Wolf at the Door

by TA Moore

  Or had never been there.

  Danny squeezed his eyes shut. He’d left Jack to be taken by the prophets and hiked miles across the frozen hills on a hunch he’d had as a nosy teenager. He had to be right.

  He shrugged the duffel bag, now soaked and worse for wear, off his shoulders and fumbled it open. His stomach turned as he pulled out the frosted Tupperware box that his mam had brought up from the village. Something inside rattled like dice as he popped the lid.

  It was an index finger, still gray and half-frozen despite being pressed against Danny’s sweaty back for the hike. The nail was broken down to the quick and the knuckle scuffed and torn from a fight. It jiggled like something still half-alive in the Tupperware as Danny’s hands shook.

  Bile retched miserably up the back of Danny’s throat, and he closed his eyes to force it back down. He was a dog, the best thing you could be if you weren’t a wolf, and he could deal with this.

  His brain disagreed. Maybe if he’d stayed here, it’d be different, but he was a professor at Durham University. The worst thing he’d seen for the last decade had been the rampant privilege of rich twenty-year-olds, and he liked it that way.

  It wasn’t wrong.

  “Yeah, well,” Danny muttered through chattering teeth as he opened his eyes. While they’d been closed, the rain had turned to snow. “Tough shit. Deal.”

  Bron was his little sister. She hated him for that—no wolf wanted people to know that about their bloodline—and he’d resented her for… being everything he wasn’t. That wasn’t the point. She was irritating, prickly, and didn’t know nearly as much as she thought. She was also the tiny, bloody blob of a person his mam had let him hold after she was born, even when the midwives thought the dog would be jealous of the new baby.

  Maybe Danny didn’t want to share a room with Bron again, but he couldn’t imagine a world that she wasn’t in, somewhere, being better than him. And if she was here, then Jack would be too soon enough. The Wild tolerated a lot, but it didn’t like prisons. Nothing that wanted free stayed caged in the Wild for long.

  He wedged the Tupperware solidly between the roots of the tree and stood up to strip off. Goose pimples prickled his arms as the cold hit him, and his balls tried to squeeze back up inside him. The film of sweat and rain on his back and stomach froze thin and brittle against his skin.

  He stuffed his jeans and T-shirt into the duffel. They’d still get soaked, but if he needed them later, there was a chance they’d be there. His coat he rolled up and put under the bag.

  Then he crouched down, breathed out, and let his skin shift.

  The dog sneezed, shook its head hard enough to make its ears flap, and hopped clumsily out of the boots Danny had left on. The cold made its feet ache, and a skitter of something nearby, under the snow, caught its ear and made its stomach grumble.

  Other things to do, the core of Danny that survived the change prodded. The dog could eat after that.

  It put its head down to the Tupperware box and nosed at the dead thing in the corner. The smell of half-frozen meat usually would have made it drool. It had pawed over the cold box in the old den often enough, choked down plastic and hard chunks of mince despite the not particularly convincing knowledge it would be sick when it changed back. But this smelled like pack.

  The dog whined softly and nosed the finger again. Dead flesh, not quite turned, and the milky, almost-me smell of the wolf it had denned with. Complexities of emotion weren’t the dog’s strength—the conflict of resentment and affection that made Danny’s feelings murky—it just knew they were family.

  And that she was hurt. Fear hadn’t stuck to the finger, the acrid gray flash of it picked apart by cold and time, but the black stickiness of pain was embedded in the splintered bone. The dog gave a soft, dangerous growl and pawed at the box until the finger fell out.

  Bron smelled peppery, mixed with milk and sweetness. Caught under the broken nail there were shreds of dead flesh that smelled tainted, that made the dog want to bite. It remembered that smell from back in Durham, the stink of it on the monsters that came into its territory.

  The dog pulled the smells apart and filed them in its brain so it would know them again. Then it assiduously scraped snow and dirt over the finger until it was hidden. Once it was satisfied, it lifted its head and cast about for a scent.

  Snow. The brittle, translucent scent of the lightning-struck mountain ash, cooked sap, and singed wood. On the roots of the tree, under them, the ghost of rodent musk hung yellow and papery until the dog growled a warning at it. The urge to unearth the finger, to move it somewhere the rodent wouldn’t find it, plucked at its brain.

