Wondrous Strange (9 page)

“Why do you hate me?” Kelley’s voice was very quiet in the still air. “I don’t even know you!”

And there it was. That look. The look from her dreams, the one that broke her heart. Sonny’s face became open, wounded, his expression wide with longing and a strange anguish.

“Oh, Kelley,” he said. “I am so very far from hating you that I think it would be a great deal safer if I did. For both of us—
Get down!
”

Suddenly he launched himself in a running dive through the air, knocking Kelley off the path toward the Wonderland statue. Her head bounced off the cap of the Caterpillar’s mushroom, and all the breath was driven from her lungs. Kelley fell to the ground, gasping, head swimming from hitting solid bronze.

The howling creature charging out of the night’s thin air had barely missed her—thanks to Sonny’s shove. The enormous thing spun with an agility that belied its size and sprang at Sonny, slamming him to the earth about ten feet away from her with such force that Kelley was sure his spine must be broken.

Sonny lay on the gravel path, unmoving, as the rabid thing swung its buffalo-sized head in her direction, fastening red eyes upon her. Its slavering jaws opened impossibly wide.

Kelley stared in utter disbelief at its huge, hairy paws. They didn’t seem to be touching the ground….

Through a fog of paralyzing terror, Kelley heard Sonny shout something that sounded like,
“Turn, hell-hound!”

She thought to herself,
That’s the wrong play.
…

That’s from
Macbeth,
not
Midsummer….

I’m in the wrong play
….

As the beast lunged at her, the dull ache in her head suddenly flared into blinding agony.

F
rom outside his immediate sphere of concentration, Sonny saw that Kelley had blacked out, and was grateful for that. He didn’t want her to see what happened next—whatever the outcome.

As the creature lunged for Kelley, Sonny leaped and locked his arms around its massive torso. He threw his weight sideways, rolling with the wolflike animal, taking it as far away as possible from the unconscious girl. The roll ended with Sonny on his back. He threw his forearms up in front of his face as the thing snapped at his trachea.

Its fetid breath poured over him like swamp fog, its sharp-toothed jaws straining to close on his flesh. With his arms crossed in a defensive shield, Sonny reached for both of the creature’s ragged ears. He grabbed, pulling hard in opposing directions. The thing yelped in a disturbingly doglike fashion and flung itself onto its back. Sonny leaped to his feet and aimed a kick at the thing’s ribs. It grunted in pain and lurched to its feet, where it hovered several inches above the ground and gathered itself, swinging its head to and fro. Backing up on its raised hindquarters, it hunched in preparation for another attack, growling hideously deep in its throat.

Before Sonny had a chance to draw a weapon, it leaped again. Arching its heavy body in midair, it twisted past Sonny and went again for Kelley. Sonny flung himself in another tackle, one-armed, grabbing frantically with his free hand at the small of his back, where he carried a sharp dagger in a sheath on his belt. The move left the right side of his chest unprotected for an instant, and Sonny felt the bloom of searing pain.

Losing his bearing, he collapsed. Face pressed to the ground, he heard the sound of running feet and more snarling. Dimly he heard fighting and then silence.

After a moment, Sonny was able to raise his head.

Maddox stood above him, holding out a hand to help him stand. A heavy mace dangled from a thong at his other wrist.

“Bellamy and Camina must have sensed you needed help at just about the same time I did, I guess,” he said, gesturing down the deserted path. “They’ve gone after—”

Sonny cut him short. “You didn’t
kill
it? Did you?”

Maddox wiped his brow. “Nah—wounded maybe, not sure…”

“Where did it go?”

“Yonder. I’ll go help them. You can stay with—”

“No! It has to be me.”

Maddox’s head snapped up at the tone of Sonny’s voice. “That was a Black Shuck! It didn’t tag you, did it?”

Sonny pulled aside his coat and watched as his friend’s eyes went wide with alarm. He looked down and saw the dark red lines of blood through the slashes in his T-shirt. He could feel the poison of the shuck’s claws seeping, a terrible numbing cold growing slowly, spreading up toward his shoulder.

“Go,” Maddox urged him, near panicked. “Go! I’ll take care of the girl.”

“Get her home. Find out where that is.”

“Don’t worry about that right now—”

“She has a
horse
in her bathtub, Madd,” Sonny said urgently.

“Ah.” Maddox blinked, understanding. “Well then.”

“Be careful, Maddox. That shuck? It had a purpose and it didn’t come after me. It went straight for
her
. Ignored me like
I was a stone. It was tracking her.”

