(skip)

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There was something to be sad for dark and rainy nights, but sadly the night was neither and Jon tried fruitlessly to blend a little deeper into what shadows were left. The full moon had turned most of the forest into something akin to daylight, silver instead of gold, but easy on the eyes. He hissed at Athen as the dog inched forward, misting into near nothingness as he moved into the moonlight.

Beside him Tos rumbled in disapproval, but Jon ignored him for the moment. They had too much riding on this to stop and bicker like, well, like dogs. Tos caught his line of thought and huffed in annoyance, but muted the snarling below Jon's level of hearing. It still ran through the packsong, but Tos was almost always growling there.

Athen reached the edge of the clearing and waited at the edge of the shadows. Beyond that was an open field without any cover at all. The folks who maintained the building hadn't worried about fencing, but had made sure there wasn't a blade of grass within two hundred yards of the walls. A sea of gravel separated the pack from its target and Jon wondered (yet again) just what kind of opposition they were facing. You didn't focus this much security with an eye towards Veil weaknesses without knowing what you were expecting.

Jon: You know, I think most folks would have had a breakdown right about now…
Writer: What, generic 'dissociative state' ain't good enough for ya?
Jon: When we’ve gone from normal life to ghost dogs and ghost deer and people shooting at me and then getting killed by boxes of dead fish all in the space of, what, a chapter?... no.
Writer: You're just grumpy because there weren't any bears.
Jon: *sighs*
Writer: Fine, fine…

Suddenly! For no apparent reason! ...there were bears.

(skip!)

--------------------------------

There was something disturbingly peaceful about the aftermath.

The giant deer-thing has vanished the moment the kid had-- Jon's mind skidded away from the reality of the limp body beneath the shattered wreckage of the shipping crates. And now he was left, the only solid thing in the building. The Dogs had faded out again, wisps of shadow against the stuttering overhead lights.

They were waiting, but he wasn't sure for what.

He looked back at the hints of moisture peeking from beneath the rubble and the need to be somewhere else was overwhelming.

So he left, slowly at first, then faster as he got away from the warehouse, away from the splintered wood and the smell of fish. But he'd never been a runner, rugby was a stop and go sport, a chase, not a flat out run away as far and as fast as he could go.

The dogs ran with him, shadows against shadows, fading in and out like flames. When he finally stopped, coughing for breath and curled against the ground, they ringed him in a whirlwind of nothing.

He wasn't sure how long he stayed, breathing in the smell of loam and crushed leaves, eyes shut against recent memory. And he could have sworn he heard them then, a sound like rushing water and the echo of belling howls. When the world final rewound itself, he sat up to find only one Dog remained. She tilted her head and smiled, tounge lolling out the side of her mouth. Like nothing had happened.

So he clung to that, that nothing had happened, because he wasn't ready to face anything else.

She led him back through the woods, back to the car, and back to the house (though he knew the way). He left her in the yard, but found her by the foot of his bed. The shadow of a dog with yellow-brown eyes watched over him as he slept, and for some reason he wasn't afraid.

Jon: Lemme guess, this is the part where you write down anything you can think of in order to make today's wordcount.

Writer: Got it in one!

Jon: Go me. Woo.

Random lines from random scenes...

-----------------------

"We're fighting the Dead Guy Mafia?"

-----------------------

The shadows solidified first into a dog, with embers for eyes and coat that rippled with every breath, then into a woman, as faint as the echo of and echo with ice blue eyes that chilled the air around them.

-----------------------

There were no secrets between Huntsman and Dogs, but there were misunderstandings.

-----------------------

Jon needed a beer, badly.

-----------------------

There were some things Jon just didn't want them to explain.

-----------------------

"So."

"Yeah." Jon leaned back in the couch and played with the paper on the beer bottle. He waited for Sebastian to react, but after a moment realized he already had. And that was the essence of friendship.

"To burying the bodies." Sebastian raised his bottle as Jon looked up.

"To burying the bodies."

-----------------------

Akela watched them from across the park, ears twitching at each breeze and tail curled morosely around her paws.

"It's not your fault." Athen settled into the grass beside her, draping his head over her back to nip at her tail.

"Feels like it." She rolled with his weight, twisting to pin him against the grass. "Everything I've done, every choice I've made, I've lead us here." She squirmed out from under Athen as he attempted to reverse the pin, nipping at his paws. "It's not my fault but it's my choice."

Athen gave up the fight and let Akela sprawl happily over him in a mismashed tangle of dog. "You never made the choices alone you know. We could have left you."

"You could have killed me," Akela snorted. "I was waiting for Tos's bite some nights." She turned her gaze back to the Dogs on the far size of the field. "Do you think they'll leave?"

(skip!)

