Wolf at the Door

by TA Moore

  Nick didn’t turn around. The wind stripped his voice from his lips when he said something, and Gregor had to stalk closer to make him out.

  “… should have let him drink it.”

  “What?

  Nick impatiently rubbed his hand over his eyes with a quick, frustrated flick of his fingers and looked over his shoulder.

  “You’ve more faith in that than me,” he said. “She’s my gran, and she killed me, but…. The first thing I learned in this world was that I had to love her.”

  “Doesn’t mean you do,” Gregor said. “I was told to love my brother, and we can barely stand each other.”

  “You saved his life,” Nick pointed out wryly. “You can’t hate him that much.”

  “I hate him enough to want to kill him myself,” Gregor said bluntly. It sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as Nick. That troubled him. Who was he, if he didn’t hate Jack? How could he justify what he did—what he might do—if thwarting his brother wasn’t an excuse in itself? But he couldn’t deny Nick’s point, so he shrugged awkwardly as he crouched down next to Nick and leaned against his leg. “Maybe one day I could tolerate the idea he’s still alive, somewhere else, but he’s not mine. You’re my family. I don’t need anyone else.”

  Nick reached up and tangled his fingers in Gregor’s cold-stiff hair. His fingers were icy.

  “I picked you over her,” he reminded him. “I chose you, even if you don’t talk to me.”

  “Not really had the time,” Gregor said. He paused and then pointed out, “It might not even be true. Prophets lie. Rose lies.”

  “Does she?”

  Gregor stiffened at the question. Had Rose gotten to Nick while he’d been lost? Had she something to offer him that was as seductive as what she’d offered Gregor?

  “You know she does.”

  Nick shuddered at something and then nodded with a brisk dip of his sharp chin. “Not about him, though. The Run-Away Man. I saw him, out on the moors.”

  “He’s a fairy tale,” Gregor said. “A bedtime story from a lunatic.”

  “I saw him,” Nick insisted. “In the Wild. In this world. He was there. They led me to him.”

  Shadows on the snow with nothing to cast them, the glint of wet human eyes in the darkness between the trees, and the faded scent of something alien enough that it could have been the remnants of grief or rage on the air and he couldn’t tell which. Gregor didn’t need to ask who they were, and he didn’t want to know if Nick would lie about them.

  “The Wild is full of things,” he said. “Some old troll that the Winter woke up. Or a berserker who never remembered he wasn’t a bear.”

  Nick shook his head. “I knew his face,” he said. “Gran had a picture of him that she hung in the hall. It was the same man. I knew him. I think he knew me.”

  Gregor hesitated, uncertain of what to say. He doubted that some man whose photo was nailed up in her hall had ever known Nick existed, never mind someone found his way into the Wild and up to the Highlands. But Nick believed it. He could feel the tension of it strung through his body.

  “Was he ginger?” he asked.

  That surprised a laugh out of Nick. “No,” he said. “He had dark hair and—”

  “Then it wasn’t Ewan,” Nick said. “He’s a little ginger prophet. And Rose, even if she told the truth about the Run-Away Man, doesn’t mean she told the truth about anything else. Or she ever planned to. You don’t need them.”

  Nick unfolded from his perch on the rock and stood up. He moved stiffly, his joints chilled, and offered Gregor a hand to get to his feet. Gregor didn’t need the help, but he accepted the offer just to feel Nick’s long, restless fingers tangle through his.

  “I know,” Nick said as he hauled Gregor up. He clung onto Gregor’s fingers once he was done. “I just… don’t want to know that everyone who made me is a monster. That I was going to be a monster, even before—”

  Gregor kissed him to shut him up. “You were always going to be mine,” he said. “Monster, god, or human. I don’t care.”

  “I do,” Nick said as he rested his forehead against Gregor’s. “I get it. We need to know what Gran has planned, but don’t blindside me, Gregor. Not again.”

  With Nick so close, Gregor could smell the sickness on him. It wasn’t as wrong as the monsters, but something bitter still clung close to Nick’s skin. Whatever the prophets—whatever Nick’s grandfather—had done to him, it hadn’t worn off yet. Thinned out, but not faded away. A whole layer of reality just wiped out.

