It scared her, a little, that she could.

Wolf didn’t kill Acne, and neither did any in his crew. What they did was send Acne packing. Curled in a corner, throat aching, cheek throbbing, Alex kept still as Acne, moving very slowly and stiffly, rolled up his sleeping bag under Wolf ’s watchful eye and Marley’s Mossberg.

Don’t notice me. She hugged her knees a little closer. Don’t see me. I’m not here. Fat chance of that. Through it all, she thought about the monster: that jump behind Acne’s eyes, Wolf ’s sudden appearance. It was possible that Wolf was close by anyway, and banged through the door just in time. But just as likely that the monster had something to do with this, same as when I was under the snow. Now as then, she’d been teetering on the edge of consciousness, and the monster panicked. Wouldn’t be the first time, and what the hell was she going to do about that? What could she do?

Got to think of something; got to keep the monster under control. Her face throbbed. She thought about her med pack. Might be something for pain. No, stay sharp; it’s when you start to lose it that the monster gets out. She sucked blood from a tear on her lower lip. I can take this. Besides, I really ought to save that stuff for when we need it.

Only after another second did she truly hear what she’d just thought: We?

Stop it, Alex; you’re going to drive yourself crazy. For want of anything better to do, she watched as Bert grabbed that green duffel, pulled it up, gave the nylon bag a shake. The birdy woman’s body slithered out in a loose-limbed splay like a limp, white, plucked chicken. After Bert smoothed the duffel on the floor, Ernie rolled the body onto the sack, then pulled a well-used knife, with a fine and silvery edge, from a leg sheath and went to work.

Don’t look, Alex. Fighting the sting of tears, she dropped her head on her knees. The air bloomed with wet iron, raw meat, fresh bone. Hell with the monster. You’re Alex. You’ll always be Alex, no matter what . . .

She felt the suck of cold air as the door closed behind Acne. A moment later, she heard hesitant footsteps coming toward her. Even before he knelt—before she felt his tentative hand in her hair—she knew who it was. For a moment, she didn’t move, but not because she was afraid.

She didn’t move because—God help her—she wasn’t scared of him. At all.

Wolf ’s rage, that steel bite, was gone. What remained was rot and mist, gassy flesh and crisp apples, and for a second, she surrendered to a very simple, basic need. For her, at that moment, even the touch of a monster would do.

I am so scared. All at once, she was crying, silently, shoulders shuddering. Angry at herself, too. Stop this, stop this . . . no one will rescue you but you. No one else can. Yet here was Wolf, and she wasn’t fighting this, or him. Maybe she should. But she was so worn out. She felt his hand move through her hair, very gently, quite carefully, as if he were trying not to hurt her more than she was already. Don’t touch me, don’t touch me. But she wanted this, craved it—a touch that was not a blow—and she thought that meant she was pretty far gone. She let his fingers travel over her uninjured cheek, felt his thumb skim away her tears, trace her jaw. When he lifted her chin, she didn’t fight that either.

Wolf ’s face—Chris’s face—was very still. Watchful. Trying to . . . understand, she thought. His dark eyes were riveted to hers, as if trying to see behind these windows to her mind. His scent was hard to read, but it was light and floral, the smell of safe and family. There might even be a smidgeon of pity there, or sympathy.

“Please let me go, Wolf.” She winced against a stinging swallow of salt. “Don’t you see? I don’t belong with you. I’m not one of you.”

Nothing changed in his scent. Maybe nothing could because he couldn’t understand, or didn’t want to. But his thumb kept stroking her cheek the way you might comfort a small child or lost kitten. Right around then, she realized she wasn’t crying anymore either.

What type of monster are you, Wolf ? It was a question she could’ve asked herself. What was she now? What lived in her head that could do these things: jump behind Acne’s eyes, slide into Spider, slither into Leopard?

Reach for Wolf ?

The monster wants him. Because she did? No, not like that, never. Whatever the monster was doing, its needs were its own; she had to believe that, or she might as well use the tanto on herself.

But . . . what if I can use the monster somehow? Her mind brushed that idea, lightly, not lingering, a touch that was as gentle as Wolf ’s on her cheek. What if I can control when and how the monster jumps? Or maybe let the monster try to reach Wolf, talk to him? Just let go and get into Wolf and see myself the way he really sees me—

“What?” Abruptly, she sat up. “What the hell are you thinking, Alex?” Her voice came out angry, and that was something Wolf understood, because she saw him flinch, felt his hand fall away from her face.

