Black Dog Blues

by Rhys Ford

  He’d always been a big man, with coarse features and a grizzle of beard no matter how often he shaved. A run up the coast had brought him to his knees, a swipe of a giant scorpion’s tail blowing out his leg. Despite the fierce limp hobbling his walk, Dempsey hadn’t changed much, even if his days of being a Stalker were done.

  I’d give Dempsey this—he might have retired from the Stalker business, but he was as mean as the day he’d taken me as winnings in a card game. I didn’t have any doubt that he could hand me my ass, so I kept silent, having learned from experience how quick the large man could move, even with his gimped leg. I might be stronger and quicker than most humans, but Dempsey was meaner than anything I’d ever met. Keeping my mouth shut was usually the wisest thing to do.

  When he was retired out, Dempsey looked for someplace to live and found a few acres in Lakeside that were cheap. A couple of battered storage containers had been easily converted into a large home, and after a few burns from the cutting torch, I’d gotten the hang of making windows while Dempsey welded the metal rectangles into place. A few coats of paint and a deck made the place almost homey, although the gun racks in the kitchen put a serious dent into the suburban image the place struggled to put up. We’d left most of the sage and brush around the perimeter; the brambles were a natural barrier for anything large to plow through.

  “Spent a lot of money and time feeding and teaching you, boy,” he’d growled at me across the kitchen table, biting back a snarl as he took a shot of Jim. Too banged up to do the job, he’d had to turn over his license, and his mood roamed from mad to mad drunk. “Time to pay up for that.”

  Being a retired Stalker didn’t come with a pension plan, and Dempsey never had been smart with his money. Most of it was spent on whiskey, poker, and women, so when the time came for him to step back from jobs, he looked to me to support him. I gave him a third of my earnings in exchange for a place to burn black dogs’ bodies. Since I lived in the city, it was a cheaper way to dispose of the useless meat. The incinerator at San Diego Central Works was expensive and too often down for maintenance.

  I could think of a thousand things I’d rather be doing than dragging around skinned carcasses of black dogs while looking for a place to burn them. Sitting on a fire-ant hill covered in honey came to mind.

  “Took down four, then?” He stepped closer, inspecting the large alpha male I’d killed last. “Good job, that. Skulls are ruined, though. Don’t know why you can’t make a kill without shattering the skull. Used to be a Stalker was known by the skulls he’d collected.”

  “Because I’d rather be alive than have a trophy? If it makes you feel better, I waited until I could spit on it before I shot.”

  Bringing the dog down from the mountain hadn’t made it any smaller. If anything, the thing seemed bigger, nearly impossible to get out of the bed of the truck and onto the cutting slab. The mound of black dog lying out on the concrete was the last one I had to do. The others were already skinned for the bounty, and the carcasses piled up to be burned. I’d already put charcoal into the pit. After a brief discussion with Dempsey, we both agreed the dogs weren’t worth wasting any precious gasoline. They’d have to burn with good old Kingston like the others before them.

  “We’ll get a good bounty on these.” He nodded at the furs stretched on the rack, the raw skin sprinkled with salt to soak up the excess gore. The Post didn’t need them tanned, but I disliked carrying decaying skins through the city, and ocean salt worked quickly on dog flesh. I appreciated him doing the salt. My skin was still tender from the acidic blood. Getting salt on the burns would be hellish. “Should get what? Five hundred for the smaller ones? Maybe more?”

  “Probably more,” I agreed, gripping the male’s paw and slicing up around its shoulder. “The Post’s offering a hundred for every hand length now. It went up last week. Lots of the dogs in the area. SoCalGov’s getting flak for all the packs roaming in the farmlands. Dead people don’t pay taxes.”

  “True. Government would want to avoid that.” Dempsey walked around me, avoiding the line of blood filling the cement channels. His hand came up to scratch his nose. I flinched a little, unable to stop myself from jerking back. Growing up with Dempsey sometimes meant my lessons were given with a hard fist as much as rough words, and my body seemed to instinctively remember that, although I couldn’t remember the last time he hit me.

