It was fabulous and rare—and Asil was going to kill it because there was nothing else to be done. A wyrm was not a dragon, intelligent enough to conceal itself from modern civilization. Asil didn’t know what one was doing in North America—wyrms were eastern European mostly. Sometimes they popped up in Eurasia.
He’d never heard of one in North America.
It raised its head and chittered at him, flattening its neck in a threat display like a huge cobra. The fluttering scales caught the dim light of the lantern in a motion that, for a moment, reminded Asil of butterfly wings.
The old beast inside his heart rose, called by old memories and the lingering stench of black magic. Asil fought it down for a moment—then considered the situation.
The boy and his unconscious mother were innocents, even by the beast’s standards. Asil raised his sword, and gave himself to the wolf.
He didn’t shift; the wolf could use their human form as well as Asil could pilot the canid one. They were both very skilled with a sword. There was a moment when Asil felt the wolf’s fierce joy at being let out of the cage of Asil’s will, then he was lost in the maelstrom that was his wolf.
He came back to himself in the darkness of the wyrm’s hoard, kneeling on the body of the creature. Both his ears and his eyes told him it was very, very dead. The wolf could be a messy killer.
With a satisfied grunt, Asil pulled his sword free, cleaned it on a piece of relatively clean cloth from the hoard, then checked on Joshua and Helen.
The boy was standing over his unconscious mother,shotgun at the ready. He looked a little pale, and when Asil approached, he flinched back. “Jeez, you’re fast,” he said.
Awe, thought Asil, with a touch of fear. Appropriate reactions to the sight of Asil in action.
“Yes,” he agreed mildly.
Joshua swallowed, squared his shoulders, and said, “I’m glad you were on my side.” He glanced at his weapon. “I couldn’t get a clear shot.”
“Just as well,” said Asil. “No one seems to have reacted to your first shot. If you’d kept going, someone would have called the police.”
“Tami is dead,” said Joshua. “Don’twehave to call the police?”
“I was just driving by,” Asil told the fireman. “I saw smoke. That boy—Joshua—he had his sisters out already. I just helped him find his mother.”
He wore a spare suit he kept in his SUV and had washed up in the only still-functional bathroom in the house. The smoke in the air would keep anyone who wasn’t a werewolf from smelling the scent of the wyrm’s blood, which still lingered on Asil’s skin and would for the next few days.
The blaze had been going well by the time the first responders showed up. They would find that the fire had started in the basement, the old electrical system having sparked something flammable—and every fireman understood that a hoarder’s home was a fire waiting to happen.
With all the occupants accounted for, no one would be looking for another person to be in the house anyway. Even if theylooked, they would not find a trace of Tami or the wyrm because wyrm flesh, enriched with magic, burned more than hot enough to turn itself and any evidence of its presence to ash. At most they would find a place where the fire had burned hotter than usual. A hoarder’s home was a good place to find things that burn hotter than usual.
As for Tami’s sudden disappearance—Asil would call upon the Marrok and they would smooth it over one way or the other—a new boyfriend, a new job, an unexpected opportunity. Asil was not worried about that part of it.
A black witch and a wyrm, both evil creatures, had been eliminated. A family—Asil looked over where Joshua and his sisters, all wrapped in blankets, were talking to the EMTs who were securing Helen to a stretcher—reunited.
That night, in his hotel room, Asil opened his laptop and sent an email.
Dear Concerned Friends,
There were no dead bodies left to find this time. I killed only the wyrm. Also, I do not feel that we have the same understanding about the meaning of the words “background check.”
Sincerely,
Asil
Asil’s FourthDate
Dating Terrors
December 6
Ruby woke up drenched in sweat, the essence of magic in her nose and mouth. She’d done it again, she thought in near despair. She’d been dreaming for the last month or more, and such dreams usually meant a change was coming. Changes, in her experience, were seldom good.
Sometimes her dreams were prophetic—which usually meant thataftersomething horrible happened she could figure out what the vague shadows and still pictures she’d gleaned from her night terrors had been trying to tell her. For the past few weeks, the only thing she could remember from her dreams was rich dark fur and golden eyes and a vague sense of unease.
