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«Hurry, hurry!» literally shouted his essence, weary from the Spell, although outwardly he did not show his impatience, remaining completely motionless in the center of the pentagram on the floor.
As if not noticing him, the master began to monotonously cast spells, moving from place to place, from figure to figurine, from drawing to drawing, stopping where he needed to perform the rite.
Gradually, Kanny felt a sweet languor slowly seize him, as if someone with an invisible hand hugged him, and then penetrated inside. The reality of what was happening began to slowly slip away from his consciousness, the smells began to dissolve and mix with each other, and the picture of the environment became more and more blurred. For some reason, the master’s words were getting louder, and his voice was getting sharper and rougher, as if everything he said caused him an extreme degree of irritation. From somewhere in the room, other wolf people began to appear, just like Kanny. They bared their teeth at him or maliciously, like hyenas, laughed in his face, splashing on him their saliva.
As usual, the werewolf was terrified with all this, but he knew he had to do his best to remain calm and not react to anything. An unbearable itch filled his whole body, as if every cell of his skin suddenly turned into a separate living being and began to live its own independent life.
«It’s close, it’s close!» this was the last thought in his mind before Kanny, as if in a dream, suddenly saw two teenagers approaching the house and, crying out in unbearable pain, fell unconscious.
* * *
Small, plump, bearded, cut like a hedgehog, with gray prickly piercing eyes, a master, he is Alex, he is Uncle Sasha for some villagers in those very rare cases when he still had to see them, he is a hereditary sorcerer, he is… although his last title, as well as other names, nicknames, ranks and the like, were not intended for a wide range of people – he saw as Kanny fell unconscious with the last spell, and thought:
«Weakling! He again could not withstand it to the end!»
At that moment, the bell rang, and suddenly someone knocked loudly on the door of the house.
The sorcerer even flinched in surprise.
«It’s impossible!» he thought, and with undisguised anger looked at the werewolf, who, at that moment, had already gone through the whole process and acquired a human form, to which the master did not feel anything but contempt. There was not the slightest trace of his former fear, which on an instinctive level aroused in him in front of the huge wolf.
Meanwhile, the knocking on the door continued.
Hurrying out into the corridor, Alex came to the exit and looked through the eyepiece of the surveillance camera to see who dared to disturb him at such a late hour in the middle of the forest. To his surprise, he saw two teenagers near the house, a girl and a guy, looking around in fear.
«Oh! Come on! And what should I do now?» the sorcerer thought irritably.
However, he knew that if he did not open, in their desperate situation, these two would look for a way to get into the house. Therefore, opening the inner door, he rudely asked:
«Who’s there?»
«Praise God!» the girl exclaimed.
«Forgive us, please, we got lost,» the guy said.
«Let us in for the night… please!» the girl asked in a pleading voice, as if she would burst into tears.
«Beasts!» the sorcerer thought angrily, and said out loud as calmly as possible:
«Wait for a moment.»
* * *
There became silence behind the door.
«He is not really pleased with our arrival, judging by his tone,» Andrey remarked.
«It doesn’t matter, as long as he lets us in,» Lera answered, chilly rubbing her cold shoulders.
«I think he will, but… I don’t really like all this.»
«Come on. It’s better than spending the night in a tree anyway.»
«It’s clear. But where is he from? I didn’t hear anything from any of the villagers that there was a forester’s house here, they crawled all the way across here. Moreover, it is quite large, not just a hut, but a whole cottage. How in the world did he get such a house like this unnoticed?»
«Maybe we’ve gone so far that it’s not their territory anymore?»
«Hmm, I don’t think so. We need to ask Uncle Venya. He is an experienced hunter. He spent all his life here and should know everything. He certainly explored every single place in the district. If, of course, we stay alive.»
«What are you talking about?» with fear asked Lera.
«Yes, be quiet,» her brother snapped. «I hope this isn’t the damned place he once talked about.»
«What place?»
«Doesn’t matter. One day I’ll tell you, but now… whatever may happen let it happen. It is strange that no light can be seen in the windows. How then did we see the illuminated window? I saw it clearly.»
«Maybe he turned it off?»
«I thought so too, but now, in theory, he should have turned it on again, but look, there is no light.»
«Yes, indeed. It’s strange.»
«I also thought that the moon could be reflected in the window, but no, all the windows are tightly closed with wooden shutters.»
«Perhaps he closed them before we arrived.»
«I don’t know, Lera, I don’t know. I have some bad feelings. I’m already seriously thinking that maybe we’d be better off staying in the tree.»
«Yeah, ok, stop it. Everything will be fine.»
«Let’s see. Now there is nowhere to go. We do not come back, do we?»
* * *
Alex entered the kitchen, took a mug, poured cold water into it, and going into the room where the ceremony was performed, he approached a naked man lying in the middle of the room and splashed him with cold water in his face.
The werewolf woke up and jumped to his feet, showing bewilderment with his whole appearance. However, although he was pitiful, and even more so, in his naked form, it was impossible not to notice that he was perfectly built and obviously very well developed and strong physically. His muscles played under smooth skin, under which not a single gram of excess fat was visible.
«Follow me,» the master ordered authoritatively, glancing at his muscular body with an envious look.
