Hellhound

Page 5

Now, Kane had experienced it, too. Just once, but once was enough to break nearly anyone. And for the next twelve full moons, his werewolf form would be twisted, over and over again, into a monstrous hound that knows nothing but pain.
The Night Hag hates me because even though I fulfilled the terms of our deal, things didn’t turn out in her favor. She’s vowed that her hellhounds will tear me to pieces. And she’s waiting until the next full moon, when her pack will have an extra member: Kane.
He’ll be forced to obey the Night Hag’s command; the pain won’t leave room for anything else. I know it, and he knows it.
There’s no way around it: I love you doesn’t stand a chance against Sorry, but in a few days I’ll be forced to hunt you down and kill you. Was it any wonder we were avoiding each other?
With a heavy heart, I crossed the street and headed home.
IN MY BUILDING’S LOBBY, I NODDED GOOD MORNING TO CLYDE, the doorman, who was stationed at his desk. He was eating, as zombies do, but Clyde’s sense of decorum was such that he never wanted to be caught snacking on the job. He stashed a crinkly cellophane bag in the desk and brushed some crumbs off his uniform.
“Good morning, Ms. Vaughn,” he said. I’d asked about a hundred times for him to call me Vicky, but to Clyde being on a first-name basis with tenants was as much a faux pas as picking one’s nose in public. “Mr. Kane stopped by while you were out.”
My heartbeat surged. “Is he upstairs?”
Clyde pursed his lips. He’d been a minister in his former, pre-plague life, and becoming a zombie hadn’t changed his moral sense one iota. Although he’d never uttered a judgmental word, he’d let me know in no uncertain terms what he thought when I gave Kane a key to my apartment. In fact, he was letting me know right now. If you’ve never gotten a disapproving look from a holier-than-thou zombie, you haven’t really lived. Still, once you get past the disapproval, Clyde’s a good guy.
“No,” he finally said. “He seemed very concerned with that business out there.” Clyde waved a hand toward the door, whether to indicate the zombie unrest in Deadtown or the state of the world in general I couldn’t tell. “He requested that I inform you he’ll telephone this evening.”
As the rhythm of my heart settled back to normal, I wondered whether it was pleasure or anxiety that sped it up in the first place. Both, probably. At any rate, Kane knew I usually slept during the day, so he was assuming I’d come home from wherever and fall into bed. Which was exactly what I intended to do.
If only he were there to fall into bed with me.
I wished. In the days since we’d returned from the Darklands, Kane and I had barely been able to look one another in the eye, let alone touch each other. It was like each of us was afraid the other would break.
Maybe we would.
A sigh escaped me before I squared my shoulders and thanked Clyde. His expression softened, as much as it’s possible for a zombie’s face to go soft. “Is everything all right, Ms. Vaughn?”
No. These days, nothing was within shouting distance of all right. But I pasted on a smile and nodded. “Fine.”
Clyde tilted his head skeptically, as if trying to see inside mine. “If I can be of any assistance. I’m a trained counselor, you know . . .” He blinked, as if suddenly remembering his place, and nodded sharply.
“Thanks, Clyde.” My words seemed to embarrass him. He shuffled papers on his desk and wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Well, have a good day,” I said. He didn’t reply.
Walking across the lobby to the elevators, I wondered how long it had been since either of us had had a truly good day. Was there such a thing in Deadtown?
4
I COULD HEAR JULIET’S MOVIE SCREEN–SIZE TV BLARING through the front door as I inserted my key. One of the disadvantages of having a 650-year-old vampire for a roommate was her simultaneous fascination and boredom with contemporary life. Juliet was intrigued by modern technology, which was why she bought the biggest, flattest, highest-definition television she could find. But during her many centuries of undeath, she’d seen it all—aside from intermittent “fascinations” (her word) with home shopping channels or the latest reality show, she couldn’t sustain interest in what was on. In other words, she loved her TV but couldn’t care less about the content. She’d turn it on, crank up the volume in all six speakers, marvel at the quality of the picture and the sound, and then wander off to find something else to do. Seeing as the sun had come up hours ago, she was undoubtedly tucked into her coffin, dead to the world, leaving me to risk going totally deaf in the time it took to cross the living room, pick up the remote, and turn the damn thing off.
Good thing our neighbors are vampires, too, I thought, opening the door and wincing against the assault of sound. Once a vampire resumes the shroud for the day, nothing disturbs him until sundown. At least I didn’t have to deal with angry neighbors pounding on—or more likely through—the walls.
