“Just die,” Gregor told it. “Do us all a favor.”
Some sort of spite glittered in the thing’s milky eye, and it shuffled around until it could slam Gregor into the wall. The bulk of it pinned him like a bug, and he felt his ribs creak as they started to give. His chest was so compressed he could hardly breathe, and what air he could suck in was rank with the reek of the thing. The monster grunted in satisfaction and shifted its weight so it could grind him against the wall.
Pain spread through Gregor like heat. His fingers slipped on the bloody gun, and gray bled through his vision as his focus narrowed down to the pressure in his chest.
A harsh caw snapped his attention back to the world around him, and he looked up as Nick dropped out of the rafters. Wide black wings snapped out, the edges of sleek feathers iridescent, and battered the monster’s head as Nick croaked angrily at it. He dug long, thick talons into the creases that furrowed the thing’s low brow and jabbed his thick, bone-white beak down viciously. Shreds of flesh peeled off the monster’s face, and it forgot about Gregor.
It staggered away from Gregor and ducked to paw blindly at its head. The thick bone spurs that jutted from the backs of its wrists raked down Nick’s wings and hooked in. It dragged Nick off its face and pinned him down to the floor. Nick shrieked and squirmed, blood flicked from the ends of his wings as he flapped, and the monster snarled down at him.
Gregor pushed himself off the wall and jumped onto the monster’s back. He scrambled up the sweaty mound of it until he could grab a handful of the wiry mane that bristled around the back of the deformed skull. It cut into his fingers and stung like a nettle. The gun jutted out of the thing’s back, canted to one side, but Gregor ignored it. He shoved his hand down into the raw wound. It was hot and wet, and the meat moved against Gregor’s skin as it tried to heal around him.
He closed his fingers around the monster’s spine. The vertebrae were thick as his fist and rough with chips and cracks where he’d battered it with the gun. Between them the spinal cord ran like a twisted root with a firm core under a pustule-caked, spongy layer.
Gregor grabbed it and yanked. It resisted for a moment and then split apart in his fingers. The reek that spilled out as the cord snapped made Gregor retch in disgust. If he thought the monsters couldn’t smell any worse, he’d been wrong.
The monster moaned in pain and confusion as its legs went from under it. The huge, bloody bulk of it rolled over onto its side, and its eyes bulged as it choked to death on its own lungs. Before it could, Jack, balanced on three legs, took its throat out.
Nick scrambled back to his feet, flicked his wings to settle his fingers, and preened himself angrily. One wing hung awkwardly and stuck out at odd angles, the feathers broken.
It would heal.
“I didn’t need help,” Gregor said. The bird gave him a skeptical look out of one black, shiny eye and then swiveled its head to look at him out of the other, as though the view might be different. “And if I did, it took you long enough.”
Nick shed his feathers and stood up. He looked unharmed, but the smell of his blood was ripe and sweet. Gregor took his shoulders and turned him around. Bloody red lines raked down his back from his bony shoulders to the curve of his ass.
“I’ll heal,” Nick said. He twisted his head around to check out the damage. “Even before the bird, I’d have healed.”
He shouldn’t have to, but Gregor was glad he would. The prophets had left enough scars on Nick. They didn’t get to claim any more of him.
Gregor tightened his fingers. “Just be careful,” he said. “I like all your bits the way they are.”
The bird glanced at him through Nick’s eyes, black and wicked. “Even me?”
He didn’t fall in love with the carrion god. He fell in love with a sharp-nosed man with restless, gentle hands and a stubborn streak. But without the bird, Nick would have been laid in a cold grave under the Scottish stones.
“I put up with you,” he said. Both of them grinned at that.
He stepped back and wiped his hands on his jeans. It didn’t make him sleep any better, but at least it didn’t feel likehisstink so much.
“Did you find her?” Gregor asked. He watched Nick’s expression settle into unhappy lines. The old tension worried with sharp fingers at the scars on Gregor’s spirit. Under his skin the Wild slid uneasily in search of something to do. Nick had enough reasons to hate his grandmother, but reasons weren’t always enough?
Nick shook his head. “No sign of her,” he said. “The Pack hasn’t cleared the whole compound yet, but… it feels too easy for Gran.”
Every time Gregor breathed in, his chest ached in a dozen delicate fractures. His hands were red and chafed from contact with the sour innards of the monster. He wouldn’t have said “easy,” but he knew what Nick meant.
For all her flaws, Rose was a mean old Scottish wolf with a traitor’s mind. If she didn’t have anyone to torment, she’d make her own life difficult for practice.
“What about prophets?” Jack asked, his voice tight with the effort it took to pull his human skin back on. He crouched next to the dead monster, his forearm braced over his bare knee and his hair slicked to his scalp with blood. “I’ve seen monsters and madmen, but not one flayed hide.”
Nick started to shake his head. He stopped midmotion, and his eyes flickered past Gregor’s shoulder. The hair on the back of Gregor’s neck prickled, but he knew that if he turned around, there’d be nothing there.
Gunfire rattled from farther down in the bunker, and a woman screamed and spat out profanities mixed in the howl of rage. Wolves snarled and yelped, the sounds distorted as they bounced off the thick walls and high ceilings. The need to move—or sit down and die—twisted at Gregor’s guts.
“We don’t have time to gossip with shades,” he said. “Where’s my child?”
The reminder made Nick’s jaw tense as he refocused on Gregor. He swallowed and ignored the jab to his sore spot.
“They want to tell you something,” Nick said. “They want something from you.”