“Seven hells. Tracking her for
whom
?”

“Dunno…”

Sonny staggered a bit and almost fell to one knee. Maddox put out a hand to steady him. In the distance, they heard baying.

“Go now, Sonny,” Maddox said. “I’ll try to signal Bell and Camina—tell them to hold off on killing the damned thing. But even still, you’ve only got till midnight if they don’t take it out first.”

Sonny nodded and took one last glance at where Kelley lay on the ground. Then he pushed all thoughts of pain from his mind and took off at a run down the path, hoping desperately that he would not be too late.

The Black Shuck had given the Janus twins one hell of a merry chase up and down the park. When Sonny finally found them, Camina and Bellamy had the thing cornered on the terrace of Belvedere Castle. By that time Sonny was a lurching apparition, heaving himself up the worn stone steps with the very last of his strength. Camina was about to send a slender spear hurtling down the thing’s gaping maw.

“Camina!” Sonny managed to rasp. “I need it. I need the kill….”

“Oh, Sonny!” She took in his appearance with one swift
glance. “Bell, hold up!” She turned and called to Sonny over her shoulder, “You’d better hurry. You won’t be able to kill in another moment, from the look of you.”

His sword was out in his hand already and he brushed past the other two Janus, not even bothering to feint or dodge. The mental image of Kelley, unconscious and at the mercy of the beast that now stood snarling in front of him, was all he needed. He took two steps, slashed upward with the silver sword, and then down again. The demon dog’s head slumped to one side, its body to the other.

In the few seconds before the gruesome thing began to fade from existence, Sonny went around to its long, shaggy tail and, with the edge of his bloodied blade, sheared off a length of the coarse black hair. He held out the handful of wiry strands to Camina and sank to his knees on the hard stone, his head drooping.

“Could you…?” he mumbled, the fire of the shuck’s poison burning in his veins.

Camina knelt in front of him, and Sonny watched through a fog as she went to work with swift, capable fingers. Soon she was tying a ribbon of braided dog hair around his wrist with an intricate knot.

“‘Hair o’ the dog that bit ye,’” she said, lifting his face gently. “You’ll be all right now.”

Slowly, Sonny’s vision began to clear. He stood dizzily and thanked the twins for their help, wishing he could go home to bed. But the night wasn’t over yet, and there was still the rest
of the Gate to be guarded until sunrise. As Camina and Bellamy prepared to return to their patrol, Sonny raised a weak hand, forestalling them.

“Be careful,” he said. “Very careful. Auberon thinks that someone may be trying to wake the Hunt.”

K
elley heard the whispered murmurings of a hushed and hurried conversation. Sonny. And someone else. Then someone was shaking her gently, calling her name.

She blinked and struggled to sit up. A huge pair of hands grasping her shoulders helped, and she found herself staring up into the open, guileless face of a man maybe twenty years old with ginger-sandy hair and a nice smile.

“Hullo,” he said. “I’m Maddox. Friend of Sonny’s.”

“What are you doing here?” Kelley asked, deeply confused.
What had happened? She must have hit her head when that
thing
…

“I was on my way to meet your man Sonny,” he said, squatting beside her. “I saw that stray dog attack you both and came running.”

“That was a…dog?”

“Bull mastiff by the look of it—big one—and rabid as a bat, most like. Nothing to worry about now, though. The proper authorities are on it, lass.” He stood and held out both hands to help her up. “Now c’mon, let’s get you out to the street and hail a cab. I’ll take you home.”

“Where’s Sonny?” Kelley thought she must have hit her head harder than she’d realized. Everything seemed fuzzy and confused.

Maddox laughed—a low, pleasant rumbling sound deep in his broad chest. “Off chasing the dog. He’ll keep an eye on it until the dogcatcher shows. Make sure it doesn’t hurt anyone.”

“What if it hurts
him
?” She glanced around a little wildly, a fluttering panic crowding up her throat.

“Now, now,” Maddox soothed. “Ol’ Sonn—he knows how to take care of himself. Don’t fret. Come on, lass. Here, let me help.”

Maddox tilted her face up so that he could stare directly into her eyes, and Kelley suddenly felt all of her questions and fears slip into the background.

Let me help you, Lady,
she thought she heard him say, although she was fairly convinced his lips hadn’t moved.

“What did you call me?”

“Uh…you mean ‘lass’?” Maddox frowned in confusion.

