novelraw Chapter 104: The Hand Off
Chapter 104: The Hand Off
Alexei nudged the wolf with the ruined knee, the toe of his boot catching ribs that made the man hiss and fold tighter into himself. Frost steamed off his breath in ragged clouds; sweat had already iced in his beard.
"What do we do with him?" Alexei asked, looking at Zubair with something between boredom and irritation.
Zubair didn’t answer right away. His gaze slid, almost unconsciously, toward Sera.
She stood a little apart from them, snow crusting under her boots, her attention already drawn past the burned-out auto shop to the dark beyond. The wind carried cold and the singed tang of liquor-fueled smoke.
Beneath both, there was something else scratching at her subconscious.
Hunger moved like a tide in the darkness. No one else could see it, but she could: the faint suggestion of bodies just past the reach of the light, the slow sway back and forth, the tilt of heads alerting to the taste in the air.
There was a horde waiting to feast. The only reason why they hadn’t pushed forward was because she was there, and they were more scared of her than they were hungry.
She was sure that if it got that bad, not even her presence would be enough to keep them away from an easy meal.
"Leave him," Sera announced, turning her gaze toward Zubair. "At this point, he’ll only slow us down."
No one bothered to argue with her.
Zubair gave a short nod as if she’d simply confirmed his own thought. Elias turned away, his expression unreadable while Alexei’s mouth tugged in a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Lachlan lingered a heartbeat longer than the others, gaze brushing her profile like a hand. He didn’t speak, but the question was there: ’Are you sure?’
She held his look for a second and that was answer enough.
They started for the warehouse—Elias already angling for the shadows as Alexei rolled his shoulders like he couldn’t wait to be messy about it. Zubair moved with that careful economy of motion that made everything feel inevitable. Lachlan took the rear, covering the turn of their backs.
A dozen paces in, he checked, saw that Sera wasn’t with them, and stopped. "You coming?"
"I’ll be right there," she said softly.
He studied her for one more beat, then nodded and followed the others down the alley.
Sera let her shoulders loosen and turned back toward the darkness. The figures at the edge of vision had crept closer, not quite brave enough to step into the open. Hunger layered over hunger, patient and terrible. The creature inside her uncurled and studied them. They weren’t her horde, but they were also missing an Alpha. Letting out a long sigh, the creature pushed forward.
"He’s yours," she told the shadows quietly. Her breath made a faint silver cloud that the wind tore apart. "I can smell his fear from here. He should taste good enough to enjoy. If you want more, I’ll make sure the rest of the wolves live long enough to provide a purpose. But after this, you’ll need to find an Alpha to help look after you."
The black shifted, a ripple like tall grass in a gust. That was all. It was enough.
She turned and walked after her men.
The scream came when she was almost even with Lachlan again—high and torn, the kind that started loud and ended wet. It flared, broke, cut off. The dark closed over it like water.
Elias’s head snapped toward the sound. "What was that?" His voice stayed level, but his eyes were already scanning over her shoulder toward the alley mouth.
"There must have been zombies around," Sera replied with a one-shouldered shrug. "They must have gotten him." The words felt like nothing on her tongue. The creature settled, pleased. She had helped a horde feed, and that was a good feeling.
After all, her own horde was more than capable of finding their own food, without her help. That galled her a bit, but she found that going on supply runs with them helped a bit.
Elias’s mouth thinned at her words, but he didn’t push.
They moved as a five again, the night folding in around them as they kept to the lee of drifts and the black seams between buildings. Snow hissed under their boots in a way that felt louder than it was. The burn of cold sat at the back of Sera’s throat; every inhale tasted clean, metallic, alive.
The warehouse they were hunting rose out of the dark like a stranded ship, brick and steel scabbed with rust and graffiti. One section of the south wall had collapsed inward, spilling a slope of broken brick into the street. Lantern light leaked thinly from high windows. Voices carried, muffled. A bottle clinked. Someone laughed a fraction too loud.
Zubair lifted a hand and they melted into stillness inside the shadow of a half-fallen loading bay awning. He studied the building in a slow, methodical sweep: the catwalks just visible behind grimy panes, the way the snow had been churned hard at two corners, the drag marks from sleds or pallets.
"Two sentries," he murmured. "Northeast and west corners. Rotating every seven minutes." He didn’t check a watch. He didn’t need to.
"Fun," Alexei muttered, breath fogging. He flexed his fingers like a pianist about to sit. "We go fast, da?"
"Fast is loud," Elias said, all edges. "Loud brings more wolves."
"We need to have patience with this one," Zubair agreed. "We do this once."
The creature paced under Sera’s skin, making it hard to keep her hands loose. The horde fed; her people hunted. The night tasted like iron and frost, and it was starting to make her hungry. The only thing she was worried about was what she was becoming hungry for.
She let herself listen to all the little sounds—fabric rubbing when Alexei shifted his weight; the faint click when Elias checked his safety by feel; Lachlan’s breath, slow and measured. Familiar. Anchors.
She pushed aside the hunger, not wanting to cross that line in the sand she had made for herself.
A figure crossed the nearest high window, a smear of motion against grime. Another answered from deeper in the warehouse with the flat snap of a boot on concrete. They had numbers. They had rhythm.
They weren’t drunk and sloppy like the auto shop; this was the true den. The creature pressed hard at her sternum, eager. Fight, it hissed. Kill...there was a long pause before the creature pushed even harder.
Eat.