Page 63 of Search for the Lost

Crispin squeaked and closed his eyes. This is the end!

Then the sound of steel freed from sheaths filled the air, and he dared to hope.

If only just a little.

22

Leopold

Sword-fighting was pretty cool to watch—when it was on a TV or movie screen and you were fairly sure nobody was going to get shish-kebabed for real. Leo found it way less fun when the swords were genuine, and when they were being used to save his boyfriend from giant wolves. WOLFs.

Which were also way less fun in reality than in the abstract.

They were as big as a draft horse, with glowing red eyes and way too many enormous sharp teeth, and they seemed intent on eating Crispin. Aspin and Dietrich were slashing away at the beasts while Crispin ducked and spun, which meant that—at least so far—fangs had not met flesh. But there were four WOLFs and only two men with swords, which weren’t good odds.

The WOLFs looked intelligent, too—and they weren’t just blindly attacking. Minkis, who was chattering angrily from a tree, was very fierce for a squirrel, but not especially helpful against Clydesdale-size canines.

Nobody was paying attention to Leo. He didn’t have a sword and, even if he did, wouldn’t have any clue how to use it. His only weapon was his voice, so he yelled instructions to Crispin: Big one to your right! Watch out behind you! Duck! He doubted that was useful. Desperate, he picked up the only weapon-equivalent he could find—a hefty branch—but couldn’t get close enough to any of the WOLFs to clobber them.

What if I have to… undo them? That was what he assumed he’d done to that giant dog that had bounded up to him, barking, when he was six years old. But now, he wasn’t sure he knew how. He’d been scared out of his mind and all alone in the park when he was young, having wandered off from his parents. He’d simply reached out to touch the dog and it had just… disintegrated into dust with a forlorn howl.

“Dammit!” he shouted and yeeted the ineffective branch away in frustration.

The nearest WOLF noticed the movement and it paused, jaws open, and cocked its head. Then it bounded away from Crispin and toward the branch, picking it up and running straight at Leo, who was too terrified to do anything but emit a strangled squeak.

The WOLF dropped the branch at Leo’s feet, made a small yipping sound, and backed up a few paces, watching Leo carefully and wagging its tail.

It was, Leo realized, kind of… cute. Okay, yes, it was still terrifying. But its fur looked super soft, and it was tilting its head this way and that, tongue lolling, pointy ears flapping a little. It bent its front legs, kneeling before him, its rump still raised and tail waving madly. It yipped again.

“Holy shit,” said Leo. He bent, picked up the branch, and threw it as hard as he could, as far from Crispin as he could manage. “Fetch!”

And the WOLF did. When it returned this time, it dropped the now-slobbery stick on Leo’s feet.

Which was all well and good except that it left three WOLFs still attempting to gobble Crispin, not to mention two swordsmen swinging very sharp pointy things at the beasts. And Leo was beginning to feel a little sorry for the beasts. It wasn’t their fault that a bunch of people had invaded their forest. And that they were big and sort of ferocious. Except when they were playing fetch, when they became super adorable.

Which gave Leo an idea.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Hey! Who’s a good dog—um, WOLF? Who wants a treat?” He dug in a pocket and pulled out some round oatmeal-cookie-ish things that were apparently this world’s equivalent of protein bars or trail mix. Dietrich had given everybody a handful before they started out this morning, although Crispin’s handful was noticeably bigger than Leo’s or Aspin’s.

The WOLFs stopped attacking Crispin and watched while their fetch-playing pal grabbed one of the cookies from Leo. Fortunately, it didn’t grab his hand as well.

Suddenly, the other three lost interest in Crispin completely. Yay! But then they galloped over to Leo. Which would have been really scary, except one of them knocked Dietrich over along the way, and that was so satisfying that Leo forgot to be frightened. “Good dog!” he said to the knocker-over, and gave it a piece of cookie. The other two, drooling mightily, crowded close for their treats.

“Um, shit.” Leo had just reached the realization that a pocketful of cookies doesn’t go far with four massive animals. He patted his clothing in search of more. He still had a couple apple slices from his mother, wrapped up in cloth, so he shared those. But that was it. All he had left was a pen, two pretty pebbles that he’d picked up, an extra pair of socks, and one of Crispin’s handkerchiefs. None of those items were likely to satisfy hungry WOLFs.

Several sets of jaws were impinging into Leo’s personal space. One of the stories his mother had read to him when he was six or seven featured monsters who slavered. He remembered pausing the tale to ask her what that meant, and she’d said drooled. He’d spent the next week or two chasing after other children at school, open-mouthed, punctuated with cries of “I’m slavering!” This hadn’t exactly earned him any friends. And now he understood how very bad he’d been at it, because the WOLFs were champion slaverers. Some of it was currently dripping on his shoes.

He opened his mouth to say… well, something commanding that would make the WOLFs retreat. That was when he noticed Dietrich and Aspin tiptoeing closer, swords drawn, both of them ready to slice off the heads of the unsuspecting WOLFs.

“Don’t!” he cried. Because slavering aside, the WOLFs remained pretty cute.

Until they whipped around, snarling, red eyes glowing like the pits of hell. They were clearly prepared to attack, and the odds were still not good for Leo’s companions.

Dietrich’s sword arm wavered a bit and he looked decidedly worried. But Aspin only appeared peeved, which wasn’t unusual for him. “Why did you have to go and warn them? We’ve lost our advantage now.”

Leo winced. “Do you have to kill them? Can’t you just….” He made a vague waving movement.

“Just let them snack on my brother? Sure. And then I’ll just throw myself into their maws as well.”