RawHeat (8 page)

But she felt it anyway. And she squeezed him tight, so
tight. And when he told her to stay close and then leaned down to kiss her, she
kissed him back.

Though when the door opened in a great rush to reveal Tara
and Commissioner Reddick, she kind of wished she hadn’t. The hand holding and
the fact that he was in her room was bad enough on its own.

The kiss was just overkill, really.

* * * * *

The weirdest thing about the whole terrible mess was the
fact that they let them continue to hold hands, all the way down the north
corridor to the incinerator. Somehow, in all her imaginings about being burned
alive and having to watch them cut Connor’s arms and legs off and so and so
forth, she’d thought they’d keep them strictly apart.

No final goodbyes. No touching of any kind. No
acknowledgement of them as people with feelings.

Though the spitting almost made up for the lack of enforced
separation. And the jabbing too, the jabbing was awesome. If that guy in the
mask behind her shoved his gun between her shoulder blades one more time, she
was going to snarl at him.

Never mind Connor. Who currently had the lock on sudden
wild, unrestrained teeth baring at very nervous-looking human beings.

Which was just another thing wrong with this familiar
scenario. She realized she’d expected them to be mean-faced and full of all the
power in the world, but even Tara seemed wary of them both. And when a gunner
jabbed and Connor snarled at him over his shoulder again, she saw her
once-was-friend shudder.

It made her wonder if Tara had really given up Conn because
she’d found him boring. Or if he’d just creeped her out with his immensity and
his always still, calm form of animalism.

Not that it really mattered now. Nothing mattered now. They
were being marched to their deaths, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do
about it.

Unless…

“They’re coming, you know.”

He said it calmly—the same way he said everything. But it
had a creepy weight even she couldn’t get over, so really it was no surprise to
see Commissioner Reddick react. He turned briefly in the middle of his brisk
walk, face by turns disgusted and unnerved.

And it got worse, when Connor continued.

“The wolves are coming. Soon this place will be nothing but
a hole in the ground. You should really evacuate now, and save yourselves.”

She was glad he sounded like he didn’t mean the last part.
They didn’t deserve it, after all. When they got to the trash room with its
ever-smell of rancid meat and its dusty black walls, the fire at its center
always burning and burning behind that steel door like a baleful eye, Tara
clawed at her suddenly. Hissed in her ear that she’d known all along, because
any decent person knew when they smelled a scummy, nasty little werewolf
fucker.

Serena didn’t let herself react. Her insides were collapsing
and the metal eye was staring at her, but she didn’t give them anything. No
crying, no screaming, no nothing.

She squeezed Connor’s hand instead, and felt his flesh
burning into hers. He looked so calm and still on the outside, so unperturbed,
but inside she knew he was a raging fire, hotter than the one waiting for them.
It made her frightened of what he might do, even as she recognized that his
possible descent into madness was the only thing that might save them.

“Do you have any last words?” Reddick asked, which seemed
nice of him. Most of her had expected them to suddenly stab Connor through the
neck on the way there, or worse. At the very least, she’d thought Reddick would
tell them that scummy werewolf fuckers and their scummy werewolves didn’t get
any last words.

Just into the oven, like the story Connor had once told her.
The one with the breadcrumbs… The breadcrumbs, and the wicked, wicked witch.

Unfortunately, when words bubbled up inside her they were
far less eloquent than anything Conn had ever said.

“I hope the wolves eat your fucking face,” she spat, then
turned to Tara, who stood by the incinerator with her hand on the crank. “And
yours too.”

The gunner behind her smacked his weapon into her back
again, but really she had no idea why. Reddick looked kind of put off by her
words, but Tara didn’t. Tara looked positively gleeful, and Serena understood
the reason why.

This was her big moment. She’d probably get a commendation
for this, from a man who was currently standing there in what looked like a
dressing gown, hair sticking up at the back, some shitty scrap of a rule book
in his pudgy hands.

“Well, then I suppose there’s nothing left to say but the
condemnation,” Reddick said, and then he opened the book as though the book
even meant anything. Serena knew that it didn’t. It was just a bunch of
half-baked nonsense about never touching a wolf lest it make you unclean, as
though this stupid thing had somehow become the new Bible.

She supposed it would be, eventually. Unless the wolves
killed everyone first.

“And I must say, on a personal note,” he said, once he’d
closed the book. “I’m very disappointed in you, Serena. I always thought you
were a model citizen, and this is just very grave. Very grave indeed. It pains
me to have to do this, but I’m sure you know we have no choice.”

All lies, she knew. He’d always thought of her as someone
who shirked her duties—not some model citizen. And it didn’t pain him, no sir,
not at all. The only pain showing on his face was due to the unease Connor’s
presence created.

And it got worse when he suddenly turned his head and stared
right at him, right into him, as steady as anything.

“You shouldn’t look at me, wolf,” Reddick said, and his
voice kind of wavered. As though he understood, but didn’t.

He didn’t even understand when Connor said, “Will you be
upset, if I kill them all?”

Though she knew why. Because Connor spoke while looking
right at Reddick, as though he was asking him. As though he was really asking
him something so strange and impossible, when any fool would know what was
actually happening.

He was asking her. He was asking her, and her heart reached
right up through her body and got her around the throat. Did he mean it? She
couldn’t imagine he did—he simply wouldn’t have the time. They’d put a bullet
in his back before he’d moved an inch, and the thought made her hold tight to
his hand.

Or at least, she did so until every light in the room quite
suddenly went out. And then after that, she simply whispered into the darkness.

“No.”

* * * * *

When they emerged into the corridor, the emergency lighting
didn’t reveal anything good. He had blood all around his mouth and blood all
down the front of the stupid mismatched jersey she’d given him, and he looked
more animal than man, she had to say. He had hair where no hair had been
before. He had rows of thorns on the backs of his hands.

