Текст книги "Tatterdemalion "

Автор книги: Anah Crow

Соавторы: Dianne Fox
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Deep runs the world of magic—and desire.

Lindsay Carrington is a prisoner of his life—first in the mundane world, then in the military testing

facility where his parents sent him to have his magic dissected, studied and “fixed”. When he finally

escapes, freedom comes at great cost. The man who rescues him from near death in a dark alley is far from

a savior. He’s a feral mage nearly as broken as Lindsay himself.

Dane knows better than to argue with the wind that summoned him to Lindsay’s rescue, but playing

nursemaid isn’t the role he envisioned for himself in the battle to end the human campaign to control his

people. In spite of his resistance, he is bound to the delicate, skittish mage who unwittingly harbors one of the greatest magical powers ever known.

Lindsay desperately hides his growing desire, sure that Dane could never reciprocate. Yet Dane lays

his life on the line to protect him, restoring the one thing Lindsay thought was gone forever: hope.

But true freedom to live—and to love—will elude Lindsay until he can regain his magic and win

Dane’s complete devotion. And survive long enough to do both.

Warning: Contains graphic language, violence and explicit erotic content.

eBooks are not transferable.

They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

Macon GA 31201

Tatterdemalion

Copyright © 2010 by Anah Crow and Dianne Fox

ISBN: 978-1-60928-037-6

Edited by Anne Scott

Cover by Natalie Winters

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: May 2010

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Tatterdemalion

Anah Crow and Dianne Fox

Dedication

If this were a book that either of us had written alone, we each would have dedicated our book to the

other. With both of our names on the cover, we dedicate this book to the family and friends who have made

our work better through their support and kindness. We would particularly like to express our appreciation

of the four-footed, furry family members whose determined interference never fails to keep our priorities in proper order: petting now, writing later.

Chapter One

The steel table at the center of the operating room would hold a body with the arms and legs spread

wide. Lindsay knew it was waiting for him and pressed his bare feet to the floor to slow the inevitable.

Technicians dragged him into the ring of fluorescent orange shapes painted on the concrete. Runes—they

spoke, but not any language Lindsay knew. He only knew to be afraid of them, and of what waited for him

inside the circle.

He screamed when the technicians tried to strap him to the table. He fought, fragile elbows and knees

thrown like weapons. He screamed when they stripped him naked to apply the electrodes. His decaying

teeth snapped on the air, ground against each other and splintered dentin. He knew what was coming. A

broad-shouldered man in a crisp vanilla jumper jammed a black rubber gag in his mouth when he opened

up to scream again.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” The man’s hand covered his mouth and nose, cutting off his air. “You know

they don’t get good results when you make all that noise.” The man straightened and patted his cheek,

letting him breathe again. The air was cold, like steel and concrete, and it stank like rubber, choking him.

With no other way to resist, Lindsay lay there and shook so hard with the cold that he couldn’t struggle

against his restraints anymore.

“Never learns, that one,” the other tech noted, shaking his head. He was at the far side of the room,

waking up the big computers lurking there, turning on the cameras.

The beetles on the ceiling came to life, flashing bright and turning their single eyes on Lindsay,

moving so close that he could look up into one. His terrified and distorted face looked back at him as he

stared up into the lens that was taking his picture out to where a hundred eyes and more would see him.

Father, can you see me? Of course he could. His father could see him. His mother could see him.

Somewhere, beyond the lens and the wires, they were watching, waiting for him to be cured. That was why

they’d brought him here. He clung to his certainty that when he was better, they’d come and take him

home. The lonely life he’d once longed to leave seemed like a paradise now, and he wanted to go home.

Lindsay reached for his magic, but it was hidden behind the drugs, like he’d never been magic at all. He

was trapped here, in this body and in this place.

“Lindsay.” It was a woman speaking. Her voice was soft and pretty and rich, like his mother’s. She

sounded gentle, but she could be so cruel. “This won’t take long.” She always said that. But what was time

Tatterdemalion

when he was in agony? “I need you to concentrate.” One of the technicians slid a needle into his vein and

pushed something into him. It burned cold and made his heart stagger.

Concentrate. He was shaking too hard to focus. His heartbeat sounded like thunder in his head. The usual drugs wore thin and the new serum ripped through him, laying him open. The real test hadn’t started

and he was already in pain.

