Wolf Hunted

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  She pressed her bleeding arm against my chest. “My… brother… by another… messed up… father…” she said.

  It must be bad if she was making jokes. “Which way, Alpha of the Alfheim Pack?”

  She sniffed. “West.”

  The storm swirled around us. My face had already lost most of my heat, and the cold bit into my ears and cheeks. Snow hit my eyes and I couldn’t make out any landmarks. “Which way is west?”

  She weakly pointed over my shoulder.

  “How long can you hold the turn?” I doubted I could carry a changing werewolf, and if I set her down, she’d bolt into the trees wild on rage, Samhain, and silver poisoning.

  She coughed.

  “Talk to me.” I stumbled through the snow. “Maybe we should sing a song.”

  Axlam coughed again. “Tell me… about… your seer.”

  She remembered Ellie? “Her name is Ellie Jones,” I said. “I don’t remember much more than that. She has a friend in Tokyo. Her name is Chihiro. The two kitsune in Vegas connected us. I’ve been able to track what I can because of Chihiro.”

  I’d made a deal with those two kitsune.

  Axlam sniffed. “You… love her.”

  “Is it that obvious?” I almost tripped over a log, but I got us through.

  “Samhain loosens…” She cough-growled again, and shivered in my arms.

  “If you turn, promise me you won’t get mad if I sit on you.” Maybe she’d hold onto her humanity long enough to not rip up the world—and me.

  Axlam cough-chuckled. “There’s a song…” she said, “… Thirty-eight Special…. ‘Hold on Loosely’… Gerard loves that song…”

  And here I never took Gerard as an eighties-arena-rock kind of guy.

  “We were in the car… on the way back from Fargo… college… came on radio….” She stiffened and growled again. “He sang along with the… radio…”

  Was I just treated to the Alfheim Pack’s alpha mate meet-cute story? But it made sense. Axlam wanted to hold onto her joy.

  Her shivers picked up speed and intensity. “Come to our house… I will teach you to make… sambusas.”

  “Sambusas?” I asked.

  “Better than… lefse.”

  “Oh, now, them’s fightin’ words.” I swung her between two trees. “Maybe we should yell that into the storm. Nothing brings elves faster than disrespecting their favorite potato-based food.”

  She coughed.

  I took us around a big tree. One I thought I recognized. “Axlam? I think we’re near my lake.” The snow grayed out everything, and without the moon visible, the world was shadows and ice.

  “If I change now… I’ll kill you…”

  The blizzard howled. How were the wolves and the elves running in this? “No, you will not. I’m already dead, remember?”

  Axlam snarled.

  Her hand on my shoulder elongated. She dug her nails into my shoulder.

  I stopped running. The snow caked the side of my face, and coated Axlam’s jacket and scarf. We were unintentionally camouflaged into the raging ice around us.

  “Axlam?”

  She spasmed. Her back arched. The moon, behind the ceiling of gusts and gray, must have been fully out.

  Whatever the deal was—whatever she’d sacrificed to get the few minutes we had away from the dome running toward the lake—popped like a balloon. I did not see it leave her body, but I felt it fly as if the storm was lifting a bird into its toothsome jaw.

  I had no idea how to help. She would get away from me sooner or later—no matter how strong and fast I might be, she was a werewolf and capable of inflicting enough damage to take me down.

  I hadn’t been fast enough. I hadn’t gotten her up the hill and to the lake, where the pack would find her. I’d let her down.

  I set her on a log. “What should I do?” Should I help with her clothes? But the boots and the pants and the coat might slow her down enough that I could restrain her until the pack arrived.

  Her hands and face elongated, and she rolled onto all fours.

  I stepped back. There wasn’t any more I could do. “I’m so sorry.” Would she burn out the silver fast enough to come back to herself?

  Axlam lifted her face to the storm above and howled. The magic reverberated again, and we both cringed. But the cry erupted from her throat with such force it pierced the snow. It pierced the wind and the ice. It rose above.

  And there, off to the south, a faint answer.

  I dropped to my knees. “Someone heard your howl. They’re coming.”

  Ice coated my head and face. Snow collected in the folds of Axlam’s scarf. But the wind carried her howls.

