Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,127
the side and stooped over Tom’s body. He grabbed a handful of tangled, unwashed hair, yanked his head back, and cut his throat.
Bile scalded the back of Danny’s throat as hot blood spilled over his fingers, and he had to choke back a retch. It shouldn’t have bothered him—no matter how pathetic Tom was right now, he’d helped kill Kath—but it did.
Tom stared at him, face slack with shock as his mind tried to catch up with his body, and then his lips moved jerkily.
“I’m… sorry,” he croaked out. A tear slid out of the corner of his eye and dribbled back into his hair. “I just… I wanted….”
There was no pleasure in Tom’s death, but Danny didn’t care about his regret. He dropped Tom’s head back into the snow to let him bleed out and backed away.
“Where you going to get her a dog skin now?” Danny asked.
His voice sounded weird around the hot pressure in his face. The skin felt numb and his skull weirdly soft. He still couldn’t see out of that eye. It gave him something to distract him from the dog as it squirmed around in his bones.
Lachlan shrugged. “You,” he said. “What? You think I’m not going pull the skin off your bones just ’cause I knew you when we were kids. That just makes it better.”
Danny flipped the knife in his hand and pressed the point against his throat. He could feel it scratch the skin as his heart thumped.
“Where are you going to get a skin?” he repeated.
Lachlan laughed. “So you’ll kill yourself to stop me killing you? Not much of a threat.”
“So you have to go back to your bitch prophet empty-handed?” Danny asked. “Sure. What do I have to lose, Lachlan?”
Confusion creased Lachlan’s face, and he rocked uncomfortably on the balls of his feet. He stepped forward, and Danny dug the knife into his skin. Now both sides of his face pulsed unhappily, and he could feel the burn in his blood. He inhaled raggedly through his nose as Lachlan jumped back.
“What’s to stop you, then?” Lachlan demanded. “You’d just fucking die to spite me.”
Danny grinned at him. It hurt his face, and one side of his mouth didn’t want to cooperate.
“I’ll have hope,” he said, “and I only lie down to die when there’s no point in fighting anymore.”
“Hope?” Lachlan shuddered, and his face twisted around itself in a moment of unexpected self-loathing. He scratched at his chest and dug his fingers into the raw, tender spans of Jack’s skin. “I gave your sister’s brat to Rose. She’s going to feed it to that abomination she’s growing in her stomach. To my son, so he can be strong and worthy.”
“Where is she?” Danny asked. His voice cracked with the need to know. “Is she at the bunker?”
“She was,” Lachlan said almost absently. “She’s done with them, but she’s still got to finish him. You’ll all show the throat to him then.”
Danny lowered the knife from his throat. His hand had started to shake anyhow, his fingers stiff and clumsy. Lachlan relaxed slightly at the sight and smirked.
“Ready to fight, then?” he asked. “One last time?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Danny said and threw the knife.
It wasn’t a great throw—the knife wobbled end over end in a weak arc—but it was good enough. Danny let the dog out as Lachlan’s attention shifted to the blade, and he bolted at the still-two-legged wolf. He dodged at the last second, and Lachlan grabbed at the empty air where he expected the dog to be.
The dog hurt, but it ran anyhow. Long legs boosted it through the now-thick snowfall in a brutal gallop that ate up the ground. Each time its paws hit the ground, pain jarred up through its bones to its ears and its blood felt too hot. But it left Lachlan behind, curses tossed after it into the dark.
“Run, then,” Lachlan yelled. He sounded afraid. “It’s too late for the brat! It’s too late for all you fuckers. She won’t stop now, and you’ll all bend the neck.”
Chapter Twenty-Two—Gregor
BLOOD SPLASHED the institutionally gray walls as Gregor used the butt of his stolen gun to hammer at the thick-domed skull of a monster’s head until it went limp. The impact jarred up his arm into his shoulder, and there was something viscerally satisfying about it. He had to force himself to stop, sweat itchy on the back of his neck and his mouth dry as he panted raggedly.