Wolf at the Door

by TA Moore

  “He’s gone,” Rose said. Her voice was unsteady as she limped out of the storm. The end of the leash was in her hand. Her stomach was blue from the cold, and something squirmed inside it, pushed against the thin, overworked skin. “I thought if I cut his wolf out, there’d be room, but it was still too tight. So I cut the man out too, a little bit at a time, to shove all the god in. It still spills out, slops over, and tries to slither back into its corpse. Stubborn bastards, man and god. I thought they’d be a good fit. But no, just to spite me, no.”

  She rapped her knuckles on the back of the Old Man’s head. He cowered.

  Jack stared at the collar and back along the leash. His life was lined up in ink-and-salt-darkened skin, strips of leather tied together in tight, stretched-to-unwinding knots. Fenrir was already awake, the Sannock had said, and bound with flesh like his father.

  “You’re right. It’s your skin,” Rose said as she jerked the lead to pull Da back to her side. Or whatever wore his skin, anyhow. “I peeled it off Lachlan’s bones for this. It would have been better fresh, wet with your meat and blood, but your brother failed me. His regard for you outweighed his love for his wolf.”

  Gregor laughed harshly as he picked himself up from the roots of a tree.

  “He’s got nothing to do with this,” he said. He glanced down Rose’s body, then grimaced uncomfortably as he dragged his eyes away. “You can’t give me my wolf, old bitch. It’s just some dead thing to hate me and rot on me. I wouldn’t be a wolf, just another fucking monster, the same on the outside as you on the inside.”

  Rose’s scarred mouth twisted angrily, and she yanked on her lead. The collar cut into the Old Man’s throat, and he reluctantly shuffled backward as she reeled him in. “I would have spared you for my grandson’s sake,” she said. “But I can find him another wolf. Maybe Lachlan, once his skin grows back. He’s not a skilled lover, but he’s pathetically grateful.”

  Gregor curled his lip at her.

  “You think we won’t kill him because he’s our da?” he asked as he edged to the side. “After what you’ve done to him, it’s a mercy.”

  Jack scrambled to his feet and took the other flank. He shifted to the side to minimize the swathe of ground on his blind side.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the monsters charge toward them, bone claws dug deep into the frozen ground. It opened its mouth to roar, and a Sannock stapled it shut with a broken stick shoved through its jaw and up into the roof of its mouth. The monster’s teeth snapped together on its tongue and punched through the pink muscle. Its eyes bulged out and blood oozed out of the corners as it squealed in shocked pain.

  The Sannock dragged it back into the snow, into a shadowy diorama of alien shapes and howls.

  “Oh no,” Rose said, sickly surprise layered over her voice. “I don’t care how this plays out. Betray him, little pups, or die at his teeth. Either will send him back to me.”

  She hauled back on the lead to pull the Old Man onto his knees. He choked on the bite of the collar and the snarl that wanted to escape his throat. Rose leaned down to press her lips against his ear. “Rip them the fuck apart and bring me their skins. I have a baby to birth.”

  The lead dropped from her fingers, and she stepped back. She gave them the finger and then stalked away. Two prophets scurried up to her, one of them with blood matted on his arms from clawed fingertips to elbows. Monsters loomed out of the snow after them, frost crusted like scabs on their battle. The prophets took Rose’s arms and hurried her away between the monsters, who glowered at the wolves but backed up after their makers.

  A snarl ripped from the Old Man’s throat as he lunged forward.

  “Da,” Jack pled as he stepped back. His chest hurt. He didn’t know if it was the cold or grief. “Please. I don’t want to do this.”

  Split lips peeled back from broken teeth, and the Old Man lunged for him. Jack scrambled backward and banged into a tree that he’d forgotten he couldn’t see on that side. He ducked as the Old Man swung a clumsy, clawed hand at his head. Hooked fingers dug into the bark of the tree and ripped a chunk out of it.

  Jack scrambled out of the way, and Gregor grabbed him by the arm to haul him to his feet.

  “It’s not our da,” Gregor said grimly as they backed away. “And you’re not much fucking use without teeth, brother.”

  The back of Jack’s neck burned. He reached around and felt splinters dug into the base of his skull. His fingers came away wet and bloody.

