by J. B. Garner
Bunny immediately shifted stance to take up as much of the hall as her giant frame could take. “Run, Mary!”
Now, I don’t cut and run on friends unless it’s absolutely essential so understand I had no intention of running as I turned sidelong down the hall. I only turned because the hairs on the back of my neck were creeping up with the sneaking suspicion we were surrounded. Keeping the light forward so Bunny could best defend herself, I trusted that suspicion enough to take a backward glance.
In a sense, I wish I hadn’t. Sometimes, it’s better to take solace in lying to yourself than to confirm your worries to be true, right?
True to that worry, there were low, hunched shapes backlit by the streetlights accented by more of those same blazing eyes. Silhouetted as they were, I couldn’t make out exactly what they were except they were even shorter than I was and emitted that same threatening growl.
“Sorry to tell you, Bunny, but we’re surrounded.” Keeping the book open in one hand, I raised my hammer, ready to fight back if need be.
Maybe the shadowy beasts understood us, maybe they didn’t, but one thing was for sure. They took our momentary hesitation to attack, bounding at us with terrible growls, barks, and yips from both sides.
So much for no big deal.
3
Seven bundles of fur, muscle, and bone bounded forward, staying low to the ground like furry snakes. I barely had the split-second to brace, my hammer held out in front of me to hopefully ward off a bite or two when they crashed into me. Some of them managed the impressive feat of reaching my chest in a single bound while most plowed into my shins and thighs. One lucky (or unlucky, depending on your perspective) one managed to grab hold of my hammer’s handle, right above my knuckles.
Though it certainly didn’t feel good to be pelted with twenty-plus pound fluffy missiles, it was immediately obvious that these beasts weren’t going for the kill. None of the ones going for flesh went for a bite, something that would have been way more effective than this literal dog pile. Though I’ve come to find out that Dwarves, on the whole, are hale, hardy, and sturdy, sharp teeth are sharp teeth, and while stylish, the standard issue Easy-E-Mart uniform polo and your typical khaki work skirt did not make for good armor.
Still, as non-lethal as these things were being, their bombardment stung quite a bit. More importantly, they hit me with enough force in both my legs and my bountiful chest to knock me off my feet, landing right on my butt. My book flew out of my hand, skittering across the floor, light flooding from its page toward the ceiling. My grip on my hammer was rock solid though, no matter the weight or pull the dog-like beast put on it. The things pranced and squirmed on top of me, growling and barking, trying to press me the rest of the way to the ground, but I wasn’t going to have any of that, shoving and swinging to at least keep my sitting position.
I could have unleashed any of the runewords I had carved into the hammer itself, but if they were playing relatively nice, I could do the same. I didn’t come here to kill anybody.
Bunny seemed to be doing better than I was, judging from the furious rabbit chuffs, the whimpering whines of her attackers, and the fact that I wasn’t being joined on the floor by a giant rabbit. As I tried to divest my hammer of its canine attachment, I finally got a decent look at the thing, and that’s when it all clicked. All the sounds and growls and whines were very dog-like for a reason. We were being attacked by dogs and not just any kind of dogs.
From the resemblance to giant furred snakes to the triangle ears to the bright, shining eyes, we were being overrun by a small army of Corgis. And that meant that it was likely these were …
“Stop!” I shouted in Truespeech as I tried to push another Corgi off my chest. “We are here to help you!”
Unfortunately, none of the dozen-plus Corgi-weres seemed to hear my plea over the hyperactive barking, yipping, and whimpering. Worse, trying to make myself heard distracted me from forcing my way to my feet, resulting in me being covered in well over one hundred pounds of dog. Corgis might have extremely short legs, but their body mass is as much as many dogs twice their height. Add to that the supernatural prowess that Garou possessed and I was lucky that the worst that they did was knock the wind out of me by playing trampoline on me.
Oddly, my secret hope was that these guys weren’t shedding. Deepest Mines, I didn’t want to try to get dog fur out of my silky-smooth locks, both on top of my head and on my face.
