Free Entwined Enemies by Robin Briar Page B

nods. “He’s moving a little, but not much.”
    I guess a wolf of his power isn’t killed by dropping a house on him after all. He might be entombed down there, but that won’t last forever. Wolves are burrowing creatures, after all. Left alone long enough, Trent will dig his way out.
    Still, if we’re going to finish him off, we have to uncover him first. That will run the risk of setting him free. We need to be ready for that. Trent has already proven to be unnaturally fast.
    Candice is thinking along the same lines.
    “You two are going to need silver weapons. Silverware won’t be enough against him. I’ve got my silvered sword, but we should all be armed against him.”
    “What about the spikes that were used to crucify Mason? They should be buried around here somewhere. Let me get them.”
    “We don’t have the time,” Saffron says. “ Veniat ad Me, Argenti .”
    I recognize the Latin. Suddenly all the silver in the room streaks toward Saffron, most of it coming from under the debris.
    The silver objects converge on Saffron and then stop, hovering in midair around her body, including Candice’s Viking sword.
    I’m in awe of Saffron’s mastery of witchcraft. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her improvise a spell on the spot. Near as I can tell, she makes up spells as needed.
    This one was called Come to Me, Silver.
    I’ve had to practice every spell I know. I can learn new spells quickly, but it wasn’t until I fell in love with Mason that I was able to improvise a spell. The first time was to summon him back to me. The painting was instrumental there. Today was the second time, infusing Mason with the lust I’d siphoned from him into the quicksilver pool.
    Neither spell was what I would call a deliberate casting. They just sort of happened.
    I grab one the silver spikes hovering in front of Saffron, and Candice reclaims her sword. The rest of the floating silver objects follow Saffron wherever she goes. She levitates all three of us down to the basement floor, spacing each witch out around a mound of wreckage.
    This is where we’re going to find Trent, and so Saffron repositions all the sharp silver objects overhead. Filling the hole we descended through while angling their pointed sides downward. Smart. If Trent does recover quickly and tries to escape by leaping away, he’ll impale himself on those.
    Saffron waves her hand and spreads the debris aside with a single gesture, parting a sea of splintered wood and twisted metal. Trent is revealed underneath in what appears to be a hollow space, still half-man and half-wolf.
    Right away we can all see that he’s not going anywhere. Near as I can tell, the werewolf has been impaled on what remains of the support beam, right through the middle of his belly. Impaled, but not dead. His breathing is shallow, but he’s still conscious. The look on his face is filled with hatred and pain, seething through his blood-red eyes.
    I can only assume that Trent is stuck in this form. If he shifted back to being a human, the support beam would cut him in half. That’s when I figure out what he must have done to survive.
    “You turned into a massive wolf before you were crushed,” I say, “and then shrank to create a hollow space for yourself once the debris settled. The thing is, you can’t go any smaller, can you? You’re stuck at this size.”
    “I’m stuck until I pull myself off this post,” he coughs back at me.
    “I doubt you could pull yourself off that post faster than I could cut out your organs,” Saffron says.
    All the sharp silver objects descend to hover even closer above him.
    “Well, the organs you haven’t already eviscerated yourself,” she finishes.
    “Alternatively, I could cut you off that beam,” Candice offers. “Piece by piece.”
    “That would mean you have to step a little closer, shield maiden. By all means do.”
    “Posture all you like Trent,” I say. “You’ve been beaten and don’t have much time