  Gregor stepped back and tucked his knuckle under Nick’s chin to tilt his head up. “I decided to keep you when you were human,” he said. “I want you, Nick, not the bird.”

  “If it can still hear you, you’ll hurt its feelings,” Nick said. “It likes you.”

  “I like it,” Gregor said. He did. The bird’s personality was distinct from Nick’s when he pulled on his feathers—a creature who cackled humor over the dead. Carrion gods, he supposed, had a particular view of the world. “But I need you.”

  Nick grinned with a flash of that unexpected, ridiculous sweetness that he pretended wasn’t there. Then his face fell into serious lines and he reached up to cover Gregor’s hand with his, fingers slotted between Gregor’s knuckles.

  “I love you,” he said.

  Of course, he did. Gregor knew that already. Why else would Nick have come back from the dead for Gregor or followed him north to the harsh welcome of the wolves? The need to say it anyhow was a human thing, as though a feeling could be domesticated like a dog.

  Gregor still wanted him to say it again. Maybe the prophets had sliced more out of him than he thought and left room for sentiment to creep in.

  “Why wouldn’t you?” he asked.

  Nick gave him an exasperated glare but leaned in for a kiss. His mouth was desperate, his lips cold and tongue warm as he pressed against Gregor’s body. He cupped Gregor’s face with his long-fingered hands, buried his thumbs in the stubble that crawled along the clean edges of his jaw, and muttered something that Gregor didn’t catch between their mouths.

  It didn’t matter what the words were, Gregor could taste the tenderness of them on his tongue. He swallowed it greedily and pulled Nick closer, his hands twisted roughly in the thick jacket that rustled in his grip. The lean body under the thermal material relaxed against Gregor with easy, seductive compliance. Nick wasn’t easy—he argued with Gregor more than anyone but Jack had ever dared before—but he always melted when Gregor touched him.

  The ache of lust in Gregor’s balls was heavy and hot, almost painful as it reminded him how cold his thighs and ass were. Temptation knotted in the small of his back, equal parts desire and the need to mark Nick with his scent.

  Mine.

  “We’ll freeze,” Nick muttered into Gregor’s mouth. Despite the objection, he didn’t pull away. “I’ll freeze.”

  “I’ll warm you up,” Gregor teased. He pulled away from Nick’s mouth and licked his way down to the taut skin under his jaw. The flutter of Nick’s pulse against his lips made Gregor’s mouth water. He bit down on the bubble of it, just hard enough to make Nick gasp, and then licked the spot better. Temptation had settled into intent as he nuzzled his way down Nick’s throat to his collarbone. “You still aren’t human, no matter what they did.”

  A whimper caught in Nick’s throat. He slid his hand back and twisted it into Gregor’s hair, and the tug of his fingers in the dense curls was echoed in the clench of Gregor’s balls.

  “I’d still rather not freeze my cock to a tree,” Nick protested halfheartedly. “And that soldier could get away—”

  “Let him,” Gregor said. It had been a whim that made him drag Boyd back with him. He might be useful, but if he got away, then Gregor would just change plans. He scraped a kiss along the hard wing of Nick’s collarbone and offered slyly, “You can go on top.”

  The whimper escaped Nick, thickened to a moan as it spilled over his lips, and Gregor could almost i
gnore the sound of an approaching ATV under the storm. Almost.

  He peeled his lips back in a frustrated snarl as he lifted his head and stepped back. Nick stumbled as the wind took advantage of him being off-balance to shove at him. Gregor caught him by the shoulder and then jerked his head back toward the abandoned house they’d passed earlier.

  “They’re here,” he said.

  Nick hunched his shoulders and swore, the guttural Glaswegian accent dragged from his childhood in frustration, when nothing happened. He roughly scrubbed his hand over his eyes, as though he could scrape the poison out.

  “Alone?”

  Gregor strained his ears. He isolated the rumble of the ATV and the howl of the wind to filter out and tried to pick out any other noise. If the wolves were out, he wouldn’t know they were here until one had their teeth at his throat. They could hunt silently in the snow. Humans lumbered and talked, the crackle of radio and confidence of something that hadn’t realized it was prey.