Bunny did hear me, though, thanks in no small doubt to those large ears of hers and she did manage to let out the closest equivalent of a bunny roar, loud enough to cut above the general chaotic din of the doggo brigade. “Cease and desist, pack Sanderson! I am Huntress Reba Kincaid, and I am here at your own request!”
While they had ignored me, Bunny had captured their rapt attention. Ah, the power of authority … and having the biggest lungs in the room. The Corgis all seemed to orient on her and stop the majority of their assault, much as it was, though they didn’t get off of me. Well, it was better than having them bouncing up and down on me. While I caught my breath, they started up what felt like a conversation in growls, yips, and wuffs before one of them, hard to pick out from the mass of them, took charge, continuing to bark in the same ‘language’ but directed towards Bunny.
I had a decent view of her looming over me, her jacket having a few torn spots from tooth or claw, I wasn’t sure which. “What do you mean ‘where is my badge’?” Her frustration was palatable even if it was hard to read on her rabbit face. One of her ears flopped cutely over her eye as she pointed at the lead Sanderson out of sight. “You must know I am the only Lapin Garou in all of Saginaw. Why do I need identification?”
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s listening to someone wandering around with a Bluetooth earpiece, talking to thin air right in front of other people. It’s the whole ‘one-sided’ aspect of things, and it’s just plain rude. Maybe I just hate being left out of conversations. Either way, this situation reminded me a lot of that, well, if you added a lot more dogs to the equation.
Lead Corgi barked and whimpered a response that sounded vaguely apologetic to my untrained ears. The rest of the pack was well-disciplined, all paying rapt attention now to Bunny and their leader. They still didn’t bother getting off me, content to use me as a comfy seat while everything was hashed out.
“Very well,” the wererabbit acquiesced, rooting in her jacket with one paw. “The moment I show you this, you had best howl for your mother. She is the only one in human form, is she not?”
“Yes,” I added with a growl of my own, “and while she does that, could you please for the love of gold get off me?”
I emphasized my question by pushing up onto my elbows. Now that I had a moment to brace, hundreds of pounds of Corgi weren’t much in comparison to my old strongwoman act. Several of the tubular dogweres tumbled aside as I sat up, yipping as they went.
“Right. My apologies, Mary.” Bunny produced a silver badge from an inside pocket. You know, I had never asked for her badge myself, and I was surprised to find out she had one. Not sure why. Maybe it was because I still kind of thought of her as more bounty hunter than Ye Olde Sheriff. “This is Mary Stone, my current deputy. I would be pleased if you would no longer accost her.”
In some ways, Bunny’s badge resembled that of a Dragon’s Eye agent (think the Drachenreich’s spy agency and secret police) in that it had a dragon curled around the center. Instead of the eye at the center, this badge had a star reminiscent of an Old West sheriff’s badge. Do you think the True Dragons got that from normal humans or did humanity get it from them?
Either way, that silver star was all the proof the Corgis needed. The last few still in my lap hopped off and gave me an utterly adorable ‘we’re sorry’ look, lolling, panting tongue included. No matter my momentary annoyance with them, there was no way I couldn’t crack a smile at those totally huggable puppies.
The lead Corgi let out a short, keening howl as the others formed ranks around him/h
er. With the situation defused, I clambered to my feet and recovered my book, the molten light still illuminating the room.
“So, we are all square then?”
Bunny glanced over at me as she put the badge away. “Everything is good now. Our young friends here were simply being very protective of their mother after what happened.”
I slipped my hammer back in my bag, happy to not have actually clobbered any of the Sanderson clan in the process of said misunderstanding. Guilt crept into my heart, both over the possibility that I would have hurt a kid and second that my brain was busier trying to figure out exactly how Garou that were animals worked. I pushed that aside, so I could focus on the reason we were here.
Fortunately, I only had to do that for a moment or two before the distinct click of an opening lock mingled with the panting of the dogs. A moment later, the side door slid open, the light from a table lamp mingling with my own magical glow, and in the doorway was a perfectly normal-looking human woman who just so happened to set off a full tingle on my Figment radar.
