3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

T he Jeep smashed into the side of the ambulance. The impact threw Dylan to the side and snapped him back, half-throttled by the seatbelt as it cut into his collarbone. Glass chunks showered him from the smashed side window. Instinct kept his hands on the wheel as he tried to straighten the ambulance out. Behind him he heard Irene scream and the distinct, meaty slap of a body hitting metal.

Alice hadn’t been buckled in.

The weight of the ambulance meant it kept going, just jarred off course as it slid over the icy roads toward the sidewalk. The Jeep came along for the ride, front end jammed against the ambulance as it scraped along the road.

Dylan swallowed, his mouth dry and throat raw, as he yanked the steering wheel around as hard as he could. It didn’t make enough of a difference. The back end fishtailed out from under him as they bounced up the curb. It clipped an icy street light and knocked it out of the ground, chunks of concrete sent bouncing over the sidewalk. The Jeep finally pulled free and slid over the road until it came to a stop against a parked truck .

“What’s going on!” Irene screamed from the back. She started to sob in heaving, panicked whoops. “I should have gone home. I told you I wanted to go home!”

She might be right.

Dylan braced himself as the ambulance crashed into the window of a coffee shop. The awning ripped off on top of the cab as the glass shattered. Broken metal bars from the window panes scraped gouges into the paintwork. One jabbed through the windshield, fracture patterns shattered out, and clipped the side of Dylan’s head.

Tables and chairs were sent flying across the room or crushed under the tires.

It finally slid to a stop.

The engine died with a dry cough, the smell of hot metal sour as it hung in the air. Dylan let out a shaky breath and peeled his hands off the steering wheel. They left sweaty prints on the pleather.

“It’s OK,” he said. It didn’t sound like he was convinced, so he tried again. “We’re OK. Irene?”

She just cried, a low, hopeless whimper that put Dylan’s teeth on edge. Dylan felt blood run down the side of his face and wiped it away on his sleeve. Head wounds bled excessively. He didn’t think it was serious. It was probably best not to check though, just in case.

“Alice?” he tried again as he reached down to unclip his seatbelt. It jammed. The strap dug into his chest as he struggled with the release.

There was no answer.

Dylan lost his patience and grabbed the strap near his hip. He yanked at it as hard he could a couple of times. That didn’t do much.

“Alice!” Dylan raised his voice as he repeated her name. “You there?”

There was nothing for a long, worrying wait. Then he heard someone choke and Alice groggily answered.

“What jus’ happ’d?”

That could wait. Dylan finally fumbled the seatbelt free with adrenaline-numb fingers. The nylon strap hung slack over his chest instead of retracting, and he shrugged himself out from under it.

“Just stay with Irene,” he said. “I need to check on the driver.”

The door was caved in. Dylan tried it anyhow, but it was stuck in place. He crawled over onto the passenger seat and let himself out that side. His legs nearly folded under him as they hit the scarred floor, muscles turned to rubber and knees to jelly as the adrenaline hit subsided.

Things hurt. He registered the various twinges and aches—the hot scrape of bruised ribs, the frayed pull of insulted muscles in his neck as he looked around—as he hung onto the side of the door and tried to remember how to lock his knees.

On the street a slick of oil leaked out from under the Jeep. It was dark and greasy on the grimy slick of slush and ice that covered the roads. The overheated metal parts ticked softly as they cooled down in the snow.

Dylan took a deep breath, cold air prickly in his throat, and slapped the side of the ambulance.

“Stay put,” he said. “I need to check on the other guy.”

He pushed himself upright and limped across the road, one hand tucked under his coat to cradle his ribs. His breath smoked from his lips.

The lights had changed, he told himself. At his side his fingers twitched absently as he replayed the moment he’d flicked the switch, the pressure of the lever against his finger. He’d seen the light react to the pre-empt.

