Page 75 of Triumph of the Wolf
My gut twisted—I hadn’t wanted to cause anyone’s death—but I forced myself to keep fighting. My other enemy remained on his feet, his rifle still in his hands. Again, he pointed it toward me.
Sword leading, I lunged in and stabbed him. He jerked his arm across to block me, and I struck his biceps instead of his chest. Even so, he cried out and dropped the gun.
I stepped back, thinking of ordering them to surrender, but what the hell would I do with prisoners? I hadn’t brought rope to tie people up.
Thinking of Bolin’s entangling magic, I opened my mouth to call to him to come back, but my foe wasn’t ready to give up. Even as his ally groaned and flopped onto his side, blood puddling underneath him, the remaining man bent, reaching for his gun. I stepped on it so he couldn’t pick it up and kicked him again.
“Surrender, you bastard,” I ordered as he reeled back.
He slipped in the puddle of blood, pitched against one of the vats, and went down. A huge drop of a glowing blue liquid dripped off it and plopped onto him. Screaming, he rolled away from the vat. But more blue liquid spattered onto the cement floor and droplets struck him.
The sizzle of burning clothes and flesh invaded my nostrils, and I backed away, realizing one of the bullets had pierced a vat. The others had clanged off the sturdy material, but that one must have landed just right.
The man rolled about, swatting at his wounds and shrieking in utter pain. His ally had stopped moving and might already be dead.
I grabbed the rifle that hadn’t been damaged and backed farther away, feeling far more horror than triumph.
These people brought it upon themselves, I told myself. They’d attackedme. Working for Abrams, they’d been attacking both Duncan and me for weeks.
That didn’t keep me from hurrying around the corner, away from the screams of the dying man.
Back in the dark aisle that followed the wall, I wiped sweat from my brow. Bolin hadn’t waited for me while I’d battled the men, and I cursed. He couldn’t have failed tonoticethat gunshots were going off—and screams.
“The boy is obsessed,” I grumbled, hurrying deeper into the building.
It was possible he’d heard something to suggest that Jasmine was in trouble. Abrams might use her as a hostage if necessary. Maybe that was the reason he’d kidnapped her in the first place.
“Who knows,” I muttered, wincing at another scream, weaker this time. That guy didn’t have much life left in him.
Whatever that blue gunk had been, it might have been worse—moredeadly—than magical bullets.
I eyed the rifle in my grip, thinking of tossing it into a vat, but if I spotted Abrams across the building on a catwalk, it might come in handy.
Since I couldn’t sense Bolin’s aura, not with so many other magical items drowning everything out, I could only head deeper into the potion factory. Soon, ceiling-high stacks of crates and more white plastic barrels blocked the route I’d been following along the wall. I debated attempting to climb a support post up to the catwalk, as Duncan had done, but tried backing up to a perpendicular aisle instead.
It led me into the interior of the building, then turned to angle around giant metal mixing machinery. Sweat dripped down my face, the heat more intense farther from the walls.
Feeling overwhelmed by all the magic and the steamy air filled with chemical scents, my senses weren’t at their sharpest. I jumped in surprise when I rounded a vat and stepped into an open area with two large cages on the floor surrounded by cabinets and counters littered with machinery and equipment.
One cage was empty, the gate ajar, but the other was not. A female wolf that I recognized—Izzy—lay tethered inside,chained to the bars so that she could barely move. Was some magic keeping her from shifting back into her human form? She lay on her belly, head between her forelimbs, eyes closed. Unconscious? Dead?
No, not dead. As I crept closer, I sensed her aura.
An IV ran from one of her limbs to a machine with a slight magical signature. My first thought was that Izzy was being drugged, but there was blood in the clear tubing. Maybe hers. A sample for Abrams’s experiments? In his journal, he’d implied that he’d given up on needing werewolf blood, but with a ready supply available, maybe he’d decided to put it to use.
Broken tubing dangled in the empty cage as well, a few spatters of blood on the bottom. It was still damp. Jasmine must have been inside it recently. Bite marks on the mangled lock suggested she’d also been in her wolf form when she’d found a way to escape.
“Probably sensed Bolin coming and was moved by her love for him,” I whispered. “Or her desirenotto need rescuing.”
The latter seemed more likely.
WherewasBolin, anyway? Guided by the Elixir of Locus, he should have found Jasmine before I had. Maybehe’dbeen the one to let her go? And then they’d gone…
“Where?” I looked all around and also up at the catwalks but didn’t see anyone, neither enemy nor ally.
Izzy lifted her head, opening her eyes and looking at me. They were glassy—maybe shewasdrugged—but her lips parted, revealing her fangs. She recognized me… and still adored me.
It crossed my mind to leave her in the cage and stuck in another realm where she couldn’t pester me further in the future, but she had a daughter. Besides, no werewolf deserved to be chained and experimented on.
