Chapter Twenty-One
N ight had fallen by the time Logan reached his first destination. He pulled up by an abandoned crofter’s cottage, built of grey stone.
Logan kicked Moss inside and ordered him to build a fire.
‘I don’t have matches,’ Moss said sullenly, picking up twigs from the dark corners of the room.
Logan threw a packet at him. ‘Get on with it.’ He rubbed his hands together.
It was a clear sky outside, showing off the simmer dim in its full pastel glory, but it meant for a chill night drawing in on them. Moss managed to get a fire lit, reflecting that it was a skill he hadn’t put to much use in Arran’s company. Arran had done so much to take care of him.
He was thankful when flames sprang from his meagre pile of firewood. Moss warmed his palms, keeping an eye on Logan as he cracked a can of beans into a mess tin.
‘Cook these,’ Logan commanded.
Moss complied, ensuring to burn them. He offered the tin of blackened beans to Logan.
‘You fucking idiot.’ Logan clapped him round the head with a thick-knuckled fist. ‘You never could fucking cook.’
Moss lay prone on the stone floor while Logan ate. He wanted to withdraw into himself, as he used to do. To become nothing for a while, so he didn’t have to be inside this situation.
No, it was important to stay present. Arran needed him. He needed Arran.
He tentatively reached out to a creeper of ivy by the cottage door. It obligingly slithered from its perch and inspected the contents of the truck bed. It felt Arran’s shape under the tarp, still motionless.
Please, Moss begged. You promised me eternity.
There was no answer.
Moss barely slept. He kept his feelers on Arran, waiting fitfully for signs of life. Logan’s snorts and snores echoed loudly off the bare stone. The crossbow rested on his thigh.
Moss blinked, and suddenly was being kicked awake by the steel toe of Logan’s boots. ‘Get up, weed.’
Moss dragged himself to his feet. He noticed an ache in the pit of his stomach—it was empty, a sensation which had been happily forgotten of late. It recalled to him the old emptiness of being bound to Elsie, of being nothing more than a hollow creature to be filled with her orders.
Moss shuddered and pushed the intrusive thoughts away. While Logan ate a dry breakfast, Moss felt for his vine of ivy still curled around the Wulver’s wrist.
He felt a pulse.
Hope skyrocketed inside Moss. Arran was alive.
Holding his breath, Moss bid the ivy to crawl into Arran’s palm and clasp it.
There was an answering squeeze.
Moss could have whooped and hollered in celebration. He fought back tears to contain his joy, and pressed his forehead against the cool stone wall to hide whatever his face might be showing.
Logan gargled water behind him and spat onto the flagstones. ‘Right. Let’s get that mutt and cut its pelt off.’
Moss’s stomach churned again. Arran was still lying down. Was he too weak to move? How long would it take to heal from a wound like that?
Logan shouldered the loaded crossbow and headed for the door.
Moss had to buy time.
‘Get the fuck out here, weed.’
Moss jerked forward, into the sunlight.
What would he have done to Elsie, if she hadn’t laid down her ground rules first?
Possibilities opened up to Moss that he had forgotten even existed. He’d been so blinded by the panic that he still mechanically followed the rules Elsie had drilled into him. Half the chains were inside his head.
Logan reached for the tarp. Moss called to the ivy and snapped it around Logan’s mouth.
‘Wha—Mmph!’ Logan thrashed at the vine, clawing at his mouth.
Next, Moss went for his limbs. ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said flatly. ‘I can’t possibly hurt you, Logan. Just slow you down a little.’
It was necessary for the roots and ivy to be gentle, or else it wouldn’t work. He had them slither over Logan’s body, trapping his legs first and then going for his arms.
Logan’s eyes landed on him, seething with icy hatred. He twisted one burly arm, snapping the grass roots holding it, and pointed the crossbow at Moss.
Moss didn’t even hear the impact. He simply looked down and registered the bolt sticking out of his chest.
His legs buckled. Moss landed on his knees in front of Logan. Too stunned to think, his roots and ivy all slipped away. A deep heat began to swell inside his ribs.
‘That’ll fuckin’ teach you,’ Logan snarled. He snatched Moss up by the hair and sneered in his face. ‘I’ll skin you, too. But I bet you’d be fuckin’ worthless for selling.’
‘Fuck you,’ Moss choked.
‘Ha.’
Logan let go of his hair and grasped the bolt in Moss’s chest.
Moss’s eyes widened, the blooming pain turning to raw torture as Logan pulled the evil spike out of him. Moss collapsed on the ground, spilling blood into the earth.
Can I die? he wondered vaguely. He’d been starved, and beaten until all his bones were broken, and even drowned once. But being shot in the heart was new to him.
Logan reset the bloodied bolt in the crossbow and pointed it at Moss again. ‘Get up.’
Moss’s body struggled to comply. It was so weak. His vision was blurring.
But there was movement from the truck. Logan was too focused on Moss to notice the shape rising behind him: the wrathful mountain of muscle and fur of the Wulver, and his open maw of fangs that glinted in the sunlight.
Arran lunged, but it was a stumbling dive. His legs seemed to give way and his jaws closed on Logan’s arm on the way down. Logan yelled as he was pulled to the ground with the wolfman on top of him. The crossbow skittered across the dirt where his bitten arm had thrown it.
Arran seemed too weak to grapple Logan properly. His jaws snapped ineffectively, easily knocked aside by Logan’s flailing fist. Arran’s weight more than anything seemed to be keeping the bastard down.
Logan turned desperate eyes to Moss. ‘Get the crossbow!’ he roared, spitting gravel from his teeth. ‘ Shoot him! ’
Moss’s heavy limbs wrenched into action. He couldn’t feel his fingers, but they closed over the crossbow anyway.
Arran’s gaze locked on Moss. Watched him helplessly pick up the weapon.
‘Move!’ Moss cried out to him. His body shook as he tried to fight off the command. ‘I have to, I have to!’
Arran went still over Logan. A perfect target.
‘ No, no, no, no! ’ Moss screamed even as his hands raised the crossbow—and fired.
Arran plunged a claw down as though catching a fish, and came up with Logan’s head in it.
The crossbow bolt thumped into Logan’s face with a sickening, wet sound. Blood spilled from his eye socket where the bolt jutted out. Logan’s mouth gaped and gulped like a goldfish for two long seconds, then fell still. A limp, grotesque mask on a lifeless body.
Arran dropped it and rolled off him. He crawled toward Moss, and it was obvious he was in agony. ‘Moss…’
Moss opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Something was wrong with his throat. With his body.
Looking down with bleary eyes, he saw the rope tattoos glow pinkish-purple on his arms. They lifted away, extending from his skin like a 3D mirage. The rope shattered, scattering transparent fibres in the air.
Freedom.
His eyes found Arran’s. The Wulver watched Moss smile and stand.
Moss opened his arms and spread his roots, declaring his truth to the earth.
I Am This One.
I Am Formidable.