To my surprise, Juliet was still up. She sat in the dark room, blackout shades drawn, her face tinged by the flickering bluish light from the screen. She didn’t notice me come in; she was absorbed in some nature program, absentmindedly eating popcorn from a bowl in her lap.
I switched on the overhead light, and she turned toward me, blinking.
“Can you turn that down?” I shouted.
She leaned forward and picked up the remote. Several clicks later, I could actually hear myself think.
“What did you say? I couldn’t hear you over the television.”
Before I could think of a suitably sarcastic reply, a large white bird hopped onto Juliet’s shoulder. “It was a little loud, I guess,” the falcon said. “But those surround-sound speakers are brilliant.” He cocked his head and fixed his sharp gaze on the bowl in Juliet’s lap. “May I have some more popcorn?”
“Hi, Dad,” I said, as Juliet offered a kernel to the hooked beak.
Yes, my father is a white falcon. A talking white falcon with rainbow-colored eyes.
He hadn’t always been a bird, of course. Although I come from a race of shapeshifters, Dad’s condition was unheard of, even among our kind. For one thing, only Cerddorion females have the ability to shift (it arrives with all the other joys of puberty). For another, when I change shape, the animal brain takes over. If I shifted into a falcon, I wouldn’t be sitting in anyone’s living room, watching TV, eating popcorn, and making conversation. I’d be out hunting mice or whatever it is falcons do. Real falcons, I mean.
But my father had done something that no one among the Cerddorion—hell, no one of any species—had ever managed to do. He’d hijacked the body of a falcon to come back from the dead.
After my father, Evan Vaughn, was killed by the Destroyer, whom I’d foolishly summoned in my eighteen-year-old know-it-all mode, Dad spent ten years in the Darklands, first serving in Arawn’s court and then, when his shade had been marked for reincarnation, hiding out in a cave. More than anything, Dad wanted to keep his spirit from being cleansed of its memories and recycled into the body of a newborn infant. When I followed Pryce into the Darklands, Dad helped me track him down. But the closer we got to Tywyll, Arawn’s capital, the stronger the pull of reincarnation became. The magic that gave Dad a body in the Darklands drained away from him, and his spirit was in danger of dispersing into nothing. In fact, I thought I’d lost him forever.
But no Vaughn has ever quit without a fight. Dad knew that the Night Hag required three items as my price of passage out of the Darklands. One of these was the white falcon of Hellsmoor, a magical bird that could enter places from which others were barred. The hag demanded I bring her the falcon, along with a magic arrow and Lord Arawn’s hunting horn, to make her nightly hunts more amusing. To Dad, the falcon looked like an escape plan. He bound his spirit to the bird’s body and hitched a ride back to the world of the living.
A brilliant idea, with one big downside. That downside was currently sitting on my living room sofa pecking popcorn from my roommate’s hand.
Juliet scattered some popcorn across the coffee table, and Dad hopped over to peck at it. Juliet stretched and stood. “My coffin calls,” she said. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Nearly eight.”
“No wonder I’m tired. I should have reinterred myself hours ago. But the program your father and I were watching was just so . . . fascinating.” Uh-oh. It sounded like Juliet was starting a new television obsession. Well, at least it would be cheaper than the time she bought every single product labeled “As Seen on TV.”
She waved good night and went down the hallway. A moment later her bedroom door clicked closed.
I sat down on the sofa where Juliet had been and picked up the popcorn bowl. Only a few crumbs left at the bottom. I set the bowl on the table.
“What were you guys watching?” I asked my father.
“A show about birds of prey. Their habitats, behavior—that sort of thing.”
“Feeding habits?” I doubted wild falcons had much popcorn in their diet.
“Let’s gloss over that part,” he said, popcorn spilling from his beak. “I figure, though, that if I’m going to be in this body, I have to be able to pass myself off as an actual falcon when needed. If I act like myself, I’ll end up as a sideshow attraction.”
“Or the Night Hag’s pet.” Dad had escaped from the Night Hag, but she was a huntress at heart and would never quit trying to get him back. Although she didn’t know the falcon was my father—almost no one did—she’d offered me a trade. If I returned the white falcon to her, she would release Kane from his servitude as a hellhound.
Kane, free of pain and subjugation.
Her offer was tempting, I had to admit. I’d take her up on it in a heartbeat, except for two things. One: The falcon in question was my father. And you just don’t hand your dad over to an evil, vindictive spirit, even if it means freeing your boyfriend from same. Two: Obscure, ancient prophecies hinted that a white falcon had a role to play in the coming war among the realms. Unfortunately, said prophecies were obscure enough that we didn’t know exactly what that role would be—or even if Dad was the falcon referred to. But when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake, you don’t sit around playing guessing games.