Wolf at the Door

by TA Moore

  “Obviously,” Gregor said. “What does this doctor want with Nick?”

  “Who?”

  Gregor growled at him. The sound made Boyd recoil uncomfortably, his nerves on edge at a sound that didn’t belong in a human throat.

  “The bastard that dragged you out in the snow,” Gregor said. It was easy to let the anger into his voice as he remembered Nick’s body in his arms, cold again and sour with the smell of fear. “The one you were going to shoot.”

  “What?” Boyd asked with a sneer. “You want to fuck him too?”

  Gregor punched him with a short, sharp strike to the nose that bounced Boyd’s head back against the tree again. Blood splattered down Boyd’s chin, bright against his pallor, and he grabbed Gregor’s wrist with one hand. A hard yank pulled Gregor forward as Boyd rammed his elbow into his chest, hard enough to jar his heart through his breastbone, and then swung it up at his jaw. Gregor grunted, realized he didn’t have time to dodge, and took the forearm to the base of his jaw.

  He gagged as his throat spasmed shut and something popped distinctly under his ear. Pain stabbed from the nape of his neck down to the small of his back, and he felt a shadow of chill numbness weaken his muscles. Boyd grunted in satisfaction. If he’d run then, he might have gotten farther. Not far, but farther. Instead he pushed his luck as he twisted at the hips to try and hammer his knee into Gregor’s side.

  Gregor blocked with his forearms, tucked his shoulder, and rammed it into Boyd’s stomach. The breath escaped Boyd on a grunt, and he pawed angrily at Gregor’s shoulders. With a quick heave, Gregor lifted the other man off his feet and then tossed him into a packed drift of snow. Boyd landed awkwardly and writhed as he tried to suck in half a lungful of frozen air.

  “… fuck….” He tried to roll over onto his stomach to scramble to his feet.

  “Stay down,” Gregor told him. He craned his neck from one side to the other to make the bruised joints pop. Then he stalked over. Boyd tried to ignore his advice, but Gregor put his boot between his shoulders and bore down until Boyd’s braced arms gave way. He went facedown into the snow, body tight and resentful. “You broke your radio. If you had someone else’s, could you use it to call this doctor?”

  Boyd spat and slapped his hand against the ground. It was surrender or frustration. Human body language was hard for him sometimes—the broad strokes were the same, the monkey was still there under the wolf, but the subtleties had never interested Gregor. Scent usually filled in the gaps when he needed it to, but after they drank what the prophets gave them, it pumped anger out with their sweat.

  “Yeah,” Boyd forced out through his teeth. “I could do that.”

  Could, not would. Gregor understood the difference, but it would do for now. He yanked Boyd up from the snow and tried to remember where the nearest body he’d dropped was. This had taken long enough. If he left Nick on his own any longer, the crow would get himself in trouble.

  He had a talent for that.

  “Why do you even want to speak to them?” Boyd asked raggedly as Gregor dragged him into the storm. “What good will it do you?”

  Gregor thought of Rose’s promise, and then he buried it.

  “That’s my business.”

  Chapter Seventeen—Gregor

  “HER NAME was Harris,” Boyd said. He stood to the side, hunched down against the wind that battered him as Gregor ripped the woman’s jacket open to frisk her. “Katie Harris. She had a daughter down in London.”

  Her radio was buckled to the inside lining of her jacket, a strip of tape on the back with Blake written on it in black letters. Gregor wordlessly showed the label to Boyd, who grimaced and looked away.

  “She still had a name,” he said. “Even if I hadn’t had a chance to learn it. She could have a kid. A family.”

  Gregor glanced down at the dead woman. Her red hair was frozen stiff, fanned in a short halo around her face, and frost glazed her brown eyes to a shabby gray. Whatever she’d been was gone.

  “Do you think I thought she didn’t?” He got up and held the radio out toward Boyd. “Call in, say you need to speak to this doctor.”

  If anyone knew what Rose wanted—today and tomorrow—it was him. And Gregor had something he wanted.

  Boyd took the radio. He pulled his mask down, coughed dryly as the wind caught him, and thumbed the button.

