Wolf at the Door

by TA Moore

  One day Gregor would kill her for that.

  Two months ago, the Wild here had been as familiar to Gregor as his own face in the mirror, and he’d known it as well as his own body. Now he wasn’t comfortable in either. The Sannock’s old prison spread like a sour infection and made the native Wild swell and crease in reaction. It hung odd across the landscape.

  Gregor counted his footsteps. Three hundred of them, his stride constrained by the wire that sliced him with each step. Yet he could feel the hot looseness of distance in his thighs and between his shoulders, and his sense of where he stood—on the Pack’s land, his territory—moved like sand under his feet.

  “What did she mean?” Ellie asked, her voice so low it was almost inaudible as she fell in next to Lachlan. He growled dismissal at her and walked faster through the snow. “She can’t be pregnant—”

  Lachlan turned on her with a snarl, closed his good hand around her throat, and pulled her up onto her toes. “Whatever Rose says she is, that’s what she is. Understood?”

  The Old Man had never had to get physical to make an out-of-line wolf back down. Lachlan couldn’t get the job done even with Ellie’s throat as good as in his teeth. She slapped his hand away roughly and took a cautious step back but held her ground.

  “She says she’s pregnant with the true Numitor’s brat,” Ellie said sharply. Her fair curls blew into her face and she swiped them away again. “If you aren’t Numitor, Lach, then what right do you have to put hands on me?”

  He glared at her. “The right she gave me,” he said. “That… what she said… was just to hurt these two.”

  Ellie glanced at Gregor and past him to Jack and then spat in the snow. “If she just wanted to hurt them, then she could have broken their legs,” she said. “Not written a play. I came up here, gave up everything, to follow the Numitor. Old Man or the Young Wolf, I don’t care. If you aren’t even the Numitor, why should we be at your heels?”

  “She told you to,” Lachlan said flatly. He tilted his head toward the front of the group where Rose walked with her fist twisted in the monster’s slack ruff of raw skin. “You want to cross her?”

  “She told the others to follow you,” Ellie pointed out defiantly. “Took their brats as surety they’d obey. I’d already thrown my lot in with you, and she told me nothing. But if something happened to you, I think she’d tell me to take over.”

  “You think too much,” Lachlan said. “The Old Man’s dead, and his heir, if that’s what that is, isn’t even born yet. Maybe he never will be. Right now I’m Numitor, and if you question it again, I’ll slice your throat.”

  He tossed her into the snow and stalked away.

  “Wise wolves don’t make threats,” Gregor said. “They just do.”

  Ellie gave him a bleak look as she scrambled to her feet. The smell of adrenaline and fear rose off her like a cloud of steam—thin and sharp as snapped fingers—and she bared her blunt human teeth at him. “And you’re wise?” she asked. “To come back here where you aren’t wanted? None of us asked for your help, neither of you, and we don’t need to hear you mouth off either. The Wolf Winter isn’t what we thought. So what? I’ll survive.”

  She glanced down the row of prisoners, the tip of her head almost unconscious, and then immediately away. Her mouth twisted with bitterness.

  Gregor would have asked, but Jack jabbed him with his elbow to shut him up. Habit made him want to ask anyhow, but he choked it off behind his teeth.

  “You trust her?” Jack asked quietly. He pointed his chin toward Rose and her monsters. “What’s left of her.”

  Ellie let a flicker of confused horror show for a second. Then she slammed a game face over it. She rubbed her throat and glared at Jack. “I trust power,” she said. “Of everyone here? She has it, and we don’t. You don’t. Not anymore.”

  She wrenched the buttons of her dress loose with one hand. Gregor got a flash of lean sides and flat stomach, the inner curve of high breasts, and then the wolf sucked it down. It wasn’t like the change the monster went through, a torture of broken bones and fever-malleable flesh. The wolf knew the template it wanted to use—the prick of its ears and the length its legs were supposed to be—and it stuck to that.

  Ellie’s wolf dropped to all fours and shook itself out of the dress. It gave Gregor a curious look out of amber eyes and then trotted away. He watched her go with sour envy in his gut. Maybe the prophet’s poison and maybe just him. Sometimes it was easier to be a wolf, to shed the noise of humanity. Gregor missed it.

