Breeds (25 page)

Only to watch the man run off, disappearing into the storm.

The Shepherd recognized the face, recalled memories of beach walks and saltwater mists with Flossie. He shouted as the man disappeared into the night. Max fumed in frustration, though realizing the greater control and function in his limbs. The dark enveloped him as he stood, flexing his hands in and out of fists, feeling the strength surge to his summons, but not quite grasping how to utilize it.

With a snap of teeth, Max ran back through the dark. His night vision was limited, but adequate to see Flossie’s fallen shape, whereupon he experienced a mallet slap of helplessness. He pawed at her, discovered how his fingers gripped, hooking them into crevices of his owner and pulling her into a sitting position. As much as he disliked this new body, hated how cold everything felt, he was quickly appreciating its power. Testing his grip, he experimented clutching at Flossie’s unconscious person for minutes until he wrapped his arms around her torso, facing him, and lifted her up until her head flopped over his shoulder, embraced in a drunken waltz.

Flossie felt very light in his arms and Max had no problem bearing her weight as he retreated back down the steps, one careful foot at a time. Upon reaching the ground floor and the dying warmth of the stove, he dumped her in a heap.

Sniffed the air. Scrunched up his face.

Something was coming.

Something not nice.

Max stepped into the foyer, smelling the various materials of leather and rubber, and regarded the closed dark of the door. A growl emanated from his throat. The door was something he couldn’t open on his own and this time he was glad of it.

The smell grew, getting closer.

A voice screamed from beyond the wood. A voice not unlike his own, but deeper, dangerous. Max hunched over, glancing at Flossie’s unmoving shape on the floor before a loud hammering jerked his attention back. A section of the door bulged, crumpled inwards, followed by another powerful blow that split the wood as if it were cardboard. The thing outside shrieked, and punched a fist through on the third strike. Talons pulled away the ruined fragments, and a single eye glared at him in the resulting hole. Another wild yell of anger.

Max could only blink and stare, watching the door being yanked from its hinges in a twisting whine of wood and metal. It came apart in a messy clatter.

The man standing in the doorway wore no clothing. Lean ropes of powerful muscle covered its naked body. A black bush of hair covered both its head and genitals. It stopped just outside, chest heaving, freezing, and stared wide-eyed at the Shepherd. The man-thing, as this wasn’t exactly a man, snapped long dog’s teeth in Max’s direction, and blurted a message of nonsense. When Blackbush got no reply, he shouted in a louder voice that Max found offensive.

Then he understood with a chill.

It wanted to come inside.

Blackbush sniffed at the air, talons flexing, and moved to enter. Max blocked him, glaring at the creature with a forbidding expression. Blackbush glowered, drew lips back from his respectable set of jaws, and made a threatening display of them.

Max didn’t care for the thing’s aggressive overtones. He didn’t like the posturing, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let some alien mongrel into his house. Blackbush came forward and Max pushed him back. The intruder tried once again, rushing the doorway, and this time Max put power behind his hands, shoving the beast hard enough to take it off its feet, sending it into the snow.

Nearly twenty feet away.

Blackbush sprang up from the drifts like a coiled spring and screeched, throwing its arms wide and clawing at air. Muscles flexed and he fixed Max with eyes as black as boot leather. Max wasn’t impressed in the least. The Shepherd knew what was coming, but he stood on the threshold and shouted back as savage a warning as he’d received. Blackbush overrode the message with a guttural yell, laced with furious consequences if he wasn’t permitted entry. Max puffed up his considerable chest and silenced him with a gruff response of his own.

You ain’t getting in.

So
fuck
off
.

A livid Blackbush hunched over, knee-deep in snow, buffeted by the elements. It rolled its meaty shoulders and shook out fingers ending in frightening talons. The night cloaked its hairless hide in a flat glow and for a moment, the creature seemed to weigh the gravity of the curt command. He regarded the bitter tempest all around, then Max’s form, considered how far, how
badly
, he wanted into the house. The brutish creature then grudgingly hissed and ranted as he turned away and stalked off into the night.

Max licked his lips and stretched his jaws until he felt his ears pop. The smell receded. Relief warmed his chest and he stood in the doorway, blinking and breathing, snow pattering his face and body. That had been a near thing. A very near thing. But danger had been averted.

