We stopped within kicking distance of St. Martin.
“I fear for my son.” Axlam’s wolf manifested in front of the altar and directly over St. Martin as a sleek midnight-black beast. Violets and blues danced along her coat, and reds and oranges through her snarling teeth.
I’d never seen the wolf this real without a turning, yet she sniffed at St. Martin, a ten-foot-tall at the shoulders bundle of the raw rage of nature.
Dagrun and St. Martin gasped awake at exactly the same time. But Dagrun, unlike the insect with the broken leg, was our Warrior Queen.
She had one foot on St. Martin’s shoulder and a hand on his forehead before he finished sucking in his breath.
He shrieked. She moved her hand so it covered his mouth, but not his nose, and looked up at Axlam’s wolf. “My friend,” she said. “What do you need?”
The wolf sniffed her face, and magic moved between them.
“Yes,” Dagrun said. “I understand.”
“Your protocols be damned, Dagrun. You need to help Ed and his family,” Axlam said. “He is the town monster slayer. He is not a mundane who will hurt you.”
She was talking as if she wasn’t going to make it out of this alive.
Dag pinched her lips.
“I will get you to the pack,” I said. “I promise.”
Axlam touched my chest. “Thank you.”
A new bolt of amber magic blasted from St. Martin’s eyes, ears, and mouth. It coiled out of his nose. And it pushed Dagrun away.
He rolled onto his side. “Look at the puppy!” He wheezed. “You open my magicks, and she’s going to rampage, aren’t you, darling? Your mate is frantic out there in the snow, isn’t he? You exit my trap and all that dark wolf power is going to do exactly what my genie said it would! You’ll kill an elf or two. Maybe go into town and kill that annoying sheriff. You’ll do exactly what—”
Dagrun slammed a hand over his mouth again, and lifted her free hand. Her fingers moved, and a sigil formed. “Frank,” she said. “You two need to leave now, while I can manipulate the magic.”
She wasn’t coming.
Dagrun moved so that she straddled St. Martin’s chest. “I can’t open the dome, but I can force it to allow you to leave. Do you understand?”
Axlam touched my arm. “We will still be inside, but not at this location.”
Dag nodded. “Get her to the pack, Frank. Find my husband. The shell must be ripped open.”
“What about you?” I asked.
Dag pressed down on St. Martin’s face. “I am sorry, Axlam. I’m sorry I allowed this to happen. I’m sorry this magic hid its true nature.”
Axlam closed her eyes. “Can you get Frank outside the magic?”
Dag shook her head. “No.”
“Frank.” Axlam gripped my hand. “You are inside the shell with me. When I change, you won’t be able to get away. Don’t let me hurt you.”
I wouldn’t hurt her. Not to save myself.
Axlam wiped at her eye. “Damn it, Frank.” She gave me a quick side-hug.
“You need to be Axlam’s elf until you find the pack,” Dag said. “Talk to her. Keep her awake, do you understand? Her wolf will overwhelm everything we’ve done to hold it off. You must keep her awake so she turns and not the rage.”
“I will,” I said to Dag, then to Axlam, “I will.”
She nodded.
“Go,” Dag said, and flashed her sigil against the side of my head.
The piercing white-hot agony between my tattoo’s branches returned. It lifted off my skin as if drawn into the ice and snow of the blizzard and floated for a moment above St. Martin as a negative space relief of the magic that, right now, mitigated the worst of his amber shell.
He stopped struggling.
Axlam’s wolf pushed her snout into his face. “You came here because you wanted to see yourself as the tamer of the Wolf. That’s why you keep on about civility and management,” Axlam’s beast said-growled. “You want me on the ground begging. You want me to relive your father’s death to show your dominance because you’re perpetually terrified of your own shadow. You’re just another weak, twisted mind doing someone else’s evil.”
He yelled once again against Dagrun’s hand.
“You will never understand how pathetic you are.”
“Frank!” Dagrun said. “Remember! Keep her awake.” Then the Queen of the Elves hit the dome with the fragmented relief of my scalp’s Yggdrasil.
Chapter 25
Cold wind raked across my face. Ice stuck in my ears, and snow to my eyelashes. The blizzard hid everything—trees, the ground, the sky—behind a veil of gunmetal gray.
“Axlam,” I shouted. She had been right next to me. Dagrun and St. Martin had been in front of us no more than five feet away.
But I could barely see my own hand in front of my face.
“Dagrun!” I stumbled forward—and into Axlam. She was on the ground, on all fours. She panted and growled, and couldn’t be more than minutes from turning.
“I’ll get you to the pack. I’ll get you to Arne. He’ll get the silver out of your arm. You’ll be okay.”
The wound wasn’t tied. She still wore her scarf and her hands were bare again and showing signs of turning into claws.
She was also located where, when we were inside the dome, her wolf had been standing over St. Martin. But he wasn’t here, and neither was Dagrun.
“Axlam,” I touched her back. “Stand up. Please. Dag wanted me to get you to the pack.”
She sat back on her heels. “Mate,” she snarled.
Her eyes were fully wolf-like, and a hint of a muzzle pushed out around her nose and mouth.
Axlam howled, and the wind howled right along with her. A gust hit us, but her howl didn’t travel with it. It reverberated inside the shell we still carried.
I sucked in my breath as the vibration set my teeth on edge.
Axlam yipped and covered her ears. “Hold it hold it hold it,” she said.
I only wore my jacket. No gloves, no hat. I’d be fine, but Axlam in her human form would not. “Can
