She leaned down again, and Susan shrieked as an eel suddenly erupted out of the woman’s hand, its sharp teeth flashing as it bit through the cord around Susan’s wrists and then her ankles, before twisting back inside the woman again, to vanish into the apparently empty crystal waters of her body.
“Ugh,” said Susan, with a shudder. She tried to get up, but her legs were cramped and so stiff she had to crouch on all fours, sobbing with the pain.
The woman reached for her again, and Susan flinched. But no eels emerged from her hands, which she ran lightly over Susan, not quite touching. A faint mist fell from her fingers to speckle on boiler suit and skin. With the mist, Susan felt a cool touch, not cold like ice, more like a mother’s hand on a fevered brow. Her legs unknotted, her back stopped aching, her hands moved without pain.
Susan stood up, and instinctively bowed.
“Thank you, um,” she said. “What . . . who . . . what should I call you?”
“Long ago mortals called my waters Morcenna’s Well,” said the woman, bowing back. “Morcenna is as good a name as any. Will you remove the sword now? The star-iron is in the she-wolf’s blood; every passing moment poisons her more.”
“Yes,” said Susan. She walked to stand in front of the wolf, quailing inside at the immensity of the monster, and particularly those jaws, those teeth. She hadn’t seen the she-wolf clearly before, in the dark of the Milner Square back garden.
She addressed the wolf directly, speaking loud and clear.
“If I take out the sword, will you let me be?”
The wolf slowly shook her head. Her eyes were growing dull, and there was a yellow cast about her gums, and froth upon her tongue.
“She must obey the one who bound her to their will,” said Morcenna behind her. “Will you take the sword or not?”
Susan nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She swallowed, and walked along the side of the wolf, trying to think. The sword was deeply embedded. It would be hard to pull out. But if she immediately ran for the tree line . . . she looked over at the thickest area, where the oaks gathered close. If she could get in there, the wolf might find it hard to winkle her out, she could hack at its nose . . . though it seemed to have no problem passing through dense woodland—
“Every moment the sword poisons her,” said Morcenna.
Susan took a deep breath, grabbed the sword with both hands, and pulled as hard as she could. But there was no resistance at all; the sword came out as if it had been in a well-oiled scabbard. Susan careered backwards, tripped over one of the encircling stones, dropped the sword, and fell into the well, plunging completely underwater before her panicked strokes brought her back up again.
“Damn it!” exclaimed Vivien. “The wolf’s left the motorway. Stop!”
Merlin pulled the cab off onto the hard shoulder, adjacent to a field of new-mown hay. The sun was rising, and the traffic was increasing, though there was a lot more heading south than north, over on the other side of the motorway.
“They’re west of here, and close,” said Vivien. “And the Fenris is much slower now. Your sword must be taking a toll. I’m going to have a look where it went into the field—I think it’s only fifty or sixty yards back.”
“Make it quick,” said Merlin. “We shouldn’t be stopping here. I don’t want to attract attention. From anyone.”
He got out and opened the bonnet of the cab, to make it look as if it had broken down, on the principle of giving people an obvious reason for something so they looked no deeper. Vivien climbed over the fence and went into the field. Though it had been recently cut, and there was little more than stubble between the rolls of hay, it was fairly obvious where the wolf had gone. Though by its nature it did not leave enormous paw prints, it did cause mysterious scuff marks that would be very confusing to any normal person. If the creature had laid down for a while, and the clover was high, it would have made a crop circle.
Vivien followed the tracks through the field for about a hundred yards, looking at the distance between prints. There were bloodstains, too, though they were not visible to any normal mortal’s eyes, and were not as frequent nor as large as Vivien hoped.
She turned to go back to the cab as a police Rover 3500 drew up on the hard shoulder about twenty yards behind it, with blue light flashing, but no siren. The doors on either side opened and the police got out but did not move beyond the doors.
Merlin was standing in front of the cab, leaning into the engine bay. He didn’t step out to greet the police officers but instead knelt down, and Vivien saw him pull out the little Beretta he had in his ankle holster.
Vivien looked back at the police officers, who had drawn revolvers and were aiming over the top of their splayed-open doors. She started to run, drawing in an enormous breath as she did so.
The softer bang of the .25 Beretta came a fraction of a second after the crack of the police officers’ Smith & Wesson .38 revolvers.
Chapter Sixteen
moonlight on rushes and still water
the quiet of the night
yet if you listen
very carefully
you might hear it
crawling closer
and closer
clos—
MERLIN FIRED TWICE FROM THE LEFT FRONT OF THE CAB, DUCKED across to the right, and fired twice more. Glass shattered as the police officers’ bullets blew out the back window of the cab and starred the windscreen, but didn’t go anywhere close to Merlin.
After these initial shots, there were no more.
Merlin dropped prone and crawled along the side
