Danny in the chest as he tried to get up and pushed him down into the snow. “Fucking Kathleen. Dog or bitch, all her whelps are a pain in my ass. I’m going to change everything, I’m going to rewrite the world, and all quail before murdering one child. I would kill them all, and when I’m a god, people will call it my tithe.”
The bird dropped out of the sky and shed its feathers. Nick stepped forward. “Gran,” he said, his hands held out. “Don’t. Just stop. Maybe everyone is against you because you’re wrong.”
She sneered at him. “If your ma begging me not to kill her, the pup I squeezed between my own legs, didn’t work, do you really think I care about this mongrel?”
Her heel dug into Danny’s chest as she leaned down to pull the baby roughly out of his arms. Nick cursed her and grabbed for feathers again as he took off. He shot skyward as he cawed his anger in a rough, furious voice.
Danny cursed him for a coward as Rose straightened up with the baby in her arms. It clenched its fist and puled its displeasure. She ignored the thin little whimper as she spread her hand over its chest. Fur sprouted between her knuckles and crawled toward her wrist. Her fingernails thickened and darkened, blood at the quick, into claws that she dug into the baby’s chest.
“For your mother’s sake,” she said, as blood dripped onto Danny’s chest. “I won’t make you watch.”
The baby cried harder, shrill and breathy, as Rose squeezed it like a fruit.
Danny dragged in a wheezy breath through the pressure on his chest. There was one thing Rose was right about. He was his mother’s son, and Kath had taught him one thing. If you can hurt them, do it.
He craned his head forward, pain all the way down between his shoulder blades, and sank his teeth into Rose’s shin. His teeth were blunt and human, but that just meant he had to bite down harder.
Rose jumped in surprise and staggered backward. She caught herself, and her mouth twisted in mean satisfaction as she made an abrupt gesture at a prophet.
“Fine,” she said. “If you want to watch, then you’ll watch.”
Torn hides littered the top of the hill. The dogs still snarled and tore at the monsters, but there were fewer of them. Fenrir snapped them up from the ground and shook the spirits out of their skins.
A prophet dragged Danny to his feet and hauled him over to watch as Rose laid the baby out on the old stone altar next to its fetch. She held her hand and someone put a wolf’s fang in it. The tooth was longer than her hand, cracked and yellow, and she pressed the point of it to the baby’s breastbone.
“I hope you burn,” Danny said as he struggled against the hands holding him. “Burn like Surtr’s candle, for years.”
Rose snorted and dragged the fang down. “I’ll bend him over too,” she said. “After this, I’m done being ruled.”
The Sannock blew in with the storm, bloody and light-footed, and the wolves came behind. Jack and Gregor were at the head of the Pack, but just behind them was a sleek, small wolf with sharp ears and rage-bristled fur.
Bron.
Danny sagged as his muscles turned to lead and exhaustion ached in his bones. It didn’t matter. He still wanted to laugh. His sister was alive, and she’d brought the laggard wolves with her. If they told Bron to her face that they should help Rose, after the old bitch had gutted her and stolen her child, Danny would have paid to see that.
Rose wouldn’t get to kill the baby, now. Danny could stop fighting.
Chapter Twenty-Eight—Gregor
DEAD DOGS didn’t know their place. They snapped at Gregor’s heels and jostled his shoulder for position in the fight. He growled and shoved through them. The bird shot overhead, close enough that Gregor felt wings skim his hair, and dive-bombed his bloody, scarred grandmother. It raked at her face and dragged talons over her skull, strings of coarse gray hair caught in the sharp, black hooks. She ducked twice and then grabbed Nick out of the air by a wing.
“You had your chance,” she said as she drove the bloody tooth into the bird’s throat. Feathers fluffed around the white spike as the bird strangled on its own voice. “I had a grandson.”
She tossed the bird aside. It landed in a lump of ruffled, unruly feathers and flapped