Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,29

to leave footprints in the snow as it walked toward him.

Nick glanced down at the tracks and corrected himself.

Hoofprints.

It was what killed Nick the first time, the fossilized ghosts of rage and extinction that were all the wolves had left of the other Wild things that had lived in Britain. Maybe that was why they’d followed him up the coast—to see how he’d done it.

They’d fallen behind while he rode the train, the steel made their edges bloat and split. He still caught sight of them as they paced along through the trees and through the frozen, abandoned towns. Despite the horns and hooves, they somehow never looked out of place.

Nick swallowed as the Sannock joined him under the hawthorn. The pronged rack of its horns rattled the branches and dislodged thick, half-frozen chunks of snow, and it stamped neat, split hooves in the snow. There was no heat from its body, no wisps of breath on its lips. It did smell, though, with a faint bitterness that reminded him of mothballs and Sunday knit dresses.

It should have looked human. Other than the narrow hooves and horned brow, it was shaped like a man with bony callused hands and a wide, sensual face. Something about the eyes and the mouth—a little too wide set and green, too lush and red—made it off, unmistakably other. It compelled and repelled at the same time. Nick was reminded of a school visit to the zoo and the poison dart frogs in their damp glass aquariums. The bright colors warned of toxins, but he still wanted to pick them up and marvel at them.

“What do you want?” Nick asked, as his teeth chattered. It made his voice unsteady, the words stuttered as though he were nervous, not cold. Maybe he was both. “I can’t help you. I don’t want to help you.”

The smile was close-lipped, as though there were something behind the scarlet pout that Nick wasn’t meant to see, and the Sannock didn’t look directly at Nick. It unbuttoned the stiff, high-collared coat it wore and shrugged it off. Without the folds of cloth to disguise them, the lines of the body were more obviously wrong—too deep in the chest, and the arms fit oddly into his shoulders, like someone had gotten halfway through making a deer into a human and given up. Yet it was dressed in what had been finery, with a faded red knot of silk at its throat and the glitter of cufflinks on its wrists.

“I don’t—” Nick started to protest. The black bird, stirred from its fake sleep, croaked angrily at him. That, it insisted, would be stupid. It tried to push out of his skin, feathers sharp and itchy against his spine, but he held his ground.

The Sannock held the coat out and dangled it from one thin, hooked finger. It was a dead thing’s coat, a ghost’s memory of what it had worn, but as the wind whipped it, the faded lines of it thickened and grew heavy. It was dark and plain, with a high collar and frayed cuffs. The Sannock held it and waited. The fact it never looked directly at Nick made it appear casual, but the tension of the moment was strung tight as a tendon between them.

In the haze of snow around them, soft-edged silhouettes of almost-human and almost-beast shapes faded in and out of view as they drifted. The shadow of a dog, head huge and eyes like dimmed torches, came close enough to sniff the coat and then veered away. A slab of meat had been sliced from its flank, peeled away to show the white, bowed arch of its ribs.

Sometimes they remembered how they died, but not always.

“It’s not a gift if it’s not an exchange.” The memory of his gran’s harsh voice echoed from his childhood. “It’s just an obligation.”

The bird gurgled in disgust at being in agreement with Gran, but Nick knew he shouldn’t take the coat. But he was cold, and they already expected something from him. If he took the first step of the exchange, maybe he’d work out what they wanted him to do.

He reached out gingerly, his fingers unsteady, and took the coat. His hand brushed the Sannock’s as he did, and he felt it crunch and collapse under the touch. It was made of frost and will and dripped to the ground as meltwater as the Sannock withdrew.

The coat was heavy and unexpectedly warm to the touch, as though it had