As he got closer to the Jeep his steps faltered. It looked like the vehicle version of “ridden hard and put away wet,” and not just from the recent collision. That could be held responsible for the fender that lay sideways on the road, ripped from its moorings, and the crushed hood. Not the deep gouges that decorated the side, down through the faded red paint to dent the metalwork underneath. The windshield looked as if it had been broken for a while too, branches and bits of greenery stuck in the cracks.

Something wasn’t right.

No, that wasn’t it. Something was wrong.

Before the realization could take root, the door of the Jeep slammed open with enough force to warp the hinges. It hung crookedly in the frame as the driver pulled himself out.

Dylan stopped in his tracks.

Wild blond hair hung lank around a grubby, wind-burned face that was half-hidden behind a matted gingery beard. A heavy duster hung from bony shoulders, the waxed cotton worn threadbare in places and greasily moldy in others. None of that did enough to hide the sickly gray lengths of briar that poked through his skin and pushed out of his nose and ears.

Fear locked Dylan’s feet in place. He guessed that since “flight” hadn’t done him much good last time, his body had decided “freeze” was worth a go .

The last time he’d seen Winter’s Wolves had been a year ago, almost to the day. He’d double-crossed them. It hadn’t been intentional, but he didn’t know if that would do him any good.

“You?” the wolf said. Its voice sounded harsh, as if it had to force the words out. “You…aren’t meant to be here. Our hunt is soon, but not yet.”

Dylan swallowed the dry lump in his throat.

It didn’t seem to remember him. Or maybe they weren’t the same wolves. That would teach Dylan to be wolf-racist.

The absurdity of that thought almost startled him into a laugh. Not quite. His ribs hurt too much, for a start.

“Then what are you here for?” he asked.

The wolf cocked its head to the side. It had the same expression on its face as a confused golden retriever on TikTok…just pointier and bloodier.

When the wolf continued to draw a blank, someone else answered for him.

“For our ticket,” a low, rough voice said from behind him.

Dylan jerked around.

Two thorn-wrapped wolves stood on the road behind him. Unlike the driver of the Jeep, who still looked…more or less…a twisted human, these looked like twisted wolves. Ice-crusted briars and thorny runners twisted around the original person to bulk and reshape it. They crouched on the road on paws made of dark burls and cracked the concrete of the road with frost-gray claws. Boughs of holly bulked out their shoulders and ruff, red berries splattered over them like blood.

The man who’d spoken stood between them. He had a black eye and a backpack slung over his shoulder.

“What?” Dylan said. It probably wasn’t the best question to ask, but it was the best that Dylan could come up with under the circumstances.

The man started to answer, stopped, and coughed into his elbow. It was a surprisingly polite move for a monster. When he straightened up, he wiped dirty slush from the corner of his mouth.

“Our ticket,” he repeated. “We need it to go home. So we’re going to take it.”

He waited like he expected Dylan to object. So it probably wasn’t a lost stub from Amtrak he’d dropped.

“I don’t think we’ve got it,” Dylan said .

The man’s face twisted with quick, inhuman rage as something sharp and dark writhed under his skin… and then it was gone. He grinned instead, his teeth very white and his gums very red, and tapped his finger against his nose.

“That’s right,” he said. “If the eye doesn’t see then hearts won’t feel. Turn your cheek, Sainted. We won’t tell.”

Something scraped behind Dylan, and he remembered the driver of the Jeep. He looked over his shoulder and saw the blond wolf had gotten closer.

Its coat flapped open in the wind, as much as it could with the thorns woven through it, and Dylan saw the T-shirt. It was faded and greasy, the wear of a good year on cheap cotton and cheaper print, but it was still just about legible.

It was the same Wolf Pack T-shirt a man had worn to his friend’s bachelor party at the Just-as-High a year ago, before Winter’s wolves claimed him. The same wolves, which meant the same pack leader.

The man who, a year ago, had been going to marry the woman in the back of Dylan’s ambulance. That probably wasn’t a coincidence.

“Don’t do this,” Dylan said, and he took a wary step backward as he glanced back and forth between the wolves. “I can help you.”

