The Lost Girl, part fourteen

"Stay close," said Peter. "I'm going to push us through as fast as I can, so we may be cutting through some dangerous areas. Stay alert, and if you have to stop for something call out." He glanced at Chris. "Or snarl loudly. Whatever. Just make sure we all know."

Chris sniffed, and glanced across at Elyssa, who had also taken a full wolf form. She hadn't taken her necklace into the new configuration; she was still wearing it, like a slender silver collar as she paced along on Antoinette's far side. Morri had dropped back, and was taking the rear again; Agatha had fallen back beside her.

The landscape shifted as they walked: cloudy skies, clear skies, a brief drizzle, a momentary glimpse of daytime moon... trees shifted around them, appearing and disappearing as they passed certain points. At one point, something hissed from back in the underbrush, but it was gone again before Chris could even growl back at it. Peter was shuffling the landscape around them, moving them closer to wherever Tammy Lynn could be found.

There was a brief commotion behind them, and when Chris glanced back he saw Morri on one knee in the dirt, tugging something away from her neck. Beside her, Agatha shook her hand out, dispelling a bit of darkness that still lingered around it. Above them, something was retreating up into higher branches, whimpering softly as it fled.

Peter stopped and turned back. "Are you all right?" 

"Yeah," his partner replied, her voice rough and her tone disgusted. "It just reached down and wrapped around my throat. Pulled me right up off the ground. Agatha saw it and cut me loose." She finished freeing herself, and held out a length of something for the rest of them to see. It wasn't rope, but whether it was tendril, tentacle, or vine Chris could not be sure. 

"Oh, good," said Antoinette lightly. "Something else to have nightmares about." 

"Will you?" asked Morri, cocking her head as she regarded the smaller magus. 

"Not until this is done," Antoinette told her, and Morri nodded respectfully at that. 

"Keep moving," said Peter, but he had a pistol out now. Chris wondered about that; he wasn't certain that he would trust a pistol out here. A blade might actually prove more effective, especially when paired with magic. Then again, if something else attacked and Peter's pistol failed him, well... that was where he and Elyssa came in. Morri and Agatha as well. It was, he supposed, precisely why the Ministry made use of Registered Outsiders. 

"Here we go," Peter muttered to himself, as the path they'd been following resolved into the stone road they'd departed earlier. The road ran ahead for a hundred yards or so, cutting a straight line through the trees; then their way was blocked by the gates of a wooden palisade. "Tammy's in there somewhere, I think."

"I could--" Agatha hesitated visibly. The forest held its share of shadows, but the area around the palisade had been cleared, and the morning sun bathed it in light. "I could scout the place after dark."

Peter glanced back at her, appraising. "That's good to know, and ordinarily I'd wait and ask you to do it. I don't think we have that kind of time, though." He glanced at Antoinette. 

"Straight in?" she asked. 

Peter nodded. "I'll be our face, so I won't have my guard up. You'll need to be the one with magics ready, and the others should be alert for ambush or other treachery." He glanced past her, including the rest of them in his next words. "Don't start anything, but if it comes to violence then do what you need to do. We keep each other safe, we bring Tammy out of this, and we do it with as little drama as possible."

"All right," said Antoinette, glancing at Elyssa and then turning her gaze on Chris. "You heard him. Low-key, easy-going, and no violence if we can avoid it."

Agatha raised a hand, and both the magi turned to look at her. "If it does come to violence..." she said hesitantly, "...the two wolves should go to their halfway shapes. That was... I don't know, but when Chris did it last night it scared me. It might scare anyone else out here, enough to make them hesitate."

Chris cocked his head, and Agatha asked, "What? I'm not allowed to be scared by the terrifying half-beast shape?"

Chris shook himself and looked back at the heavy, sharpened logs of the palisade and the high, wide gate that gave passage through it. He could get past those walls without much problem, but not without attracting attention and not without turning an unknown situation into something definitely hostile. It was better to have Antoinette in charge here; on his own, he might just have gone in. 

"Wait," said Morri. "You're scared of them but you're not scared of me?"

Agatha shrugged. "I wouldn't like to fight you," she said carefully. She paused for a moment, thinking. "I especially wouldn't like to fight you without a lot of darkness to work with, because I'd need it to avoid having you hit me or grab me. But... you're a warrior. I know how to deal with that. When Chris suddenly went to claws and fangs and fur and tail and still somehow a human shape, I just... I don't know. It shook me. I'm not saying it was rational."

Morri shook her head, then grinned. "I'll allow it. Especially since I owe you for saving me from that hangman thing back there."

Agatha grinned back hesitantly, then turned to Peter. "I'm ready. If, um, you are."

"Calmly," said Peter. "Let's go see where Tammy Lynn is now."