Chapter 1
You’re going into the wilderness. You have all the supplies you need. You don’t need cake.
Henry Grant’s jaw clenched almost imperceptibly, and his fingers tightened around the steering wheel of his car. He wouldn’t have called it adeath grip, per se, but it was definitely more than was probably absolutely necessary.
You made a pact with yourself. No junk food. Yousay‘oh, just one little cake,’ but you know what it’s like. You get one taste, and next thing you know you’ll be coming back down the mountain for ‘just one little cake’ every day, and then where will that get you? What’s the point of exiling yourself from society if you can’t even control your most basic of urges?
So he was a bit of a sugar addict.
Or, more to the point, acakeaddict. Everyone had a vice of some kind, right? But this really was not the time to be giving in to his weakness.
You’re right about that, at least,his hellhound chimed in.Honestly, it’s embarrassing. There are times when I’m ashamed to be seen with you. A lot of times. Most of them.
Put a lid on it,he snapped back.My life is falling apart. At least let me have this.
Sounds like you’ve already decided to give in. How weak of you.
Henry snarled, but held his tongue. His hellhound knew exactly just how to bait him. Certainly it had had more than enough practice at it over the years. It was par for the course for hellhounds, but that didn’t mean that he had to enjoy it.
Anyway, there was probably nowhere out here to get cake. The whole thing about going out into the wilderness was that there were none of the nicer conveniences of modern civilization. He was heading up to the remotest, most desolate place he could think of, and that meant that the towns were getting smaller and more spaced out as he went, with fewer and fewer places to buy non-necessities.
According to his map, there was a dirt road just past this town that would allow him to bypass the ski resorts farther up the mountain, and instead make his way around to the mountain beyond, which, being no good for skiing or winter sports in general, had been left largely untouched. The crevasses, sheer mountain faces, and lack of vegetation made it less than appealing for both man and beast, which meant that it would be perfect for his purposes.
Sure, there were temptations along the way. Right now, for example, he was passing a diner – and even though he had the car windows all the way up, his sharp hellhound senses were picking up the heavenly scent of hot dogs and fried onion rings.
But that was okay. He could deal with that. He had canned meat and vegetables in the trunk, and he could always go hunting in hellhound form once he was out on the mountain.
As if there’ll be anywhere up here to buy cake, anyway,he reassured himself.This is just a poky town in the mountains.The best they can probably offer is a Twinkie that’s five years past its expiry date. I’m notthatdesperate.
Probably.
Looking out the window as he made his slow way up the town’s main drag, he did have to admit that it was a little livelier than he would have expected.
Okay, alotlivelier.
The town – Girdwood Springs, if he remembered correctly from his map – had looked tiny and unassuming when he’d been plotting his route, but there was a surprising amount going on.
People of all ages were wandering up and down the sidewalks, eating a variety of foods that both looked and smelledamazing– not just tasty, but obviously made with quality ingredients and a great deal of skill. Various small stores were obviously doing a brisk trade, with customers wandering out the door with paper bags stuffed full of souvenirs and other items. The whole town appeared clean, well-kept, and welcoming, with freshly painted shopfronts and an abundance of greenery that was just starting to show the first signs of bursting into flower, even as the last stubborn remnants of snow gave everything a magical quality.
Best of all, he couldn’t see any animal or bird life around. Not that he had anything against birds or animals in and of themselves, but, given his current situation, he was trying to avoid them wherever possible. There were no dogs running out onto the road to try and open his car door, no bobcats leaping up onto his hood and screaming in his face, and no woodpeckers desperately trying to hammer their way through his windshield.
It was, quite frankly, heaven. He had learned over the past few weeks to appreciate small mercies, and not seeing the inside of a bobcat’s mouth inches away from his face while driving at fifty miles an hour was definitely something he had not appreciated enough in the past!
Whyhe had been subjected to such things, he had no idea. Truly.
It had been just a night like any other – working security at a nightclub, managing the line to get in, checking IDs and ejecting abusive drunks – when, out of nowhere, a pigeon had settled on his shoulder. He had barely even noticed, at first – it had only been when the guy who had been yelling abuse at him had suddenly started laughing at him instead that he even realized what had happened.
Things had only gotten worse when the pigeon startedsmoochinghim, rubbing its head against his neck and cooing happily. All attempts to shoo it away had just led to it digging its little claws into his shirt even harder, and in the end he had only been able to escape it by shifting into his hellhound form in an alley at the end of his shift, and then running like hell.
One lovestruck weirdo pigeon, he could deal with. But the next night, it had been four pigeons. The night after that, seven pigeons, a territorial seagull, and three rats that thought it would be fun to try and run up the leg of his pants.
After a week of this, his boss had taken him aside and not-so-gently told him that unless he could get hisconditionunder control, he would be better off seeking employment elsewhere.
Not that he had minded too much – he’d been preparing to hand in his resignation, anyway. It wasn’t exactly easy to appear stern and in control when you had swallows nesting in your hair and lizards peeping out of your pockets!
The only thing that seemed to stem the flood of adoring animals was shifting into his hellhound form. Unsurprisingly, they wanted nothing to do with a slavering mythical beast, and would take flight the moment he shifted.
It wasn’t exactly a practical long-term solution, though, especially when you lived in the middle of a bustling city and worked a job that involved constantly interacting with people.Though, he supposed, itwouldbe an effective way of keeping unruly patrons in line… even if he suspected it’d only work once, and then he’d be out of a job, since the nightclub would close down due to no one wanting to have their heads bitten off by the world’s largest, most terrifying dog, with the flames of hell burning in its eyes.