  No.

  It shook itself bristly, nose to tail, to shed the compulsion and a layer of snow. The scentscape here was bleak, just ice and see-through ghosts and not as familiar as home. Even the finger was preserved, the scents it picked up dry and powdery.

  Houses always smelled. Scents lingered in corners and worked into carpets—old food and sweat, anger and happiness, sex and death. Humans did all that inside.

  The dog growled at the rodent that might be under the tree—just so it knew—and headed off toward the house. It was too lanky and dark to go unnoticed, but it skulked through the trees and slunk up on its belly to the house. The long roll of chain-link was stapled to wooden posts hammered into the ground around the house, but it had bagged in the storms. It wasn’t hard for the dog to flatten itself and squirm under, even if it lost some hair in the process.

  Some skin too. It smelled its own blood, a bloom of salt in the cold air, before it felt the itch of pain across its shoulders. Nothing else. The dog prowled, stiff-legged and careful, across the snow. With each step its paws left deep, perfectly round prints in the virgin snow, but there was no help for that.

  Besides, the snow that eddied around it would fill those in soon enough. The dog shook its head to get the tickle of ice out of its ears and then cocked its head. It heard the same creaky sound of something under the snow, but it couldn’t smell mole or rat. The sound didn’t move either.

  The dog paced back and forth in front of the house as it tried to pin down where the noise came from. It got closer and closer to the steps and then pounced, paws first, on the sound. Instead of warm body, its feet found metal, and the sound stopped.

  It dug down into the snow, kicked white, frozen chunks back between its hind legs until it had uncovered a heavy, metal grate sunk into the concrete under the stairs. The sharp smell of pepper and milk leaked up on the damp hair. The dog flagged its shaggy, whip of a tail in excitement and barked, one sharp yelp, into the grille.

  There was a pause.

  “Danny?” the voice was smaller than Danny remembered, pinched in by fear and walls. It wobbled for a moment and then hardened. “You stupid dog. What are you doing here? Get out. Go away. I don’t need your help!”

  The dog wagged its tail and stuck its nose against the cold metal. That was her. Definitely Bron.

  Chapter Ten—Gregor

  FADED RED hair hung in frizzy hanks around the old bitch’s head as she limped down the beach, hunched and ruined-looking in a stained Aran sweater and long skirt…. The monster kept pace with her while the other watched them and growled through its deformed mouth.

  Last time Gregor had seen Rose, she’d fled the cave of the Sannock Dead—their slaughterhouse and resting place—with a single hide. It didn’t look like it had made it out intact. The freckled skin had been sliced into scraps and used to patch Rose back together where the hot oil Gregor had doused her with had sloughed the skin off muscle and bone. It was stretched over her face like a mask, the thin skin under her eye puckered with small, black stitches, and she’d used long strips of it to pull her singed scalp back together. Patches of her own hair, gray and brittle, stuck wirily through the matted hanks of corpse hair.

  It was a horror—Gregor could see that—but the idea she was beautiful caught in his brain like a fishhook. That was somehow a fact, even as the stitch
es gaped to show the waxy burns and hints of bone below. The dissonance of it made Gregor’s brain ache and his cock twitch with an interest that turned his stomach. He breathed in the wrong stench of the monsters instead, the reek of sick-poison flesh almost welcome, and let the revolted anger push everything else out.

  Had this been it? The unearthed dead and the murdered children had just been to make her beautiful again. That wasn’t much to show for all her trouble.

  Her trouble, Gregor recalled bleakly, and the life of her grandson. Nick had come back, but that didn’t undo what Rose had done. It didn’t erase Gregor’s memory of Nick’s twisted corpse on the beach or the wash of raw, sour anger that clawed up his throat.

  The thin, furious snarl trickled down his nose. One of the prophets yanked on his collar hard enough to bend him backward. The hobbles laced through his ankles tore the skin as he staggered. He choked as the metal dug into his throat and cut off his air along with the growl.

