placeholder post #7 from Barnes & Nobel writings

placeholder post #6 from Barnes & Nobel writings

Then Hunter shows up and that does nothing for Jon's state of mind.

After a bit of talking, and figuring out why they heck she is there (Dead Men Mafia) she drags him back to the fish warehouse to investigate.

While the dogs are off searching a different part of the warehouse, Hunter talks Jon into bloodgifting her. This leads to all sort of interesting things, the most obvious being a description of what bloodgifting is, and that the dogs owe him the other half of the bargain.

The dogs come back from investigating to find them and figure out immediately what happened. They are all sorts of livid and Tos is all for killing Jon off and finding another Huntsman. The rest of the pack is more or less of the same mind, but Akela talks them around and they end up completing the gifting (since it can't hurt and they can always kill him afterwards just as easily).

So now Jon can hear the singing and he's got a bit of the other gifts as well and he's about a million times as confused as when he started. So Jon ditches them to go hang out with Sebasitan, who was always the grown-up of the group. If anyone can help him sort out this mess it's Bastian.

Sebastian listens to everything (including the fight and the drive by and all the fun supernatural stuff) and takes it all in stride. He's nothing if not imaginative and he's more than willing to suspend disbelief for a bit. Jon is more or less expecting that reaction (which is why he came) but it's still a relief to have someone else who believes him. After all, he's still not sure he believes it all himself.

This is the point where Hunter shows up (avec Dog) and Sebastian gets a little more involved than he'd wanted to. Crazy things happening are always more palatable when they are happening to someone else.

But Hunter assures them that the Dead Man Mafia and the Dogs won't care that he knows, since he's not really involved. No one is going to believe him anyways, so there's no risk. So yay for firend's safety and boo for the hunt's general disinterest in anything other than Veil business.

Writings from Barnes & Nobel write-in!

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...they work out what to do next.

Jon: And that is?

Writer: I have no idea.

Jon: That's typical.

Writer: Hey, I'm just following where you guys lead at this point. Do you see an outline? *waves pages of completely ignored notes at fictive* Do you?

Jon: Not my fault you don't do contingency planning. *ignores the piles of paper*

Writer: I can't keep you on one scene for more than four hundred words, how on God's green earth am I supposed to keep you on a plot??

Jon: Well, at least you could try giving us a theme or something. *reaches for a beer*

Writer: You want a theme? How about 'generic cookie cutter fantasy'? That seems to be y'all's modus operandi at the moment.

Jon: I protest this uncouth assessment!

Writer: You're a normal schmoe caught up in a paranormal world unexpectedly. *holds up one finger* You've got magical companion animals.

Tos: RRRRR

Writer: Oh shut up, you are too. *finger two* Plus you've got this detective shtick going on and the Dead Men Mafia, which I had to say is the most clichéd thing ever...

Jon: Since when is a band of rebel humans and renegade Veil creatures a cliché?

Writer: Hmm, true, normally they're the good guys--

Jon: And for a band of generic bad guys I'm sure they could have picked something more cliché than bringing back dead people. I mean, normal dead people, not dead dictators or dead gods or something more earth shattering than Mr. Prescott, attorney at law.

Writer: ...Who?

Jon: Never mind, he's a secret. *attempts to look mysterious*

Writings from Barnes & Nobel write-in!

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"Where are we going?" Jon demanded.

Tos just stared at him. Akela twitched an ear in confusion and Athen sat down with a sigh.

"I'm not going anywhere until someone tells me what's going on!"

Of course since the dogs couldn't talk it was rather silly to ask. The dogs gave him a moment to figure this out for himself, and then Tos gave an exasperated look when he remained firmly planted on the ground. Akela whuffed in annoyance and shouldered Tos aside to take his place a nose length from Jon's face.

"Are you trying to kill me?" Which is really what he had meant the first time, but Jon was still working out what he wanted to know and what he didn't want to know. He wasn't sure if he wanted an answer, but having Akela looming over him made it a rather important point.

Akela blinked, as if she was trying to translate from human to dog, the shook her head. Jon assumed she meant 'no'.

Tos nodded quietly to himself and muttered something unrepeatable.

"Is someone else trying to kill me?"

