Anna Richland - First to Burn

“Take it!” Wulf flung the gold cross along the floor.

She dropped to her knee and made a perfect save, catching the relic a moment before Kahananui’s fist hauled on the back of her coat.

“Go, dammit!” Wulf’s arm extended toward the door, pointing palm down, willing them to follow his command and move out even as he struggled to raise his body.

Thumbs-up, Kahananui acknowledged, and then he hauled the other two away.

Wulf rolled, the fastest way to move without using his leg. Behind him, Unferth had the fire axe in one hand and the bloody glass shard in the other. Until his tendon healed, Wulf would have to keep the other Viking busy. The nearest missile was a piece of pottery, which the other immortal didn’t bother to dodge. Nor did he flinch at the horseshoe that bounced off his chain mail. Wulf would have traded both nuts to find a loaded assault rifle in this mess, but the longer they played cat and mouse, him throwing and rolling, Unferth batting almost blindly, the farther the others could escape.

As he slithered toward a broken oar, a hard object in his pocket dug into his pelvis, reminding him that he did have a bigger bang. Along with the rifles, Guleed had supplied a Soviet grenade. It was probably forty years old and useless as wet toilet paper, but what the fuck.

One or the other of Theresa’s legs sunk in snow with every step, up to her calf if she floundered into one of Kahananui’s footprints, or all the way to her knee when she broke her own craters. She’d fled without the snowshoes, and already she’d tumbled to all fours half a dozen times crossing a hundred feet. Guaranteed the only way she could have been forced to appreciate snowshoes was to try maneuvering without them, which made her previous hike seem like cruising the mall.

“Cruz, you up?” Carrying the added weight of his commander, Kahananui sank twice as deeply as she did, but he maintained calm into his walkie-talkie. “Boss is leg shot. Exit time.”

Chris was muttering—maybe orders, maybe profanity—as he hovered at the edge of consciousness. A tourniquet had worked enough magic that the splotches in the snow fell farther apart, but the clock was ticking on the golden hour. Even without knowing his vitals, she assumed that he required a transfusion.

She didn’t hear Cruz’s response to Kahananui, but it must have been good, because he whooped and shouted something that sounded like, I love your mama. “Come on, Doc,” he yelled as he slogged around the next building.

Icy air sliced her lungs and stung worse than the stitch burning low on her left side, but she pistoned through the drifts to catch up. No quitting, not now.

Around the corner, Kahananui had halted at an open-sided shed.

She braced on the log wall, gasping. Three snowmobiles, a dusting of white on their seats and wind guards, sat under the shed. Unferth and his fighters must have arrived on them.

“My lawn mower’s bigger.” Kahananui kicked the side of the machine on which he’d propped Deavers, whose skin was almost the color of the fresh powder at their feet. “No fucking way this Euro scooter will carry the boss and me.”

The captain looked down at his injured leg and moaned. His eyes rolled up to pure white at the same time his head and shoulders started a slow tumble to the side. “Catch him!”

Despite his size, Kahananui was quick to grab the other man. “You’ll have to drive with him.”

“Tell me how it works.” She stuffed her hands in her armpits, regretting her lost gloves, and hoped her frozen fingers could grip the handlebars. Thankfully Raymond had familiarized her with motorcycles.

“Starter is the red button.” Kahananui talked while he boosted her in front of Chris’s slumped form. “Right lever’s the throttle.”

“Brakes?” The seat was wider than a motorcycle, and as cold between her thighs as a morgue cart. The metal cups would be foot stirrups. She easily inserted her left boot, but stuffing her prosthetic into the other cup was like threading a needle with rubber tubing.

“Left lever.” Kahananui’s massive glove shoved her foot into place. “But go easy. Better to stop by letting up on the throttle.” Judging by the way he looked over his shoulder at their footprints while he cinched the captain to her body, he didn’t think they had time to waste. The two-sentence tutorial would have to suffice. He ordered the man behind her to wake up.

“Owww, thasss my ha-ir.” Slurred words. Another sign he was fading.

“Hold on, or else I’ll pull out more, haole boy.”

The snowmobile’s engine turned over, caught, steadied into a rumble. She exhaled a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. At least she wasn’t doomed to be one of those women stuck sputtering while the bad guys closed in. She jammed the gas lever—

Boom. Her duck reflex took her and Deavers forward, but mercifully they didn’t tip.

Behind her, Kahananui ignored the explosion and fired up his snowmobile. “Go!”

She obeyed, even though each bump of the snowmobile warred with her instinct to turn the machine around and find Wulf, the way he’d found her in that burning vehicle months ago. But she’d promised to leave him, and the man behind her needed more help than they could provide during a firefight.

Following Wulf’s last order was the hardest commitment she’d ever made.

Exit. Wulf’s life shrank to one word as the floor scorched his bare palms and the treasures around him ignited. Dragging himself forward was the only route to salvation. Behind him planks popped into flame as fire fingers chased his useless leg. He hadn’t unleashed an ordinary fragmentation grenade. Guleed’s treasure had been thermite, molten droplets guaranteed to sear. Rolling under a displayed boat had spared him from instant incineration, but escape meant crawling through hell one handhold at a time.

Burning roof timbers collapsed, feeding the fire with fresh oxygen. Accumulated snow dropped through the roof hole and vaporized in the inferno, and for a fraction of a second it seemed as if Loki’s chilled hand brushed Wulf’s cheek and tantalized him with the outside cold.

The green running-man sign beckoned, and he heaved and scrabbled onto the porch. A second later he rolled down the steps into snow—blissfully, brilliantly, killingly cold snow. The seared soft places of his lips and tongue needed moisture. He struggled to lift a handful to his mouth, but the white fluff melted on his black glove.

Glove?

He’d removed his gloves with his snowshoes. The black coating, dark and glistening like a wet suit, was layers of his skin. Where the snow sizzled on his hands, sheets of blackened tissue shed to show red muscle and white bone beneath. Decades ago, he and Jurik had speculated about how much fire it would take to end their type of life. Burning at the stake wasn’t enough—Jurik had experienced it—but they’d assumed charcoal and ash couldn’t heal without living cells.

Today was not the day he would discover an answer for Jurik.

As he buried his open mouth in the snow, the heel on his damaged leg finally swiveled and pushed him an inch. He’d walk soon, even if his hands were stubs.

Unferth staggered off the porch, armor glowing. Snow hissed in his steps.

“Not so tough without an army behind you.” His opponent yanked at a porch plank.

“Tough enough to destroy you and your company.” Pushing to his elbows and knees, Wulf prepared to test whether his leg could hold weight.

“Black and Swan was mine.” Board in hand, Unferth lurched toward the edge of the hill.

“Took your secret lab too.” Wulf stood, but his hands couldn’t handle a weapon, and he wasn’t steady enough to kick.