“This job isn’t just finding a dog, or a black dog, but the Black Dog.” I heard the capital letters as she spoke. “Are you familiar with the legend?”
Both Marty and I shook our heads.
“Most people who’ve heard about the Black Dog only know the legends. Most of them are incorrect, of course, but all legends contain some truth. This one started in Northern Ireland centuries ago. The home of your ancestors, Miss Kelley. The last stones of a once great castle still stand on the cliffs. Before the castle stood a village, whose name is long lost to time, and this is where the Black Dog began.”
My head didn’t stop spinning when Helen’s story ended. “So, you’re telling me this Black Dog legend is real and now it’s hunting in New Orleans?”
“With a plethora of famous, profitable dead, I’m sure you see the problem.”
Problem. As if there was only one. As if supernatural, undead dogs killed by the Church to protect the sacred burial grounds prowled the streets of a major city every day. As if the presence of this dog didn’t threaten the very lucrative afterlife business in New Orleans. As if this job meant as little as some menial task and not a potentially life-threatening feat.
“Maybe that’s why I didn’t see anything at the hotel last night,” Marty said, as if talking to himself.
Helen continued. “This requires the utmost sensitivity. The Black Dog is to be captured, not killed, and returned to my collection.”
My brain struggled to respond. “This legendary portent of death and calamity is something I’m supposed to scoop up without killing, without dying, and before it culls any of the important ghosts in New Orleans? Hey, yeah, no problem. How about I find the Holy Grail while I’m at it?” The wolf-dog scrambled to his feet and growled as I stood.
“Hush, Fen.” Helen tugged the ribbon.
My hand slid to the short blade stashed in a waistband sheath as the animal lowered his head between his paws, ears up and vigilant.
I took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of my nose. “I apologize. That was unprofessional.” Clasping my hands behind my back, I tried to regain my composure and smile. “This is a bit much to take. I need to do some research, consult with my team, and I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an option, Miss Kelley.”
Marty paused half-way out of his chair.
“Excuse me?”
Helen pulled an envelope from between her leg and the chair and held it out to me. “There isn’t a decision to be made.”
“There’s always a decision. Like I could walk out right now and you’d be on your own to find your undead demon doggy.”
She leaned farther forward, the letter in her fingers.
“What’s this?”
“Read it.”
I took the thick envelope, immediately recognizing the wax seal of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Mercy of Saint Brendan on the flap. Knots in my shoulders tightened, and a weight settled in my stomach. Not good.
The wax seal cracked as I opened the envelope. When I finished reading, I handed it to Marty and walked to the open French doors. A weak breeze shifted the curtains around me. Only a sliver of the empty street showed through the open doors. The faint riff of a jazz melody crested, broken by the sound of a car horn.
“Cee?”
Never before had I gotten a letter like that from Sister Betty’s order.
Marty touched my shoulder.
Never before had I been ordered to a job like this.
“You okay?”
Never before had the Pope personally assigned me.
“Yeah,” I said, steeling myself as I turned to face Helen. “I don’t know who you are, but you’ve got my attention. You’ve obviously got connections, so I’ll find this damned dog of yours, but after that, I’m leaving New Orleans. No one jerks me around like this.”
“Cee!”
Her slow smile spread like honey. “I am not ‘jerking you around,’ Miss Kelley. As you know, the local hunter is dead.”
“Did you have something to do with that?”
The wolf-dog stepped between us.
“Don’t say something you’ll regret.” Her smile stiffened. “I will excuse your shock, but I will not tolerate your disrespect.”
“If there’s nothing else,” I said, “I have a job to do.”
Her bare hand gripped the pink ribbon, her gloved hand stroking the slack end, but she did nothing to pull back the wolf-dog or to discourage his bared teeth and raised fur. “That is all. For now.”
Marty re-read the letter in his hand.
“Guillaume will show you out.”
