Black Dog (10 page)

Okay, so I probably laid it on way too thick. The first rule of collections is stay calm. Let the guy you're after work himself into a lather, yell and threaten to cause trouble.

But I was tired, and this wasn't a normal job, where I had the power of a reaper behind me. Just me, and the me that had ridden thirteen exhausted hours to Wyoming wasn't in the mood for being felt up by any more shifters.

Billy detached his wrist from my fingers and waved his heavies off with a raised eyebrow, still smiling. He thought I was cute and amusing, rather than dangerous. Well, if it kept me out of the shit a little longer, I was fine with playing Shirley Temple. “Who's the son of a bitch unlucky and stupid enough to get you after him, darlin'?”

I took a breath. “Clint Hicks.”

You could feel the mood of the room change, like a fast squall rolling over the Rockies and down into the valley, bringing cold wind and crushing rain. Thunderheads piled up in Billy's eyes, and he wasn't looking at me anymore, but at the other shifters. “Wait here,” he said, brushing past me. The trio panted at his heels, and for such a big guy, Billy had vanished out the door in the blink of an eye.

The door lock clicked behind them, and I was pretty sure it wasn't for my protection.

I pressed my ear against the door, but all I heard was the vibration of the music from the front room.

I went back to the musty daybed Billy had been lounging on and pulled back the velvet curtains covering the windows. They dislodged clouds of dust that triggered a sneezing fit, and my eyes watered as I tugged on the window. It was painted shut, and I leaned into it with my shoulder, snapping the latch and pushing it open.

Voices and footsteps came back down the hall, only the voices were snarls and the footsteps sounded more like paws, claws clicking on the splintery wood.

I saw now the mistake Wilson had made was not trying to collect on Clint Hicks, but not running when he had the chance. Maybe I was fucking up by bolting, but better to be skittish than dead. I swung my legs over the sill and dropped the five feet to the ground.

I'd learned to tell when things had gone bad a long time ago. Even before Gary had found me, I'd had the instincts to know what streets in the French Quarter not to walk down, which of the mobsters I sold moonshine to could be trusted if we were alone, when it was time to stop being polite, turn around, and leave.

My instincts had only failed me once, and I figured since that time I'd ended up dead, I'd made my one big mistake.

Behind me inside the clubhouse, I heard the door slam open and shapes crowded the open window. I made it to the tree line, layers of pine needles muffling my footsteps.

“Puppy dog,” Billy singsonged, leaning out the window and inhaling the chilly night air. “Where arreeeee youuuuu?”

“Let her run,” said a voice I recognized as the girl bodyguard. “Even if we don't catch her, she'll be back. We have the meat suit.”

Shit. I felt my stomach flip uncomfortably, like I'd just stepped off an unseen stair into thin air. I made myself keep moving. I wasn't going to be any help to Leo if I let the shifters pulverize me.

I heard two soft thuds of feet landing on the ground, and I peered around the rough bark of a pine tree, watching the girl stand with Billy's other heavy, who lifted his snout, pointed ears slicked against his skull as he scented for me.

He was big, maybe an eastern coyote or a young wolf, and when he caught my scent a low growl rumbled from his throat.

I took off, sprinting until my lungs burned and the pines and scrub turned into a blur. The clubhouse sat on the edge of unbroken woods, and the moon gave off just enough light to keep me from catching a fallen tree and breaking my leg.

The two shifters crashed through the brush behind me. I heard their high, vicious yips as they split up, flanking me through the night forest.

The ground sloped under me and I used the incline to push myself harder, feeling twin blades of pain from my lungs jab deep into my chest. It didn't matter. If they caught me, I was dead. Leo was dead. And even if I got away, Lilith would kill me anyway.

I crashed through a shallow stream, cutting up the rocky bed for a few hundred feet to confuse my scent before scrambling up the opposite banks. Rocks and roots cut at my hands. The coyotes snarled behind me, sliding down the bank into the stream.

Another sound joined their panting and yipping—­the long, blood-­chilling scream of a mountain lion. A swath of limestone cliffs, gleaming pure white in the moonlight, loomed up in front of me and I cut along the foot, shoving through the thick brush. Billy had joined the hunt.

