by Nash, Layla
“We’ve got some chains from the tractor,” I said. “And extra padlocks in the barn from when the raccoons were getting in the garbage. But I don’t know if that’ll be enough.”
“We’ll find out,” Lucia said. She put her hands on her hips, then glanced at me. “So how the fuck do we get him into the shed? He’s gotta weigh at least four hundred pounds.”
Olivia’s hands started to shake under the effort of maintaining the spell, and sweat beaded her forehead as she glanced between us. “Well, it was Sass’s idea, so...”
“For God’s sake,” I muttered, wanting to throw the rifle to the ground. “Doesn’t your fancy-pants compulsion spell also have a mobility addendum?”
She glared at me. “You are just so—”
“We’ll drag him,” Lucia said, holding up her hands. “Use the chains to restrain him, drag his ass on the sled into the shed, then we can all go back to arguing about what a stupid idea this is. Okay? Fine. Sass, give me the rifle and get those chains. There might be some in your truck.”
Of course. I handed her the rifle, giving the beast a wide berth, and limped over to where my busted truck waited. My whole side and hip and shoulder ached from the rough landing after flashing through the ley lines, and I knew it would only get worse with time. But with Liv starting to look tired, I couldn’t risk moving slowly. A spell like that took a lot of effort, but not so much that she couldn’t hold it for even half an hour. Something else was off, though I didn’t know if my sisters already knew about it or it was some other unpleasant surprise waiting for all of us.
Part of me almost wished I could have asked Hazel about it, since her witch magic might have seen or found something we couldn’t.
But that ship sailed. They’d be on the reservation soon and then back to town, and from the look on Lincoln’s face when I left, he wouldn’t go out of his way to say goodbye or pay me in person. It was just as well. I couldn’t handle the hope.
A pile of rusty chains occupied the corner of the stall we used for tack storage, and I sorted through the mess for the least-rusted and right lengths so we could restrain the werewolf. Finding the padlocks took a little longer. Finding the keys to the padlocks took even longer than that.
By the time I dragged all of it along with the plastic sledding disk we hadn’t used in years out to the yard where my sisters waited, the werewolf had begun to struggle again and Liv paled to the point where she should have passed out. Shit. I hustled over and tossed some of the chains to Lucia. “Why does she look like that?”
“Like what?” Liv asked, alarm making her eyes go round and big until she blinked like a startled owl.
Lucia snorted, but caught the bottle of horse tranquilizers and needle I held out as well. “Whatever kind of magic made this beast, it’s draining away the power of the compulsion spell almost as fast as Liv can spin it out. I’ve never seen this kind of trap. The beast doesn’t seem to be doing it consciously; he’s hardly even struggling anymore. It’s just…the magic disappears into him like it’s being vacuumed up.”
“Weird,” I said. I started unlocking padlocks and attaching them to parts of the chains, hoping we had enough of both to securely restrain the werewolf as soon as he was unconscious. “How much do we give him of the tranqs?”
“I was hoping you might have an idea about that,” Lucia said. She flicked the bottle and frowned at it before putting the needle into the cap to start drawing some into the syringe. “Since I haven’t sedated many werewolves lately.”
I held my hands out and almost whacked Liv with the chains by accident. “Like I have? Give him what we’d give the horse, I guess, and we can go from there? I’ll call Doc Hastings tomorrow morning to get more, unless you’ve still got Bess’s Xanax bottle upstairs. We could grind those up and give them to him in some pudding or something.”
“I really hope you’re kidding,” Olivia said.
Lucia and I traded glances, shrugging, then turned our attention back to the werewolf. I crouched next to him but still out of his reach, running some of the chain through my hands. “How do you want to do this?”
“Can you cast something to paralyze him? I don’t want to strain Liv’s net too much.”
I put the chains down and rubbed my hands together. “I can give it a go.”
