Page 24 of Warmongers and Wands
“I already told that werewolf that I’d been here for two hundred years, that I couldn’t leave this area,” I mused. “So even if they don’t know you’re hurt, they’ll know you’ll stick close to me, and there’s nowhere I can go outside this circle.”
“So, we need to be prepared for a dozen wolves in the dark of the night.” She stirred as though she was going to get up, then slumped back with a gasp. “Correction, you need to be prepared. I don’t think there’s much I can do right now to help you.”
I was a demon—a war demon. I didn’t need a witch’s help to fend off even an army of werewolves. I could handle them, not just by fighting them, but by turning them against each other. They had internal strife? A faction that had split and was warring against them?
Good. That was totally my jam, as they said in the Tiger Beat magazines. Let them come. Let them cross into my circle. I’d have them killing each other before they got within a hundred feet of the cabin. I wouldn’t even need to lift a finger.
But that wasn’t something Bronwyn needed to know. At least not now. She’d been nervous about my being a war demon—scared even. Let her see the dark side of me later, when she might be more willing to accept and even understand it.
“I’ll stand guard while you sleep. Diebin will ensure you awaken if you need to defend yourself. And you have the frying pan.”
She began to laugh. “Uh, yeah. The frying pan. I lied, Hadur. I couldn’t do anything to that pan besides the pretty blue lights. By the time I’d gotten out of the bed and managed to get the sheet around me, I was so exhausted and in pain that I couldn’t enchant my way out of a paper bag. The only thing I could have done with that frying pan was whack Stanley over the head with it. And I would have had to hobble my way over to him with a broken leg first.”
I scooted the pan over near her hand. “Well, just in case. Here’s your weapon.”
She wouldn’t need it. I’d take care of the army of werewolves before they were more than ten feet inside my circle. But I knew she’d feel better if she had some weapon at hand.
“Maybe in the morning I can enchant a few things.” She ran a finger around the edge of the frying pan. “This. My nippers. If I’m strong enough, then maybe a fork or two.”
“I’ll give you my power,” I promised. “You’ll still need to be careful about physical exhaustion, and I can’t do much about any pain, but I can help with your magic.”
“Thanks.” She reached up and ran her fingers through my beard, tugging me closer. “I’m pretty good at enchanting things. Mostly metal objects, but if I’m really motivated, then I can do other things as well.”
“Like the towel?”
She blinked. “Towel?”
“You told the werewolf that you’d done the same enchantment on the pan as you had on somebody named Pete’s towel. What does the towel do?”
She grinned. “You don’t want to know. Just suffice it to say that you should fear the towel.”
Fear the towel. This witch was so very strange—and I was absolutely falling in love with her.