  “Leave him be,” Rose ordered. Her voice was harsh, the accent burned off her words but still clotted. “They came a long way to die for me. The least I can do is let them do it on their feet.”

  The prophet relaxed his grip with a disgusted grunt, and Gregor straightened up. He hunched his shoulder in a clumsy attempt to rub the bruised, torn skin of his neck. Blood dripped down his ankles to stain his bare feet and soak into the almost-there beach.

  “Bitch,” he said.

  She shifted her chin at the sound of his voice, tilted her head toward him, and he realized she was still blind. One eye socket was empty, the edges melted like wax, and the other had been stitched closed with a stolen lid. Something moved under it. Gregor wasn’t confident it was an eye or even what was left of one.

  “Where’s my grandson?” she asked.

  “Gone,” Gregor said harshly.

  She had the gall to flinch as though she had the right or the ability to give a fuck. Her head snapped around and she raised her hand at Lachlan, finger reconstructed from stolen skin and splints.

  “What did you do to him, boy?” she demanded harshly. “Where is Nicholas and my little god?”

  Lachlan stumbled forward, propelled by a shove, and dragged Ellie with him. His hand was locked on her arm as they stumbled through the misplaced seawood and stopped just in front of the old woman. His face was greasy with sweat, and an uneasy stink of fear and lust seeped out of him.

  “The dark-haired man? I didn’t know he was anything of yours. If I’d known, if we’d known, we’d have welcomed him better,” Lachlan blurted out. He yanked Ellie forward, grabbed the back of her neck, and shoved her toward Rose. Ellie struggled in his grip but couldn’t break away. “I barely saw him. It was Ellie who chased him off.”

  Ellie stammered out a shocked denial. She buttoned her lips together midword as Rose turned her ruined face toward her. There was an accuracy to the movement that gave the creepy impression she could still somehow see through that ruined eye.

  “What did you do to him, girl?” she asked as she leaned down into Ellie’s face. Her lips, smooth and pink, sagged and slipped as she talked, her own wrinkled seam of a mouth visible underneath. Ellie squirmed uncomfortably, her face puckered with revulsion and attraction, and tried to turn away. Rose pinched Ellie’s chin between her fingers and held her in place as she sniffed. “Did you bite my boy? Did you fuck him? I can smell him on you.”

  Ellie whimpered. Behind Gregor, among the row of dogs, a chain rattled, and a man made a low, strangled sound of protest. He looked around, past the prophet behind him, to see the strange dog cuffed to his feet.

  He registered that and glanced at Jack to make sure he’d seen it too. He had, and his jaw was set unhappily. Before Gregor could pick the expression apart, the prophet behind him cracked him around the ear.

  “You look at her,” the prophet ordered over the ringing in Gregor’s ears. “She wants you to see her.”

  Gregor exhaled and reluctantly turned his attention back to the patchwork woman of scars and stolen skin. He could see her, but his brain didn’t question the belief in her beauty. Some Sannock skin, he supposed. The myths of them claimed they were beautiful, yet when he saw the remnants of them in the Wild, they’d been mismatched, none of them just one thing entirely.

  In Rose’s grip, Ellie gulped audibly and choked out through her pinched jaw, “I fought… no, I chased him. He got away from me.”

  Rose snorted. “How did he do that? He’s all leg now. And I taught him what happened to boys who can’t run fast. But you’re a wolf. How did one lanky boy get away from you?”

  Ellie hesitated. She tried to turn toward Lachlan again, but Rose didn’t let her. “He… he turned into a bird.”

  “Crazy bitch,” Lachlan blurted. “She just doesn’t want to admit a human got away from her.”

  Rose finally let go of Ellie, who staggered back and wiped her face on her sleeve. Then Rose reached out for him. She patted the air blindly, and Lachlan moved under her hand, a shudder of something going through him as she gripped him.

  “No, he does that,” she said pleasantly. Then her fingers tightened, dug down through the wool sweater to dig into flesh and muscle. Lachlan staggered under the pain but managed to throttle the whimper that tried to escape his throat. She dropped to a guttural growl. “And do I look like I’d have a human grandson?”

