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As silently as she could, she rolled to the side under two low lines, heart pounding. Pine needles stuck in her hair and clothes.
The wolf moved toward the sound of the twig, swinging the sword wildly in the dark. The blade severed a pencil-thin pine branch that dropped on Liliana’s shoulder.
She twitched involuntarily, and the wolf’s blade swung toward her. The wolf-kin might be unable to see in the dense shadow, but he followed every whisper of sound.
Liliana smiled with fangs exposed.
I can work with that.
The spider-kin kicked a pinecone so it made a skittery sound across the ground.
Peter Teague lunged toward the sound, swinging the sword blindly. The sticky silk of a trip line caught his ankle.
Finally.
The wolf sprawled full length on the ground. He lost his long knife but managed to keep hold of his sword. He braced himself up on one elbow, swung the sword down to sever the trip line tangling his ankle, then sat up.
He tilted his head, listening.
Liliana held her breath.
Thunk. Thunk. Two throwing knives embedded themselves in the trunk of the tree beside her. Liliana didn’t even flinch. He missed her by feet. He had only the vaguest clue of her location.
As he regained his feet, she knew what she had to do.
She did a low plié in close to him, reached out, and tapped her wrist lightly to the back of the wolf’s sword hand, attaching a line. He felt the touch and slashed over her with his sword. She dove over a trip line and under his swing, threading the narrow space, then somersaulted back to her feet and yanked him off-balance.
As the wolf staggered toward her, he used his momentum to shift the movement into a charge, arms held out wide to catch her. He growled low.
A werewolf didn’t need weapons to be deadly.
He shifted to big demi-wolf form with long, clawed fingers. Fangs pushed out of his elongated mouth. His collar-length hair turned shaggy and thick and crawled over his exposed skin.
Liliana kept her hold on the line attached to his wrist, while she leaped upward and tucked into a forward flip. The wolf stumbled under her, right into her trip lines, but stayed stubbornly on his combat-booted feet. His boots no longer looked too big on the massive wolfman.
As he chased the phantom of another tossed pinecone, the spider-kin touched his other arm with a spinneret. When he tripped again, she tossed a few loops of sticky, fresh silk at him while he was on the ground, entangling him.
The wolf growled and struggled back to his feet, trying to cut her silk cords with his claws and yet another knife.
She misdirected and tangled him some more. She pulled on his limbs like a puppet master and flowed with his swings and steps as if he were leading her in a dance. Rather than fighting his great strength, she used it against him.
Soon, she got his sword arm wrapped painfully behind him. The other arm she pinned across his belly. Liliana took a deadly risk, darted in close, and attached the other end of one line to his sturdy, braided nylon belt so his arm was anchored behind him to his own body. He couldn’t use the sword at all now.
A ghost of warm breath touched her throat as sharp fangs snapped at her. Liliana yelped in terror and jumped aside barely in time.
The wolf used that moment of fear to free the arm that wasn’t fully anchored yet. Their battle had taken them near the trunk of one of the tall, straight pine trees. The wolf swiped at her with his claws.
Liliana dove behind the tree.
Claws ripped bark instead of her skin, spraying splinters of wood into the night rather than blood.
Holding tight to the line attached to his wrist, she yanked with all her might, the full weight of her body thrown into it.
The werewolf’s own momentum helped spin him until his back slammed into the tree.
Behind the trunk, she pulled the line taut and touched both the line and a sticky spinneret to his shoulder on the other side of the trunk. His free arm was no longer free, but bent awkwardly behind the trunk. He yanked with all his great strength and only pulled his own shoulder tighter against the rough bark.
His strength fought itself.
