Free RawHeat by Charlotte Stein

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