“Can you hear me, Lindsay? We’re going to start now.” The computers hummed. The beat of his

heart pinged and echoed off the bare concrete walls. Lindsay stared into the blackness beyond the rings of

lights like halos all around him, trying to will himself out of his body. A door opened and the woman

entered, her heels clicking sharply on the floor.

“You’ve been doing very well lately,” she said. He couldn’t see her—the lights around him were too

bright. “Let’s try this one more time.” She put a velvet cloth on his chest. It was so warm and soft. He didn’t know when he’d felt that last. The curtains at home, maybe, where he used to hide from the adults

stalking the halls like specters. There was something heavy hidden in the cloth and she unwrapped it,

spreading the velvet over him. So warm.

She fit something icy and heavy around his throat. He tried to gasp, but the gag made it hard to inhale.

She closed the stone collar with a click and put the locking pin through with a tiny, silvery noise. There was a collar for his throat, a cuff for each wrist.

“You look like royalty,” she said affectionately, when she was done. She took the warm velvet away

from him and she put an icy hand on his forehead. “Only very special mages got to wear this, you know.”

When she leaned in, he could see her eyes, clear and glassy as common marbles. “Celare,” she whispered.

And then she was gone, clicking away from him. “Start the experiment.”

Lindsay whimpered as the collar began to do its work, silencing and neutralizing his magic, the magic

he had just started to feel once the drugs had been flushed from his system. Every time they brought him

here, he was sure he wasn’t going to scream, but he screamed anyway. He shook and writhed, trying to

escape the artifacts locked around his neck and wrists. The gag didn’t stop him from screaming, it only

muffled his agony enough that he wouldn’t interfere with the carefully calibrated machines that measured

his power and his pain.

Time stopped, then disappeared completely. There was no time here, just magic filling him up from

within, magic crawling under his skin, magic wailing to be free. The pain was worse than anything he’d

known. The drugs and the hours in restraints never came close to this. He screamed through the gag and

tried to rip his wrists and ankles free, over and over again, until they were hot and slick with his own blood.

Fighting for breath between screams, he looked up into the eye of the camera and saw an alien staring back

at him.

White, it was so white, and its eyes were wide and almost black. Like him, it was crying. But the alien

wasn’t crying tears, it was crying blood, blood that welled up in its eyes and ran down its colorless skin.

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“The readings are maxing out, Dr. Moore,” someone said in the distance. “Heart rate is over two

hundred. The containment field is holding. Prepared for stage two—the guided experiment.”

“Lindsay.” The woman’s voice was all around him, snapping like a whip. “Lindsay, I need you to

listen to me. You’re going to make an illusion of rain in the room. Do you hear me? Make it rain in the

room.”

He couldn’t hear anything but his blood pounding in his ears, couldn’t see anything but a haze of red.

His body twisted with agony, and his stomach lurched. His magic, his magic that they had kept from him,

his magic was filling him up and searing his bones and drowning his lungs and burning his brain. He

slammed his head against the steel table over and over, trying to break his skull open, trying to let some of it out.

“Are you sure about this?”

“He can hear me. He’s ready. Regere.”

There it was. The crack in the wall. Lindsay didn’t understand the word, but his magic saw the gap in

the restraints before the echo of the command had faded.

Rain. Let them have it. Let them have a flood. The ceiling cracked and water crashed in, sweeping the equipment across the floor. The lights in the halos overhead exploded one by one, going out in blinding

showers of light and glass.

“Holy shit! We’ve got to get him out of here.” One of the technicians flung himself against the

rushing water to unlock Lindsay’s restraints.

“Don’t touch him. It’s not real,” the woman snapped over the intercom, her voice edged with hysteria.

“You were told what to expect.”

“Help me! He’s going to drown.” Lindsay’s feet were loose and the man fought to undo his wrists and

the strap over his waist. Water crashed against them and sent the gurney spinning as it sucked the

technician under.

“Open the doors,” the other man was screaming, throwing himself against the locked doors at the far

end of the room. There was the sound of the locks clicking open, slowly, too slowly.

Lindsay curled up on his side, clawing at the last restraint on his wrist. The waves crashed around him

and he pushed the water out into the halls, pushed it up into the air ducts, washing everything clean.

