The Wolf & The Witch
A Handful of Dust

Lestat shielded himself as best he could- he knew the rocks were coming, and changed into a wolf- his muscles tightened, hardened, layered, and black fur ran down his body, but it was only a partial shift- he couldn’t fully transform into a werewolf.

Claire took a deep breath as she fell- she hit the water, then crashed into the pipe, then froze the surface solid- she wove magic out her fingertips the second she hit the pipe, intending to turn the surface to solid ice behind her, but her magic was diminished. Was it the cuff? Or him? Instead of freezing solid the water partially froze, and partially stalled the stones.

The wolf pushed two stones off him, jerking the witch over- she fought him, and kicked at him, and they both sat up coughing, choking, and groaning in the cold water of a black stone sewer pipe. “Stay the fuck… away from me,” she coughed.

Cold gray light hung above them, too high to reach, and darkness in front of them, and blackness behind them.

“Fuck you, witch.”

“I told you not to… do that,” Claire coughed. “You damn stupid… wolves never… think.”

Lestat hadn’t been all that worried before- now he was. If he had been able to fully transform then his hand, and his wrist, would’ve smashed hers to the inside of the metal cuff, destroying her arm, but he couldn’t. He didn’t particularly care if her arm ended up mangled, but he did care that he could no longer transform completely. Was it her? Or the cuff? “We need to get this cuff off.”

“No shit,” she coughed. That was the first intelligent thing he had said. The reason was as obvious to Claire as it was Lestat- channeling ice through her body, the way she intended, would’ve frozen his arm so hard it would’ve shattered at the slightest touch, freeing her. Except she couldn’t use that much magic. This was bad. If she couldn’t do any more than that then she would be defenseless against this damn wolf.

Lestat stood with aching legs and stiff shoulders and a tight back. Hard muscles protect the body, but they don’t hurt any less when injured. He groaned, and tugged the witch to her feet.

He followed the water and pulled them forward- he partially transformed again, coating his body in hair, and increasing the size of his muscles a little, but he couldn’t do much.

The witch stumbled behind, still covering her breasts. She was shivering, and her feet were on fire from the cold water, and her teeth chattered.

“Hurry up,” Lestat ordered. She was slowing down.

“Go to… hell.” A chivalrous man would offer to carry her, so that she would at least be out of the water- not that she would accept that offer from him. A kind man would ask if she was ok after falling twenty feet into a stone sewer. A normal man would’ve looked at her naked body by now, at least once. Which led her to the obvious conclusion that this wolf was neither chivalrous, kind, or normal.

They walked on another mile when Claire stopped and pulled them to the sloping stone wall of the sewer and forced them to sit.

“We don’t have time for breaks, princess.”

“Shut the… fuck… up.” She shivered and trembled on the cold stones and jerked his right hand forward and huddled up into a ball, and held her feet- they were burning cold.

As far as Lestat was concerned this hateful bitch could freeze to death. At that point he could simply snap her arm off her dead body, slide it through the cuff, and be free. But she didn’t freeze- five minutes later she stood, still shivering, and they continued on to the end of the sewer pipe.

Light came crippled and wounded through the iron bars of the sewer grate. Lestat reached out and shook them- they would give and crumble and fall just like the bars of the cell. He looked up- twenty feet to the stone ceiling of the sewer; he knew what would happen when he pulled these bars free, but falling stones were only one of their problems this time.

The water from the sewer dropped down, past the bars, many hundreds of feet to a stream that flowed out into long, barren fields of dead grass and shrub and stone and clay. No life. Mountains loomed white in the distance, with blankets of snow and fog and ice.

It had been the end of summer earlier today. Was it still? Were they so far away that the climate had shifted that much? How far would they have to go for summer to turn to winter? He looked down, and wondered how deep the stream below them was? Probably not enough. How badly would falling rocks and iron bars hurt when they fell from that distance? A lot. But what worried Lestat the most- the water in this sewer pipe was clean- crystal clean, and there was no trash- none. And still, the only things he could smell was this woman, metal, and stone. Cells and sewers implied a city, and the lack of sewage and trash, and the age of the iron bars, implied a long-dead city.

“You know what happens if… if you pull those… those bars loose.”

“And you know what happens if I… if I don’t.”

Their voices were freezing; their anger was freezing, and both the wolf and the witch knew that if they didn’t replace either clothes or fire soon, they would die. The witch, first, but the order of death doesn’t matter when the line is short, and death’s sickle is long and sharp and white.

“You can’t… fully transform… can you.”

He was finally starting to shiver- cold ran up his toes, up his fingers, along his arms and was just now touching his jaw, his face, his ears. “You can’t use… magic, can you.”

“I... I can,” Claire answered, but her voice betrayed her- her answer wasn’t a lie, but there was no confidence in it, and now she was afraid of him again. Even if he couldn’t turn into a full wolf he was still plenty strong enough to force himself on her, and rape her. How could she protect herself from a wolf his size?

“Then cook something up, damned witch,” he said, “Before we freeze to death.”

“Again, dumb… dumbass- there’s nothing to-to-to burn.”

“Is making ice and fire the only thing you know how… how to do? You can’t levitate us, blow the rocks away, cut the iron- nothing?”

Claire didn’t answer. Maybe she could do one or two of those… if she could use more magic.

“Fucking worthless,” he spat, and reached his left hand out and grabbed a solid iron bar.

“Stop- Don’t- fucking moron!” She jerked their cuffed wrists back but he was too strong- she couldn’t budge him.

He rattled the bars and the stones high above them shifted. Mortar tinkled down on their heads.

“You stupid fucking-“

He stepped back, pulling her back with him, lowered his shoulder and ran at the bars, dragging her behind. The iron bars crumpled and bent like wet sticks and they were in the air, falling- a heap of broken images, gray and white margins, dead forests gray in the distance, red clay, black rock, the crumbling remains of a stone city, and brown grass, as barren, and as bleak, as a handful of dust.

They fell five-hundred and fifty-two feet into cold, deep water and the rusted iron bars and the sewer stones came down with them. The bars didn’t injure them. The stones didn’t injure them, and the water was plenty deep enough.

They fought, and swam, and the wolf and the witch crawled naked to the bank of the stream coughing, and shivering, and freezing to death, and they collapsed in the dead brown grass and the cold red clay in the white fog of a winter sunset.

Night was coming, and with it frost, and with it ice.

*

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-hollows-