Black Dog Short Stories (9 page)

     Turning, he took a long step back toward the restaurant’s front door.

     No one tried to stop him, but two of the staff got in his way, like it was accidental. He shoved past them, ignoring their sullen, wary looks. The back door was now locked. Yeah, like that was a coincidence, right? He broke the lock and flung the door open, and was back out in the alley, casting back and forth. Yes. The kid’s scent was here, stronger now. He was in black dog form again. The moon or just plain fear had driven him to shift, but he was still heading west—yes, one small street and then parking lots, empty in the dark.

     And then the bulk of some large building, not a little shop but something big. There was a green banner in the front, right up the face of the building above the front door, three stories if it was an inch, but Thaddeus couldn’t read the Chinese characters on the banner. He didn’t care what building it was, anyway. All that he cared about was the hunt, the hunt with his quarry running before him, yeah, the kid knew he was back here, knew he hadn’t managed to throw him off the trail. Maybe he’d hidden and waited, watching the back of the restaurant. Maybe he’d seen Thaddeus come back out. He was scared, Thaddeus could smell it. Any stray would know right away, seeing Thaddeus, that there could be no way to fight. That Thaddeus was the hunter tonight, and the kid was just prey.

     The kid hadn’t gone in the front door of the building. Around the side, and away toward the river—toward the river, really? Thaddeus cast one way and the other, circled wide around the building and then more closely, and found, as he’d half-expected, his quarry’s scent on a rear wall and a balcony one story up. Yes. The same exact trick again, fake trail and doubling back, but it was a good trick and the kid hadn’t had a lot of options once he’d got his far. This time he’d laid down a lot more of a trail to draw Thaddeus away toward the river before he doubled back. And jumping up to the balcony, that was clever, if Thaddeus had been a little more careless, that break in the scent trail might have thrown him off. Maybe it was even another false trail . . . but no. The scent was strong here. He was sure the stray had gone in through the balcony door.

     The door wasn’t ajar, but it was unlocked. A black dog could slide it open, but only a human hand could work the little lock, and his quarry was too scared now to manage the shift back to human form. Thaddeus had never yet let his Beast up; he had no need to. If he ran into ordinary human people, better to do it in his human form and not as the Beast. Grayson had laid down that rule, but it was true. No need to change, not yet, plenty of time for that once he caught up with the stray at last. So he had no trouble sliding the balcony door open and then shutting it behind him.

     An apartment. A bedroom, and beyond that another room, and across the room a door, closed, but probably leading out to the main hall. Dark and empty; this apartment even smelled empty . No one lived here. The scent trail led straight through each room, detoured to one side and the other, and then led out through the interior door. Thaddeus had his hand actually on the doorknob before a breath or a sound or, hell, maybe a half-conscious thought about kids who doubled back and doubled back again, made him turn.

     He was shifting as he turned, and he ducked, too, hit the floor and rolled, or he might have bought it right there, ambushed by a kid a third his age and less than a third his size. DeAnn would never have let him hear the end of it. That was the thought that made him move so fast, that brought his Beast roaring up. In that form he was close to half a ton of jet-black shaggy monster, all muscled bulk and hot breath and fiery eyes and knife-sharp claws. And the kid was only a kid, hardly bigger than a big dog. It was not an even contest.

     Thaddeus’s Beast loved the younger black dog’s fear and despair. It didn’t want a
contest
. It wanted a hunt and a leisurely slaughter, preferably not too fast. That wasn’t what a decent man would want:  if killing had to happen, a decent man would make it quick. But it was hard; harder than it should of been; he’d been scared by that ambush and now he was angry—or his Beast was angry, it was always angry, but this was a hotter, more vicious rage, feeding his own anger. Thaddeus had intended to make it quick, but instead he only tore five shallow gouges along the stray’s shoulder and side and threw him against the far wall. Then, embarrassed by the self-indulgence, he lunged to finish the stray, but the young black dog rolled and tucked himself down and fled before Thaddeus caught him, out the door and gone down the hallway. Thaddeus wanted to curse. It came out as a low, grating snarl.