“Get to him. Sedate him again,” the woman was shouting in the background. “Celare,” she said

desperately. “Celare! ”

The gap was closing, the collar was tightening again. Lindsay’s magic seared his nerves as the collar

forced it into his body. He spat out the gag, struggling for breath so he could scream, so he could end

everything, end the pain.

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“No! ” The word ripped up from his gut, tore free of his spine, and exploded out of his skin. The collar blew apart in a hail of shrapnel. The cuffs followed a moment later, shredding his skin with stone

flechettes.

And then, instead of nothing, he could feel everything. He was everything. Tied to nothing, bound by

nothing, he was a hundred minds at once—a thousand, even. He breathed a thousand breaths a second,

spoke a thousand tongues, laughed, cried, smiled, frowned, opened his eyes, closed his eyes, saw through

every eye. Every soul was under his skin.

“Stop!” he screamed, trying to make the torment end. He saw the face of every person who had

caused his pain, clenched his will around their hearts and minds, and ended them all. Curling up on his side, clinging to himself, trying to hold himself in his own skin, he vomited blood and bile. “No more,” he

whispered with his ruined voice, between sobs. But there was nothing to answer him, only silence.

When Lindsay opened his eyes, the techs were lying on the floor, the dry floor. It was as though

nothing had happened but that they had gone mad, clawing to escape, soiled themselves, and died. There

was silence from the observation room above. The camera lens was black and unmoving. Lindsay’s own

blood-streaked, tear-stained face stared back at him, and he realized what he’d done.

All dead. He got his wrist loose and slipped off the gurney. There were no alarms ringing, no voices,

no footfalls. No one was coming. He fell to his knees. His legs wouldn’t hold him up, so he crawled

through the open laboratory door and out into the hall. He dragged a white coat from one of the bodies in

the hall to cover himself.

At the stairwell, he used the railing to pull himself to his feet. Surely, someone would notice soon.

They would search for him, and they would find him. He tried to hide himself with an illusion, but pain

made the world go dark. Clinging to the railing, he pulled himself up again with almost nothing but the

force of his will.

Up one flight of stairs, then two, he had no idea where his strength came from. He stumbled over a

pair of bodies wound together in the dark stairwell, under the red exit light bathing everything in a bloody halo. The door opened when he fell against it, and he tumbled outside.

It was freezing outside and it was night. The snow fell in thick clots, nothing like feathers, and so fast

he could hardly see through it. Falling down the stairs hurt, but it was a pain he understood. He clawed at the fender of a car until he got to his feet. One staggering step at a time, he stumbled into the dark. The snow covered up his footprints.

Even the guard at the parking-lot exit was dead, slumped over his open cash register. A man in a black

car leaned back in his plush seat, arm extended, coins still in his palm, and snow was slowly shrouding his dead body. Lindsay crept past, clutching the white coat around his thin, cold flesh.

Lindsay staggered a block, maybe two, hidden by the snow, clinging to the shadows beside the

buildings that lined the silent street. Distantly, he could hear sirens. They were coming. He tried to run, but

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only ended up on his hands and knees in the snow. If he couldn’t run, he would have to hide. Getting to his feet, he took two steps and fell again. First, he would have to crawl.

He crawled in the snow and the muck, shoulder to the wall of a looming building, until an alley

yawned open and he fell into it. The ground was littered with nameless fluids, with glass and twisted metal and rotting wood, refuse thrown out of sight and out of mind. He crept to the only open dumpster—a

listing, rusting hulk—and, with the last of his strength, he pulled himself into it.

He slid between wet, folded cardboard boxes, his weight carrying him toward the bottom. As he slid,

more trash slipped on top of him and the dumpster shifted, the lid falling shut with a crash. It was dark in here and not as cold as it was out in the wind and snow. Whether he wanted to get out or not, he was here to stay. He curled up in his new bed and tried to keep warm. He was so cold and tired and empty, a burnt-out

husk. There, in the dark, he fell asleep and the cold slowly leached away the little bit of life he’d managed to preserve.

Dane had just leapt off the top of the subway at the 207th train yard, on his usual rounds of the city,

when he smelled strange ozone. It had a different taste than the oil– and grime-saturated power of the

subway line, a different smell than the burnt Bakelite reek from the transformers upwind. This had the

touch of magic to it, nothing that came from the shifting of the sky or the machines of men. He crouched in the shadows and cast about for the source of the scent.

