Chapter Eleven #2
He used Hill’s body to dodge around a rusty skip in an alley and boost himself over a chain link fence that didn’t exist in the Beyond. The two worlds glitched and folded around each other, with no one on either side apparently aware of it.
Except Hill.
It was just layers, he told himself in a desperate attempt to quell the existential nausea, just Adobe Undead.
He took a quick glance back over his shoulder and saw the Hound drop to all fours as he lurched into a graceless, efficient run.
It wasn’t quite the same locomotion as a canine, but closer to it than seemed possible with more or less human anatomy.
Slaver dripped, pink-tinged and frothy, from the narrow, scarred muzzle and splattered the ground.
Hill flinched into a misstep. His foot slipped off a low step and pitched to the side. Davy caught him with a tentacle under the arm and one under his ass. A rough shove from both straightened him out and propelled him after Davy.
“He’s catching up,” he said in a thin, tense voice.
“Good,” Davy grunted.
Hill gave the back of Davy’s neck a confused glare. “Good?” he spluttered out a challenge to that statement.
A tentacle snapped out and grabbed a nearby pole, pale flesh wrapped tight around the tar-dark, splintered wood.
It tensed into a yank, and Davy gave a quick, uncomfortable shudder before he turned that way.
He saw the pole just in time to throw his hand up in front of his face, but it came apart before he could touch it, ripped like paper, and stitched itself back together again behind him.
Just in time for Hill to nearly end up floored by it. He just about managed to dodge past it, swapping one set of supportive tentacles for another.
“Asshole,” Davy muttered as he swiped one hand at the tentacle without breaking stride.
Some of the other tentacles joined in, a knot of pinching and pulling flesh.
While they worked out—whatever that was—Davy headed on down the narrow alley.
His voice was ragged and breathless as he tossed an answer to Hill over his shoulder.
“And yeah. Don’t want him to catch up, but don’t want him to fall behind either. Sweet spot of about…ten feet.”
“How do you feel about six?”
The truth was somewhere in between, but a sour part of Hill wanted Davy to feel the same wet twist of fear drag his stomach toward his asshole. All he got was a grunt and a tentacle in the small of his back as Davy shoved him out in front.
“In that case,” Davy told him, “move your ass.”
Hill grimaced but did his best. He was pretty sure that his view had been better than Davy’s, but fear and the lack of lactic acid were on Hill’s side.
A ragged, stained sheet flapped from a loose line strung over the end of the alley.
He slapped it aside, the fabric clammy and sour, as he staggered out onto the next street and almost bumped into the Hound.
They both recoiled from the contact, and the Hound flattened its ears as it flicked its pale tongue over snagged teeth and black lips. For the first time, it occurred to Hill that the Hounds had good reason to be scared of him too. It didn’t make him feel any better.
He froze for a beat, his legs no longer taking instruction from his brain, but the tentacle in his back shoved him unceremoniously into the street.
Hill tripped down the curb and into the path of a black hearse-like car.
He flinched at the blare of a horn and fell on his ass before he realized the helpful tentacles had abandoned him.
Shit.
The driver of the car started to open their door.
Hill got a glimpse of a heavy, sour-looking face that somehow managed to look florid even in the undersaturated light of the Beyond.
Something about the thickness of the skin and the shape of the nose gave the impression he’d have been choleric in his coffin.
Before the scowl could be fully deployed, the Hound slammed a thick, paw-like hand flat on the window and shoved it shut.
The edges of it crushed the man’s finger and split the skin.
He started to scream, then saw the big canine head turn his way, and choked the noise back.
During the brief distraction, Hill scrambled to his feet and bolted.
It would have helped, he thought as he dodged between cars that braked and those that tried to keep going out of the area, if Davy had given him any idea what the plan was.
If there was a plan yet, he supposed.
He glanced back and saw both Hounds behind him now, and an overtaken Davy lagging behind them. They had a brief shoving match, culminating in snapped teeth and snarls, to establish who took point as they moved to cut him off.