--------------------------------

If he listened for it he could hear the Song underlying every breath. Akela's song, bright and coppery; Athen's sharp woodwind's dancing around her chimes, Jenna's soft murmur of low strings, and Tos's bass drums rumbling underneath. Hunter and her Dog were whispers only, echoes of echoes not meant for living ears or minds.

He wondered sometimes what damaged she'd done by binding the two of them in rituals meant for the Veil. He'd tried to ask Tos once, but the dog had just growled at him until he'd given up and left the grizzled mutt to his brooding. Jon didn't trust Akela or Athen to answer honestly, and Jenna-- Jenna avoided him in an almost desperate scrabble and that told him more than he wanted to hear.

He was unnatural, unnatural to things so foreign they had never felt the touch of life or death. It unnerved Jon, the loss of anything to belong to. He wasn't human, not really, but he wasn't just Huntsman anymore either. He was life and death and dogs, and he'd given anything just to be human again.

(skip)

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"I am darkside," the ghost said, as if this somehow answered everything. Jon was shifted backwards as she knelt and sifted through the pile of rubbish.

He gave her a moment, hoping she'd elaborate on her own, but she ignored him. "And darkside means what?"

She paused in her search and turned to look up at him. "You are a Huntsman, are you not?"

"A what?"

She just looked at him for a moment, then stood carefully brushing off leaf debris. "You are Huntsman." She touched shadow fingertups to his forehead, "Huntsman here," she touched his chest above his heart with the same featherlight caress, "Huntsman here. As you are, so are they." She gestured past him to the faint outlines of the Dogs down by the river. "You anchor them here, lightside, as they anchor you to the Veil."

There was a pause, and Jon tried to look slightly less confused. It didn't work.

"You know of the Veil?"

"Err, no."

She frowned, then clucked her tongue at the distance Dogs. "Ah, I see now," she brushed back her sleeve to show an oval of silvered scars. "My bloodgift was unexpected as well." Jon rubbed his upper arm sheepishly, still wincing slightly as the newly healed skin protested. "But you are not part of the Singing, I think."

Jon blinked.

"This is the simple thing," she chided. "You have gifted them, but have they gifted you? I think not." She frowned thoughtfully. "But this may work for our favor."

Before Jon could react she had fished a slim silver knife out of one of the many half-coalesced pockets and drawn a fine red line along her forearm. The blood glistened in the moonlight, heavy and real against the shadows of her skin. "Drink."

"Wait- what??" Jon backpeddled from the offered arm. "Are you crazy??"

She frowned, "Do not think I offer lightly. Nor would I give what I would not ask in return." She tilted her arm to look at the cut. "But this will offer me purchase in your world, and give you the same in mine."

"Wait, what world?" Jon trained his gaze on her face and away from the blood. "I don't understand."

"There is the Veil, which cleaves life from death." She nodded towards the Dogs, "They who are of the Veil protect it, guard it from crossings. We," she grinned at Jon, ", we who are of the light and the dark, we anchor them that they might fight in our stead."

Jon wasn't quite sure what was more disturbing, that the ghost was apparently actually a ghost or that the vampire dogs were contagious.

*skip*

---------------------------

When Tos was the voice of reason, it was time to go home. Jon counted through the rest of the ammo again, but the number remained hopelessly low. Even if he managed to hit something with every shot (and that was a pretty big if) there were just too many of them. And that was only counting the flesh and blood, there were a third as many Hinds and a handful of renegade Dogs to boot. A human, a darksider and five Dogs weren't going to make a dent.

They would, however, make a nice stain on the rug and Jon was all for preserving other people's decorating choices.

Tricks of the Light

Part 1
See dog at work
See dog that night (nightmare?)

Part 2
See dog again at work
See dogs when leaving work
See dogs at college

Part 3
See dogs at apartment
Chomp!

Jon: Okay, stop, just-- stop.

Writer: What?

Jon: I'm throwing fish at a guy with a gun. Well, a teenager with a gun, still. Fish. Gun.

Writer: And?

Jon: ... *sigh*

(Okay, now skip back for a bit... ^_~)

----------------------------------

For a fraction of a second Jon was furious that they were ignoring him. Then reality snapped back into focus and he dove behind the nearest wooden crate. The Dogs and the What-ever-it-was were a snarling, baying, braying fury of teeth and hooves and horns. A bullet ricocheted off the box above him and Jon's attention switched from the Dogs to the nervous looking teenager.

"Hey! Hey-- stop it!" Jon started flinging random objects in the direction of his attacker. Thankfully the teenager's aim was as good as Jon's talent for flinging dead fish. "Why the hell are you shooting at me?!?"

"Make them shop!" The kid was screaming, buy Jon couldn't tell if he was angry of terrified.

"The dogs?" Jon ducked another rain of splinters, "They don't listen to me!" He searched frantically for more flingable fish...

: working

Jon: So your plan was to write nothing? Good plan.

Writer: Oh shuddup and pass me a beer.

: frustrated