There was alcohol on the air, and unwashed flesh, a hint of rot. Dane grimaced as he located the mage

who smelled of a little power and a great deal of sorrow. He was a bent thing, dragged down by his filthy

overcoat and bags of cans. Dane paced the shadows, following him for a while, his long stride easily

keeping up with the other man’s shuffle.

They left the train yard and headed for the river, for the haven under the University Heights Bridge.

Dane crouched on the cracked concrete wall that shored up the riverbank and watched him go. If he weren’t

so accustomed to seeing his people reduced to that, he might have spared a thought or two for anger or pity.

Instead, he filed the scent and sight away under “harmless” and turned his face into the wind pulling at his long, dark hair.

“I’m listening,” he whispered, a bit impatient. There weren’t many places he could go that the wind

wouldn’t find him in time. He wondered what it wanted this time.

“I need you,” said the wind, tangling in his wild hair and tickling at his ears. “Come.”

Dane was already moving at the word need, his four-limbed feral gait carrying him faster than any

human could run. He swung up to the rooftops to race across the top of the city, under the heavy clouds,

and dropped down to lope through narrow alleys, staying to the shadows. At last, he swung over an iron

fence and into the empty yard of an old hostel in a row of brownstones. The French doors of a third-floor

room were standing open and the light poured out from within, but Dane could see no one on the balcony.

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“Up,” the wind urged, pulling at him. Dane went up the trellis, over the balcony, and up farther still to

the roof, graceful and silent.

The old man was waiting for him, face turned into the wind, a thin black silhouette against the milky

winter sky. The snow parted around him like a curtain pulled back, leaving his silver hair and black robe

unmarked.

Now that Dane had arrived, the urgency faded, to be replaced by his usual temper. His voice scraped

the silence like a rusty saw. “What is it, Cyrus?”

“Go to Washington.” When Dane drew near enough to see him clearly, Cyrus’s face was whiter than

the New York snow. “The laboratories. You know the ones.”

Dane’s nose wrinkled, but he nodded slowly. “I know them.” He wished he didn’t. The one time he’d

gone to scout them out, the smell had lingered in the back of his throat for more than a day. Vivian, the

third member of their little cabal, had said it was psychosomatic. Dane disagreed. There was something

about suffering and the fear it brought that didn’t easily wash away.

“Take the car,” Cyrus said, as Dane turned away. That was enough to make Dane stop. The wind

swirled snow around them both, dragging Dane’s long hair about, pulling tendrils to catch in his beard.

“You will find a boy there, outside, if he lives.” Cyrus’s eyes were black stars in his pale face. He swayed from the effort of his magic working, drawing the winds whistling through the streets of Washington to

whisper to him on the rooftops of New York City.

“I will,” Dane promised, his voice dropping to a gentle rasp. He held out one huge hand to Cyrus,

careful of his own claws. “After you come inside.”

“The wind…” Cyrus began to protest faintly.

“Is about to knock you on your skinny old ass,” Dane said bluntly. The argument was familiar and

Cyrus’s thin hand was already drifting into Dane’s, fluttering like a snowflake. Dane closed his hand over it and guided Cyrus to the door on the roof that led into the house.

In Cyrus’s room, which had once been an upstairs dining room complete with huge glass doors and

beautiful balcony overlooking the old garden, Dane helped Cyrus out of his damp coat and settled him into

a chair by the fireplace. The hearth was dark and full of ash, so Dane stacked wood to light it again,

ignoring Cyrus for the moment.

“Time is of the essence.” The old man sounded too tired for the words to have much effect.

“No use me getting the kid if I’m bringing him here to meet your frozen corpse,” Dane said stolidly,

working on lighting the fire. He was grinning behind the thick, wet curtain of his hair. His priorities and Cyrus’s clashed more often than not, as Dane didn’t feel the same urgency about following arcane visions

that the aeromancer did. He enjoyed the conflict more than a little. The fire caught on twisted newspaper

and dry twigs, and gnawed the wood.

“Dane.” Cyrus’s brittle voice cracked on his name.

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“Cyrus.” Dane rose and crossed the room to shut the balcony doors. The snow had already come in

and streaked the wool rug with white. It was as cold as the rooftop in here.

