by Nazri Noor
Actually, don’t answer that.
We crept through the darkened manor, Sterling calling on his heightened senses to detect anything amiss. So far, so good. It was a little strange, truth be told, to have to really work at being sneaky this time around. I’d gotten so used to relying on my connection to the Dark Room, on letting the pact bind my blood to the shadows and make it second nature for me to blend into the gloom. Stealth was second nature to me, once. So was shadowstepping. So was the act of calling beasts and blades made from solid night itself.
Okay, so I’m not about to lie. Part of me missed my bond with the Dark. I don’t know that you could blame me entirely. With the Dark Room, I was so powerful, so free. Despite its many drawbacks, I could travel from one point to another in the blink of an eye. I could vanish into the shadows whenever I needed, whether it was to hide or to evade a blow or a stray magical spell fired by someone who was really, really pissed at me.
But no use reminiscing all that now. Life was better off without the Dark Room. I was better off without it, and so was the world. Hell, the universe. I was still a mage, wasn’t I? I could wield flame, the way Herald was a master of frost. Fire and ice, just us two. And with time and training, as Carver himself had said, I could learn to bring much more than just the fire.
As we crept on, I lifted the flap of my backpack, totally prepared to rock and roll if things came down to it. So I didn’t have control of the Dark Room anymore. Big whoop. I still had a bloodthirsty flying sword living in my backpack, and oh, I might have forgotten to mention it, but I’ve learned one or two new tricks when it comes to casting fire magic, too.
“Wait,” Sterling said. “You hear that?”
I froze, my muscles stiffening. In the past, my reflex would have been to crouch lower to the ground, to make myself a smaller target, but also to bring myself closer to the shadows, and therefore closer to an expedited, totally courageous exit through the Dark Room.
But alas.
“Hear what?” I said, my eyes flitting around the mansion.
“It’s like – the padding of feet,” Sterling said. “Tiny feet.”
My heart thumped faster. Little feet? What did we have on our hands here? Imps? Rats? I clenched my teeth. Faeries? Please, please. Not the fae folk.
Sterling placed a finger over his lips, and I followed his other hand as it pointed towards an open doorway. A dim light emanated from it, enough to cast a shadow against the wall. And there we saw it: the silhouette of a beast with four legs, pointed ears, and a long snout.
“Oh dear God,” I whispered. “What the fuck is that?”
A dire wolf, I thought. A hell hound. Maybe even a dragon. Sterling and I stood rooted to the spot as we watched with bated breath. The shadow grew larger, and larger. My fingers curled towards my palm as, instinctively, my body helped me generate a small, steady ball of flame, ready for battle.
The shadow blotted out the far wall, and I stifled a gasp as the thing walked into the room.
A corgi.
I squinted. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Arf,” the corgi said, running on its tiny, stubby legs towards us.
“Probably the Ramseys’ pet,” Sterling said, squatting on the ground, holding his hands out. “Here, boy.”
“Wait,” I hissed, tugging on his jacket. “What if it’s a trap?”
“Please,” Sterling said. “A Welsh corgi, possibly the cutest breed of dog in existence?”
The corgi did a little twirl, then raced back down the doorway that it came from. I watched as it waddled away.
“Look at that butt,” Sterling cooed. “Adorable.”
“Follow it,” I said. “Something fishy is going on here.”
Fishy couldn’t begin to describe it. The dog led us down a brief hallway, pausing to twirl every few feet, its tongue lolling out the side of its mouth, its eyes beady and thrilled. Finally, it wrangled us through an open door – which was flooded with blood.
Human blood.
My stomach roiled. It was a scene from a nightmare, one I thought I’d already recovered from. But the Pruitts, the dead reality TV couple I found with the holes in their stomachs, and those twelve corpses I once discovered in a different mansion? Nothing compared to this.
Dozens of bodies, arranged in a circle around an empty stone platform. An altar. There had to be at least thirty of them, their tuxes and gowns still peeking through the blood-stained cover of their ceremonial robes. I recognized each combination of clothing and mask from the ballroom. I knew – but I fucking knew that there was something messed up going on with all those animal heads. Rich people and masks? Never, ever a good combination. Their bodies were broken, pulverized as if struck by a massive blunt force. Smashed with a huge hammer, or an oncoming truck. This was bad magic. Dark magic.
