Page 77 of Curse of the Wolf
So much weightcrushed me that I struggled to move, even to breathe. Above me, Duncan groaned, his body pressed atop mine, his arms covering my head. To the sides, nothing but jagged rock poked into my flanks. The air still smelled sweet and foul, the taint of poison coating my mouth along with the dust from the fallen rubble.
As all the rock settled, it grew silent. Thetinksof those strange metal constructs had faded. I hoped they had been destroyed by this rockfall.
Duncan groaned again and shifted, trying to push away from me, to shove the rock off us. But his muscles shook and lacked the strength for the effort. Too much weight smothered us.
I was able to turn my head enough to lick his jaw, to let him know that I appreciated the effort.
“Oh, Luna,” he rasped. “I meant for you to get away. I was going to stay behind and make sure the bugs didn’t kill you. I didn’t mean—” Coughs broke up his words. “I didn’t mean for usbothto be trapped.”
I tried to shift, thinking I might have the strength to move the rocks, but that poison had sapped me of strength as well. More,it threatened to stop my heart. In the stillness under the rock pile, I could feel its beats, rapid and strained.
Somewhere in the distance, beyond the remaining walls of this structure, a faint rumble reached my ears. The noise from a human vehicle?
Duncan must have heard it because he growled. “I have one more grenade. If that’s Abrams or Radomir… maybe I can take them down with us. I’d rather you survive though. Damn it, Luna.” He snarled and heaved again, pouring the last of his energy into the effort.
A few clunks sounded. Rocks shifting and falling off our pile? I also tried to thrust upward.
As we combined forces, straining together, magic flared, startling a yip from me. It had been pitch dark under the rockfall, but a glow came from somewhere. Duncan’s chest. The medallion he wore.
It emanated powerful werewolf magic, and I remembered him using it in our last battle. Could it help us again now? Maybe it could fling the rocks aside.
The light and magic from the medallion flowed into Duncan. Some of it crept into me as well, and I felt it zinging through my veins. It rejuvenated me, and my paws tingled, almost hurting, as if they were waking up after falling asleep under my weight.
Duncan’s aura rippled. Was he shifting? When he’d said he couldn’t? The magic of the medallion had to be rejuvenating him too, giving him strength.
Something clunked softly onto the rubble next to me. One of the oblong objects? He’d released it. Alarm blasted through me. Would it cause another explosion?
No hint of tension tightened Duncan’s body. Instead, his power fluctuated, and he shifted, turning not into a wolf but the bipedfuris, his torso and limbs growing thick and strong with layers of muscle. This time, when he flexed and heaved, rockswent flying, clattering against whatever walls remained around us.
A hint of fresh air reached my nostrils. I gulped it in eagerly and also pushed, the weight lessening, thanks to Duncan’s efforts.
Rocks shifted away from me, and I sprang out of the rubble pile. I landed on all fours in a hallway, the floor cracked and buckled. The bipedfuris also sloughed off rubble and leaped out of the pile.
The explosive hadn’t detonated. He must simply have let go of it so that he could shift without losing it.
A clattering came from one end of the hallway, bars across a doorway rising. Numerous men stood on the other side, all pointing rifles in my direction.
Duncan grasped the oblong object. Claws scraping at it, he pulled a slender stick from it. As the men at the end of the hallway stepped into the building, rifles raised as they squinted into the gloom, he hurled the object toward them.
It clattered and bounced off the wall and floor, then skidded in their direction. They cursed and ran outside.
Duncan patted my back, then led me in the opposite direction, toward another door. Another way out, I hoped.
The poison lingered in my body, making my limbs leaden, but I kept pace with Duncan, even outpacing him, four legs always faster than two.
One of the mechanical bugs blocked the way. Alone, it did little to intimidate. I sprang upon it and bit down, accepting a jolt of electricity to my jaws, and flung it away. It crashed into a wall and did not pursue us.
We rushed into a cavernous room as an explosion ripped behind us. Someone cried out, but I believed the men had backed away soon enough to avoid being blown up. Too bad. They had been sent by our enemies, I had no doubt.
The bipedfuris raced toward a metal door, but bars had descended in front of it and remained down. He grasped them and attempted to break them. Though his muscles strained with great power, he hadn’t yet regained all of his strength. He snarled and heaved, but the bars remained in place.
Another wall held giant doors meant for human vehicles. Though such things mattered little to a wolf, I’d seen similar doors numerous times. I remembered that buttons could move them. Was one such button mounted on the wall by the door we’d just exited?
As I contemplated the spot, gunshots rang out from the far end of the hallway. Whatever damage the explosion had caused hadn’t been enough to stop those men, and they were charging into the building with their firearms.
I barked to alert Duncan to the button. With hands closer to what humans had than my paws, he could more easily press it. But his back was to me as he continued to try to rip away those bars.
Men ran down the hall, someone yelling, “Are you sure it’s safe?”
