She snarled again, and shook her head. “Where… cub?”
“I don’t know.” St. Martin hadn’t taken the kids. That was clear. And he had no knowledge of his boss taking them, either.
But the “genie” could have still taken Jax and the girls.
I swung Axlam up into my arms. “Can you get a scent through the shell? Do you smell Dagrun? The pack?”
She stiffened as if holding her wolf back hurt worse than the gunshot wound. I had no doubt that it did. “Dag is…” she growled. “I will… hurt you… if change…”
“Then hold it,” I said. “Which way should I go to get you to the pack?”
Dagrun could take care of herself. Axlam needed to be my main worry at the moment.
She pressed her bleeding arm against my chest. “My… brother… by another… messed up… father…” she said.
It must be bad if she was making jokes. “Which way, Alpha of the Alfheim Pack?”
She sniffed. “West.”
The storm swirled around us. My face had already lost most of my heat, and the cold bit into my ears and cheeks. Snow hit my eyes and I couldn’t make out any landmarks. “Which way is west?”
She weakly pointed over my shoulder.
“How long can you hold the turn?” I doubted I could carry a changing werewolf, and if I set her down, she’d bolt into the trees wild on rage, Samhain, and silver poisoning.
She coughed.
“Talk to me.” I stumbled through the snow. “Maybe we should sing a song.”
Axlam coughed again. “Tell me… about… your seer.”
She remembered Ellie? “Her name is Ellie Jones,” I said. “I don’t remember much more than that. She has a friend in Tokyo. Her name is Chihiro. The two kitsune in Vegas connected us. I’ve been able to track what I can because of Chihiro.”
I’d made a deal with those two kitsune.
Axlam sniffed. “You… love her.”
“Is it that obvious?” I almost tripped over a log, but I got us through.
“Samhain loosens…” She cough-growled again, and shivered in my arms.
“If you turn, promise me you won’t get mad if I sit on you.” Maybe she’d hold onto her humanity long enough to not rip up the world—and me.
Axlam cough-chuckled. “There’s a song…” she said, “… Thirty-eight Special…. ‘Hold on Loosely’… Gerard loves that song…”
And here I never took Gerard as an eighties-arena-rock kind of guy.
“We were in the car… on the way back from Fargo… college… came on radio….” She stiffened and growled again. “He sang along with the… radio…”
Was I just treated to the Alfheim Pack’s alpha mate meet-cute story? But it made sense. Axlam wanted to hold onto her joy.
Her shivers picked up speed and intensity. “Come to our house… I will teach you to make… sambusas.”
“Sambusas?” I asked.
“Better than… lefse.”
“Oh, now, them’s fightin’ words.” I swung her between two trees. “Maybe we should yell that into the storm. Nothing brings elves faster than disrespecting their favorite potato-based food.”
She coughed.
I took us around a big tree. One I thought I recognized. “Axlam? I think we’re near my lake.” The snow grayed out everything, and without the moon visible, the world was shadows and ice.
“If I change now… I’ll kill you…”
The blizzard howled. How were the wolves and the elves running in this? “No, you will not. I’m already dead, remember?”
Axlam snarled.
Her hand on my shoulder elongated. She dug her nails into my shoulder.
I stopped running. The snow caked the side of my face, and coated Axlam’s jacket and scarf. We were unintentionally camouflaged into the raging ice around us.
“Axlam?”
She spasmed. Her back arched. The moon, behind the ceiling of gusts and gray, must have been fully out.
Whatever the deal was—whatever she’d sacrificed to get the few minutes we had away from the dome running toward the lake—popped like a balloon. I did not see it leave her body, but I felt it fly as if the storm was lifting a bird into its toothsome jaw.
I had no idea how to help. She would get away from me sooner or later—no matter how strong and fast I might be, she was a werewolf and capable of inflicting enough damage to take me down.
I hadn’t been fast enough. I hadn’t gotten her up the hill and to the lake, where the pack would find her. I’d let her down.
I set her on a log. “What should I do?” Should I help with her clothes? But the boots and the pants and the coat might slow her down enough that I could restrain her until the pack arrived.
Her hands and face elongated, and she rolled onto all fours.
I stepped back. There wasn’t any more I could do. “I’m so sorry.” Would she burn out the silver fast enough to come back to herself?
Axlam lifted her face to the storm above and howled. The magic reverberated again, and we both cringed. But the cry erupted from her throat with such force it pierced the snow. It pierced the wind and the ice. It rose above.
And there, off to the south, a faint answer.
I dropped to my knees. “Someone heard your howl. They’re coming.”
Ice coated my head and face. Snow collected in the folds of Axlam’s scarf. But the wind carried her howls.
Axlam reared up onto her legs. “Jaxssssoooonnn!” she howled.
The kids…. They’d vanished. We’d felt St. Martin’s approach and the girls had… I couldn’t remember. They’d been next to the gate telling us about the spell Akeyla had set over my dog’s water, and then they’d disappeared.
My axe called from somewhere nearby.
“Sal!” I yelled. “We’re over here!”
Chapter 26
Jaxson found us first. He burst through the gloom in full wolf form, a violet-black bundle of magic trailing waves and waves of frantic energy. He ran right by me and to his mother’s side.
Sal called out to me again.
“Over here!” I yelled.
Out in the snow, no more than twenty feet away, the magic of her blade lit up like a beacon.
“Hold on, Axlam,” I said.
“Uncle Frank!” Akeyla yelled. She burst through