I gagged, the back of my throat tasting like bile. “Oh my God,” I croaked. “I think I’m going to hurl.”
“Please,” Sterling said. “You’ve seen worse.”
I clutched my stomach, gagging again. “I really, honestly haven’t.”
He shrugged. “Honestly, if I were still human? It’d be the smell that would bother me. It’s like an abattoir in here. I mean, to me it smells sweet. Delicious.”
Sterling brought a cigarette to his lips, lighting it, then blowing twin streams of white smoke out of his nostrils. Really? Right there?
“If that’s supposed to help with the smell – ”
“Oh,” he said. “It really isn’t. Metallic, isn’t it? The smell of all this gore. Terrible. Really gross.”
“Oh my God, Sterling, please stop.”
“Arf,” the dog said, playing at our heels, its little paws splashing in shallow pools of blood. My stomach seized again.
Then it ran over to one of the corpses – an older woman, possibly one of the Ramseys – and tugged at the hem of her robes.
The woman gasped, convulsing, crimson liquid rocketing from her mouth. She turned to her side and shuddered, sobbing the whole while.
“It lies sleeping,” she croaked. “Not truly dead and gone. It waits.”
“That’s Delilah Ramsey,” Sterling hissed. “What the hell is she talking about?”
“Hallucinating,” I said, locking away the possibility that Delilah was talking about the darkness that lived in my chest. “Delirious, maybe, from blood loss.”
Delilah’s eyes focused on something in the distance, something we couldn’t see. She fell silent, then vomited again, blood and bile tumbling past her lips.
The corgi looked up at me with its oddly adorable smile.
“Barf,” it said.
I held it in like a champion, because the alternative was to barf, just like the dog told me to, all over my dad’s shoes.
Chapter 3
“I thought you’d have a stronger stomach than that,” Sterling said. “Honestly, Dust, how embarrassing.”
I threw my hands up. “Embarrassing for who, exactly? Me or the dog?”
He shrugged. “Pick one.”
We’d left very shortly after verifying that the Ramsey woman – Delilah, as Sterling correctly pointed out – was actually alive. We beat it the hell out of the mansion just as soon as we heard the telltale pops of teleportation magic, as the Lorica’s Wings arrived on the scene. Let them deal with her, I thought. None of our business.
I didn’t envy the crew that would have to rinse out the Ramsey House. Hell, I didn’t envy the coverup job Royce would have to pull, either. Something fucked up had happened in Delilah’s little sacrificial chamber. You know how I feel about sacrifices, and I had an inkling that whatever she and her sister were attempting would have involved slaughtering the corgi.
“So, are we all sure that it was a good idea to bring it here?”
From Gil’s lap, the dog bared its teeth and growled at me. I was convinced it had something to do with the massacre.
“Better with the Boneyard than the Lorica,” Carver said.
He wove his fingers
in intricate patterns as he activated his false eye, the one he used to scry, detect magic, take notes – a multipurpose tool, really. Our boss was an undying lich, a sorcerer with an artificially extended lifespan, but as far as I was concerned, he was basically a cyborg in a tailored suit.
“I think you’re all being silly,” Sterling drawled. He was sprawled along his favorite couch in the Boneyard, the long red one that he liked so much, one foot dangling off the edge. “Equally silly. You, Dust, for worrying about it, and you, Gil, for getting so attached so quickly.”
“Listen,” Gil said, his voice ringing with warning. “It’s a corgi. It’s cute. Look at those stubby legs. That little butt.” He nuzzled his face into the top of the dog’s head. The dog yapped and blinked up at him, pleased. Gil grinned. “Werewolf or no, I’m only human at the end of the day.”
Gil had taken to loving the little mutt like a fish to water. Or, I dunno, like a dog to water. He’d fussed over the corgi, cooing over it the very moment he spotted it in Sterling’s arms. As expected, the dog refused to stay put with me, wriggling around and snapping. I confess, it was kind of disheartening. I’m normally pretty good with animals. Hell, I’m great with animals.