I needed to gain high ground, get someplace where I could defend myself. Running from them would be easier if I was the hound, but my arm was still throbbing, and the last thing I needed was to pop my stitches and come up lame. If that happened, I might as well slap a $4.99 sticker on my forehead and call myself all-­you-­can-­eat buffet for the shifters.

The coyotes picked up speed, close enough that I could see their low, slinking shapes against the forest. They were just playing with me, running me down until I was too tired and beat up to do anything but surrender.

I dug my boots into the soft dirt of the forest floor. I'd run for my life before, splashing through the bayou shallows, the hem of my dress weighted down with brackish black water.

The thick air coated my face and hair with damp, the kind of damp that rots everything it touches, sooner or later. My lungs burned, and choking sobs worked their way out of my throat no matter how hard I tried to stay quiet. I'd lost my shoes in the mud somewhere back near the old plantation house, the cane fields and grounds choked with kudzu and cypress. The swamp always reclaimed its own, and if I didn't run soon it would claim my bones.

Even though I was thousands of miles and close to a hundred years from the overgrown bayou now, running through a mountain forest and sucking down lungfuls of thin, clear air, the outcome would be the same. I'd run, but sooner or later I'd have to either kill or be killed.

The land dropped away, eroded down to the bones of pale limestone beneath, and I skidded to a stop. The coyotes burst out of the woods behind me and slowed, pacing back and forth to cut off any escape.

I tried to slow my heart down, really breathe and get my heart under control. The larger of the two, a black streak down her spine, stepped forward and bared her teeth. She barely gave me time to brace myself before she gathered her haunches and leaped.

Her weight hitting me felt like taking a Ford Pinto in the chest, but I managed to get an arm in between my jugular and her snapping jaws. I grabbed the fur between her shoulders with my other hand, digging my nails deep into her skin. She snarled and snapped, breath like a garbage furnace radiating against my face.

We stumbled to the edge of the ravine at my back, and instead of trying to stop my fall I leaned into it, the coyote and I still locked together. She yelped as we went over the edge, hitting the dirt and rolling, brush and dead trees snapping under my body. I bounced off a dead log and felt a spot under my lungs go tight, every breath hot and sharp as a punch in the ribs.

The coyote screeched as we tumbled down the almost sheer rock face, scrabbling with her paws to slow her descent. I could have told her it was useless, but a boulder filled my vision, sticking like a broken tooth from the loose gravel at the bottom of the ravine. The coyote unlocked her jaws from my forearm, slipping out of view as the rock came up at me. I curled into a ball, all I could do in the split second before I slammed into the rock and came to a dead stop.

Everything blurred gently, like ink running off a page. I saw the cold silver face of the moon, impossibly large, filling up my vision, before I blacked out.

My broken ribs brought me back a few seconds later, stabbing me with pain that would have made me vomit if there had been anything left in my stomach.

The coyote whimpered off to my left, scrambling up from where she'd landed and shaking herself off. She favored one of her hind legs, but she was in a lot better shape than I was. Both of my arms were cut up now, and one of my legs wouldn't hold weight when I tried to stand.

Above us on the ridge, Billy started to pick his way down, his blond coat sleek as a shark cutting through dark water under the moonlight.

The girl coyote let out a small yip, drawing her lips back. I'd swear she was laughing at me. And why shouldn't she? I'd basi­c­ally laid out a free meal for the three of them.

My scrabbling fingers found a sharp rock within reach, and as she jumped at me I swung it and smacked her in the side of her skull. She yelped and snapped at me. I jammed my less injured arm between her jaws, feeling her teeth scraping my skin through my borrowed jacket. I grabbed her scruff with my other hand and jerked her head sharply to the left. There was a crack like a dry branch snapping, and she slumped on top of me.

For a moment, the ravine was eerily silent except for my own breath rasping in and out. The coyote's body was heavy, and I struggled to free myself. Billy let out a caterwaul, the sound Dopplering off the cliffs around us, and started bounding down the ravine, not caring when he stumbled and took a header on some gravel. The other coyote followed him. In thirty seconds they'd both be on me, and I doubted they'd be in a forgiving mood.

My arm was bleeding freely, black rivulets running over my fingers and coating the ground, turning the dust to mud under me. The edges of my vision started to blur and I realized the coyote had nicked a major vein. I'd killed her, but she'd killed me too.

