Read Online Grim Tidings by Caitlin Kittredge - Free Book Online

back. He didn’t freeze, or try to be a hero. I would have grinned if I wasn’t spending all my effort on breathing after getting slammed to the ground. I’d been right. Jacob wasn’t going to die here. He was a survivor. Like recognizes like.
    A foot tucked under my shoulder and rolled me over. The spotlight lit up a man’s face, hard-carved with sharp cheeks and chin, like someone had hacked him out of wood. He looked at me, steam rising from his mouth as he breathed hard in the snowy air. “And who might you be?”
    I lashed out with my foot. He was a big bastard, at least six and ahalf feet, so I didn’t bother aiming for the groin. Kneecap is much more accessible when you’re on the ground, and he let out a startled grunt when I made contact.
    I managed to get up, but he grabbed me again, slamming me into the fence. The sensation of a hundred hot pins digging into my back and thighs as the barbs bit my skin forced me to make a sound, and he smiled.
    â€œYou’re not one of them,” he said, looking at me with his head cocked, like I was some kind of rare creature he’d caught in a trap. I wondered if I was about to lose my skin.
    â€œNo,” I whimpered. “I’m not a Nazi.”
    He pressed me harder against the wire, and I hate that tears were leaking out of my eyes. Men like him wanted me to flinch, wanted me to cry and beg. Usually that was the quickest way out of whatever mess I’d found myself in, but this time the man’s eyes were dead. Nothing was going to get me out of this. I knew that kind of man by sight too.
    â€œThat’s not what I’m talking about,” he sighed, almost in my ear. His breath was hot and he smelled—not like offal and blood, but something strong and herbal, which chilled my nose and all the way down the back of my throat. “You’re so small,” he said. “Like a bird. I see birds caught on this fence. Their feathers get so heavy with blood they can’t fly away.” He pushed again, and I felt one barb dig into the back of my head, all the way through the scalp. The man moaned into my hair.
    â€œYou’re a lucky bird,” he said in my ear. “You’re not the species I like to catch and eat.” Faster than my heart was beating, he wrapped one massive scarred hand around my throat. “But I’ll pull your wings off just the same.”
    I clawed at his hand, but I might as well have been trying to tear apart a chunk of cement. My nails tore at the tattered sleeve of his uniform shirt and I saw through the black borders closing in that it wasn’t tan, like all the good little Aryans in the place—it was dark green, stained and faded.
    One of those dying prisoners. An American. Many are sick when they come here but he was different . . .
    At the realization spreading across my face, he grinned wider. “That’s right,” he said. “Nobody here but you and me and the monsters.”
    I kicked at him, feeling the wire tear chunks out all up and down my thighs, but he slammed his knee into mine. The wire shook under me. “Stop struggling,” he snapped. “Only the foolish ones struggle.”
    A shape moved up on my left, and I thought it was just a blood vessel rupturing in my field of vision until a hand reached across the wire and pressed into the man’s ruddy forehead.
    Jacob squeezed his eyes shut as he murmured, the man’s skin under his hand turning a molten color like it was metal in a forge. The man cried out, letting go of me and swatting at Jacob’s face as he swung wildly, catching him on the side of the temple. When the connection broke, Jacob fell onto his ass in the mud and the man lunged for me again.
    I emptied all four shots from the Luger into him, three in his chest and one thunking into his scalp. He staggered, like he was drunk, his head dipping to his chest. Nothing came from the wounds. The bullet just left