“I’m going outside.” She wasn’t going to run—she wasn’t stupid— but she had to get out of this miserable little room with its smells of death and Changed. Walking the wall with her hands, she made her feet. For a moment, she thought Wolf would try to help. “Don’t,” she said, flattening herself against cold wood. “Leave me alone. I don’t want—”

She stopped talking then, the words turning to dust in her mouth as she saw Bert, just beyond, coming toward her. . . .

With dinner.

The arm was spindly. It was the right. Not tons of meat. Tattered remnants of skin and ropy veins dragged over the pinkish knob of the birdy woman’s funny bone; and—oh God—the slim steel band of a watch was still tight around that twig of a wrist.

Something seemed to snap in her head. She stared at the arm, horrified—and yet she was so hungry that this thought actually bubbled to the surface: If there’s no other choice; if it’s life or death . . . “No!” Grabbing back a scream, she bullied her way past Wolf and Bert. Clawing open the cabin door, she stumbled into the bronze dazzle of a sunset. The cold was stunning, like blundering through glass, but she couldn’t stay in that cabin another second. Of course, the Changed would feed; they had to eat. But I do have a choice. After a half dozen yards, her knees unlimbered—just plain gave out—and she toppled to the snow. She dug in until her face and neck and bare hands flinched with the cold. Eventually, she would feel the burn, which was fine.

Burn my eyes out, take a blowtorch to my brain, anything. She dragged her head from side to side like a dog trying to get a bad smell out of its snout. I can’t go down that road. I do that, then I might as well have eaten Jack and snacked on those kids—or let the monster out all the way.

No matter what Wolf was thinking, what he wanted, she had to fight. Can’t give in, can’t go there. Behind, she heard the cabin’s door open; felt his eyes, knew his scent. He only watched, though, and didn’t follow.

I’m me. Ahead, by the shed, she saw that strange mound. I’m me, I’m Alex. She battled her way there, slithering through snow until the mound loomed. She knelt before it, sweeping her eyes over patchy snow—and spied a dark pinprick scurry over a patch of ice. And another pinprick, and another. And another.

Fight.

She thrust both fists into the mound, right up to her wrists. Almost at once and despite the cold, a black tide boiled to the surface and over her forearms. Withdrawing a hand, she inspected her fingers, smeary with dirt and so many ants her skin was a black, writhing mat. Many carried eggs and tiny, milky larvae clamped in their mandibles.

Do it, Alex. Just do it. Hang on to who you are. Don’t let them break you.

Before her brain could really kick in and stop her, she stuck two fingers into her mouth and sucked. Ants foamed over her tongue. She tasted dirt, the coarse pop of grit and the yeasty tang of fermenting earth; felt the spidery scampering of many legs, the minute pricking of mandibles nipping at her flesh—but she bit down and killed them all and swallowed them back and went back for seconds. And thirds.

Because, yes: things were that bad.

40

“Sarah, I know things are bad. That weird earthquake spooked everyone—” Greg broke off as Tori, with Ghost in tow, bustled into the church’s main office. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, what took you so long?” Pru had parked his butt on a desk still heaped with stacks of Xeroxed announcements for October 2. Given that they were at the end of the first week of March of the following year, an Amish Friendship Bread and Whoopie Pie church bake sale scheduled for October 8 last year was probably moot. “Cutter and Benton’ll be back in less than twenty minutes, and Greg and me have to be gone. A couple cans of refried beans only buy you so much time.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Caleb’s pretty sick.” Tori backhanded honeyblond frizz from her forehead as Alex’s gangly Weimaraner made a beeline for a muscular black German shepherd curled at Sarah’s feet. “Honestly,” Tori said, “if one more kid decides to chow down on play-dough, I’m going to throw it all out.”

Greg made a face. “Play-Doh? That stuff stinks.”

“Not the homemade stuff. The little kids made it back when we actually had flour. Looks and smells like bread dough. Really salty, though.” Propping her shotgun, a Remington 870 with a carved floral design on the walnut stock, in a corner, Tori said, “Then I had to shake Becky. She wanted to know if I was going to see you.”

“What? How’d she find out?” Greg blurted. At the dart of dismay in Tori’s eyes, he wanted to kick himself. When the girls lived with Jess, he’d drunk so much tea just to be near Tori, he could’ve floated his own battleship. After Alex’s escape and the ambush, the Council moved Tori and Sarah into the church’s rectory. That should’ve made things a little easier, especially since the girls’ housemother, a lumbering hag named Hammerbach, keeled over from a stroke. But he always seemed to say the wrong thing.

“Becky saw me unlock the choir door while I was sweeping the basement. She was under the altar, playing hide-and-seek, she said. But I think she was scoping out the pantry. A couple kids tried to break in yesterday.”