“Danny,” Jack gasped as he shed his wolf. He bolted over to crouch next to Danny, his hand cautious as he touched the bloody cheek. “Danny-dog. What happened? Who did this?”
“Don’t call me that,” Danny grumbled on autopilot, no real heat behind the words. His eyes flickered over Jack’s face, and he winced in sympathy. The brush of his hand mirrored Jack’s, light and cautious as it skimmed over Jack’s bruised cheekbone. “And I could ask you the same thing.”
Jack leaned into the touch as though he were a cat, not a wolf. “It’ll heal,” he said. “What happened to you, Danny?”
One of the wheezing wolves painfully shed their fur. The woman sprawled back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of her and eyes still wild. Spit crusted in the corner of her mouth as she spat, “You sell us to the prophets, abandon James’s boy to the Wild, but what happened to some dog is who you care for?” she asked, contempt in her voice. “Maybe we should have made Gregor Numitor instead. Even gelded, he’s more of a wolf.”
Ellie propped herself up on shaking legs to aim a disciplinary snap at the woman. Other wolves backed her. Most of them, even, but there was a hesitation before they picked their side.
“What do you mean, the same as me?” Nick asked as he decided to ignore the dispute. He thought Gregor would be a better wolf king than his brother, but that was because he loved Gregor and it didn’t really matter right now. He waved a hand at the Sannock. “She gutted these men to make room for the gods or the Sannock, why would she need a baby?”
“She needed Bron’s baby. She needed a wolf pup,” Danny corrected. He tried to get up, but only managed to leverage himself into a crouch. His legs trembled under him as he put his weight on them, the muscles taut under the skin. “I caught up with Lachlan in the storm, but he’d already handed the baby on to Rose. He told me what she was going to do, although I don’t think he really understands it. She did this for the same reason she took Nick as a baby. The same reason she took your sister, Jack.”
Nick glanced askance at Gregor, his head tilted curiously, but Gregor looked as confused as him. It was the wolves, a few of them, who put their eyes down and put their noses guiltily between their paws.
“How do you even know about that?” the wolf in her human skin asked. “None of us would have told you. Told anyone, never mind adog.”
Danny’s lower lip trembled for a moment until he made himself swallow hard. “Kath did,” he said. “My mam told me about it, about the Numitor’s little girl who came out a dog and how Rose drowned her in the lake.”
“Da let that bitch kill my sister?” Gregor asked after a stunned second.
“He wouldn’t,” Jack protested. “Da backed you when you wouldn’t let the prophets take your little girl before she died. He told them to fuck off when they wanted her body after she died. Dog or not, he’d never give his pup to the prophets.”
“He didn’t,” Danny said. He rubbed the back of his hands over his eyes as he tried to focus. “Rose took her, and I think that’s when she got the idea—with the baby, and the loch, and the monster that lived there. It didn’t work, but that’s why she took Nick. That’s why she took Bron’s baby. Humans? Even once they’re hollowed out by the prophets’ potion, only have room for little gods and dead things. They’re notmadefor it. Wolves are. Rose took Bron’s baby because of thepotential, because of theroom.”
Gregor inhaled sharply and then breathed out a word. “Fenrir,” he said, as close to reverent as Nick had ever heard him. It didn’t seem like the moment to ask for details. Nick knew the name, but not the details behind it. Gregor didn’t notice his confusion as he shook his head in frustration. “That’s what Ewan meant, Nick,whohe meant. If Rose has him on a collar and lead, then the wolves will follow her no matter what a raddled old monster she is. Odinfuckus all. Fenrir will lead the wolves into the Winter, and he’ll be trained to walk at that bitch’s heel.”
Silence greeted his announcement. The only sound in the room was the wheeze of the wolves breathing and the drip of blood as it oozed from gutted bodies. The Sannock stood in still silence, not accustomed enough to their new bodies to fidget or move.
“Where is she?” Jack asked. He gripped Danny’s shoulder in one hand and squeezed to catch Danny’s attention. “Danny, did Lachlan say where Rose was going?”
There was a pause, and then Danny gingerly shook his head. The motion made him flinch. “I couldn’t beat him in a fight. If I didn’t run, he’d have skinned me for Rose. I didn’t expect everyone to be dead already.”
“Dead or fucking unhelpful,” Gregor said as he gave the Sannock a bitter look. “I always thought you were cowards, hidden in a hole waiting for the slaughter. It looks like I was right.”
The horned Sannock opened its mouth and let loose that terrible, hollow bell of noise that reverberated in Nick’s bones. Gregor staggered, caught himself, and screamed back, the wolf’s howl caught in his throat shrill enough to undercut the Sannock’s roar. The horned Sannock snapped his jaw shut and snorted as he grimly lowered his head. The horns on his brow were thicker now, branched in two short nubs.
“I have killed wolves in my first skin. Do you beg to be the first in my second?” he said. “Let the world freeze and end. We will end with it andrest.”
The other Sannock sighed and repeated the word. It murmured around the room, passed from mouth to mouth like a prayer. It was the first time that Nick hadn’t heard them sound bitter or angry.
“No,” Nick said. “You won’t.”
The bird stirred uneasily as it caught the edges of his idea. It dug its claws into him with a quick prick of pain to warn him, but wicked humor made it cluck approvingly as well.
“The little spirit of carrion and battlefields rides you,” the Sannock said. He narrowed eyes that were too black, the rim of white eaten by the liquid spill. “The past, spent days and breath, are your preserve. You have no oversight on the future.”
“In this I do. We put you in those bodies, and we can put you in others. Every death we will jam you back into a corpse, trim what doesn’t fit, and make you walk,” Nick said. His voice was dry as dust in his throat, and he’d have felt more confident in his threat if he had clothes. “You never lie down and rest. Not if that baby dies. Help us. You’ve nothing to lose. Trust me, my gran won’t need any more excuse than what you did here to make you suffer. And you don’t want to be on the run from us both.”
The Sannock snorted, low and wet like an animal. Nick remembered cloth on his shoulders, like woven shadows, and hissed some of his tension out between his teeth.
“Please.”
Gregor made a disgusted noise at the plea.
The Sannock turned slightly as they traded glances, conversation worn down to sketched expressions and twitched fingers by centuries of familiarity. After a moment they came to an agreement, and the horned Sannock turned back to Nick. He smiled, not pleasantly.
“Why lie, little bird?” he asked. “You already know where your great mother has fled. Does the crow have your tongue?”
