Blake held out the knife. “Stab her. Stab her in the heart.”
“A pleasure.” Sandow took the knife and straddled Alex.
A cold wind gusted through the house from the open door. Alex felt it on her flushed
face. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t fight, couldn’t run. Behind Sandow the top of the open
door and the brick path were visible. Alex remembered the first day Darlington had brought her here. She remembered Darlington’s whistle. She remembered the jackals,
spirit hounds, bound to serve the delegates of Lethe.
We are the shepherds.
Alex’s hand lay against the floorboards. She could feel the cool, polished wood beneath
her palm. Please, she begged the house silently. I am a daughter of Lethe, and the wolf is at the door.
Sandow raised the knife high above his head. Alex parted her lips—she wasn’t
speaking, no, she wasn’t talking—and desperately, hopelessly, she whistled. Send me my
hounds.
The jackals burst through the front door in a snapping, snarling pack. They raced up the
stairs, claws clattering and paws sliding. Too late.
“Do it,” said Blake.
Sandow brought the knife down. Something slammed into him, driving him off Alex.
The hallway was suddenly full of jackals, trampling over her in a snarling mass. One of
them crashed into Blake. The weight of their bodies drove the breath from Alex’s lungs,
and she cried out as their paws smacked over her broken bones.
They were wild with excitement and bloodlust, yelping and snapping. Alex had no idea
how to control them. She’d never had reason to ask. They were a mess of gleaming canines and black gums, muzzles frothing. She tried to push up, push away. She felt jaws
clamp closed on her side and screamed as long teeth sank into her flesh.
Sandow shouted a string of words she didn’t understand and Alex felt the jaws open,
hot blood gushing from her. Her vision was turning black.
The jackals retreated, slinking back toward the stairs, bodies bumping against each other. They crouched by the banister, whining softly, jaws snapping at the air.
Sandow lay bleeding on the hall runner beside her; his pant leg was torn. She could see
that the jackal’s jaws had snapped clean through his femur, the white jut of bone gleaming
like a pale tuber. Blood was gouting from his leg. He was gasping, fumbling in his pocket,
trying to find his phone, but his movements were slow, sluggish.
“Dean Sandow?” she panted.
His head lolled on his shoulders. She saw the phone slip from his fingers and fall to the
carpet.
Blake was crawling toward her. He was bleeding too. She saw where the jackals had sunk their teeth into the meat of his biceps, his thigh.
He pulled himself up the length of her body, resting against her like a lover. His hand
was still clenched in a fist. He struck her once, twice. The other hand slid into her hair.
“Eat shit,” he whispered against her cheek. He sat up, gripped her hair in his hand, and
slammed her skull against the floor. Stars exploded behind her eyes. He lifted her head again, yanking on her hair, tilting her chin back. “Eat shit and die.”
Alex heard a wet, heavy thud and wondered if her skull had split open. Then Blake fell
forward onto her. She shoved at him, scrabbling against his chest, his weight impossible,
and finally rolled him off her. She touched her hand to the back of her head. No blood. No
wound.
She couldn’t say the same for Blake. One side of his perfect face was a bloody red crater. His head had been smashed in. Dawes stood over him, weeping. In her hands she
clutched the marble bust of Hiram Bingham III, patron saint of Lethe, his stern profile covered with blood and bits of bone.
Dawes let the bust slip from her fingers. It hit the carpet and rolled to its side. She turned away from Alex, fell to her knees, and vomited.
Blake Keely stared at the ceiling, eyes unseeing. The snow had melted on his jacket, and the wool glittered like something far finer. He looked like a fallen prince.
The jackals padded down the stairs, vanishing through the open door. Alex wondered
where they went, what they spent their hours hunting.
Somewhere in the distance she heard what might have been a siren or some lost thing