Chapter 17 #2
The black wolf held Verity’s gaze for a heartbeat longer. Then it turned and loped away, disappearing into the darkness between the trees with a speed that stole her breath.
She wanted to call after him. She wanted to run into the woods and find him, to wrap her arms around that massive furred body and tell him that everything would be all right.
But she knew that the wolf was not entirely Lucien.
Not tonight. And if she followed him into the darkness, she could not be certain what she would find.
“Help me,” Ephraim said, cutting through her thoughts. He thrust the empty rifle into her hands and dropped beside the gray wolf, his weathered fingers already pressing at the wound. “We’ve to get him inside. Else he’ll bleed out.”
“Inside?” Verity’s voice came out as a croak. “You want to save him? After everything he has done?”
“He’s a killer, Miss Hale. I ken it well enough. But he’s the only one who can tell us why.” He grunted once. “An’ his lordship … he’ll be wantin’ answers. We owe him that. Aye, we do.”
Verity wanted to argue. She wanted to say that Max Dray deserved to bleed out in the snow, that the lives he had taken could not be balanced by any information he might provide.
But she thought of Lucien, of the devastation in his voice when he had told her what he suspected, of the tears that had threatened to fall when he spoke of Max’s friendship. She knew that Ephraim was right.
Lucien needed to understand why.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked.
Ephraim jerked his head toward the cellar door.
“There’s chains inside. Silver ones. We’ll have to bind him, in case he throws ‘em off.” He glanced at Verity, grim. “Help me get him below. I’ll fetch what’s needed once he’s fast.”
Once they had dragged Max’s snarling, bleeding form down the stone steps and Ephraim had locked the silver manacles around his limbs, the old gamekeeper took the stairs two at a time and disappeared.
He returned minutes later with an armful of supplies, strips of linen, a bottle of something sharp-smelling, and a leather muzzle that Verity suspected had not been designed for any ordinary dog.
Verity felt sick.
“He be crafty, Max Dray. See how he were wearin’ gloves to shield hisself from the silver? Didn’t have the chance to pull ‘em off afore the change, did he?”
Verity looked down and saw shreds of thin leather tangled in the coarse fur of its forelegs.
Then at the wound in the wolf’s shoulder, which was bleeding heavily, dark blood matting the gray fur and pooling on the stone floor.
Ephraim pressed a wadded cloth against it, but the fabric was soaked through almost immediately.
“I’ve to bind it proper,” he muttered. “Can’t do it wi’ his jaws free. If the pain takes him, he’ll snap.”
He did not need to finish the sentence. Verity understood.
“You want me to muzzle him,” she said flatly.
Ephraim handed her the leather contraption, straps, and buckles designed to wrap around a wolf’s snout and hold its jaws closed. Verity stared at it, her fingers rigid, every nerve in her body recoiling from the task.
“I ken ye’re afeared,” Ephraim said. “But we’ve little time.”
Heat crept into Verity’s cheeks, the particular shame of a woman whose weakness had been named aloud by a man who could not afford to indulge it.
She took the muzzle from Ephraim’s hands.
The gray wolf’s eyes were open, watching her with an intelligence that made her skin crawl. There was pain in those eyes, yes, but also hatred. Also calculation. Even wounded, even restrained, the creature was dangerous.
“Hold his head,” she said, and was surprised by how steady her voice sounded.
Ephraim shifted position, pressing down on the wolf’s neck to keep it still. The creature snarled, its lips pulling back from teeth that were stained with blood, and Verity felt her terror rise up in her throat like bile.
It is just an animal, she told herself. Just an animal that happens to share its body with a murderer.
Somehow, that did not make her feel better.
She moved quickly, her hands trembling only slightly as she fitted the leather straps around the wolf’s muzzle.
The creature thrashed against the restraints, and for one terrible moment, Verity thought the chains would not hold.
Then the silver bit deeper into its flesh, and the wolf went still with a whimper of pain.
“Good,” Ephraim said. “Good, Miss Hale. Now hold this.”
He guided her hands to the cloth pressed against the wound, and Verity felt the hot pulse of blood against her palms. The gray wolf’s eyes never left her face as Ephraim worked, binding the wound high along its chest, near the foreleg, with the efficiency of long practice.
She wondered how many times he had done this.
How many wounds he had tended. How many secrets he had kept.
“There,” Ephraim said at last, tying off the final bandage. “That should hold until the moon sets. If he survives that long.”
“Will he?” Verity asked.
“It’s… not simple. If the ball went clean through, he may mend. If it’s lodged…” He gave a short shake of his head. “We’ll ken more once he turns back.”
Verity released her grip on the wound and looked down at her hands. They were covered in blood, dark and thick. She thought she should be horrified, but all she felt was a strange, distant numbness.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Now we wait.” Ephraim lowered himself to the flagstones with the stiff ease of a man long used to discomfort, setting his back against the cellar wall. He gave a small nod toward the rug. “Moon’s high yet. Won’t be settin’ for hours. Best sit, Miss. Rest, if ye can.”
Rest. As though she could possibly rest while Lucien was running wild through the woods, and a wounded wolf lay chained at her feet, hovering somewhere between life and death.
She climbed the stairs to clean her hands in the snow outside before returning to sit down on the rug anyway, because her legs were shaking too badly to hold her upright any longer.
The lantern cast long shadows across Ephraim’s weathered face, deepening the lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked old, Verity realized. Old and tired and unutterably sad.