Black Dog Blues

by Rhys Ford

  “It’s all good,” I said, shrugging. “And you whipped my ass enough to know elfin don’t have tails.”

  There was a large Dusk Court below the border. They usually stayed down there, picking off the locals instead of heading into the city, but I wouldn’t put it past a Dusk Court unsidhe to bring a barely trained Hunt to the city. The unsidhe weren’t the most responsible of the two elfin races. Without strict control, a black dog could break free of its master and do some major damage. I’d seen entire packs running through major metropolitan areas because a Hunt Master couldn’t control his dogs.

  Both intake windows had lines up to them, people shuffling back and forth as they waited their turn to lodge a complaint or file a job with the clerk. Sarah, one of the older workers at the Post, was paying out a young man who seemed to be giving her trouble. My money was on Sarah.

  Sarah Marks had been at the Post since I’d first come in with Dempsey. At the time, my Singlish wasn’t very solid, so I didn’t understand everything she said, but I could make out most of it when she asked Dempsey if he thought he was going to turn me in for a bounty. She was a beefy woman who liked to dress in loud floral shirts and had dyed her curly poof of hair various shades of ginger over the years. Her broad face was tanned, freckles darkening the bridge of her nose. She was as much of a fixture in the Post as the bells hanging in the tower.

  “Take your money and leave before you find yourself breathing out of a new set of nostrils,” Jonas whispered into the man’s ear, clamping one hand on the young man’s shoulder. His fingers dug into the new leather, crumpling it. The man turned, raising his hand to slap Jonas away, but common sense won out. Somewhere in his lizard brain, it registered that striking a man nearly seven feet tall and three feet wide could possibly be the last thing he’d do in his life.

  “She’s cheating me. I’ve got three skins, and she’s only giving me money for two.” He gave me a hard look. I recognized it. It wasn’t the first time someone looked disgusted when they noticed my elfin face and pointed ear tips.

  “One looks like it’s been through a chewer,” Jonas remarked, looking over the skin. “She’s got to check it through before you get any money for it. Just give her your account, and they’ll process the money that way.”

  “They can keep it.” He risked dismemberment by spitting on the counter next to Sarah’s hand, and I stepped back in case she decided to respond in kind. “I don’t need the money anyway.”

  Jonas led the boy away from the counter, giving me a smirk and a wink as he passed by. “Kai, you go on first. I want to see how much you get for those monsters you brought in.”

  Sarah watched Jonas herd the leather-clad newbie to the door, his hand still firmly gripping the young man’s shoulder. Her hands were below the counter, probably gripping the shotgun clipped underneath. Her icy blue eyes remained pinned on the young man’s back until he left the Presidio, and only then did her hands come up, a thin smile curving her tight lips.

  “Hello, Mr. Gracen,” she said, patting the counter. “Roll them out for me, please.”

  “Hey, Sarah.” I put the burlap roll on the counter and undid its ties.

  “Hay is for horses, Mr. Gracen.” I got one of Sarah’s patented cold glares, and I smiled, watching her face soften. “But then, how can I expect more from you, considering who raised you?”

  “Dempsey sends his love, ma’am.” He hadn’t, but I often extended courtesies for Dempsey. Through me, he’d become much more pleasant over the years than he’d ever been in person. “He hopes you’re doing well.”

  “Humph,” she grunted. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  I did the pack leader first, stretching the pelt over the counter. Measuring tics were etched on either side of the counter, marked off per handspan, but those were mostly for show. An electronic reader scanned the skins as I placed them, marking off the length and width for each. The dog’s haunches and legs draped over the side a bit, and moving the pelt ruined the reading. Sighing, Sarah arranged the skin for me, flattening the wrinkles out. The reader beeped, and a green line of light ran through the counter’s pane, gridding the pelt into sections.

  “Did you save the skull on that one?” Jonas asked, towering behind me. “It must be a glorious thing.”

  “Um, no. It sort of broke apart when I shot it.”

  “Damn it, boy! When are you going to hunt proper?”

  “Funny, Dempsey said the same thing,” I replied, poking at Jonas with my elbow to edge him back. “I like shotguns. You’re just pissed off because you can’t handle them.”