What happened, Hill wondered for the first time, if there was no spirit to put back in his body once the Invocation window closed? Would it just drop, like a puppet with its strings cut? Or would Davy, in lieu of any other claimant, just get to keep it?
The notion probably should have scared him, but…
Maybe that was fair. Whether Davy held a grudge or not, Hill’s dad had been party to cutting his first life short. What better compensation for that than a second chance? And, if Hill was honest, Davy would probably make more of Hill’s life than Hill had to date.
The dragging self-pity in that thought tickled the corners of Hill’s brain with the static white rush that had leveled the cafe. Unfortunately, the flash of relief he felt at that banished it again.
Great. That was a fucking useless power.
Hill caught a glimpse of something gray-white and emphatic out of the corner of his eye. A glance that way showed Davy’s tentacles raised as he gestured emphatically toward…
Another alley.
More running? So far, that didn’t seem to have done much good. They’d not gained any ground on the Hounds; if anything, they’d lost it. But since Hill didn’t have any better ideas, he scrambled in that direction.
He dodged a woman coming out of a butcher’s shop, a haunch of something wrapped in dripping brown paper cradled in her arm, and threw himself into the alley. A lifetime of movies and TV shows had primed his brain to expect to see a startled arch of a cat or a spooked rat scurrying for cover.
Except he’d not, he realized, seen an animal since he got here. Just the muzzles.
That probably would have puzzled him more if he wasn’t preoccupied by the wall at the end of the alley.
It was a dead-end.
Hill turned on cornered instinct to bolt back out of the trap. It was too late. The Hounds were already there, broad shoulders and sharp teeth blocking his exit.
“Not bad,” the one with the sharp, bony muzzle growled out. “You got…pretty far, dead rabbit.”
The other one, hairier and bulkier, curled black lips back in a strained-looking smile. “Not far enough.”
They both laughed at that. It looked like Davy had been right about one thing at least; they weren’t bright.
Big, though, he thought as they stalked toward him. The bulky one pulled what looked like a bridle made of wire and bone out of his jacket. It rattled as it dangled from his hand.
Hill clenched his fists and tried to remember all the self-defense classes that Fraser had sent him to over the years.
Except that wasn’t going to do much good, was it? Hill had never been great at taking the lessons from class to…well…most of the time back to class. And that had been against other children. He didn’t fancy his chances against whatever the Company had made into their Hounds.
He backed up, feet scuffing over cracked concrete and gravel, as he tried to give up.
Why was it so hard? Hill’s mouth twisted around the old, sour reminder as it bubbled up. It was in his DNA to throw in the towel. Why fight that now?
Self-pity wasn’t despair either, it turned out.
Hill took one more step back, and his shoulders hit the wall. He stopped with a little grunt of surprise as if…as if the world might have reshaped itself to suit him. Just this once more. It looked like he only got one of those in a lifetime, though.
He took a deep, unnecessary breath and squeezed his eyes closed. If Davy got to keep his body—he thought, generously under the circumstances—he hoped he did something spectac—
The sharp, sliding whistle cut through what Hill had expected to be his last thoughts. He snapped his eyes open and flinched back from the bridle hung in front of his face. Hard enough that the back of his head hit the wall.
The bit was made of teeth.
Both Hounds had flattened their ears at the sound. They turned and stared at Davy. The confused, in-unison head cock as they tried to make sense of him was so canine it read as cute despite…everything else.
Hill stifled a choked laugh against his fist. His arm brushed the bridle as he raised his hand, and the strung bones clattered against themselves. Amusement faded quickly as he noticed something.
The bit, Hill corrected his earlier thought grimly, was made of sharp teeth.
The thought made his stomach turn unhappily.
While he absorbed that, Davy grinned at the Hounds and uncurled his tentacles from behind his back. Twelve of them. One of them made what was somehow a clearly rude gesture at the Hounds, while the others lashed out to the sides.
“You fuckers spoil dogs,” Davy said.
He pressed his tentacles against the wall, the tips picking at the mortar and at the texture of the bricks as they crawled upward until they lashed around the rusty bottom step of a fire escape.
Oh.
