behind the two murderers, barely out of their line of sight.
The baby wasn’t there, and it looked like they weren’t allies anymore.
Tom lay on the bloody ground, naked and blanched with the cold. His arms and legs lay at unnatural angles, jerked roughly loose from where they’d been moored in the joints, and his fingers and toes looked gray. Stiff. His ribs and chest were deformed, the bones lumpy and misshapen under red-blotched skin.
The dog felt a cold satisfaction that felt alien. It laid its ears flat to its skull and pushed the Danny-feeling back down under the surface. Tom was no threat now, and that was good, but gloating was a human thing.
Down below, Lachlan tilted his head up to the sky. “The bitch…. Selene,” Lachlan corrected himself self-consciously, “will be in her chariot soon. You’ll turn then, like it or not. Why drag this out?”
Tom squirmed on the snow as he tried to push himself back on ruined elbows. He wouldn’t have gotten far, but Lachlan bent down to grab his ankle and drag him back. Tom’s leg stretched in a way that a human leg wasn’t meant to, and he screamed.
Tears dripped down his face. His blind eye was flushed pink with broken blood vessels.
“I did everything she asked,” he said. A sob retched out of him. “I helped you kill Kath. I held Bron down. They’d never done owt to me. They’d been kind, but I did for her.”
“You hated them for being kind,” Lachlan spat. “And she appreciates your service, but now we need one thing from you.”
“Why?” Tom begged, his voice breaking.
“You were the only dog stupid enough to think you’d ever matter,” Lachlan said. He booted Tom in the side with a slippery crunch of already damaged bone. The impact rolled Tom onto his side. “And she needs one more skin.”
As Tom flopped back onto his side, he saw the dog midslink down the hill. His face twisted with self-hatred, but he still opened his mouth.
“Take him, then.” He waved his blistered hand in the dog’s direction. “Let me go. I won’t tell her.”
Once a traitor.
The dog bolted down the hill. Long straps of muscle in its back legs and hips burned with the quick flare of exertion. Snow slipped and stones slid underfoot, but the dog had already shifted his footing before it could lose balance.
It had never won a fight with Lachlan. Lachlan had never enjoyed his win, but that had never gotten the dog back on its feet faster. It didn’t matter. The past was gone, and the future hadn’t happened to it yet. All that mattered was the wind in the dog’s ears as it lunged, and the howl that escaped Lachlan as the not-quite-wolf-sized hound slammed into him.
The dog tore at Lachlan’s throat, the wolf’s blood sickly sweet as it spilled, until its teeth hooked around his collarbone. Then it shook itself like a terrier with an oversized rat.
Bone snapped, and Lachlan howled again. He managed to grab hold of the dog’s scruff and toss him toward a nearby rock. The dog hit the stone, felt the shock pop of its ribs as they gave, and then nothing as it slid to the ground.
Its legs didn’t want to work. Pain radiated from between its shoulder blades up into its skull.
“Fine,” Lachlan snarled. His T-shirt hung in rags where the dog had torn it. Something was wrong until the shreds of cotton, but the dog couldn’t tell what. “Have it your way. I’ve wanted to cut the fucking pride out of you for years.”
He reached behind him and pulled a knife out of his waistband. Blood was scabbed along the worn blade, clotted around the handle. The dog could still smell the ash wood that stained the old ritual blade under that. It had been in Kath’s kitchen. Danny had seen it.
The dog tried to move again. This time its legs cooperated, or tried to, although they were still numb and clumsy. Pain stitched down its spine to its toes as it scrambled to its feet. Blood—its own? Lachlan’s?—splattered from its mouth as it panted.
“I’d rather you were human for this,” Lachlan said. “I’d make you beg for all the times you shamed me.”
It had been a lot of times. The dog shook its head despite the pain and crouched down. Lachlan was predictable. He always went for the kick to the ribs before he went for the throat.
Blood-smeared teeth flashed in a tight grin as Lachlan lunged forward