There was a quick dog conference and then Akela nodded, but in a roundabout way that was half nod and half negation. Okay, so that wasn't too bad. At least the dogs seemed to be on his side, or not actively trying to get him killed. Jon paused to digest the fact that some other unknown force was trying to kill him, or at least thinking about it.

Jon tried to figure out how to phrase his other thousand question into yes/no answers, but Tos's snarling was getting less muted and Akela was giving him a 'that's it lets go!' look. So he figured it was better to save those for after whatever it was the dogs needed him for. He stood, bushing off the remnants of last years leaves. Gesturing dramatically in the direction they had been heading originally he solemnly intoned "Lead on MacDuff!" But the dogs missed the reference.

: working

Writings from Barnes & Nobel write-in!

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Jon's driving to work in the Frankencar and the dogs are running alongside like normal. At least three of them are, Akela has taken to riding shotgun because she's amused with the whole 'running around in a metal box' concept. The others are mostly phased out, which means it's easier for them to run through things, and generally avoid detection.

A normal looking sedan pulls up beside them and someone leans out the back window and shoots into their car. They miss but do a good bit of damage and scare the -bleep- out of Jon. The dogs go into battlemode, but as there isn't a Veil creature to contend with they are mostly useless. Akela does a good job of slowing some of the bullets so that they do less damage, or just lose momentum altogether.

Jon escapes (mostly by chance) and drives to work where everyone else marvels over the bullet holes while he has a small meltdown. The cops are called and a report is filed, but all they can really do is put out an APB for a white sedan with Wyoming plates. Since he can't really give them a reason for why anyone would be out to get him the cops write it off as a one-time random things. Jon stays at work and basically hides inside the entire time (which no one can blame him for).

The car isn't too damaged so Jon figures he'll just have Todd patch it up later. Someone from work follows him home (just for safety's sake) but nothing happens. The whole pack of dogs crashes in his room that night which doesn't help his peace of mind.

Writings from Barnes & Nobel write-in!

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Jon had almost gotten a handle on the situation. True, he was being followed around by a sometime solid pack of ghost dogs, and he had almost probably maybe sorta killed someone. He was actually less okay with the killing than he was by the whole ghost dog business, and what did that say about his psyche? Still he though he was adapting to the situation pretty well, all things considered. Everything would be okay. Somehow.

And then he was attacked on his way to work.

That was not okay.

Writings from Barnes & Nobel write-in!

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This was where the trail ended. Jon stared at the unmarked ground for a moment wondering where the Dogs could have gone. Unless they could fly there should have been another set of ghost faint pawprints right after these, but he saw nothing. Of course the fact that the Dogs weren't actually dogs took a second to percolate from things Jon knew to things Jon knew. At that point the question shifted from where the trail had gone to why the Dogs had been leaving a trail to start with. It would have been easier on Jon for them to have simply stayed with him instead of running ahead into the forest. The fact that they apparently no longer cared if he could follow them was disturbing.

So he decided enough was enough and he sat down. Leaning up against the trunk of the tree he started upwards into the oblivious canopy. The Dogs had seemed very determined to get him out here, and now they've just vanished. Which either meant that they'd gotten him lost in the woods on purpose (which wasn't a good sign) or that they'd simply forgotten he wasn't able to keep up with them (which boded only slightly better).

Either way he was going to wait right here until they came back or the search parties found him. At least he was assuming they'd send out search parties at some point.

After a few moments Akela and Athen came loping out of the forest, but the other two dogs were nowhere to be seen. They stopped about ten yards away and Akela yipped at him expectantly. They looked primed to turn and dash off again as soon as he got up, so Jon didn't get up.

Athen barked at him.

John ignored him.

The dogs tolerance for being ignored was apparently very low. Akela gave him about twenty seconds after Athen's barked to repeat the command, this time considerably less politely. Jon was amused how much emotion he could read into the various poses and noises. Dogs were so easy to anthropomorphize, especially when they were acting acutely undogly.

At that point Tos and Jenna reappeared. Jenna stopped a few feet behind Akela and Athen, but Tos continued all the way over to Jon until they were nose to nose. Or almost nose to nose, Tos had to look down.

Yet again reminded of just how large the dog was, Jon briefly considered giving in and getting up. Large and annoyed wasn't the best of combinations for something roughly the same mass (even if he was phased out) and with much larger teeth.

But no, enough was enough, and he wasn't budging. Jon glared back up at Tos. It was time for some answers.