  Working my fingers under the cut skin, I separated the pelt from the black dog’s body, ignoring the burn of its blood on my hands. Being elfin, I’d heal from the poison-ivy-like rash within minutes of pulling my hands from its carcass, but it still stung. Gloves were more of a bother than they were worth. Latex melted and stuck to flesh, and leather ones were too expensive to replace after every dog skinning. Even Dempsey, when he could be bothered to help with a skinning, went barehanded.

  With the fur off in one piece, I began the task of taking the carcass apart. A black dog bounty paid per handspan, measured carefully by the clerks down at the Post. Bounty was paid not only for the pelt but also for the kill. Stitching together a pelt that had been cut meant waiting for the money to be released while the Post determined if the fur came from a single animal or had been cobbled together from separate pieces for a bounty. Trying to pass off strangely cut dog pelts brought in short a leg or haunch usually meant a yanked license.

  A real Stalker knew all the tricks and never played them. Having a firm reputation for being reliable and honest was nearly as good as being a keen shot. Dempsey might be an asshole, but he never shorted anyone or ran off on a job. He’d left Stalking behind with his head held high, and people still spoke about runs he’d done along the coast. Other than a warm woman at night, it was all he’d wanted. Well, he also told me he wanted to die in his bed at the age of ninety-eight from being shot by a jealous husband, but a warm woman at night would be good enough.

  Dempsey took over shoveling chunks of dog meat into the pit with his bare hands. He worked quickly, keeping his contact with the acid down to a minimum. Grinning unevenly, he stopped long enough to ruffle the hair at the back of my head, getting gore and guts on my neck. “You can hose yourself off outside. You stink like the dog-hugger you are, and that black mop of yours is all dusty, like you were rolling in a barn. There’s some of your clothes in the back room. I’ll bring ’em out for you.”

  I didn’t argue. I’d spent the night in the truck’s cab, parked under one of the tall trees, after getting to Lakeside at nearly three in the morning. The sun was barely up when Dempsey knocked on the truck window to wake me up with a cup of coffee as pitch black as the dogs I had lying in the truck bed. The tarp I’d spread over the truck’s seat wasn’t very comfortable to lie on, but it kept the fabric clean. I had a crick in my neck and stank from cutting open gullets filled with rotting meat. The coffee in my belly was a distant memory, and I still needed to drive back in to San Diego. A shower would go a long way in shaking me awake.

  The outside shower’s water was cold, leaving me with pinpricks on my skin and shivering when the wind hit my bare ass. The dog’s weight left me sore, and I was covered in purple and black bruises. Moving to the side was a bit painful, and I was sure my back had suffered as much as my legs had, perhaps even more, from being rubbed against the rocky hillside. A few spots of dog blood had made it through my jeans, scorching the two hand-size Asiatic dragons tattooed on my hip and back. The blistered skin didn’t look like it had lifted up any ink, but I’d have to wait a few hours to see if it healed smoothly or whether I’d have to make a trip down to the Flying Panther to fix it.

  “That last damned dog was a bitch to move. Must have been an escapee from a Wild Hunt. Damned elfin can’t keep track of their own hunting packs, and we always got to go out and wipe up their messes.” Dempsey gave me a once-over as he handed me a worn towel, frowning at the bruising on my thighs. “What the hell did you do? Ride the damned thing to death?”

  “If I’d ridden it to death, I wouldn’t have been under the damned thing
when it died,” I said, taking the towel and trying to use its sparse pile to soak up the water on my naked belly. The air whistled between the outdoor spigot and the trees around it, catching on every icy drop on my skin. He stood staring at me for a moment too long, and I started to wonder if he’d switched the side of the street he walked on. “What?”

  “Haven’t really looked at you in a few years. Grown up a bit. You’re not as skinny as you used to be. Muscled up nice.” He moved his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Finally got some meat on that stick body of yours. Hell, I could have waited a few years and pimped you out for money instead of teaching you to Stalk.”

  “Nice of you to have a backup plan in case the job gets too hard for me,” I muttered, grabbing at the clothes he held out for me. I looped the wet towel over a branch then slid on my jeans, shaking out the water from my hair as best I could.

