It was blissful and impossibly perfect. And even better when he pulled her up to lay beside him, as though maybe they could just drift off to sleep now. Like real people.
Though in truth he looked better than real, when he turned his head on the pillow and gazed at her. His eyes seemed a deeper color than usual—almost a blue—and those lids still hung heavy over his smoky gaze. It took her a moment to realize it, but then it came to her.
He seemed relaxed. Utterly, lazily relaxed, as though nothing in the world could hurt or touch either of them.
And he backed her theory up too, when he ran the back of his hand over the swell of her partially uncovered breast. Down over her side, so soft and unhurried. A caress, rather than a frantic stroke or grab.
“Would you really leave here with me, if it came to it?” he asked, and though the mood remained slow and easy, she could feel her heart suddenly picking up the pace.
“Are you serious?”
He wouldn’t meet her gaze then. Just kept following the path his hand was winding over every bit of bare flesh he could find.
“I don’t know. I’m just…talking. Idly.”
She propped herself up a little, on her elbows.
“So talk less idly. Ask me for real, and see what I say.”
“There’s nowhere to go—you know that right?”
She thought of the pictures some of the gunners had brought back once. Of a great field filled with a roiling, squirming maze of fur and teeth and blood. No wolf distinguishable from another one, everything nightmarish and strange. She thought of her dreams, so filled with running, endless running.
“I don’t care.”
“You would. Living in the shell of civilization up there, eating only what we’d managed to hunt down. Always scared the wolves would scent you out or worse…because you know the people here would look for you too. Maybe, in time, I could make the wolves stay away. But I could never stop whatever humans are left from shooting you down on sight.”
She wanted to say he was crazy—that people had too many other concerns now. That time was running out and human beings were running low, and why would they bother coming after some feeble little traitor?
But something in her knew he spoke the truth. They wouldn’t see her as little or feeble. They’d only see the word traitor in massive, blinding lights, and go after her with the same burning hatred destroying them now.
“I’d rather be shot out there, than burned in here. I’d rather run with you and know we were both free just before we got eaten or sliced up or whatever else could possibly happen to us, than stay here like this.”
He turned his head on the pillow, closed his eyes. Spoke in a low, grave voice, “You don’t know what you’re asking. God, you just don’t know.”
Chapter Five
He’d seemed pretty set on no, after their last talk. So set, in fact, that when he actually turned up in her room in the middle of the night, she felt sure she’d cracked her head on something and started hallucinating.
She thought about her idea in the lab—of werewolves who could mimic each other. She thought about it long and hard as he shut the door behind himself and closed them both into utter blackness, leaving behind nothing of him and everything of some possible other creature. He could have been anyone or anything in the pitch black, and she didn’t know which was worse.
Putting her little nightlight on to see if it was some other terrible thing instead, or keeping it off and sticking with the lack of surety.
In the end, she went with the light. And there he was, just as bold as brass and twice as large, eyes gleaming with the now familiar sort of hunger—so much so that she had to wonder if he hadn’t come here to escape with her like some mental person. Maybe he’d done something even more mental, like turned up at her door wanting sex.
“Are you insane? What are you doing here? Did you come all the way down here from the ward? Holy crap—I’m only surprised the combined hatred of a thousand people didn’t strike you dead as you flounced through the corridors.”
“I didn’t flounce. I just walked. They don’t even lock the ward door anymore—they probably think I’m simple.”
“They don’t think you’re simple, Connor, and they do lock that door. Did you bust it open? I can’t believe you busted it open.”
“Listen. Serena—”
But she had to interrupt. She had to. She’d just noticed something even more insane.
“Oh my Christ, are you wearing pants? Where the fuck did you get pants? Oh they’ll just kill you if they catch you wearing clothes, they’ll kill you—”
“Serena, I’m in your actual real, live room. I think we’re a little past clothes-wearing.”
She fell silent, then, because by God he was. And he looked so big in her tiny little space too, like a huge, impossible giant. He seemed to swell against the narrow line of her bed and the tiny cupboard she kept her few possessions in, head almost at the ceiling. Shoulders almost crowding things out.
She didn’t know what to do or say on any level. Most of her wanted to reach out a hand and touch his immense chest, just to see if he was real.
“We have to go,” he said, and she needed to check that out too. Were those the actual, honest-to-God words he’d honestly spoken?
“But you said that—”
“I know what I said. We have to go. Right now.”
“You could have warned me you were going to change your mind in the middle of the night, Conn.”
It sounded a bit mealy and petty coming out, even though she hadn’t intended it to be. This was all just so…and he just seemed so…well…
He seemed pale, and harried. And when he almost put his back to her so he could start doing something ridiculous like rummaging through her cupboard, she could see all the hackles on the nape of his neck had risen in a weird, jagged line.
“I haven’t changed my mind. We just have to go whether I want us to or not.” He passed her a jacket. The one she’d made out of seven other torn and ruined jackets some scavenger trip had brought back. “Here, put this on. It’s winter outside, and believe me winter is fucking cold.”
