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  “We must keep walking,” Oscar said, his voice tight. “Come along, Ms. Beaumont.”

  “But—”

  I didn’t have a chance to finish. Another howl split the air and I clapped my hands to my eardrums. The howl went on and on again, and my eyes filled with tears, my heart aching for whoever was in so much pain.

  I stared at Oscar, half in shock, wordlessly imploring him to do something, anything, but he gazed at a spot above my head, lost in thought. It looked like he was trying hard not to show any emotion. This time the howl didn’t taper off as it had previously. This time, it morphed into a scream—a full-throated, wholehearted scream. And I recognized the voice of the person screaming.

  It was Dax.

  My feet propelled me forward without any conscious input from my brain. I grabbed Oscar’s arm—he was still standing there like a statue. His skin was blazing hot even through his suit, but I didn’t really register it. “That’s Dax,” I said, my voice shaking, hysterical. “That’s Dax. Oh my god. Oh my god, he’s in pain! We have to help him!”

  That seemed to break his trance. He brushed me off and grabbed my upper arm with a gloved hand. With surprising force, he began to drag me forward. I tried futilely to resist.

  “No, it’s not Mr. Allard,” he said. It was silent again—the howling and screaming had temporarily stopped. My heart was trying to pound itself out of my chest as I waited for it to start back up again. “It’s just an animal out in the woods.”

  “No, it’s not!” I tried to pull away from him, but his hand was like a steel trap around me. “Let go! Why don’t you want to help him?”

  “Believe me, Ms. Beaumont, it’s best if I get you home now.”

  I kept asking, but he wouldn’t relent, lapsing instead into complete silence. Finally, I shut my mouth too, my heart still racing as I waited for more screaming. What was happening to Dax? And why didn’t Oscar want to help?

  Oscar pulled me to the giant attached garage in silence. His footsteps were completely quiet compared to my loud shuffling walk. Inside, there were several different, shiny cars. We headed to a black Range Rover. Oscar released my arm, waited while I clambered in to the passenger’s seat, and then went around to the driver’s side.

  He sat staring out the windshield in the quiet. I looked at him out of the corner of my eyes, my blood roaring in my ears. I wondered if I should be afraid.

  I wasn’t; not at all. Nothing about Oscar scared me, just as nothing about Dax did. But I still wanted to know what was going on, why Dax had howled and screamed that way.

  Oscar finally turned to me. “I know this must be hard for you to understand,” he said.

  I nodded and waited for him to go on.

  “But please, trust me when I say Dax is fine.” “Dax” again, not “Mr. Allard.”

  “So what…what was the screaming all about?” I swallowed, my chest clenching tight with the horrible memory. “Is he…in pain?” The thought of him in agony was like a knife in my flesh. It actually, physically hurt.

  Oscar sighed and started the car. “I cannot say any more, Ms. Beaumont,” he replied. “I do apologize.”

  Of course. Of course he couldn’t say any more. Everything was a big secret that I wasn’t in on. But I still needed to see Dax. I wanted to make sure he was okay with my own eyes. I didn’t have much hope of Oscar letting me, but I had to ask. “Can I… can I see him before we go?”

  Oscar shook his head as he sped toward the hill. “I’m afraid not. He’s otherwise occupied.”

  Right. How had I known he’d say that? “Oh.” I watched the shadows of trees and bushes speed by us as Oscar drove. The Range Rover was a much smoother drive than my Volvo, and I could barely hear the noises of the rocks and pebbles under us. “In that case, what time should I be at work tomorrow?”

  A small frown creased Oscar’s eyebrows. “Mr. Allard wants you to take the day off tomorrow. You’ve had a rather hard time of it today.”

  “No. I want to be there.” I had to see Dax again, to see if he really was all right. If I couldn’t see him now, I’d see him tomorrow. “I’ll take a taxi.”

  “I’m afraid I must be firm about this,” Oscar replied, disapproval heavy in his tone. “Mr. Allard would be extremely unhappy were you to turn up tomorrow.”

