Gregor rasped out a laugh. “One day you’ll do as you’re told.”
“Not today.”
Ewan turned to look at them. The two monsters crouched at heel on either side of him, and he put his hands on the bony jut of their deformed shoulders. He looked small and oddly normal between them—a neat, slightly weathered man with a tired face. But Nick’s shoulder still ached from the iron grip of those fingers.
“I would have been a bad grandfather,” Ewan said. “I was a bad father, and I learned nothing from it. That’s why my daughter’s dead, no matter what the Old Man did or didn’t do. All these years, all this god fuckery, because I didn’t want to admit that.”
Gregor used Nick’s shoulder to push himself up onto his feet. He folded his arm over his stomach to hold the wound shut with his forearm.
“They’re not alone,” he said. “Prophets. They’ll catch up soon.”
Ewan smiled thinly. “I know. I brought them,” he said. “It was a trap.”
“Yeah,” Gregor said. “We got that. And now?”
There was silence for a moment as Ewan glanced at Nick. His eyes were dark with unsaid things, and then he let his smile stretch ruefully over his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “Call it my bid to be the favorite grandparent.”
Blood had cooled stickily on Nick’s hands. He wiped them on his trousers as he struggled to his feet. His heart thumped in his ears, too fast and too hot.
“What’s she going to do?” he asked.
One of the monsters raised its head. It flared its nostrils, split like petals, and slurred something out of its broken jaw.
“… now y’r plas,” it rasped, raw lips peeled back and wet with blood.
Nick felt the itch of the bird’s feathers behind his eyes as it stirred and pecked irritably at him. In the shadows, between the trees, he caught a foggy glimpse of a dead woman. Dark stains clotted on the front of her oversized Aran jumper and gloved her hands. Nick couldn’t make out her face, and he didn’t want to.
The monsters saw her too, or at least knew she was there, since their eyes didn’t track her. They growled at the air where she’d been, thick runs of goose pimples on their spines as they tried to raise their hackles while she walked around them and stood behind Ewan. Her mouth moved close to his ear.
Nick couldn’t make out the words. He tried, but the bird croaked and flapped to drown it out. It—they—might be a god, but not everything was meant for them.
Ewan tilted his head as though he could hear her too. Then he sighed and shook his head to dislodge whatever it was.
“Rose made you a god, but only a small one. She made herself… something. That won’t be enough when the real gods come back. They’ll still expect us to bend the neck. That’s why she’s here. That’s what the humans are for… will be. Gods, ones who will bend the neck to her and do as they are told. So when Odin sets his one eye on us and Selene finally comes down to earth, we’ll meet them as equals.” He tightened his grip on the monsters and glanced over his shoulder. Nick thought, at first, that he’d heard something the dead woman said. Instead he hissed under his breath. “The others are coming. You have to go. Go as far as you can. It’s too late to stop Rose, but maybe if you run far enough, she won’t come after you. My daughter thought she could do that, but I guess she didn’t go far enough.”
Fragments of voices carried on the wind—curses and Ewan’s name.
Gregor grimaced and grabbed Nick’s arm to pull him away, although Nick didn’t know where they meant to go. He dug his heels in and looked at Ewan.
“What’s the dead thing on the mound?” he asked. The rot-musk of it was strong enough in his memory that he could taste it. The oil of it coated his tongue. “And why did Rose leave the Run-Away Man to guard it?”
Ewan looked confused for a moment, but he didn’t have time to puzzle out whatever part he’d missed. The monsters were restless at the approach of the other prophets, and they pulled against the restraint of his hand on their shoulders. He dug his fingers in and wrenched them back, sweat on his face despite the cold.
“God or not, she needs to have the wolves at her heel,” he said through gritted teeth. “And when the Old Man wouldn’t bend his neck or give her his cock, that only left her one path.”
Ewan spoke like he’d shared something profound. It meant nothing to Nick.
“I don’t understand.” he said. “What path? What’s she going to do?”
Maybe Ewan would have answered, but he didn’t get a chance. The prophet limped into the clearing on malformed legs. She was half-wolf, but the rotted hide was torn to rags and it couldn’t cover her. The long, fanged muzzle of a wolf was unfinished, her ribbon of a tongue shredded as she tried to fit it between broken teeth crammed in a human jaw. Her eyes—one clouded amber and the other human as it peered through a split in the hide—flicked from Ewan to the bloody Gregor, and she leered.
“Kill the whoreson,” she said. “I’ll pluck the bird.”
Ewan smiled. “You make it easy, Ailsa.” He dragged the monsters around by the scruffs of their neck, skin loose and too elastic in his fists, and set them on her with a snarled command. She went down with a shocked screech as the mass of twisted bone and claw hit her. Ewan shot a quick look at Nick and Gregor and snapped. “It won’t work for long. Run.”
Guilt pinned Nick in place. It felt like he should care, but he couldn’t. Gregor growled and dragged him away. The last thing Nick saw as the Wild closed around him was the monsters lurch away from Ailsa and turn on Ewan.
He held his ground.