As if summoned by his name, the door opened, and the butler appeared. He gave a half bow and swept an arm toward the open door, unfazed by the growling animal.
Helen nodded at me, as if in dismissal. “I expect to see you soon. The information you’ll require is waiting at your hotel.”
I didn’t answer.
She stood, my anger suddenly distracted. Her clothes hung strange on the left half of her body. It seemed smaller. Lopsided. With a subtle, controlled tug on the pink ribbon, the wolf-dog stopped growling and stepped back. She gave a little nod. “Good day.”
Guillaume cleared his throat, gesturing toward the open door.
Annoyed, I shrugged off Marty’s attempt to guide me to the door. “This isn’t over.”
“No,” Helen said, “it’s not, but you’re not the one running the game.”
“I don’t play games.”
She laughed, an indulgent sound. “You’ve been a player since the night your sister died, Miss Kelley. Did you think your role in Rome was accidental?”
Ice formed in my guts. My knees wobbled.
How the fuck did she know about Rome? Or Shannon?
“Perhaps I struck a nerve,” she said, her eyes fixed on me.
My back went rigid. “Your research is impressive.”
“Not as impressive as my reach.” She walked towards the open French doors, the wolf-dog reluctant to follow until the ribbon stretched taut between them. She didn’t turn. “And now, as you said, you have work to do. Good day.”
5
“Whoever heard of a ghost tour with no ghosts?” The two college-aged women wove between tables, one settling the strap of her expensive designer purse between her breasts as she snorted. “Of course, I demanded a refund.”
“Hey. Will you focus, please?” Marty tapped the table and gestured to his tablet as the two walked away. “I’m brilliant on my own, but this requires expertise I don’t have.”
I shook myself, rubbed my eyes and muttered an apology. First the airport, now being retained by Helen and chasing a supernat dog instead of taking my vacation. Not only that, the assignment came directly from the Pope by way of Sister Betty’s order. On so little sleep, it made my head ache. With so much out of the ordinary, I didn’t know where to start untangling it.
“Are you daydreaming about Sister Hot Pants? Do we need to feed your carnal appetites? What’s the sex equivalent of a Snickers?”
Though a thousand rejoinders crossed my mind, none of them came out of my mouth. “No, nothing like that.”
“Then what?”
How had Helen procured that letter? And why had Sister Betty not warned me? Surely, she’d known. Nothing happened in that order without her knowledge. Or so I’d thought. And if the directive came from the Pope, who hated me as much as any man could, what the hell did it mean for my future?
Nothing good.
Maybe last night’s nightmare of being attacked by a homeless man had been a premonition of the shitstorm to come. If premonitions were a thing. Or maybe it had been my brain’s revenge for the delicious gastronomic travesty of the chili cheese fries I devoured before bed. Thank you, room service. Or maybe the nightmare was just stress.
I could have said any of this, but the pity in Marty’s eyes made my jaw clench. An encore of misplaced sympathy for the girl with invisible wounds. Exactly the last thin
g I needed.
I shook my head, avoiding his gaze. “I love you, Mar, but you wouldn’t understand.”
His smile deflated. “No, I wouldn’t. But I’m trying.” With a shrug, he added, “In my own unique and charming way, of course.”
Shaking my head with a snort, I stared into my cup of melting beige slush dusted with coffee grounds. Charming or not, he was right. My thoughts needed to be here and strategizing, not thousands of miles away or obsessing over questions I couldn’t answer.
“Is it the Rome thing?”
The gentleness in his voice brought the sting of tears. I swallowed hard, chastising myself. It shouldn’t still bother me. The past is past, and I needed to get over it. I’d been working on getting stronger, getting faster. It wouldn’t happen again. After a long sip of the creamy frozen drink, I cleared my throat. “Yes and no.”
“Regret pissing off the Pope?”
No matter how shitty things got, the image of the spluttering old man trying not to curse as he stomped around the Vatican guest house still amused me. He might hate me. He might fuck up my life forevermore, but he’d never take that memory. I smiled in spite of myself. “Never.”