  “No, soldiers.” He licked the back of his teeth and caught the greasy aftertaste of the monster’s off-putting reek on the air. “Maybe one of their monsters.”

  Nick shuddered and didn’t stop as he remembered he was meant to be cold… or that he was afraid.

  “I guess Grandad is on the same child-rearing book as Gran,” he said bitterly. “Good to know.”

  Gregor grabbed the back of Nick’s neck and pulled him into a quick, rough hug. He pressed his face to the tangle of dark, fine hair and breathed in the odd, candy sweetness that was unique to Nick.

  “Fuck him,” he said. “I was going to kill him anyhow. Now I don’t need to make up an excuse.”

  Nick laughed unsteadily. He pulled his jacket over again and ducked out from under Gregor’s hand to head back to the hut. “Since when do you need an excuse?” he asked skeptically.

  “I don’t,” Gregor said. “But I’ll pretend it matters if it makes you feel better.”

  Nick snorted and hunched down into his coat. He leaned forward against the wind as it tried to push them back to the lake.

  “Should have let him drink,” Nick said. “It would be easier.”

  Gregor hesitated, eyes narrowed against the snow. It was Nick’s voice, the sanded-off vowels and quiver from the cold, but Nick was in front of him. The voice came from the lake.

  He didn’t turn around. Whatever was there—dead thing or Sannock ghost—wanted to play games, and this wasn’t the time. If they wanted to haunt him, they could wait their turn.

  Maybe when they saw what he’d do to Ewan, the prophet who’d been dumb enough to think Gregor would trust him, they’d give up Nick’s voice before Gregor had to reach down their throat and rip it out for them.

  He grinned at the thought and broke into a jog to catch up with Nick.

  Chapter Eighteen—Nick

  PAIN PECKED at the inside of Nick’s skull. His head throbbed as though it were about to crack open like a melon and misgivings would spill out like guts.

  Something is wrong.

  Nick rubbed his finger up the bridge of his nose and pressed against the span of skin between his eyebrows. The pressure didn’t help, but the small new pain distracted him from the dull thump in his brain as he hunched down behind a heaped mound of frozen snow. Gregor was only a few feet away, folded in behind a scrawny tangle of threadbare bushes, but it felt farther. Every time Nick looked over, it took him a second to pick Gregor out from the frost and branches. They were stationed across from the lonely little house tucked onto a pocket of land just off the road. It had been all straight lines and modernity a few months ago, from the look of it, but now the white plaster had broken off the walls from the cold, and hailstones had smashed out the windows.

  Boyd stood at the door, wrists laced to the handle with his back to the drive. From behind, with the hood of his filth-blackened jacket pulled up over his head, he could pass for Gregor. At least he could if you didn’t know Gregor. Nick was confident he would have been able to tell from the breadth of shoulders and the way Boyd stood.

  Hopefully his grandfather had spent less time watching Gregor move.

  The drift they were behind was gray and clumped under the fresh coat of new-fallen snow, a relic of the locals’ last attempt to clear the roads and pretend this was just a hard early frost.

  “Good for potatoes,” people had told each other in the shops, “There won’t be a shortage of brussels sprouts this year.”

  That little bit of self-delusion hadn’t lasted long. Anything that had grown through this had been left to rot in the fields.

  On cue, Nick’s stomach remembered it was empty and growled. Gregor frowned over at him, and Nick shrugged an apology. The last time he’d eaten had been a bag of jerky as they headed around the lake.

  Crunchy. Meat. Slippery. Sweet.

  Nick gagged at the unexpectedly vivid memory of something the bird had eaten, peeled off the frozen corpse of a sheep. He’d thought he’d gotten used to the bird’s appetite, but apparently that was one of the bits they shared. Now that it was quiet, his stomach had turned fastidious.

  A flash of black humor reminded him that he’d see the sheepsicle again if he puked. That helped to choke back the bile.

  Nick ran his hand through his hair, ice-matted knots cold against his knuckles, and wondered if that dark thought was him or if maybe his gran’s bitter liquor had worn off.

  Or started to, he reminded himself, which wasn’t going to be any help over the next few hours. He shifted his weight and kicked away the snow that had built around his feet. The rumble of the ATVs’ engines rattled under the howl of the wind with a deeper note, but it carried oddly through the snow-dense air, and Nick couldn’t tell where the noise came from.

