“Well, no,” she admitted. “But an enthrallment is an enthrallment. The one I know breaks the hold of a black witch—but my mother used it against a vampire…”
“Blackwood?” asked Asil. Blackwood had been eliminated, but he had ruled Spokane for a long time. Even other vampires had stayed away from him.
She nodded.
If her mother’s spell had worked on that old villain, it would probably work on a wyrm.
Asil was old and wyrms had once been more common than they were now. He hadn’t faced one in centuries, but he’d killed a few. He’d seen what happened to the people the wyrm held in thrall—presumably as this one held Joshua’s mother. Sometimes those people died with the wyrm. If Tami could breakthat bond before he killed the creature—maybe Joshua’s mother would live.
He’d agreed to bringing Tami with him.
He gave the car keys to Joshua. “Start the car and turn on the heat. If you get scared, drive to your home. Can you drive?”
Joshua nodded. “No license yet, but I know how.”
“Good. If you are scared, go home. We will find you there.”
“We’ll be here when you come back out,” Joshua said stoutly.
“You have sisters to protect,” Asil reminded him gently. The boy bit his lip and nodded.
“Okay. Yeah. Right.”
Asil looked at the house, assessing it as if it were an enemy. Behind him, he heard the car door open.
“Joshua,” he asked, “if this hoard had a heart, where would it be?”
The boy hesitated. “The basement.”
“And what,” asked Asil, “is the best way to get to the basement?”
As it turned out, there was an exterior entrance to the basement along the side of the house. Asil found a broken shovel leaning against the wall of the house next to an assortment of battered gardening tools and started to excavate the snow that had accumulated on top of the slanted doors.
“When this house was built,” Asil murmured, “this would have been where deliveries of ice and coal would have been made.”
“What about Helen?” Tami asked.
“Helen?” he asked absently. Doors cleared enough for his purpose, he set the shovel aside.
“Their mom.”
“What about her?” he asked. He grasped the chain that kept the doors shut and shook it, dislodging more snow and revealing the padlock.
“She isn’t going to be in the basement,” Tami said, a hint of exasperation in her voice. “Joshua said you can’t get into the basement anymore from the house. We need to get her out before you start killing mythological magical beasts.”
“She’ll come to us,” Asil told her. “It will call her as soon as it views us as a threat.”
“And will it view us as a threat?” Tami asked.
Asil bared his teeth in something like a smile. “I am always a threat.”
He wrenched the heavy chain apart, dropped it into the snow, and pulled the doors open. The inner stairs that should have eased their way were nothing but a pile of rubble on the basement floor. As he watched, they crumbled further in a drift of wyrm magic.
“It knows we’re after it,” Asil said.
The drop to the basement floor was about eight feet, which meant the basement was unusually deep. And dark. There used to be lights, Joshua had said, but he didn’t think they worked anymore.
Asil took the sturdy electric lantern he’d brought from his SUV and tossed it into the basement. After a few bounces and a short roll, it hit a structural post and came to rest on its side, illuminating a concrete-floored room.
