Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,1

had been severed roughly at the neck, the skin torn in ragged strips and the pink-stained vertebra cracked.

Blood puddled around the old man’s boots, dark red and curdled with the cold as it sank into the stones. It was still fresh, the salt and metal tang of it sharp as it rose off the cold stone.

The bittersweet nostalgia that had dogged the Numitor’s heels like weeds from the lake withered under a raw-meat flash of anger. He had no real desire to murder an old priest tonight, but that someone had dared to snatch his kill from between his teeth made him growl. The sound echoed off the high bare walls.

“So, whose balls dropped?” the Numitor asked. He walked into the church, and his feet left wet prints on the stone as he paced from flag to flag. The air smelled of blood and hot wax, cut with a bitter undertone of some spiced incense that itched the throat. He coughed and spat to clear it. “Or was it your fangs? You here to challenge the old wolf?”

Somewhere in the building, something scraped, metal on metal. The Numitor turned toward the noise and took a step forward. His heel came down in the puddle of blood, unexpected warmth between his toes, and then he heard the heavy rasp of labored breathing outside.

More than one. Had he grown old enough to miss such an obvious trap, he wondered, but then he felt the evergreen tug of the Wild in his bones. He took a deep breath of it—a cold so clean it burned—and let it ripple through the church. For a moment, haphazard old trees, trunks glued together with moss and frost, took the place of the walls. The eerie blue of a sky untouched by smog shone overhead, and a stag’s raw head, antlers glassy with ice, was strung from the branches. Misshapen shadows moved through the trees, snouts wreathed with the wet steam of their breath.

In the Wild they stank of rot, greasy sweet like old pork in the back of the Numitor’s throat, and a hint of that sweet, pickled incense. He let the woods and the trees slip away from him, burst like bubbles on the hard-edged stone of this world, and he could almost taste the smoky burn of perfume on his tongue and something like….

Sickness. The nicotine and sour smell of a sick room, of curdled ulcers and the hopeless sweat of someone who didn’t think they’d get better. The stink of it reached down the Numitor’s throat and stoked the heady flush of anger. Another scent cut through that fetid stink, though—a familiar one.

He pulled the wolf up until it pressed hot and itchy against the underside of his skin, the fangs and ache behind the bones of his skull.

“Jack,” he said. He should have known. What other wolf would walk the Wild to come and challenge him here? Now, at the end of things. The reek of them… there were strange things in the Wild these days. Old things. Maybe they’d killed something foul and rolled in it. “Gregor. Which of you is it, boy? Who’s come home?”

It shouldn’t have been an easy choice. He’d tried to love them both, and he would mourn the fallen, but he knew which son would take something of who the wolves were now through the long wolf age.

The wolf split through his skin. He let the thick, dense hair bristle over his shoulders and crawl down to his knuckles, the sharp nails on the ends of his fingers split to let claws through, but no further. The wolf pushed at the back of his throat, but he scruffed it back. He wanted to say goodbye to his last son.

It was the first time he’d been challenged and not wanted to win. He’d kill his child—again—if he had to. The wolves needed a strong leader, but if Jack, or Gregor, put their teeth in his throat, he’d not curse them for it.

Age had already closed up the windows and boarded the doors of his life. Maybe it was time for him to turn off the lights and leave before winter.

“DON’T KEEP me waiting,” he said, the wolf’s rasp trapped under his tongue. “Come and give an old man a hug before you try to kill him.”

Someone stepped halfway out of the shadows behind the altar. A raw scalp shone red in the candlelight, black charred strings of flesh stuck to it, and a bloodshot eye peered at