Silver in the Bone (Silver in the Bone #1)(14)
Author: Alexandra Bracken
His shoulder shrank from my desperate grip as he fell to his knees.
“I’m gonna—” I spun toward the nearby loft space we used as an office and fumbled for an idea, any idea about what to do. “I’m going to go get more crystals—I’m going to get—”
A low, thunderous growl rose behind me.
I turned.
The hound was massive, almost more wolf than dog. Its shaggy black coat shimmered like spilt gasoline, rippling with each step forward. Cabell’s clothing hung off it in tatters.
The sound of claws clicking against the battered floorboards stirred a primal terror, one as old as life itself. Strings of saliva dripped between its long white teeth. Adrenaline surged in me, bitter on my tongue, pounding through my blood.
There was nothing human left in those dark eyes.
The shift had been coming on more often over the last year, but I’d always been able to pull him back. To return him to himself. He hadn’t had a completely uncontrolled transformation since we were kids, when he was just a pup.
“Cabell?” I whispered.
The hound stopped, cocking its head to the side.
“Listen,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. My mind was moving too quickly, flipping through the extensive archive of references and Immortalities in my memory. I never forgot a thing I saw or read, but this—there had never been any need to find something to shift him back to his human form. He had always been able to do it himself.
“Listen to me,” I said, holding out a hand. “That’s good. That’s good, Cab. Focus on what I’m saying . . . In ages past, in a kingdom lost to time, a king named Arthur ruled man and the Fair Folk alike . . .”
The hound let out a whine, but stayed, giving itself a vigorous shake. The vise around my stomach eased as I took another step forward. “This is a story about his beloved friend and knight Lancelot . . .”
There wasn’t time to run. There wasn’t time to draw in a breath.
Not before it lunged at my throat.
Instinct alone saved me.
I threw up an arm as the hound tackled me. A scream tore out of me as its fangs ripped into the flesh of my forearm, piercing skin and muscle to scrape the bone.
Pain blistered me, but it was the sight of my own blood painting the hound’s teeth crimson that made me scream again.
Saliva foamed and sprayed against my face as the hound snapped and bit at the air to get to my face. My mind had emptied, but my body wanted to survive. Needed to. Somehow I drew my knees up enough to kick the dog away. It whined again as it struck the floor and rolled onto its feet.
I dragged myself back, and back, with that one arm, trying to build distance between us, trying to get to my feet, trying to get to the office alcove, where there were tonics and crystals and—
The hound’s limbs went rigid as it released an earsplitting, unearthly howl.
“Cabell!” I choked out. “Please—snap out of it!”
The hound stalked forward, its hackles raised along the ridge of its spine like needles. It was too fast—its jaws locked around my foot, forcing me to kick its snout and skull and whatever part of it I could reach to free myself.
I’m going to die. The thought seared my mind, agonizing. He’s going to kill me.
Unless I killed him first.
The hound lunged again, but so did I, grasping for the letter opener just beside the mountain of research books on my desk. I spun around, slashing wildly through the air to ward it off. Instead of backing away, the hound let itself be cut as it came for me. My body was gripped with a single, desperate drive for survival.
I can’t.
The letter opener fell from my hand, spinning against the floor. I took a step away, then another, as the hound briefly turned its attention to licking a deep cut on one of its legs.
I can’t.
He was still Cabell. Inside, somewhere, this hound was my brother.
And he was going to kill me.
The dog prowled forward between our two desks. My back bumped into the bookshelf near the window, and just like that, I had nowhere left to go.
I reached back, throwing book after book at the hound, unleashing all of the anger and desperation throbbing inside me. The hound snapped at them, yelping and whimpering when a few managed to hit it.
I sucked in a ragged breath as it backed away, turning its snout up toward the ceiling. Its howl reverberated through our small apartment as if trying to summon others to the hunt.
The hunt.
The idea pierced the fog of pain in my mind. I risked a glance to my left, toward our pack, the one we only used when we needed to camp out before entering a vault. It leaned against the buckling leg of Cabell’s desk, just out of reach.
“Listen to me, Cabell,” I said, moving slowly toward it. The hound turned back, flattening its ears against its skull as it growled.
I kicked the bag over, letting its contents clatter out onto the floor. The silver box of tranquilizer darts, the ones meant for bears and other predators, magic or mundane, slid out among the mess of notebooks and tools.
There would only be a second . . .
Less.
The hound leapt. So did I.
My body slammed against the floor with the full weight of the snarling creature on my back. My hair caught between the hound’s teeth and was ripped out of my scalp. I threw one elbow back, unable to get the silver box open with my shaking hands, slick with blood. I bashed it against the floor and it sprang open just as the hound plunged its teeth into my shoulder.
I twisted around with a feral sound of my own and jammed the dart into the bulging muscle of its neck.
The dog yelped, bucking against me. I held its face away with one hand, keeping my grip on the dart until the animal shuddered and, finally, lay still.
“It’s all right,” I told it, wrapping an arm around its back. “It’s okay now.”
It collapsed on top of me with one last snort and a low, mournful whine.
My neighbor pounded on the wall between us. “Everything okay?”
“We’re fine!” I called back, hearing the tremor in my voice. “Sorry!”
We were on the ground floor. It was amazing no one had seen what had happened through the window.