An altar grew at the front of the space, and like the door, the window behind it swirled with the icy pastels of the trapped blizzard.
The walls of the dome fluttered, and though they obscured the raging snow outside, they did not conceal, and pulsed with figures carved from the same wood as the benches: Odin. Frigg. Thor. Baldur. Freya. Frey. Heimdall. Loki. Hel. The church of Yggdrasil reached upward toward Asgard, and…
It reached outward to others. To spirits I did not recognize. Spirits of the land on which it stood. Other spirits that carried a sense of warm seas and sand, of trade and farming, of a rich world far from the Norse.
“Axlam?” I called. Was the Yggdrasil magic embedded in my scalp somehow connecting to an ancient heritage of East Africa?
She’d been hurt. Shot, just before the dome formed. She’d been standing right next to me. And Dagrun, she’d slammed her fist into St. Martin and he’d responded. He’d torqued her body.
Where were the women?
“Frank.”
Axlam was right there, right next to me, seated on the end of the closest pew. She stared at her blood-covered, now-gloved hands. The wound on her shoulder had soaked her bright blue jacket and added a sudden metallic acidity to the cold scent of the snow.
“Your jacket is ruined,” she said.
I also bled, and my blood had soaked the shoulder of my jacket more so than hers had her own. “I’ll be fine.” She was right on the edge of the pew, and like me, too close to the wall for comfort.
“Are you…” Her wolf was here, somewhere. It, like us, was trapped inside the dome, and even though it tethered to her body, it wasn’t here.
“I am taking… measures.” She scooted down the bench. “Sit, son of Victor.”
Once, not long after I moved to Alfheim, I’d asked Gerard about the change. A werewolf could hold it at bay in much the same way as a person could hold a noxious smell at bay by holding their breath.
It worked, but only for a moment.
And after a while, that breath needed taking. You’d either black out, and then there’d be none of your humanity when the change came, or you could just gulp in the air and deal with the bad fumes, and the breaking bones. With the ripped skin and the popped eyeballs. With the teeth and the claws.
Axlam must have found a way stay awake while jamming a breathing tube down her own throat.
I glanced around the church. “Where’s Dagrun? St. Martin?”
She pointed with her chin. “The altar.”
I looked again.
Ornately carved vines both coiled and grew around the living altar while also being of the main column of wood. Leaves that were green—yet also golden, orange, and red—grew, rustled, and fell. Rain touched the crown over the altar, as did wind and snow.
The unconscious St. Martin lay facedown on the snow-covered floor. He suffered at least two fractures to his right leg. Blood pooled under his mouth and nose. He breathed, if barely.
Dagrun, her back pressed against the altar, sat with her legs out and her arms at her sides. Her armor had vanished, and she wore only the jeans and t-shirt she’d been in at my house. Yet she showed no wounds, nor had her personal magicks been disrupted.
“She still glamours.” Axlam twisted enough to brush against my pocket. “Leave those plates here, Frank. Set them on the pew.”
“Plates? What plates?” I saw no food.
Axlam twisted her head as if listening to someone. “They’re in your pocket.”
I patted along my jacket, and sure enough, I carried two daguerreotype photographic plates. One was of St. Martin close up, and the other was St. Martin and the descending wolf maw. “I don’t remember finding these.” Perhaps they fell out of Rose’s notebook before we were attacked.
Axlam pinched her eyes closed. “My wolf makes a deal.”
A deal? “Axlam…”
She shook her head. “Please, Frank.”
“Okay.” I pulled both plates from my pocket and set them on the wood of the pew.
“Thank you,” Axlam said.
Something huge and wild brushed against my side. It pushed between us and the wall as it ran headlong into the dome between the altar and the front pew.
A howl erupted from the spirit. The dome vibrated, and for another split second, the reality of the blizzard reasserted itself. A bone-chilling gust hit my face. Shadows snapped down onto us. Axlam and I sat on the ground. Dagrun leaned against a tree with St. Martin at her feet.
Then it was gone, and we were back in Yggdrasil’s church.
“The moon calls,” Axlam said.
She should be changing. Dagrun should be at her side filtering the wolf’s rage and offering magical support.
But she was not. “Is this your deal?” I asked. “To hold off your wolf until it is safe for you to turn?”
She nodded.
“What did you trade? Besides the plates.”
“The same as you, son of Victor. A promise to help when the time comes.” She gripped her arm. “Do you know what the elves do, when we run?” she asked.
I didn’t go out. I wasn’t privy to the magic, but I did listen to what the elves said. “Hold the feral in check,” I said.
“They tell the other elves that it’s their guidance that keeps our feral side under control, but that’s not correct. They act as flashlights in the dark. They illuminate Alfheim so that we can clearly see our human lives.” Axlam pressed her hand over the wound on her arm. “The wolf, it can consume a person. It can eat the sun and the moon and it can leave you with nothing but an eternal blackness. Nights like tonight make the wolf stronger.”
Gerard and Remy once told me the same thing. That the elves illuminate the dark corners where the beast draws its power.
The power that brushed my side rammed the dome again. The magic rumbled, but held.
The power howled.
“Your wolf is trying to escape, isn’t