I didn’t dare close my eyes to center myself, and instead just pressed the tips of my fingers into the grass and dirt next to my feet. It didn’t take long to feel the power of the ley lines surging under me, and it took even less for it to run through me and wind around my fingers. I didn’t need to burn herbs, like Liv usually did, and concentrated on how I moved my left hand to draw binding gestures around the werewolf. He started growling again as the magic spun out in long fine strands to match my sister’s net, but I used the magic as restraints. I drew it tight and made sure his legs and mouth were tightly bound, then nodded to Lucia. “It should hold.”
“Should?” She gave me a dark look. “You want to be the one with the syringe?”
“No way in hell,” I said. “But it’ll hold. Liv and I will both be tired as hell for a while. Hit him with it.”
She muttered under her breath in what might have been a prayer or a hex against me, but edged closer to the werewolf. He started to snarl louder the closer she got, and strained against both my hold and Liv’s, but both nets held. He couldn’t move or do more than make noise, not even able to snap as I kept his snout bound up.
Lucia had nerves of steel after working in that bar with all the drunk cowboys and ranchers and oil well roughnecks, and she used every one of them to crouch next to the werewolf and slide the needle into a meaty section of his hip. The werewolf howled in rage and maybe pain as she depressed the syringe. Then we all held our breath, watching the werewolf as he struggled to fight off both spells. It felt like forever until the tension at the end of my spell eased as he stopped fighting against the paralysis, and I could finally exhale as his eyes drooped shut.
“We better work fast,” Lucia said. She and I took the chains to wrap around the werewolf’s neck, arms, wrists, legs, and ankles, and used the sled to drag him into the shed.
Olivia followed, her expression sour as we tossed some of her beloved Halloween decorations out into the yard, but at least she didn’t look like she’d fall over from exhaustion in the next ten seconds. The werewolf weighed a ton as dead weight, but it was better than struggling with a live werewolf. By the time Lucia and I dragged him in and secured the chains to different parts of the shed’s structure, all of my muscles—regular as well as magical—shook and trembled on the edge of failing completely. I’d sweated through my shirt despite the cool air, and even Lucia wiped her forehead and exhaled a relieved breath when she could finally step back.
The werewolf still breathed, though he didn’t move, and Lucia hit him with a little more of the tranquilizer before she tossed me a simple first aid kit from one of the shelves near the door. “Dump some of that peroxide or iodine in the infected parts. It might help keep him alive a little longer. How long do you need to figure out if he can be changed back?”
“I don’t know.” I searched through the first aid kit for something to try and get rid of the pus in the series of cuts on the werewolf’s leg, my stomach going squeamish at being so close to him. There was something deeply, inherently unnatural about the werewolf—a stomach-turning half-man, half-beast amalgamation that had neither the full fur of a wolf nor the smooth skin of a human. It made the cuts easier to see, but that didn’t help keep my stomach in one place as I contemplated who or what created such a miserable combination. “Figured you might have some opinions on that as well.”
Liv sank to sit just outside the shed, leaning against the wall as she watched the two of us try to bandage the werewolf and double-check the chains at the same time. “If I drop the wards, we might be able to scan for any other magic on him.”
Lucia and I traded a look. She was right, but dropping the wards left us open to a whole host of problems. I cl
eared my throat and tossed more Christmas decorations out of the way, hoping it didn’t rain that night and ruin them all. Liv would never let us hear the end of it. “Will you be able to get them back up fast enough to keep us from getting bit?”
“Won’t know until we try,” she said, offering a wan smile.
Lucia snorted, shaking the small bottle of tranquilizers at me. “We’re out of juice, so if we want to try it, it’s got to be now. You feelin’ brave, Sass?”
It was too much of a challenge, and she knew I wouldn’t be able to walk away. She knew me too well. They both did. I sighed and ran my hands through my hair, raking it back from my face, and tossed what was left of the first aid kit aside. “What the hell. At least it’s daytime and we’ve got light on our side.”
