Wolf at the Door (Wolf Winter #3) - T.A. Moore Page 0,66

floor as he padded down the hall. Just before he reached the end, a familiar voice stopped him dead in his tracks, feet nailed to the floor. Between one breath and the next, he was a little boy again, damp with night terrors and holding his breath in case his gran knew what he was doing.

“What about Nicholas?” Gran asked. Her voice was still rough, scorched from fire and smoke. Behind her he could hear the sound of laughter and things being broken over the dull thump of bass-heavy music. “Is it still in him?”

“… yes. The carrion god is still inside him,” a man said. He had the same accent as Gran, same as Gregor and Jack. Highland born and bred, without any attempt to soften it for the English. “I’ve just blinded him to it for now—”

The crack of a hand against skin made Nick jump. He could almost feel the sting of the slap against his cheek, and he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from yelping.

“If you have damaged him or it, I will crack your ribs open and use your beating heart as a snack to lure the bird back to us,” Gran said flatly. “He’s a god, Ewan. The first god to walk our world in millennia. The others need to see that before they’ll trust us.”

“And once they know they can’t?” Ewan asked. “What will it do to him then? What will we do with him? He’s your blood, your grandson.”

Gran huffed an impatient breath through her teeth. “Don’t borrow trouble, Ewan. Once the gods come to our table, everything is possible. Look at me.”

There was a pause, and Ewan’s voice was thick with longing as he said, “You’re as beautiful as the first day I saw you, like fire in a meadow. But it’s not real, Rose.”

“Does it matter?”

“… no.”

The sound of wet kissing jarred Nick out of his paralysis, and he gagged as he recoiled from the sounds. There were some things that you didn’t want to imagine your gran doing, especially when she was an evil old monster.

Something bigger than a glass smashed down where the party was going on, and a roar of approval and anger rose up.

It reminded Nick of the rest of the medics back in Girvan after they’d swigged the prophets’ tainted brew.

He licked his lips and tasted the sharp poison on his tongue again. What was his gran doing here? What did she want with soldiers and civil servants like Malloy? And what did the Run-Away Man have to do with it?

The answers lay—probably—somewhere ahead of him, but escape didn’t. Nick closed his eyes, turned, and jogged back down the corridor. This wasn’t Girvan. He didn’t owe these people anything.

He’d set Jepson’s ghost free back in Girvan, cut her loose of her bones and her duty to go to whatever reward the ex-army surgeon had earned. Even if he hadn’t, he couldn’t have seen her right then. That didn’t matter. The memory of her still haunted the windows he passed, her face pinched with disapproval.

Yeah, well, she was dead, so she didn’t get a vote.

Someone had stenciled directions on the wall at the end of the hall where it branched. Nick stopped to read them.

Mess and Med-bay were behind him.

Barracks straight ahead.

Labs to the right.

Nothing indicated what was to the left, so Nick went that way. Two more turns and the floor started to incline upward. It got colder too, and Nick shivered as the chill worked under his hoodie to bare flesh. If whatever they’d done to him had killed the bird, would he still be able to survive out there?

It didn’t matter. Gregor would find him. He just had to make it easier to be found.

Two sets of heavy doors got him to the end of the corridor, where heavy, snow-damp coats and insulated boots had been left to drip in front of a heavy steel door painted with a sharp white three.

Something about that seemed important. Nick stared at the door as he tried to work out what, but it wouldn’t stick. He grabbed one of the thick, pixelated-gray camo jackets and dragged it on, then swapped too-big sneakers for too-big boots. Once he zipped the coat up, he could smell the man who’d worn it before him—rank sweat and a meaty, sour undertone that reminded him of typhoid.

He had a feeling none of the others would smell better.

The door was sealed with a heavy-duty door bar. It