This was familiar—­my struggles getting weaker, skin going cold, the only warm spot the wound where the blood pumped out of me. Black dots spun in front of my eyes, and the weight of the coyote might as well have been a thousand pounds.

As I felt the ground shake under Billy's paws, a thunderclap rolled across the ravine. My skull vibrated, and Billy let out a scream. Not a thunderclap.

A gunshot.

Thunder rolled again and the rock next to Billy exploded, peppering him with chips of limestone. He and the male coyote turned tail and took off up the canyon, disappearing into the dark.

I lay alone, breath shallow, and saw a dark shape fade into view above me. It was walking on two legs, but that was about all I could say for sure.

“Are you alive?” a male voice asked. I tried to answer, but all that came out was a gasp. Staying conscious was officially way too much work, so I let the curtains come down and slipped under the cold waves.

 

CHAPTER
13

B
ack on the bayou, I smelled smoke, and when I opened my eyes, dawn was creeping up on me, turning the cypress at the clearing's edge to black lines. The Spanish moss blended with the smoke from the dead fire and the fog clinging to the ground.

Cold slithered over my bare skin. I was naked, blood dried on my skin to the same shade as the mud coating my thighs and buttocks. The road map of cuts across my stomach and thighs, my breasts and forearms, radiating down to my feet had healed, the sticky residue all that remained of the hot, sharp pain that went to the core of me.

The fire had long since gone out, a jumbled mass of charred lumber scavenged off the plantation house. The white chalk paint of the
veve
was gone too, churned under a mass exodus of footprints through the bloody mud. Caleb and the others had disappeared into the bayou. I was alone.

“You're not alone. You're dead.”

I jolted awake, throwing the weight of the coyote off me. Not the coyote, I realized as something crashed to the ground. Blankets. And an enamel pitcher sitting on a nightstand, which was leaking water all over the braided rug next to a bed. I was indoors, in a small room little bigger than the bed, low ceiling of rough-­hewn beams tilting overhead. An oil lamp hung from the rafters, calico curtains covered the only window. Decades of sun had bleached stripes into them, turning the weak light creeping through into a kaleidoscope.

I could have been back home in Bear Hollow, shoved into our too-­small mountain cabin, able to hear the breathing of every other living soul within its walls, but the excruciating pain of being awake told me this was real life, not some memory flotsam that had bubbled to the surface, borne on my concussion.

There was no sound here, though. As far as I could tell, I was alone.

I braced myself and tried sitting up and swinging my feet over the edge of the bed. Bandages restricted my movements and my skull throbbed with a pain hangover, like every cut and bruise had its own heartbeat. My arm was wrapped in gauze spotted with rusty bloodstains. The spots were dry, and when I peeled the bandage back the bites had faded to red, puckered scars, joining the interstate of older injuries on my forearm. My ribs were wrapped, and I could actually breathe without wanting to scream, which was a nice change.

The cut from Gary's Scythe was still crimson and warm to the touch under Leo's stitches, but I'd take what I could get.

Leo. He was back at the clubhouse. If he hadn't cut and run when I didn't come back.

If Billy hadn't killed him outright.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and started looking for my clothes. I was wearing a nightgown covered in faded pink flowers, so old and thin it was practically transparent. At least whoever had put me here had let me keep my underwear. That pointed toward “Good Samaritan” rather than “cannibalistic sex offender.” In situations like this, you had to be glad for the small things.

A neat stack of fresh clothes sat on a rough-­hewn log chair by the bedroom door. Jeans, a man's T-­shirt, an overshirt that smelled like it had been cozying up to somebody's grandfather for the last decade, even thick wool socks. I got changed fast, finding my boots sitting under the chair. They'd been cleaned up, free of the coating of road dust they usually sported.

Now I could run again if I had to. I left the nightgown draped over the bed and put my hand on the door, listening.

Nothing sounded from beyond the splintery wood except a faint thumping, arrhythmic and jarring. I eased the door open, finding myself in a dim, dusty room much like the one I'd woken up in. It was marginally larger, a stone fireplace taking up one wall and a small kitchen to my left. The cookstove was wood fired, and there was no sink, just a basin. It really was like being back home on the mountain. Outhouse and all most likely. I picked my way to the small front window and peered out.