  “Not like I didn’t have offers for you before. That face of yours and those purple-blue eyes,” he scoffed, leaning on the tree. “Lots of folks thought you were tasty, even with you being elfin, but whoring’s too much work for too little. Stalking’s easier, and you don’t have to worry about someone not paying up. Well, not as often.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Part of being a Stalker meant having to take private jobs when Government Issue was lean. We’d both been burned too many times to count after a run.

  “’Sides, not like you wouldn’t have stabbed anyone who pissed you off,” Dempsey said. “You cut enough people with your teeth when I first got you. Savage little cat-bastard.”

  Dempsey’s words didn’t bother me. We’d been down this road before. He’d been suckered into taking a mostly wild elfin in a poker game, calling a bluff that resulted in the bluffer passing me over the table as payment. I hadn’t understood a word of Singlish, and up until that point, I’d spent more time bleeding than eating. Over the years, I’d heard him wonder if it wouldn’t have been more profitable just to sell me to whoever would give him a good price. But sponsoring me as a Stalker was one of his better ideas, especially on those mornings when his fondness for drink kept him in bed. I was more motivated by the hunger in my belly, where Dempsey needed only a fifth to survive on for a week.

  Considering where I’d come from, Dempsey was a godsend, no matter which god sent him.

  “Not that I don’t want to bask in the warmth of your undying love, Dempsey, but I should head in and drop off the furs, then get some sleep. I’ll have the Post drop your share into the fund,” I said, pulling on a faded red T-shirt. “The account’s the same, right? They can do a transfer.”

  “Yeah, same account,” he replied. “Stay a bit. I’ll bring out some food. Might as well feed you before you head back into the city. You can always eat. I’ve fed that damned stomach of yours long enough to know that. You probably need some more coffee in you too.”

  “Yeah, I could eat.” I was hungry. I was always hungry, but I didn’t expect Dempsey to invite me in. The woman he was with hated elfin with a passion. She refused to be in the house if I stepped into it, calling a priest to bless the place whenever I crossed the threshold. It was easier to eat on the porch with him and afterward toss my paper plate and wooden chopsticks into the fire with the burning dogs.

  He gathered breakfast quickly, and we sat eating rice, cold Spam, and wet eggs as the flames burned through the dogs’ bodies. I tossed my plate into the fire when I was done and lit a clove cigarette, filling my lungs with the kretek’s husky sweetness to wash away the stink of burning dog.

  Dempsey’s plate joined mine after a few more mouthfuls. Standing next to me, he put his chewed-on cigar stump into his mouth, lit the end, then drew it back to life with a few pulls. Blowing out a stream of smoke to battle the dogs’ reek, he pursed his lips and stared off into the distance.

  “You could have just sent me off with some food, you know.” I spotted the sun behind the gloom in the sky, surprised to discover it was only midmorning. Dempsey must have woken me up after only a few hours of sleep.

  “Nah, that wouldn’t be right,” he growled. “You know it’s not good to eat on the run, and a Stalker should always have his man’s back. Be a shame if I’d spent all that time beating some sense into you and left that bit out.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I DROVE the truck into the city. By the time I hit El Cajon, the landscape had changed from rural to tall steel and concrete, but bits of the elfin world poked up in places. When I approached the city proper, the Merge between Earth and Underhill was more apparent. Cracked fingers of wide freeways jutted out of old sage canyons, and the newer roadways fought against the spread of rolling green hills dotted with haunted cairns brimming with ghosts. Some places, like the Mission, were perpetually shrouded in fog, and some areas of the understreets were filled with slithering things eager to suck out the brains or eyes of a wayward warm body. San Diego tried its best, but the Underhill was stubborn, refusing to give up anything it took over.

  I ran my way through the Eight corridor’s traffic, slipping into the express access lane toward the city and across the wide bridge stretching over the remains of Mission Valley, spanning the Merge-formed inlet. The ocean water pouring into the corridor mingled with the clear fresh water coming down from the snowy mountains, creating a brackish tempest in the city’s guts. Another chasm, thinner than the Eight corridor, cut down past the old park, and the Balboa River raged past the elfin forest, crowding into the area. Set aside as sidhe territory after the Troubles, it lay empty, its enormous old trees shoving at the remains of old San Diego museums. The area squatted like an undead raccoon in the middle of a pristine lawn, waiting for something to reanimate it so it could dig through the garbage.

