Page 28 of Hillbillies and HellHounds

***

I almost choked on a cloud of sulfurous smoke.

The flames were moving fast, egged on by the swift north wind. If nothing was done, the fire would eat through Windy Ridge, racing down the slopes toward Dagwood and Devil’s Run. And after that... could it gain enough momentum to make it to the edge of Branson? If it were a natural fire, I was pretty sure we could have contained it, but this was anything but a normal blaze. And that meant I had no clue how fast it could spread, and Ireallydidn’t want to find out.

Most of the partygoers were frozen, staring at the growing flames with wide eyes. One of Mason’s marshmallows was still ablaze and began to drip down the tongs like candle wax. He realized it a moment later as a glob of melted sugar landed on his palm. Immediately, he dropped the heated metal with a curse.

That one word rang out, momentarily drowning the crackle of the flames, startling everyone into motion. The air was suddenly full of shouts, hacking coughs, and an echoing chorus of curse words.

Dean’s fingers locked around my wrist, tugging me back from my position near the fire. I hadn’t noticed, but I’d come to a standstill as well, staring with mounting horror at the shape that was shaking the shattered remnants of logs and tinder like a dog emerging from water. And.... yes, the comparison was more accurate than I liked. The thing had paws, a snout, a tail, and a distinctly canine look to it. That is until it started belching more of that reeking black smoke. My eyes stung, and I threw a hand up to shield my face as heat poured off the thing.

“Is that a wolf?” Dean asked faintly.

I opened my mouth to reply but ended up wheezing instead. The air was baking and growing thinner by the moment as the thing’s flanks heaved, and it sucked in every ounce of oxygen, no doubt to fuel its flames. It didn’t look exactly like the illustration in Sicily’s books, but there really was only one thing it could be.

“It’s a hellhound,” I answered on a breathless whisper. “Come on, we’ve got to go!”

Which was easier said than done. You’d have thought that after everything we’d seen and experienced post-Fog, people would have gotten used to bizarre emergencies. But, as my pa would have said, some people don’t have a lick of sense. They drive on snow like they’ve never seen the stuff before, and then end up in ditches or dead. The same seemed to be true of fires.

As soon as the crowd lurched into motion, people began tripping over each other in their attempts to leave. Some were trying to crawl, lope, or fly to their homes in an effort to salvage what they could before their houses went up like so many matchboxes.

“Damn it, they’re all going to trample each other,” Dean muttered, pulling me along by the wrist. “This is bad.”

I stumbled a few steps before righting myself, tugging my hand gently away so I could move on my own. My laugh was tinged with a note of hysteria. That was the understatement of the year. Dean took off, and I was right behind him, keeping a careful eye on the hellhound, just in case he decided we looked like juicy monster steaks in need of charbroiling.

“So, what do we do?” I asked.

For once I was panting, trying to suck in enough air to fuel our flight. Contrary to popular belief, I wasn’t a walking corpse. I ran warm, I had a high metabolism, and I had to breathe, just like everyone else. It didn’t matter how tough I was. If something sucked all the air out of a room, I’d suffocate as easily as the next person. The only difference? I might come back to life. But on that point, I still wasn’t sure.

“We plan drills if we make it out alive,” Dean huffed. Sweat was popping along his brow and neck, gathering in the collar of his shirt. “I don’t care how private people are, we have to start planning for this shit. This place is nuttier than a tree full of squirrels and it’s high time we started acting like it.”

My eyes roved General Street. It was hard to see much through the pall of smoke, even with my enhanced senses. I had to rely on my ears, because my nose and eyes were pretty much useless in this scenario. The ground-down gravel crunched just behind us and I pulled Dean out of the way seconds before a cloven hoof would have crushed his foot. I caught a brief flash of Karen Dooley’s devil-red skin before she was off, practically bleating her terror. Nowthatwas a sound worth remembering. If we survived, I was going to play it over and over in my mind when she started complaining about this, that, or the other.Which, undoubtedly, she would.

Dean’s eyes went round. “Thanks.”

I craned my neck but couldn’t see more than a foot in front of my face. The air shimmered and warped, seeming to pulse in and out of clarity in time with the thing’s breathing. Sweat ran in a sluice down my spine, sticking the fabric of my shirt to my back.

The hellhound was now just a dim light shifting in the smoky shadows, almost impossible to pinpoint. I had to think quick before the thing managed to consume the entire town. And that was when it dawned on me—this thing was probably responsible for the Thatcher house fire, which meant it hadn’t just accidentally shifted and started burning everything in sight. It waschoosingto attack us, and we had to stop it.

“You, Mason, and Boone gather everyone else and get them out of here. Try to find a place without a lot of brush. If we can’t stop it, I don’t want you to get trapped with no escape route. Call 911 or Skye, or whoever you have to if things get bad.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Dean insisted. “I can help. And besides, if we call—”

I raised my voice to be heard over his protest and the roar of the flames. The fire was spreading now, setting leaf piles alight as it loped forward. We didn’t have time for this.

“If the choice is our secret being discovered or dying in a fire, I know what they’d choose,” I said, giving him a slight push. I must have misjudged by strength, because Dean staggered away from me, windmilling his arms to remain upright.

“Twila—”

“I need you to get Sicily out of here, Dean,” I said, voice cracking with desperation. The heat and horror of it all tugged unwilling tears from my eyes. “Please. This is dangerous for the monsters, but it’s so much worse for humans. If she doesn’t get out of here—”

My voice failed me. I couldn’t say the word in conjunction with my daughter’s name, but the thought rang like a struck bell in my head.

Die.

If she didn’t get out of here, if we couldn’t control this, if the hellhound charged her, it was all the same.

She. Would. Die.

---