Hill glanced over at the other wall and saw two tentacles latched onto the struts that propped up the bowed wall of the butcher’s.
Oh! That was the plan.
Davy braced himself and pulled. The long ropes of his tentacles tensed into wiry bands of sinew and muscle, the soft, dappled skin pulled taut.
Metal creaked, and brick made a raw, surprisingly organic sound as the nails ripped out of the walls.
The fire escape came down first in a rattle and clash of metal, and then the struts gave way with a wet spray of splinters.
Hill dropped to the ground and covered his head with his arms.
Dust and bits of metal stung the back of his neck and exposed arms. The bone-and-tooth bridle hit the ground in front of him, two of the teeth breaking as a brick landed on it.
Without thinking about it, Hill reached and grabbed the strap that would have gone over his head. He meant to throw it away. That was the reason for grabbing it that occurred to him once the warm, wet leather was gripped in his hand, anyhow. He never got around to it, though.
The Hound dropped in front of him, one ear hanging by a bloody, ragged string, and jaw kicked wonky. One eye was caked shut with blood and brick dust and hair, the other was bloodshot, and the pain made it so uncomprehendingly animal-like that Hill felt guilty for a second. Like he’d kicked a dog.
His ears were ringing, and he could barely see from all the dust and debris that hung in the air like smoke. But someone yelled something.
“…the…fucking id…” The words filtered through the high-pitched thrum that bounced between Hill’s eardrums. It didn’t sound flattering. He shook his head, chunks of mortar falling out, and tried to make it out anyhow. “…muzzle! Get the fucking muzzle.”
Hill’s first thought was the bridle he still clutched, but then he looked at the Hound and realized what Davy meant. He hesitated. How did that even work? Hen had just plucked it off, but that had been—
Before he could work out a plan, the Hound reached up to scrape the scab off its eye and then just rip its ear off like a hangnail. Blood dripped from its still-broken muzzle as it tried to push itself up. It failed, but that obviously wasn’t going to last.
Hill swallowed shakily and scrambled up onto unsteady legs. He’d work it out, he guessed as he lunged forward and grabbed hold of the Hound’s head. His fingers dug down into fur, and into the wet hole where its ear had been, and the smell of it made him gag.
Dead dog smelled worse than wet dog, it turned out.
He hauled on it as hard as he could and felt it shift slightly, like a sealed jar. Before he could try again, the Hound lashed out at him with one arm. It caught him across the torso, and he felt his ribs give with a weird internal pop as he was flung backwards.
One hand slid loose, caked with grease, dust, and dog hair, but he managed to hang on with the other. That might have been a mistake. The Hound grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him in, until he could smell the sourness on its breath.
“…peel you,” it gargled out of its broken jaws. “Slice you. Sell you to the hollowmen for laces.”
All Hill meant to do was put something between his face and the Hound’s rank, fanged jaws. He just used the hand he’d slung the bridle around. It slid down over his wrist and clacked against the Hound’s teeth.
Bloodshot eyes dilated until they looked almost human again. Human and afraid. It let go of Hill.
“…don’t…”
The voice that came out of that ruined mouth sounded almost human, too. Hill didn’t know if that should make him feel worse or not. Either way, he couldn’t afford for it to stop him.
He shoved his fist, bridle still clutched in one hand, into the Hound’s mouth. Broken teeth scraped over the back of his hand, ripping the skin over his knuckles. He bled sticky memories onto the Hound’s tongue as he jammed the toothy bit back as far as it would go.
The Hound fought him, ripping its tongue and the soft meat of its cheeks on the ragged yellow canines.
Hill got half-stunned by a glancing head-butt, pain radiating back into his sinuses, but he managed to grab the strap and twist it around the back of the Hound’s head.
It wasn’t properly fastened, but close enough.
The Hound stopped.
Hill staggered backwards from it and fell onto his ass. He grabbed hold of a broken bit of fire escape, rust rough against his fingers, and stared at the Hound. It stared back with frosted-over eyes and a dull expression.
He hit it with the rail anyhow. Better safe than sorry.
Then he turned to look for Davy.