But she didn’t pull away when he grabbed hold of her, and
forced her to run in the direction of the south entrance.

He didn’t stop to ask her if she was okay, though she
understood why. Her ears were ringing from gunfire and screams and that awful
tearing sound, and something had grazed her ear and made it bleed, but she knew
what kind of signals she was actually giving off.

Relief-filled signals. Let’s-escape-before-the-wolves-come-in-and-get-us
signals.

She’d meant that no. She’d absolutely meant it. It had
almost been satisfying to hear Tara beg for her life—for just that one short
second before Connor had cut her short. And it was terrible, it really was, but
some dark part of her had almost wished the lights had stayed on, so she could
have seen him slice her in two.

“Stop,” he said, and she did—pulling up short just before
the intersection that led north, south, east and west. Somewhere far off she
thought she could hear screaming, but it could have just been an echo left over
from the trash room.

It could have been anything, until Connor turned and grabbed
her, suddenly.

“Hold on to me,” he said—almost whispered, in fact—but she
couldn’t fathom what he meant. Hold on? Hold on to what?

And then suddenly they were moving up, actually upward
toward the ceiling, and she didn’t have a choice about the holding on part. She
just wrapped her arms around his shoulders and neck, tightly, and watched him
climb the wall in a blur of nails and pushing limbs and other things—all of
them completely insane.

She couldn’t even fathom how he’d managed it, not even with
her back pressed to the actual ceiling and her gaze suddenly on the ground over
his shoulder. Somehow, he’d pinned her to the thing most typically above their
heads. Arms and legs shoved up against the walls to brace himself. Nothing
about him suggesting that such a move put a strain on him.

And then she saw the reason why he’d done it. She felt it,
rushing by beneath them and just ever so slightly to their left.

A great train of wolves, rolling and stampeding and snarling
their way from east to west, stepping over each other and biting each other in
an effort to get at whatever they were going to get at first.

She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Her stomach clenched
around nothing and then even worse, oh most awful of all she felt the blood
from her grazed ear start to wend its way down, down over her face.

She couldn’t swipe it away. Both of her hands were needed to
clutch on to him with every bit of strength in her body. And she couldn’t rub
her face against something on him, like his shoulder, because moving her head
made it trickle faster.

So she just had to keep as still as her body would allow,
fearing every tremble and every slick slide of that one little drop…until
Connor turned his head—slowly, so slowly—and
licked the blood from her face
.
One long swipe, almost sensuous in spite of the situation, so tender and full
of a strange sort of caring.

It made her think weird things—things that had started in
the room of screaming and tearing and blood. Things like
you are my mate
.
You are my wolf, always.

And then she opened her eyes and took in the suddenly empty
corridor below. Everything so still and silent, as though nothing had even
happened. No wolves had come and left a bloody mosaic of paw prints on the
dusty walls and floors. Connor hadn’t held her safe like this, while the beasts
made their way down to the living quarters.

Though she couldn’t deny that she heard screaming after a
moment, somewhere off in the distance.

Her stomach dropped as he slid them back down to the ground,
though mainly because of the speed at which he did everything. He didn’t even
stop long enough for her to catch her breath or check to see if anything was
coming. He simply set her down, grabbed her hand, and went for the door at the
end of the south corridor.

Of course she saw wolves waiting for them in her mind’s eye,
before they’d gotten close. Nothing could be this easy, and even when it turned
out that way she couldn’t quite believe in it. Any moment, and something was
going to spring out to stop them. It didn’t even have to be a wolf—she’d have
settled for a desperate survivor, with a gun.

But no one came. No survivors. No humans running for the
door. Just an eerie silence, and the great metal door before them.

“Jesus, they planned this well,” she said, but he didn’t
answer. He looked high on something other than adrenaline and twice as anxious,
resorting to actions rather than words. He shoved her behind him before he
turned the two big wheels, metal grinding and creaking as though no one had
been outside for days. Weeks, maybe.

It made her wonder what on earth had been going on. Had
things gotten so bad out there that scavenging runs and gunning runs and
movement between the undergrounds and the fortresses had stopped? She didn’t
know and by God it was too late to ask now.

All she could do was hang on to his hand and plunge out into
the black beyond, so full of everything she’d experienced in the last few hours
that asking questions and finding answers seemed secondary.

She was going outside, for the first time in her life.
Actually outside, where the air felt like a knife in her throat and everything
seemed dark and yet not, at the same time.

Of course she’d seen pictures of the moon, and the stars,
but in reality they were so much more than she’d ever imagined. They glowed.
They made fingers of light come down on everything, and everything wasn’t what
she’d expected at all.

Was the world all forest now? She knew trees when she saw
them, and they covered the landscape as far as the eye could see. They looked
like a maze, like a great living beast, and when he pulled her down some gentle
slope of soft stuff to the beginnings of this…
thing
, she tried to pull
back for a second.

But he kept hold of her hand. And he stopped long enough to
look at her with eyes that seemed like his again—gray and stormy and full of a
suddenly sparking life.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s this way—we’re safe if we go
this way.”

And she believed him. She did. She believed him so much that
she let him lead her into this living, breathing place, not looking back for a
single second because God, she could hear people screaming now. She could hear
snarling and that tearing and even though she didn’t love a single one of them,
it was still terrible in its own way.

Though there remained one thing good about it. One thing
right. They were running together, hand in hand, nothing furtive or hidden
about it. They’d evaded death and here they were, flying through an actual and
real forest toward…toward…

Anything
, she thought, and oh how words like those
filled her up. Anything was possible now, even when he stopped quite suddenly,
panting and looking about them. And then he said, “They haven’t breached the
fortress on the hill. Another couple of miles and we’ll be there.”