The blond wolf snorted, snotty and wet, and feinted a charge in Dylan’s direction. Dylan flinched and nearly tripped over his own feet.

“You can’t even help yourself,” the groom said with contempt.

Something creaked behind Dylan. He looked around to see the back of the ambulance swing open and Alice scramble out. She hung on to the door for balance as she looked around. There was a goose-egg bump on her temple, the bruising visible through her tangled hair, and blood smeared over her mouth and nose.

“Wha’…what’s going on?” she asked. “Dylan. We gotta get her to the…to the hospital. She’s—”

The groom jerked his head at one of the wolves that flanked him. It shook itself, shedding a cloud of frost, and started forward.

“Wait!” Dylan blurted.

They did. That was more than he’d expected, and he drew a blank for a second on what to say next. He closed his mouth, swallowed hard, and tried again.

“Wait,” he repeated. “Irene needs to go to the hospital. She’s hurt.”

That wasn’t bad, for something off the cuff .

A ticket had to be in fairly good condition to be accepted, after all. Except…Dylan had been part of the otherworld for a year now. Even part-time, you picked things up. One of which was that it was never that easy

The other wolves looked at the groom. Out of the corner of his eye Dylan saw Alice wipe her face on her sleeve and pull herself up onto her feet. He thought she was going to run, but instead she leaned back into the ambulance and gestured with her hands.

That wasn’t going to work, but Dylan supposed he couldn’t fault her for it. He tried very hard not to look directly at her as she helped the heavily pregnant Irene climb clumsily down onto the road.

The groom stared at Dylan for a moment and then smiled. His mouth stretched so wide that it looked like it had to hurt, the skin pulled tight and raw at the corners.

What a big smile you have… Dylan thought absently.

“Then we take both women, and yours can care for mine,” he said and jerked his head at the wolf. “Get them.”

Oh good, Dylan thought, he’d made it worse. That was…not helpful.

Sometimes, at times like this, he wondered if his grandfather had really thought it through before he made Dylan the heir to Yule. So far he was coming down on the side of probably not thoroughly…maybe the whole “seat of the pants” thing was genetic.

Dylan took a deep breath and felt his lungs cramp as the cold night air filled them.

“Alice! Run!” he yelled and threw himself into the path of the wolf.

He grabbed hold of a thick, thorn-strung “tendon” with one hand. The hooked spurs, the ends capped in black ice, ripped his fingers and jabbed into his palms. Blood dripped from between his knuckles and ran sluggishly down his wrist. The jolt of pain slammed up his arm and caught in his throat, but it was chased by a cold, heavy numbness that sunk through muscle and down into bone.

Dylan staggered over his own feet as the wolf dragged him across the road. He swore under his breath as he tightened his grip and reached over the wolf’s shoulder to grab a fistful of holly ruff.

The wolves had come for him a year ago. Back then he’d been in over his head. That wasn’t the case anymore. Dylan was part of the Line of Nick, and he wore the watch, he’d cracked the whip, and he’d driven the Sleigh.

He was Yule. The magic was his to command…

…theoretically .

Dylan could remember what it had felt like on Christmas Eve, like he was the eye of the storm as time pulled apart and the reindeer fucking flew . It had filled his chest like a storm. Tonight all he had was the pain in his hand and a sinking feeling in his chest.

What if, the idea occurred to him queasily, last year had just been a trial run. He’d not made the grade and Yule had just cut him off. Like Somerset at the Just-as-High before he tossed a drunk out on the street.

Great timing , Dylan thought as he tossed a frantic glance toward the ambulance, couldn’t have thought of that two minutes ago?

Alice had an arm around Irene as she tried to lead the heavily pregnant woman away from the crashed vehicle. It would have been easier if Irene had cooperated, but she fought Alice every step of the way, tears and snot slick on her face.

“I won’t go!” she yelled. “He promised it would be OK!”

Just a bit , Dylan begged as he tried to scrape up some leftover power from inside him, just for a minute.