There were still questions in her, but she didn’t find it odd that her hands wanted to obey him. Her hands wanted to pull on the trousers he offered her, and the half-woolen, half-something else sweater he rooted out, and then finally the jacket.
“What’s going on? Have they—”
“There’s going to be a breach. Very soon. A big one.”
She watched him check the torch she had in there, though she couldn’t imagine why he’d need one. He could see in the dark, couldn’t he?
But then she realized. Oh yeah, then she realized all right. He could see in the dark. But she couldn’t. And if anything should happen to him while they were making a run for it, what then?
She’d be lost and alone in the pitch black world above, with no light and no weapon—or at least, she had no weapon in her imagination, until he told her to strap the machete over her back.
“Do you have anything else? Guns, arrows—anything?”
She didn’t know what was more disturbing—that she was shaking, or that he was too.
“They don’t give us anything like that, Conn. Only the gunners have them. But just wait a second, okay, just wait.” She took a deep breath, while he tried to fit himself into the biggest item of clothing in her cupboard—a jersey made out of three other jerseys, all of them with the remnants of weird words all over them. Things like Harvard and University and State. “Are you absolutely positive this is what’s happening? You’ve never sensed a breach before—have you? God, I don’t know if you have or—”
“No, I haven’t.” He swallowed thickly. “But this one’s different. Okay? This one’s different. It’s over. All of this—it’s over. It’s like a wall coming this way, too heavy and dark to stand, just too much…”
It was to his credit, she felt, that he sounded remorseful about it. And the pain on his face looked so
real and inescapable too, as though he had hold of her shoulders and was whispering in her ear, Even after everything they’ve done to me, I don’t want things to end this way for them.
She loved him. God, she loved him.
“Then let’s go. Go on. I’m with you.”
Those words seemed to help him at least. He took her hand when she offered it and a great blurt of feeling went through her—stupidly, of course. Because really, who got so mushy over the first time they’d ever properly held hands, when wolves were probably about to burst through the ceiling and kill everyone?
But she felt it anyway. And she squeezed him tight, so tight. And when he told her to stay close and then leaned down to kiss her, she kissed him back.
Though when the door opened in a great rush to reveal Tara and Commissioner Reddick, she kind of wished she hadn’t. The hand holding and the fact that he was in her room was bad enough on its own.
The kiss was just overkill, really.
* * * * *
The weirdest thing about the whole terrible mess was the fact that they let them continue to hold hands, all the way down the north corridor to the incinerator. Somehow, in all her imaginings about being burned alive and having to watch them cut Connor’s arms and legs off and so and so forth, she’d thought they’d keep them strictly apart.
No final goodbyes. No touching of any kind. No acknowledgement of them as people with feelings.
Though the spitting almost made up for the lack of enforced separation. And the jabbing too, the jabbing was awesome. If that guy in the mask behind her shoved his gun between her shoulder blades one more time, she was going to snarl at him.
Never mind Connor. Who currently had the lock on sudden wild, unrestrained teeth baring at very nervous-looking human beings.
Which was just another thing wrong with this familiar scenario. She realized she’d expected them to be mean-faced and full of all the power in the world, but even Tara seemed wary of them both. And when a gunner jabbed and Connor snarled at him over his shoulder again, she saw her once-was-friend shudder.
It made her wonder if Tara had really given up Conn because she’d found him boring. Or if he’d just creeped her out with his immensity and his always still, calm form of animalism.
Not that it really mattered now. Nothing mattered now. They were being marched to their deaths, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.
Unless…
“They’re coming, you know.”
He said it calmly—the same way he said everything. But it had a creepy weight even she couldn’t get over, so really it was no surprise to see Commissioner Reddick react. He turned briefly in the middle of his brisk walk, face by turns disgusted and unnerved.
And it got worse, when Connor continued.
“The wolves are coming. Soon this place will be nothing but a hole in the ground. You should really evacuate now, and save yourselves.”
She was glad he sounded like he didn’t mean the last part. They didn’t deserve it, after all. When they got to the trash room with its ever-smell of rancid meat and its dusty black walls, the fire at its center always burning and burning behind that steel door like a baleful eye, Tara clawed at her suddenly. Hissed in her ear that she’d known all along, because any decent person knew when they smelled a scummy, nasty little werewolf fucker.
Serena didn’t let herself react. Her insides were collapsing and the metal eye was staring at her, but she didn’t give them anything. No crying, no screaming, no nothing.
She squeezed Connor’s hand instead, and felt his flesh burning into hers. He looked so calm and still on the outside, so unperturbed, but inside she knew he was a raging fire, hotter than the one waiting for them. It made her frightened of what he might do, even as she recognized that his possible descent into madness was the only thing that might save them.