  A misstep in the snow bumped Jack’s shoulder against him. Gregor reminded himself of their new alliance and didn’t shove him away. “What the prophets don’t know,” Jack murmured, “won’t help them.”

  The prophet chained to Jack yanked him away with a growl before Gregor could respond. Jack’s ankles ripped open again and spilled fresh blood, musky and potent in the snow as he stumbled. Something would eat well tonight, Gregor thought as he glanced back and tracked their trail along the blood-splattered snow.

  What was in the Wild was real, but it was a memory of a thing. Catch and eat a squirrel and it would satisfy in the teeth and on the tongue, but it wouldn’t linger or satisfy, not like meat in the world, where an hour later you could lick your chops and taste the meaty gravy of the prey. In the Wild anything from the world was a seductive treat, a lure as good as the smell of grease and fried starch from a Lochwinnoch chip shop on a Friday night.

  The prophets had grown in confidence if they weren’t worried about what they’d bring to their door. Or…. Gregor waited for the rest of the thought to form, but it didn’t. It felt like he’d missed something, but he couldn’t pin down what.

  At least it gave him something to think about as he walked, one step after the other, the weight of a collar around his neck and the itch of pain in his feet. Then, between one step and the next, he caught the tail end of a familiar scent—salt and candy floss, Nick and blood. Even the cold-thinned hint of it caught in Gregor’s throat like a hook and jerked his gaze away from his grim study of the pimple on the back of Lachlan’s neck. He looked around quickly, his eyes drawn first to the white, snow-heavy clouds in search of a cruciform black silhouette and then back down to earth.

  A cliff of ancient, black trees loomed along the ridge of a nearby hill, dense as a thicket of brambles, and a herd of elk skirked along the outskirts of it. Snow lay thick over their humped backs, and as the lead male swung his head around to study the wolves as they passed, Gregor saw that he was long dead. Icicles dripped like knives from his antlers, and the skin had sloughed off his head to leave weather-scrubbed planes of bone.

  Then he moved again, and instead of an elk, there was a man—most of a man, although he was still skull bones and icy horns wrapped in old rags. The Sannock locked its empty eye sockets on Gregor—a flicker jolt of stolen life battered against Gregor’s mind as if it needed in—and then pointed down the slope with an oddly mortal ugly hand.

  Blood splashed on the snow three steps left to stain the ice.

  Then Gregor’s foot came down, and the Wild spat him out. It clawed at him as he went, tried to hold on to his bones as it ejected the metal, and he had to struggle to keep himself together. He landed somewhere else. The scent of Nick was ripped out of his nose, and the flat, acid fear in the back of his throat turned hollow in confusion.

  The prophet behind him laughed and jabbed a finger into the back of Gregor’s skull. “Finally smart enough to be afraid,” he mocked as he caught the edges of the scent. The moment with the Sannock at the tree line had been quicker than it felt. No one else had noticed. “Too fucking late.”

  Gregor spat the bad taste out of his mouth and looked up. The ruins of an old manor house, stitched together by scaffolding and ice, sulked in front of him. There was a sense of something unfulfilled about it, like it was the architectural equivalent of a miscarriage.

  Something had also slaughtered a sheep in front of it. Half of the gray, matted corpse of a black-l
egged Highland sheep was impaled on the fence, its head dangling back to stare with bulging black eyes at the new arrivals. The other half had been ripped free and been dragged over the ground in front of the house. Entrails lay in long, purple streamers, blood had soaked into the snow and frozen in fat, red targets, and the bones had been torn apart and dragged away to gnaw on.

  The stink of dead sheep and offal hung in the air. Gregor resisted the urge to turn and look at Hector, as though the dog might recognize one of his flock like this.

  “What the fuck?” the ginger prophet blurted as he took the scene in. “How the hell did that sheep get up there? Look at the mess.”

  He sounded exasperated, like a Lochwinnoch housewife who’d just had mud tracked on her clean floors. It was Jack who laughed first, a snort of amusement, and then it spread even to the dogs, who tittered and then cringed as the prophets beat them with the ends of their chains.

  Ginger flushed angrily all the way to his scalp, bright through his faded hair, and yanked on Jack’s collar to shut him up.

