Winter (52 page)

She could feel their breath on her now. She could see the colored flecks in their eyes. Smell the sweat and blood on their skin. One of the men was sucking on a knuckle as if he couldn’t wait to taste her flesh.

They were a noose growing tighter.

Pulse hiccuping, Winter raised her hand to her throat where the soldier had touched her. She felt a prickly rope there. Tightening.
Squeezing.
She squeaked and tried to wrap her fingers around it, to form a barrier between the rope and her throat, but it was already too tight.

“Spoiled little princess,” one of the soldiers hissed, stooping down so she could feel his breath on her cheek. Winter shivered and knew her gaze was watery and pleading. “We don’t fight for princesses. We
play
with them.”

Alpha Strom smirked. “Ready to play?”

Fifty-Eight

Scarlet pushed Winter, hard, sending her sprawling to the floor with a cry. Through a veil of hair she watched Scarlet elbow one of the mutants in his nose. She reached for the gun beneath her hoodie, but the soldiers were already grabbing her, pinning her arms to the side. The gun fell uselessly to the ground.

A dozen enormous hands pulled Winter back to her feet. She hung limp in their hold, her legs too weak to carry her. She was shaking from head to foot, and the men were flickering in her vision. Engineered soldiers one moment and a pack of wild wolves the next. Prowling and baring their enormous fangs.

Scarlet screamed something. A battle cry. She was struggling like a caged tigress, hair flying, teeth snapping, while Winter hung, weak and brittle and trying to block out the vision before it overwhelmed her. Her head was heavy as moon rock and spinning as fast as an asteroid in orbit. Burdened with the brutal knowledge that this was real. They were going to die. They were going to be
devoured.

The tears came on fast and overflowed quickly, leaking down her cheeks. “Why are you being so cruel? Ryu would not act like this. He would be ashamed of you.”

“Hold it together, Winter,” Scarlet growled.

The world hesitated. Dissolved into blackness before re-forming again. Winter knew she would collapse if they let her go, but she couldn’t find grounding in her own strength.

“Wait—I have an idea!” she said brightly, lifting her head. “Let us play a different game. Like when Jacin and I would play house. This one can be our pet.” Tipping forward, she tried to put her palm on the nearest soldier’s nose, but he jerked away from her, surprised.

She blinked at him. Trying to remember who he was.
What
he was. “No? Would you rather play fetch?”

His face turned from baffled to angry in half a second. He sneered, his teeth taking up half his face.

“What’s wrong with her?” someone spat.

“Or I’ll be the pet, if you prefer it.” She swayed against those holding her. “Sticks and bones, sticks and stones. We’ll play for hours, but I’ll never tire and I’ll always come back, I’ll always come back…” Her voice shattered. “Because Ryu always, always came back. Sticks and bones. Sticks and bones…”

“Lunar sickness,” someone murmured. Winter sought him, finding a warm-skinned soldier who could have been handsome before he’d been made so very ugly. He looked at her with the same hunger as any of them, but there also might have been sympathy.

Winter couldn’t remember what she’d said that was insane. What had they been talking about? Leaving? Weren’t they leaving? She wanted to leave. Or perhaps they’d been making dinner plans, hosting a cocktail party.

“That’s right,” said Scarlet. She was panting. “She refuses to manipulate anyone or to use her glamour, even when it would be
highly
beneficial. Unlike the people you serve, obviously.”

“It will not affect how she tastes,” someone yelled.

Winter started to giggle. They had all become animals now. Even Scarlet had turned wolfish, with pointed ears and a fluffy tail and flaming red fur. She turned her own muzzle up to the cavernous ceiling and sang, “
And the Earth is full tonight, tonight, and the wolves all howl, aa-ooooooooooh…”

One of the hands—paws?—on her forearm loosened.

She howled again.

“A princess of Artemisia,” Alpha Strom muttered, “who does not use her gift? By choice?”

“She thinks it’s wrong to control people,” said Scarlet, “and she doesn’t want to end up like the queen. You can see the toll it’s taking on her.”

Winter’s voice cracked and she stopped howling. When she slumped again, the hands released her, letting her crash to her knees. She gasped in pain and looked around. Scarlet was once again Scarlet, and the men were once again soldiers. She blinked, and was grateful when the hallucination didn’t return.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to interrupt your meal.”