  “Command, this is Alpha 4,” he said. “Come in. Over.”

  He let go and waited. Silence except for the drone of the wind and the distant grumble of thunder. Gregor’s skin itched under his clothes as he remembered the lightning that came to the snap of Jack’s fingers back in Durham. Maybe, he thought dourly, the Wild had already had its favorite, then, long before he lost his wolf.

  “How long will it take them?” he asked.

  Boyd shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Soon. If they answer. It’s been….”

  He trailed off as he glanced toward Blake. His eyes lingered on the flask tucked inside her jacket, and nervously he licked his lips at the temptation.

  “Chaotic,” he said.

  Gregor used the toe of his boot to close the flap of the jacket over her chest and disguise the bottle. “Try again.”

  “Command, this is Alpha 4,” Boyd repeated. He stopped to cough. “Come in. Over.”

  Nothing for a long moment, and then the radio crackled. The voice that came through was distorted and unidentifiable.

  “What the … going on out there?” it demanded, broken by silence and static. “Half the Alpha squad … back empty-handed. The … radio silent. Do … the target in custody?”

  Boyd looked at Gregor. Anger warred with self-preservation as he visibly weighed his options, his thumb stalled over the Call button. Gregor’s smile was sharp.

  “Alpha four?” the static prodded.

  Gregor leaned forward. “Say they drank all their medicine,” he instructed. “Lost their wits. Ask for the doctor.”

  “That won’t work.”

  “Then tell them what will.”

  Boyd grimaced, hesitated for a moment, and then squashed the button roughly under his thumb.

  “Target acquired,” he rasped out. He took a quick look at the dead soldier and then turned away from her. “But Blake lost her fucking head and shot him.”

  Silence except for the crackle of the radio.

  “Is he dead?” It was almost a whisper, the voice of someone who knew they were in trouble. There was something almost childish about it.

  “She’s dead,” Boyd said. “Him, not yet. He’s bad. I don’t think he’s going to make it back to base. Get Doc Ewan. If I can stabilize him, I’ll hole up somewhere until you get someone out here to pick us up.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Command, get me a goddamn medic,” Boyd barked harshly. “I need to speak to him now! Or else, when this guy dies, it’s on you.”

  That did it.

  “Wait. Over,” the static muttered.

  The line cut out. For a second it felt almost quiet, and the wind whined around them, a muffled roar that rolled down from the hills. Gregor reached for the Wild and folded it between his mental fingers, but instead of the familiar scent of heather and old stone, it stank of seaweed and cold salt. He cast it away with a scowl and wiped his hand on his leg, as though that was where the smell lingered.

  “How badly is he hurt?” the radio spat out suddenly. It was hard to recognize the attenuated voice, but it was more thickly Scottish than the rest. “Do you know where you are? I can get there on one of the snowmobiles.”

  Gregor plucked the radio out of Boyd’s grip. He held it for a second in front of his face, the plastic thick with the smell of a dozen sweaty hands, as he considered his options. It was just a hunt, he reminded himself as the choices available weighed on him, and if things didn’t work out, he could change his plans.

  “The junkyard by the loch,” he said. “Come alone, no need to worry Rose over this if you want to see your grandson.”

  The s
nort of laughter bounced down the connection. “When will I see him, then?” he asked. “When we both get to heaven after you kill us? I have put my faith in the judgment of wolves before. It never ends well.”

  Gregor lifted the corner of his mouth in a quick snarl at the suggestion that he’d hurt Nick. He knew the prophets were evil, but that they were this stupid and still a danger offended him.

  “Do you want an oath, prophet?” he asked. “After you swore you’d never hurt Nick, but you put out his eyes?”

  “That was for his own good.”

  It was the sort of lie that was only meant for the one who told it. The words slipped off Ewan’s tongue too quickly, practiced and ready. But Gregor’s laugh punctured the thin veil of the excuse.

  “Liar.”

  He lifted his thumb from the button and picked absently at the crust of ice matted into his stubble. Any information Gregor gave Ewan would probably make its way to Rose’s stitched-back-on ear, no matter what he promised. Or she could already be there behind him, Ewan’s strings wrapped around her fingers.