  “Maybe we should get you to clean it up,” he spat. “The Numitor’s sons can finally do something useful.”

  Rose turned her head as if she could still, somehow, see the mess. The monster under her hand turned its head at the same time, as much as it could around the exaggerated bulge of muscle under its jaw.

  “There are things in the Wild that have fasted for a long time, Ewan,” she said, an edge of mockery to her voice. “Now they are free, we should begrudge them mutton? Soon enough we’ll be gods, and this old place will have outlived its usefulness to us anyhow. Let the sheep rot.”

  She absently touched the ruin of her face as she spoke and picked with her nails at the stiff, dry edges of the stitches.

  “It’ll stink,” Ginger Ewan protested.

  Rose turned her shoulder toward him. Her matted, stolen hair blew back from her face, revealing the nub of her ear. The edge of mockery had sharpened in her face as she waved her hand in an expansive, encompassing gesture.

  “It’s winter, Ewan,” she said with withering contempt. “It will freeze.”

  She took a step toward the house, stumbled, and had to catch herself with an arm across the monster’s back. One hand lifted to check her face again, and the skin pleated between her fingers as she pressed it back down against the raw edges of her face.

  “You need to go,” Ewan said. He didn’t hide the satisfaction in his voice.

  She pushed herself back up straight on the monster’s back. Pus dripped down her wrist in a thick gray trickle.

  “Get on with our preparations. I don’t want to have to wait until the New Year to get this done,” she ordered sharply. The pus dripped onto the snow, and the monster lapped it up. Rose kicked it away with a hiss of disapproval. It withdrew, and she shot her hand out to grab Ewan’s wrist and dig her fingers in. “And find Nick. Do one thing right and I’ll be pleased. Get both right and I’ll be amazed.”

  She threw his arm back at him like it offended her and stepped—no, Gregor corrected himself—was taken back by the Wild. Lachlan made an inchoate sound of protest before he managed to choke it off.

  “Burns heal badly,” Gregor said. “But they heal. The old bitch looks as raw as when I tossed the oil on her.”

  With the side of his boot, Ewan scuffed snow over the pus stain. “And she has neither forgiven nor forgotten that,” he said.

  “Didn’t want her to,” Gregor said bluntly.

  Ewan snorted, half amused. “Aye, well,” he said. “Piss off the Wild and you won’t heal at all. What she’s done—”

  “You talk too much!” one of the other prophets interjected. “If the wolves know all our secrets, what use are we to them?”

  “If her plan works, what use are they to us?” Ewan countered. He didn’t sound excited at the idea, just grim. When the other prophet spluttered out a half-formed protest, Ewan impatiently waved it away with a freckled hand. “Besides, they’ll be dead soon enough. Who will they tell? Take the dogs inside, put them with the rest.”

  Tom protested as they dragged him inside, promised that he was a loyal dog and they could trust him. He was still marched through the sheep guts and into the old ruin with the rest.

  “And us?” Jack asked.

  “She has set aside special accommodations for you,” Ewan said. He sounded almost regretful, as though he’d realized what he’d thrown his support behind too late. “So you can properly appreciate what’s to come. Now everything is in place, it will be over soon enough.”

  He stepped back and gestured for a prophet to take them away. Gregor resisted the yank at his collar and dug his heels until Ewan actually looked at him, bloodshot blue eyes reluctant.

  “If you hurt Nick, I’ll kill you,” Gregor said. “Alive or dead, I’ll find a way.”

  “Gregor,” Jack warned softly.

  Ewan straightened his shoulders and glared indignantly at Gregor. “He’s my grandson,” he spat out. That was new information. Nick had only ever spoken of his gran, but Gregor supposed there had to have been a grandfather or two. Maybe even a father somewhere. The flicker of jealousy in his gut resented that. He wanted Nick to be his alone, but it made sense. “My flesh, my blood. All I have left. You think I’d hurt him?”

  “She did,” Gregor said. He wanted his wolf, wanted the bite it would mark on the edge of his word. But it was still gone, and he had to make do with his own anger. “And Nick’s mine, prophet.”

  Ewan looked taken aback. Maybe Rose hadn’t told him everything about why Nick had been willing to come north. But it only made him hesitate for a second, and then he gestured sharply for the prophets to get on with it.

