Iron to Iron (Wolf by Wolf) by Ryan Graudin Page A

Delhi checkpoint with ease, standing just long enough to watch his name get chalked into first before heading inside. Takeo, on the other hand, looked skittish. Especially when Luka marched up to the boy’s bike, bloody hand first. There were too many officials and camera lenses floating around for the Higonokami blade to make an appearance without Takeo’s name getting struck off the list, but the boy’s eyes darted to his sleeve, as if he was thinking about using it anyway.
    Luka held his cut palm up, words cold: “You use that knife on me again, and I will use it to cut you to pieces.”
    He didn’t have to ask if Takeo understood the German. Luka could see his threat being weighed and settled behind the boy’s dark gaze.
    “Same goes for Felix Wolfe,” Luka added. Just on the other side of Takeo he could see Adele favoring her left arm as she pulled off her helmet.
    Not just a nick, then.
    Takeo followed his stare. “No more thinning the field?”
    “Just stay away.” Luka didn’t quite snarl, but the animal signal was there, bristling between them long after he turned away.
    Reichssender press crowded around, eager for updates, but Luka pushed them away as he followed Adele into the checkpoint. She walked fast—through the dining hall already fragrant with curry spices, down one of the building’s many twisting corridors until she found the first noncommunal toilet.
Thud, click
went the door before Luka could reach it.
    “A—” He started to say her name, but caught himself. “Open up! It’s me!”
    Her voice came, faint through the wood. “I’m fine.”
    Luka didn’t believe her. “I want to see it.”
    A pause. Faucet water started flowing. And flowing… and flowing…
    She wasn’t going to let him in.
    “Let me see your arm, Felix.”
    Finally, the door opened. Adele’s jacket was off, slung over the sink. In her plain white undershirt she looked small, though not small enough in certain anatomical places. It suddenly made sense why she wore the jacket at all times, even when she slept.
    “Stop ogling.” Adele didn’t sound angry when she said it, just pained. Her left arm was smeared in blood, as if her swastika armband had seared through her sleeve, branded into her skin.
    Once Luka looked past the blood, he realized the cut wasn’t as deep as he’d feared. There was no visible muscle mass or fat, only a red that made Adele hiss. It needed a thorough cleaning, certainly. Maybe even stitches. “You need to go see Nurse Wilhelmina.”
    Adele jerked away. “I can’t go to the nurse, dummkopf! It will take her twenty seconds to realize I have breasts, and another twenty seconds after that to tell a racing official. I’d be out of the Axis Tour before you can say, ‘
Heil Hitler!
’”
    “You want that to go gangrene central on you?” Luka asked. “Trust me, getting an arm amputated is
not
worth seeing this rat race through to the end.”
    “Rat race?” Adele’s incisors flashed against the vanity light. Her question—as sharp as those teeth—caught Luka off guard. “Is that all this is to you?”
    Words often had a habit of spilling out where Luka was concerned. Ones he didn’t always mean, but usually did.
Rat race
: running in circles—around, around—just for show. What use was being the prize rat if you were still just a rat?
    Would two Crosses really make his father see that Luka had bled, was bleeding? Just not in the way Kurt Löwe wanted…
    “No,” Luka said. His hurt hand throbbed against an uncertain pulse. “But I’ve seen what losing an arm can do—”
    “Quite the one for melodrama, aren’t you? The wound won’t get infected. I’ll clean out the cut myself.” Adele went on, “You already have a future, Luka Löwe. One that matters. Not all of us have that luxury. This is my chance to live my life the way I want it to be lived. I’m not going to toss that away because of some playground scratch.”
    “What kind of playgrounds do they
have
in