  Axlam reared up onto her legs. “Jaxssssoooonnn!” she howled.

  The kids…. They’d vanished. We’d felt St. Martin’s approach and the girls had… I couldn’t remember. They’d been next to the gate telling us about the spell Akeyla had set over my dog’s water, and then they’d disappeared.

  My axe called from somewhere nearby.

  “Sal!” I yelled. “We’re over here!”

  Chapter 26

  Jaxson found us first. He burst through the gloom in full wolf form, a violet-black bundle of magic trailing waves and waves of frantic energy. He ran right by me and to his mother’s side.

  Sal called out to me again.

  “Over here!” I yelled.

  Out in the snow, no more than twenty feet away, the magic of her blade lit up like a beacon.

  “Hold on, Axlam,” I said.

  “Uncle Frank!” Akeyla yelled. She burst through the storm just as Jaxon had, a little elf with a glowing axe as big as she was on her shoulder. A bubble of her warm fire magic kept the snow and cold off not only her, but also off Sophia, whose hand she held.

  “We’re here, Mrs. Geroux.” Akeyla set Sal on the ground next to Axlam and expanded the bubble to include all of us.

  “Where have you kids been?” I asked. “Akeyla, stay back. Axlam is changing, honey.”

  Akeyla pinched her lips together. “Jax says I can help.” She put her hands on Axlam’s cheeks. “There’s something here. It feels sticky.” She lifted her hands away from Axlam’s skin.

  My niece blinked. She looked up at Jax, then nodded. “Okay.”

  She cupped Axlam’s cheeks again.

  Sophia took my hand. “It’s okay, Mr. Frank. We know what to do.”

  I looked down at the little girl who carried herself so much like her father. “How?” I asked.

  She watched Akeyla work. “The lady Akeyla can’t see told us there was bad magic. She told me to tell Akeyla to give Ms. Geroux her light. She said if it was bright enough, it could get through the bad magic. Sal helps. The lady said she’d realized what the bad magic was and came back to tell you but she needed to hide us from the monster first.” She tugged on my fingers. “She was really scared, Mr. Frank. She said none of us would remember her when she vanished. Akeyla couldn’t see her anyway, and I know Jax doesn’t remember, but I do.”

  A magical woman—a seer—protected the kids?

  Sophia squeezed my hand. “Her name was Ellie. She said she was your friend.”

  Ellie. Ellie Jones. “Yes, she’s my friend,” I said. I’d forgotten about her. Again.

  Sophia pointed at Akeyla and Sal. “She told us to use Sal to call for help after she vanished, so we did.”

  Axlam calmed some, under Akeyla’s fingers.

  Part of me wanted to scoop them all up and get them away from the changing werewolf. But another, stronger part understood that right now, my nine-year-old niece and her friends were keeping Axlam sane.

  “When your friend disappeared,” Sophia pointed over her shoulder, “he showed up.”

  I sensed him first, as if his magic tapped me on the shoulder then ran away like a kid playing ding-dong-ditch-it.

  I instinctively moved Sophia behind me as I turned around.

  The elf standing close enough to touch extended his hand. He was as big as Arne, and c
arried his shoulders the same way. He wore elven hunting leathers as black as Lennart’s, as if he, too, had gone out on the run with the wolves. Elven tattoos shimmered around the naked part of his scalp, over his face, and down his neck. His ungloved hands were also covered in elven tattoos, as if someone had put wards on his skin to throw off some evil’s scent.

  But he was unlike any other elf I had ever met.

  Never in my two hundred years had I come across an elf with gray hair and black eyes, nor had I met one who grinned like Loki himself.

  “Hrokr Arnesson,” he said. “I am so pleased to finally meet you, Frank Victorsson. We’re neighbors!” He winked. “Though my father doesn’t approve of the town bothering me.”

  He pulled back his hand when I didn’t shake. “It is Samhain.” He shrugged, then leaned close as if to tell me his deepest secret. “Concealment enchantments thin this time of year, my dear.”

  This elf lived behind concealment enchantments? “Who are you?” I asked.

  He held up his hand. “One second,” he said, then cocked his head as if listening.

  Axlam’s back arched again.

