I wrinkled my nose, giving Bastion a sidelong glance. I didn’t think I had a very weak stomach, but imagining him just pulling limbs the way a child plucks petals off a flower was still disconcerting. He talked about it so casually, too.
“This is all very amusing,” Uriah said, “but I have somewhere else to be. Time to play with your food, children.”
Three lengths of blue light flashed into existence, connecting each of the hounds to Uriah’s waist. They were ethereal chains, their links made out of the same ghostly substance. And then the chains just snapped, a faint tinkling noise as Uriah released his hounds.
“Oh,” I muttered. “Fuck.”
Bastion yelped as the closest hound lunged for him. He raised his other hand towards it, the air around his fingers gleaming. The hound snarled, then yipped when it struck a solid wall of force, one of Bastion’s shields. But with his energies focused on defense, he had let slip on his conflict with Uriah. The corpse dangled and jerked merrily under Uriah’s command once more.
“Excellent,” he said. “Perhaps I will see the three of you again, provided you live. I enjoyed our little game, sorcerer. I’ll see to it that my children devour you first. Fare well.”
The other two hounds had been racing towards me and Gil, but they swerved at the last moment, converging on Bastion. Three of the monstrous dogs were now focused on him, snarling and slavering as they threatened him in an ever shrinking circle.
“Uh, guys?” he said.
“Not so cocky now, are you?” I said, relishing the opportunity to gloat.
I rushed in, raising my katana, electricity surging and sizzling as I brought it down on the closest hound. It had its back to me, still baring its teeth at Bastion. There was little satisfaction in attacking an animal, even one that was nothing more than a revenant. I could only hope that snuffing out its unlife would mean releasing the creature from Uriah’s hold.
The dog vanished.
“Well,” I breathed. “Fuck me.”
Nobody warned me that these doggies could teleport. A humongous weight fell on my back, dropping me to the ground, my face smashing into the dirt. I just barely kept my grip on the katana. A dull pain shot through my jaw, my lip tasting of blood. Above me, what felt like three hundred pounds of ghost-dog growled and slobbered, chewing at my –
“Not my fucking leather jacket,” I shouted.
I struggled to roll to my side, fighting to throw the hound off me, but the damn thing was far too heavy. Asher wasn’t kidding, these things had turned their forms physical as fuck. The damage to the leather was one thing – my baby was custom-made – but the bigger problem was what would happen if the dog gnawed its way through and pierced the delicate dimensional barriers. And then, kaboom – goodbye, Everett House, and probably everything else in a half-mile diameter.
But why would I wear such a fragile magical device so close to my body, you ask? It’s called fashion, sweetie.
I brought the katana swiping upwards, flailing. Like that was ever going to work. And then the monstrous weight above me disappeared, shortly after it yelped, following what had sounded like the collision of two very large bodies. I rolled to my side – successfully, this time – then sprang to my feet.
To the right of me, Bastion was fighting off two of Uriah’s hounds, his palms flashing with light and activating his shields each time one of them came too close. And to my left – oh boy. The third hound was snarling and snapping at the air, aiming and failing to clamp its ferocious jaws around the black, hairy shape wrestling with it. It was Gil, completely shifted into his werewolf form. He’d gone full dog.
Gilberto Ramirez when he was no longer Gilberto Ramirez was always a sight to behold. His sinewy digitigrade legs gave him incredible running speed and jumping power. The muscles in his arms were already well-developed when he was human, and they only grew bigger and stronger when he transformed. His wolf talons and the massive teeth of his enormous jaws were just a bonus.
As a man, Gil was a dangerous opponent. But as a wolf? He was a force of nature.
He pinned the hound to the ground, tearing at it with his talons. Gil threw his head back, baying to the red moon before plunging his jaws in a final, fatal clamp. I flinched, but there was no blood, no awful death. The hound simply dissipated into wisps of pale blue smoke, rising harmlessly into the night sky. I thought I heard a distant rush, something like a peaceful sigh.
“Rest well,” I whispered, watching as the ghost passed on into nothing. I turned to Gil, pointing a finger-gun at him and winking. “Nicely done, buddy.”
“Sterling,” Bastion shouted. “Help me. You are such a fucking asshole.”
Gil, on the other hand, bared his teeth and snarled.
“Oh, shit.”
I tumbled and rolled into the grass as he sprang at me, keeping my blade close so I wouldn’t slash him by accident. It was always a damn gamble when he went full dog. If there were enough enemies around, he could expend his bloodlust and go on a berserk rampage, threshing and slashing until everything that opposed us stopped moving.
I climbed to my feet, my sword at the ready. Gil had landed across the way, to the other side of Bastion and his desperate dance of self-defense. Gil’s red eyes flitted between me, then Bastion, then the hounds. At last, he made a choice. Hound it was.
“Holy shit,” I sighed, relieved.
Gil tussled with the second hound, taking it down with a tackle. The two of them snarled and barked, the tangle of dog and werewolf limbs taking them somewhere among the bushes. It distracted the third hound long enough for Bastion to regain his bearings. He dropped one of his two shields, preparing his newly freed hand to strike. But seeing the opening, I struck first.
I shouted as I drove the sword downwards. If Tabitha Bridges could kiai her way to better results in battle, then so could I. Susanoo’s katana came slashing down in a crackling crescent. It struck a single hair on the back of the hound’s neck, then passed into the grass, biting into the earth. The hound, like its sibling, had disintegrated almost instantly into a puff of bluish matter, floating up into the clouds.