Max started back in, but stopped and faced the garden area again. His nose flickered.

Out there in the dark, the smell retreated but didn’t dissipate.

It lingered, somewhere out there in the swirling veils, as stinging as a whip of frayed wires.

A second later, the smell grew.

Max tensed up, releasing a knowing
whuff
.

The blizzard churned as a black shape erupted from its depths, charging the front door with wrecking-ball speed.

Blackbush. Grinning insanely.

Less than ten feet out, the monster leaped at the unwavering doorkeeper with a roar. The attacking man-thing barreled into Max’s midsection with a fleshy clap that flickered night into day. Max buckled. The Shepherd raked Blackbush’s bare back, gouging grooves in his flesh even as he felt pain exploding in his guts. His attacker’s momentum overwhelmed him and they rolled into the foyer, flailing with arms and kicking with legs, trying to bring their feet into play. It quickly became apparent that Blackbush was the more experienced with his tools. In a burst of stars and speed, Max absorbed three swats from heavily-clawed hands that minced his cheeks into ribbons and jacked his head from side to side. An eyeball popped. His throat let go in a gargle. His head got crushed into his shoulder, hard enough to feel vertebrate crinkle painfully, enough that all strength left him in a gush.

Blackbush got his hands into Max’s armpits and heaved him into the low ceiling, flattening his skull in a grimace of teeth, before flinging the creature against the foyer wall. The house vibrated with the impact. Blackbush pounced and pistoned a series of hard knees into Max’s chest, bone against bone, caving ribs in an explosion of agony. The knees stopped only to be replaced with more punishing blows to the face and head of the defender, opening up torrents of blood and leaving Max’s face in ruined tatters.

Then, perhaps sensing his foe dead, Blackbush stood back. He studied the body at his feet,
whuffed
, and bellowed loud enough to split the latex paint covering the walls.

Blackbush’s head jerked around, smelling fresher, more palatable meat just waiting. A dark mass lay unmoving, breathing ever so slightly, but still alive, and without the off-putting scent clinging to his enemy’s hide. Blackbush hesitated a moment before flaying Max’s face one final time, turning it into an awful grid. Satisfied he’d established dominance, he moved towards Flossie, flexing iron jaws.

Leaving the Shepherd slumped against a wall.

Somewhere, in a warm dream, Max was no longer a man. He ran through open fields, upon four strong legs, banking left and right at times, chasing one of Flossie’s grandchildren through an overgrown meadow, while the old girl herself stood off and watched, shouting and clapping her hands at times. The fresh smell of dry grass tinged with a hint of saltwater and fir trees filled Max’s nose. A young girl squealed and ran, her blonde hair bouncing and flashing like fine silk in the sun. A grinning Max chased her down as he’d done many times before. Occasionally she stopped with a giggle as pure as summer rain. She whirled around at the last possible second, hands bunched to her face in excited play before throwing her arms around his thick neck, accepting his kisses.

The sight sparkled as if the very sun blazed down upon the scene. Sounds echoed in his ears, those of happiness, while the pressure of a child’s loving hug resonated around his neck. So good. So very good.

But then the carpet of grass slipped away with a tug of reality, replaced by the smell of blood and wood and decaying air fresheners. Max opened his remaining eye, distantly wondering why the other wasn’t working. Pain burned through his chest and face like hot pebbles, and he knew he’d been hurt bad. Very bad. Perhaps onto death.

But then he saw the intruder standing over Flossie, remembered how her granddaughter ran to him in that swaying sward of twilight, felt again the embrace of a little girl’s arms.

A little girl Flossie would see this spring.

Gritting teeth, Max willed life into his limbs, felt them move. On the main floor, Blackbush screeched, as if trying to waken the woman at his feet so that he could kill her. Max pulled himself along on bloody hands and knees, feeling the ruined bellows of his chest working, rattling,
grinding
. Blood pattered from his ears, his face, but his one good eye narrowed into a determined slit.

Blackbush reached for Flossie with a scream.

And Max’s hand shot upwards in the graceful arc of an underhand softball pitch, grazing the flesh of thighs before clamping down hard, claws deep, on a rather bulbous set of testicles.

