Pressure throbbed behind Gregor’s eyes, a hot pulse in time with his heart. He struggled to focus past the pain and the blood that dripped into his eyes.
Maybe it was enough. The monster wasn’t going to shoot another wolf, and that was a victory of sorts. He could give up.
Gregor bared his teeth in a hard snarl of a grin that made his bruised face ache.Fuck that.He forced his arms up and grabbed the monster’s head, dug his fingers into the hole the bird made, and pulled. Bone creaked and split along the fracture lines the bird had left in the skull. It cracked open like an egg, and blood and clots of hair spilled out around his fingers.
The monster howled like a dog and slammed Gregor’s head into the door until his vision grayed out. He couldn’t see, but he didn’t need to. He thrust his fingers through the thin membrane of scalp and into the wet slop of its brain. The monsters healed quickly, but Gregor pulped the delicate tissue in his fist and pulled it off the stem.
That wasn’t something to come back from.
Big hands flexed around Gregor’s skull for a heartbeat. Then they went lax. The monster staggered back and pitched over onto the ground. Its brains dripped, wet and sticky, from Gregor’s fingers. He shook them off and pushed himself off the door.
The Sannock pulled the last of the gaunt monsters to the ground, and Jack, so matted in blood that the flash of his one green eye was the only thing that broke the monochrome gore, tore its guts open.
Gregor wiped blood out of his eyes and turned around to try the door. His blood was smeared over the metal, but it didn’t make any difference. It didn’t open. He swore and smacked the heel of his hand against it.
“Can you step into the Wild?” Nick asked. “Come out the other side.”
Jack, still in his wolfskin, grunted his opinion of that.
“Not a good idea,” Gregor said. “We ask the Wild to let us in, and if it wants, it does. Then we hope it lets us out again, where it wills and when it wills. With how twisted Rose has left it? It might never let us out, or it might drop us in the middle of a wall.”
James screamed this time. It was a raw, bloody noise, as though he’d screamed all the time the Sannock had been silent, but the voice that came out was the same.
“Wolves,” it said. “All appetite and anger and cur’s luck. The Wild bless you, for nothing else ever will. Sannock are old, wise, and we were loved once. Step aside.”
Gregor hesitated. It galled on a deep, uneasy level to even abide the Sannock, never mind obey them, but they’d gone this far. He stepped aside.
The Sannock in James padded over to the door on silent paws and reared up onto its back feet. It pressed its nose to the seal and whispered. Gregor tried to listen, but it stuck to his brain like tar. He recoiled before it could coat it all and took a step. The bird landed on his shoulder and clipped him around the ear with a wing as it caught its balance. He reached up and stroked its beak, the hard surface warm and pitted with ogham.
“I thought I disliked them before,” he said. “Now I see them in wolves, I realize I’d barely begun.”
The bird croaked quietly against his ear. Gregor didn’t understand it, but he decided to assume that it agreed with him.
There was a yell of surprise on the other side, and something smacked into the door hard enough to rattle it. Gregor traded a quick glance with Jack. They didn’t need to speak. Understanding passed silently between them.
If the Sannock had set a trap, they’d bleed to get the meat out of it.
The door rattled again, and blood seeped out from under it in a thick, dark trickle. Then it pulled open, and a familiar man, scar raw and pink across his forehead, staggered out.
Boyd—the soldier Gregor had left for dead in the snow, now on his feet and on their side. He had a heavy knife in one hand, the curved blade coated with blood, and a desperate look in wild, dry-looking eyes.
“There,” Boyd said as he dropped the knife and went down on his knees. “I did what you asked. Keep your side of the bargain. Now.”
He sounded desperate, and he smelled like death—not the agitating stink of the monsters, but just death.
“We made a deal, we keep a deal,” the Sannock said through James’s sobbing wails. Then it snapped gray, brittle-looking teeth at the man. “At the end. Once we’re done.”
Boyd tried to protest, but the Sannock ignored him. What would he do, after all? Who would he appeal to for justice against them? He sagged to the ground like a discarded toy, his hands slack and palm up on his knees.
The Sannock flowed around him, uncaring, into what had been meant to be a safe room.
A snarling prophet, the skinned corpse he’d pulled on tattered and dry, looked shocked as he saw the Sannock-ridden Pack halfway through his grab for Boyd. It was too late for him to stop. Jack pushed Gregor out of the way and flew at the prophet in a lean, bloody streak of muscle. He hit the prophet in the stomach and knocked him to the ground. They rolled back and forth as they snarled and snapped at each other and the Sannock went around or over them. The prophet tore at Jack with taloned hands, but the thick, gore-matted coat protected him, and the prophet’s wolf split like cheap leather as Jack ripped into him. Jack sank his teeth into the man’s throat and snarled as he shook his head.
“No!” Ailsa screamed in frustration as she shoved one of the fever-skinned humans away from her. Liquid that Gregor assumed was the prophets’ poison spilled onto the floor from the silver flask she held. Since he’d seen her last, she’d patched her shabbily tailored wolf hide with fresh skin, roughly tanned with piss and still fresh enough to stink. Reddish fur sprouted from the darkened skin in rough patches. Gregor didn’t know if Ewan deserved better or not, but he’d peel the skin of Ailsa’s back for Nick’s sake. “You can’t be here yet. We aren’t ready. Why won’t you just give up anddie.”
Gregor showed her his teeth.
“We’re wolves,” Gregor told her. The Sannock prowled slowly forward, ears flat and lips curled back to show fangs and gums. One slow step after another. “And the Old Man’s sons. We might die, but we don’t give up.”
