Chapter 25 Will
Will
Whenever Will sniffed the air and couldn’t smell any blood, he was relieved, just a little bit. Since the vegetation was so dense, the woods made the story of the loup-garou’s pursuit relatively easy to read, and Will sensed Sage’s magic on all the broken branches and the gouges in the soil.
At least Sage had managed to defend himself, and he’d stayed clear of the beast’s teeth and claws. Please be safe. I’m on my way!
Carl carefully crossed a stream ahead of them, then stopped. He held out a hand, but it wasn’t necessary. The hairs on the back of Will’s neck were standing up, his wolf clawing at his skin at the sense of impending danger.
Will pushed the wolf back, something he’d never had to do before in his life. It was distracting, and it distracted him for just a moment, just long enough to almost miss the dark shadow passing behind a fallen tree to their right.
But Carl didn’t. He spun. The loup-garou was going for Carl first, likely because he thought Carl was the bigger threat.
This time, the wolf wanted out even more, and Will gave in, allowing the shift. Carl brought a knife. I only have this. It was urgent—not painful exactly, but almost like freefalling when Will was suspended between his two forms.
The loup-garou got distracted, the sudden change in Will’s scent drawing the beast’s eyes. Carl had no time for distractions. He was diving to the side to escape the massive paws and claws.
He drove his knife into the beast’s side before jumping the tree trunk with a grace that wasn’t right for a wolf on two legs. It got him out of the way and safe behind the tree trunk and left the loup-garou halfway between him and Will.
Will’s world expanded. He was in his wolf form, remnants of clothing clinging to his fur.
The ground was soft under his paws. He smelled the woods, moss and beetles, heard birds chirping in the trees.
He smelled his mate. That scent was the strongest, the most important among all those others, and Will could tell he was near.
The loup-garou had that scent. It was the one Will used to fear, the one he would run from in this form. But no longer. That wickedness, those dark desires, they held no more threat, birthed no more unwanted fear, not for the wolf who knew his mate loved him.
Will, in fur and fury, growled and focused on the black beast, the wide jaws and cruel maw so much like the other one, the dead one, the one that rotted in a ghoul’s belly now.
Shift, Will thought, shift.
The magic answered. It came easily, like it lived in these woods all the time and simply waited beneath the leaves and sporing mushrooms for someone to call it.
The beast turned man, and the man was naked and weak, dirty. Will bared his teeth. He charged.
“Fucking badass! You magical wonder wolf!”
Carl. Will saw what he was doing, distracting Will’s target, and Will appreciated that. The loup-garou, now in human form, turned his head ever so slightly.
Will jumped at the man and bit deep. There was a technique to killing, but Will didn’t know it. He bit deep into the juncture of neck and shoulder, hoping it would be enough. The naked man screamed in pain and stumbled back, right into Carl’s blade.
Life drained out of him with his blood, and Will knew the end was near, but at the moment when he thought it was over, the loup-garou went into the shift again.
Will let go just a heartbeat before a claw sliced through the air where his head had been. Carl retreated too.
“I call water, earth, and land. Turn the leaves and ground to quickest sand.”
Will’s head whipped to his left when he heard his mate cast a spell.
It was a strong one, using the magic the very ground under their feet was imbued with.
Will had no idea how he even knew there was magic in the earth here.
It wasn’t like he’d been able to sense it before, in his human form, but it was there, all around them.
The quicksand sucked the loup-garou in all the way to the elbow and knee joints. Sage looked relieved when he saw Will. Sage himself was a little worse for wear, but Will would happily soothe all those minor scratches and bruises with a few good licks.
“What now? I can’t get to him like this,” Carl said. “You did magic to him, right? Well done for a pup.” Carl grinned at Will. Will wolf-grinned back.
Break a few bones. All the bones in the sand, Will thought. The magic responded easily now, even if Will didn’t think of the words in spell form. All he had to do was focus on it and think of what he wanted it to do, which was…neat.
Uncomfortably loud cracks echoed through the air, and the loup-garou started yowling.
“Well, that seems to be an option.” Sage looked down at Will with pride from his slightly elevated position on an incline thick with firs. “You did that, sweetcakes?”
