Gregor shrugged. “We know.”
He coldcocked the man and tossed him aside to be sniffed at by the rest of the Pack. Then he reached into the thicket for the gun. The dog laid his ringing ears back and doubtedthatcould end well. Gregor slung the weapon over his shoulder and turned to search the sky. The bird dropped out of it, battered by the wind, and landed awkwardly in the snow. A flap, a hop, and its feathers peeled away like shadows as Nick stood up. The pale, dark-haired man wrapped his arms around himself, although he didn’t shiver. It was habit—an old scar stitched over his stomach, an untidy cord of knotted tissue.
“Down there,” he said as he pointed with his chin. “It’s open.”
“A trap?”
Nick frowned and cocked his head to the side. His eyes flickered as though he could see more than wolves and snow. “I don’t think so,” he said. “They’re getting ready for something.”
There was a pause as Jack and Gregor traded a look with matched green eyes. Then Jack flicked his ear, and Gregor nodded. They led the way down the hill, and the wolves followed. The dog sniffed the man, not sure what he thought he’d smell, and then jogged after the last wolf’s tail to catch up.
Ice-crusted nets were hung over the rocks that disguised the entrance to the bunker, heavy and layered to disguise the deeply set metal door. Even half open, the stink of confined human and the agitation of hot,infected meatthick in the air, it was hard to see. The wolves milled around outside, wary and nervous, but then slunk in on slow, wary paws.
The dog didn’t follow. Something in the air got its attention. It lifted its nose, snorted out snow, and tasted the air. It was nothing, but the ghost of it made the hackles on the dog’s neck itch. A nervous growl tickled the dog’s throat, and the big wolf that smelled of grief rounded on him with a snarl meant to quell him.
The dog scrambled back, ears flat, but once the wolf’s attention was back on Jack, it scrambled to its feet.
It had hunted on its own for years, in narrow streets that smelled of a hundred things on a good night. Maybe it wasn’t a wolf, but it could pick out a fox’s spoor through curried goat, old piss, and the rainbow dizziness of spilled petrol. Sometimes it knew to trust its nose even if it didn’t know why.
Jack was busy with his brother and the bird. The other wolves would wait on them. The dog shuffled slowly backward, snow matted in shaggy fur until it was out of the line of sight. Then it scrambled to its feet and cast about until instinct tugged it forward.
It was off the track they’d followed. The dog glanced back, and it had already lost sight of the rest of the Pack. It didn’t matter. Sound carried farther, and it didn’t take long to howl.
The ripe green stink of decomposition shimmered around the base of a tree, and the faded scent prints of humans hung like grease stains in the air.
Somewhere in the back of its mind, the dog felt Danny worry, but the humans weren’t the dog’s problem. They hadn’t hurt it.
Not yet.
The dog twitched its ear to shed that thought and plowed through the nonrelevant scents. It could almost catch the cobweb smell it was after—a damp, sharp smell like rusted metal. Like….
The connection clicked into place, and the dog stopped dead in its tracks. It stood frozen ankle-deep in the snow, and a growl rumbled up from its stomach to the back of its throat.
Lachlan.
When it was younger, the dog had good reason to be aware of Lachlan’s stink. It made it easier to stay out of his way, especially when he smelled of blood and the sticky satisfaction of someone else’s pain.
A quiver trembled through the dog’s haunches as it tried to decide what to do. Chase the trail now it had the scent hooked in its nose, or go back and try to convince the wolves to go with it?
Safer to go back. Wolves hunted in a pack for a reason. The dog took a step back but hesitated. They might not believe him. He was a dog. Even a Sannock was more tied to the Wild than him. The dog didn’t really understand why that mattered—a nose was a nose—but it did.
Jack might be able to convince them, but… would he?
That wasn’t the dog’s thought, but it knew that the human side of it understood that sort of thing better. So it forged forward through the snow after the smell of shed blood and Lachlan. The wind picked up as the Wild grew stronger, like a hand on the dog’s ruff to urge him forward.
“Please.” The word was whined in a strangled, snot-filled voice from over a low rise. The dog flicked its ear as it tried to decide if that was Tom’s voice. “I did what I was told. I was a good dog. That’s what she wanted. Shesaidthat if we were good dogs, the gods would keep us.”
“She lied.” That was definitely Lachlan, his Highlands brogue thicker than normal on his words. “She does that. To you. To me. Worse for you, though, I suppose.”
He sounded drunk, but the edges of the word were still crisp. The dog pulled its lips back from its teeth in a silent snarl as it cast around the landscape. There was no cover worth the name, just a few scrubby patches of heather that sagged under the weight of the snow and a scattering of stones. The dog stalked, stiff-legged and slung low, up and around the rise. The steady drone of the wind disguised the soft crunch of his paws on the snow as he climbed. He came up behind the two murderers, barely out of their line of sight.
The baby wasn’t there, and it looked like they weren’t allies anymore.
Tom lay on the bloody ground, naked and blanched with the cold. His arms and legs lay at unnatural angles, jerked roughly loose from where they’d been moored in the joints, and his fingers and toes looked gray. Stiff. His ribs and chest were deformed, the bones lumpy and misshapen under red-blotched skin.
The dog felt a cold satisfaction that felt alien. It laid its ears flat to its skull and pushed the Danny-feeling back down under the surface. Tom was no threat now, and that was good, but gloating was a human thing.
Down below, Lachlan tilted his head up to the sky. “The bitch….Selene,” Lachlan corrected himself self-consciously, “will be in her chariot soon. You’ll turn then, like it or not. Why drag this out?”