A man stood in the clearing beyond the cabin, shirt off and honey-­gold skin glistening in the early sun. He hefted an ax and swung it down. Logs flew in either direction. He repeated the action twice more, then picked up the split wood and stacked it in a small, moss-­covered lean-­to.

I backed off, letting the curtain fall, and checked the other windows. An ancient pickup, composed mostly of rust and primer, was parked at the far end of the clearing. Otherwise, we were alone, just forest as far as I could see, crested by silver-­peaked mountains beyond.

A hunting rifle hung above the front door, the kind with a carbon stock and a nightscope that cost more than a midsize used car, but I left it where it was. The kick alone would knock me on my ass, and it was bad manners to shoot the person who saved you from being lunch meat.

I backed away from the window and prowled the perimeter of the cabin. No photos, nothing on the walls except a ­couple of ancient taxidermy heads, nothing to tell me who the mystery man was.

A small oak desk was shoved into the corner next to the fireplace, and I sat down, trying the drawer. It was locked, but a few seconds with a letter opener popped it. Inside, an orderly stack of bills sat atop a yellowed permit from the National Park Ser­vice giving the owner of the cabin permission to maintain an access trail through federal land.

I froze, looking at the scribbled name on the first line, just below a date reading
June 27, 1962
.

Clint Hicks.

A split second later, I realized the noise from outside had stopped. I shoved the permit back into the drawer and stood up, knocking the desk chair over as I spun around.

I was too slow. The man from outside stood in the doorway, looking at me. “You're awake,” he said, mopping sweat off his face with the tail of his shirt.

“Yeah,” I said cautiously, planting my feet. There was no way he was Clint Hicks—­if he'd made a deal with Gary that long ago, he'd be at least twice this guy's age—­but the fact I'd ended up in his cabin was way too much good luck for me to trust it.

“They fit,” the man said, and gestured to me when I frowned. “The clothes. I wasn't sure they would. You're small.”

“I manage,” I said. The guy's eyes darted from me to his kitchen, to the desk, and then back. Seeing what I'd touched, what I'd snooped into.

“Don't see many ­people this far into the woods,” he said, running a hand through the damp black hair collected on the nape of his neck. “Then again, you're not ­people, are you?”

I stiffened. He smiled and held up his hand. His teeth were dazzling white in contrast to his dark hair and eyes. His eyes were black, so dark I couldn't pick out the pupil and iris. The smile didn't reach them. They remained still and cold, like the part of the ocean so deep no light can reach it.

“Let's skip the games,” he said. “I'm in a good mood, so if you go out this door and tell your reaper you couldn't find me, I'll let you. Life and limb intact.”

I sighed. “You are Clint Hicks.” I skipped lying and telling him I didn't know what he was talking about. I also skipped wondering why a guy pushing eighty looked thirty. Bathed in the blood of unlucky hikers for all I knew, or just moisturized like crazy.

“What I've gone by lately,” said the man. “I've been a lot of ­people.” He stepped aside, pointing out the door. “It's about twenty miles to the highway. I suggest you start walking. Shifters will be out looking for you again as soon as the moon's up.”

I stayed where I was. “I can't do that.”

Clint Hicks sighed. “Don't be stupid. Whatever your reaper has threatened to do to you, trust me—­it's nothing compared to what I'll do to not be found.”

“Nothing stupid about it,” I said, judging the distance between us. Less than five feet—­I could smell the salty tang of sweat rolling off Clint's skin.

It would be over. After everything that had happened in the last week, this seemed distinctly anticlimatic.

That fit. I wasn't about big satisfying endings. I couldn't even die properly.

“I'm warning you,” Clint said, dropping the shirt and shutting the door behind him. “I'm not somebody you want to mess with, no matter what your reaper told you.”

“Gary didn't tell me anything,” I said. “Gary didn't send me. He's dead.”

Clint started to say something else, but I took a leap and landed, my claws digging into the splintery pine floor. I pushed off my back legs, landing on him with my full weight, and sank my teeth into the meat of his shoulder as we crashed to the ground.

Screams echoed, splitting my skull, and my vision bleached to white. It lit a fire behind my eyes like looking directly up at the sun, and whispers from a hundred voices skittered around the inside of my brain, never condensing into words, always just on the edge of hearing.

The pain got worse by the second, and I felt my heart thudding against my ribs so hard I was sure I'd broken them all over again.