Scarlet groaned. “When she says she’ll never manipulate you, she means it. And she does plan on giving you your freedom back. I doubt you’ll ever get such a promising offer again.”

The grate of ancient hinges startled Winter. The soldiers pulled apart. The huge iron doors creaked open and the soldiers separated, filing into neat rows fast as an oiled machine. Scarlet took the opportunity to snatch up her gun again, tucking it against her side.

Beyond the doors stood eight thaumaturges, one in second-tier red, the rest in black.

The red-coated thaumaturge, a man with silver-gray hair, saw Winter and Scarlet and smiled viper-like at them.

“Hello, Highness. We heard you might be down here.”

Some of the soldiers shifted aside, making a clear aisle between the thaumaturges and Winter.

“Hello, Thaumaturge Holt,” Winter answered, rising onto her wobbly legs, though they were aching. She felt like she should be afraid of these men and women—normally the sight of their coats and embroidered runes filled her with anxiety and dread and a thousand memories of people dying on the throne room floor. But all her fear had been used up.

“When the system picked up on your identification, I thought it must be a mistake. I did not think even you would be crazy enough to come
here
.” His gaze cut over the soldiers. “Were you not hungry? Or were the girls not appetizing enough for your tastes?”

“Oh, they were very hungry indeed,” said Winter, struggling to her feet. “Isn’t that right, alpha-friends, wolf-friends?” Her head swayed to one side. “But I had hoped they might protect me and fight for me, if I could remind them they were men once, men who did not wish to be monsters.”

“Turns out,” said Scarlet, “they’re just Levana’s trained dogs after all.”

A handful of the soldiers cast them cool glares.

Thaumaturge Holt scoffed. “I’d heard about your sharp tongue.” His gaze dipped toward the stubbed finger on Scarlet’s hand. “Say and think what you want, Earth child. These soldiers know their duty. They were created to carry out Her Majesty’s bidding, and they will do it without complaint.”

“Is that so?”

Winter wasn’t sure which of them had spoken, but the words were so full of loathing they made her skin crawl.

Holt glowered at the surrounding men, cocky and hateful. “I trust this isn’t
dissension
I’m detecting, Regiment 117. Her Majesty would be disappointed if she heard some of her prized soldiers were showing disrespect to their masters.”

“Prized puppies, you mean,” muttered Scarlet. “Will they each be getting their own diamond collar too?”

“Scarlet-friend,” Winter whispered, “you are being inconsiderate.”

Scarlet rolled her eyes. “They are about to kill us, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes, we are,” said Holt. “Men, you may kill these traitors.”

Winter sucked in a breath, but Alpha Strom raised a hand—and none of the soldiers moved. “Interesting that you mentioned our masters before, as you seem to be missing a few.”

The seven thaumaturges behind Holt remained as statues, staring into the ranks. Winter counted. There were eleven packs in this regiment. There would have to be eleven thaumaturges to control them.

“I will forgive your ignorance in this matter,” Holt said through clenched teeth, “as you could not have known that our country is in upheaval. Some of our highest-ranking thaumaturges and guards and even soldiers, like you, were murdered today, along with an attempted assassination on our queen. So you
see
, we do not have time for discussions. I ordered you to kill these girls. If you refuse, I will do it myself, and you will be punished for failing to obey a direct order.”

Winter felt the bodies around her shift, as they had when they first surrounded her and Scarlet. Moving almost imperceptibly closer. Tightening a knot.

“Too bad you did all that tampering with our brains,” said Alpha Strom. “Otherwise you could have manipulated us, right? Forced us to follow your command. Instead, you’ve turned us into a bunch of wild animals.”

“A pack of hungry wolves,” someone growled.

“Killers,” Winter whispered to herself. “Predators, all.”

They moved around Winter and Scarlet like water around a rock. Winter grabbed Scarlet’s wrist and tugged her close, their shoulders tight together.

“You didn’t make me to be good at math,” Strom continued, “but by my count, you couldn’t punish all of us, even if you wanted to.”

They had half circled around the thaumaturges, who were showing uncertainty now.

