Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(77)

I glanced at Uncle Mike.

He said, “Some of the great ones, maybe, but witchcraft is . . . more like Underhill’s magic. It doesn’t answer well to the fae.”

“Sherwood?” I asked.

Sweat gathered on Ruth’s forehead and she gripped Uncle Mike’s hands. “Don’t let me go,” she gasped in a whisper. “Was supposed to attack. There’s a knife . . . a knife.”

“We took it when you came here,” he crooned. “There’s no knife now.”

I turned to Sherwood, who stood as far from her as he could get, his eyes wild—but not wolfish. It had been the wolf who’d taken down that zombie, I thought. The man didn’t want to remember.

I wished Elizaveta were here. Sort of. Wulfe?

If they wanted Elizaveta for their coven, they’d be salivating for Wulfe. I didn’t know what witchblood family line he carried—or if he was wizard instead. But he was twisted like a pretzel and he represented a lot of power. On the whole, it was probably good that he wasn’t here.

“Sherwood,” I said. My voice was quiet, but there was authority in it. Not Adam’s, I realized, because the bond between my mate and me felt like it was filled with cold grease—sluggish and reluctant—when I tried to draw on it.

Panicked, I reached for Adam again . . . and our bond was back to being uncommunicative, but healthy. Maybe it had just been that I was smack-dab in the middle of a fog of foul magic.

In any case, I couldn’t afford to fret about Adam right now. I put that concern aside. Right now we were dealing with a good woman hexed by witches.

“Mercy, her breathing keeps stopping,” Uncle Mike said. “I’ve already done what we can. We tried the usual salt and circles as soon as we realized she’d been cursed. Had no effect at all. Usually salt and circles work on everything.”

“They have her blood,” Sherwood said, still with his back against the door. His eyes were trying to go wolf, but he was fighting it. “Blood magic is harder to block.”

I didn’t need Sherwood Post. I needed—

“Wolf,” I said, yanking on the pack bond between him and me.

Sherwood jerked as if that pull had been physical. Then he turned his head toward me and snarled—and this time his eyes were wolf.

“Sherwood,” I said clearly. “Fix her.” I pointed at Ruth without looking away from his eyes. “Fix her and then we’ll go out and hunt some witches.”

I didn’t know why I said that last. Sherwood certainly had never shown any desire to go out and hunt witches, not even after he’d destroyed the zombie werewolf that had been made from the body of someone he’d obviously known.

He looked at me with golden eyes and growled, “Done.”

I was afraid I’d gone too far and he’d begin the change. But I’m not that dominant unless I can pull authority from Adam, and our bond was being stubbornly quiescent.

Sherwood looked at Uncle Mike and rumbled, “I need chalk or a pencil. A candle and a knife.”

Uncle Mike went to his desk and opened a drawer from which he gathered a piece of chalk, a pencil, a candle just barely small enough to have fit in a drawer, and a silver knife. He glanced at the knife and put it back.

He handed over everything else to Sherwood, who had left the door to kneel beside Ruth, prosthetic leg stretched out awkwardly. For her part, Ruth was slowly writhing, both hands against her throat, tears sliding out of her eyes.

“Why didn’t you give him the knife?” I asked.

“That was the athame the witch gave Ruth to kill you with,” Uncle Mike told me. “I don’t know how it ended up in my drawer, because that’s not where I put it. Under the circumstances, I think that it’s probably best not to use it for this.”

“I have my cutlass—” I began.

Uncle Mike shook his head. “I have something better than a cutlass, no matter how fine.” He pulled a worn pocketknife out of a pouch on his belt and gave it to Sherwood, who took it with a raised eyebrow.

“My word that for this purpose, it’s just a pocketknife. Be careful, wolf, it is sharp.”

That seemed to be enough for Sherwood. He took the chalk and began to draw symbols on Uncle Mike’s cement floor.

The leg got in his way again and with a growl he pressed something on the ankle of the prosthetic and pulled it off with so little trouble that I wondered if he’d broken something and would have trouble putting it back on. Especially since he tossed it across the room with frustrated speed. It hit one of the metal file cabinets and left a dent.

His knee seemed to be his own . . . which shouldn’t have surprised me. In werewolf form he was missing most of his leg, but a human knee corresponded to the stifle joint, which is farther up the wolf’s leg.

The leg dealt with, Sherwood continued to draw. I would have had trouble writing at the speed he moved—and he was drawing things a lot more complicated than a letter from the Latin alphabet. I’ve never seen a werewolf use their enhanced speed to draw before.

Ruth’s breathing was oddly broken. She wouldn’t breathe for a minute or two, and then she’d gasp and wheeze for a little bit until she stopped breathing again. While she gasped and wheezed she would flop around like a fish out of water. Her hand hit one of the chalk symbols Sherwood had drawn, scuffing it.