  It didn’t matter. Gregor already assumed he couldn’t trust Ewan. If prophets had any honor, they wouldn’t have been sent to be maimed. Still, something of the man he’d been had survived. Enough that he wanted to believe he could care about his bloodline.

  “Do you want to know what Rose did to Nick?” Gregor asked. There was no answer. He’d take that as a yes, or close enough. “I told you what to do. If you can still think for yourself, I’ll see you there.”

  Gregor tossed the radio back down onto the dead woman’s body. It crackled, voices lost as he turned to look at Boyd. The soldier stared back at him with a grim expression on his bruised face. He pulled his lips back in a humorless smile, blood on his teeth as his lips split.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I’ve outlived my usefulness?”

  It was past the point he could put up a fight. Whatever benefit the drink offered required a steady top-up of it in the bloodstream. Boyd still hunched his shoulders and lowered his chin aggressively. It would almost be admirable, in a wolf. In a human, it was deluded.

  Still—Gregor dodged the punch, and Boyd tripped forward over the corpse and went face-first into the snow—not quite yet.

  “HE’S GOT frostbite and the early signs of hypothermia,” Nick said. He winced as he turned Boyd’s hands over, his nails a pale blue that shaded into black toward the beds, and tied blunt fingers together with vinyl strips torn from the kayak’s covers. Boyd sweated silently through the treatment, sweat beaded on his forehead from the pain. “There’s a chance he’ll lose some of his extremities, even with proper treatment. Which I can’t provide in a boatshed, Gregor. He needs to go back to the base. The infirmary there was full stocked, and I might not have agreed to being drugged blind, but whoever did it could at least put a line in.”

  Boyd laughed. “British military equipment,” he said bitterly. “Our boots melt in the desert, and we get frostbite in the winter. Who are you, anyhow? Why is it so important we get you back?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Gregor said. “Just accept you won’t.”

  “Is it because of Doctor Ewan?” Boyd pressed on despite the warning. “Is he really your grandfather?”

  Nick fumbled the knot, the pinch of wrinkled fabric yanked tightly enough to make Boyd hiss in pain.

  “Is my what?” Nick asked. His attention was on Boyd, and then, as the question sank in, he turned to look at Gregor. He narrowed his dark eyes. “What’s he talking about?”

  Gregor shrugged. “You heard him.”

  Nick stared at him for a second, face blank and composed. Then he nodded slightly to himself, gave Boyd his hands back, and pushed to his feet. He walked over to Gregor and punched his upper arm.

  “Go to hell,” he said, his voice tight. “You don’t do that. Not to me.”

  Gregor caught his wrist and tightened his grip to keep hold of Nick as he tried to pull away. The fact his hand still fit easily around the narrow joint made him loosen his fingers slightly. Even if they were more evenly matched these days, the reminder he could have ever hurt Nick always reined in his temper. Not that he had to show that.

  “I could say the same,” he reminded Nick in a low, dangerous voice. “Do that again, and you’ll find out why not.”

  Nick didn’t even flinch at the barely veiled threat. He leaned in until they were almost nose to nose, his breath warm against Gregor’s face.

  “You think I should be scared of you?” he asked. “That’s what you want?”

  The temptation of Nick’s mouth caught at Gregor. He resentfully ignored it.

  “I want respect,” he said. “I’d accept fear.”

  Nick leaned in and kissed him, his free hand cupped around the back of Gregor’s neck. It was a quick hard press of lips, breath mingled between their mouths, and obviously meant to make a point. Gregor didn’t care. He pulled Nick closer, twisted his hand in the padded folds of the oversized jacket, and bit at the soft curve of the lips pressed to his.

  His human, his carrion god. The prophets might have fucked to make Nick and the gods might have brought him back to life, but they could all fuck off if they wanted to take him back. He was Gregor’s now, the only thing other than his wolf that Gregor had ever loved without hating at the same time.

  The one thing he’d ever beaten Jack at, because Gregor wouldn’t have to choose between the Pack and his mate. That choice had been made for him already.