  “Where are they?” he muttered to himself.

  He wasn’t sure if Gregor heard him—for all his complaints about the loss of his wolf, Gregor’s ears were still sharp enough—or if the gesture to catch Nick’s attention was just well-timed. When he looked over, Gregor pointed down the road and then pressed his finger to his lips in silent direction.

  Nick nodded and strained his ears. At first the noise was lost in the wind, but then he caught the low growl of an engine in the stillness.

  A moment later two ATVs bounced through the trees and up the hill, snow spraying out behind them with waves. Two men sat on each ATV, heavy black guns slung over their backs and gloved hands wrapped around the handlebars of the machines as they jarred to a halt in front of the wall.

  Boyd made a muffled howl of protest and yanked at the door until the reinforced wood rattled in the frame. He threw his head from side to side to try and dislodge the hood.

  “Hands up,” one of the men shouted as he scrambled off his bike. He moved stiffly after an hour in the saddle in the cold, but his hands were steady as he raised the gun. “Get away from that door.”

  Two of the other men followed his example, guns cradled ready in their arms as they fanned out around the house. Nick didn’t have a wolf’s sense of smell, except for the ripe, red threads of carrion, but he could read tension in tight shoulders and jerky movements. Gloved fingers twitched on triggers as Boyd kicked at the door with black-booted feet and swore through his gag.

  “We should just fucking shoot him,” the man on the left yelled over the wind as he hiked the gun up to his shoulder. “Shut the fuck up!”

  The last man stayed in the saddle of the ATV. He pulled his gloves off, hands very pale at the end of his thick-cuffed sleeves, and tucked them into his pocket as he turned to search the white-blanketed landscape. The crest of phantom feathers that weren’t there on the back of Nick’s neck bristled as he felt the man’s attention linger on him. Even hidden behind smoked glass goggles, the weight of his attention felt… heavy, thick with something that sucked at the pain in Nick’s head like it could taste it. That was his grand—Nick’s brain stalled over that idea, the word weighted down with a leaden ball of panic. He let it go. The prophet, he corrected himself as the man turned
his attention back to the soldiers. That was the prophet.

  “I told you to—”

  The flat retort of gunshot cut the ranting short. Blood sprayed through the air as the prophet shot him in the back of the head. It splashed a gory red against the faded white walls of the cottage. Boyd stayed upright for a moment and then pitched over, face-first into the snow. Blood seeped out from his head, watered down from scarlet to a faded pink as it filtered through the crystals.

  One of the men flinched in surprise and his finger tightened on the gun. It spat a short judder of bullets that studded the door and caught Boyd in the shoulder. The impact smacked Boyd into the door with a grunt. He slid down the door onto his knees and Nick started to his feet. It was instinct, years of training taken over from the lessons learned in the last few weeks. Gregor growled loudly enough for Nick to hear and impatiently gestured “stay.”

  “Wait,” Gregor mouthed as the prophet put a bullet through the shooter’s throat.

  Nick flinched at the noise, his heartbeat loud in his ears. After everything that had happened—the monsters, the dead, the strange things—it was the sound of a gunshot that still hit every socially installed, pop-culture-panic trigger he had. His breath caught in his chest, hot and anxious, and he covered his hand with his mouth to hide the steam as he panted.

  The last soldier realized where the shots came from and spun around. He didn’t bother to ask why, just pulled the trigger and pumped two bullets into the prophet’s gut. One spat out his back, just above his ribs, but the other caught something inside. The prophet groaned, pressed one hand to his gut, and hunched over.

  “What the hell?!” the soldier got around to. His voice was ragged, and he swung the gun in quick, unsteady arcs to threaten shadows in the snow. He shot one in a quick spray of bullets, and it burst apart to reveal nothing but ice and emptiness. Nick flinched again as his ears reacted to the noise with a hot whine of feedback. “What the fuck!”

  The prophet slouched to the side, nearly off the ATV. There was no blood on his jacket, absorbed by the thick stuffing, but that Nick could smell on the wind. With his head slumped down toward his chest, he muttered something.