As they ushered the three children through the narrow path down the hall, Asil considered the avalanche that had fallen to trap Joshua and his sisters. Keeping them here in thesame way the ocean of junk he’d just crawled over and through was being kept here.
He inhaled deeply. And this time, over the foul stench of the hoard occupying the creature’s den, he thought he caught its scent again.
Wyrm.
No mother appeared as they exited the house. Asil shut the back door and took them all to his car. As Joshua worked on how to make his sisters safe in a car without car seats, Asil held out his keys to Tami.
“Take them away,” he told her. “You can come back and pick me up later.”
“What are you going to do?” she said, not taking the keys. Then, dropping her voice to a whisper, she said urgently, “Their mother is broken, she’s not evil. Don’t do anything to hurt her.” Then, belatedly: “Please?”
Asil shook his head. “This is not a human thing,” he told her, waving his hands at the house. “I know you can’t smell it—especially given the odor of that house. But I would think that you could feel it.”
She frowned at him, then turned toward the house and lifted both of her hands. After a second, she took a step toward the house, and this time he felt her magic.
His wolf snarled, and he had to expend an effort to keep it from rolling over his skin and taking charge.
“What is that?” the witch—Tami—whispered.
“Wyrm,” he told her.
She turned a startled look on him. “A dragon?”
“There’s a lot of debate about that in some circles. But I haveseen both—and wyrms are very different creatures. Thankfully. I do not think even I would be equal to a true dragon.”
She stared at him a moment, then said, “I’ll leave that one. A wyrm, my mother told me, is driven by the need to surround itself with treasure. But unlike other…unlike dragons, it doesn’t gather its treasure by itself. It takes a human in thrall and uses them to gather it.”
She had it right, but she sounded tentative.
“Yes,” Asil agreed. “And a wyrm’s treasure is not what a dragon’s treasure is. Dragons surround themselves with metals and materials that can hold magic. Wyrms gather whatever catches their eye.”
“If it’s magic shit,” said Joshua, shutting the car door with his sisters inside, “we need to get Mama out of there.”
Asil looked at the boy. He was shivering in the night air even with his coat on.
“Magic?” said Tami, sounding surprised. It was the first lie Asil had heard from her—and it was a lie of tone, not substance.
“Street people know magic,” Joshua told her. “We—they all know that you work magic, Ms.Tami. It’s like a beacon of hope in the shelters. People get better when they shouldn’t. Bad people back down or go away—when they never would normally do that. Word out there—” He made a vague gesture. “People say, ‘Things will be okay, because we got Ms.Tami, our own witch.’ ”
Tami’s mouth fell open, but she didn’t say anything.
Joshua turned to Asil. “So are you a witch, too?”
Asil shook his head. “Werewolf.”
And despite the cold and fear, Joshua’s face lit up. “No shit? No shit? We got rescued by a werewolf? A real one?”
“A real one,” agreed Asil solemnly. “And I am going to rescue your mother, too. Tami will take you and your sisters to your home, and I will call her when I’m finished.”
And then there was a great round of protests.
If his wolf hadn’t been so eager for hunting the wyrm, Asil might have had serious issues keeping it from showing them who was in charge. Eventually it was decided that Joshua and the girls would wait in the car—a defeat Joshua agreed to only because someone needed to stay with the girls.
Asil would have made Tami stay in the car, too. But it turned out that she could be useful.
“I can break the enthrallment,” Tami told Asil. “A little spell my mother taught me.”
“Your mother taught you a spell to break a wyrm’s enthrallment?”