  This time Gregor went when they dragged him away.

  Chapter Eleven—Gregor

  OLD MOISTURE stains blotted the eggshell-blue walls and warped the once-glossy wooden floorboards underfoot. The dark oak was scored from neglect and pitted with round, golf ball dents from the hail, rough-edged chunks of which still lay along the skirting.

  Gregor glanced through a door as they passed it, into a room with bowed, empty shelves and a smashed desk. He craned his neck to look up the stairs, and he could see right up through the roof, to the span of pale sky that floated overhead. The Winter had reined its storm in, but it would be back soon enough.

  A prophet punched him in the back of the head. The impact made Gregor stumble forward, and he felt the wire rip something important in his ankle. A jolt of pain slashed up the back of his leg, and his toes went numb and unresponsive. They folded under him as he forced himself forward, bloody and ripped with splinters.

  Jack staggered over and braced his shoulder against Gregor’s to keep him on his feet. The fact he needed the help, and from Jack, tasted like rotted meat on the back of Gregor’s tongue. He swallowed it anyhow.

  “There’s nothing to see up here,” the prophet said. He sounded almost proud of the run-down den the prophets had moved into like hermit crabs on the beach. “Our lives aren’t spent where wolves can see them. Ailsa, get the door.”

  The prophet who ducked past Gregor was small and dark haired, with a sallow, mean face dominated by nothing in particular. She’d already shed her coat to reveal the patchy silver-and-black hide of a wolf that Gregor did recognize. Jess had been old, maybe even older than Da, and only part of the Pack by courtesy these days, since she preferred to keep to herself in the hills.

  But she’d been alive and well when Gregor had left for the Wall, and from the gore-tatted hole ripped between the shoulders of her hide, she hadn’t died well.

  It looked like the prophets weren’t willing to wait for a corpse to skin anymore.

  “I hope Jess took her gelt from your guts on the way out,” Jack said before Gregor had the chance. Irritation scratched at him, one more thing his brother took, but he ignored it. “She deserved better.”

  Ailsa spat on the ground and crouched down to unlock the thick, iron padlock that hooked through a hasp sunk into the floor. On
ce it was undone, she unlatched the two steel bars and hauled up the trap door with a stink of old dirt and fresh musk muggy as it escaped.

  “I deserved better,” she spat. “I deserved my wolf. The boy was only human anyhow, what business was it of the Old Man’s—”

  “Shut up, Ailsa,” a prophet ordered. “It’s bad enough to have to know you, without being reminded what you are.”

  She rolled her lips back to snarl at them. Not satisfied with the wolf’s fangs when she changed her skin, Ailsa had pulled two eye teeth from something and jammed them in her gums. They were gray and chipped, dead-looking and full of infection.

  “What we all are,” she spat back at him. “Whatever we did, they made us all prophets the same. Now we’ll make ourselves gods.”

  She pulled her hand off the ring and left shreds of skin frozen to the metal. Her frost-burned hand didn’t bleed, not yet, as she scrambled out of sight down the sharp curve of gray stone steps.

  “Some of us,” said a prophet behind Gregor, his voice indistinct but thick with disgust. “Not all.”

  He was told to shut up, and then it was Gregor and Jack’s turn to go down into the ground.

  “What’s going to happen to the others?” Jack asked as he struggled down the narrow steps on hobbled feet. It hadn’t occurred to Gregor to care. He supposed that whatever Jack’s plan was, it wouldn’t work if the dogs died first.

  “The dogs?” Ailsa asked with a snort. “You would be the one to care about them.”

  She lifted her foot and kicked him down the stairs. An odd, breathy laugh escaped her as he tumbled down into the dark. Gregor lunged for her with a snarl, but the collar pulled him up short as the prophet yanked the chain tight with a laugh. Gregor gagged and stumbled back a step.

  “The dogs are kenneled out back where they belong,” Ailsa said. She stepped forward, ignoring the other prophet’s hiss of warning, and stroked his face with a soft, fever-hot hand. The stink of her—rot and misery stitched to whatever sickness had sent her for a prophet—sweated out of her skin, and Gregor gagged. She smiled at him with those stolen fangs. “But you keep the breeding stock away from the curs. Someone should have told your brother that years ago—”