The Hound dropped in front of him, one ear hanging by a bloody, ragged string, and jaw kicked wonky. One eye was caked shut with blood and brick dust and hair, the other was bloodshot, and the pain made it so uncomprehendingly animal-like that Hill felt guilty for a second. Like he’d kicked a dog.
His ears were ringing, and he could barely see from all the dust and debris that hung in the air like smoke. But someone yelled something.
“…the…fucking id…” The words filtered through the high-pitched thrum that bounced between Hill’s eardrums. It didn’t sound flattering. He shook his head, chunks of mortar falling out, and tried to make it out anyhow. “…muzzle! Get the fucking muzzle.”
Hill’s first thought was the bridle he still clutched, but then he looked at the Hound and realized what Davy meant. He hesitated. How did that even work? Hen had just plucked it off, but that had been—
Before he could work out a plan, the Hound reached up to scrape the scab off its eye and then just rip its ear off like ahangnail. Blood dripped from its still-broken muzzle as it tried to push itself up. It failed, but that obviously wasn’t going to last.
Hill swallowed shakily and scrambled up onto unsteady legs. He’d work it out, he guessed as he lunged forward and grabbed hold of the Hound’s head. His fingers dug down into fur, and into the wet hole where its ear had been, and the smell of it made him gag.
Deaddog smelled worse than wet dog, it turned out.
He hauled on it as hard as he could and felt it shift slightly, like a sealed jar. Before he could try again, the Hound lashed out at him with one arm. It caught him across the torso, and he felt his ribs give with a weird internalpopas he was flung backwards.
One hand slid loose, caked with grease, dust, and dog hair, but he managed to hang on with the other. That might have been a mistake. The Hound grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him in, until he could smell the sourness on its breath.
“…peel you,” it gargled out of its broken jaws. “Slice you. Sell you to the hollowmen forlaces.”
All Hill meant to do was put something between his face and the Hound’s rank, fanged jaws. He just used the hand he’d slung the bridle around. It slid down over his wrist and clacked against the Hound’s teeth.
Bloodshot eyes dilated until they looked almost human again. Human and afraid. It let go of Hill.
“…don’t…”
The voice that came out of that ruined mouth sounded almost human, too. Hill didn’t know if that should make him feel worse or not. Either way, he couldn’t afford for it to stop him.
He shoved his fist, bridle still clutched in one hand, into the Hound’s mouth. Broken teeth scraped over the back of his hand, ripping the skin over his knuckles. He bled sticky memories onto the Hound’s tongue as he jammed the toothy bit back as far as it would go.
The Hound fought him, ripping its tongue and the soft meat of its cheeks on the ragged yellow canines. Hill got half-stunned by a glancing head-butt, pain radiating back into his sinuses, but he managed to grab the strap and twist it around the back of the Hound’s head. It wasn’t properly fastened, but close enough.
The Hound stopped.
Hill staggered backwards from it and fell onto his ass. He grabbed hold of a broken bit of fire escape, rust rough against his fingers, and stared at the Hound. It stared back with frosted-over eyes and a dull expression.
He hit it with the rail anyhow. Better safe than sorry.
Then he turned to look for Davy.
Chapter Twelve
Dec 23rd 3:30pm
It wasn’t the fightthat Davy hadwanted,but he supposed you had to take what you could get.
Or, he thought dourly as he fumbled blindly with his tentacles, fuckingfind.He edged to the side of the street and leaned against a car, hands in his pockets as he tried to look likesomeone who didn’t need an intervention to the passersby. From the worried look an older man gave him and the way a young dad power-walked his baby’s stroller past Davy, it wasn’t working.
A stab of pain raked through his chest, like teeth scraping the gristle off his ribs. He instinctively yanked that tentacle back, losing a chunk of meat and splattering plasm up the wall, and swung another in low. If the teeth were upthere, after all, there’d be a leg down…
There it was.
He wrapped the tentacle twice around the Hound’s calf and yanked. The leg bent but didn’t shift, and he didn’t snatch it back quickly enough. A hand grabbed it, clawed fingers digging down into the dense muscle, and something cold and sharp and…hollow…stabbed through it and into the ground.
Davy staggered as the chill sucked on him. The Beyond was set at cool, but this was different. It was a numb, deadening cold that sucked the energy out of him. His tentacles felt heavy and sluggish, like it was too much of an effort to lift them up.
So he let them drop.
One tentacle might not have been enough to move the Hound; all of them dropped on him at once was a different matter. Davy sagged down onto his knees, his hands braced against the ground, as he groped out a map of the Hound. It got another chunk of him, claws ripping rents into pale flesh, but he jammed a tentacle into its ear and pushed another against the wet, hard grape resistance of its eye. Another tentacle wrapped twice around its throat and squeezed enthusiastically.