Silently following him, Kanny approached the front door.
«Look!» the sorcerer ordered, pointing to the screen.
«Who are these?» with fear asked werewolf.
«That’s what I wanted to ask you,» Alex said with a promising threat in his voice.
«I… d… don’t know,» Kanny began to stutter, but when he stumbled upon the host’s cruel, boring gaze, he broke off and, lowering his head, fell silent.
«Do not lie! How is it that these two are still alive and ended up here?» the sorcerer lowered his voice almost to a whisper, and then sharply and demandingly shouted: «Answer me!»
Startled, Kanny muttered plaintively:
«They… they climbed the tree. I couldn’t get them there. They got lost and… climbed up to spend the night. They fastened their belts to it, and… I p-passed them, and… th-thought that… I can’t get there, but… there’s not enough time, and they won’t come down anyway and… they won’t find the house… and… ran here.»
The sorcerer swung his hand, and Kanny shuddered and drew his head into his shoulders in fright. However, the master did not beat him, but only asked with displeasure:
«Did they see you?»
«No. I… think n-no.»
«Do you think or are you sure?» the master almost shouted.
Startled, Kanny still quite firmly answered:
«I’m sure.»
«You know that only at this time of day do I turn off the field so that you can freely enter the house. And you know that people are less sensitive to it than you are, and can come much closer. That is why at night time I demand that you destroy those who at this time may be nearby. I was sure that if there were any in the area, you would finish them off. And… Now what?!»
«Didn’t you turn on the field after you let me in?» Kanny asked with the intonation of a small perplexed child.
The sorcerer, out of annoyance, swung his hand at him again and at that moment thought: «By the way, it’s strange, I did turn it on.»
The werewolf reflexively pulled his head into his shoulders, but the master suddenly went limp and asked more calmly:
«Now what do you want me to do with them?»
Shrugging his shoulders, the werewolf, though very timidly, dared to answer:
«Only you give orders here, Master.»
After a moment of silence, considering his words, Alex shook his head and said:
«Okay, now get dressed, go to your place and wait there so that there is not a sound from you. And I will deal with these two.»
Kanny nodded and quickly walked away, and the sorcerer, having opened the inner door, began to slowly open the locks of the outer, deliberately stretching the time.
Chapter 3
The morning sun shone mercilessly directly into the eyes, and terribly interfered with sleep, but the dream was strong and stubbornly did not want to let the human consciousness out of its power, keeping it in a painful state of languor.
However, soon the strange sound of a running motor joined the bright sun, which, becoming louder, then quieter, periodically intervened in a restless sleeping state, penetrating deeper and deeper into the unsteady ripples of a morning dream.
At some point, the sound of the engine sounded so close and strong that Lera woke up abruptly and saw that the tractor Belarus was rushing towards her at speed, threateningly pointing at her the sharp forks of the harvesting mechanism.
From surprise and fright, she screamed piercingly, and her cry, despite the loud noise of the engine, nevertheless reached the hearing of the tractor driver, and he sharply pressed the brakes.
The tractor stopped, just a few centimeters short of her head with protruding fork teeth.
Apparently, the girl’s cry was so sharp and loud that it woke her brother Andrey, which neither the noise of the engine nor the morning sun could do, and he, waking up from a heavy sleep, now looked around in surprise, trying to understand what was happening and how he ended up of being here.
The driver leaned out of the tractor cab in surprise and, seeing the guys, swore in his heart, remembering all the obscene expressions that he only had in his not very rich rural verbal arsenal.
«Are you completely out of your mind?! What is the kind of place you’ve found for that matter! Come on, get off the field before I grab something heavier and go over your shameless asses.
Without forcing himself to be persuaded for a long time, Andrey nimbly jumped up, grabbed his sister by the hand, and tried to get away as quickly as possible from the angry tractor driver and the ill-fated ruined bale of hay at the edge of the field.
Having run back to a safe distance, the guys stopped and looked back at the working tractor, which, with the help of a special device, moved the collapsed hay bales to the edge of the field.
«What is he all about?» Lera asked.
«What, what? He works on the field, that’s what he’s all about.»
«Well… than… what are we doing here?»
Andrey, apparently, tried to find an answer to the same question, helplessly rummaging through his memory and, finding nothing, answered irritably.
«Probably, when we wandered through the forest yesterday, we were so tired that we fell into this hay without strength, and therefore we don’t remember anything.
«It seems to me that there was nothing like that,» the sister shook her head doubtfully.
«I don’t remember either, so what? But I remember how we got lost, and I remember how we wandered through the forest, looking for the way back.»
«There was also a tree… it seems… kind of… on which we climbed.»
«Tree? Hmm… I don’t remember the tree.»
«We still seemed to be fastened to it, remember?»
«Mm… no, I don’t remember such a thing. Apparently… We were very tired.»
The remembrance of the tree was so distant and vague that Lera herself doubted whether there was a tree or not, as if her brain stubbornly did not want to think in this direction. So, finally she said:
«Ok, it does not matter. Do you know where we are?»
Andrew looked around.
«No, I do not know. I have never seen this field.»
«Maybe we should ask the tractor driver?»
«After everything he told us?»
«So what?»
«What if he doesn’t tell us?»