  It didn’t take long to scan the rest of the pelts, especially after I left the arranging to Sarah. The bounty brought a whistle to Jonas’s lips, a low trill of admiration. Shunting a third of it into Dempsey’s account, I signed off on the chit to surrender the pelts, agreeing to their destruction.

  “Don’t go yet, Kai,” Sarah said, reaching for a transparent sheet with a marker dot. My name and license number ran along the top of the sheet, the illuminated symbols flashing red as they scrolled from left to right. “I’ve got a job tagged for you. It came in this morning.”

  “Let me read it while you measure up Jonas,” I said, stepping back from the counter. “I don’t know if I want to take a job right now.”

  “You don’t have much of a choice,” she replied, waving Jonas forward. “It came over as a special. Government requisition. I’ll help Mr. Wyatt, and then we can talk about the details.”

  The marker dot gave under my pinch, activating the job listing. I scrolled through the specs, and Jonas was gone before I finished reading the plasma sheet. Sarah was waiting for me at the counter, and I grumbled as I approached her.

  “You weren’t kidding. This says I can’t refuse the job or I get points off my license.” I slid the sheet across the counter. Sarah slapped it down before it could go over the edge, reached for her glasses, then settled them on her nose. “Last time I looked, I’d say I wasn’t owned by SoCalGov.”

  “You are not owned, Mr. Gracen,” she pointed out. “But you are a licensed Stalker, and you jeopardize that license in refusing a special chit. It’s an easy enough job. Go to the Los Angeles border with the contractor and bring back an additional passenger. Simple.”

  “Jobs are never that simple,” I said, frowning at the sheet she placed back in my hands. “And it’s for… a sidhe lord? Why isn’t someone up in LA bringing the passenger down?”

  “They asked for you.” Sarah shrugged, creating ripples in the purple hibiscus shroud she wore. “You could make the run tomorrow if you wanted to. It shouldn’t take you more than a full day.”

  “How far into LA do I have to go to get them?” I scrolled down the sheet, looking for the pick-up point. “Anaheim. That’s deep into sidhe territory. I’m not a tour guide, Sarah. Why the hell do they need a Stalker for this run?”

  “It didn’t say. The run will pay out four times as much as your bounty did today. That’s nothing to turn away for an easy ride up.”

  “A shot through Pendle isn’t an easy ride up.”

  “It’s not pretty when you whine, Mr. Gracen.”

  Before the Merge, the area north of Carlsbad was home to a military base and residences. Above that, a nuclear power plant and more homes. After the Merge, it was all gone, consumed by Underhill wastelands. The black lava fields and desolation made Pendle a hard ride between Orange County and San Diego. Most Stalkers chose to circle around, making the four-day trip through Brawley and passing into Palm Springs before heading into Los Angeles proper. A day run through Pendle meant risking encounters with things far worse than a black dog, providing a vehicle could make it in the cooking heat coming up from the ground.

  “Why not go around?” I asked, thinking about what I had to do over the next few days. With the pack in Julian taken down, I was mostly free. Dempsey didn’t have any projects he needed help with, especially after we’d just laid down the rest of the fencing along his back acre.

  �
��The passenger is a pregnant young woman, a human.” Sarah held up her hand at the snorting noise I made. “Hold up and listen to me. She’s due in a few weeks and needs to be down here. The trip through Palm Springs is hard on a woman in that kind of condition and would take too long. The mountain pass isn’t good for a baby that far along.”

  “And going through Pendle is?” I muttered. “What the hell am I supposed to do if the baby decides to poke its head out on the way down? Duct tape her legs shut and tell her to think about unicorns?”

  “She’s good for a month or so,” she said. “It’s easy money, Kai, and money you don’t have to split with Dempsey.”

  That’s really what it came down to for Sarah. She had an odd hatred for my mentor. He’d never said one word against her to my knowledge, but Sarah had carried her dislike for the man for as long as I’d known her. She dealt with him civilly, but any warmth she had she saved for other people. When asked, Dempsey would just shrug his shoulders, but I knew there was more to it than either one of them was letting on.

