Page 31 of Wild Wolf

“One second, my old chum,” I said to Ethan then bowled my latest fire bomb after the woman, the little explosive bouncing at her heels then going bang with an explosion that made my ears ring. “Damn, I love that sound, the way it shakes and shudders my eardrum is a special kind of treat.” I stuck a finger in my ear and Ethan grabbed me by the shoulders, forcing me to look at him.

“Did you take these bombs from Rosalie?” he snarled.

“I didn’t not take them. But don’t worry, sugar, I left her something better in their place. She’ll thank me for it later. Now let’s get inside and blow this shit hole to kingdom bum.”

“Come,” he corrected me.

“Later baked potata, I can’t just go blowing my load right now, I’m saving it for the after party.” I skipped away from him, racing toward a doorway where a few guards were gathering their wits. They turned to us, magic crackling at their fingertips as they prepared to fight, but I’d already rolled one of my friends between their legs and as I pointed it out, their eyes bugged a second before they were blasted to hell. I raced inside while pieces of them rained down around me like dandelion seeds caught in a summer breeze.

“Where’s Hastings?” Ethan cursed, looking around for our little guard friend.

“Hiding under a table probably. Let him be. He’s just a babe. We’ll fetch him later,” I said and Ethan nodded, not wasting any more time as we forged on.

Magic blasted our way from the fleeing crowd in the entranceway and I wrapped a tight air shield around us, their strikes of air, water, fire and earth not nearly powerful enough to break through. Ethan started blasting Fae with water, sending them flying into walls and freezing them in place to clear our path.

I cast a fire-nado into existence, sending it out to sweep through the crowd and cause untold destruction. The Wolfy boy’s strikes were efficient and brutal where mine were wild and unpredictable, making us an unstoppable force united. I tossed a giggly bomb onto the stairway that people were fleeing up and the whole structure groaned as I blasted a hole in it.

“We have to get our goods,” a pretty boy with fluffy gold hair called to an older gentleman, grabbing his arm and towing him towards a concealed door. He shoved it open, revealing a set of steps heading underground and they slipped away down it like moles down a hole.

I caught Ethan’s arm as he stabbed an ugly man with an ice blade who had made a bid to kill him, tossing the body away and shaking my friend. “I am feeling very squid-like all of a sudden.”

“What?” he blurted, trying to turn from me to engage a group of Fae who were running at us with roars of anger and magic building in their palms. I tossed a blast of fire their way and their screams zig-zagged through the air while my eyes remained on Ethan’s shiny blues.

“I have an inkling, see?” I shoved him toward the open doorway. “Down there’s where they keep the good stuff, I reckon.” I tossed him through the door and cast an air shield behind us so no one could follow before sprinting down the stairs into the dark. And it was dark. As dark as an unwelcoming asscrack, but my inkles were growing and I knew we were going to find ourselves somewhere real interesting in a moment or three.

As we wound through tight corridors, a sound grew up ahead, a cacophony of sorts, birds and monkeys and shrieking animals I couldn’t put a name to. All kinds of wild things waiting for me to reach ‘em.

My heart pumped harder as I burst through a door, finding cage upon cage, stacked as high as high could go. There were rows of them, stretching away into the nevermore and I growled ferally as I took in the magical creatures contained within bars. I saw me in there. That crow-looking thing, I could see my own eyes in its eyes. Its struggle my struggle. I’d been right where he’d been. A crow-thing in a cage, all sad and yearning to be free. To do what crow-things did best and be crow-like.

“Fuck these fucking fucklings,” I hissed, aiming my ire at the people who had done this. Not my crow-thing. Or that horse-goat over there. Nor that group of three-legged celery-looking birds in that corner.

The snap of a lock made me turn and I found my Ethy-baby breaking open a cage with a wedge of ice in his hand.

“I knew I liked you for a reason, Wolf boy,” I purred. “You see in these creatures what I see. You’re just like that pygmy shrew-thing over there. You resemble him and he resembles you.”

Ethan’s gaze slid to the shrew in question. It had four bucked teeth protruding from its mouth and eyes that stared in different directions.

“You’re one and the same,” I whispered, then clapped his scowly face on the cheek and turned to start breaking open cages.

I broke my crow-thing free first and he squawked his thanks, flying up to land on my shoulder. I smiled my biggest smile at him. He had a beak that was brightest gold and his eyes were a dreamy pool of violet, but the rest of him was jet black, his feathers as smooth as silk.

“I love you, Crow-thing, I truly do.” I kissed him quick then turned to release his friends. My friends. Our friends. We were an army now. An angry army of animal-things with Ethan and I mere soldiers in their battalion.

“Rise!” I called as I cracked another cage open with air magic and released a bunch of mini-pony-cat-things. “Be free. And kill – kill your captors! Kill them all!”

Our system was efficient, the cages snapping open time and again until the corridor was alive with running creatures. I ran with them, skipping and spinning as I went, as majestic as the magical animals I danced with. We turned a corner and found a line of guards running our way, shouts of alarm escaping them as the hoard of animals galloped their way.

A group of winged monkey-things slammed into the first guard, shrieking and clawing at his face. The next was mowed down by a horned tiger-thing and the last met with my own fury, fire swirling away from me and consuming the woman’s head, eating her up until she was gone, gone, gone.

Ethan started cracking open more cages and I helped him, focusing on my air magic and sending it spiralling down the narrow corridor, ripping the doors clean off to free our new friends.

Crow-thing squawked on my shoulder and I squawked in response, following a line of rabbit-things towards the next turn. The corridor we stepped into was darker here, the cages bigger. Things leered out of them, big dangerous beasties with hungry eyes and sharp teeth.

“Not these,” Ethan said, catching my arm.

“Oh but these are the killers of the crop,” I purred. “They mirror our souls so very well. We can’t leave them here to rot.”

I paused before a bear-like creature with antlers and curved canines that hung from its mouth.

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