     There were no screams, that was something; apparently no one was out there  just at the moment. Thaddeus tore his own way through the doorway, wrecking a good chunk of the doorframe and wall, and followed. The trail was so clear it might have been lit by burning fire; there was no missing it now. The door at the end of the hall—that was a stair, and the stray had fled upward, very nice, the kid would run out of
up
soon enough—a chase, a hunt, and a victim who had no hope of getting away . . . he tried not to savor it, but it was hard.

     Out on the highest floor, and here at last someone was out in the hall, an elderly Chinese woman who pressed back against the wall, her hands over her mouth. The Beast wanted to tear her intestines out in passing. Thaddeus blocked the impulse, barely noticing the familiar effort, and slammed his weight against the door through which the scent trail led.

     The stray flung himself at Thaddeus as he came through the door, one last desperate effort, but Thaddeus turned his shoulder to that rush, blocked the first frantic slashing blow and the second, and someone shot him.

     It wasn’t silver. He knew that first. It wasn’t a killing shot, obviously, or he’d never have known anything about it. A handgun, something small caliber, it hadn’t made much noise. It hadn’t made much of a wound, either:  he’d been shot in the chest, but his heavy bones had deflected the bullet and in this form he was very hard to kill. But it hurt. His anger roared up, vast and burning. The stray was in front of him again. Thaddeus knocked him down and aside, crushed his ribs and tore through his belly, flung him aside and turned on the man with the gun . . . who was an old man, old, old, ninety years old, a hundred maybe, he looked that old, a little old Chinese man with a thin face and wispy white hair and a little gun gripped in his shaking hands. Hands shaking like that, it was a miracle he’d hit Thaddeus at all, even if Thaddeus in his black dog form was a target hardly smaller than the broad side of a barn.

     Then the kid was there. Thaddeus had hurt him, hurt him bad, he’d done it deliberately, forcing him to shift back to human form to shed those injuries, getting one enemy down so he could figure out this new threat. That had worked fine, because of course the kid didn’t have the control to shift back to his black dog form, not right away, not when it counted most. But he flung himself in front of Thaddeus in his fragile human form. Like a toy terrier pup facing down a wolf. Just like that. It was a surprise, a black dog cur facing Thaddeus like that, protecting an old human man—his father, no, too old:  maybe his grandfather. That was . . . actually, that was kind of something, a black dog kid acting like that.

     The kid was shouting, quick and angry, but at the old man, not at Thaddeus. Thaddeus couldn’t understand him and thought at first he’d lost language after all, though he hadn’t in years, but it wasn’t that, of course:  the kid was shouting in Chinese, cussing up a storm by the tone, but the old man wasn’t budging. He was trying to get around the kid, shoot Thaddeus again. So the kid grabbed the gun out of his hands and
threw it away
, smart kid, even right now, right this minute, even with everything else. That was
seriously
astonishing. Hard to believe he was an ordinary stray’s kid—but then, Thaddeus knew better than most, better than any stuck-up Dimilioc wolf, that some black dogs actually did do their best to train up their kids.

     And the gun skidded all the way across the room and under a threadbare old couch, gone, out of easy reach. Not that it had been much of a gun anyway. The kid was pushing the old man back bodily, away from Thaddeus, down an interior hallway. The kid shoved the old man away and then blocked the hallway with his own body, like his skinny ass would slow anybody down for more than half a second. Not that the old man went, he was pushing at the kid’s back, yelling something loud and angry in Chinese.

     Thaddeus caught his Beast by the tail and dragged it back and down, forced it down when it didn’t want to yield, stomped his foot down on it and braced himself good against it getting free. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at both the black dog kid and the old man. “What the hell?” he demanded. “Kid wants to save your sorry ass, what’s your problem, old man?”

     “Don’t hurt him,” the kid said, quick and urgent. He
was
just a kid, too, thirteen or fourteen. No way he was as much as fifteen, skinny little kid like that, all knees and elbows. “Don’t hurt him,” he said again. “He’s not one of us, he’s nothing, you don’t have to kill him, people know him, everyone knows him, killing him’ll only make trouble, people with guns—”
     “Yeah?” said Thaddeus.