Nothing.

Just a hollow so deep he could hear it whistle.

Dylan gave up with a ragged “Fuck” and just let his legs go from under him. He dangled from the wolf’s neck, and it made it stagger. Not enough to slow it down, but enough that it swung its woven basket muzzle around to look at him. It snorted, and its breath was cold, fogged with ice.

All he was going to do was buy Alice a few moments to get nowhere. It seemed pointless, but Dylan still pulled his hand off the wolf’s leg and grabbed its ear instead. Blood smeared everywhere as he dug his fingers into the gaps in the latticework and yanked as hard as he could.

Long strands of holly ripped free, unraveling from around the wolf’s dead-stick bones. It dragged the thing’s head around, and it staggered as it tripped over its feet. Dylan’s blood dripped down the twisted thorns. It splattered over the dry, cracked face of what used to be a man whose worst sin was being a lout on a night out.

The wolf threw its hard back. Its scream sounded like the wind in a storm. Dylan was yanked off his feet and whipped from side to side as the wolf shook its head. He hung on for a second, but the blood and ice made his handholds slippery.

First one hand lost its grip and then the other. Dylan was flung through the air and then smacked down into the road. The impact knocked the breath out of him. He sprawled there on his back for a shocked moment, until his lungs remembered they needed to refill and cramped behind his ribs.

He rolled over onto his side as he tried to choke down air. Heat seeped through his body despite the snowmelt that puddled under him.

A booted foot rolled Dylan over onto his back, and the groom looked down at him. His eyes were leaf-green, with blood-red stains in his tear ducts.

It could still get worse. Good to know. Dylan kicked at the ground as he tried to squirm away. It didn’t work. He gave up and let his head drop back onto the ground.

“Let them go, take me instead,” he said. “Whatever you want, Yule will get it for you in return for me.”

If only so Somerset could yell at him for this mess.

The groom grinned, still too wide. The corners of his mouth were cracked. Frayed, almost. He crouched down next to Dylan and took his jaw in hard, cold fingers. They dug into Dylan’s skin as the groom shook his head back and forth in a parody of good humor. Then he let go.

“We don’t need you or Yule,” the groom said. His grin split his face, the skin of his cheeks peeling apart like old bark to reveal thorn-sharp teeth and a wet black tongue. Drool dripped down his jaw and splattered on the concrete, frozen into silver dollar-sized patches of hoarfrost as it landed. His words slurred, thick and chewed on, as he forced the rest of the sentence out. “Not all of you anyhow. Since you’re here…we’ll take what you offered last time.”

He grabbed Dylan’s arm and dragged the sleeve back to reveal a bony wrist and the battered old watch that started all this. Dylan made a noise that sounded a lot thinner and more panicked than he’d expected.

He yanked desperately on his arm and flailed at the groom with his free arm. His fist caught the edge of the groom’s cheekbone and tore the already loose skin. His knuckles scraped along the rough twisted gums and grated the skin off.

In the background he heard Alice scream something. He didn’t know if it was from horror or for help. There wasn’t much he could do either way.

The groom hauled Dylan up by the arm and closed rough frost-capped teeth around his arm. Dylan screwed his face up and grabbed for the tiny, faded hope that this could, maybe , still be a very detailed coma dream .

Pain crushed down on his arm, and he howled in shock. He’d seen the wolf’s teeth, but the bite didn’t feel sharp. It was blunt pressure that punched through skin and bent bone. Dylan writhed in pain as he tried to scream.

Before the bone could snap, someone reached over the wolf’s head and grabbed his snout. Gloved fingers hooked into the peeled-back nose and yanked to force the wolf to open its jaw. Dylan yanked his arm free and scrambled backward, his heels leaving divots in the rime of frost that had settled on the road.

Somerset gave him an annoyed look over the wolf’s head.

“Learn to duck,” he said in an irritated voice. “That's all I’ve ever asked.”

That wasn’t even true, but Dylan didn’t feel like it was time to argue.