In all of the hundreds of collections I'd made, I'd felt a lot of tainted, battered souls slither into my mind to rest until I turned them over to Gary. But not this. There was nothing here but agony, and finally, I had to let go or die.

When I was the hound, letting go was the last thing I wanted. Fortunately, the hound also wanted to live a lot more than I did, and I flew back from the blinding white void where voices cried and screamed.

Then it was just me, panting and whimpering, crumpled in the far corner of the cabin by the stove. Clint Hicks stood over me, just a black outline in the light from the door. Shadows played around him, enveloping us both, swirling like a black blizzard, overtaking my vision until it was down to a pinpoint.

“You bitch,” Clint muttered, dabbing at the blood on his shoulder. He retreated, and the shadows with him, and after a moment the nausea subsided and I could draw a normal breath.

“What are you?” I croaked. Clint looked over his shoulder, wiping his wound clean at the basin. The bloody rags stood out like neon on a rainy night, the scent so rich and cloying my throat almost closed up.

“Somebody who doesn't want to be bothered,” he said. That shut me up for a second. I hadn't met many men who understood hellhound talk.

The operative word there being
men,
which Clint Hicks clearly wasn't. At least not all the way. I'd turned over a lot of stones hiding nasty critters in my time, but never one who could repel a hellhound bite like an electric fence.

Clint examined the bite in a small hand mirror hung over the basin and winced. “Never do that again,” he growled. “It hurts like hell and I think we've established it's useless.”

I let myself shift back, sitting up slowly. I was dizzy, shaking, like I'd just taken a line of the hillbilly crank back at the shifters' clubhouse.

“You promise?” Clint Hicks demanded sternly, going to a squat chest of drawers and pulling out a clean shirt.

I pulled myself to my feet. “Yeah, it's useless.” My throat was tight and hot, turning my voice to a whisper. “Because you don't have a soul.”

Clint shook his head. “Nope. And now you've made things difficult for yourself. Now I'm going to have to set your reaper an example.” He opened the cabinet farthest from the cookstove and took down a box of rifle shells.

“I told you I don't have a reaper,” I snapped. “And if you were so worried in the first place, why didn't you let Billy kill me?”

He shrugged, taking his rifle down from the hook and starting to load the finger-­length shells. “I needed to know who sent you. If I let the shifters rip you apart like they did that other hound, the reapers just send more.”

“You could have just asked me,” I muttered. Clint finished loading the shells and lowered the rifle so the barrel pointed at the floor. I felt sweat work its way down my back. The shot might not kill me, but at this range it would make life unpleasant for a good long while.

“No offense, but in my experience you all are a bite-­first, ask-­questions-­never breed of thug,” he said.

“It was Lilith,” I said. I felt a flash of satisfaction when his face slackened, cut jaw and sharp cheekbones seeming to fall in on themselves.

“You're lying.”

I folded my arms. “I'm not. I don't have any reason to. I just have a job to do.”

Clint dropped the rifle and closed the space between us so fast I didn't even have time to make a sound before he shoved me against the stone fireplace, his fingers curling around my windpipe. His hands were thin, graceful, all bony knuckles and soft golden skin. Far from the calloused, knobby hands I would have expected a mountain man like him to be sporting.

They were plenty strong, though, and I choked as I struggled. My ribs starting throbbing again where he'd bashed me against the fireplace.

“Does she know where I am?” Clint snarled. “Right now. Does she know about this place?”

I clawed at his hands, but he hit me hard, knocking me to the ground. Blood erupted where my teeth cut into my cheek.

“No,” I rasped, spitting it onto the floor. “She just told me to come find you when Gary bit it.”

Clint turned on me again, pointing his finger inches from my nose. “Stop lying!” he bellowed. “Hounds don't exist without a reaper!”

“I do.” I pulled myself to my feet, swiping at the blood on my chin. “I killed him, Lilith cornered me, and she told me to find you. So far I'm not having trouble understanding why she's got it in for you.” I gingerly prodded my jaw, but my teeth seemed to have survived intact.

“You better not be messing with me . . .” Clint started. I pulled the twisted iron poker out of a dented metal trash can by the fireplace and pointed it at him.

“I swear if you come near me again, I will beat the shit out of you, soul or no soul,” I said. A tic appeared in Clint's jaw, but he backed off, taking a deep breath.