Ahead of them, almost lost in the gray, the bird shrieked impatiently. Jack threw his head back and answered, the hollow, mournful bell of his howl sharp as it pierced the crackle of the fire and the breathing of the wolves.
The other wolves joined in as they scrambled to their feet and jostled eagerly for position, shoulders and hips pushed together. Only Gregor stayed quiet, his jaw clenched against the sound. The dog felt the urge tug at its stomach, but it died to a creak of a groan before it could get past tongue and teeth.
It wasn’t in a dog’s nature to hold a grudge, but beat one long enough and it would learn.
Gregor was right. Rose and the prophets needed to die tonight, and the dog didn’t see any reason to warn her ahead of time.
Jack let the howl trail to silence and took off after the bird’s shadow. He forged his way through the snow, the rest of the Pack on his heels. Gregor loped along next to them, the ground-devouring strides of his long legs able to keep pace with the Pack for now.
The dog hung back out of habit. Its place had always been at the back of the Pack, bottom of the pecking order, and last to get the pickings from the kill, even if it could outrun most of the wolves in a pinch, over a short distance at least.
THE BIRDflew, and the wolves followed.
The dog could tell they were on the right track. Tom and Lachlan couldn’t afford to linger in the Wild. It took babies, and this one didn’t even have a mother’s flesh to keep it anchored. They staggered across the countryside in jolts and starts. Every mile or so, Danny would catch the thin, antiseptic scent of amniotic fluid where it had dripped on the snow. Drops of blood stained the snow like gory breadcrumbs, still wet and running despite what had passed since their murder.
The core of Danny that the dog hung on to thought bleakly about curses, but it was more likely to be the way the Wild was twisted. Not as much time had passed for the killers.
Curse or not, it was useful.
Under it all, the stink of Tom’s guilt and fear hung in the air in thin gray strands that clung like cobwebs to the snow. The weakness of it made the dog’s hackles go up from his ears to the base of his tail, stiff with anger. It was too little, too late. Tom could salt the Highlands from here to John O’Groats, and the dog’s mam wouldn’t be any less dead.
The spike of emotion hit the dog like a hammer hit a bell. It stumbled briefly over its own feet as dog and Danny jostled for space. The dog caught its balance as one of the other wolves, frost crusted heavily on its fur, turned to snap at him. Jagged white teeth clicked shut just in front of his nose. The dog snarled back. There was a difference between being at the bottom of the pack and being a punching bag. It was a thin, hard-defended line.
It ended the same way it always did. The aggression rippled outward—a growl, a shoulder block hard enough to jar, fur in the snow—and then faded before it reached the high-ranked wolves. They settled down and found a steady pace again.
The Wild faded in and out around them, a lungful of eerily clean air—like it had never known the inside of anything’s lungs—and pocks of salt-melt in the snow. Ahead of them the storm brewed like a wall of gray, snow and hail tangled around each other as it hammered the worldthinto make way for something older.
It was a landscape the dog had run through all his life, but in a month, he doubted he could find a landmark he’d recognize.
Ahead of them, the bird suddenly pitched out of the sky. Dead, the dog assumed at first, but then black wings snapped out and it pulled out of the dive just before it hit a frost-limned thicket of gorse.
A second later something cracked, a harsh pop and echo of noise, and the bird squawked its objection as it banked hard to the side. A handful of feathers, so black they looked like shadows, tore free of its wing and floated to the snow.
“Nick!” Gregor yelled.
He split away from the Pack and broke into a dead run across. The wolves tangled themselves up as they tried to decide if that made him something to follow or something to chase.
The dog had never liked him, but right now it knew they were on the same side. It pushed through the wall of muscle and fur and raced after Gregor with a burst of speed that left the wolves in his wake.
The noise barked again—a gun, the dog realized as it laid ringing ears flat. Gregor had already dodged to the side, and Danny was always faster than people expected a huge, dark wolfhound to be. Something clipped his ear, a sharp pinch, but he’d had worse.
He threw himself into the gorse. Sharp branches scraped at him and plucked at his back, but that was what the dense coat of hair was for. There were tufts of hair left caught on the thorns, but Danny ignored it as he wriggled deeper.
The man sprawled on his stomach in the damp ruins of an old hide, gun propped up on a rock in front of him. An acrid, dry smell leached from his pores and clung to the ragged suit he was wearing.
“Fucking animals,” the man spat through split, dry lips as he reared back.
He swung his gun like a club. The barrel of it caught the dog over the head, the metal hot enough to scorch his skin through the thin hair around his ears. It ignored the sting of pain and sank its teeth into the man’s arm, deep enough that fabric and down gave way to meat and blood. The man yelped and let go of his gun. He groped down at his belt with his free hand, but it was cold, and he was clumsy.
The dog got his feet braced on the ground and dragged the man out of his makeshift hunter’s blind, close enough for Gregor to reach in and grab him by the collar. A blade flashed in the man’s hand as he finally got the knife out of his belt. The hooked tip of it opened Gregor’s arm from wrist to elbow, his blood spice and metal on the air. Then Gregor twisted it out of the man’s hand. Finger bones popped with that distinctive chicken-wing sound, but the man just cursed and spat at Gregor.
Not quite a man, the dog saw, not anymore. His bones were loose under his skin, halfway through a decision of where to set, and his eyes were full of dry, brittle temper, like the townsfolk Rose had turned to her purpose, the parts of them that cared scarred over from the poison she fed them.
Gregor shook the man like a terrier with a rat and then roughly frisked him. He came up with another gun—it was tossed away into the snow—and a cheap flask that the man grabbed for with his broken hand.
“One of Rose’s cult,” Gregor said with disgust. He dropped the man to the ground and emptied the liquid onto the snow. It bubbled and stained the white flakes with a greasy, iridescent film. “Drunk on god piss.”
The man laughed and bared bloody teeth. “You’re fucking monsters,” he said. “Animals. Beasts.”