“Never mind,” Kelley murmured. “He
told
me I shouldn’t be here now….”

“And so you shouldn’t, lass. The park is no place for a lady after nightfall. Come along now.”

Kelley felt herself slump against his side as Maddox put a muscled arm around her shoulders, and she let him lead her east along a well-lit path toward the edge of the park, where he hailed a taxi. Somehow she wasn’t surprised or worried when he climbed in as she was giving her address.

Just as she got out of the cab in front of her building, she remembered something and, leaning down to the half-open window, said, “He’s not my man.”

“Sorry?”

“Before—you said ‘your man Sonny’ to me.”

“Ah, right. An idiom, that. Figure of speech, lassie.” But as the cab pulled away, she thought she heard him say, “I hope.”

Inside the apartment, Kelley heard a whickered greeting from the bathroom.

“Hi, Lucky, I’m home,” she murmured. She still wasn’t sure if she had actually heard an exchange between Sonny and his friend in the park or if she’d dreamed it all up. Kelley ran a shaky hand over her face, trying to remember exactly
what it was the big guy—Maddox?—had called the creature in the whispered conversation she’d overheard between him and Sonny. Not
mastiff
or
dog
like he’d told her. To Sonny he’d called it by another name.
Black
something.

Black…Shuck.

What the hell is a Black Shuck
?

She went into her bedroom and flipped open her laptop. While she waited for it to boot up, Kelley opened the bathroom door to check on Lucky. The horse swiveled his ears in her direction, bobbing his head in greeting.

“Hi, pal.” Kelley couldn’t help but smile. She was really becoming quite fond of the wayward beast. She went to give him a scratch, but as she approached, Lucky suddenly arched his neck, and his eyes rolled until she could see white all the way around. He shuffled his feet in the soapy water, trying to back up in the bathtub even though there was no more room. Kelley jumped as the horse began making distressed, high-pitched noises and tossing his head violently. He flared his nostrils so wide she could see the network of veins stretching in the delicate skin, as if he scented danger.

Kelley sniffed hesitantly at her clothing. She couldn’t smell anything, but that didn’t mean Lucky couldn’t. Kelley supposed that the scent of the…whatever—she was content, for the moment, to keep referring to it as a dog—might have clung to her clothing.

She backed out of the bathroom, away from the agitated horse, and went back to her bedroom, stripping off her jacket,
sweater, and jeans and exchanging them for a robe. She would have had a shower but, well, not really an option. Instead she went into the kitchen and scrubbed at her skin with the liquid soap there. It seemed to work—Lucky was a great deal calmer when she returned to the bathroom, shaking a fresh box of cereal.

Lucky sniffed at her, snorted a few times, and sneezed. Then he nuzzled around in her palm and ate the cereal, seemingly mollified by the scent of Spring Rain liquid soap on her hands. She couldn’t figure out exactly why the horse would eat nothing but frosted cereal. Nor why, when it did, what little went in…didn’t come out. The messy logistical difficulties of keeping a horse in the bathroom never seemed to materialize. Which was suitably mystifying and yet, Kelley supposed, good news—considering that their landlord would have them out on the street in a flash if Lucky’s presence was discovered.

Kelley might not have admitted it openly to herself, but she was starting to appreciate having Lucky around. There was something strangely soothing about the big animal’s presence. Something…familiar, almost. Her rational mind may have shied away from the notion, but especially in the wake of the frightening episode in the park, it was comforting to come home to the horse in her bathtub. Almost
normal
, even.

Having fed the horse, Kelley went back into her room and pulled up Google, entering the phrase “Black Shuck.” As she read, a cold dread filled her stomach. Beyond a sparse
Wikipedia entry, one of the first Web sites that came up actually looked fairly scholarly—even though it was devoted to supernatural sightings and the paranormal.

Kelley switched on a lamp to dispel the shadows in the room.
This is ridiculous,
she thought, suddenly angry with herself. A horse in the bathtub was one thing, but “demon dogs”? That was just the same kind of silly “ghost story” superstition she’d fought to outgrow as a kid. Kelley closed her laptop and went to sit on the side of the bathtub for a while, breathing the comforting scent of her horsey companion, soothed by
his steady breathing. Exhausted by the events of the afternoon and evening, by the strangeness of her encounter with Sonny—at least she could finally stop referring to him as Handsome Stranger—and the unfathomable animal attack, Kelley finally stood and tiredly bid Lucky good night.