Page 2 of The Wulver's Bond
Weed shot a sly smile at Logan, knowing it would infuriate him. Just occasionally, he was grateful for Elsie’s pragmatism.
Her gaze snapped to Weed and narrowed. ‘Have your plants told you anything of the Wulver?’
Weed shrugged languidly and waved at the barren, rolling landscape. ‘Look around. It’s grass for miles and miles. No deep tree roots to follow.’
‘Can’t you just ask thegrass?’ Logan muttered over his weak tea.
‘Grass is dumb as shit,’ Weed replied sweetly. ‘Almost as witless as you.’
Worth it,Weed reflected, after Logan had socked him in the jaw and given his stomach a vicious kick for good measure. He listened, curled up in a ball on the ground, while Elsie and Logan wrapped up in their sleeping gear around the dying fire.
He listened to the quiet hum of the grass beneath his head: gentle, stupid, and calming. Small flowers and a singular alder tree joined the choir further out as he stretched his awareness, travelling through tangled root systems deep beneath the soil.
Weed lifted his hand to brush the stony outcrop by his head, and his mind drifted into the moss there. Mosses, by contrast, were busy and hardy despite their soft appearance. They could survive nearly anywhere, in arctic tundra or scorching desert, in soaking wetland or on barren rock. Weed liked them. They reminded him of himself.
Hours passed and the sky grew dim, but not quite dark. Weed sank into sleep cocooned by the noises of the earth. He found peace in the rustle of undisturbed florae; truly wild on this island, free in a place where humans did not often tread.
So the padded footsteps, when they came, broke through the harmony like a crash of drums. Weed woke with a start, heart thumping as he homed in on the sound. There were sheep on the island, but these footsteps were lighter than a sheep’s—and yet, still animal. Grass blades crushed beneath soft paws instead of rubber soles. Slow, intentional. Like a predator stalking prey.
Weed crawled to Elsie first, shaking her awake. ‘The Wulver is coming,’ he hissed.
She was alert in seconds, cocking her crossbow. ‘Wake him.’ She jerked her head at Logan. ‘And have your roots ready.’
‘They won’t do much good out here,’ Weed muttered resentfully, but he poured his mind into the ground under his feet as ordered. He kicked Logan awake, delighting in a brief chance for violence seeing as Elsie hadn’t specifiedhowhe should wake Logan up.
Logan greeted him with a slew of curses, but sobered quickly when he understood the threat. Rummaging quickly in his gear he grabbed the large net he could swing in one hand and wielded a silver-tipped javelin in the other. From his belt hung all manner of knives and an extra quiver of silver darts for Elsie’s crossbow. The man looked prepared to take on an army.
Logan and Elsie took up positions on opposite sides of the outcrop, peering round at Weed’s instruction as to where he’d last heard the footsteps approaching. He couldn’t hear them any longer, which worried him. Had the Wulver stopped? Did he know they’d detected him?
The answer came swiftly and brutally.
A squall of fur and claws dropped down from the jutting stone overhead. It landed feet-first on Elsie’s back. She went down with a painful grunt, tried to twist to point her crossbow and instead had it ripped from her hands.
Weed had seen the Wulver before. Elsie had almost caught him once, when she’d gotten a lucky shot off and pierced his chest with a silver bolt. The beast had seemed weak then, taken by surprise in foreign surroundings and exhausted after days of fraught travel. The only reason Elsie hadn’t succeeded was because of a witch’s intervention.
There was no witch in sight now, but the Wulver seemed formidably stronger. Rested, on his home turf. He towered over Elsie, a seven-foot lupine giant glaring down with amber eyes and an open jaw full of pointed fangs.
This time, Weed realised, the Wulver had been huntingthem.
The beast broke Logan’s javelin as he charged, snapping it in half like a twig. Weed reacted as fast as he could: he spread his palms and summoned the nearby grass roots to rise out of the ground. They were white and reedy, coiling fast around the Wulver’s legs and snatching at his arms. The wolfman yankedout of their grip with ease. Weed sent more, seeking to slow him down while Logan rushed in again with his net swinging.
The Wulver sensed him and dodged the lunge. He tore out of another feeble onslaught of roots and grabbed Logan’s wrist. Weed heard the sickening crunch of bone shattering. Logan screamed, dropping the net to clutch at his mangled wrist.
Elsie was back on her feet, gripping three crossbow bolts between the fingers of one hand like a lethal knuckle-duster. She swung a punch at the Wulver, grazing his left arm. The wolfman countered with a deft twist, swiping hold of first one of Elsie’s arms and then the other, until he had her in a deathly-tight grip, hugging her body from behind. Her feet dangled several inches above the ground.
‘You have one chance,’ the Wulver growled at her throat. ‘Stop hunting me, and you shall live.’
He locked eyes with Weed, who froze momentarily. Swallowing back his panic, Weed sent another flurry of roots to clutch at the Wulver’s limbs. But the Wulver held fast, locking Elsie’s left arm by her side and lifting her right hand—still armed with bolts and now clenched inside the Wulver’s fist—directly under her chin. The pointed metal pressed deeply into her skin.
‘This is your only chance,’ the Wulver repeated. ‘It is your choice whether you leave this island alive.’
Weed caught Elsie’s eye, saw it flick downwards to her belt. A sheathed knife, inches from her trapped hand. He understood.
Weed sent a burst of roots into the Wulver’s face and bid them to erupt into flowers for a distraction. At the same time, a stealthy creeper shot to release Elsie’s knife. He flicked the handle into her palm. She gripped it. Twisted her wrist—and plunged the knife backwards.
The Wulver roared, convulsing as the blade sank in. But he didn’t let go.
He snarled into Elsie’s ear. ‘You have made your choice.’
