For the first time, Gregor wondered what his father had thought when he’d seen them, whether they’d been a curse or a blessing. He’d loved them well enough, but they were doomed to be at odds.
These two would be lucky enough to live that long, he supposed. He shelved the next question for later—how he felt—as he reached around and slit Rose’s throat in one sure, practiced slash. He twisted the blade as it reached her ear and dragged it down, to be sure he got the big vein.
Blood gouted out of the wound and dripped from her stomach. Gregor pulled the knife back and punched it neatly into the base of her neck. He felt the blade snick through bone and the thick, grainy length of her spinal column. He yanked it back out and a pink, greasy-looking liquid seeped out and ran down her back.
Rose choked on her own blood, her voice garbled as it drowned in her throat. She went down on her knees and then pitched over onto her side. Her eyes, wild and white-rimmed, rolled as she tried to scrape back control. She clenched her jaw, the muscles bunched and rock hard under her skin, as she tried to move. All that happened was her little finger scraped the snow.
“No,” she slurred out with a mouthful of blood. “No. I’m… a god.”
Gregor jumped smoothly down off the altar and knelt next to her. He gently smoothed her hair back from her face. His fingers crazed over the scars, thick as cord and rougher, where she’d stitched herself back together. Whatever enchantment had been in the skin she’d stolen from the Sannock reached into his gut and squeezed it frantically withlust/love/want/need.
Everything wanted to live, even spells and skin.
Gregor let the itch of distraction sink down into the pit of his brain and set the point of the knife against her temple. The prophet shoved Danny aside and took a step forward. Then he changed his mind and fled into the darkness and the snow instead.
“This is for Nick,” Gregor said as he braced her head on the other side with his free hand. “This is for his ma, your daughter. Maybe she’ll rest now.”
He slid the knife through into her brain and watched the fever fade from her eyes.
Dead she was still—unreasonably—compelling. The sort of corpse that got itself laid out in a glass coffin for passersby to grieve the loss, even though a small, cold part of Gregor could see she was all scars, wrinkles, and overstretched grafts.
Beautiful or ugly, it didn’t matter. She wasn’t Nick.
Gregor left the knife in Rose’s brain—just in case—as he got up.
“You okay?” he asked Danny. When he got a nod, he waved his hand at the altar. “Take care of them. Please?”
Danny grimaced. “I haven’t done great so far,” he said bitterly as he levered himself up onto his knees. “If I were a wolf—”
“You’re alive. They’re alive,” Gregor said flatly. “Dog or wolf, that’s good enough for me.”
He left Danny to mind the babies and looked around the fight for the black ball of the bird where it had fallen. Feathers were scattered in a wide circle in the snow. The bird lay in the middle of them, too black to be real and afloat on a red puddle of its own blood and ice.
The wolves had driven Fenrir back into a thin copse of frozen trees and had him at bay. His hide hung in dry, matted strips from his bones and blood coated his muzzle. They didn’t need another wolf, and they definitely didn’t need Gregor. He pushed through the scrapping prophets and dogs to get to the bird and scoop it up out of the slush. The head dangled, slack as an eel, and its wings draped over his hands. He could feel its warmth against his fingers and the slow stutter of its heart. It was still bleeding, slick and hot as it filled his palms. The feathers were so soft as he folded the bird’s wings in and lifted it up to his chest.
“You don’t get to die,” Gregor told it roughly. “Not again. We won, Nick. It’s all down but—”
“Gregor!” Danny yelled. “Watch out!”
The blow hit his back hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Gregor tried to force a breath into his lungs, but they wouldn’t expand. He could feel them, slack and unresponsive behind his ribs. Then he felt snow, cold and wet, against his knees and realized his legs had gone from under him.
There was something cold and hard in his gut. He could feel his body shift around it. When he looked down, a frost-sheathed branch, shreds of skin caught on jagged spurs of ice, thrust out of his stomach. He touched it gingerly with his fingertips and jostled pain out of the wound to bleed through his body.
“That’s for Rose,” Lachlan’s familiar voice scraped in his ear, rough fingers twisted into Gregor’s hair. He dragged the makeshift weapon out slowly. “That’s for every time you ignored me, every time your fucking brother picked that dog first. Now fuck off and die at last.”
Lachlan shoved Gregor down into the snow and stalked past him toward Fenrir. He held his arms out like the statue of Jesus that Gregor vaguely remembered from assembly in the primary school Da had dragged him to.
“Take me!” Lachlan yelled. He dragged the broken branch, smeared with Gregor’s blood, over his stomach to roughly carve it open. “Fenrir! Eat my wolf, wear my skin. Make me a god!”
He raked his stomach again, deep enough to make him grunt. Fenrir looked toward him, ears pricked with interest. Jack snarled and went for his throat and tore at the loose flap of skin. His teeth ripped deeply, but it didn’t make much impact on Fenrir. The great wolf shook himself and slapped the heavy, tawny wolf away as though he were a terrier. He doggedly plowed through the wolves, ignoring their teeth and attempts to drag him down.
“I have been loyal,” Lachlan said as he dropped the branch. “I dideverythingshe asked. I deserve this. Youoweme my reward.”
Gregor hunched over the bird and rested his forehead against the thick breast feathers. His lungs still didn’t want to work properly so he couldn’t take a deep breath, but he inhaled what he could of the familiar dusty sweet scent. Nick had always smelled like that, even before the bird.
“I didn’t see him,” Danny apologized in his ear, a hand under his elbow. “Can you get up?”
“Probably,” Gregor said. He straightened up and scowled at Danny. “I told you to stay with the babies.”
