Page 21 of The Howling
I wouldn’t trust me either.
I am the Barghest, the black dog of death. No one gets close to me voluntarily.
But she nearly died. The warlock I dragged from his bed spent the night and day treating her. One of her lungs wasn’t working properly, and because she couldn’t heal herself, he had to put something into her to re-inflate it.
I did not let him rest until the colour returned to her face and her body relaxed. Until the light came back into her. The light I saw the first time I met her.
But despite all of that, she doesn’t trust me. I am the Reaper’s advanced force. I am the soul eater. I do not get to choose what I do or where I go. The Faerie thought they sent me to the Night Lands, but they were wrong.
It is the Reaper who sends me. The Reaper who calls. If I take a mate, he will take her too.
But I can’t stop looking at Wynter. I can’t stop coveting her. My desire to protect her was the reason I broke from my cell far too early.
“I don’t belong to anyone,” she says, and I see her hand shake slightly over the covers of the bed. “I didn’t belong to Lord Guyzance, regardless of what he said. I only ended up in the Yeavering because someone put me into the human lottery.” She pulls the bedclothes back and lets out a squeak of surprise. “I’m naked! When in the hells did I get naked?”
“Um…” I’m caught off guard by her question. “The healer.”
Admittedly I growled and snarled a storm at the warlock when he insisted he would have to remove her clothing, but when he said it would get blood on it and it wasn’t doing her any good, I carefully slit it with my claws and divested her of the garment.
“Just the healer?” She pulls at a sheet, wrapping it around herself.
“I…helped?” I suggest.
Wynter says something under her breath, and I don’t think it’s complimentary. A shudder wracks her body, and she winces.
“Had you been awake, I would have asked you,” I add.
I don’t think it helps.
“I liked the ink on your skin.”
Unfortunately this is absolutely the wrong thing to say as Wynter falls out of the bed, onto the floor, and rolls away from me. She gets to her feet and her eyes blaze.
“How do you know?”
“I see them.” I nod at her arm which is a swirling beauty of ink on her skin. I don’t know how it got there. All I know is when I traced a claw over it, it didn’t move, and it is not magic. It is all her.
“Oh.” She swirls the sheet over her shoulder, covering her arm, then staggers a little.
“The healer said you should rest.”
“I think I’ve done enough now,” she says haughtily. “I’d like to use the bathroom.”
“Bath…room?” It’s my turn to shudder.
“Yes, bathroom.”
“I don’t think I like that word,” I say, given the way my guts churn and my tail, even though I’m not shifted, is tucked between my legs.
“Do you like me urinating on your floor?” she asks.
I contemplate her suggestion.
“Don’t answer that,” Wynter fires at me, her lip curling up. “I guess you must have some sort of toilet here.”
“We have a pisser.”
Her nose wrinkles. “I guess that will do, if you don’t have a bathroom.”
