Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,59

air through his teeth and pulled the wire from between the bones of his wrist. It didn’t hurt like the knife in his shoulder had, but the hot sting of it as it sliced through raw flesh caught the same nerves that nails on blackboards put on edge. Done, he crouched down to do his feet. They were bruised and puffy-looking, the skin so swollen that it folded around the wire in fat pleats.

He had to dig down into the raw meat, almost down to the bone, to get to the strands.

“What now?” he asked as he discarded the bloody slinky and dragged the cuffs of his jeans down to cover the raw-meat mess of his ankles. He tossed the cutters to Jack in a mute request for help with the collar. Their truce still held, apparently, since Jack cut him loose without comment. Gregor scratched the back of his neck once he was loose and looked expectantly at Bron. “You whistle?”

Bron shook her head and produced a battered lighter from her pocket. She tightened her fingers around it like a talisman. Her wolf glittered ferociously in her eyes, wild and dangerous from being caged.

“We burn their fucking hospital down.”

OR AT least smoke them out. Gregor balanced on his brother’s shoulders as he stuffed wads of petrol-greasy cotton into the cracked plaster tubes that went up inside the walls. The fumes rose like rainbows, sweet enough to make his mouth water as he packed the fabric tightly.

“Danny said there’s speaking tubes that go all through the building,” Bron said under the cover of the kids’ renewed wails. She unraveled the bandage from her hand—the missing finger healed into a smooth stump—and clambered up the stairs to wedge it around the edges of the trapdoor. On the top of it, something shifted and gargled out a suspicious growl. She snatched her fingers back an inch and then shook the chill off and finished the job. “It should get everywhere. He’ll see it.”

“How’d he know?” Gregor asked.

“The house isn’t exactly well-secured,” Bron pointed out as she flicked the lighter. “He was able to look around. That’s why he slaughtered the sheep. You saw the one outside, and he dragged another one all through the house.”

She ran the flickering flame of the lighter along the dry linen. It smoldered sullenly, unwilling to step on winter’s toes, but eventually it caught. Bron tossed the lighter to Jack, who snatched it out of the air. The gas-soaked rags flickered, spat, and caught much more willingly. It singed Gregor’s fingers as he fed it more fuel, one of Surtr’s littlest demons hungry for flesh. It writhed through the flames and then, with a leered wink, crawled into the pipes.

Gregor wiped the Wild out of his eyes and stepped back. He licked his blistered fingers and wrinkled his nose as the smoke backed, thick and black, into the basement.

“I hope your brother thought of this,” he said with a cough.

“At least he thought of something,” Bron said. She stripped her dress off and stood, pale and freckled in the fire light, as she ripped it to shreds to feed the flames. Her voice pitched up as she screamed, “Help! Help! There’s a fire! Help us.”

Gregor’s fingers were still scratched with white scars from his last encounter with a fire. As it caught and spat, cracks spread up the way as it rose through the pipes like a chimney, he couldn’t move. In the shadows of his mind, the flayed, scorched hides of the Sannock billowed and tore and the smoke caught in his throat as he got ready to die.

Then Jack shoved a handful of rags into his hand, and he forced himself back to work. Jack stripped down, naked as Bron, and fed the fires, since clothes would only slow him down. Damp, bloody denim made the smoke thick and ripe with the charred smell of skin.

It didn’t take long for the smoke to reach the upper levels. Over the children’s wails and the crackle of flames, Gregor caught the sound of curses and scuffling as the prophets upstairs tried to work out what was going on.

“Where’s your brother, Bron?” Gregor asked. The kids had backed away against the wall, hands over their faces. “Or are we just the turkey in the oven, stoking the flames?”

She ignored him.

“Trust him,” Jack said. “I do.”

“You trust me,” Gregor pointed out sourly. “So, your judgment is poor.”

Jack made a face, half amused and half acknowledgment, and shrugged. “What other