Wolf at the Door

by TA Moore

  It opened its jaws, and Ellie screamed—a wolf’s scream, high and terrible in a way that nothing else was. The Sannock spoke through the noise.

  “Once upon a time you couldn’t wait to have us in you,” he singsonged. The voice was clear but somehow sounded like it came from a long way away. “Chewed us off our own bones you were so. Eager.”

  “Yeah, well,” Gregor said. “Done is done. You told Nick that you’d help us.”

  Ellie’s head ticked to the side to stare at the bird. Her neck popped like knuckles with the force of the movement.

  “We did,” it said. “Maybe we lied.”

  “Stories say you can’t.”

  It somehow managed to shrug like a man with a wolf’s shoulders. It was a disturbing motion. “Stories lie. That’s what they are for. We might have lied to it, but we made a deal with you. Oaths aren’t stories. They’re true. We can help. We will help. After we get the skins we take tonight.”

  Jack snarled and took a step forward. Before he could take another, Gregor reached down and hauled him by the scruff.

  “Not those skins,” Gregor said. “You get out of the wolves.”

  The Sannock tried to spit but was thwarted by Ellie’s muzzle. “We want to live again. To learn to die, so we can go. We tolerate your hides for that, but we’d rather linger in the shade forever than live in your hungry flesh. Even if we could bear the shame, there’s no room.”

  “I get my child,” Gregor said. “We get Rose’s throat. Anything else is yours.”

  The Sannock smiled. It wasn’t a friendly expression, stretched over a wolf’s muzzle, but it wasn’t meant to be.

  “Deal,” it said. “May you live to regret it.”

  Gregor shrugged. “Wolves don’t waste time on regret,” he said. “If you double-cross us, we’ll make sure the Sannock have all the time in the shade to dwell on yours.”

  The Sannock bobbed its nose in a nod. “Follow.”

  It turned and ran. The rest of the Pack fell in behind it, almost as smoothly as when the wolves were in charge of their own paws. There was still something alien about how uniform each step was and the perfectly aligned noses.

  Jack pulled away from Gregor and watched them go. Then he whined softly under his breath and looked up at Gregor with a worried expression in his last green eye. Gregor knew what he’d noticed—the one face not in the furry crowd.

  “He’s a dog, not a wolf,” Gregor said. “You couldn’t hand him over to the Sannock if you wanted. If he were dead, we’d have seen him already. If Rose has him, we get him back.”

  Jack shuddered from nose to tail, but he had to accept it. There was nothing else they could do.

  The Prophets had left monsters to guard their last stand—four gaunt things, bones stretched out like greyhounds and stitched together with heavy, raw lumps of muscle that split their thin skin, and one who looked almost human. Her face was a caul of swollen bone, bloodshot eyes sunken deep and full of rheum, but she still stood up straight, and her hands worked well enough for a gun.

  Barely.

  The first splatter of gunfire just grazed the leading edge of the Sannock wolves. It scored a raw line across a black wolf’s shoulder and took a nick out of his ear. The red wolf next to him was unluckier. They caught a bullet to the leg, and it shattered like a stick. The Sannock didn’t care. It ran on splinters and ragged flesh. In eerie silence.

  Jack shuddered at the offense of it but threw himself into the fight.

  The gaunt monsters took point and tore into the Sannock wolves as the Pack surrounded them. Thin, bony muzzles, the skin peeled back from the jut of raw gums like a glove, snapped at the press of fur and muscle that eddied around them to snatch wolves up and shake them like rats. Clawed paws, fingers braided together and their nails thick and yellow where they poked from the raw beds, tore through shoulders and slapped unlucky wolves to the ground or into the wall.

  It didn’t even slow the Sannock. They didn’t need a moment to shake the ringing from their ears or let the Wild knit their bodies back together. They just picked themselves up and slunk back into the fight with teeth that slowed the monster’s healing when they sank down to bone. Infected flesh withered and dried into creased, stained leather.