  “What if she wants us to kill him?” he pointed out. “Maybe it’s part of her plan.”

  Gregor made a sour sound in his throat and pulled away from Jack as the Old Man tore a thick branch off the tree and threw it at them. It arced between them and crashed into the ground in a spray of splinters and snow.

  “You think we have a choice,” Gregor asked as he shook the bark and ice from his hair. “If we want to get my baby back and put Rose down, we have to go through the Old Man. Better us than one of her monsters.”

  Jack laughed bitterly. “Keep the killing in the family?”

  Gregor shrugged and stooped down to grab a sharp sliver of the broken branch. They both knew that was exactly what they had to do and that Gregor was right. Jack was more use with teeth. His wolf pushed at him in agreement, fur rough against the inside of his skin. It just didn’t feel right, not without… saying something.

  What, though? That Jack was Numitor despite what his father had decided, and he’d fucked it up for all the reasons the Old Man had banished him? That the Wolf Winter wasn’t what any of them had expected. Or just that this wasn’t fair?

  Whatever was left of his da, wherever he was, Jack supposed he knew that.

  Jack let the wolf out in an explosion of tawny fur and snarls as he lunged at the Old Man. He ripped chunks out of the Old Man’s heavy thighs and dodged the wild swing of heavy-knuckled fists. It didn’t always work. A backhand caught Jack under the jaw and snapped it out of the joint with a jolt he felt all the way up into his skull. He staggered backward, and Gregor broke his chunk of branch across the small of the Old Man’s back and then jammed a sharp, dagger-sized length of it up and under his ribs.

  Pain made the Old Man stagger, his knees suddenly unreliable, and reach back to pluck the splinter out of his kidneys. His fingers closed around the bloody bit of wood as Gregor grabbed his wrist. There was too much muscle to bend it far, but he wrenched it as far as it would go. The joint visibly strained under the skin, tight and swollen, as Gregor threw his weight behind it.

  Jack lunged in and ripped at the Old Man’s heavy stomach. His teeth tore through skin and yellow fat down to the hard slabs of laid-down muscle. The raw weave of muscle tightened as Jack slashed at it with a physical pressure that he could feel against his teeth. Blood soaked his face, clotted in the thick ruff of hair around his throat. He tore a long strap of muscle from its moorings before the Old Man got a leg up and kicked him away. Jack skidded backward into the snow, his breath tight as his breastbone throbbed. A second later Gregor was sent after him and rolled head over heels. He landed badly on something buried in the snow and felt a bone snap with a loud, definite crack. The pain made Gregor try to squirm away from it, bent like a bow and with a curse caught in the back of his throat.

  The Old Man threw his head back and roared in triumph.

  Hail hammered down around them, balls of Ping-Pong-sized ice that bounced off rocks and dented trees. It caught Jack on the hips and back, impact dulled by thick fur, and rattled down onto the Old Man. The skin over his eyebrow was split, blood splattered down his face, and bruises showed up red and gray on his shoulders and arms. It didn’t seem to bother him any more than the open wound on his stomach, where a bulge of pink intestine was visible through the shredded muscle.

  Jack sucked in air—his already bruised lungs tight as the cold hit them—and threw himself forward. He didn’t bother to look at Gregor to make sure they were on the same page. Either they were or they weren’t, and there was no
time to make another plan. Besides, it might not even make a difference.

  The Old Man grabbed at him. He closed his fist around Jack’s ear and yanked. Jack pulled free and sank his teeth into the thick, muscled forearm. He bore down until he felt his teeth grate against bone, and the Old Man swung him up in the air and then slammed him to the ground. The scattered hail dug into his side and skull. It was cold enough that it was almost comfortable. A heavy foot came down on his tail and jolted him into movement as Gregor tussled with their da over Jack’s sprawled body. He dug his fingers into the Old Man’s wounds and smashed his nose—again—with a short, brutal headbutt that rattled bone on bone.

  Blood splattered them both, and the Old Man snarled as he sank his broken, sharpened teeth into Gregor’s shoulder. His jaws worked, muscles thick as ropes under his skin, until Gregor’s arm hung limp from shredded meat.