  “Mr. Hrokr!” Akeyla said. “We need to call Mommy and Grandpa!”

  A burst of warmth rolled by. Not Akeyla’s warmth, or anything that felt particularly elven, but it did feel alive. And deep down I knew what that meant.

  The shell had burst.

  The elf nodded approvingly. “It is done.”

  Dagrun must have figured out how to break St Martin’s magic.

  “Jaxson, my boy,” the elf said, “it’s now safe to release your best howl! Your father is close. Let him know where you are.”

  Jaxson obliged.

  “And you, my sweet girl, call in the cavalry.”

  Akeyla touched my axe. “Now, Sal!” she said.

  A new burst of magic rolled off Sal and into the storm.

  Out in the snow, several close-by wolves howled their responses. Yells followed. And out in the gray between the snowflakes, magic lit the way.

  Hrokr leaned close again. “My father thinks I’m a bit… odd.” He shrugged. “We are all different aspects of our magic, yes?” He pointed at the children. “When Salvation called out, I answered. It is my sacred duty to protect the children and the disadvantaged, including the other fae-born of our town.”

  He twisted slightly as if looking at rips and tears in my jacket, then nodded as if satisfied for some unseen reason. “I helped the kids listen, and I made sure they didn’t get lost in the storm. We didn’t need frozen kiddos tonight, now did we?”

  “The pack’s coming,” Akeyla said to Axlam. “They’re almost here.” She touched Jaxson’s snout. “Your daddy’s coming.”

  “And then there’s you.” Hrokr gripped my arms and a purplish-red magic washed from his hands to my body. “Funny how you have already died and come back to us here in Midgard. So presumptuous. I like it!”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Who are you?” I asked again.

  He poked my chest. “Hrokr, silly. I’m a jotunn, just like you.” He waved his hand and a streak of reddish magic erupted in front of us like a waterfall of fireworks.

  I was a reconstituted man. He was an elf, even with the strange hair and eyes. Neither of us were real jotunn.

  Akeyla looked up. “Where’s Uncle Frank?” she said.

  The red magic must have hidden me.

  Sophia squeezed my hand again, though, and looked up at Hrokr, who touched his finger to his lips.

  “If I don’t hide him, he’ll lose his only chance to find his friend,” Hrokr said.

  Sophia nodded knowingly. “Then you should go, Mr. Frank. Ellie must be worried. Please tell her we did as she asked and now everyone is safe.”

  Sophia seemed so certain of her words.

  Then Sophia called out to Akeyla, “Mr. Frank’s going to find Marcus Aurelius.” She looked up at me and grinned. “It’s not really a lie, is it?”

  I’d long suspected someone was caring for my wayward hound. “No,” I said. That someone must be Ellie Jones. “No, it’s not.”

  Hrokr bent down and looked Sophia in the eyes. “Thank you for remembering me, my dear. I owe you a boon.”

  She gave him a quick hug.

  “Now, do you remember what I told you to tell the first elf who comes?” he asked.

  She thought for a second. “I see the truth,” she said.

  “Yes! Yes. Good.” Hrokr straightened again to speak to me. “If my father has another of his conniptions about mundanes, it’s not prophecy. Alfheim already has her seer.” He winked at me. “It’s truth.”

  The kids were not acting as if this strange elf was a danger. Perhaps he wasn’t. But any elf I didn’t know who called me neighbor set off all my alarms.

  Hrokr gripped my elbows this time. “Time to go, darling! The evening reset has already happened, that’s why you don’t understand all this, but her concealments haven’t closed yet.” He looked at his wrist as if he wore a watch. “You have… twenty minutes? Maybe thirty before that cottage of hers shutters for the night.”

  “I can get through Ellie’s enchantments if I go now?” I asked.

  Hrokr touched his finger to the tip of his nose, then pointed the finger at me.

  “Which way?” I glanced out at the blizzard raging outside Akeyla’s bubble of magic. “Why are you helping me?”

  “I told you already.” He turned me in the direction I suspected was perpendicular to the lake. “Off you go, young man. The kids are alright. They have this.”

  A massive, dire-wolf-like adult werewolf leaped out the trees and into Akeyla’s bubble of warmth. He shook and immediately pressed his snout against Axlam’s cheek.