Predictably, she was short. Well, short for a human anyway, topping no more than five feet at most. The other immediately distinctive thing about the Sanderson matriarch was her thick, wavy orange hair, matching the predominant fur color of her brood. She was dressed plainly enough in a rainbow-colored, hand-knit sweater, and black tights. As she was a Garou, I immediately took stock of her footwear, house slippers in this case. By my estimation, she couldn’t be more than thirty, but looks can be deceiving, especially when it came to Figments.
I glanced up from her shoes and smiles politely. “Mrs. Sanderson, I presume?”
The Sanderson pack circled around their mother as she nodded slowly. “I am.” She certainly spoke Truespeech perfectly fine. Though her tone was polite, her eyes were wet as if from a recent cry with bags under them that spoke of little sleep. “Oh, I am sorry about the children. They are almost of age for their first change, and you know how rambunctious we all get then.”
I didn’t, but Bunny must have because she nodded emphatically. “I do indeed, Mother Sanderson. I remember what I was like at that age.” The Huntress sketched a near-perfect curtsy. “You have my apologies as well for having to cuff some of your pups.”
Mother inclined her head as I followed Bunny’s lead with my own curtsy. Mine was a little better as I had the skirt for it. “You have mine as well, though I do not think I actually cuffed any.”
While her children started to cavort and play like any bunch of dogs might, Mother’s eyebrows raised and her eyes lit up a little as she turned her gaze towards me. “Great Hunters, a Dwarf!” That wasn’t an uncommon reaction even after these months since I went ‘public’ in the Figment community. “It is an honor to meet you, lady Dwarf, and do not fret. No harm has been done.”
I smiled even as I fidgeted under the attention. While it was fifty times better than the usual attention my height and beard drew, it still made me vaguely uncomfortable. At least Bunny was enjoying herself, a vague kind of playful smirk on her muzzle (I think).
“As that is the case, Mother, let us sit down so you can tell Lady Stone and I all about your problem,” she said. I had only heard Bunny use this deferential tone when she talked with Governor Sinclair (even if he didn’t often deserve it), not even with Siofra and she was a Gods-honest Dragon’s Eye.
I’d grill her about it later. “Exactly. We are here to help.”
I was a bit surprised at how enthusiastic that came out of my lips. Not that I wasn’t interested in helping out before, even more so when Bunny told me it was a missing person. I do have a soft spot for helping people out, or else I’d never have gone through everything I did to help Aelfread.
This was different, though. This was more than just a missing person. The moment I saw Mother and her collected pups and my brain deduced that said missing person had to be the father of the pack, something else clicked in my heart. Maybe it was the fact that I was an orphan myself, in both the Figment sense and the ordinary sense.
Whatever the cause, I was in like Flynn now, 110% committed to cracking the case. If I could do anything about it, I wouldn’t let any child (or thirteen puppies in this case) lose a parent.
4
It turned out that the den for a pack of Garou Chien isn’t far off from any typical American home. The family room was a bit more spacious than I expected and dominated by more pet beds than love seats but there was still a large, well-used sofa against one wall, aimed straight at the focus of the room, a widescreen LCD television. Judging by the assortment of DVDs on a wire rack by the TV, the idea of television-as-babysitter wasn’t confined to the human world.
If you replaced the chew toys and tennis balls with building blocks and action figures, you probably wouldn’t even notice this place was anything odd. Well, if you didn’t have a dog allergy.
At Mother’s insistence, Bunny and I took the sofa while the Sanderson matriarch sat in a rocking chair opposite us. The puppies, er, teenagers - I wasn’t sure exactly how to classify them – milled about, some tussling, some thoughtfully chewing on things, others crashing out on beds. Two of them, one of them undoubtedly Lead Corgi, sat down on either side of Mother.
As we settled down in our seats, Bunny shifted back into her human form. Unfortunately, I was too preoccupied with trying to clamber up into the seat with some attempt at decorum that I once again missed my chance to solve the mystery of her footwear.