  I frowned and shook my head, but my heart soared at the thought that Dax’d be fine enough to be unhappy with me. So Oscar wasn’t just trying to pacify me—the screaming really wasn’t as bad as it sounded? I shuddered at the memory. “All right. I suppose I can wait another day.” Or maybe I’d show up there tomorrow anyway. What could they do at most? Send me away? At least I’d have a chance at getting a glimpse of Dax.

  Oscar beamed at me. “Excellent. We’ll see you the day after at nine a.m.”

  I smiled weakly back.

  Oscar jetted off after he’d extracted a promise from me to not overdo it the next day.

  Inside, the house was dark and quiet; Mom was in bed. I peeked into her room. She lay on her side, just a small lump under her covers, Dad’s side of the bed vast and empty. She’d never learned to sleep in the middle of the bed. I considered waking her to tell her I was home, but what would be the point? Mom wasn’t aware of my presence in her universe, not really.

  I closed her door and tiptoed into the bathroom. Grimacing at my image in the mirror, I began to pull out twigs and leaves from my frizzy mess of hair. My mind slipped back to Dax’s howling and screaming. It had sounded so animalistic, so primal. I couldn’t imagine that Oscar wouldn’t rush to Dax’s aid. Or even Oscar’s daughter, Victorine. What sort of a person could ignore a sound like that?

  But I knew from the way Oscar had reacted that it had to do with the big secret they’d paid me off to keep. Something weird was going on up there on that hill. Something that involved dogs as large as horses and incredibly strong, scalding-hot men…

  When I’d washed my face and scrubbed the dirt out from under my fingernails, I figured I should brave looking at the bite.

  I wasn’t good with physical wounds. Blood made me dizzy and anything bigger than a paper cut made me vomit. But this being my body, I figured I needed to check it. I felt bile begin to rise up my throat at the memory of the searing pain and smell of burning flesh, so I quickly pushed it to the far recesses of my mind.

  The doctor had covered the wound with a thick bandage. Gingerly, gritting my teeth, I pulled the edge of the tape off and peeled the bandage away from my skin. I stood staring at the spot where the bite should’ve been for a full minute.

  There was almost nothing there—just a smattering of faint pink, slightly puckered spots where the creature’s teeth had sunk into my flesh. I rubbed my skin in wonder. It felt warmer than the rest of my body, but other than that, there was no indication anything near the terror of what I’d experienced had really happened. It should’ve taken weeks for a bite wound to heal to this point. What the heck had happened? I flipped the bandage over to see if there was blood on the other side, but it was snow-white.

  It was too late and I was too exhausted to think about it further. Tossing the bandage in the trashcan, I decided that I’d ask Dax about it…not that I expected any answers.

  After a quick, hot shower, it hit me just how tired I was. I crawled into bed and, in spite of all the impossible memories and images my brain was buzzing with, I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  When I woke up early the next morning to an empty house, Dax was on my mind. I’d tossed and turned with nightmares of him being bitten by giant dogs. I briefly pondered heading up the hill in a taxi, but the memory of Oscar’s disapproval stopped me. I sat on the edge of my bed, torn. What should I do? I wanted answers so badly, but it was clear that Oscar and Dax didn’t want to give them to me.

  And then, like a bright bolt of lightning, the answer came to me: research. I was good at research, having had to do mountains of it for papers at school. Even someone like Dax Allard had to have an electronic trail, right? Were there any
questions the Internet couldn’t answer?

  I brushed my teeth and showered, and, by the time I stepped out of the bathroom, a plan had coalesced in my brain: I would dig out my old bike from the garage and drive to the library. I wanted to harness the power of the written (and digital) word to find out all I could about the weird creature in the woods and the howling I’d heard last night…and by extension, hopefully about Dax Allard, too.

  I scarfed down a granola bar and some coffee and headed outside into the foggy morning. My Volvo, gleaming in the muted sunlight, greeted me in the driveway. I stood staring at it for a long moment. When had it arrived? Had Dax been to my house?