  Jack dodged between the Sannock and harried the gaunt monsters. He took a chunk from one’s thigh, meat and gristle torn from the bone, and lunged in to tear at the stretched-out point of an ear when the monster went for a wolf. In the middle of the fight, he looked, somehow, more vivid than the other wolves, as though what had taken up residence in them had faded them down. Gregor grimly stuck to his heels and watched his back. The Sannock might be their allies right now, but they’d hated the wolves for as long as there had been a Scottish Pack.

  One of the monsters swung its head around. It had eyebrows, thin and black, that arched over the distorted orbits of its eyes. Twisted as the things were, sometimes the most grotesque part was the shreds of who they’d been. Gregor dodged as it swung its head like a hammer. His foot slipped on the gore that splattered the floor, and his knee twisted as he went down. The slip saved him, and he only had to absorb part of the impact. He sucked in a breath and let the disgusted rage wash the pain away as he pulled his knee back to kick the monster in the throat.

  It squalled and reared back, throat bulged out like a frog’s around the shattered trachea. One of the Sannock leaped for it and hit it in the chest. It staggered backward, and they toppled over, tangled around each other as they scrapped and clawed.

  Gregor scrambled to his feet and threw himself back into the fight.

  The almost-human monster had backed up to guard the door. She squinted around the bony jut of her own sockets and strafed the room with a volley of bullets, careless of whether they punched through wolves or her own allies. Gregor swore and hit the ground again, his ears ringing. Two wolves caught bullets to the head and dropped like a stone, the mist gone from their eyes. Maybe they could have gotten up again, probably not, but maybe. Instead the monsters tore them apart and spat out the remains.

  The Sannock seeped out of the dead, shrugged the corpses off their hollow shoulders like old coats, and drifted back into the fight. They couldn’t deal out the same damage, but they sucked the breath from the monsters’ mouths and pinched their ears with thin, grave-filthy fingers.

  Gregor cursed under his breath—he’d rather the Sannock died and the wolves got up—and got his elbows under him. His chest ached from the hard landing on the ground, and it took him a second to catch his breath. He forced the pain down and scrambled up. If the body count of Jack’s deal got too high, then Jack would be useless. To Gregor. To the Pack.

  The monster fumbled the gun back up toward her shoulders. Her head was turned toward Jack, his tawny fur easy to pick out from the faded wolves, and the curve of her cheekbones blocked her peripheral vision. Gregor took a breath—his lungs cramped around the chill of it—and darted toward her. He jumped over the Sannock who got in his way and dodged the snake-like strikes of the monsters who saw him pass. Mostly dodged. Blood dripped down his arm from a bloody gash in his shoulder.

  One of the monsters loomed up in front of him, dappled gray and liver with raised, wrinkled moles, and screamed at him. One of the disembodied Sannock hung from its throat, fingers worked in deep under the skin, and another had its teeth buried in the thing’s loose breasts. Its attention was on Gregor.

  He put his head down and made straight for it. At the last second, he went down on the floor—slick enough to take his feet from under him earlier—and skidded between the thing’s legs. It nearly knocked itself out on the ground as it tried to chase him between its own ankles. One of the Sannock darted in as it was occupied and tore open the taut skin of its neck.

  Gregor rolled to his feet on the other side. The muzzle of the gun was pointed directly at him, the monster’s scab-ringed eyes focused on him. Twelve feet of empty ground stretched out between them, and experience told Gregor that he couldn’t cover it in time,
not on two legs.

  He went for it anyhow, with a staggered lunge across the distance. The Wild that stung under his skin might not be able to find what it needed to turn him, but given something to do, it cooled the ache in his joints and flooded him with the quick, endless adrenaline of the moon hunt, when he could run forever, tireless and fast as the wind.

  He covered two-thirds of the ground before the monster could react. It still wasn’t going to be enough. The monster tightened its finger, and Gregor, his hearing sharpened by the Wild until he could hear the pulse of the thing’s blood in its throat, caught the click as something engaged.

  The world slowed down. Gregor skinned his lips back in one last frustrated snarl. He could accept death, but it stuck in his throat to fail.

  The black bird crashed into the side of the monster’s head. Sharp talons scraped on the skull and worked gouges down into the bone, and the thick, carved beak cracked it open like a nut.

