The skin on the tentacle had been a light-pink-tinged gray, mottled and darker on the upper surface than on the lower. The underside of the tentacle, which only Tag had seen, had round ridges similar to—if not exactly like—a squid’s, suction cups that would allow the Singer to attach itself to the underwater edges of the pit, giving it stability in the water.

A second tentacle struck at Tag, landing with a hollow boom that echoed like a rumble of thunder. Charles leapt on top of it. He had to dig his claws through the thick slime to give himself traction. Bearing in mind the speed the last tentacle had shown, he wasted no time biting down, burying his fangs into the tough flesh—and releasing the flesh instantly. He jumped off the moving tentacle and landed on the ground not two feet from the steep edge of the lake.

He ran, coughing up slime that seemed to grow inside his mouth. When he was a reasonable distance away, he rubbed his face in the wet grass. The slime tasted vaguely familiar—and unpleasantly fishy.

Hagfish, supplied Brother Wolf, who never forgot anything they had tasted. To the others, Brother Wolf suggested, Use your claws.

He was right, though that effectively lost them half of their attack capability. But that loss didn’t bother Charles now. His earlier grim assessments forgotten, fierce excitement lit his veins as his focus, and his pack’s focus, narrowed to the here and now. Charles was always most alive when he and Brother Wolf fought a worthy enemy.

Brother Wolf threw them into the fight with a joyous abandon, wishing that this battle, this song, might last forever, an eternal dancing with the pack against an enemy that demanded every skill they had. Tag’s berserker spirit lay over them all, but spread out so that it only gave muscles more strength, speed, and endurance instead of the suicidal madness it could become.

A different sort of limb snuck out of the water and wrapped itself around Anna. It was darker colored and round, like the snakes children made with Play-Doh, maybe six inches in diameter—but at least as long as, if not longer than, the tentacles. It tried to haul Anna into the water, pulling her off her feet with a jerk.

Charles was on the far side of two of the big tentacles and couldn’t even see what had happened, but what the others knew, he knew.

It was Tag who got to her and bit down savagely on the rubbery flesh, which was devoid of slime. Had Tag known that, the hunting song understood, he would not have done a bite-and-release. But the bite did the trick, and the arm went momentarily limp, allowing Anna to scramble out of it. She freed herself and rolled to her feet as the Singer’s limb gave a sudden twitch, then withdrew to the safety of the dark waters.

They watched for those sneaky dark limbs after that.

Unable to use their mouths on the tentacles that were the Singer’s main physical means of attack because of the slime, and unable to stay for a concerted attack because of the danger of being flung or dragged into the water, the wolves were reduced to delivering minor wounds in the hope that they would eventually weaken the creature.

They were further hampered by the mental attacks. They all understood when Leah missed a strike because she thought she was still waiting for the first attack. The hunting song offered her what it knew of the past few minutes, and she made her second strike count. Anna took the next mental attack, but Charles would not have known it bothered her without their bonds because she never slowed down, his graceful, deadly warrior. Hit and run suited her style of fighting because she was fast.

Charles had been right about Tag’s resistance to the Singer’s magic. Though the hunting song told him that the Singer attacked Tag’s memories as frequently as it did Anna’s or Leah’s, the only effect on the old wolf was the deepening hold the berserker spirit took on him. Charles had to work to make sure that it didn’t spill onto the rest of the pack. Tag knew how to use the berserker in his soul; if it attached to one of the other three, it could be a disaster.

But the larger part of the Singer’s attempt to steal memories settled onto Charles, as if the Singer was well aware that Charles spearheaded the wolves. If it had not been for Brother Wolf, Charles suspected he would have fallen.

Trust me, Brother Wolf told the twelve-year-old Charles, who found himself in wolf form trying to keep upright on slick ground in the middle of dodging an unlikely giant tentacle when just a moment before he had been on two feet and talking to his grandfather.

The only possible answer when Brother Wolf asked for trust, no matter what the circumstances, was for Charles to give it. He allowed Brother Wolf ascendance, and the wolf got them away from the danger. It was Brother Wolf who coordinated the others in Charles’s place while Charles battled in a different arena.

For the next ten minutes, by Brother Wolf’s reckoning, Charles was tossed from one reality to another with only brief sojourns in the current time. Then something changed.

A very distinctive drumbeat pulsed through the ties of the hunting song as Anna brought her steel-trap memory for music to bear. There were no lyrics—only Brother Wolf could speak through the hunting song’s bonds, a quirk Charles had been unaware of until this battle. But “We Will Rock You” didn’t need words.

The Singer’s attacks on their memories lessened in effect—and then, as if it had become aware of their new inefficacy, ceased altogether. The fight continued as the rising dawn, muffled by the storm clouds and the rain, brought only faint shards of light onto the battleground.

As Charles had feared, Leah fell first. She saw it coming, but exhaustion slowed her more than she’d expected. Her right front foot slipped in a patch of mucus—the ground anywhere near the lake was becoming dangerously slick. She mistimed her dodge. One of the smaller dark arms whipped out and wrapped around her back leg, jerking her off her feet.

Charles got his jaws on the tentacle a second later and severed it in a spray of clearish fluid that seemed to be the Singer’s version of blood. But the damage was done. Leah’s leg was all but ripped off.

Charles did not see a mouth in the frothing water of the lake, but something must have surfaced, because the Singer shrieked, an ululating, ear-piercing noise that rose to the point of pain on sensitive ears. The searing agony of the sound dropped on the pack, and for a moment they were still.

Then Brother Wolf took advantage of the temporary motionlessness of the three tentacles currently onshore and opened a four-foot-long wound that was as deep as he could manage given the length of his claws and the toughness of the Singer’s rubbery skin. In apparent response, the Singer jerked all of its parts beneath the water.

Directed by the needs of the hunt, Anna grabbed Leah by the scruff of the neck with her teeth and pulled the wounded wolf well out of reach. Leah did not object to either the pain of Anna’s teeth breaking through hide and into flesh or the bump of her damaged leg on the ground. The hunting song knew that to heal such a wound would weaken the pack too much to continue the battle. So the song withdrew from Leah, leaving only three wolves in the fight.

* * *

*

ALONE AND SHIVERING from pain and exhaustion, Leah tried to start her change. The shift should heal most of the damage to her leg on its own. The sooner she got this done, the sooner she could get back into the fray. Nothing happened. She simply didn’t have the resources to change again without rest or food.

She cast an anxious glance at the ongoing battle. They weren’t going to win. The Singer was simply amusing himself with them. Leah couldn’t bear being the only survivor a second time.

Desperately, she reached out to her distant pack for a boost of energy to help her change. They should have been too far away for her to reach. And they were.

But Bran wasn’t.

Rich energy pulsed through her mate bond, making the change almost easy, certainly quicker than she was used to. As her body burned and stretched, she felt Bran begin to open their bond.

Buried with pain and the confusion of the shift, she reacted with utter and instinctive honesty. She shut it tight, cutting off the feed of energy, which she might not have done if she’d been more cognizant. It didn’t matter; she had enough to finish the change on her own.

When she lay faceup in the mud, the falling rain keeping her eyes closed, she heard the faint sound of an approaching helicopter. Proof that Bran was near—had she needed further confirmation.

He brought hope with him. She knew of no other being who might accomplish what Sherwood had failed to do. Charles said he was bringing Jonesy’s sword, and that was certainly a weapon that might kill a god—it had killed Jonesy, who was a son of Lugh, after all. If Bran joined them, they stood a chance.