“Stop enjoying yourself.”

“Yes, Cyrus,” Dane said insincerely.

“This is important.” Cyrus thumped his fist on the arm of his chair, a small noise in the large room.

“So are you.” Dane brought a wool blanket from the bed and tucked it over Cyrus’s lap with careful

movements. The scene was more than a little incongruous: the wild-haired, hulking feral caring for the

slender, aging prophet. There was no one there to point it out, though. No one had been there for years. No one but Cyrus and Dane and sometimes Vivian, who was as alien as they were and just as inured to it.

The window by the bed was still open a crack. The wind whined and lapped at the crack before

slipping in to find its master, rippling Cyrus’s hair and tugging at his sleeves.

“Find him.” Cyrus put one cold hand on Dane’s wrist, gripping like a bird’s talons. Tension flowed

from him in slow waves, seeping under Dane’s skin.

“Have I failed you yet?” Dane gently detached Cyrus’s hand from his wrist and turned to go.

“Not yet,” Cyrus admitted. When Dane looked back, he was huddled and small in the chair, cast into

odd patterns of light and dark as the fire struggled to breathe. A twitch of Cyrus’s hand and the air swirled around the flames, coaxing them higher.

“And I won’t.” Dane closed the door behind him. He was heading down the back stairs when he heard

Cyrus’s voice once more. It was soft and far behind him, inaudible to anyone but the wind and the fire in

Cyrus’s room, inaudible to anyone but a beast with ears that could catch the flutter of fear in a heartbeat at a hundred paces.

“Not for some days.”

Dane stopped dead on the stairs for a moment, his mind caught on the words. And then the beast in

him shook off all concern about tomorrow. All that mattered was now. He dug under his layers of ragged

clothing and pulled out a chain with several keys on it, picking the one for the sleek, black Cadillac he

would be driving tonight.

It was snowing heavily when Dane got to DC, white clots that spattered on the windshield and clung

and melted into a slurry of half-frozen water. The wipers scraped and flung the slush aside, but it was still a miserable drive. The car was stuffy, even with the vents open and the windows cracked. The air was full of

exhaust and rust and rubber and oil, a thick smear of civilization over Dane’s delicate senses.

The cell phone rang and Dane flipped it open. “What is it, Viv?” No one else called him.

“I’m on my way to the scene,” she said. He could hear the breathlessness in her voice, the hum of her

car. “I’ve been speaking to my people. I still can’t say what’s happened, but they’re treating it like a

biological terrorist attack, which works for us.”

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The place would be crawling with Army and Homeland Security. Dane growled as a transport truck

passed, sluicing the car in a wave of slush and muck. “Explain.”

“They’ve quarantined all of Walter Reed. They won’t know what they’ve lost for hours. You can find

it before then. I think I know what you’re looking for.” Now, Dane could hear sirens. She must have been

getting closer to the Institute of Pathology.

“What is it, then?”

“Moore is a hack, but she can rate power.” Vivian’s fingernails chittered on a keyboard. She was

using a computer or something like it while driving again. Dane and Cyrus had never taken to technology

the way Vivian had. “I’ll give her that. The only inmate she has who could have that wide a sphere of

influence is a kid named Carrington. This is a big deal, Dane.”

“Carrington.” Dane didn’t care much about these things, usually, but he recognized the name. “Isn’t

he a general or something?”

“Spokesman for the armed forces, among other things,” Vivian said. “You remember. That’s good.

Mother’s a socialite from some cereal-empire family. It made the news when they had him committed

about two years ago.”

“Cereal empire. I hate this country.” Dane shook his head and picked up the pace as the rest of the

traffic was wisely slowing in the storm.

“Yeah, one of those poor-little-rich-boy stories. I feel bad for the kid. Or, man. He’d be nineteen now.

Dane, they cannot afford to lose him. They’ll kill him first.” Vivian paused, the sound of her car engine died, and there was another voice.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, this is a restricted…”

“I have clearance.”

“Go ahead, but stay clear of the red zone. We’re still testing for biologicals.”

Vivian’s engine murmured to life. “Sorry, Dane. I was saying…”

“They’ll kill him before they let him go, if they don’t simply kill him outright. I hear you. I’ll get

him.” Dane wasn’t concerned about the soldiers and agents crawling around the building or the

neighborhood. “Cyrus said he got out. I’ll find him.”

