Page 76 of Curse of the Wolf
A longevity potion ought to keep someone from dying because of a curse, right?
“It doesn’t sound like he’s cracked the code yet. Even if he had, which of those hundreds of vials in the fridge would I quaff? I didn’t see labels.” Louder scratches near the plug in the wall made Duncan look in that direction. “It might also be difficultto reach those fridges at the moment. Due to the bug infestation this building is suffering from.”
I huffed a frustrated breath and started opening drawers and cabinets. There had to be an immediate answer toDuncan’sproblem here. If there wasn’t…
I shook my head, throat tight, well aware of how quickly he was deteriorating. We didn’t have time for Abrams to make a scientific breakthrough, damn it. We needed an answernow.
The door fell away with a clang, and bugs rushed inside, tinking, clinking, and oozing clouds of that vapor into the air. Shit.
“Time to go,” Duncan said.
He ran around the table but clipped his hip on the corner. That shouldn’t have fazed him, but he pitched forward, legs wobbly as several bugs sailed toward him, spewing vapor into the air more rapidly than before. It hazed the whole room.
My heart beat erratically, and numbness spread from my fingers into my arms and legs. Duncan covered his nose and mouth with his arm and kicked one of the approaching bugs. It flew into the wall but not before spitting an electrical charge into the air. It must have struck Duncan when he contacted it, because he stumbled back. More bugs swarmed closer.
Furious, I rushed to grab him. But with my legs growing more numb by the second, I almost fell too. Frustration and fear swept through my veins, and my skin pricked with hot magic. The power of the moon flowed into me, and all I managed to fling aside was my bag before fur started sprouting from my skin. I also thrust my grenade at Duncan before the wolf overtook me.
Dropping to all fours didn’t make the bugs any less daunting, not with those vapors flooding my nostrils and their red glowing eyes even closer to mine. Though the wolf magic didn’t eradicate the numbness creeping into my body, I sprang for the door,trying to scatter the mechanical obstacles as I rushed through them.
A memory percolated through my lupine thoughts. Duncan, the one I wished to be my mate, was ill and couldn’t change. I had to clear the way for him.
Electric shocks assaulted me whenever I touched one of the strange contraptions, but I accepted the pain, biting into the metal things and hurling them aside. I wanted to destroy them utterly, but their carapaces were strong, deterring even my magically enhanced jaws.
Some I batted with my paws, sending them skidding away, but I dared not delay long. Awareness that something in my blood was slowing me down, something that might knock me out or kill me, forced me toward the door. Instinct urged me to go as quickly as possible, to reach fresh, natural air.
But more bugs flooded in from the larger room outside of this one, piling atop each other and blocking the exit. Worse, the poison clouding the air grew thicker and thicker. I stumbled, almost pitching to my shoulder.
“Luna,” came a raspy voice from behind, followed by a thump. “This way.”
Duncan had grabbed my bag, slung it over his shoulder, and unplugged a hole in the wall. He waved for me to follow him, then crawled through.
Weren’t there more of those bugs in the other part of this cave? I thought so, but the air in here was so toxic, sweet and cloying and deadly. Perhaps it would be better over there. Even if it wasn’t, I had to go with Duncan.
He almost fell through to the other side. With more bugs piling through the doorway and surging toward me, the poisoned air crackling with electricity, I leaped through the hole. I landed beside Duncan. From one knee, he pointed past the laboratory counters and to the doorway. A handful of bugs wereinside with us, but most had gone into the other room. Others were… they were clumped together and appeared to be stuck to a dark cylinder on the floor, legs and carapaces caught by its pull. Itsmagneticpull. Duncan must have hurled one of his fishing tools ahead of him into the room.
“Hurry,” he said, then lifted a paw-sized oblong metal object. “I’ve got this for the others. I’ll follow right behind.”
What it was eluded my wolf brain, but Duncan was a strong bipedfuris when he wasn’t ill, and my instincts instructed me to follow his guidance. I ran out the doorway and toward the scent of pine trees and snow that wafted down from a stairwell. Escape lay in that direction.
Duncan stumbled after me, and I made myself slow, offering my back if he needed to rest a hand on it for support.
“That way.” He pointed at the stairs. “Go.”
The bugs in the room we’d left had realized we’d departed and were flowing out the doorway after us. Duncan pulled a slender piece out of the metal object, then rolled the device toward them. He turned to run toward the stairs, but his legs almost betrayed him. Again, he stumbled.
Despite his order, I drew close to him, again offering my back. This time, he rested his hand and some of his weight on me. Together we hurried toward the stairs.
We’d only made it up two steps when a great explosion ripped through the air behind us.
The stairs trembled, and the walls quaked. Duncan stumbled but grunted with determination and kept going, fingers digging into my fur as we climbed. He needed my support.
I gave it, but fear and instinct made me want to sprint up and outside, especially when the stairs continued quaking. Snaps and cracks came from the structure all around us. Worse, the memory of bars blocking the exit wafted through my mind. It wouldn’t be easy to escape out into the forest.
We climbed as fast as we could and had almost reached the level above, that which led to the outdoors, when something snapped right over our heads.
Before I knew what was happening, the roof of the cave gave way. As it collapsed, Duncan sprang atop me, protectively pushing his body over mine. I wanted to object, since he was far weaker than I in that moment, but great chunks of heavy gray rock pummeled us. Duncan covered my head as the cave roof collapsed atop us.
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