Chapter 13: Smoke

The smoke was heavier than air.

It came down the walls in slow green ropes and pooled along the concrete.

I tasted it before I understood it, bitter and sweet, the taste of every morning for ten years.

Briar howled inside my ribs.

*Not again. Not again. Wynne, do not let it in.*

"Cover your faces!" the old Alpha shouted.

His men tore their sleeves and pressed the cloth over their mouths.

Two of them threw themselves at the front door.

The first one hit it and bounced off.

The second one grabbed the handle and screamed, because the handle was silver and the door was lined with it.

Bram reached me in three strides.

"Can you stand?" he said.

"I've stood in worse than this."

"That is the worst thing you could have said."

"Then help me find the back."

Something crackled above us.

An orange light moved across the vents in the ceiling, and a dry heat rolled down the corridor.

"He's burning it," said the old Alpha. His voice cracked on the last word. "He's burning every cell with them still in it."

Nobody answered him.

Eleven wolves lay behind eleven doors, and not one of them could walk.

Bram took the first latch in his bare hands.

It was a silver bar, and there were no keys.

I heard the skin on his palms hiss.

He did not make a sound.

He dragged the bar back, and the door swung open, and he went in and lifted the heir of the eastern pack off the cot.

"Bram, your hands," I said.

"Take the door at the end."

"Your hands are burning."

"Then they're burning in a good cause. Wynne, go."

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