But again, this all boils down to my pathological need to be liked – even by strange, potentially magical killer dogs. And the fact that the new Boneyard dog didn’t like me was twisting me up inside.
“And you can’t exactly fault me for being suspicious about all this,” I told Sterling. “There were a lot of dead bodies. I mean, the smell alone.”
Sterling folded his arms behind his head and sighed wistfully. “All that blood.”
“Ugh.” I wrinkled my nose. “All that blood.”
“Well, he’s not a shifter, I can tell you that much,” Gil said, scratching the corgi under its chin. “Are you, boy?”
The corgi barked happily. I squinted at the two of them, but I trusted Gil enough to know the difference. Who else but a werewolf could spot another shifter?
“So we know two things so far,” I said. “That it’s a boy, and that it’s not someone in disguise.”
“That we know of,” Carver said. His false eye was glowing with amber light as he scrutinized the dog. “I don’t sense anything amiss about this creature, which makes me even more suspicious. I do not trust these small dogs that are truly only overgrown rats.”
The corgi barked in Carver’s direction, then growled. Carver flinched.
I chuckled. “You’ve got something against dogs, Carver?”
“No,” he said. “Not necessarily. But as a lich, I am essentially a walking skeleton wearing the skin of a man. I understand canines are fond of bones.” He shuddered. “Keep the thing away from me and we’ll all get along swimmingly.”
The amber fire in his eye faded, and he glided out of the break room, cup and saucer in hand. It wasn’t like Carver to bring his tea to any other spot in the Boneyard – he generally liked to drink it boiling hot, right off the kettle. He clearly wasn’t comfortable around the corgi.
Who, it turned out, had developed a kind of fondness for Gil in return. The dog licked enthusiastically at Gil’s hand, then his face, and our big, burly resident werewolf just laughed and literally took it on the chin.
“What is this?” I said, arms folded. “Something about the ancient bond between wolves and dogs, maybe?”
“Or,” Gil said, vigorously rubbing the dog’s head, “I’m just naturally good with animals.”
“Very likely,” I huffed. The dog turned to me, then growled.
I found myself flinching, too. I mean the little guy was cute, sure, but considering the circumstances we’d found him in, I wasn’t a hundred percent sold on befriending him. Carver’s reasons for distrusting the corgi were ridiculous in their own way, but I knew better. We had a murder-dog on our hands, I was sure of it. The question was getting more details about what the hell had happened at the Ramsey House. The thing couldn’t talk. Could it?
“Gil,” I said. “Possibly stupid question, but can you communicate with it?”
“Him,” Gil said. “Communicate with him.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Him, then.”
“And no, I can’t. I’m still a man, if you haven’t noticed. I’m a werewolf, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got a whole doggie dictionary trapped up in my skull.” He tapped the side of his head, as if to prove his point.
You know, fair enough. And I wasn’t about to check if he could talk to the dog in werewolf form, either. Gil tended to go completely out of his mind when he went full dog, losing his ability to think rationally as the transformation into a lycanthrope overrode his brains with that of a ravenous, bloodthirsty wolf. Which meant that, even if we did figure out a way of restraining him, he’d probably spend all of his wolf-time trying to eat the corgi in the first place.
“Puppy!”
I was just wondering when Asher was going to realize that everyone besides him was gathered in the living area. He rushed straight towards the corgi, blissfully ignorant of the fact that it was discovered among the ruined corpses of so many cultists, then scooped it up in his arms. The corgi yapped happily, immediately rewarding Asher with two licks to the face.
Sterling chuckled from his sofa. “Seems like the dog likes everyone but you, Dust.”
“Banjo,” Asher said between giggles, turning his head this way and that to dodge the corgi’s slobbering. “His name is Banjo.”
I frowned. “Banjo? Says who? Does it have a collar?”
“Says me,” Asher said, placing the dog gently down on the floor. “And him. Right, Banjo? You like that name, boy?”