  Nick sighed into Gregor’s mouth and pulled away. He tightened his hand around the nape of Gregor’s neck and rubbed his thumb along the tight ridge of tendon in his own version of possession. His eyes were soft and vague for a moment, and then he blinked them back into focus and cleared his throat.

  “Then don’t be a dick,” he said as he pulled away from Gregor. “Don’t leave me in the dark. I’ve had enough of that.”

  Nick pulled his jacket tight around him and stalked over to the door. He wrestled it open and squeezed out through the gap. The wind pulled the door out of his hand and it slammed behind him hard enough to dislodge chunks of half-frozen ice from the corners of the hut.

  Lust and anger were both volatile scents. They hung in the air behind Nick as he slammed the door behind him, hot and red, but the gray thread of old, worn fear pulled through it. He’d grown up with no idea of what the world really was, afraid of the inside of his own head as people told him that what he saw made him mad. The things people hadn’t told him had gotten him killed.

  Gregor resented the idea that Nick would lump him in with the prophets and the ignorant. It sat in his throat, thick and rancid like a lump of sour meat he couldn’t quite swallow.

  “He’s a bit high-strung,” Boyd said, his voice pitched to needle. He shifted position on the floor, with his weight braced on the heels of his hands to keep his roughly splinted fingers from being jarred. Gregor hadn’t bothered to leash him. Where would he go? “You’d think he’d be grateful you came to get him. I’d have left him to rot, ungrateful bastard.”

  He waited for a response. Gregor crouched down and grinned at him, all teeth. “Is that how a professional does it?” he asked. “You’re trying to, what, divide and conquer? Because my lot invented that.”

  Boyd shifted back. The complexity of his smell had been stripped, and only the coarse notes were left to dominate. It made it difficult to track his emotions, like someone who shouted every word.

  “Your lot? Who is that? You’re not military, but you know how to fight. What, some Glasgie brawler that hooked up as a merc with some PMC? Get to kill people without having to do the time? I’ve seen it before. No judgment here. But what’s the likes of you doing up here, and who’s he that he matters so much? You didn’t chase him up here into the blizzard for his sweet ass. Neither did we, I’m guessing.”

  He said guess, but there was confidence in his voice.

  “You’d be surprised,” Gregor said. He shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet and stood
up. “About a lot of things. If you had the time. If you drink that, you’ll still die.”

  Boyd held his face still, but his hand twitched toward the pocket of his jacket. He’d stolen the flask from the corpse when he tripped over it. The sleight of hand had been smooth. Gregor might have missed it entirely if Boyd had been able to resist a nip on the long walk back.

  “I don’t….” He started the objection and then gave up in the face of Gregor’s disinterest. “Maybe, but at least I won’t feel it.”

  It wasn’t Gregor’s business. He didn’t care how—or where or when—humans died. They did it so easily, after all, how was he meant to keep track? Yet he hesitated before he followed Nick outside.

  “Die as yourself,” he said. “It might come quicker, but it’ll be cleaner.”

  Boyd snorted out a harsh laugh. “I’m a soldier,” he said. “If I wanted to die clean, I would have stopped living a long time ago.”

  It was as much effort as Gregor was willing to make. He left Boyd with his poison and headed out into the storm.

  The loch was entirely frozen now, rippled with sharp, chipped ridges where the cold had caught the waves midlap. The haze of cold rose from the black glass surface, the bite of it sharper by the hour. Tomorrow the moon bitch would open her lazy eye to track how far things had progressed toward the end, and it felt like something had been brewed to give her a show.

  Nick was perched on a rock at the edge of the water, his arms braced on the shelf of his knees. It looked a lot less elegant in the padded, stolen snow gear than it did in his trademark long coat—still birdlike in the hunch of his sharp shoulders and the tilt of his head, but more like a fluffed-out sparrow than a raven.

  “What does it matter?” Gregor asked. Despite his best intentions to be kind and loving, the words turned harsh as he spat them out. “What do you care if Ewan is your grandfather? Rose is your grandmother, and you have enough sense not to care about her.”