Liv sighed as I released the paralysis spell, bracing myself for the werewolf to leap awake and attack us, and after a few very long heartbeats as we waited for something to happen, she murmured under her breath and the wards crashed down. Silence followed, the three of us staring at the werewolf as he slept.
“That’s a good start,” Liv said. She blinked a few times, and a little life came back to her face as the strain of maintaining the wards eased. “One of you will probably have to scan him. I need a second before I try anything big.”
“Got it,” Lucia said. She shuffled around the shed to get closer to the door so she could escape, just in case, and held her hands out over the werewolf’s prone body.
I held my breath, watching the werewolf’s face to see whether he stirred, and braced myself for the unnerving but still very structured wash of Lucia’s magic.
Chapter 32
Magic was such a personal thing that I had almost no idea how Lucia did her magic. I could kind of see the way she drew power from the ley lines and her own personal power, but it was like listening to someone else sing a popular song in another language. I kind of knew the melody and the beats and could get the gist of what it meant, but there wasn’t any way I could have repeated it. Gran gave us lessons for the basics, but she gave up after a couple of weeks when none of us really understood what she was talking about.
I frowned as I studied Lucia’s work, though I kept an eye on the werewolf as well. Liv didn’t look strong enough to control the rifle if it came to shooting the beast, so I mentally prepared myself for having to hex him in case he woke up. Lucia squinted as she watched him, and a slight haze of yellow-green magic adhered to the beast.
The hair stood on my arms as Lucia’s magic crackled like static and lightning filled the shed. Olivia sighed and leaned her head back against the wall of the shed. “I think you’ve got a hell of a story to tell us, Sass.”
“You could say that,” I said.
“You were gone more than two weeks,” she said. “How much are they paying you?”
“I don’t remember.” I tilted my head at where Lucia worked her magic and the werewolf grimaced in its sleep. “We should probably pay attention.”
Our older sister’s magic faded and she shuffled closer to the door so the three of us were all out of the werewolf’s reach. “There’s a small problem.”
“I’d say there’s more than a small problem,” Liv said, gesturing at the werewolf and then at the Christmas decorations on the lawn. “But you’re the queen of understatement, so lay it on us.”
Lucia gave her a sidelong look of pure irritation, then turned her attention to me. “Did those friends of yours explain how werewolves are made? What changes them?”
I rubbed my jaw, struggling to remember all the things Hazel and Lincoln had said. It really hadn’t felt like two weeks riding, but time moved differently in the Crossroads. Something about a toxin or virus in the werewolf’s bite, although it didn’t explain how the very first werewolf came to be if nothing was there to bite it. “I’m not sure. I thought one of them called it a virus, but it seems like it could be something else. I don’t know how certain they were—their only goal was to kill the werewolves, not study them.”
“That might have been a clue for what we should have done,” Liv muttered.
“That’s the problem,” Lucia said, ignoring Liv’s commentary. “I don’t know how to heal it or even mitigate it unless we know what causes it. It’s not like regular healing. It doesn’t feel like a regular virus that can be purged with enough of the right magic and tinctures. It also doesn’t feel like a curse, or at least not entirely a curse or a hex, so...” She lifted her hands in a shrug. “I don’t think we can do much unless we know what it is.”
I desperately wanted a shower as I ran my hands through my hair again and realized how gross it really was. After two weeks without a wash and only dry shampoo, it practically stood up on its own. But that had to wait at least a little bit longer. “How do we figure it out?”
They both looked at me as if I’d just birthed a litter of kittens.
“What do you mean, how do we figure it out?” Liv hefted the rifle. “We can’t fix him in time, Sass. Those cuts on his leg will kill him slowly. And he’ll die before we can do the research on what spreads werewolf... disease or whatever it is. Seems like a simple answer to this little problem.”
“Wait,” I said, pushing away the barrel of the rifle so it aimed at the corner of the shed instead of the motionless beast. “We can’t just give up that quickly. There’s got to be something else we can do.”