“The girl may be here.” Vivian’s voice was low and Dane felt his muscles twitch involuntarily. He

hated mind mages.

“Did she bring the dog?” he growled.

“I can’t imagine she wouldn’t. They need to find this kid, Dane. This isn’t just humans playing here.”

Dane could hear the undercurrent of loathing in her voice that echoed the feeling under his skin. “Be

careful.”

“I will be.” The idea that he could get the drop on his old enemy left Dane smiling.

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“Pay attention.” Vivian’s voice stung his ear. “Dane. The boy, and nothing more. You can play with

Jonas another day.”

“I can focus,” Dane rumbled.

“You have about four hours until they finish processing the building.” Vivian’s tone softened slightly.

“Be quick, but be careful. You’re not immortal, you know.”

“People keep reminding me.” Dane snorted with irritation. “I’ll be fine. I’ll call you when I have

him.”

“Good luck,” she said, and he could hear her smiling.

“I don’t need luck,” he snapped. “You know that.” She was laughing at him when he hung up the

phone. Now he could pay attention to driving hard, to get there soon. The dog and the girl had a head start, but Dane was older and wiser. He was looking forward to this.

He parked, badly, several floors up in a garage next to a mall. He took note of the numbers painted on

the wall as he slipped over the railing and dropped into the dark of the loading docks. There was a crackle and splash as he broke through a thin crust of ice and landed up to his ankles in water. Moving too fast to get wet, like a cat, he was gone before the water could wash in over his boots.

Dane glided through the streets and alleys of the capital like a revenant, his long, dark coat swirling

around him with the wind. Crouched in the doorway of a shuttered shop to let a police car pass, he

murmured, “I’m here.”

Dane had no idea if Cyrus was still awake, but if he was, the wind would take him the message. The

air was mad with tension and anxiety. Even if he hadn’t been forewarned, he would have been wary

tonight. Closing his eyes, he breathed and let the world speak to him.

The wet, snowy night couldn’t muffle the footfalls and muttered voices, the growl of engines and the

crackle of radios, and the scents of hunters and hunted. Dane’s eyes flew open, staring into the distance far beyond the opposite wall, focused on nothing, and he growled low. He flicked his tongue against the cold

air, tasting.

He dropped to all fours, moving in his strange, rolling, animal gait, his heavy head swinging as he

sought out the strands of scent that beckoned the beast. Instinct kept him hidden, kept him in the shadows

while his mind was consumed with the hunt. The urgency was here and now, the same as that which drove

Cyrus. Dane entered the moment of it and it drove him, too.

The scent of suffering and fear grew heavier as Dane hunted. The wind was with him, dipping into

some distant alley and bringing him what it found there, drawing him along narrow streets. When he was

near, when he could taste iron on the back of his tongue along with the sweat and fear of something dying

alone, he scaled the side of a darkened building and cruised the rooftops.

The gap between roofs, where Dane stopped to peer down like a gargoyle, was only a few yards

across. Almost no light fell between the buildings, but it was enough for Dane’s feral sight to make out the 14

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blocky shapes of dumpsters and the snow-tufted trash pushed into haphazard heaps. He tensed, leaning

forward to make the leap into the dark, when the wind shifted. Instead of leaping, he moved out of sight,

grinning like a demon. The wind had been in his face all this time. He hoped it had kept him hidden.

Dane could hear the heavy, booted footfalls of a man keeping an almost lazy pace down in the alley.

The sound stopped and the man inhaled. It was all Dane could do to stay still. Jonas. The thrill in his veins was like fire, like lightning, and he licked at his long teeth in anticipation. One more step, and another, and another—every one brought the man deeper into the alley. The real prize was all but forgotten. That

moment had changed into another, and Dane was airborne, falling from the sky with the thick snow.

Dane’s aim was perfect, even without having seen his goal before he leapt. Jonas was moving already,

but not soon enough. He went down under Dane’s mass with a thick crackle of bone and tendon parting.

Pain seared through Dane’s side as four long claws gouged through skin and muscle to catch on his ribs on

their way to his heart. Dane’s laugh was caught in a snarl of pain, but the rush of adrenaline swept it all away. They rolled through the slush and puddles and Dane got his teeth into Jonas’s neck, a snap of fangs