“Do you have any last words?” Reddick asked, which seemed nice of him. Most of her had expected them to suddenly stab Connor through the neck on the way there, or worse. At the very least, she’d thought Reddick would tell them that scummy werewolf fuckers and their scummy werewolves didn’t get any last words.
Just into the oven, like the story Connor had once told her. The one with the breadcrumbs… The breadcrumbs, and the wicked, wicked witch.
Unfortunately, when words bubbled up inside her they were far less eloquent than anything Conn had ever said.
“I hope the wolves eat your fucking face,” she spat, then turned to Tara, who stood by the incinerator with her hand on the crank. “And yours too.”
The gunner behind her smacked his weapon into her back again, but really she had no idea why. Reddick looked kind of put off by her words, but Tara didn’t. Tara looked positively gleeful, and Serena understood the reason why.
This was her big moment. She’d probably get a commendation for this, from a man who was currently standing there in what looked like a dressing gown, hair sticking up at the back, some shitty scrap of a rule book in his pudgy hands.
“Well, then I suppose there’s nothing left to say but the condemnation,” Reddick said, and then he opened the book as though the book even meant anything. Serena knew that it didn’t. It was just a bunch of half-baked nonsense about never touching a wolf lest it make you unclean, as though this stupid thing had somehow become the new Bible.
She supposed it would be, eventually. Unless the wolves killed everyone first.
“And I must say, on a personal note,” he said, once he’d closed the book. “I’m very disappointed in you, Serena. I always thought you were a model citizen, and this is just very grave. Very grave indeed. It pains me to have to do this, but I’m sure you know we have no choice.”
All lies, she knew. He’d always thought of her as someone who shirked her duties—not some model citizen. And it didn’t pain him, no sir, not at all. The only pain showing on his face was due to the unease Connor’s presence created.
And it got worse when he suddenly turned his head and stared right at him, right into him, as steady as anything.
“You shouldn’t look at me, wolf,” Reddick said, and his voice kind of wavered. As though he understood, but didn’t.
He didn’t even understand when Connor said, “Will you be upset, if I kill them all?”
Though she knew why. Because Connor spoke while looking right at Reddick, as though he was asking him. As though he was really asking him something so strange and impossible, when any fool would know what was actually happening.
He was asking her. He was asking her, and her heart reached right up through her body and got her around the throat. Did he mean it? She couldn’t imagine he did—he simply wouldn’t have the time. They’d put a bullet in his back before he’d moved an inch, and the thought made her hold tight to his hand.
Or at least, she did so until every light in the room quite suddenly went out. And then after that, she simply whispered into the darkness.
“No.”
* * * * *
When they emerged into the corridor, the emergency lighting didn’t reveal anything good. He had blood all around his mouth and blood all down the front of the stupid mismatched jersey she’d given him, and he looked more animal than man, she had to say. He had hair where no hair had been before. He had rows of thorns on the backs of his hands.
But she didn’t pull away when he grabbed hold of her, and forced her to run in the direction of the south entrance.
He didn’t stop to ask her if she was okay, though she understood why. Her ears were ringing from gunfire and screams and that awful tearing sound, and something had grazed her ear and made it bleed, but she knew what kind of signals she was actually giving off.
Relief-filled signals. Let’s-escape-before-the-wolves-come-in-and-get-us signals.
She’d meant that no. She’d absolutely meant it. It had almost been satisfying to hear Tara beg for her life—for just that one short second before Connor had cut her short. And it was terrible, it really was, but some dark part of
her had almost wished the lights had stayed on, so she could have seen him slice her in two.
“Stop,” he said, and she did—pulling up short just before the intersection that led north, south, east and west. Somewhere far off she thought she could hear screaming, but it could have just been an echo left over from the trash room.
It could have been anything, until Connor turned and grabbed her, suddenly.
“Hold on to me,” he said—almost whispered, in fact—but she couldn’t fathom what he meant. Hold on? Hold on to what?
And then suddenly they were moving up, actually upward toward the ceiling, and she didn’t have a choice about the holding on part. She just wrapped her arms around his shoulders and neck, tightly, and watched him climb the wall in a blur of nails and pushing limbs and other things—all of them completely insane.
She couldn’t even fathom how he’d managed it, not even with her back pressed to the actual ceiling and her gaze suddenly on the ground over his shoulder. Somehow, he’d pinned her to the thing most typically above their heads. Arms and legs shoved up against the walls to brace himself. Nothing about him suggesting that such a move put a strain on him.
And then she saw the reason why he’d done it. She felt it, rushing by beneath them and just ever so slightly to their left.
A great train of wolves, rolling and stampeding and snarling their way from east to west, stepping over each other and biting each other in an effort to get at whatever they were going to get at first.
She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Her stomach clenched around nothing and then even worse, oh most awful of all she felt the blood from her grazed ear start to wend its way down, down over her face.
She couldn’t swipe it away. Both of her hands were needed to clutch on to him with every bit of strength in her body. And she couldn’t rub her face against something on him, like his shoulder, because moving her head made it trickle faster.
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