Page 79 of White Wolf

A grin touched his lips as he turned to her. “You’re feeling better, then, if you’re arguing with me.”

She was struck all over again by the clean lines of his face, but it was a quieter sensation that stirred in her stomach this time. The fierce attraction tempered with a sense that he was safe, that he was looking out for her.

She sighed and nodded.

“Was that the first time you’ve killed a man?”

Had he asked mockingly, she couldn’t have stood it. But it was a simple question, laced with sympathy even. So she nodded. Her voice came out small and wavering. “Yes.”

He reached for her, telegraphing the movement, not wanting to startle her, and squeezed her shoulder. “I wish I could tell you that it doesn’t get easier, but unfortunately, it does.”

She nodded again, swallowed, felt a sob building in her throat.

“You’re a very good shot,” he said, kindly. “You saved us all today.”

She leaned into the scant comfort of his hand on her shoulder, and her legs buckled.

His arm went around her shoulders, quick and instinctual, solid and grounding.

Katya told herself it was a wave of dizziness that pressed her head down onto his shoulder, but it was the simple need for comfort and closeness.

His neck smelled of sweat, and dirt, and gun oil, just as she’d thought, but sweeter than she’d imagined.

Somewhere behind them, she heard the murmur of voices, but they were alone here, and she allowed herself a moment to bask in something as strange and wonderful as human contact in the aftermath of death.

19

REMAINS

“I think it best not to let the wolves eat them,” Monsieur Philippe said, a suggestion for which Nikita was grateful.

They piled the bodies up – a messy business – and then Philippe stood over them, hands cupped in the air. Nikita knew what was coming, but it was still a shock when he heard the thump and hiss of fire leaping to life from his palms and igniting the corpses.

“Shit,” Katya said beside him, stunned.

“I know.”

They left the remains to smolder – it smelled alarmingly of every other kind of cooked meat – and headed up a slow rise to a wooded ridge that proved to be the site of an abandoned village.

Five wooden cottages and a one-room church sat hunkered down amongst the tree trunks, their windows dark, sills piled with snow that had melted and refrozen a dozen times into long wet spikes. One door hung open, the floorboards warped with water damage.

Nikita stepped through and almost choked on the smell of dampness and mold. A few heavy cooking pots had been left behind, and bed frames, but no personal effects. The cobwebs and squirrel nests suggested the residents had left years’ prior.

“They’ve been gone a long time,” Sasha confirmed, sniffing the air in what was now a normal sight, head tipped back, nostrils flared as he searched for scents none of them could hope to pick up.

“Before the war,” Nikita told him, and earned a startled look. “When the state took up all the farmland.”

“Oh.”

“Good place to camp out for the night,” Kolya said with a meaningful look, and Nikita nodded his agreement. None of them had said it, but he knew they were all thoroughly rattled after their run-in with the Germans. Walls, and a roof, and a more solid defense would be welcome.

“Excellent idea,” Philippe said. “Though I believe one of the cottages with, um, with its doorshutwould be preferable.”

~*~

They found one that had been carefully shut up before its owners migrated. It was cold, musty, and the spiders had found their way in through the cracks, but it was mostly clean and it kept the wind off. Feliks knocked a bird nest from the flue with an old broom handle and soon they had a fire going in the hearth, its orange and yellow shadows cheerful across the floorboards.

They sat in a half-circle around the fireplace, choking down SPAM and pumpernickel sandwiches, the wolves warm, solid, and musky at their backs. There was a time when having seven wolves in a cottage with you would have been a horrifying prospect, but now Nikita could only feel glad that no one would have to sit up and keep watch tonight; nothing could sneak past the wolves.

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