Page 6 of Monsters of Mayhem

Apparently, Sofie had a job. She couldn’t just live on the stipend paid by the DGC.

I had asked her when I was going to get this chunk of change, but she said I’d probably be excluded from it because I was a banshee. The DGC didn’t recognize us as one of their protected people. I had a sneaking suspicion I was considered something far worse than Ryder. I was a monster in my own right. A harbinger of death. At least I was employable in the real world.

So was Sofie. She worked in a witch shop that sold trinkets to the tourists who came to Alameda to look at the cute old Victorian houses. I asked her if I could come down to the shop and help out, but Tony put a firm “No” on that idea. The mere mention of it had made him look apoplectic. There was no way I was leaving the premises and he was going to make sure of it. Especially after the run in we’d had in San Francisco with the demons and the hellhounds.

After Sofie left, I sat up in my tower staring out of the window feeling melancholy. I didn’t even like the thought of it, but it was true; I was lonely. I didn’t want to be lonely. I didn’t want to be alone. I’d gotten so used to it over the years it didn’t make sense to me how I could feel such an aching sense of loss like I used to always get whenever Ryder left. I picked at my nails, which seemed to be growing much more rapidly than they should be and were forming into sharp points. I frowned. it felt like the banshee was taking over my being now I had let her out.

Ryder was heavy in my thoughts. He was protecting me, but he didn’t want me. There was something else he was keeping a secret from me, but I didn’t know what it was. The reality was, if I really thought about it, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to know why he was protecting me and ignoring me. I didn’t want to know what he was keeping from me.

All I really truly wanted deep down inside was to go back to Boston, to go back to the world I knew, a world that was safe. I wanted to hang out with Laney on a Friday night eating popcorn and drinking wine and watching the Hallmark channel. Sitting with my girlfriend had been safe. It had been comfortable. It had been fun. Now, though, she had found some guy who was obviously going to keep her attention for a while.

I felt pathetic missing her, but deep down I knew it was being rejected and neglected by Ryder that really hurt.

Was it possible to keep shutting my heart down? I had made a terrible mistake sleeping with him, a mistake I wouldn’t make again.

I stared silently out the window at the grey overcast sky. Suddenly there was screaming and yelping. I stood up and pressed my face against the glass, looking down as far as I could see below.

“The hellhound,” I whispered as I saw it in a standoff against one of the satyrs who was guarding the building.

My hellhound.

At least that’s how I felt about it. We had made a connection somehow when I had sung and he had cowed to me. I was his alpha. Only the satyrs didn’t know it.

The hellhound was alone and clearly wanted inside the building. He was ferociously snapping against the satyr, his long rows of jagged teeth looking like they would split the satyr in two. More satyrs approached, but the hellhound was focused and not about to take no for an answer. It was coming inside no matter what. Even if it had to take out some satyrs to do that. I screamed as it bit the leg of one of the satyrs causing blood to gush out.

I ran down the stairs two at a time, practically clinging to the handrail and sliding down. I needed to help. I couldn’t let people die just because the hellhound had a strange affection for me.

My arm was yanked back as I ran through the living room. Tony was still there.

“Let me go,” I exclaimed, trying to pull my arm out of his iron grip.

“Not a chance,” he denied me.

“Can’t you hear it?” I insisted. “It’s a hellhound.

“I know what it is,” he said. “My men have seen them before.”

“Your men are bleeding,” I argued. “Right now. Let me go out there so I can stop it.”

A look of confusion rolled over Furlan’s face. A scream rose outside.

His grip loosened just enough for me to rip my hand out of it and dash toward the door. He was faster though. “I can’t let you out of the house.” He slid between me and the exit.

“I can stop this,” I insisted. “Someone’s going to get hurt and it’s either going to be one of your satyrs or my hellhound.”

“Your Hellhound?” he asked dubiously.

“Yes!” I said, claiming the wild beast as my own to help protect it if nothing else. “What don’t you get about ‘let’s stop the danger?’”

He hesitated again and then turned and moved with me toward the back porch of the giant Victorian house, it’s perfect lines a blur as we ran toward the picture window. “You have to stay in the house. If you leave the house, Ryder will know. If you step one foot outside of these boundaries, then there will be hell to pay,” Furlan insisted.

“Open the window!” I cried, staring at it and trying to figure out how it worked.

Furlan looked at it. It was painted closed; there was no way the window was going to open. I looked up. These old houses often had stained glass windows or small sections that would open to let in fresh air. “Up there,” I pointed, tapping on the glass, trying to get the hellhound’s attention, but it was too focused on the three satyrs stabbing at it with spears.

“I’ve got it,” Furlan said as he bounded up on his hind legs and pressed the window open slightly.

“Cover your ears,” I said before opening my mouth and taking a deep breath. I felt the power inside of me, in the center of my core, swirling around like a deep sadness almost, but it wasn’t a grief I could keep inside at all. It was one I had to get out. I stopped for a moment, wondering how it was I was going to sing, knowing when I sang somebody died, but I had to. It was the only way to calm the hellhound.

---