Page 72 of Relics of the Wolf

I might have been reassured, but then he glanced back through the open door. Movement on the wide stairs drew my eye too.

More of the hulking, magically enhanced men were striding up. They came in pairs, walking side by side, and there had to be twenty total. Some had guns while some were merely flexing their powerful arms. Jaws set and eyes determined, they all looked to be itching for a fight. Further, they wore camo flak vests as well as neck guards. To fend off wolf bites at their throats.

I slumped. Even with Duncan’s two grenades and our combined fighting power, we were in over our heads.

21

Radomir held up a finger,and the twenty armored men stopped in the hallway a few yards back from the door.

“Touch it now, and cooperate with me,” he told me, “and perhaps I’ll let your lover walk away.”

Abrams stirred, but he didn’t object. Maybe he’d long ago written Duncan off as lost.

“I understand he’s recalcitrant and unwilling to properly bend his knee to an employer,” Radomir added.

“Employer, right.” Duncan had shifted so that his back wasn’t to any of the security thugs, and he could monitor them while also watching me and the men behind the desk. He met my eyes briefly. His hand was still in his pocket.

The new arrivals hadn’t changed anything for him. He was still ready to fight.

I didn’t know ifIwas. This was starting to look suicidal. Unless one of these artifacts could do more than share a vision with me.

“All right,” I said, conceding but only to buy time to think. Reaching forward, I rested a finger on the wolf head in the center of the medallion.

It startled me by glowing much more strongly than it had in Mom’s cabin. Silver light bathed the faces of the older men and gleamed off the windows in the office. Either the medallion’s reaction to me was stronger because my potion had fully worn off now or… it knew I was in trouble.

I had no idea how to properly use an artifact or summon its magic, but I imagined it getting brighter and brighter, then lashing out with magic at the two men. They were the leaders here. If we took them down?—

The medalliondidintensify its glow, the silvery light growing so bright that I had to look away. Unfortunately, it didn’t hurl great beams of power at my enemies. Radomir grunted and reached over the artifacts, grabbing my wrist.

I reacted on instinct, lunging over the desk to punch him in the face. His nose splattered under my fist, and he released me as he cursed and reeled back.

Footsteps thundered in the hallway—the security men charging toward the office.

Duncan slammed the door shut. I almost laughed at the idea of that stopping the army, but then an explosion ripped from the hallway, the floor and walls shuddering all around me. Duncan had also thrown a grenade out there.

Screams of pain as well as curses sounded, and my stomach churned at the thought of men’s body parts being blown off. Something heavy flew across the office, clipping the back of my shoulder and almost knocking me to my knees. The door. The explosion had blown it from its hinges.

As if that weren’t enough, gunfire opened up. It came both from the hall and from within the office—the two security men inside with us.

At that point, surviving was all I could think about. I dropped to my hands and knees and scrambled behind the desk for cover, hardly caring that the two older men were probably already crouched back there.

Smoke filled the air, and wood snapped. Support beams giving way?

A roar sounded near the doorway. Duncan? It sounded like his voice, but it wasn’t human. And wolves didn’t roar. What the hell?

I lifted my head, surprised Radomir and Abrams weren’t beside me behind the desk, but they’d run toward the metal safe in the corner of the room. Yes, that would provide better protection than wooden furniture.

More gunshots and roars came from the doorway, along with the sounds of cracking wood. Maybe that had nothing to do with support beams. Maybe Duncan was ripping things to pieces.

He was farther from me than Radomir and Abrams, and the smoke made it hard to see him well, but he stood on two legs, not four, as he hurled things about. Maybe he hadn’t changed. Or maybe…

The realization struck me even before the smoke cleared enough to see him clearly. He’d become the in-between, the bipedfuris. He’d warned me that he could, but I hadn’t entirely processed that.

On two sturdy legs, he was covered in salt-and-pepper fur. It wasn’t as thick a pelt as when he became a wolf, but there was no mistaking that this was Duncan.

His muscled torso had broadened, his neck had thickened, his legs and arms had grown more powerful, and he was taller, his head higher than the doorway. His face had elongated to form a fanged snout, but it wasn’t as pronounced as a wolf’s snout. It was deadly, though, and his strong jaws snapped with the same strength as those of a wolf. Instead of paws, he had furry hands, but great sharp claws extended from his fingers, and he used them to rake at his foes, tearing into those flak vests as if they were T-shirts. He was terrifying.

But, since he was attacking our enemies, I didn’t worry too much about him. Oh, I didn’t want to risk running in front of him, but I understood that he was buying me the time I needed.

---