  This time Jack took out the big muscle in the back of the Old Man’s thigh. It squirmed under his teeth as he viciously shook his head to drag it out of the meat, and he was nearly crushed as the Old Man toppled back onto him.

  They struggled on the ground for a moment, the Old Man’s hands in Jack’s mouth as he tried to yank his jaws to dislocation. Jack howled in pain as he felt the joint click out of true. Before the tendons could snap, Gregor hooked an arm around the Old Man’s neck and yanked back until his throat was taut and bared for Jack’s teeth.

  Flesh tore open and blood spluttered out. The ground was already sodden, the white snow trodden into a mire. The Old Man gagged and dragged himself off Jack to scrape Gregor off against a tree. He lost a hamstring to that distraction.

  Jack had seen Nick after a fight. The bird god in his head stitched him back together, quicker than a wolf sometimes, but not immediately. Humanity gave it a skin to walk the world in, but it cut its godhood too, like water in whiskey.

  The Old Man had always healed fast, and he did it faster with whatever scraps of Fenrir Rose had shoved in there, but not instantly. All Jack and Gregor had to do was hurt him faster than he could undo it, bleed him until he dropped like a stag on the moors.

  Then they could kill him.

  Between the two of them, together or in turn, they wore him down bite by bruise. It cost them—and their bones took longer to heal—but they were willing to pay.

  Eventually the Old Man staggered to his knees and didn’t get up. He doubled over and wheezed like a half-dead horse, and blood and spit sprayed from his lips as he strained for breath. His guts lay in his lap in thick loops, and his bones showed through his skin.

  “Do it,” Gregor said. He staggered back, arm folded over his chest to clutch his ruined shoulder. When Jack hesitated, Gregor snarled in frustrated desperation. “He said you couldn’t be Numitor. Prove him wrong. For fuck’s sake, do it before he gets back up.”

  Jack limped over on three legs. He steeled himself to do what he had to. The Old Man snarled at him, mean as a beaten dog, and crawled away. He dragged himself through the mud of the fight, after Rose.

  Before Jack could strike, Lachlan staggered out of the thick curtain of snow. His face was shredded, barely recognizable, and one hand dangled like so much chewed mince from a swollen wrist. He dragged a snarling dog with him under his arm, muzzle clamped shut with his good hand.

  “Let him go,” he yelled, his eyes swollen and clotted black under torn lids. “Go near him and I’ll kill your fucking dog. Maybe I’ll skin him, wear him like the prophets do their wolf. Would you like that?”

  Jack curled his lip in silent answer. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Old Man drag himself farther away, but he couldn’t take his eyes away from the strain of the dog’s neck. It would only take a little more pressure to snap the bone, sever the spinal column. Like the rabbit that Jack had killed earlier.

  “Let him go, Lachlan,” Gregor said. “Fuck’s sake, Lach, look around. The old bitch has left you to die here.”

  Lachlan grimaced around the ruin of his face. “She… she’s gone to have our baby in peace, safe from you. We’re going to rule the world together. Fuck being Numitor. I’ll have sired a god.”

  The dog growled, noise strangled by the angle of its neck. Lachlan jerked roughly at its nose and it choked on its own blood, the tender scar on its face torn open again. It scraped the ground with its paws and tried to twist its head free. Jack lost sight of the Old Man as he took two quick steps forward.

  “She’s dried up like an old bit of jerky, you idiot,” Gregor spat. “She’s got a bitch’s skin on that makes you sniff after her like she’s in heat, but whatever she’s going to pull out of that gut of hers isn’t going to be a baby.”

  Lachlan gagged on his own laugh. “You’re wrong,” he said. “I saw her put it in.”

  Jack forgot about Danny as he realized what that meant. He dropped his head and whined in disgust at the image. It took a second for Gregor to catch up with him, but when he did, he roared in angry grief and went for Lachlan. Fear made a brief, understandable appearance on Lachlan’s ruined face as his fingers tightened around the dog’s nose. Before Lachlan could do anything, Jack got in Gregor’s way and shouldered him back with a snarl.

  If it would have done them any good, if it would have gotten the baby back, then maybe Jack would have sacrificed Danny. He knew it was what Danny would have wanted. So maybe, but not for nothing.

  “The dog’s already dead,” Gregor spat as he tried to shove Jack out of the way. “Even Lachlan isn’t going to fuck that up.”

