hand, so the dogs were always recruited. Sometimes lambs died or the sheep died giving birth, but there was a trick to get a bereaved sheep to accept an orphan lamb.
Just skin her dead lamb and dress the live one in it. The sheep would never know any better.
Wolves were smarter than sheep, smarter than the dog. Fenrir wasn’t like Jack, though. He’d never been human, never learned how to lie or trick. Rose had dressed Lachlan in Jack’s skin to fuck him, so she’d smell like the skin Fenrir wore. Then she’d skinned it back off the moron to make a leash for the wolf. Now she’d taken the Old Man’s grandson, his blood and his bone to….
Danny cursed to himself and forced himself to run faster. He’d left Jack and Gregor behind, caught in the middle of a slaughter, and there wasn’t time to wait for them to catch up. He’d promised to bring the baby home, but someone else would have to do that. If Danny didn’t stop this, all they’d bring home was a corpse.
Probably.
Some wild flash of humor sparked through Danny’s brain as he thought about how stupid he’d look if he was wrong. It probably wouldn’t be for long, but it would be impressive.
Danny didn’t bother to fight the prophets. He just flung himself between them and ignored the yank of urgent hands on his arms and the fingers in his hair. Rose’s scarred face twisted in contempt when she saw him—there was a horrid, impossible beauty knit into that scarred corpse mask, but the thought of his mam’s corpse dulled Danny’s reaction to it—and she raised her hand to push him away.
He stooped to grab a rock that had rolled away from the cairn. It was round and smooth in his palm, and he straightened up to swing it in one smooth motion. It crushed her fingers and snapped her wrist at a weird angle. She swore at him for the indignity, and he caught her on the jaw on the backswing. It broke with a dramatic pop and knocked her backward onto the altar.
Danny dropped the rock, grabbed the baby from her loosened grip, and backed away. It didn’t cry, but he soothed it anyhow as he looked around for a way out.
“The dog,” Rose said, her voice slurred. She poked her jaw back into place with her fingers. “I should have expected it. Loyal as a cur and just as dumb.”
Fear stuck in Danny’s throat like nettles, and a bleak, awful fury backed up behind it. It felt like an allergic reaction, a physical response to the scarred old prophet that made Danny feel like he was about to throw up or have a heart attack. He wanted to run away. He wanted to peel her apart like a present in musical chairs, just tear off the stolen layers until all that was left was the bitter old bag whose voice he heard when Nick talked about his childhood.
“You killed my mother.”
Rose’s scarred lips twitched in a sour smile. “She killed me.”
