Winter, White and Wicked - Shannon Dittemore Page 0,49
kill this wolf.
I’m sorry, I tell Winter. So sorry.
And then I swing the axe.
My momentum spins me around—I’ve missed.
How did I miss?
The blood in my head rushes, dulls the sound of a projectile flying by my ear. It sinks into the beast with a wet thud and the alpha falls to the ground, skidding toward us, taking my feet out from under me.
He’s dead, but not by my hand.
A long, narrow icicle protrudes from his eye socket, the splash of blood like hysolberry wine on linen tablecloths.
A sob rips from my chest and I crank my head to the wretched Kerce smuggler standing on the edge of the trailer, twelve feet above. He’s barely upright, faltering in the wind, but he’s fighting. Using Winter against herself. Dozens of icicles hover in the air around him.
“On your feet, Miss Quine. There are others.”
I spring to my feet, my heart racing, and aching, and hating Mars with each frantic beat. I can’t explain the rage. I would have killed the beast. I lifted the axe. I tried. But I wouldn’t have used Winter to do it.
The four remaining wolves have slowed. Their eyes are still trained on us, but they mewl and moan. I feel their conflict, feel it as I feel Winter’s moods. They don’t know who their leader is now.
Kyn reaches deep in his pocket for more shells. He’s still loading when the pack chooses their new alpha.
This one has two different-colored eyes: one the color of boiled chocolate and the other a cool blue. She moves to the front of the pack and then they’re racing toward us.
“Hurry up,” I tell Kyn.
I turn the axe in my hands, whispering unintelligible things to Winter. Things about Lenore. About Drypp. About the day she blew out the windows at Mistress Quine’s. I whisper promises I have no way of keeping.
It doesn’t matter. She’s not listening to me anymore.
From overhead, an icicle flies and then another. A gust of wind carries them off course, but one of Hyla’s guns has aimed true. It strikes the wolf behind the alpha. He stumbles and goes down, his cries horrible. It wasn’t a kill shot.
The pack picks up speed, their fallen brother screaming behind them. My stomach churns, flips. I refuse to be sick.
Icicles fly left and right but none of them finds their target.
Kyn curses, drops a shell. Crouches to retrieve it.
And then the wolves are on top of us. Hyla drops from the trailer, a gun in each hand. She lands directly in front of the wolf bringing up the rear.
Kyn’s abandoned his efforts to reload the shotgun. He swings the butt of it around, cracking a wolf across the jaw. It snaps and snarls and shakes his head. Kyn flips the gun in his hands, presses the barrel to the wolf’s chest and fires.
“That’s it,” Kyn yells. “My last shot.”
I’m swinging my axe, fear trumping angst as I stare down the wolf in front of me, his jaws snapping, frothing.
“Knives at my waist,” I say.
Kyn kicks out at the wolf in front of me and slides closer, grabbing both daggers from my belt.
Hyla dispatches the wolf in front of her, then turns and scales the trailer once again, taking aim at the Rangers gunslinging this way. I catch it all in my peripheral vision. I don’t dare take my eyes off the circling beast before me.
The wolf orbits me and Kyn orbits the wolf. There’s only this one left. This one and the poor beast howling and bleeding and not dying fast enough.
Kyn strikes out with one bone-handled dagger, jabs the wolf in his rear flank. The wolf flips around, backs toward me, his snapping jaws turned on Kyn.
I lift the axe and swing. It sinks into the wolf’s back and he howls, falls. Kyn drives a dagger through his rib cage. It takes far too long, but eventually the wolf goes silent. He strides to the mewling, flopping beast next. The wolf who can’t quite die.
“Hyla,” he calls. “Help this guy out, will you?”
From the top of the trailer, she fires. A headshot that silences the suffering animal.
The wind picks up, gusting so strong it’s hard to stand. I tip my head and high above, Mars hovers; he’s nothing but a gray splotch against the ever-present cloud cover. Torrents of wind and hail spin from his body, pummeling the pass. Blood mingles with all of it.