  I crunched across the gravel toward it, and my gaze immediately lit upon the note in the windshield. My heart beating an erratic pattern, I pulled it free of the wipers with trembling fingers.

  Ms. Beaumont, it said in devastatingly perfect cursive,

  My sincerest apologies. You’ll find your car in acceptable condition once again.

  See you tomorrow.

  Dax Allard

  I could smell his scent on the paper—wood smoke and an underlying spice—and it made me dizzy. It was all I could do to not hold it to my nose and breathe it in. Relief surged through my veins. If he’d brought this here today, if he’d written this note, it meant he truly was okay, just like Oscar had promised. I slipped the piece of paper into my back pocket instead, and smiling, got into my car.

  The inside, too, had been thoroughly cleaned, and as soon as I turned the key, heat began to blast through the vents. Wow. Tentatively, I tried my window. It rolled down smoothly. I wasn’t surprised to find the gas gauge on full and the windshield repaired; I hadn’t noticed it before because the note had monopolized my attention.

  My head swimming, I began to back out the driveway. Who was this man?

  I drove to the library with the windows down and the heat on, just because I could. Dax Allard or his personal mechanic hadn’t just returned the Volvo back to acceptable condition; it was now better than it had been before the breakdown. I was able to coax it to just under sixty as I raced down the highway toward the library Eden shared with Grantonville, a nearby, slightly larger town.

  I sang along with Toby Keith on the only station I could get out here in the boonies, my hair whipping around in the damp, chilly breeze. Though the sun was out now, there’d be more bad weather heading our way—the clouds on the horizon looked an angry purple.

  This was Eden’s winter of storms.

  The library was a tiny shack-like building that leaned slightly to one side. It smelled like mold and dust, and the roof leaked. But it was all I had. The librarian looked up in surprise when I walked in, putting a plump finger in her book to hold her place.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in an affronted tone, peering over her glasses.

  “Would it be all right if I used the computer?” I pointed to the lone desktop machine sitting sadly in the corner. “The Internet’s working, isn’t it?”

  “More or less,” the librarian replied, still watching me suspiciously. I wondered when someone had last been in here. She pushed a clipboard with a form toward me. “Sign in, please.”

  I scrawled my name in the topmost row and plopped down in front of the computer. The connection was sluggish, but thankfully, it still worked. I pulled up the search engine and, with fingers that suddenly felt stiff and cold, typed in Dax Allard Enterprises.

  It pulled up the official Dax Allard website, which was rigidly professional and gave me no information at all. It had Dax listed as the CEO and Oscar as his assistant. No one else, not even Oscar’s daughter Victorine.

  Closing the website, I scrolled down and saw mentions of some of his philanthropic endeavors. Wow. He gave a lot of money to charity. I’d be kept plenty busy. There were people from every kind of non-profit foundation—AIDS to animal welfare to women’s rights—singing Dax’s praises.

  After reading fifteen minutes’ worth of carefully-worded press releases, I blew out a frustrated breath. There was nothing listed here that would help me make sense of any of what had happened. Pretending to lean down to itch my ankle, I tossed a look over my shoulder at the librarian. She was still behind her desk, about twenty feet away, engrossed in her paperback.

  Turning back to the screen, I typed in Large dog with red eyes. The very first website that came up talked about an entity called, straightforwardly enough, The Black Dog. It said apparitions of big black dogs with red eyes were associated with the devil or with hell. Apparently these phantom dogs were believed in some parts of the world to be portents of death, and were also called Hellhounds. They were ridiculously strong—virtually indestructible.

  My hands began to get clammy and I felt my breathing speed up. Virtually indestructible. Associated with hell. I thought about the searing heat of the dog’s teeth, the way its body felt like it was made of iron. Could it have been responsible for those animals I saw on my first day back in Eden, the charred ones on the side of the road?

