“Bite me and I’ll kick you,” I warned. He let go and raced into the barn. I followed.
At the bottom of the ladder, which I had replaced at the entrance to the loft, he turned, looked at me, and made one of those soft chuff-barks dogs do when they’re excited. At the bottom of the ladder, he bounced on all fours and looked up at the big square hole in the ceiling/flooring above, the kind built for access to hay and feed. I had spotted another such opening outside, at the back of the barn, with a lift for carrying up the hay and feed. FireWind bounded up the ladder and disappeared. It was a comical view from below, but I didn’t laugh. I had likely pushed my improving relationship with the big boss as far as I could. I retrieved my flashlight and followed him into the barn loft.
Hay in rectangular bales was stacked here and there. The light was dim, and what light there was shone up from small holes in the floor, situated over each feeding trough. Dust hung in the unmoving air, caught in my flashlight beam. Support beams ran from the foundation below to the rafters overhead, and hammocks were strung between them, all empty except for cats, which raised their heads and peered over the hammocks at us. “So that’s where you’ve been,” I said.
One gray-striped cat jumped down and sauntered closer, curious or thinking I might have food for it. Then it spotted FireWind and arched its back, hissing. FireWind growled and the cat leaped straight up to land on a joist. The mouser peered down, its tail tip twitching in annoyance.
“Be nice to the kitties,” I ordered my boss as I looked around. He snorted.
There were old saddles on supports, and a line of bridles hanging from hooks, all dust covered. There were rectangular bales of hay and fifty-five-gallon plastic barrels with heavy-duty lids. I peered into several to see different kinds of feed. There were buckets and scoops and brooms and shovels and openings into each stall for hay and feed to be dropped.
There were cardboard boxes and an old trunk along one wall. A cat was sleeping in a plastic laundry hamper that was full of folded clothing. Other than that, the loft was amazingly clean and free of the kind of old, rusted equipment I was used to seeing in church barns. The only surprise was a long, narrow bench holding a candlestick and several puddles of melted dark red wax. FireWind trotted to the bench and sniffed. His body went stiff and quivering, his hair standing on end. A snarl curled his muzzle into something fearsome. St. Bernards had seriously big fangs.
“FireWind?”
He whirled to me and growled. There was nothing human left in his eyes. It occurred to me that I should be angry, frightened, something. Instead I recalled Occam’s words describing the boss: nose-suck. Dogs’ brains were hardwired for tracking from back in the day of being wolves, and scents could take over that part of their brains, just latch on and not let go.
FireWind whirled back and buried his nose in the candle wax, huffing and puffing in the scent. Yeah. Nose-suck. I moved up beside him in the dark and touched the wax with a pinkie. I jerked away. Mega death magics. I looked closer and I realized that there was blood mixed into the wax, giving it the strange reddish color. Black magic? Death-magic practitioners didn’t usually practice blood magic. One was raw power, the other was ritualistic and required a blood sacrifice. And death and decay was actually neither, so why the focals? And then I remembered the intruder. We had been wondering how the energies had been restored and repowered. Someone had been up here.
FireWind breathed deep, his nose touching the wax.
I needed something to knock my boss free. Like a hosepipe attached to an icy water source, turned on full blast. A rolled-up newspaper to the snout. But both of those might just make him mad. I went back down the ladder and found the potted tree, which I carried up. I shook some of the tree’s surface soil out on the floor, in a trail back toward the ladder. Then I walked to my boss, who was still transfixed by the wax, and carefully dumped a bit of the soil onto his snout.
FireWind jumped as if I’d hit him with that rolled-up paper, spun,