“How’d he know?” Gregor asked.
“The house isn’t exactly well-secured,” Bron pointed out as she flicked the lighter. “He was able to look around. That’s why he slaughtered the sheep. You saw the one outside, and he dragged another one all through the house.”
She ran the flickering flame of the lighter along the dry linen. It smoldered sullenly, unwilling to step on winter’s toes, but eventually it caught. Bron tossed the lighter to Jack, who snatched it out of the air. The gas-soaked rags flickered, spat, and caught much more willingly. It singed Gregor’s fingers as he fed it more fuel, one of Surtr’s littlest demons hungry for flesh. It writhed through the flames and then, with a leered wink, crawled into the pipes.
Gregor wiped the Wild out of his eyes and stepped back. He licked his blistered fingers and wrinkled his nose as the smoke backed, thick and black, into the basement.
“I hope your brother thought of this,” he said with a cough.
“At least he thought of something,” Bron said. She stripped her dress off and stood, pale and freckled in the fire light, as she ripped it to shreds to feed the flames. Her voice pitched up as she screamed, “Help! Help! There’s a fire! Help us.”
Gregor’s fingers were still scratched with white scars from his last encounter with a fire. As it caught and spat, cracks spread up the way as it rose through the pipes like a chimney, he couldn’t move. In the shadows of his mind, the flayed, scorched hides of the Sannock billowed and tore and the smoke caught in his throat as he got ready to die.
Then Jack shoved a handful of rags into his hand, and he forced himself back to work. Jack stripped down, naked as Bron, and fed the fires, since clothes would only slow him down. Damp, bloody denim made the smoke thick and ripe with the charred smell of skin.
It didn’t take long for the smoke to reach the upper levels. Over the children’s wails and the crackle of flames, Gregor caught the sound of curses and scuffling as the prophets upstairs tried to work out what was going on.
“Where’s your brother, Bron?” Gregor asked. The kids had backed away against the wall, hands over their faces. “Or are we just the turkey in the oven, stoking the flames?”
She ignored him.
“Trust him,” Jack said. “I do.”
“You trust me,” Gregor pointed out sourly. “So, your judgment is poor.”
Jack made a face, half amused and half acknowledgment, and shrugged. “What other choice do you have?”
“Move that thing,” someone snapped overhead, harsh and thickly Lowland. “Don’t just stand there like idiots. What do you think she’ll do if she comes back and finds we let her wolves burn?”
The monster tried to hold its ground. Gregor could hear its claws scrape against the wood and the snap of its teeth, but in the end, it gave in to the prophets. As it was dragged outside, someone rattled the padlock against its hasp.
“I was going to get them out,” Ailsa said, her voice nasal and self-serving. “Just before you said that, I decided to—”
She hauled the door up.
Bron and Jack were already in their fur. They shot for the slice of light the minute they saw it. Bron had always been fast on her feet, and she wasn’t pregnant enough for it to slow her down as a wolf. She went up the stairs like a missile and slammed into Ailsa’s chest. She bowled the mean-faced prophet backward onto the floor and sank her teeth into her upraised arm. Dead skin and hot flesh ripped and tore under her teeth.
Only a second behind her, Jack went for Ailsa’s legs and ripped chunks of them as she tried to get back onto her feet.
That left Gregor to grab the children, like the toothless old wolf only good to scavenge bones and watch the pups play. He grabbed the pup by the scruff with one hand, slung John up onto his shoulder, and dragged Shauna along by the arm as they scrambled up the stairs.
Ailsa had finally remembered the stolen wolf she’d stitched to her back. Her body twisted as the fur sank down into it and the poor, dead wolf crawled out. One eye was split open, eyelid peeled back and the gray-pink of old liver, and Gregor got a glimpse of Ailsa’s desperate, bloodshot eyeball underneath. She grabbed at Shauna with a hand that was short a finger.
She tore Shauna’s pajamas with her claws as Gregor pulled the little girl out of her reach. She shrieked and clung to him with bony little hands. Gregor stamped down on Ailsa’s hand, heel ground down into the heart of it, and jumped over to get to the far side of the hall.
He staggered and caught himself, the wood hot under his feet as Bron sunk her teeth into Ailsa’s throat and ripped it out. She let the meat drop from her mouth and let Ailsa splutter, jaws big and broken, her blood out. A wild blow of Ailsa’s arm threw Bron off, and she thumped against a wall hard enough to make Gregor wince. She writhed away from Jack and staggered away on bloody, half-ruined legs, Ailsa’s voice a raw gargle as she tried to raise the alarm.
Gregor started to lose his grip on Shauna as she squirmed and grabbed at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a prophet in a dirty brown hide grab for her. Gregor snarled, dropped Shauna, and pushed her behind him with his knee as he shoved the prophet into the wall. The reek of dead, badly preserved skin slid into his nose and down his throat. He dug his fingers into the other man’s throat until he gagged, and Gregor could feel the brittle strands of cartilage creak under his fingers. On his shoulder, John hiccupped with quiet panic and tightened his arms around Gregor’s throat in unconscious mimicry.
“Don’t!” Jack grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back. “It’s Danny.”
Surprise loosened Gregor’s fingers, and the prophet slumped back against the wall. Now that he looked, he could see Danny’s face under the skin of the wolf, the narrow muzzle draped over the frame of an old pair of heavy glasses.
“Finally got to play wolf, huh?” he said roughly.
Jack shoved past him and dragged Danny, stinking hide and all, into a hard, desperate kiss. He slid his hands up under the wet hide to tangle through Danny’s soft curls.
“You smell like shit,” Jack said as he leaned back. He grazed his thumb along Danny’s cheekbone. “Are you okay?”
