Page 22 of Hungry Like the Wolf

CHAPTER 9

Nadja couldn’t sit still. She paced the length of the porch on the cabin, not wanting to go inside but not wanting to sit in one of the cheery yellow Adirondacks either. They’d been gone almost an hour. And given how pale and gray Robbie had been when they left, there was no possible way he had survived an hour of running. JJ was probably transporting his corpse back right now.

What a godsdamn mess. As she’d collected the scattered clothes, she’d cursed both JJ and Robbie, cursed her luck, cursed the High Commissioner. Hell, she’d even cursed Eugene the art student and his godsdamned abstract art. She collected JJ’s jeans and waffle knit and boots before picking up Robbie’s boots and black jeans and tee. And if she’d lifted Robbie’s tee to her nose and smelled it, well, that was merely incidental as it was on the top of the heap of clothes in her arms.

And then, if she’d dipped her head to sniff that same shirt three, four more times as she’d stomped down the path following JJ’s directions? Well, nobody saw and nobody could prove it.

For some reason, she couldn’t get enough of the smell of his shirt. It was damp with sweat, yes, but it was him, too. And beneath it, under the smell of laundry detergent and Irish Spring soap and something sweet was… lavender? From her? She’d barely touched him, but maybe it had been enough?

She dumped the clothes on the porch as soon as she reached the top of three steps, stepping over the heap to begin pacing, which she’d been doing ever since.

It was late now. The woods around her were dark, made all the more dramatic by the lack of moonlight. She wasn’t afraid of the dark, but you didn’t grow up in Hell and not learn to be at least a little bit afraid of the creatures that only came out in the dark. Not that there were any here. The smell of the pack would be deterrent enough, and JJ was more than strong enough to push back any who might have felt especially bold. But it still made her shiver.

She hadn’t had a childhood. She’d never been a child. She simply… existed one day, as she was, appearing at Halphas’s feet. He’d pulled her up with his hands under her armpits and held her upright until she was steady. Then he’d turned on a heel and strode off, clearly expecting her to follow. In her youth, if you could call it that, or, perhaps, her early days of existence, there had been a lot of following Halphas around. A lot of learning about the Stonebreaker clan and the Stonebreaker keep and who was who and how everything fit together in Hell.

And while she hadn’t been a child, she’d been new. And so when Halphas walked her past the pitch-dark pits where creatures he called “The Guardians” lived, she had trembled with fear. She had never seen one, not up close anyway, but she had heard them. The scrape of claws against stone, the heavy breathing, the high-pitched screeches when their meals were late.

There were no Guardians here, but she still jumped when the wind scraped a branch against the side of the cabin.

No, there was nothing from hell here. Not her body, with the iridescent wings that looked like a crow’s wing in the sunlight, not her strength or speed, not the smell of fire and lava and stone. Not the hierarchy. Not the High Commissioner. Nothing.

Well, not nothing. There was one relic she carried with her from her previous life. The hunger.

A fresh, nauseating wave of hunger crested over her, and she leaned her forearms on the deck railing as her knees went weak. Nadja wrenched upright, her head spinning, as she heard laughter from the woods, coming from the direction of the lake.

From between the trees, Robbie and JJ emerged. She could see them clearly in the golden glow from the porch light. JJ had the body of a linebacker, his shoulders thick and slabbed with muscle. But Robbie had the body of a fighter. Strong and lean and fast. She couldn’t help but stare.

He was a work of art, and she didn’t mean the way his muscles curved around his bones. His body was covered in tattoos. She’d seen them in her office, and in the car—his full sleeves and tattooed hands, his neck. She had assumed there were more, but seeing them was something different entirely. There were flowers and animals and words framed by creeping ivy. They covered his torso, right down to his?—

Nadja ripped her gaze upward, focusing on his face. Robbie was smiling at something JJ had said. They were close enough to be heard, but the ringing in her ears was so loud, so incessant, that she couldn’t have made out what he said if he’d used a megaphone right next to her skull.

They stopped in front of her, looking at her expectantly.

“Welcome back,” she said, flustered.

“You found it,” JJ said, his canines sharp as he smiled.

She ignored him. “How do you feel, Robbie?”

“Good,” he said. “Great, actually.”

“Good,” she repeated. “That’s great.”

They stood there, the three of them, with Nadja shifting awkwardly between her feet until JJ said, “Well, as much as I love standing here with my D and Bs out for all to see, can I have my clothes back?”

Nadja jumped back like a snake had struck out at her, her heel catching on the bottom step. She cartwheeled her arms as she felt herself falling backward, bracing herself for the impact of the edge of the step against her lower back. But instead of that pain, she felt herself yanked forward and up against a very warm, very wet, very colorful chest. Robbie gripped her wrist in one hand and her elbow with the other.

She inhaled and her breath caught as she smelled him. Pine and clean water and Robbie. No sweat. No detergent. No lavender. Just the earthy, slightly sweet, slightly animal scent of him. She wanted to drag lungfuls of that smell into her body, bottle it, and spray it on her pillow.

“You okay, Doc?” Robbie asked quietly.

“Doc?”

“Aren’t you a psychologist? That’s a kind of doctor, right?”

“I’m a social worker,” she said, her breathing labored. “A licensed clinical social worker. Not a doctor.”

“Oh.”