9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

T here was too little time to breathe, yet alone think, as Enki pulled Zen from the square to find a place of refuge. There wasn't only one werewolf, but many, so many, all shifting form and then launching upon the villagers who had only been celebrating and trying to feel normal.

A flash of the trials Zen usually didn't remember flitted through his mind like the memory of a dream—the temple being savaged by cultists of the Dark Goddess, and all he could do was flee.

"Wait! We have to help!" Zen pulled back on Enki's insistent tugging toward freedom. He couldn't see anything clearly or recognize any faces.

Where were the others?

"All you have is a dagger, and my magic isn't offensive!" Enki yanked Zen onward.

"But my magic can be! I have to help!"

" Please . Not when there are so many!"

Zen had lost track of everyone who had proven to be beasts in disguise, but there seemed to be dozens, and they were falling upon anyone who tried to run.

"Please," Enki said again, pointing to the building he'd been leading them toward. It was the tallest in the village, a watchtower of sorts, or maybe a converted church. "We can still help if we get to a higher vantage point."

This time, when Enki dragged Zen forward, he didn't resist. He wasn't sure if he thought the suggestion sound, or if he was simply relieved to have an out that let him escape without feeling like a coward.

If the building had been a church once, there was no sign of that now. It seemed to be for storage but was also a mess of tables and scraps from preparing for the festival.

Enki led them upstairs past multiple floors. The screams from outside were unnervingly audible as they climbed.

"How did this happen?" Zen asked.

"The circle never breaks. Someone must have snuffed it out, and no one noticed in the bustle of the festival."

"Why? Why would someone do that?"

"For the lord's favor," Enki said simply. "Someone must think he wants this."

Zen was horrified at the thought, so much so that he might have lost everything in his stomach if not for the rush of cool air when they reached the top of the tower. It indeed gave them a better vantage point, and below them was insanity, with the hulking werewolves breaking into buildings to hunt people down.

Zen wouldn't have been able to describe them before, but now he saw how they were men made wolves, more like wolves made to stand on two legs but broader and with dexterous hands instead of paws. What remained of their clothing was stretched but mostly intact.

He honestly couldn't tell if they were killing people, eating people, or merely terrorizing them while looking for something.

Or someone.

"Because I'm a priest of the Sun God…. Khel said it loudly. Degnan heard him, maybe others. I didn't mean for him to say it."

"It's not your fault." Enki squeezed Zen's hand still tight within his grasp. "But if it is you they seek, be careful what you cast. Anything too bright will draw them to us."

"If only I had my bow," Zen thought aloud.

Then he spotted on open area, the same area near where the girl had been snatched into the dark. There was the least concentration of people there now and plenty of room for a trap.

" Ensnare ." Zen raised his free hand, which glowed dimly, but the main light erupted on the ground where he set his eyes, painting intricate sigils that quickly vanished, leaving no trace of a trap.

"Is that a priest spell?" Enki asked.

"Not exactly, but a useful one. If we can lure the wolves over that spot, they won't be able to move. We just need to get a message to my friends. Where did they go…?"

Zen had yet to spot any of them and worried over what that meant. They were likely fighting off the wolves somewhere indoors—fighting, helping .

Whereas Zen had run.

"Come on." Enki tugged his hand again, pulling him back toward the stairs. "We'll look elsewhere, but we must be careful."

They only made it down to the next landing, before they heard the crash of the door downstairs being burst open, and then growls.

Detouring onto the next floor, Enki pulled Zen into a nook beneath the stairs. They sat huddled together, hiding, but it only made Zen feel more like a coward.

"I could blind it," he whispered, "or—"

"Shh!" Enki covered Zen's mouth and mimed for him to listen.

There were more growls now, a lot more, and they were coming up the stairs. Even if Zen could blind the wolves or if either he or Enki could think of another spell that might help, there were too many foes.

Enki dropped his hand from Zen's mouth to coil their fingers together again. The wolves went straight up to the tower, shuffled around in search, and then went back down—all but one, who exited onto their floor.

Zen could hear its nails on the wooden floor. He'd swear he could smell it, musky and earthy.

Slowly, Zen reached for his dagger. He could handle one werewolf, couldn't he?

But Enki shook his head—right before a clawed foot crunched into the wood in front of them. Zen held his breath, hearing his own heartbeat in his temples.

But the wolf turned away and hurried after its fellows.

They breathed in collective relief, keeping their hands clasped.

"Only silver to the heart can kill them," Enki whispered, "and your dagger isn't silver."