  It gave me the creeps every time I went past it.

  Along the corridor, San Diego sprawled over canyons and mesas, lined with walls of converted storage containers like the ones we used to build Dempsey’s place. Following the Merge, people flooded into the city, coming from far-off neighborhoods and across the border to a place they felt safe. We’d come to San Diego after Dempsey’s accident and I bought my own place near the Bayshore.

  My link beeped at me from around the truck’s shifter, reminding me I had messages. I’d taken the thick leather band off when I’d gone up the mountain because I didn’t want a beep to draw a dog’s attention and didn’t put it back on afterward because I had to skin the dogs. No matter how good the tech was, its electronics couldn’t hold up to black dog blood.

  The blue call light winked at me, and I snapped the band around my wrist, hitting the call buttons to listen to my messages.

  “Hello, Kai.” The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it until he said his name. “This is David. I know we haven’t seen….”

  “That is why you don’t sleep with anyone you know, Kai,” I reminded myself, deleting the message before it went any further and forwarding to the next one. “They get your phone number and call you.”

  “Hey, you!” Her voice was bright, too sunny to be for the likes of me. I could almost see Dalia’s grin, and my heart did a little twist. “I’m going to be working later, but I’ll stop by for a bit. You better have been a good boy.”

  “Hope she remembered to feed Newt,” I murmured, turning down the ramp and into the Presidio, sitting on its isolated green hilltop near the shore. “Or I’ll have hell to pay.”

  The old Presidio’s adobe walls were painted Navajo white, and the buildings stood alone on their peak, surrounded by grassy hills and gardens. Once an old Spanish fort, the Presidio housed the Office of Reclamation and Mercantile Services, which paid out bounties for runs or hunts. Old-timers called it the Post for short. The only thing that mattered to the Post was that I brought in bounty and completed all the jobs I took.

  It was probably the closest thing I had to a mother.

  I pulled into the lot next to a battered Rover I knew belonged to a Stalker named Jonas Wyatt. Like all SoCalGov buildings, weapons were forbidden inside the Post,
so I locked my guns up in the truck’s cab, grabbed the roll of pelts, and headed in.

  The Presidio was half-full of people, their conversations low, as if their secrets could only be told to the person taking in bounties. When I walked into the Presidio, Jonas spotted me and greeted me with a nod, the sunlight from the open windows gleaming on his shiny head. Like me, he’d brought in a few skins, thin nylon ropes binding them into a tight roll.

  “How you doing, Kai?” Jonas slapped me on the shoulder when I edged up against him, and I tried not to whimper, taking the hit to my bruises like a man. Curious, he peeked over my shoulder to see what I’d brought in. “Lord, boy, what the hell do you have there? That sack looks like you’ve got a whole dog.”

  I wasn’t short. I stood a bit under six feet, but I had to crane my neck to look at Jonas’s face. A balding man the color of ebony and with an easy smile, he’d been one of the first Stalkers Dempsey had brought around me. Despite having half-moon scars on his thigh from my sharp teeth, he still appeared to like me. I liked him in return, especially after he’d given me my first taste of hot chocolate on a run to Montana.

  “There was a small pack in Julian,” I replied. “Four big ones heading toward the village. If I’d known there were that many, I’d have called you.”

  “I’d have been busy,” he said, toeing the bundle. “Got three myself, but from the looks of it, smaller than yours. Out by Spring Barrio. They were picking off old ladies going to church. Can’t have that. Catholics don’t like the competition.”

  “No, definitely not a good thing.” Usually weeks went by without a black dog making an appearance. Seven in a few days seemed like a threat. “Think someone’s running a Hunt?”

  “Haven’t heard about any Dusk Court cat-bastard losing their dogs, but who knows? Someone could have lost his hounds and slunk off with his tail between his legs,” Jonas said. “Sorry, kid. You know I don’t mean you.”