The dog barked once, its – sorry, his cheeks rising into that weird and admittedly crazy cute smile that dogs make when they’re happy. I frowned harder, getting jealouser and jealouser by the second. Making sure no one was looking, I raised my arm and sniffed myself carefully. Did I stink? Was that it?
As if sensing my thoughts, the dog turned towards me, staring unblinkingly with his beady little black eyes. This time, though, he didn’t growl. Aha. Progress.
Then Asher reached in to ruffle the fur on Banjo’s back. Distracted, the dog went into a little spin, yapping excitedly as he began to chase his own tail. Gil took out his phone to start recording Banjo’s antics. Hell, even Sterling got off the couch to get involved, scouring the kitchen for dog-safe treats.
Puppy Yum biscuits. All I needed were Puppy Yum biscuits. Then Banjo would be mine.
Chapter 4
It was going to be a while until we would get Carver accustomed to the idea of having a dog around the Boneyard, plus it wasn’t like you could just amble out into Valero and pick up some pee pads and a litter box for a puppy past midnight. Hell, even the Black Market didn’t stock that stuff, and they sold pet dragons.
“Then maybe they have dragon pooper scoopers,” I said. “You know, something we can improvise with before morning. Gil and Asher did volunteer to buy stuff for Banjo, so now we just need to make sure he doesn’t poop everywhere tonight.”
Sterling cocked an eyebrow at me, and the corgi sort of mirrored the expression, looking at me with a sidelong glance up his snoot. Sterling had the dog on a makeshift leash. I only say makeshift because Sterling’s the kind of guy who definitely keeps leather collars and leashes around his bedroom, only ones that were sized for humans. With a few adjustments and some tightening, though, Banjo seemed happy enough.
“This is improvising,” Sterling drawled, a cigarette hanging loosely out of the corner of his mouth. “We do a couple of rounds around Heinsite Park, get him to do his business, and we’re set.”
“Did you bring any bags for his poop?”
“Of course I did,” Sterling huffed. “I’m not a monster.” He pushed a couple of small paper bags into my hands. “Here. You hold on to them.”
I frowned. “Why are you making me keep these?”
“No reason.” He shrugged, pulling lightly on the leash. “Come on, boy. Let’s go take a walk
. You gonna make a doo-doo for daddy?”
I shook my head, watching as the pair of them ambled along into the darkness. When I joined Carver’s employ as a member of the Boneyard – hell, when I was first recruited as a staffer at the Lorica – I had no idea my life was headed in this direction.
In all my time with them, even knowing that they were decent people at heart, I still always knew that Sterling and Gil were fundamentally beasts: bloodthirsty predators, a vampire and a werewolf who’d worked in concert long before I showed up, twin instruments of destruction.
To see them so quickly reduced to cooing, quivering piles of jelly by this tiny, furry creature and its waddling butt was quite something else.
Okay, fine. I could relate. How can you not love a dog? And a corgi, of all things. The Queen of England keeps a billion of them. That woman has the right idea.
I lingered at Sterling’s heels as Banjo waddled among the bushes, picking the perfect spot to evacuate. The dog looked at Sterling, then at me as he shat his brains out. I’d read somewhere that dogs did that with people they trusted, to check that their pack mates had their backs in times of vulnerable, pooping need.
But for some reason, Banjo’s gaze felt more authoritative than that. “That’s right,” it seemed to say. “You pick up my leavings.”
Probably just my imagination, but I was willing to bet that this creature had to be in some way supernatural, if not at least a little bit smarter than the average dog. I mean come on, you parse this out for me. Thirty dead bodies, smashed into pulp and drained of their blood – fine, twenty-nine, if you account for the fact that Delilah somehow survived.
And you’ve got a dog just minding its own business among them, hardly distressed. That’s not how a dog behaves around its owner, especially one who’s been injured. Banjo didn’t belong at the scene, the way he didn’t belong to the Ramseys. The pieces of the puzzle just did’t fit.
But hey, free dog. At least until we figured out who the real owner was. No collar, no tag, from what we could see, but again, as Carver said, better with us than with the Lorica.
