I shot straight up on my bed of moss, grabbed my dirk, and lunged to my feet.
It was a frightful sound. A sound I’d heard before, back in my own world—beneath the garage of Barrons Books and Baubles!
It was the tortured baying of a thing damned, a thing beyond redemption, a thing so lost to the far side of despair that I longed to puncture my own eardrums so I could never hear such a sound again.
The wolves howled.
The beast bayed back. Not so close this time. It was moving away.
The wolves howled. The beast bayed back. Farther still.
Was there something worse than my monster out there? Something like the thing beneath Barrons’ garage?
I frowned. That would just be entirely too coincidental.
Was it possible “my” monster was the thing from beneath Barrons’ garage? “Oh, God,” I whispered. Had IYD actually worked?
For time uncounted, I listened to the mournful concert, eyes wide, blood chilled. Such desolation, isolation, loss in the thing’s cry. Whatever it was, I grieved for it. No living thing should have to exist in such agony.
The next time the wolves howled, the beast didn’t bay back.
A short time later I heard terrifying yipping and the sounds of wolves being slaughtered, one after the next.
Shivering, I lay back down, curled into a tight ball, and covered my ears.
I woke again near dawn, surrounded by dozens of hungry eyes staring at me from beyond the circle of urine.
I had no idea what they were. I could see only powerful shadows moving, stalking, pacing hungrily in the darkness beyond the light from my MacHalo.
They didn’t like the scent of the urine, but they could smell me over it, and I obviously smelled like food to them. As I watched, one of the dark shapes pawed a spray of leaves and dirt over the urine.
The others began to do the same.
The black monster with crimson eyes exploded from the forest.
I couldn’t make out the details of the fight. My MacHalo was throwing off too much glare. All I saw was a whirl of fangs and talons. I heard snarls of rage, answered by frightened snarls and hisses and screams of pain. I heard some of them go splashing into the river. The thing moved impossibly fast, ripping and slicing through the darkness with deadly accuracy. Chunks of fur and flesh flew.
Some of them tried to run. The monster didn’t let them. I could feel its rage. It rejoiced in the kill. It reveled in it, soaked itself in blood, crushed bones beneath its taloned feet.
Eventually I closed my eyes and quit trying to see.
When at last it was silent, I opened my eyes.
Feral crimson eyes watched me from beyond a pile of savaged bodies.
When it began to urinate again, I rolled over and hid my head under my coat.
I got up as soon as it was light, gathered my stuff, and picked my way past the remains of mutilated bodies to wash up in the river. Everything, including me, was splattered with blood.
I waded into the shallows, cupped my hands, and drank deeply before washing. I needed water, it was running rapid and crystal-clear, I couldn’t build a fire to boil it, and I had to believe that, after all I’d lived through, I was surely slated for a more meaningful death than by waterborne parasite.
After I washed up, I moved into the forest. Finding food was at the top of my to-do list today. Although there was plenty of raw meat lying around, I’d rather not.
I passed corpse after corpse. A lot were small, delicate creatures that couldn’t possibly have presented a threat to me. They hadn’t been eaten. They’d been killed for the kill.
After about twenty minutes, I realized I was being followed.
I turned. The monster was back, and once again it was slate gray with yellow eyes. My pouch was still tied to its horns. Tatters of my sweater were knotted around its leg.
“You’re IYD, aren’t you? It did work. You’re what Barrons kept beneath his garage, and he sent you to protect me. But you’re not the brightest bulb in the box. All you know how to do is kill. Everything but me, right? You keep me alive.”
The monster, of course, said nothing.
I was nearly certain of it. After the second mass slaughter, I’d lain awake, waiting for the sun to rise high enough in the sky to go foraging, pondering possibilities. It was the only one that explained why the monster wasn’t killing me. When it had first tried to attack me yesterday, it must have smelled Barrons on me. And it was the scent of him that was keeping it at bay. I made a mental note to not wash very well, no matter how dirty I got.
“So, what’s the plan? Do you keep me alive until he finds me?”
Was this killing machine what would have shown up on Halloween if I’d dialed IYD then? I couldn’t see it being any use against the LM and the Fae Princes, but if I’d summoned it during the riots, or even shortly after instead of holing up in the church, it certainly could have cleared my path and led me somewhere safe, where the LM might never have found me.
I examined it. It stared back through matted, bloodied hair. Rage blazed in its gaze, and something wilder, more frightening. It took me a moment to realize it was madness. The thing was one link in a chain away from total insanity.
It had to be IYD. There was no other explanation for it. How had Barrons captured the thing? How did he make it obey him? How had he kept it from killing him? By mystical means? As usual where Barrons was concerned, I had nothing but questions and no answers. When I was finally back in my own world, he wasn’t getting out of answering some. I knew what he kept beneath his garage now, and I wanted to know more.
As I studied its savage face, the eyes deep with psychotic rage, its powerful body built for killing, I realized I was no longer afraid of it. I knew in my bones the thing was not going to kill me. It was going to slaughter and decimate every living thing around me, and piss, and probably collect anything of mine I was careless enough to let get away from me. It might even want to kill me, but it wouldn’t, because it was IYD and its sole purpose was to make sure I didn’t die.
I felt like half the weight of the world had just slid from my shoulders. I could do this. I had a weapon I hadn’t known about: a guardian demon. It occurred to me that I didn’t even need to retrieve my stones. Barrons could get them when he showed up. There went another quarter of the world off my back.
I got on with my search for food. The monster trailed me most of the time. Occasionally something rustled in the distance, and it would tear off through the trees. I began to hold my ears when that happened. I love animals and hated that it was killing everything. I wished Barrons could have taught it to discriminate.