Fiends and Familiars - Debra Dunbar Page 0,4
dog-thing off my porch and away from my door. He slurped them up, following the trail, but as I took another step forward, his orange eyes lasered back on me.
“Easy boy. I won’t hurt you. Why are you here? Do you need help? A place to stay?”
I didn’t know if it was the liver treats or if my magic was somehow getting through to the creature, because he cocked his head, a puzzled expression on his face. Random thoughts and emotions washed over my mind, as if they were making their way to me through a thick blanket.
It was a fierce beast, trained to seek, find, and kill. It was confused about why I could see it and how I was managing to communicate with it. And it really liked the liver treats.
“I’ve got more in the truck,” I told the dog-thing. “And I know you’ll like the rib bones as well. Why don’t you let me get you some water and more to eat?”
I tossed the rest of the liver treats into the grass next to the porch, and while the creature ate them, I casually walked up the steps to my door as if this was absolutely an ordinary occurrence to find a strange dog beast on my porch.
The noises the thing was making as it ate the liver treats were setting the hairs at the nape of my neck on end, but I kept my breathing steady and unlocked my door. As soon as I pushed it open, I felt the creature’s attention snap to me once more.
There. I sense it. Master was right.
I stood in the open doorway and faced the creature, not sure if I should slam the door shut and bolt it or not. It curled its lips back again, and I swear its teeth grew longer. The thing hunched down as if it were about to spring and I sucked in a breath, my hand gripping the door.
A hissing noise and the flapping of giant wings rent the silence. Drake descended from the sky, landing on the porch between me and the dog-thing. I froze, unable to retreat inside and leave my vulture friend to fight this thing himself.
I shouldn’t have worried. Drake extended his wings outward, opened his beak, and hissed. I don’t know if it was the sight of the huge bird, the threat of the knife-sharp beak, or the stench of long dead weasel on his breath, but something made the dog-thing take a step backward. He snarled at Drake, then snarled at me.
“Get back,” I told Drake as I prepared to do something I hated—something I’d sworn I’d never do.
Drake hopped aside, and I locked eyes with the dog-thing, but before I could unleash my spell, he vanished.
“Stupid preternatural dog-thing,” I muttered as I scanned my yard to see if he’d just teleported across the street or something. Thankfully none of my neighbors seemed to have been disturbed by my standoff, because out here in the world away from Accident, supernatural beings and magic were supposed to be the stuff of fantasy. Not that I hadn’t been able to explain away all sorts of odd things in the month since I’d bought this house. It was amazing what people believed when the alternative was even more unbelievable.
Deciding that I’d rather relax and eat ribs than go searching for the dog-thing, I went inside. My house wasn’t particularly big. In fact, it was fairly indistinguishable from the other cookie-cutter one-story homes in this neighborhood, but I liked it. It had been a difficult decision to move out of Accident, where my kind of weird was less weird, to out here in the “real” world, where I couldn’t hang with shifters, fae, vampires, and goblins at the local bars. Practicality won out, though. The majority of my clients were outside of Accident and it was a much shorter commute if I lived here.
The real bummer of living here was how isolating the last month had felt. I hadn’t any friends outside of Accident, so I’d thrown myself into my work and was beginning to feel a bit depressed at my lack of a social life. I should go over to the bar where my youngest sister worked and maybe meet some people, but those darned squirrels had worn me out. Ribs, pajamas, and Ladyhawke it was. Tomorrow was Sunday and family dinner night. That would give me some much-needed interaction with non-feathered, two-legged beings.
True to my word, I threw the rib