  “If she pops on the way down, I want more money,” I said, blowing my breath out between puffed cheeks.

  “I can negotiate that,” she said, sitting back with a smug expression on her face. The chair creaked and rocked back a little. “From what the intake worker said, the girl’s parents aren’t very happy about her pregnancy.”

  “How unhappy can they be to let her head here? What’s down in San Diego for her?”

  “Sanctuary.”

  “No, really….”

  “Really,” Sarah replied. “The sidhe lord is paying….”

  I leaned my hands on the counter. “And since when has the sidhe started handing out charity to humans? Especially the sidhe down here?”

  “I thought you’d know by now.” There wasn’t a flicker of innocence on Sarah’s face. She knew damned well I had no idea what she was talking about. I kept as far away from the few elfin in San Diego as I could. “There’s a sidhe lord here. He’s formed a Dawn Court. I believe they’ll be taking over the land SoCalGov set aside for the sidhe. He probably was the one who asked for you, since you’re both elfin.”

  “Yeah, because we all love one another so much.” I felt about as reassured as a turkey being thrown from a helicopter. “Wait, why doesn’t he fly her down?”

  “It’s the start of mating season,” Sarah reminded me. “The skies aren’t going to be safe for another four months. And even then, you know the dragons like that area. It’s not worth the risk to fly something through there right now.”

  “Shit, I forgot about mating season.” Glancing at my link, I scanned the scroll for the date. Sarah was right. Pendle would be in full aggressive bloom about now.

  “On the plus side, you don’t have to worry about any sea monsters crawling up the coast to chase after you. They’d be eaten by the dragons.”

  “Great, thanks.” I snapped the listing out of her hands.

  “You are quite welcome, Mr. Gracen.” Her smile reminded me of the black dogs I’d brought in, cunning and sharp. “The sidhe is going to want to talk to you about it, but do you think you can do the run tomorrow night? It’s on a short leash.”

  “Thanks for letting me get some sleep,” I muttered. It was hard to extract myself from the conversation without looking like a fool. “Yeah, tell him I’ll talk to him after I’ve gotten a few hours in.”

  “You’re a good boy, Kai Gracen.” Sarah patted my cheek, her palm soft against my skin. She smelled of powder and cigarettes. She gave me crap about smoking kreteks but secretly snuck a few sticks in when she was on break. “Go home. Get some food in you and sleep. I’ll see you in a couple of days to pay your chit.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  BEFORE HEADING home, I stopped to swap out the fuel cells in the truck and then got groceries. It was nearly dark by the time I pulled into the cul-de-sac where I lived. When I’d first started looking for a place to squat, I found a small area by the Port that still had warehouses for sale. Most were slated for demolition, but a few were considered salvageable. Long and thin, they’d been used for storing printer spools and other water-sensitive materials, so the buildings were nearly airtight, with banks of frosted windows slanting down on the south ceiling. I’d bought one without seeing the inside, caring only that the docking bay had been enclosed so it would serve as a garage.

  After I’d been given the keys to the front door, Dempsey had declared me insane and sworn off ever coming into the city to visit me. It was smack dab in the middle of the hub, nearly on top of the SoCalGov building complex and not far from the Post.

  It suited me perfectly and gave Dempsey hives. He’d stayed a few weeks to help me empty the place of debris and erect a stairwell up to the roof of the docking bay so I could use it as a bedroom. I painted the walls white where I could and left the honey brick alone, ignoring Dempsey’s grumbling when I insisted on enclosing a space for a bathroom. I heard more disgusted snorts when I hauled in a large bathtub with lion’s feet I’d gotten from salvage, because apparently bathing wasn’t as manly as scraping dirt off while standing under an outdoor shower spigot with no hot water.

  Dempsey welded the last of the railings into place around the upper level I wanted for a bedroom area and called it the final trip he’d take into the city. With that, he left me to haul the mattress up by myself and drove off. I’d added things since then, combing through swap meets for furniture. I didn’t need much—a couch and some rugs to cover the poured concrete floor, mostly to take off morning chill. I didn’t bother trying to scrape off the splatters of paint and glue left from years of workers’ spills. It seemed a sacrilege to wipe them away with a sandblaster.

