Page 18 of Silver in the Bone

Cabell was dead weight in my arms, muttering and senseless with pain, as we tumbled into the endless black of the passage and the door slammed shut behind us.

It was the apartment’s smell, sweetened by a neighbor’s laundry, that told me we’d arrived. Then we burst through the linen closet door, tumbling onto the threadbare rug. The whole building seemed to groan at the impact.

I scrambled onto my hands and knees, crawling back toward the closet and slamming its door shut once more so no one could follow.

“Cabell,” I said, my voice sounding distant to my ears. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t ... ,” he said, fisting a hand in his hair. “Tams, I think—”

His face went terrifyingly slack, and I knew. I knew exactly what was coming the instant before his shoulders hunched, before the dark hair rippled out over his arms, before his bones began the work of reshaping themselves into something that wasn’t human.

“Take a deep breath,” I said. “Just focus—focus on my voice. You don’t have to go. You don’t. You control it, it doesn’t control you—”

His shoulder shrank from my desperate grip as he fell to his knees.

“I’m gonna—” I spun toward the nearby loft space we used as an office and fumbled for an idea, any idea about what to do. “I’m going to go get more crystals—I’m going to get—”

A low, thunderous growl rose behind me.

I turned.

The hound was massive, almost more wolf than dog. Its shaggy black coat shimmered like spilt gasoline, rippling with each step forward. Cabell’s clothing hung off it in tatters.

The sound of claws clicking against the battered floorboards stirred a primal terror, one as old as life itself. Strings of saliva dripped between its long white teeth. Adrenaline surged in me, bitter on my tongue, pounding through my blood.

There was nothing human left in those dark eyes.

The shift had been coming on more often over the last year, but I’d always been able to pull him back. To return him to himself. He hadn’t had a completely uncontrolled transformation since we were kids, when he was just a pup.

“Cabell?” I whispered.

The hound stopped, cocking its head to the side.

“Listen,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. My mind was moving too quickly, flipping through the extensive archive of references and Immortalities in my memory. I never forgot a thing I saw or read, but this—there had never been any need to find something to shift him back to his human form. He had always been able to do it himself.

“Listen to me,” I said, holding out a hand. “That’s good. That’s good, Cab. Focus on what I’m saying ... In ages past, in a kingdom lost to time, a king named Arthur ruled man and the Fair Folk alike ...”

The hound let out a whine, but stayed, giving itself a vigorous shake. The vise around my stomach eased as I took another step forward. “This is a story about his beloved friend and knight Lancelot ...”

There wasn’t time to run. There wasn’t time to draw in a breath.

Not before it lunged at my throat.

Instinct alone saved me.

I threw up an arm as the hound tackled me. A scream tore out of me as its fangs ripped into the flesh of my forearm, piercing skin and muscle to scrape the bone.

Pain blistered me, but it was the sight of my own blood painting the hound’s teeth crimson that made me scream again.

Saliva foamed and sprayed against my face as the hound snapped and bit at the air to get to my face. My mind had emptied, but my body wanted to survive. Needed to. Somehow I drew my knees up enough to kick the dog away. It whined again as it struck the floor and rolled onto its feet.

I dragged myself back, and back, with that one arm, trying to build distance between us, trying to get to my feet, trying to get to the office alcove, where there were tonics and crystals and—

The hound’s limbs went rigid as it released an earsplitting, unearthly howl.

“Cabell!” I choked out. “Please—snap out of it!”

The hound stalked forward, its hackles raised along the ridge of its spine like needles. It was too fast—its jaws locked around my foot, forcing me to kick its snout and skull and whatever part of it I could reach to free myself.

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