A Red-Rose Chain

The Mauthe Doog’s blood was tart and faintly bitter, like it had been tainted by some unknown substance. I closed my eyes as I swallowed, trying to find something—anything—that would tell me what the dogs wanted, or how to make them stop attacking joggers and eating people’s housecats. Instead, I found my own face, distorted by the Mauthe Doog’s fear until it became the visage of a monster. Danny loomed behind me in the red blood haze of memory, a walking mountain that dealt out death with every blow.


“They’re terrified,” I said distantly, only barely aware that my lips were moving. I swallowed hard, trying to chase away the shreds of blood memory. A faint headache was growing in my temples, warning me that I was pushing the limits of my powers again. Blood magic is hard on a body—harder, it seems, than regenerating most of my skin, or repeatedly healing broken bones. Louder, I repeated, “They’re terrified!”

“What?” The low rumble of Danny’s voice pulled me all the way back into the present. I opened my eyes and dropped my sword in the same motion.

The sound of the blade hitting the ground seemed louder than it was. Even Tybalt stopped his snarling, head whipping around as he stared in my direction. His ears were better than mine under the best of circumstances, and in his partially-transformed state, his hearing would be especially sharp. That was a good thing. I didn’t want to yell.

“They’re scared,” I said, lowering myself to a crouch. The three Mauthe Doog who were in any shape to fight watched me warily, but didn’t attack. I think they were just relieved that I wasn’t holding a sword anymore. “We’ve been acting like they were animals because they’re not shapeshifters, and that was sort of right: they are animals. They’re monsters. The Law doesn’t protect them, because they can’t claim its protection. But they’re not dumb animals, and they’re not attacking people out of malice. They’re doing it because they’re scared out of their minds.”

“What do you mean?” rumbled Danny.

“Imagine going from one of the deep realms—a place where there’s never been an Industrial Revolution, no people, no pollution, no cars—to modern-day Marin in the blink of an eye, just because you were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I extended my hand toward the nearest Mauthe Doog, fighting not to let my nervousness show. I could probably grow back any fingers the big dog decided to bite off. Probably. I’d never actually experimented with regenerating limbs before, and this would be a lousy way to find out where the limits of my healing powers were.

“So you’re sayin’ that these are somebody’s pets?” Danny actually sounded halfway excited now. He had a big heart to go with his big body—and given that he was almost eight feet tall, that meant he had a lot of heart. He also ran the only Barghest Rescue Society in existence. He was supposedly trying to find homes for all his semi-canine, scorpion-tailed monstrosities, but since most Bridge Trolls didn’t live in houses with backyards and everyone who isn’t a Bridge Troll has issues with venomous pets, he hadn’t managed to adopt one out in the whole time that he’d been keeping them. I wasn’t sure he really wanted to anymore.

“I’m saying they used to be, a long time ago, before we went away and left them all alone.” Sometimes I questioned Oberon’s wisdom in sealing the deeper realms. Yeah, he kept the kids away from the guns and liquor, proverbially speaking, but he’d also kept them away from their quiet spaces and favorite toys. More, he’d locked them out while locking their companion animals in. Even fae creatures can live forever, under the right circumstances. How long could an abandoned fae dog wait for its master before it decided to turn loneliness into rage?

I turned my attention to the injured Mauthe Doog. “Hi,” I said, as gently as I could. “I’m sorry we hurt you. You scared us.”