Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,23

coat hung from her teeth as she panted and spun to keep up with the dodges and kicks. Nick could have pulled on his feathers—human clothes were less of a hobble to a crow than a wolf—but the bird in him thought this was more fun. Stupid, but for now he was safe.

Gregor tightened his grip on the rock, his fingers grated raw on the rough surface, and started after the cringing wolf. Before he could deliver the final blow to Jamie’s battered skull, Jack yelled his name. Two wolves had his brother down on his knees, teeth locked in his forearm and thigh. Lach, his eyebrow twisted where the forehead had stitched itself back together crookedly, fumbled his T-shirt up with a healed stiff arm and pulled a thin, ash-gall-stained knife out of his belt.

The rank blade was worn hard by years of use, the wooden handle dark from years of being gripped by bloody, sweaty fingers. Acid and ink had buffed the shine off the metal. By rights there should have been a legend around it—that the first Numitor had brought it from Rome, that it had been carved from a Pict’s thigh bone before the truce—but it was too obviously just a knife. Practicality was worked into it, but so was the blood of generations of wolves.

Lach grabbed Jack by the hair and yanked his head to the side. He laid the blade against the thick pulse of the carotid artery and pressed. Tanned skin split easily and peeled back from the coarse stain on the knife, the thin strips of see-through skin dry and withered from contact with the oiled surface. Jack jerked away as far he could, weighed down with wolves and Lach’s fist in his hair. It wasn’t far enough.

“How long did you want to kill your brother, Gregor? How many years did it take?” Lachlan jeered as he dragged the knife back and forward in teasing strokes. “One fight and he’s on his knees. You really think I’m not fit to be Numitor?”

Gregor spat in the snow. “I don’t think you’re fit to be a wolf,” he said. Two big steel-gray wolves circled him on straight, stiff legs, heads down and eyes wary. Gregor shifted his weight and turned as he tried to keep them both in view. They were younger wolves, younger than him. Lachlan’s chosen seemed to be either new or worn, handpicked from the bottom of the barrel either way. “No wolf would have the stink of a prophet’s ass on their breath.”

The jibe had been meant to cut, to confirm Gregor’s suspicion that this—like everything else that had gone wrong since Job dripped his poison in the twin’s ears and sent them south—was the prophets’ doing. He hadn’t expected it to slice down to the pus of an old wound. A sick knot of loathing and glee twisted Lach’s face.

“When the gods come home,” he said roughly, “the prophets will speak well of us.”

He tightened his grip on the knife, ready to lay Jack’s throat open down to the bone. Jack took a deep breath and threw himself backward. His arm ripped free of the wolf’s fangs, flesh and muscle shredded, but he took the one locked on to his thigh with him as he pitched off the edge of the path. The two of them crashed down the slope, through rocks and shrub, toward the shore.

Lach stood for a second, mouth agape like an idiot, and then kicked the confused remaining wolf in the ribs.

“Go,” he yelled. “Get him.”

The wolf apologetically licked bloody jowls and clumsily went over the edge. Lach turned to face Gregor, a rictus smile twisted over his mouth.

“When the gods come home,” he repeated the words like a mantra, “nobody will speak of you.”

The two wolves went for Gregor at the same time—one low and one high, as though it were a hunt and he was prey. Maybe Gregor had fallen, but not that low. He reached for the Wild, the taste of stone on the back of his tongue, and a gust of wind and ice caught the wolf in the air and slammed it into the wall. Something broke, and the wolf huffed out a whimper.

The wolf on the ground was Gregor’s toll. He dove to the side, landed hard on his shoulder, and kicked out with both feet. His heels hammered into the wolf’s shoulder, knocked him off his feet, and Gregor jumped back to his feet before the wolf could