Marty propped his chin up with both hands and grinned. “I still wish I could’ve recorded it. You should get an award for making his head explode.”
“Nah, it’s not hard to do.”
“I don’t know. That dude seems more chill than most of his predecessors. Well, seemed. Until you.”
“He didn’t excommunicate me, so that’s something.” I picked at the corner of my notebook. “Though he probably should have.”
“Stop.”
“You know I’m right.”
“I know you’re beating yourself stupid with this Catholic guilt shit.”
The waiter cleared his throat. Neither of us had noticed him. “Anything else I can get you?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “Just the check.”
He produced a small, black vinyl folder from the pocket of his bistro apron and stood it, open, on the table. “Have a great afternoon.”
Marty watched him walk away. “Is it me, or did that sound like ‘fuck you’?”
“Yeah, I thought the same thing.” I tucked the church credit card in the pocket at the top.
“Visa. Accepted everywhere Jesus needs to be,” Marty said.
“Can I get an amen?” I winked at him. “So we’ll start—”
“We weren’t done with our conversation.”
“Maybe you weren’t, but I am.” I gestured to the waiter.
“You can’t blame yourself, Cee,” Marty said after the waiter collected the folder and left. “You’re never going to save everyone, especially people who don’t want to be saved.”
The muscle in my jaw twitched, and I rested it on my hand to hide the spasm. “She didn’t know what she was doing.”
“Maybe not in the moment, but she did what she did of her own free will.”
Echoes of her screams and the interminable wet crunching still haunted me. Awake and asleep. “No one deserves what she got. I should have—”
“No.” Confidence and calm made him sound like a different person. “There’s no way to win that game. You did everything you could. Even Sister Betty said so, and she’d be the first to correct you.”
Instead, Sister Betty had flown to Rome to hold me through the tears. It wasn’t the first time someone had died during a battle, but it was the first I could have—should have—prevented. I took another long drag off the straw. “Let’s drop it, okay?”
“When you do.” He sat back in the chair, his arms crossed.
“You’re not a shrink, so—”
“Maybe you need one.”
Whatever I intended to say fled. I stared at him, open-mouthed.
Like a nasty accusation rising from the past to haunt me, he’d said it.
Knowing my history, he’d said it.
The dagger of his words hung in the air.
His shoulders softened, and his arms dropped. “I only mean—”
I almost collided with the waiter as I stood. “Don’t.” I snatched the folder from his hand. The pen tore the slip as I scribbled a signature and grabbed my card. “It’s pretty clear what you meant,” I said, dropping the folder on the table.
“Cee—”
Weaving around tables, wait staff, and diners, I cut across the dining room and through the lobby. Steamy New Orleans humidity oozed over me as I hurried down the shadowed sidewalk.
“Caitlin!”
I dodged tourists, jaw clenched. This was supposed to be a vacation. Marty was supposed to be the no-pressure guy, the friend I could relax with without expectation or judgment. Now, again, I faced the same accusations my parents brandished like sacred relics of denial. Of rage. Of grief. The parade of psychiatrists, the landslide of pills. Every month, some new doctor, some new “treatment.” They believed in my mental illness more than they believed a monster killed Shannon.
Father Callahan assured me their denial protected them from harm.
But I paid the price. In every cautious look, in every glance they shared. In the nervous way they talked to me. I felt it all. I lived in a world they refused to believe and protected them with my silence.
I fought to keep them safe. As payment, they insisted I needed a shrink.
And now, Marty.
“Caitlin!”
The streetlight changed, and I crossed without regard to the oncoming traffic. They could hit me or not, it made no difference. I wasn’t running so when the hand grabbed my shoulder, I expected it to be Marty. Acid words rose to my tongue as I spun to break his grip and confront him. Instead, I stumbled and blinked.
