“Not enough of one,” Lachlan said. “I was never good enough until she came. Then they all bowed, didn’t they? Your ma.”
“Fuck she did.” Danny’s mouth was dry, his lips like leather, and he didn’t know if it was the pulse of poison under his face or just anger. “And I don’t care why you did it, Lachlan. If you wanted to make excuses, you should have done it before you had my sister’s blood under your nails.”
Lachlan looked at his fingers and shrugged. “That could be anyone’s.”
“What did you do with the baby?”
“I gave it to her,” Lachlan said as he lunged forward. He grabbed for Danny with both clawed hands, and Danny ducked under them and scrambled between Lachlan’s legs. He scraped through the snow as he lurched back to his feet. Lachlan spun around and paused at the sight of the knife clutched in Danny’s hand. Then he shrugged it off. “That won’t help you. Or Gregor’s bastard. You know it wouldn’t have lived anyhow, right? I could tell that when I pulled it out of your sister. It was made wrong, like that other brat of his.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Danny said.
“Why should I tell you anything?” Hair prickled over Lachlan’s chest as the Wild tried to shift him around Jack’s stolen skin. Lachlan grimaced and spat into the stained snow. Tom whined and rolled onto his side as he felt the shift pull at him.
Danny feinted forward. Despite his stolen skin and his brave words, Lachlan flinched. At the last second, Danny veered to the side and stooped over Tom’s body. He grabbed a handful of tangled, unwashed hair, yanked his head back, and cut his throat.
Bile scalded the back of Danny’s throat as hot blood spilled over his fingers, and he had to choke back a retch. It shouldn’t have bothered him—no matter how pathetic Tom was right now, he’d helped kill Kath—but it did.
Tom stared at him, face slack with shock as his mind tried to catch up with his body, and then his lips moved jerkily.
“I’m… sorry,” he croaked out. A tear slid out of the corner of his eye and dribbled back into his hair. “I just… I wanted….”
There was no pleasure in Tom’s death, but Danny didn’t care about his regret. He dropped Tom’s head back into the snow to let him bleed out and backed away.
“Where you going to get her a dog skin now?” Danny asked.
His voice sounded weird around the hot pressure in his face. The skin felt numb and his skull weirdly soft. He still couldn’t see out of that eye. It gave him something to distract him from the dog as it squirmed around in his bones.
Lachlan shrugged. “You,” he said. “What? You think I’m not going pull the skin off your bones just ’cause I knew you when we were kids. That just makes it better.”
Danny flipped the knife in his hand and pressed the point against his throat. He could feel it scratch the skin as his heart thumped.
“Where are you going to get a skin?” he repeated.
Lachlan laughed. “So you’ll kill yourself to stop me killing you? Not much of a threat.”
“So you have to go back to your bitch prophet empty-handed?” Danny asked. “Sure. What do I have to lose, Lachlan?”
Confusion creased Lachlan’s face, and he rocked uncomfortably on the balls of his feet. He stepped forward, and Danny dug the knife into his skin. Now both sides of his face pulsed unhappily, and he could feel the burn in his blood. He inhaled raggedly through his nose as Lachlan jumped back.
“What’s to stop you, then?” Lachlan demanded. “You’d just fucking die to spite me.”
Danny grinned at him. It hurt his face, and one side of his mouth didn’t want to cooperate.
“I’ll have hope,” he said, “and I only lie down to die when there’s no point in fighting anymore.”
“Hope?” Lachlan shuddered, and his face twisted around itself in a moment of unexpected self-loathing. He scratched at his chest and dug his fingers into the raw, tender spans of Jack’s skin. “I gave your sister’s brat to Rose. She’s going to feed it to that abomination she’s growing in her stomach. To my son, so he can be strong and worthy.”
“Where is she?” Danny asked. His voice cracked with the need to know. “Is she at the bunker?”
“She was,” Lachlan said almost absently. “She’s done with them, but she’s still got to finish him. You’ll all show the throat to him then.”
Danny lowered the knife from his throat. His hand had started to shake anyhow, his fingers stiff and clumsy. Lachlan relaxed slightly at the sight and smirked.
“Ready to fight, then?” he asked. “One last time?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Danny said and threw the knife.
It wasn’t a great throw—the knife wobbled end over end in a weak arc—but it was good enough. Danny let the dog out as Lachlan’s attention shifted to the blade, and he bolted at the still-two-legged wolf. He dodged at the last second, and Lachlan grabbed at the empty air where he expected the dog to be.