  “Gerard!” I said.

  Hrokr leaned close again. “He can’t see or hear you.”

  Sif appeared next. She immediately ran to the kids.

  Two more werewolves arrived, along with Arne and Bjorn, who immediately augmented Akeyla’s bubble and wove a spell to draw the silver out of Axlam’s bicep.

  Hrokr Arnesson tugged on my arm. “This way.”

  Lennart and his wolf appeared next. He scooped up Akeyla, now with Sal on her shoulder, and took Sophia’s hand to lead them away from Arne and Bjorn, who, like elven paramedics, were spinning intricate healing spells around Axlam.

  Three more wolves arrived and formed a circle around Axlam and Gerard. The other elves formed their own circle farther out, a levy really, and waited.

  Maura appeared, as did Benta and the remaining elder elves. Lennart handed off Akeyla, who stood with the circle. He leaned down to listen to Sophia’s words, then nodded and turned his back to the circle. His hand moved and…

  Ed, flashlight in hand and fully bundled in winter gear, walked through the spaces between the blowing snowflakes.

  “Daddy!” Sophia shouted.

  He gasped and dropped to his knees to hug his daughter. Lennart touched his shoulder. They spoke, but I couldn’t hear, though I knew what he said. Lennart pulled Ed into the circle with his daughter.

  “Well, look at that!” Hrokr said. “Dad’s gonna be pissed.” He slapped my shoulder. “Still, there might be hope for us elves yet, huh?”

  “Is Axlam okay?” I asked.

  He gave me another shove. “All is well in Alfheim! Go on! The window closes.”

  They did seem to have everything under control. “Thank you.”

  He extended his hand again. This time, I shook.

  “Remember what I said.” He vanished into the thickening snow.

  A new gale blotted out what I could see of the wolves and the pack, and I turned in the direction the strange elf with the gray hair and black eyes had pointed. He’d said I had twenty minutes, thirty tops, to find my way to Ellie’s cottage.

  I had vague memories of notes telling me I needed to get inside her concealments, otherwise I’d never remember her. I also had vague memories that I really didn’t know what Ellie Jones wanted.

  I trudged
forward anyway, taking the scouring blizzard wind and now-blinding snow directly in the face.

  A wolf ran by so quickly its brown and white fur blended into the storm’s gray. The snow roared, and the wolf moved through the cold as if what raged around us was nothing at all.

  Another dire-wolf-sized beast followed. He slowed for a moment and sniffed the air, then howled for his pack to follow.

  A sleek black wolf appeared. She stopped, but she did not howl. A second massive wolf padded up to her side. He sniffed at her ear and nuzzled her neck. A third smaller, black wolf trailing brilliant violet-blue magic pushed between the two larger wolves’ legs.

  Bjorn, Sif, and Benta appeared, one on each side of the family, both casting beacons into the cold night.

  More of the pack ran by, with more elves. Gerard howled, and Remy, now off in the distance, responded.

  The magicals of Alfheim disappeared behind a wall of snow.

  They were okay. They would finish the run unmolested.

  I returned to trekking though the blizzard, looking for a woman I did not remember. A woman who, like Axlam’s World Wolf, was always there, always nearby, always touching me somehow.

  Ellie Jones, the phantom around whom I built my perception of the world.

  I saw no trees. I sensed no logs, or forest, or the lake. Only the wind and the ice. Only the gunmetal shadows and the sting of the cold. Had I gotten turned around? I closed my eyes against the ice onslaught. The wolves howled. The blizzard roared. And I stood alone against the storm.

  A dog barked.

  I opened my eyes. “Marcus Aurelius?” I called. “Here, boy!”

  He barked again as if commanding the veil of the storm to part, and trotted up to my legs.

  Like me, he was coated in snow and ice, and also like me, it didn’t seem to bother him all that much. He shook, and snow released from his curly fur only to build up again immediately.

  He jumped up to give me hound kisses.

  “Where have you been?” I asked. “Can you show me the way?”

  My dog turned slightly to the right of the direction I had been walking. He looked over his shoulder and barked again.

  “I’m coming,” I said.