The world fractured into white, and a cat, tail bottle-brushed out, stared at him for a second and then ran—
…some idiot who’d taken his fursona too far…
The lid of a rusted green dumpster slammed down, and it slammed back into the wall. Sharp metal edges cracked the cheap plaster.
…thought he was funny.
The door on the car parked in front of the alley suddenly buckled. The glossy hunter-green paint cracked, and the window shattered in. As the alarm was jolted on, it pulled a handful of people out onto the street. They commented uncomfortably on the chill as they tried to work out what had happened. One man, a crucifix around his neck, crossed himself quietly.
There was no non-sequitur from Davy to break the spell this time, no weirdly comforting tentacle to lean on. Hill just had to claw his way back out on his own.
He was on his knees.
Hill stared at his hands braced in the dirt and tried to remember how they worked. They felt thick and clumsy, like he had shoved them into a pair of gloves wrong. He managed to get them to work enough to push himself upright and…
The walls of the alley were broken, rents clawed in the plaster and stucco like it was butter, and the ground under him was cracked and pitted. Blood—and even if it was milky and viscous, heknewwhat it was—splattered the walls. The sound of alarms and slow, rattled voices were drawn out and muffled by the rattling in his ears.
A dog’s skull lay on the ground in front of him, close enough to touch. Half of it anyhow, the crack where it had broken scoured smooth and the teeth blunted.
Hill reached out to touch it, but changed his mind.
He scrambled to his feet and took a step backwards. He felt something under his heel just in time not to put his weight on it and glanced down to see Hen’s chicken skull there in the dirt.It looked clean, tiny scratches worked into the bone, but it was intact.
She’dtriedto help.
Hill bent down and grabbed it. He fumbled it for a second as he tried to work out where to put it. He finally just clutched it in one hand as he ventured out of the alley and down the street.
The Hounds were still there. He might have—whatever happened to that one in the alley—but the rest had just been knocked on their backs. They were already pulling themselves back together as Hill tried to work out what to do next.
One near him that Hill hadn’t noticed grabbed his foot, thick pink nails scraping his ankle, and Hill kicked out at him to get free. Despite everything, he felt a little jolt of guilt as the heel of his foot jammed into the dog’s eye. Stupid. It wasn’t a dog, but…it still felt bad.
The Hound’s hand slipped free, and Hill ran.
He didn’t know where. It just needed not to be here.
Chapter Ten
Dec 23, 1pm
Hill’s mother took herlong peacock-blue coat off as she stepped into the apartment. Melt dripped from the ends of it as she looked around for somewhere to hang it. With the sigh of a person who was going to give Hill a coat rack forChristmas, she hung it over the back of a chair already half-covered with dumped outerwear.
“What am I doing here?” she parroted. “Lovely way to greet your mother, and if you’d answered your phone then you’d know.”
“But since I didn’t, you’re going to have to tell me,” Davy said.
She looked taken aback at his tone. He supposed he could understand that. Hill seemed to have a much better relationship with his mom than Davy had with his. The guilt-trip routine probably didn’t put Hill’s back up quite that much.
“Sorry,” he said. “I…ah…think I’ve lost my phone.”
That actually wasn’t a lie, he realized as he glanced around the apartment. The only phone he’d seen was the burner that Fraser had…
Davy’s brain skipped the track mid-thought as his eyes fell on the money, guns, and ID still laid out on the coffee table.
Fuck.
It was hidden by the back of the couch for now, but as fig leaves went, it was precarious. Davy mentally scrambled for a solution as Hill’s mom sighed.
“Again?”
