fingers twisted into the snow-matted knots, and dragged him down into a cold, eager kiss. The heat of Gregor’s breath warmed his mouth and slid through him.
Even half-frozen and battered, Nick felt the hungry tug of desire under his skin as Gregor shifted his weight on top of him. It wasn’t the time, but his body didn’t care, and neither did Nick really. There was something reassuring about this, the private bubble of hunger and unexpected love that pulled them together.
It wasn’t about the carrion bird or the wolves, his gran or Gregor’s brother. This was theirs.
“My gran’s here,” Nick confessed as Gregor broke the kiss and pulled back. “Back there, with some old wolf.”
“I know,” Gregor said bluntly, still no fan of wasting words. He glanced down between their bodies. “You’re bleeding, Nick.”
Nick started to disagree, but then he looked down and saw a splash of blood spread from under his arm across the white crust of snow. The minute he saw it, he felt the hot, dull ache of pain between his ribs and his head swam with woozy discomfort.
“Oh,” he said. “Can you die twice?”
Chapter Thirteen—Jack
THE OLD house shouldn’t have burned so easily. It was halfway to a ruin, but it had stood for decades and was riddled with frozen damp. That made no difference. The flames caught and spread inside the walls with giddy spite for what made sense. The bricks cracked, the mortar crumbled as it was kiln-dried, and unruly licks of flame poked through the shattered roof like hair from under a hat.
It wouldn’t be Surtr’s turn at the world for seasons yet, but fire was never patient, and he wanted the world for kindling. He took what he could.
Winter wouldn’t have it. Already the wind had picked up to dash thick flurries of snow into the flames where they turned to steam and made the fire crackle out thin curse words in the giant’s sizzle-and-pop language.
A prophet threw himself from a window on the top floor. Ungainly in his stolen skin, he landed badly, with a crack of bone, and lay broken on the snow until he could pull himself together. Others milled out front, half-blind in the smoke and snow as they tried to pull themselves together.
The dogs harried them with sharp teeth and quick strikes, louder than any wolf as they barked and yowled to each other. It made Jack want to put his ears back, annoyed at the noise as he used his fangs and the bulk of his dire-wolf muscle to keep the two monsters Rose had left behind at bay.
Bulldog shoulder-charged him with a pig grunt of a growl and slammed him into a tree. A rib popped, loud and hollow in Jack’s ears, and snow dropped off the tree’s branches onto him. It was heavy, almost solid, and studded with chunks of ice that battered his skull and back. His ears rang with an oddly pitched tone that made him feel unbalanced as he shook the snow off and staggered back to his feet.
Millie shot in from the snow, low to the ground and with black lips wrinkled back from her teeth. She still had something of the terrier about her, with tricolored fur and wiry muscles, but mapped onto the body of a much larger dog. She grabbed at Bulldog’s tail, a naked knob of bone and twisted nerves, and clamped down. Bulldog screamed in affronted pain, an unexpectedly shrill noise for its size, and spun around in a clumsy circle to try to grab Millie. She slipped in the snow, tumbled paws over tail, and scrambled back to her feet in time to snap at Bulldog’s nose.
It stung Jack’s pride to leave a dog to fight his battles for him, but as a wolf, he was too practical to dwell on that. He ducked his head to paw blood out of his eye, the skin over his forehead laid open from a sharp bit of ice, and let Millie keep the Bulldog busy while he shot after the long-nosed, mad-eyed monster who pranced through the snow on fingers and toes pulled out long and braided together. Its jaw unhinged all the way back to its ears, revealing serrated rows of thick, see-through teeth that it snapped at Bron as it tried to get around her to the pups.
“Fucking abortion,” she spat as she turned to keep between them. “Get away from them.”
Blood dripped from gouges in her arms and legs. The monster feinted to the