Winter Door by Isobelle Carmody Read Free Book Online

Rage and slammed his bulk into the shed door so hard that if it had not swung open on impact, he would surely have broken something. The door gave a great metallic clang as it rebounded off the inner wall. They hurled themselves inside and turned to slam the door shut.
    “The bar,” Rage gasped, and Logan was beside her, their breaths rasping in unison as they lifted it into place.
    A second later the wolves were at the metal door, smashing and snarling as if there were a whole pack of them instead of only three. Fortunately, the door was heavy metal, as were the shed walls and floor. The bluish security light above the door made Logan look pale and ill, and Rage supposed that she looked the same.
    “The roof,” Logan hissed, jerking his chin upward.
    Rage looked up to see that there was a section of transparent Perspex. She shook her head. “They couldn’t possibly climb—” She stopped because all of a sudden the animals outside had fallen silent. She made a move toward the door, and Logan grabbed convulsively at her arm. She shook him off and pressed her ear against the metal by the crack between door and jamb. The hair on her arms rose as she heard the sound of ragged breathing. A picture came into her mind of a wolf pressing its ear to the door on the other side. She drew back sharply, terror and helplessness rushing through her veins.
    “What did—” Logan began, then something landed heavily on the roof. This time it was Logan who moved first, turning and literally dragging Rage after him to the bathroom in the back of the shed. He pushed her in first and shot the bolt behind himself just as the Perspex in the roof cracked with a violent report. Of one accord, they pressed themselves against the wall on either side of the malodorous toilet bowl, as far from the door as possible.
    Rage listened so hard her head ached, but she couldn’t hear any movement. Time passed. It grew colder, and the silence went on and on until Rage finally pushed her fear aside and gathered her wits. She knew that wolves were stealthy, clever hunters, but they would not wait long if there was other prey out there, easier to catch. It might even be that she had imagined the cracking sound of the roof giving way. How on earth could wolves leap onto the roof, after all, even if they had been as gigantic as she had imagined? Glancing at Logan’s pale, set face, it occurred to her with a faint sense of hysteria that they were waiting for the surprise terror that always happened in the movies when you thought the characters were safe. The body you thought was dead that leapt up and grabbed the hero. The dragon that had been killed, then opened its maddened eye. The face that suddenly appeared at the window.
    The wind moaned. It wasn’t as cold in the shed bathroom as it had been outside, but it was cold enough, and they must have been standing there for an hour. Rage couldn’t feel her toes. She forced herself to stand up.
    “What are you doing?” Logan whispered. The white showed all around his green irises.
    “We can’t stay in here forever,” Rage whispered. Her voice sounded strange and husky, as if she had screamed for hours.
    “What if one of those things is waiting inside?” Logan whispered. He was sweating. Oddly, knowing that Logan was so frightened made Rage feel less so. After all, she had faced some pretty terrifying things in her life already, hadn’t she?
    “I’d rather get eaten than freeze to death slowly in a smelly bathroom,” she said in Rue’s stern, no-nonsense voice.
    Another silence.
    “All right,” Logan said at last. “But don’t blame me if we get eaten.”
    This was so completely absurd that, incredibly, Rage started to laugh. It was more than half hysteria, and she was shivering so hard that her laughter sounded like some sort of convulsion. She tried to stifle the sound, but this only made her laugh the harder. She doubled over and tears leaked from her eyes. She saw that after his first look