slide into gray scale I realized there was one problem. Leo wasnât in front of me.
I got out one breath before he raised the dart gun and fired until the clip was empty. Five darts, a payload that would drop a three-Âhundred-Âpound lycanthrope.
A blue velvet sky full of stars spun across my vision, and then the stars blurred into white lines on the center of an endless highway before everything went black.
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CHAPTER 6
I was seventeen when I left Bear Hollow, Tennessee, for the last time. I had one dress, one pair of shoes, and two dollars that Iâd saved working since I was barely fourteen mending and taking in washing with my mother.
I had never seen electric light or indoor plumbing, but I was no dummy. I worked my way to New Orleans, mending clothes for rich women and cleaning houses when I had to, watching children, anything that paid the bills and didnât involve putting my legs in the air for strange men. Prohibition was going strong, and my grandmother had made the best moonshine in Bear Hollow, so it wasnât hard to set up a little shack in the bayous of St. Bernard Parish and watch the money roll in.
She was the one who told me about haints, about the black dogs that prowled the swamps where she grew up, deep in Cajun country. About the rougarou, the beast with red eyes whoâd consume you, body and soul.
I guessed it was only fitting Iâd ended up back there. And I made a good life for myself until I died.
After I became a hound, Iâd catch glimpses sometimes of that mirror-Âstill bayou water, silvered by the moon. Of the things moving in the cypress swamps, ruffling the hanging moss with their passage. No matter where I went, from Anchorage to Juarez and most every back road in between, part of me was always back in that bayou. It wasnât strange to me. After all, it was where Iâd left my soul.
Cold water smacked me in the face, and I choked, sucking in sour-Âtasting fabric.
Leo yanked a black cloth sack off my head. I hissed as harsh light abused my dark-Âadapted eyes, and bared my teeth at him.
âCalm down,â he said. âYouâve been napping for a while, and I need to talk to you.â
My head was still muzzy from the tranquilizers, but everything snapped into focus pretty quickly. I was in a chair, two-Âlegged again, chained down hand and foot. Smells of oil and hot metal and the lack of any furniture besides my chair and a rusty metal table told me I was probably in one of the hundreds of abandoned gas stations that littered the Mojave.
âYou keep saying that, and then you keep knocking me out,â I told Leo. He disappeared from the pool of light and wheeled a ratty old rolling chair to face me. He sat, taking a flat silver flask from his pocket and sipping before tucking it away.
âItâs hard to talk when all you want to do is shift and rip me apart.â
He was right. I wanted to shift more than anything, the craving like claws in my brain. I was frightened and hurt, and the hound in me knew the right response. Shifting in these chains was going to be a bitchâÂI could easily snap all the bones in my arm, and then Iâd be a three-Âlegged dog. That wasnât much more use than a chained-Âup woman.
Leo got up and disappeared again. This time he brought back a mechanicâs cart covered with a rag. âYouâre the third hellhound Iâve caught,â he said. He tossed the rag on the ground, and metal instruments gleamed.
I felt my teeth start to grow, and my muscles rippled under my shirt. Leo flinched a little. Good. At least I knew there was something that could get to him. âThis is a hobby for you?â I snarled. I could still be hurt, especially like this. Get hurt bad enough, and I wouldnât be able to shift anymore. Iâd be fucked, even if I did somehow convince Leo to take the chains off.
âNo,â he said. âThis is my job.â
He switched