  Lachlan choked out a strained “No” and “Sorry.” Rose finally let him go with a shove. He staggered out of the way, blood dark as it stained the cable knit of his sweater, and nearly into the heavyset, flush-skinned monster. Its growl was a thick gargle of a sound in its throat, and Lachlan jumped away from it.

  “Nicholas will find me,” Rose murmured to herself. Her eyes flicked over Gregor, and she tightened her lips behind the stolen ones. Her voice was bitter as she grudgingly admitted, “Or he’ll find you.”

  Gregor spat at her. It hit the freckled mask and dripped down onto her shoulder. She backhanded him, her knuckles like a bag of dice, and only the prophets behind him kept him on his feet. Gregor’s ears rang with a brittle buzz as they dragged him back upright. He could taste blood in his mouth, and his cheekbone throbbed with the hot pressure of a fractured bone.

  “Do not let it slip your mind,” she told him coldly. “You are not what you were. Nor am I.”

  Gregor shook his head—the wash of red-tinged nausea drowned out the drone in his ears—and spat the mouthful of blood onto her. It speckled her face, a bright addition to the faded freckles, and the beautiful/hideous mask slid for a second.

  The prophets cursed and kicked him in the backs of his knees until they gave way. He went down hard on the stones, and the prophet grabbed a handful of hair and yanked his head back. Rose found his face with fumbling, uncertain fingers and dug her thumbnails into the soft skin under his eyes.

  “Leave him alone!” Jack yelled at her. There was a sound of scuffle, a dull crack of bone on flesh and muscle that ended with a grunt and a stifled whine of pain. Gregor didn’t need to look over. He could smell his idiot brother’s blood on the air. “What the fuck do you want with us anyhow?”

  There was a pause, and then Rose pulled her nails out of Gregor’s flesh. He felt blood run down his face like tears.

  “I want what every new bride wants. To get to know her new family,” Rose singsonged mockingly as she stepped backward. Gregor licked his own blood off his lips and watched as she pulled the sweater tight across the front of her body with both hands. The cable knit stretched over her stomach where it swelled, drum taut and round, over skinny hips. She looked like a snake that had swallowed a pig. “And to get your blessing for your new brother. The Numitor’s true son.”

  The prophets threw back their heads and howled, triumphant and deranged. A few of the dogs were carried away enough to join in, their undying loyalty to Jack forgotten in the moment. Lachlan’s wolves looked at him for a guideline on how to respond, but he looked as poleaxed as any of them.

  “The fuck it is,” Jack spat out as h
e recoiled back a bloody, confused step.

  Gregor threw back his head and roared with laughter. He laughed until the prophet at his back choked him on it, but even with a knee in his back and metal cut into his throat, he sniggered.

  “My brother?” he rasped as he hooked his fingers into the collar. “More likely a rat crawled up in there and died.”

  The wolf rippled under Rose’s face. It bristled, moldy gray fur patched with stolen bits and grafted skin, and bared yellow, chipped fangs. The stolen skin sprouted fur too, dandelion white and matted, but whatever it was made the pelts around it wither and go dry.

  Rose sucked in her breath and the stolen wolves, stuffed the change back into her bones. The stolen face had frayed at the edges, torn where the stitches held it behind her ear, and she had to hold it in place with one hand.

  “You don’t need to give your blessing,” she said from behind lips that had slid out of place. “I can take it just as well, but ask your brother if you want to spend any longer than necessary under my care. Take them to the valetudinarium.”

  The hospital. But wolves didn’t need hospitals. Anything that they couldn’t heal from, they either died of or lived with. Gregor had never heard another wolf talk of a hospital, but as he was dragged to his feet and beaten around the head until he shuffled forward, he doubted anyone was in the mood to answer his questions. As he edged past the monster, he supposed that he’d find out soon enough.

  THE THING snarled at him, and thick strings of pus and blood hung from ruined gums as he passed. Its stink scraped on his nerves, dug down into his guts where the same infection festered, but he ignored it in favor of one last hard look at Rose.

  Once upon a time, Nick had loved that raddled old witch, whatever was left of her between the grafted wolf and the Sannock skin, and now Nick had to live with the knowledge that he’d only ever been meat for her ambitions.