Page 73 of Triumph of the Wolf
“I’m afraid I only brought two though,” he said.
Bolin chopped his arm in an impatient motion. “I’m fine.”
He chucked his sphere toward the center of the intersection. The Orb of Entanglement landed between the bugs, steaming as it lost cohesion and spread into what I well knew was a sticky puddle.
Not waiting to see how the mechanical constructs reacted, Bolin ran toward the intersection. He skirted the puddle to go around a cement planter marking the corner.
The bugs hissed out purple vapor, a cloud forming in the air above them. Though we were outside, the breeze had died down, and the stuff lingered.
I tugged the mask over my head, tightened the straps, and strode forward with Duncan. A glance back made me jump. Our wolf friend had appeared on the path behind us.
Eyes intent, Lykos watched us for a moment before looking back the way he’d come. He lifted his snout and howled.
“You might have to confront him,” I said as Duncan and I ran around the corner after Bolin. My face was hot under the mask, the canister weighing down my jaw, but I trusted its filter would keep the air from poisoning us. Just in case, I held my breath.
“I’m going to confrontAbrams,” Duncan said, his voice muffled by his mask.
I didn’t know if we would be able to reach Abrams without facing off against Lykos and the men.
Ahead of us, Bolin ran toward the warehouse Duncan had seen. The size of a football stadium, it was larger than I’d imagined. Its outer walls were a combination of cement and corrugated metal, and it had a flat roof with not a single window visible. As Duncan had said, it would fit into an industrial setting more than here in the strange garden.
At least the way was clear, a brick walkway surrounding the building on all sides and keeping the vegetation away from the walls.
We caught up to Bolin at a pair of solid metal doors with a keypad next to them. He tapped buttons, trying to guess the combination.
“That’s not going to work.” Duncan grabbed one of the metal handles, planted a foot on the opposite door, and heaved.
Bolin snorted. “That won’t either. Maybe some vines could be summoned and coerced to slip underneath and open it from the other side.”
As Bolin eyed the narrow crack under the doors, Duncan heaved, his muscles straining under his shirt.
“You didn’t bring grenades this time?” I asked.
“OfcourseI did,my lady,” Duncan said, his voice tight as he pulled. Something snapped. A metal hinge or one of his joints? “But we’ll save them for thehardobstacles.”
“There!” someone yelled from the path behind us.
Two of the men ran into view, lifting their rifles. Magic pricked at my veins, the full moon offering its power, promising I could turn into a wolf easily here.
But, with another snap, Duncan tore open the door. A broken hinge clattered onto the brick walkway, and Bolin uttered a startled oath and scrambled aside. With the door in his hands, Duncan whirled and heaved it at the men.
They weren’t so startled that they didn’t shoot, but their bullets went astray. Several struck the door as it flew end over end toward them. Those bullets left silvery streaks in the air, promising what my senses had told me. Their magic made them a threat to werewolves.
We leaped into the dark building and put our backs to the wall inside. Footsteps pounded as the men in heavy boots ran in our direction.
“If someone hadn’t thrown the door away,” I said, lifting my sword, “we could have locked them out.”
“Tally ho!” Duncan called cheerfully as he leaned over and hurled something through the doorway. One of his grenades.
“Shit!” someone outside cried, the footfalls reversing direction.
Someone got off a shot, a bullet whizzing through the doorway and leaving a silver streak, but Duncan had already pulled back. The bullet clanged off one of many towering metal vats to either side of a walkway heading down the center of the building.
Outside, the grenade blew, a booming explosion in the previously still night. The cement floor under our feet reverberated, the walls trembling slightly, though they seemedsturdy and held. The whole building was sturdy. We didn’t hear so much as a clunk to indicate something had fallen off a shelf.
Not that I saw any shelves anywhere. Twice as tall as us, and much wider, the vats blocked the view of much of the building, with darkness adding to the obscurity. Not seeing any bugs inside, I pushed my mask up for a better view. Duncan’s already hung around his neck.
Inside, the air overwhelming with floral and chemical scents, the place reminded me a lot of the potion factory on the lavender farm where I’d first encountered Abrams. It was hotter, some of the open vats bubbling like molten ore, but the interior of the building had a similar look and maybe layout. In the dim lighting, that was hard to determine. The only illumination came from the glow of screens and panels on the sides of the vats. Just visible in the shadows of the high ceiling, metal catwalks ran along the walls and crisscrossed over the vats. Allowing access to the tops of them? A machine similar to a crane rose up from the center aisle—something that could lift giant barrels of chemicals to dump? Near the wall not far from us, plastic barrels were stacked, many of them emanating magic. A lot of the vats did too. More than one of those barrels glowed green even through its plastic sides.