  Overhead the bird’s caw was a sharp, insistent sound that made Lachlan flinch and cast a quick, nervous glance at nothing. At most, at a shadow.

  “Shut up. Shut up,” he muttered as he shifted away. He dug his fingers into the dog’s nose until his nails broke the skin. “I didn’t do it. Leave me be. Bother them!”

  He backhanded the hair with his ruined hand. Outlined by snow and blood, Jack saw a sketch of a girl. The brief glimpse of her profile was dark as loch water, and her expression was mean and pinched with anger.

  Then the bloody snow drifted away and the faint lines of her were gone. Jack was left with the idea that she looked familiar, although he couldn’t place her. Lachlan still could, or at least he knew she was there.

  Someone groaned—a harsh, raw splutter of grief. Jack looked at Gregor first and then over at the Old Man. He’d stopped his slow crawl through the snow and stared at the space the girl had been, his battered face twisted with ugly intensity. It was bleak and angry, but for the first time, it was Da and not some angry beast that glowered out of those dark eyes.

  “Da,” Gregor said as he recognized it too.

  The Old Man didn’t look at either of them. His bloodshot eyes were focused on Lachlan, who shuddered and stepped away from the weight of that banked rage. The dog squirmed in his grip and kicked him. His nails raised welts on Lachlan’s legs.

  “I’ll kill the dog!” Lachlan yelled, but his voice cracked, and he jerked his head away from something at his cheek. “I killed its ma, didn’t I?”

  The Old Man growled and dragged himself to his feet. He staggered as though something hooked into his shoulders was trying to pull him back.

  “Not. Again,” he ground out through his ruined teeth. “You won’t. Betray us. Again.”

  Something gave at that idea—a wolf-god’s centuries-old resentment toward his traitors, maybe—and the Old Man roared forward. Lachlan dropped the dog, who splayed out awkwardly as his paws hit the ground, and pulled a stained knife from the back of his jeans.

  He sliced the Old Man’s throat open down to the bone and then jammed the knife hilt-deep in his gut, through the torn muscle, and into the soft organs. His elbow pumped as he jabbed the knife in again and again.

  The Old Man got his hands around Lachlan’s throat, but he didn’t squeeze. His battered fingers twitched weakly, and then he grunted softly as though it surprised him. He fell backward into the snow and cupped his hands over the ruin of his stomach.

  No one moved. Lac
hlan looked more shocked than any of them, almost guilty as he stumbled back with his bloody hands held in front of him. The dog nudged the Old Man’s fingers with its nose and then scrambled to its feet to snarl at Lachlan.

  A newborn squalled, the sound drawn out like taffy by the wind, and the Old Man died.

  Jack held his breath and waited, but that was it. He’d been wrong, he thought dully. The Wild didn’t ring with Da’s passing. He was gone, and there was meat where he’d been. Jack was truly the Numitor now. He could feel it in his bones.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven—Danny

  THE DOG felt sick and sorry for itself as it snarled at Lachlan. It hurt from its nose to its paws, the Old Man smelled like a dead thing—and that was wrong—and the stink of blood and screams from the fight made it flinch under its skin.

  It wanted to run, but it stayed. For Jack, for Bron’s pup.

  Loyalty the dog could understand. The rest of this it would leave for Danny to make sense of.

  Lachlan grinned at them, his teeth bloody in a face that hadn’t worked out how to put itself back together.

  “It’s done,” he said. “You’re too late, Jack. Fenrir is born again in blood and in death. And I killed the Old Man. You all treated me like shit, like a dog, but I’m the one who put him down!”

  The dog snarled and lunged for Lachlan. He flinched back in surprise from bared teeth and then jumped away from the chill touch of something the dog couldn’t see. It was there. The dog knew that in the hackles over its shoulders, and so did Lachlan. They just couldn’t see it. Lachlan spat at it and laughed as he staggered into the storm.

  “You should have showed throat when you had the chance,” he yelled over the howl of the storm. “Maybe Bron will. She was still alive when I left her. I should fix that.”

  The dog snarled furiously and charged after him. Jack shoulder-checked it off course, and Gregor grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and hauled it up onto its back legs.