The sadness and fatigue in Mother’s eyes spread to the rest of her body as she seemed to melt into her chair as if she barely had the strength to hold her head up. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”
This was Bunny’s job, so I let her take the lead. “My pleasure and my duty,” she said with a nod. So far, so good. Bunny looked calm, focused, and all business. “Could you please tell us what happened to your mate?”
That wasn’t an exact translation from Truespeech, to be fair. Just as ‘Dwarf’ didn’t quite feel the same as it did in English, so did this use of ‘mate’. It carried a specific connotation that felt entwined with the concept of being, well, Garou. I don’t know how else to describe it, not with how interconnected Truespeech was with my subconscious mind and that crazy racial memory inherited from the Dwarven ancestors.
“He disappeared two days ago,” Mother began, never quite meeting Bunny’s gaze as she talked. “Patches left the den quite abruptly in the afternoon, far too early for his work, and I have not caught the scent of him since.”
I couldn’t tell if her darting glances were from nerves, fatigue, deception, or animal instincts I didn’t understand. I also managed to keep a completely straight face, swear to my ancestors, at the fact a grown sentient being had the name ‘Patches’. No, instead, I found myself wondering if animal Garou often wound up named by humans instead of by themselves or if they mimicked the human naming conventions for pets.
Bunny started with the obvious. “Do you know why he left or where he was planning on going?” If she had one of those little notebooks, a pen, and a suit, she would have been a picture-perfect detective.
“I am not sure why he left.” Mother rubbed her temples slowly. “That alone is so strange. With so many pups from this last litter, Patches has always been so good about making sure I knew his comings and goings.” As if she could foresee the next obvious question, she actually looked up and met Bunny’s level gaze. “This is not our first batch, Huntress, and we have a very open relationship. He would not have cut and run under the burden or gone off rutting with another bitch, not without telling me first.”
I couldn’t help but wince. Yes, I knew what Mother actually meant by using the word, especially with how plainly she spoke it, but it wasn’t something I expected to ever hear an intelligent dog woman say, even if she looked completely human right then.
“Oh, my apologies.” She must have noticed my discomfort as she was now bowing her head to me in that weirdly submissive way. More and more, I could see the dog in her coming through. �
�I understand that Dwarven culture is somewhat more reserved than most. I should have thought about how to put it to not offend you.”
Bunny smirked as she glanced sidelong at me and before I could get out a word edgewise, she said, “I would not worry too much, Mother. Trust me, Lady Stone has done her fair share of rutting.”
“That is neither here nor there, Bunny.” I topped off my protest with a punch in her arm, a semi-playful one but I didn’t pull it too much. I knew she could take it after all. “Let us focus on finding your missing mate.”
Bunny winced from the punch but laughed it off, rubbing her arm. “Yes, of course.” She turned her focus back to a confused-looking Mother. “I will take it as truth that marital issues have no place in this investigation. As you say, you have no idea as to why he left, what about my second question? Do you have any idea of where he intended to go?”
Casting one last glance at me which I answered with a reassuring smile, the Garou Chien looked back to Bunny, her brow tightening in thought, no doubt complicated by the constant scamper of Corgis around the room. One of the younger ones, closer to an actual puppy than the others, was doing his or her level best to climb onto the couch with us. Sympathetic to the short-legged dog’s plight, I leaned over to help.
“As with why, he did not say where” – she paused for a beat – “but I know some things that might point you towards his scent.”
Without even thinking, I began scratching behind the ear of the Corgi in my lap. “That would be of great assistance, I am sure,” I smiled, figuring I should be a good cop. Well, maybe better cop would sound better. It’s not like Bunny was playing a bad cop, after all.
Mother nodded slowly. “He did not intend to go far, as he left in his natural shape. No automobile, no taxi, no Uber, not even other human conveniences. None of the people we know in this neighborhood have seen him and none of us, even Samson, the best of my litter in tracking, have found a scent of him beyond the yard.”