Will nodded. The loup-garou growled, even through the pain, spittle flying from his maw. He shifted, coming back to his human form only to then go back to fully beast again.
“He can’t get out of there, can he?” Carl asked.
Will was kind of wondering the same thing, but for now, it didn’t look like it. The quicksand was sucking the loup-garou in deeper, but with another shift cycle, the beast managed to come back up. It was a “two steps into the quicksand, one step out of it” situation.
Will, rather than staring at the struggling loup-garou, loped uphill toward his mate, sniffing him to check for injuries or the sour odor of pain, but there was nothing.
“Hey.” Sage went to his knees and hugged Will. “I want to tell you you shouldn’t have come after me, but I’m kind of glad you did.”
Will licked Sage all over; or at least all over his face. I guess we aren’t really in public right now.
“Argh, stop! We fucking talked about the licking in public. Carl, can I borrow your phone?” Sage’s fingers dug into Will’s fur. It was nice.
Carl grunted agreement and came over, handing Sage the device. “Who are you calling?”
“Peter.” Sage began typing in the number from memory. Wow. Not many people memorize phone numbers these days.
Carl nodded. “Right, good thinking.”
“Yeah. At this stage, I could fire up something lethal, but to tell you the truth, it’s not my cup of tea. And dealing with this guy might mollify Peter. He told us to stay at the house, you know.”
Carl sucked in a lungful of air. “Wouldn’t want to trade places with you there. One of Celeste’s employees spilled a few of the details about how he handled that other witch situation—the guy who wanted to put Celeste out of business, you know?”
Sage pressed the phone to his ear. “I do know. I was there. In the room. I had to throw my shoes out after, but I kept my dinner down, so that’s something, I guess.
Peter? Yeah, it’s me. So, listen, do you know that thing about asking for forgiveness instead of asking for permission?
Well, no, no one murdered anyone, but you like to talk so much about how the cats ran away, which is actually a non sequitur unless you count all of us running out of the house as a pertinent point, which it’s not.
We did find the loup-garou, isn’t that neat?
Yeah, I understand English just fine. Yes, I can follow simple instructions, you don’t have to be so fucking mean about it, because I just hiked through the fucking woods with a fucking loup-garou at my heels.
Well, I said I was calling to ask for forgiveness, didn’t I?
He’s here and still alive, and I was sort of wondering if you had any idea how to proceed, you know, in an ethical way. ”
After that, Sage relayed their approximate location and hung up.
“I should go,” Carl said when Sage handed him the phone back.
Will yipped. The loup-garou howled half-heartedly, but no one paid him much mind.
Carl scowled down at Will. “I agreed to help you out with this loup-garou situation. I did not agree to anything involving getting on the radar of Peter fucking Collins. He vaguely knows me and engages in small talk here and there, and I’d like to keep it at that.”
“It’s fine,” Sage said. “I can hold the spell as-is.”
In that moment, the loup-garou shifted back into a man. “You three sons of bitches! The one who gets me out of here, I’ll allow to live.” He grinned at Will, and Will shivered, leaning into Sage. “You little bitch. Ed’s little fuck boy. I remember digging into that soft fur and—”
“No more song, cut out that tongue.” Sage hit the plosives hard, and the spell took.
The loup-garou screamed as blood started pouring out of his mouth, along with a juicy piece of meat. Will watched, but he’d gone cold all over and was only able to remain calm and standing because he had Sage right next to him…and Sage’s hands in the fur on either side of his neck.
Carl gave the two of them a thoughtful look before he nodded curtly at Will. “I see you have the beast handled, Sage. See you at the Boudoir.”
“Yeah. And thanks, Carl. Also tell Kira thanks, from Will as well.”
“Will do.”
Carl left, and Will was alone with the beast, but also with his mate. Sage gave Will the strength to face the loup-garou, who was getting more and more furious and more vicious in his fury, tearing up the ground he could reach. But the magic held, and Will calmed down.
The wolf remembered all that had happened, but he wanted the future, a future with Sage. And Will, witch wolf and prey no more, wanted the same.