Page 122 of Tethered Souls
“Shit.” I can’t call them while they’re in their shadows.
“Any wolves near us?” I ask.
“Nope.”
I pull out my phone and call Enoch with one hand. “Find Maddox and Khalid. Something’s wrong.”
“Where are they?”
I relay the information Leno gives me about where the van is – our brothers’ destination rather than their current location, which is changing fast.
Hanging up, I slip my phone back into my pocket. There is no point in Leno and I trying to join the fight. We can’t move fast enough to reach them before they’ve moved. The best thing we can do is Leno keeps an eye on them, giving us all intel, and I protect him if any wolves decide to come out this way.
Walking over to him, I pull out nine shield potions, then place them on the ground. Three potions on three sides of him, lined up in a row trailing away from Leno and spaced out a few feet apart. The closest one to my brother is about three feet away. I take up position on the fourth side, the one without any potions laid out, my sword ready.
“Talon and Rudy have engaged the wolves, but most are splitting off. Fuck.”
My body buzzes with the need to move. I want to be out there, helping them fight, but Leno is vulnerable while he’s like this. Krypto can’t kill a werewolf. He’s just a dog, and my brother can’t concentrate on multiple surroundings at once. He’s bouncing back and forth between our brothers, trying to keep an eye on everyone.
We tried comms at one point, but if anyone enters the Plane of Monsters, they become unusable even when they are back on Earth.
Krypto growls, and I dart my gaze to him as I inhale. His nose is a lot better than mine, so all I smell is the forest. But I can see the direction he’s facing. The fact both his ears are down means it’s a werewolf. Leno taught him to growl with his ears up if it’s a vampire. If it’s anything else, he wags his tail.
Slinking forward, his ears still low, Krypto steps on the potion furthest away from Leno in the set of three in front of him. He’s wearing shoes to protect him from the glass, and he’s been trained to hop back quick. A shimmering blue shield goes up, twelve feet by twelve feet. Nothing alive can get past it, and Krypto has been trained well not to touch it. He quickly runs around the other two sides, cracking open the furthest potions, surrounding Leno in a triangle.
Staying inside the shields too, he paws the ground three times. Three wolves.
“Antonio?” I ask as I pull out my gun with my free hand.
Leno takes half a second to connect to the plants around us, searching for the wolves his dog can smell. “No.”
“Then keep connected. I have this.”
A second later, a streak of red aims for me just as a dark-gray one rushes Leno from the other side. The wolf slows in front of the shield, then darts around it to join the red wolf I’m already engaged with. I slash my sword across the chest of Red, then spin and shoot Dark-Gray. Red howls as she jumps back. Dark-Gray stumbles to a knee, then gets back up. A white wolf tries attacking the shield – too young to know it’ll hurt like hel to touch. They howl. Red turns her head, and I lop half of it off with a slice of my sword. I line up my other hand with its chest, and fire the gun. As Red falls to the ground, the bullet having torn through her heart, I swing my gun to Dark-Gray.
The first swipe of her claws I catch on my sword, and the metal bites into her nails. She growls. My arm muscles bulge under the strength of her power, but the rings I’m wearing let me match her. I fire my gun into her chest before she can think to lean forward and bite my head off.
She barely flinches as the bullet enters her. I kick at her knee. She goes down, then rolls away before coming back, her teeth snapping for my neck as she lunges. I step to the side at the last second, and she flies past me and into the shield. She yelps as it burns her. She scrambles away as the white wolf rushes me.
A shot rings out. Dark-Gray howls, and then she turns to flee. Having no qualms shooting an opponent in the back, I line up the shot and take it.
Then I remember she would’ve died anyway due to the magic of the gun.
“Fuck,” I mutter. Khalid is going to be pissed I wasted so many shots on one wolf.
“What?” Leno asks, not connected to this area visually or magically, relying only on the updates I give him.
“Nothing. How is everyone?”
“Talon is hurt.”
My pulse spikes. “Badly?”
“Rudy is bringing him to us.”
Shit. So yes.
“What about Khalid?”