  Gregor supposed that was what that awl of a thing was meant to do.

  A squawk escaped the monster as she jerked the gun up as it fired. A single bullet sang by Gregor’s ear, and the rest stitched over the ceiling. Splinters of concrete and dust rained down, and the square box creaked around him.

  “Nick,” Gregor yelled. “Move.”

  Black wings curved and the bird pushed off with a croak and a splatter of blood drops. It was well-timed. The bird was just clear as Gregor slammed into the monster. He grabbed the gun, metal hot against his palms, and slammed it up into the monster’s face. It staggered backward briefly and then swung him around to slam into the door.

  It rang like an untuned bell.

  The monster dropped the gun and grabbed Gregor’s head. Her fingers wrapped almost all the way around, and it felt like a vise when she squeezed. The sharp tips of her thumbnails dug into Gregor’s eyelids like knives. Her mouth, lips shredded by a lamprey excess of teeth, writhed with the effort of speech.

  “Mek yo’ uglee,” she slurred. The scabs around her eyes cracked as she narrowed them. “Mek it stick whatever yo’ do.”

  Pressure throbbed behind Gregor’s eyes, a hot pulse in time with his heart. He struggled to focus past the pain and the blood that dripped into his eyes.

  Maybe it was enough. The monster wasn’t going to shoot another wolf, and that was a victory of sorts. He could give up.

  Gregor bared his teeth in a hard snarl of a grin that made his bruised face ache. Fuck that. He forced his arms up and grabbed the monster’s head, dug his fingers into the hole the bird made, and pulled. Bone creaked and split along the fracture lines the bird had left in the skull. It cracked open like an egg, and blood and clots of hair spilled out around his fingers.

  The monster howled like a dog and slammed Gregor’s head into the door until his vision grayed out. He couldn’t see, but he didn’t need to. He thrust his fingers through the thin membrane of scalp and into the wet slop of its brain. The monsters healed quickly, but Gregor pulped the delicate tissue in his fist and pulled it off the stem.

  That wasn’t something to come back from.

  Big hands flexed around Gregor’s skull for a heartbeat. Then they went lax. The monster staggered back and pitched over onto the ground. Its brains dripped, wet and sticky, from Gregor’s fingers. He shook them off and pushed himself off the door.

  The Sannock pulled the last of the gaunt monsters to the ground, and Jack, so matted in blood that the flash of his one green eye was the only thing that broke the monochrome gore, tore its guts open.

  Gregor wiped blood out of his eyes and turned around to try the door. His blood was smeared over the metal, but it didn’t make any difference. It didn’t open. He swore and smacked the heel of his hand against it.

  “Can you step into the Wild?” Nick asked. “Come out the other side.”

  Jack, still in his wolfskin, grunted his opinion of that.

  “Not a good idea,” Gregor said. “We ask the Wild to let us in, and if it wants, it does. Then we hope it lets us out again, where it wills and when it wills. With how twisted Rose has left it? It might never let us out, or it might drop us in the middle of a wall.”

  James screamed this time. It was a raw, bloody noise, as though he’d screamed all the time the Sannock had been silent, but the voice that came out was the same.

  “Wolves,” it said. “All appetite and anger and cur’s luck. The Wild bless you, for nothing else ever will. Sannock are old, wise, and we were loved once. Step aside.”

  Gregor hesitated. It galled on a deep, uneasy level to even abide the Sannock, never mind obey them, but they’d gone this far. He stepped aside.

  The Sannock in James padded over to the door on silent paws and reared up onto its back feet. It pressed its nose to the seal and whispered. Gregor tried to listen, but it stuck to his brain like tar. He recoiled before it could coat it all and took a step. The bird landed on his shoulder and clipped him around the ear with a wing as it caught its balance. He reached up and stroked its beak, the hard surface warm and pitted with ogham.

  “I thought I disliked them before,” he said. “Now I see them in wolves, I realize I’d barely begun.”

  The bird croaked quietly against his ear. Gregor didn’t understand it, but he decided to assume that it agreed with him.

  There was a yell of surprise on the other side, and something smacked into the door hard enough to rattle it. Gregor traded a quick glance with Jack. They didn’t need to speak. Understanding passed silently between them.

