Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)(19)

She dreamed she lived in a cage.

She stared between the bars at a woman who was both beautiful and terrible to look at, with long, shining golden hair and wide, cornflower blue eyes, and a lovely, young face that was a cross between a flower and a nightmare.

The woman’s gigantic face came closer, and the nightmare was the rage in the woman’s eyes.

I warned you to watch your tongue, Imp, the woman said. So. You will watch your tongue.

Then others came and put their giant, hurting hands on her. No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t break free of their grip. They had too much strength, too much magic. They forced her mouth open, took hold of her tongue in iron tongs, and ripped it out. She screamed and screamed, a wordless wail of bloody agony. As she watched, they threw the piece of her flesh into a fire.

With an appetizing smell of roasting meat, the tongue turned black as it burned.

Sophie woke with a muffled shout. Heart pounding, she stared around the shadowed, unfamiliar room. For a moment she felt completely displaced. Where were the bars of her cage?

Then a snore beside her on the bed snapped her fully back into reality.

She was in her room at the pub, lying fully clothed on top of the covers. The newly shorn and washed dog lay sleeping at her side.

When she had arrived, Arran, the owner of the pub, had sent his son, who owned a rusted Land Rover with a tow bar, to retrieve the Mini. According to the son, when he had turned the keys in the engine, the Mini had started perfectly.

Of course it had, the fucking fucker.

Arran’s son had towed it into town and parked it at the back of the pub. When she had tried to apologize for the inconvenience and pay for the tow, neither Arran nor his son would accept her money.

Arran had told her good-naturedly enough, “Not to worry. Odd things happen around here sometimes. Living here, ye get used to it.”

“Good to know,” she muttered. The Mini inspired her with hope. Maybe her cell phone wasn’t as dead as she had thought. Pulling it out of her pocket, she checked the power. Sure enough, the screen lit up.

So she had settled into her room, borrowed sewing scissors from Arran’s wife, Maggie, who had clucked sympathetically over the dog’s condition, and had cut away all the matted hair. Underneath, he looked as starved as she had suspected, with protruding ribs, a concave belly, and hip bones visible under his skin. The area around his neck was thick with deep, half-healed blisters that were half her thumb’s length in size.

Clenching down on a rage that wouldn’t ease, she had washed him gently and wrapped him in a towel, and together they had shared the snack of boiled eggs Maggie had offered to tide them over until the pub started serving supper.

At least he didn’t have fleas. Sophie had been surprised at that.

He had gulped down without chewing the pieces of egg she had fed him and growled at her when she stopped. “You quit that,” she said in a firm voice. “It’s not okay to growl at me. I don’t want you to throw up again. You can have more food soon, I promise.”

At that, he had stopped growling, almost as if he understood her, and curled into a tight ball on the old narrow bed. Intense weariness dragged her down beside him. Unable to fight off the black tide that took her, she closed her eyes.

She had only meant to rest for a few minutes, not fall asleep. Now jet lag would keep her up through the night.

The horrific dream still clung to her, like sticky black cobwebs in her face and hair, and her heart raced. Just another thing to add to her what the fuck list. Rubbing her face, she sat, turned on the bedside light, and looked down at her unexpected companion. She didn’t know how to cut a dog’s hair, and he looked pretty bad, a small bundle of ragged hair and bones. At least the mats were gone.

She washed her face and hands at the small basin in one corner of the room, then walked over to gently touch the dog’s shoulder. “Time to wake up, kiddo.”

He growled without opening his eyes.

“Hey!” she said sharply. “No growling! Do you want supper or not?”

At that, he snapped upright and looked at her alertly. Again, almost as if he understood her.

She frowned at him. What the hell, maybe the dog did understand her. She had seen a lot of strange things in her life, both inhuman creatures and events that logic alone couldn’t fully explain.

“And you need to go outside so you don’t have an accident in this nice place,” she told him, then sighed. “And tomorrow we’ll start looking for a good home for you, with someone who will love and take care of you.”

At that, the dog let out the cutest little whimper and, tail wagging, came across the bed to stand his forelegs against her hip as he nudged her hand.

Stroking his round head and thin, silken ears, she scowled against the sneaky melting in her heart and muttered, “Suck-up.”

Scooping him under one arm, she left her room, locked the door, and pocketed the key in the back of her jeans. As she headed down the narrow, steep staircase, she told him, “I’ll look after you, and I promise, I’ll make sure you’re okay. But you’ve got to understand something—I don’t live the kind of lifestyle that’s good for a dog. Do you hear me? I’m not good for you. I’m too mobile, and I’m not just an asshole magnet. I’m a weirdo magnet. Weird things happen to me all the time.”

Kind of like the dog itself. And that rope tied around his neck. That rope hadn’t just been weird. It had been evil.