Blackbush’s screech twisted into a singular note of surprise before tapering off into a paralyzing wheeze. His arms dropped and his legs gave way, but not before Max emasculated him with one ferocious yank. Blackbush mewled as Max crawled on top of his adversary’s back. He pulled the dark mop of hair to one side, exposing flesh traced with arteries thicker than roots. Max chomped into these with whatever power he had remaining. Blackbush shivered underneath, quieted, and finally went still in a widening pool of bad wine. Max started chewing and didn’t stop. Not even when he hit bone.

When Max drew back from the carcass on the floor, the neck, shoulders and a good amount of the upper torso had vanished.

Every breath flared embers of agony within Max’s crushed chest, but he watched the man-thing bleed out, willing to pitch into that piece of dying meat once more if needed.

Blackbush did not rise. Instead, the creature performed one last feat of magic for his audience of one. The legs shortened, a snout lengthened, the skin oozed hair until covered, all in under a minute. Max watched the shrinking transformation with baleful eyes. And when all was done, a half-breed terrier exhaled gently, a blood bubble swelling upon black lips, and became still at the center of an expanding puddle.

Max passed out by Flossie’s side.

The blizzard sought to upend Ross as he struggled through sorcerous spirals of snow, numbing him through his snowsuit. He sensed he was heading in the right direction, although at times he felt as if he were slogging through a wall of stinging gauze. A wooden fence appeared almost mystically. Ross grabbed it, lowering his head against the icy lashings, anchoring himself long enough to get his bearings. To his right lay a road and a cliff side. The hill was on his left. The house belonging to Caramel and Roger Moore stood somewhere ahead. As far as Ross knew, the Moore house could be ten feet away from him. Or it could have been buried right up to the tip of its A-frame.

A powerful gale bore down on him, a veritable avalanche of snow and cold, surprising even him with its strength. Ross held on, burying his face in his arm and hugged the fence for dear life. The length of wood trembled like a speeding train bearing down on a length of rail. Had to be minus twenty at least by now, and the temperature seeped through the layers of his snowsuit and gloves with insidious determination. The wind intensified, almost impossibly so, furious that something living defied its wrath, and seemingly concentrated itself upon the man with the goal of blowing him over the cliff or jerking him up and away into the night. Tightening his arms around the fence, Ross heard frozen fibers crack, stole a breath, and prayed.

Then the storm winds slammed into him with all the force of a tornado.

“Jesus H. Christ,”
he snarled into his sleeve, barely hearing the words, believing any moment the storm would flay the snowsuit from his back, just for starters, before
really
having fun. But then the nearly irresistible force subsided, as if debris choked the blizzard’s windpipes. Ross, breathless himself, took the lapse to flip over the fence and pound feet in a direction he hoped was correct. The blizzard could alter a person’s path by degrees, disorienting them enough to make one walk past their mark without even realizing it. For all he knew, after the blast he’d just survived, he could be in fucking Kansas.

Ross crashed into the trunk of a nearly submerged car. He stumbled around the useless vehicle, glancing once over his shoulder and seeing squat, before pressing on ahead.

A wall loomed out of the freezing gloom. The Moores had painted the house a light sky-blue, but the storm rendered it colorless. He pressed himself against frost-bearded lengths of clapboard and staggered along, until he found the front door. Ross slammed his gloved fist on its hide as if he were old Jack Frost himself, weary of the gale. He didn’t stop until it opened a cautious crack.

“D’hell ye want?” Roger Moore demanded, his face twisting in the weather.

“Roge,” Ross shouted back. “It’s Ross Kelly. Can I come in a minute?”

Roger allowed him that, closing the door as soon as the milky figure stumbled inside.

Ross didn’t mind Roger and Caramel Moore. Right up to his seventy-fifth birthday, Roger possessed a wicked sense of humor, no matter how many spy jokes the boys cracked at him. He went along with the fun, delivering secret service lines with a thick Newfoundland accent. Ross’s own favorite had been, “I’se James Bond. Now, luh, give us a mar-teenie… and shake de living’ shit outtavit.”

Roger wasn’t doing the spy bit tonight.