  If the Sannock had set a trap, they’d bleed to get the meat out of it.

  The door rattled again, and blood seeped out from under it in a thick, dark trickle. Then it pulled open, and a familiar man, scar raw and pink across his forehead, staggered out.

  Boyd—the soldier Gregor had left for dead in the snow, now on his feet and on their side. He had a heavy knife in one hand, the curved blade coated with blood, and a desperate look in wild, dry-looking eyes.

  “There,” Boyd said as he dropped the knife and went down on his knees. “I did what you asked. Keep your side of the bargain. Now.”

  He sounded desperate, and he smelled like death—not the agitating stink of the monsters, but just death.

  “We made a deal, we keep a deal,” the Sannock said through James’s sobbing wails. Then it snapped gray, brittle-looking teeth at the man. “At the end. Once we’re done.”

  Boyd tried to protest, but the Sannock ignored him. What would he do, after all? Who would he appeal to for justice against them? He sagged to the ground like a discarded toy, his hands slack and palm up on his knees.

  The Sannock flowed around him, uncaring, into what had been meant to be a safe room.

  A snarling prophet, the skinned corpse he’d pulled on tattered and dry, looked shocked as he saw the Sannock-ridden Pack halfway through his grab for Boyd. It was too late for him to stop. Jack pushed Gregor out of the way and flew at the prophet in a lean, bloody streak of muscle. He hit the prophet in the stomach and knocked him to the ground. They rolled back and forth as they snarled and snapped at each other and the Sannock went around or over them. The prophet tore at Jack with taloned hands, but the thick, gore-matted coat protected him, and the prophet’s wolf split like cheap leather as Jack ripped into him. Jack sank his teeth into the man’s throat and snarled as he shook his head.

  “No!” Ailsa screamed in frustration as she shoved one of the fever-skinned humans away from her. Liquid that Gregor assumed was the prophets’ poison spilled onto the floor from the silver flask she held. Since he’d seen her last, she’d patched her shabbily tailored wolf hide with fresh skin, roughly tanned with piss and still fresh enough to stink. Reddish fur sprouted from the darkened skin in rough patches. Gregor didn’t know if Ewan deserved better or not, but he’d peel the skin of Ailsa’s back for Nick’s sake. “You can’t be here yet. We aren’t ready. Why won’t you just give up and die.”

  Gregor showed her his teeth.

  “We’re wolves,” Gregor told
her. The Sannock prowled slowly forward, ears flat and lips curled back to show fangs and gums. One slow step after another. “And the Old Man’s sons. We might die, but we don’t give up.”

  The prophets were gathered behind her, around a guttering bonefire. Their hands were thrust into the embers, fingers scorched raw red and swollen with blisters. A handful of soldiers fed the fire with chunks of raw flesh and rolls of salted dog skin that charred and stank as they burned. The rest of the soldiers stood and watched, entranced by the flicker of flames and the black streams of smoke as they rose toward the ceiling.

  Gregor glanced around the room as he totted up the scabby hides. Ten prophets. Eleven if Gregor counted the half-dead prophet on the floor, almost strangled by the grip of Jack’s jaws around his throat. There should have been more, even accounting for the ones they’d already killed. Maybe some of them had the good sense to turn coat on Rose and run.

  She wasn’t here, nor was the baby. He could smell it. Under the smoke, the honey sweetness of a newborn cut with salt and copper hung in the air, but it was diffuse—a trace the child had left, but no source.

  “Where’s the baby?” he asked.

  Ailsa laughed raggedly and tossed back a swig of the clear potion. She shuddered and made a bitter face as the taste hit the back of her throat.

  “You’re too late,” she said. “Too late for him. Too late for us. It’s time. Kill them.”

  Gregor braced himself.

  The prophets pulled their hands out of the fire, strings of raw tendons strung around the knuckles, and their bodies crackled and popped as their chests thickened and the wolf crawled up over them. Snarls tore out of their dry vocal cords, and then they tore into the humans around them. Clawed fingers hooked into throats and tore them out and grabbed heads to snap the necks with one quick twist.