  The website went on to say that the Black Dog didn’t typically attack people or cause harm unless it was threatened. But I definitely hadn’t threatened the thing in the woods. I kept reading, but there was nothing about what I really was curious about: people who were able to kill these Hellhounds with their bare hands. People who gave off enough heat to power a small city.

  I felt like I was missing something obvious, like the answer was in these pages but I just wasn’t seeing it. I clicked on links from one website to another and read sentences here and there.

  …these beasts were created by demons to act as protectors…

  …demonic entities, representatives of the Dark World…

  …gates of Hades…

  The words began to slowly sink in to the folds of my brain. Red flags began to pop up, their siren call finally getting through to me.

  Hades. Hellhounds. Representatives of demons. They were demon-created… did that mean they could only be demon-destroyed?

  My heart began to race, thoughts swirling around rapidly in my head—it was hard to focus on any one. With shaking hands, I typed in How to destroy demonic creatures. A long list of websites came up, but the only real information stated was that demons and their creatures couldn’t be destroyed easily. I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes: That was something I’d figured out on my own.

  But then I stumbled on a small website run by a group of demonologists that had something different to say. According to them, there were ancient shamanic rituals and special ingredients that could be employed to destroy certain kinds of demons, though the outcome wasn’t always successful.

  One article listed a story that had been passed down from generation to generation in an Inuit tribe. It told of a fearsome demon in human form that’d been captured by the tribe’s spiritual leaders. As they’d recited the chants and performed the ritual to destroy it, the demon had shrieked in agony, banging against its iron fetters. Its howls were said to have pierced the night, waking every creature that slumbered.

  The article stressed over and over again that these shamanic rituals worked only on demons of the most powerful, terrifying kind—the kind that took human form and walked the earth with the sole intent of seducing humans to steal their souls.

  I thought back to last night: the agonized howling, the screaming that I’d been so sure had emanated from Dax, the ear-pounding banging. My flesh was riddled with goosebumps as I pondered the impossible. Was Oscar trying to kill Dax, whatever he was? But he worked for him. And Dax had left me a note this morning, so he wasn’t dead. It didn’t make any sense. I shook my head to clear it.

  Okay. What did I know about Dax Allard?

  He was stronger than any human I’d ever encountered—he’d turned to dust a creature from hell that seemed to be made of iron. His hands had steamed, as if his skin was extremely hot to the touch—as hot as the creature’s mouth had been on my skin. His own arms, when he’d wrapped them around my waist, had been scalding hot. A tempe
rature like that on a normal person would surely signal impending death. His eyes were a color I’d never seen on any person, and they’d seemed to shine when he was fighting the hound. He was impossibly beautiful. There was something that drew me to him…his soul reacted to mine with an electric charge that was almost tangible.

  The puzzle pieces began to fall together, arranging themselves into a shape I recognized, but was trying my best to not see. I still didn’t have all the answers; I didn’t understand everything I needed to in order to know the whole truth. The rituals didn’t quite fit into what I was beginning to understand, but that still didn’t stop realization from dawning. Faced with facts I couldn’t deny, I knew in my soul that this was true:

  Dax Allard was a demon. He was here to steal my soul. And I’d fallen in love with him instantly.

  The night is darkening round me,

  The wild winds coldly blow;

  But a tyrant spell has bound me,

  And I cannot, cannot go.

  The giant trees are bending

  Their bare boughs weighed with snow;

  The storm is fast descending,

  And yet I cannot go.

  Clouds beyond clouds above me,

  Wastes beyond wastes below;

  But nothing drear can move me:

  I will not, cannot go.

  - The Night is Darkening Around Me, Emily Brontë

  Demon. Demon. Dax Allard is a demon.

  The word echoed, spun around, and hit the sides of my brain as I drove back to Eden from the library. Demons didn't exist. They were the stuff of myths and legends, a scary story we told to entertain ourselves.

  Right?

  But if that was true, then how could I explain the weird events I'd witnessed? Dax's superhuman strength, the heat that rose off him as if he were some kind of human sun? As I got closer to the turn-off to my mom's house, I gripped the steering wheel hard.