"What manner of monster is this lord that he controls such beasts?"

"A broken one," Enki said, almost pitying, "driven only by the desire to see his love again."

"So I heard. That isn't an excuse. The children…"

"I am sure they are safe. Werewolves may be beasts, but they are also men. They have no reason to attack children."

"Even so, we must find my friends. We have to stop this before anyone else gets hurt."

They clamored out from under the stairs and continued to the first floor, listening carefully for other wolves. There were none, but the door was half off its hinges when they reached it.

Peering outside revealed no one immediately nearby, so they hurried inside the next building. Zen remembered this one. It's where he and Enki had been helping with the food, the general store, with many of its shelving pushed against walls to give room for the preparations. No one appeared to be here either.

"He's not completely heartless, just single-minded," Enki said quietly, as they snuck up to the second floor, where the owner lived. "They say he found a way to smuggle out the remains of his love in hopes that he could be reborn outside the barrier and return someday."

"Gaian discovered a way to bring his love back?"

"Yes, but all he had was his head, and a magical crystal he forged to call back his love's soul. He couldn't return the soul to the body, however, not without some part of the other remains."

Zen stopped at the top of the stairs, the apartment also seeming empty, as what that meant struck him. "He's sending out his horde looking for the remains. Maybe that's what can finally kill him."

"What do you mean?"

"Degnan said he never stays dead, because to truly kill him, his slayer needs a part of what first cursed him. What more than his love?"

"Love is an awful thing to be a curse," Enki said with a cringe, "but people do any number of things in the name of it. Even terrible things." There was remorse in his eyes, but also yearning—yearning that Zen felt too, to know a love that powerful.

There was a candle lit upstairs, flickering shadows across Enki's face, as Zen asked, "How do you think you know the difference between love and lust?"

"I suppose…" Enki trailed off, smiling softly in the candlelight. "You try and see for yourself."

The darkness, the hush of their voices, the anxious feeling in Zen's chest, all made him want to grab Enki and hold him tight, but now wasn't the time.

"We need to hurry," Zen said, turning from the intensity in Enki's eyes to head downstairs. They had to keep moving, seek out friendly faces over angry maws, and find a way to lead the werewolves into Zen's trap.

But, as they reached the door, Enki grabbed Zen's wrist. "Wait. If your friends have fallen—"

"They haven't. You'll see—"

"I believe you. I want to believe you. But when we can't know what the rest of tonight might bring, I won't waste another moment not doing this."

"Doing—" Zen's words were stolen by a hand at the back of his neck and another gripping his robes, pulling him into the kiss they kept being denied.

It was the strangest sensation to meet lips that Zen would swear he had tasted a hundred times, yet this was the first—his first kiss.

He held Enki like he had never been allowed to hold the angel in his dreams, wholly and solidly against him, and tilted his head to push the connection deeper. Enki was his angel, prophesized and sent to him by the Sun God himself. Zen was riveted by the heat and softness of Enki, so full of emotion that he might have choked if he wasn't starved for anything real.

Even if disaster waited outside the door, for now, Zen got to have this, and the press of Enki's lips and tentative slide of their tongues felt better than anything Zen could ever dream.

"Apologies, my lord."

Zen tore from the kiss, whirling to face this new threat and protect Enki behind him.

Two werewolves had entered, one speaking in a growly but discernible voice—as it bowed. "We know you said not to disturb you no matter what, but the adventurers are proving too much for us."

Adventurers?

The others?

But why would these beasts call either of them lord…?

Slowly, Zen turned to look at Enki, and what he found was fury in the brown— red —eyes, with the face he had found so beautiful twisting into a half-mad snarl that betrayed fangs.

Gaian flashed from Zen's side as though he had disappeared and reappeared across the room, grabbing the neck of the werewolf who had spoken and sinking his fangs into the flesh beneath its fur. He drank, holding the wolf like a child held a doll, so much power in his grip and bite, that even a werewolf twice his size was helpless.

The devouring of the wolf's blood was so viciously executed that the wound gaped, the wolf's neck soon falling unnaturally to the side as if half-severed. The sight was too shocking for Zen to feel any rise of bile. All he could do was stare with an awful numbness overtaking him as he saw now that this was no angel.

The second werewolf dropped to its knees in supplication, clearly hoping for mercy that it knew it would not get if it fled.

Gaian finished draining the first wolf, dropping it like the lifeless doll it had become and licking blood from his lips and fingers.

"Forgive me, my love." Gaian turned his glowing red eyes on Zen. "But I did warn them. No. Matter. What ."