They were both as tired as the horse and coated in cold wet mud, so I didn’t really have the right to insist. But Barb raised her chin. “I think we should try a little longer.”
Todd sighed, but when she shot him a look, he relented and nodded.
“Barb, stay at his head and talk to him,” I said. “Todd, can we get that rope up over that oak branch?”
He surveyed the tree with doubt. “Even if we could, how are we going to lift him?”
“He may not need much lifting. I may be enough.”
His eyebrows did a skeptical little dance, but he glanced at his wife, and his expression softened. He nodded and went to unfasten the rope from the tractor.
The line needed to be threaded in front of the horse’s hind legs, enabling me to put upward pressure on him while they pulled. They had set planks over the mud in their earlier efforts to get a rope behind his butt. Judging by how high the goo sat on the horse, it had to be four feet deep. Buster moved his head to watch me as I eased my way onto the planks, slippery with muck and inclined to dip and sway.
Bracing myself on the broad, shivering rump, I kneeled on the plank and searched for the rope that disappeared behind him. A good yank, and it snaked free from under his encrusted tail. With my chest leaning on Buster, I slid the end down the hind leg and into the muck. I pushed it beneath his belly before mincing my way on the planks around to the other side. Even with my face resting against his barrel just above the quagmire, I couldn’t quite reach under him, to where the rope waited.
Dammit. This has to work. I closed my eyes and concentrated, visualizing my fingers stretching to their utmost and adding claws to the mix for extra length. Long, long claws, to hook into the rope and pull it through.
A tremor ran through Buster, and he snorted as he sensed the wulf. I figured that any adrenaline at this point would be a good thing. My claws touched rope and by wiggling, I pulled it up in front of his hindquarters. The big muscles tightened beneath me.
“Talk to him, Barb. He wants to try, but he has to wait.”
She murmured to the horse, and after many years of trusting her, of knowing she always found a way through, he listened. The muscles didn’t relax, but they didn’t push, either.
Before I pulled the rope, I had to get my fingers back to normal, important if I didn’t want to scare the crap out of everyone. No, really, my hand has always had three-inch claws. By the time I tossed the rope to Todd, I was vet Liam, not wulf Liam.
I extricated myself carefully from the pit and pushed through scrub to join Todd under the trees. A few tosses and yanks later, we positioned the line over the big branch, a little ahead of Buster’s butt. Buster weighed about twelve hundred pounds, and at least half of that would be a dead lift, out of sucking mud. Not to mention the branch had to do its bit—and without a pulley, I would be yanking the rope over rough bark. Todd looked at me as I took up the slack, his expression riddled with doubt. I had to admit, it didn’t look promising.
But he couldn’t know I had extra help. I shoved my way through bushes until I positioned myself behind and to one side of the cellar, where the ground was higher, out of the mud.
“Go slow,” I said to Todd. To Barb, I added, “Back away, but keep your focus on him. Stay on the side opposite me, so he keeps straight if his hindquarter swings my way. He might thrash and accidentally nail you, and we don’t want his front end back in the mud. Use a light pressure on the lead rope to keep him straight, focus on his head, and keep talking.” She complied with renewed hope in her expression, her eyes fixed on the horse as she stepped to his other side, away from me.
Todd headed to his tractor. The bush beneath the big trees would disguise what I was about to do. I reached within myself and closed my eyes. Growing the claws had been easy, but I was about to try something much more difficult. Chris had warned me about the dangers—wulfleng that messed with partial modifications risked losing themselves, not able to return to human or go onward to wulf. But Buster needed me, and I couldn’t exactly do a full change to help him with the strength of my wulfy alter ego. And be damned if I would give up without trying. So I called upon my anger and visualized the muscles and tendons of my arms thickening and strengthening. Those of my wrists and fingers writhed beneath the skin, but Barb and Todd were too preoccupied to notice. My pectoral and shoulder muscles expanded, stretching the coveralls tight, my abdominals and laterals bulged, linking to my pelvis. I concentrated, altering the soft tissues down my thighs, knees, calves, and feet. Beneath my clothes, I sensed strength flow from my fingers and arms, through the core to my toes, forming a continuous line of reinforced muscle, bone, and sinew.
The tractor throttled up and moved.
I snarled at Buster, the sound disguised by the tractor’s roar, but the horse responded to the presence of a predator and surged forward with trembling muscles in one last, great effort, the forelegs scrabbling for purchase on the slippery ground as the ropes around his front end tightened.
Bracing myself, I heaved for all I was worth. I sensed the tremendous weight of him through the rope and dug my heels deep. My entire body took the strain, and I opened the floodgates on my anger, feeling my teeth break through my gums
