Page 3 of Muzzled

Closing out the document, he did a quick search for Maestro Mike, hitting on a poorly constructed website. His eyes strained to read the dark blue print on the black background as he spent a few minutes hunting for the image gallery.

And what a gallery it was.

The guy was incredibly talented, his smooth watercolors rivaling his detailed charcoal works, both competing against the lifelike acrylics and photo-quality pencil sketches. Stunning ink prints were discounted, and the vibrant spray-paint originals were two-for-one.

The subjects of the pieces ran the gamut from pastoral scenes to night club dancers, each medium carefully chosen to suit the image the artist was conveying. He took his time looking through the gallery, mentally cataloging the number of works pulled from the underworld.

And there were many.

Persephone was a popular theme in the painted pieces, Hades more so in the charcoal. Even Dionysus made an appearance in an intriguing watercolor highlighted with ink.

The alarm on his phone buzzed on the dresser, and he bookmarked the website for a closer perusal later. He ran his hands over his face, set his laptop on the nightstand, and stared at the bargain-basement painting on the wall.

He’d been chasing ghosts alone for six months, living out of cheap motels and his car. And now he was close enough to taste the freedom this final kill would bring.

Freedom from the weight of Hades’s curse on his shoulders.

Freedom from the human world.

Freedom from the hunt that had consumed him for centuries.

Freedom from the heaviness of his failure.

He rose to his feet, slid his keycard into his pocket, and tugged his shoes back onto his protesting feet. There were few precious hours between the closing of the bars and the rising of the sun, and he needed to make good use of the limited darkness he had.

The motel was only three miles off of the festival, nestled among discount car lots and warehouses that had seen better economies. Slipping into the shadows, he stripped down and nudged his clothes behind a dumpster before dropping to all fours as the transformation took hold.

His nose wrinkled at the stench of rotting meat in the alley and he looked back at his clothes in annoyance, knowing he’d be hunting down a laundromat in the morning. Staying tight to the empty buildings, he kept his ears tuned in to the few cars on the road. He ducked into doorways as the threats drove past him and made his way to the bridge leading to the deserted festival street.

Keeping his muzzle to the pavement, he tracked up one side and down the other, the overpowering odors left behind from the multitudes of food vendors hampering his progress. The few scents that caught his attention were little more than reminders of his evening.

The faint lilac of Persephone.

The sharp herbal of Hades.

Spray paint.

Acetone.

Chuffing in annoyance, he crouched in the doorway of the coffeehouse and laid his head on the sidewalk, no hint of a god or deity wafting in the air.

And no hint of the Pirithous.

If the bloodline was in the area, the chemicals used by the artists had overwhelmed the scent. The muskiness of the Maestro’s charcoal combined with the heady odor of the pastels to fill his nose and coat his tongue. The tang of paint and turpentine cut through enough to burn his throat and water his eyes.

With his last hope for the night yielding nothing more than a headache, he scanned the area one last time and trotted back toward the bridge, one eye on the storefronts for a dry cleaner.

*

“No way wecan salvage the fan, Mike,” Logan called out, holding up the balding paintbrush. “We’ll have to hit up the art store before we take the street tomorrow.”

Mike wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “I’ll make do with the others. I’m not paying a king’s ransom for a replacement when I can order it online for half the price.” She paced the length of the basement floor, stretching out the kinks that had settled in her back from sitting on the sidewalk all evening. “And I don’t care how big a pain in the ass it is, I’m hauling the easel over in the morning. I’m too old to sit on cement for twelve hours.”

Logan collapsed the easel for her and set it by the door before he loaded the rolling tote with paper pads and canvases. “I’m tossing an extra set of pastels in here. You’re getting low on the reds in that open pack.”

Giving her apprentice a smile, she waved him toward his cot. “I’ll deal with this later. You rest up.”

He side-eyed her, pushing himself to his feet. “It’s four a.m. This is as later as it gets, Mike.”

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