“Enough,” Holt snapped. “I order you to—”

The tension exploded before he could finish. The soldiers converged on their masters, mouths snarling and enormous hands ready to shred and claw and tear.

Like a sonic pulse, dozens of soldiers fell to the ground, writhing and grasping their heads. Knuckles whitened as they pressed their fingertips against their scalps, screaming in pain. The few left standing bounded over their fallen comrades with faces twisted in rage.

Winter flinched, watching as Alpha Strom, who had fallen in front of her, curled into a fetal position and screamed. But it was cut short, and replaced with retching and a whimper, his eyes shut tight as he tried to block out whatever was being done to him.

That whimper cascaded into Winter like a memory. Ryu behind her. The sound of Jacin’s knife. The warm, sticky blood.

Winter dropped to the ground and crawled toward Strom, rubbing her hands over his misshapen face, trying her best to soothe him. The tips of her fingers cracked, devastatingly cold.

The fight, if it could be called a fight, was over in seconds. Winter couldn’t recall the thaumaturges even having the time to cry out. There was the crunch of bones, the tearing of tissue, and it was over. A quick glance confirmed eight bloody bodies inside the cavern’s entrance, and a couple dozen soldiers standing over them, wiping the blood from their chins and digging the flesh from beneath their fingernails.

Winter’s breath fogged in the air. The cold was in her stomach too, icing over.

Her fingers were still in Strom’s hair when he suddenly grabbed her hand and threw it back at her.

Scarlet was there in a second, her elbows hooked under Winter’s arms, pulling her away. All around them, those who had fallen were recovering from whatever torment their masters had inflicted on them. Their faces were glazed from pain, but there was also a satisfaction when they noticed the dead thaumaturges.

Strom pushed himself into a crouch and gave his head a shake. His piercing gaze found Winter. She curled against her fiery friend, shivering.

Strom’s words were slurred when he spoke. “You have Lunar sickness because you cannot control people like they do?”

Winter glanced toward the thaumaturges, or what was left of them, and immediately regretted it. She looked down at her brittle fingertips instead. “Oh, I
c-could
,” she stuttered through her numb lips. “But I know what it is l-like to be controlled as m-much as you do.”

Strom stood, gaining his strength back faster than many of the others. He inspected Winter and Scarlet for a long while.

Finally, he said, “She will send more of her hounds to punish us for this. They will torture us until we are all begging before them like the dogs we are.” Though his voice was rough, a smile crept across his vicious mouth. “But to know the taste and smell of thaumaturge blood is worth it.”

One soldier howled in agreement and was soon joined by a chorus of howls, splitting through Winter’s ears and making the cavern tremble. Alpha Strom faced the regiment and there was a moment of celebration—fists clasping fists and howls that went on and on.

Winter forced herself to stand, though she was still cold and trembling. Scarlet stayed at her side, a pillar.

Winter’s voice was strong when she asked, “Are you now satiated?”

Strom turned back, and the raucous congratulations between his men began to fade. Their eyes still showed hunger as they raked over the two girls.

“Are your cravings filled?” asked Winter. “Is your hunger abated?”

“
Winter
,” Scarlet hissed. “What are you doing?”

She whispered back, “I am thawing out.”

Scarlet frowned, but Winter took a step away from her. “Well? Are you satisfied?”

“Our hunger is never satisfied,” one of the soldiers growled.

“I thought as much,” said Winter. “I know you still want to eat my friend and me, for what a juicy, tasty snack we would be.” She smiled, not as terrified by the prospect as she had been before. “But if you choose to help us instead, perhaps you will soon be feasting on the queen herself. And won’t her flesh be more satisfying than ours? More satisfying, even, than your dead masters in the doorway?”

A silence hovered over them. Winter watched the calculations behind their faces and listened to a few of them sucking on their teeth.

“Fight with me,” she said, when enough time had passed and neither she nor Scarlet had been devoured. “I will not control you. I will not torture you. Help me end Levana’s rule and we will all have our freedom.”

Alpha Strom met the eyes of a handful of the soldiers—the other alphas, she presumed—before fixing a penetrating look on her. “I cannot speak for the entire regiment,” he finally said, “but I will accept your offer. If you swear to never control us as they have done, my pack will fight for your revolution.”