     “
Real
guns, man,” insisted the kid. “Not like that one.”  He said something else, something violent, in Chinese, and the old man stopped pushing at him and glared over the kid’s shoulder at Thaddeus.

     The kid took an urgent step forward. “I’ll go with you. Listen, not here, but I’ll go
with
you, wherever you want, the river, the park, you want a fight? I’ll fight you—”

     Thaddeus snorted. “You? Fight me?”

     “I will!” snapped the kid, jerking his head up in affront. “That’s what you want, right? That’d make it more fun for you, wouldn’t it? But not here. Lots better down by the river. Lots more space.”  And he stood up real straight and glared right into Thaddeus’s face in deliberate challenge.

    
Brave
kid. Smart kid, decent control. Yet he’d been out there in the city. Hunting. A stray. Dimilioc put down strays like ordinary people put down mad dogs. Kind of the same thing, except black dogs that got out of control were a lot worse than rabid dogs. A lot smarter, a lot more deliberately vicious. Killing mostly when the moon rose full and their control dropped into the pit, but violent all the time, even when the moon was dark, raping girls and beating up anybody who looked like a target, yeah, that was a black dog cur. But this kid . . . Thaddeus looked him up and down.  The kid managed not to back up. The effort was visible.

     “Come on,” Thaddeus said abruptly. “Come with me.”  He caught the kid by one skinny wrist and dragged him back through the apartment toward the door. After the first involuntary jerk to get free, the kid didn’t fight him. He shoved his grandfather back when the old man tried to catch at his other wrist and then came willingly, fast, pulling Thaddeus, even, instead of the other way around, into the hall and right past the old woman and two other old people who’d come out to see what was going on. One had a gun, a .38. Even a black dog would feel that, even though it wasn’t loaded with silver. Thaddeus slapped it out of the man’s hands and strode down the stairs. The kid stayed right with him, no problems at all.

     Then he did balk suddenly. “Not that way—this way, fire exit, quicker, the alarm doesn’t work, it’s the best way out.”

     Thaddeus shrugged and went the way the kid indicated. “You’re awful damn eager to get out, for a damn fool who led me straight here.”

     A sullen look, scared and resentful. “I thought I’d got away. I thought you’d lose me for sure—nobody ever—and I needed Grandfather. The monster, it was hard to keep it down—it wanted up so bad—the moon—” he stopped.

     “Yeah,” said Thaddeus. That made sense. Especially if you were an inexperienced kid and you didn’t have a clue what you’d run into when Dimilioc came after you.

     Out of the building then, and, yes, down toward the river. Quieter down this way, a couple big buildings, warehouses or offices or whatever, deserted at this hour, surrounded by empty parking lots and lit by streetlights and the full moon. Sirens, not too far away. But not here. Thaddeus let the kid go, straightened to his full height, and stared at him.

     The kid looked away at once, took a sharp breath, and looked back. Then away again. Another breath. He pressed his hands together, rubbed his hands up his arms, glanced warily at Thaddeus once more. But he didn’t shift. He didn’t try to run.

     “Full moon tonight,” Thaddeus observed, ignoring the part of him that wanted to snarl
and
make
the kid run. He said instead, “A kid like you, out in the city for a little fun, seeing what turns up? Didn’t get so far away from home, did you, huh? You always hunt in your own backyard? Didn’t your daddy teach you better? He didn’t teach you to get clear of your own neighborhood before you hunt, huh?”

     The kid was shaking his head. “Not like that.
Not
like that. Stray cats, man, it’s all about stray cats, there’re some big-ass rats behind the restaurants, maybe a dog or two, no people, man, really!”

     “Yeah?”

     “Grandfather wouldn’t like it!”  The kid sounded young and desperate. Thaddeus could hear his Beast’s vicious snarl behind his human voice. But the human voice was in front. The human kid was in front.