  I backed the truck up against the rolling door of the bay, making sure I could reach the hitch without hanging it up on the steel panes. I grabbed the bags of food in one hand, then headed around to the front of the building toward the door, keeping my shotguns tucked up against my body.

  A woman stood in front of the entrance to my place, her hand on the keypad. I stopped for a second to admire the curve of her body, her long legs visible through the thin fabric of her skirt where the beams from the building’s floodlights hit her. She’d tucked her riot of cherry red hair up, fastening the strands with an odd clip thing that only women understood.

  “Dalia Yamada, does your mother know you’re breaking into a man’s house?”

  “I didn’t even hear your truck.” She turned, and her almond eyes were almost wide enough to swallow her features. “Don’t sneak up on me, Kai.”

  “The truck doesn’t make that much noise anymore.” I kissed the top of her head in hello. “I fixed the alternator and the coils.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d be back, so I was going to feed Newt.” She keyed the door open and swung it clear to let me in. I slid past her, ordering the lights on as I dumped the bags onto a low table by the door. She stood at the threshold, lingering behind me. “And then leave a note because he’d tell you he was starving.”

  Dalia was gorgeous, plain and simple, a petite Irish-Nipponese woman from up North. Her hair color changed as often as the wind did, and she snorted when she laughed, but she drove me nuts when I saw her. Her hips made waves in my self-control, and the smiles she gave me sometimes led me straight to a cold shower. I could tell anyone who asked that she had twenty-four dark brown freckles over the bridge of her nose and a tiny divot of a scar next to her right eye.

  And she was firmly off limits. Dalia was a friend and someone I could count on to stitch me up when I came off a hunt sliced to ribbons. She also fed my cat when I was away. That was something I needed more than a good time in bed.

  “Did you find a car to go around that engine yet?” She pointed at the 455 motor I had sitting on a rack in the living room area.

  “No, not yet,” I admitted. “Hard to find a GTO with a clean body close by. I might have to go up to Oregon. I hear there’s one in a barn near Eugene.” I rustled around in the bags, then found the cardboa
rd flat I’d picked up at the market. “Here, I got these for you.”

  “Kai, you shouldn’t have.” She lifted the lid, inhaling the sweet scent of strawberries. “They had to be expensive.”

  “You’re worth it,” I said, turning away before I saw her lift one of the succulent red berries to her mouth. I was sometimes an idiot, but Dempsey didn’t raise a fool. Craning my head back, I yelled, “Newt!”

  The cat poked his head out over the edge of the upper loft. He screamed a hoarse welcome and scrabbled down the stairs.

  I acquired Newt when I noticed him on my truck bed during a pouring rain, shivering as he chowed down on the giant newt I’d cornered at a mall. I’d spent a good five minutes with my arm down the reptile’s gullet, hunting for a shoe it swallowed when it tried to consume a little girl. I’d dragged the child free before I blew its head open, but the shoe’d been a favorite.

  No matter how tough a Stalker is supposed to be, there’s nothing like a little girl’s tearstained face as she holds up a ribbon-covered pink shoe to make someone dig into a newt’s guts.

  With his mouth full of newt meat, the kitten growled at me, standing on his three good legs over the tear he’d made in the creature’s shoulder. He was ugly, with matted short fur the color of vomit and concrete and holding a paw up against his body…. There was a notch missing from his left ear, like the one in my right, and his other ear wasn’t much better. When I plucked him from the newt’s shoulder, he bit me.

  An ugly lame kitten is much worse than the tearstained face of a little girl.

  Newt’s paw eventually healed, although it was shorter than the rest. His fur became glossier, but the color remained a hideous blend of grays, blacks, and white. Only a few pounds heavier than when I’d found him, Newt still made a racket coming down stairs. I’ve heard quieter bison stampedes.

  “Hey, baby.” I leaned over, scratching under his chin. “Come on, I got something special for you.”

  Dumping a can of whitefish into a bowl, I placed it on the kitchen floor and stepped back. Newt fell on it like he’d been starved for a week. I left him to his food, staying out of swiping distance as he growled a warning with a full mouth.