A man in dirty clothes grinned at me. Bits of brown leaves stuck in the tendrils of his scraggly beard. His white tongue poked through his yellowed teeth to roll over parched lips. “Yer a pretty girl,” he rasped, his right hand rising to my shoulder again, “a pretty little thing for the collection.”
Without a thought, my left hand swung up to block his grip and knock it away. I stepped back as he howled, gripping his arm. He rolled across his back on the wet sidewalk, clutching his arm, his knees drawn to his chest as he rocked. “Why you hit a’ old man? What I do to you?” The soles of his shoes flopped away from his feet with each movement, the thin gray material only attached at the heel.
Marty skidded to a stop on the wet pavement, almost falling over the man. “What the hell happened?”
“He grabbed me, I turned, and when he went to grab me again, I blocked him. Then,” I gestured towards his theatrics, “this.”
Few of the passing people stopped, but they stared as long as they could. A few pedestrians stopped to watch, some holding phones. The man didn’t seem to notice, his antics unchanged. I shook my hands to ward off adrenaline shakes. And to prepare. Though thankful for the knife at my back, the general lack of weapons pissed me off. I scanned the area for anything useful and adjusted my stance. Nothing about this man should make me so nervous, and yet…
Marty leaned over him, sidestepping a collision when he rolled. “Mister? Mister, are you okay?”
The old man raised his voice and rolled, cradling his arm against his chest. “No reason for none of this. Assaulting a’ old man!”
I met Marty’s gaze and shook my head, answering his unspoken question. “Standard block. Nothing special.” I repeated the movement with the same speed and power I’d used.
Squatting back on his heels at a safe distance, Marty pulled out his phone. “I’ll call it in.”
“Be careful.”
As he rolled and howled his pain, the old man watched Marty.
Something about him wouldn’t let me relax. Something on the edge of memory. Something…familiar.
I inched closer to see his face, careful to stay out of range.
In the wrinkled wreckage of sun-damaged skin, grizzled eyebrows, and layers of caked-on dirt, his eyes sparkled. The clarity of his rich mahogany eyes contradicted
everything about him, even the broken way he spoke. A separate consciousness stared back at me while he carried on. When the sunlight glinted in his eyes, they flared gold.
And then, I knew.
Everything happened in a second.
The longest second of my life.
I lunged, knocking Marty to the ground and out of striking range of the knife that flashed out of the man’s sleeve. A woman screamed. We tumbled across the uneven sidewalk, followed by the scuttle of the man scrambling after us. Searing heat tore through my calf. I kicked the hunched, feral old man, knocking a bloody knife from his hand and gaining a little space from his elongated teeth as he retreated.
Swearing under my breath, I grabbed a broom leaning against the wall and swung it. The old man dodged with freakish agility, just as the man from my nightmare. His blade glinted, and I swung, narrowly missing his stomach. Behind me, Marty yelled, his words unintelligible and—
Pain exploded in a black burst as something crashed into my back and knocked the wind out of me. My broom clattered to the sidewalk seconds before I fell to all fours, hands and knees scraping against uneven pavement. Unable to draw air, I still turned, trying to find the bastard.
“Caitlin!” Marty collided with me, grabbing my shoulders and pulling me up to face him. “Breathe.”
I struggled to pull in a thin breath.
“Breathe, babe, come on.”
I coughed and doubled over, Marty grabbing me, preventing me from crumpling to the ground. A shallow gasp and I tried to break free, to find the old man.
“He’s gone. He ran.” Marty shook me, and I coughed again. “Relax for a second and breathe.”
Never had I wanted to breathe so bad, if only to tell him to shut up.
Another cough and I finally drew a full breath. Black and white sparks danced on the edge of my vision. I knelt, bracing my bloody, scraped palms on my destroyed jeans.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded and looked around. “Where’d he go?”
Bystanders murmured to each other, putting cell phones back in pockets or purses.
Caitlin Kelley--Monster Hunter, #1 Page 3