I touched my side, where the book still waited, and figured it was time to explain what had happened in the Crossroads. Lucia watched me with the same look Ma used when I was being obstinate for no reason. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes so I didn’t see either of my sisters, or the ghost of Gran standing behind them. “Look, we can’t just kill him. I need to at least…at least try to figure this out. Please.”
“If he gets loose, do you have any idea of the damage that will be done? How many innocent lives might be lost?” Lucia folded her arms over her chest. “Come on, Sass. I get that you’re upset about killing the other werewolves, and it seems weird as hell that one showed up at our house in time to save you from the dire wolf, but that doesn’t mean you need to be the werewolf savior. It’s gone. There isn’t a person left in those eyes, girl. Just beast. Just hunger. We should put him out of his misery and be done with it.”
“Give me a day.” I tried to drag my hair back into a ponytail without falling over from exhaustion. A shower, a nap, and then studying that damn book and the werewolf. “I’ll try to get more information from the feds. Maybe the witch can tell me more. I just don’t want to tip them off that we’ve got one here.”
Lucia exhaled and turned her attention to the still-unconscious werewolf. “Well, we’ve got to wait for this guy to wake up so we can make sure the chains will hold. Start talking. Where the hell have you been?”
I really didn’t want to have that conversation without a little time to figure out what to say and what to leave out, but with both of my sisters looking at me expectantly, I didn’t have much choice. I was asking them to trust me with a wild animal who could bite and turn humans into wild beasts, and so far they’d gone along with it. They deserved to hear what had happened in the Crossroads.
Except maybe for the part about me making out with Lincoln.
So I took a deep breath and hiked up my big girl panties and started talking. They both listened without much reaction until I got to the part about taking the group to the cave and actually letting them see it, and Lucia practically jumped out of her skin.
“You’ve got no right to expose the cave to strangers!”
I held up a hand to wave her off, but Liv wasn’t happy either. She’d at least put the rifle aside before she started glaring. “We hardly ever go to the cave, Sass. Why the fuck would strangers—witches and shifters—be allowed in there? That’s just asking for trouble.”
“I was trying to solve a problem,” I said. “And besides, werewolves had somehow let themselves into the cave anyway and made a mess. I wasn’t going to be the first one down those stair
s in case there were more waiting, and the price for that was letting the shifters in first.”
Lucia shook her head. “I can’t believe you. Fucking ridiculous, Sass.”
“There was something different about the cave,” I said. “Maybe it’s bad that we don’t go there more often. It felt... hungrier. Needier. It definitely liked the company.”
“We’ll deal with that later,” Lucia said. She still looked pissed, but at least her attention was back on the werewolf. “Looks like he’s waking up.”
“Great,” Liv said under her breath. She reached for the rifle once more and slowly pushed to her feet so she could brace herself against the door.
The werewolf stirred and immediately started snarling, moving its limbs in jerky, uncoordinated movements. When the chains stopped it short, the snarling increased in volume and ferocity. He strained against the chains and the shed creaked, and all three of us looked around in alarm.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the werewolf would be strong enough to bring the shed down on top of us. That seemed like an oversight. “Huh.”
“Yeah,” Lucia said. She held her breath but backed up a step, avoiding the rifle barrel and Liv as she edged closer to the door. “How old is this shed?”
“Maybe we should have put him in the barn,” I said.
The chains creaked and dust shook loose from the rafters, and I sneezed. The werewolf roared and struggled, flailing like a fish in a net, and all three of us prepared to run if things took a turn for the worse. But the chains held and the shed remained standing, and after what felt like an eternity of waiting for the beast to break free and maul us, we started to breathe again.
“He makes a lot of noise,” Liv said. “We sure the neighbors won’t wonder what we’ve got locked up in our shed?”
“Dampener spell,” Lucia said. She back out of the shed and started trudging back to the house. “I’ll get some rose petals and lye. Sass, get cleaned up and then figure out how to contact that witch you were hanging out with. Liv, look through some of Gran’s books and see if you can find something in there about werewolves or reversing curses and that kind of thing.”
