Wild Wolf

“Reid didn’t tell me anything. He left me a note . . . It’s a long story.”

“Misty did a spell,” Matt said, running up to them. “She spun around and around, and then we were here.” Matt demonstrated.

“And you brought the cubs?”

“Yes,” Misty said. “Stop yelling. You’ll cause a cave-in.”

A few more pebbles rained from the ceiling. Another faint groan sounded, as though rock shifted.

“I want you out of here,” Graham said.

Misty didn’t wilt under his glare. No, she knelt there looking all pretty and sexy. “We came to get you out. I have a lot to tell you, but we can talk later.”

“Later? That will be a first. Usually you want to talk without delay.”

“Very funny, Graham. Can you break away?”

“I’ve been trying. Then I got covered with the damn vines and passed out.”

“Enchanted sleep,” Misty said. “You were in an enchanted sleep. I got you out of it, you know, like in Sleeping Beauty.”

Matt laughed. “Uncle Graham is Sleeping Beauty.”

Graham grabbed at the vines that held him, but he’d lost so much strength he could barely budge them. Uncle Graham was more screwed than anything else.

“I can’t leave,” Graham said, even as he tugged at the vines.

“What are you talking about? Why not?” Misty grabbed the vines and pulled too.

Dougal materialized out of the darkness, holding a mirror in one hand, a wolf cub in the other. Graham thought he’d scented his nephew over there. He wanted to start roaring again, but he stopped himself. Yelling would only upset Dougal, and Dougal needed to keep calm and not go to pieces.

“I can’t go, because Reid is trapped.” Graham tore away another vine that had rewrapped his wrist. The fact that he was too weak to do much about it worried the hell out of him.

“He’s trapped too?” Misty looked dismayed. “Where?”

“In the ice.”

Misty stood up, which gave Graham a nice view of her legs in her shorts. Her skin was scratched and abraded, but even that couldn’t mar her. Some of the scratches were from last night with her, when Graham had made hot pounding love to her in her garden. The thought of doing that again someday was one thing that kept him from crumbling and dying as Oison wanted him to.

“Where?” Misty started walking away, toward the sheet of ice.

“Misty.” Graham sat up, jerking at the vines. They still wouldn’t let him go. Dougal tried to help, but to no avail.

“He’s in there?” Misty stopped, horrified. “Is he dead?”

“Hell if I know.”

Dougal kept trying to free Graham, starting to moan when he couldn’t. Graham had to switch his attention to bolstering Dougal’s confidence. When he looked back at Misty, she was leafing through a book.

Must be her little book about flowers. The one that had gotten him drunk on tequila, making him take another step in his relationship with Misty.

“There’s nothing in here about melting ice,” she said in frustration. “Or breaking ice. Nothing about ice at all.”

“Anything about water?” Graham asked. “Oison said his element was water. Reid’s is earth.”

Misty turned pages, rustling in the stillness. “I don’t know. Damn it.”

Dougal called out to her. “Anything about making plants stop messing with us?”

More rustling. “Let me look. Why are they doing this anyway? I mean, they’re flowers. Plants aren’t magical or sentient. Their ‘magic’ is converting sunlight, water, and soil into food and oxygen. Photosynthesis. These plants shouldn’t be alive at all. No sunlight, and these are all sun-loving flowers.”

“But this is Faerie,” Graham said. “So magical shit works. All the stories about magical creatures originated here. The stories are watered down in the human world, but the original incidents weren’t.”

“Oh.” Misty looked back at Graham, her face losing some color. “So all the scary stories about frost queens and witches putting children in ovens are true?”

“Yep.”

“That’s disturbing.” Misty went back to her book, as though determined to find something to protect her from every fairy tale ever written.

“Why the hell are Kyle and Matt here?” Graham demanded. Kyle was trying to help pull away the vines, while Matt was busy licking the ground around a crumpled bag of what used to be chips.

“Ben said they had to come.” Dougal shrugged. “I don’t know why.”

“Ben?” Graham roared. “Goddess, get me loose. I need to strangle some people.”

“Here we go!” Misty actually jumped in delight, her feet leaving the ground. “To train plants. I thought it meant pruning. It kind of does.” She started moving excitedly to the nearest clump of plants. “Matt, Kyle, Dougal, I need petals from every single type of plant here. All of them. Don’t miss one.”

Her legs moved as she ran about the cave, grabbing flowers and yanking petals free. She moved so fast the vines that reached for her didn’t have time to latch on before she was at another plant. Matt and Kyle, turning human so they could hold the petals, ran every which way, making a game of it.

“I got the red one!” “No, I saw it first.” “You can have the purple one. I got yellow!”