Hell Hounds - There Goes the Neighborhood Part 3

Content warning: abduction, murder, graphic horror, references to cannibalism

OFFICER TRENT WALTERS: 27 yo male Police Officer (also appeared in The Possession)

NYKKI: Siren, dog-lover.

DETECTIVE JILL HARDING: 30s Female detective (also appeared in The Possession)

DEENA: 20s female, Beatles fan

I hate blind dates.

Why is it when you’re single, even happily single, well-meaning friends and family members take it upon themselves to throw women at you, one after another, hoping someone will stick?

Tonight is my sixth blind date in the last two months.  

The first, a friend of a friend, had a moustache. I also have a moustache. It was one thing I didn’t want us to have in common.

The second had a lot of cats. Not a deal-breaker outright, until tufts of cat fur from her clothes wound up in my mashed potatoes. I can still feel them sticking to my tongue.

One woman was taller than me by a foot—also not a deal-breaker, until she thought it would be funny to throw me over her shoulder and carry me down the block like a sack of potatoes.

Yeah, that really happened.

I’m a cop, and things like that can’t happen. Not because they’re illegal, but because I don’t need to give the other officers any ammunition against me. I’m already fairly low on the totem pole, already given most of the grunt work—the interviews no one wants, coffee runs, cleaning the shit stains off the cell walls…

The point is, I don’t need any of my superiors or—god forbid—my peers to see me getting hauled down the street by an Amazon woman my cousin Trish knew from the gym and thought would be perfect for me.

If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. And it isn’t just the women and the crap jobs at work. My whole neighborhood has been going to hell lately. Literal hell. I thought it couldn’t get any worse than the Carver murders—a man shooting his wife, cutting a priest into a million pieces, and putting his baby—

No. No, I still can’t talk about the baby.

I thought it couldn’t get any worse than that. There have been fires—so, so many fires—and disappearing animals and strange tremors that shake the ground—the latest and strongest happening just a few days ago. And then…the children. Three have gone missing without a trace. Today I was shamefully relieved that the latest disappearance to cross my desk wasn’t a local kid, but a twenty-something waitress whose roommates emailed me dozens of pictures of Barbara Holmes, the blond-haired, blue-eyed woman with a butterfly tattoo on her ankle who left for work two nights ago and never came home.

But the disappearances, tragic as they are, pale in comparison to the barbeque. I ignored my own invitation to meet the Joneses, new neighbors who appeared out of nowhere, until I was called in on my day off to answer a disturbance a few blocks from my apartment. What I found made Henry Carver’s grisly rampage look like a mere opening act on a gruesome stage. First, it was mass chaos in the backyard of the old Miller house: women on the ground fighting, someone had been stabbed, and a mother was frantic because her little girl was missing. Chaos but not horrifying. Not until forensics discovered what they had all been eating—what Mister and Missus Jones had been feeding their guests.

The Miller family. Bones and all.

I haven’t been able to get that out of my head—the rib bones scattered on the ground, the slabs of meat sizzling on the grill, the giant stew pot churning on an outdoor burner. What’s worse, by the time anyone realized what had been done to the Miller’s, the entire murderous Jones family had vanished into thin air.

The recent detour my neighborhood has taken down the stairway to hell might have something to do with why the smell of a steak dinner at a nearby table turns my stomach and I keep thinking about butterfly tattoos while I wait for Deena. Tonight’s blind date is another friend of a friend. We’ve texted a few times and she seems normal; works as a receptionist in a reputable office, likes the Beatles, and lives in an apartment only a few streets away from mine. My friend assures me that the picture Deena sent me is accurate, so I know she’s a petite woman with curly brown hair and a friendly smile—not an Amazon with a moustache. And she doesn’t have cats.

While I sip water from my usual table at the restaurant where I’ve met all the women, I check my phone for the tenth time, and for the tenth time there are no new messages. Deena is late. The waitress, who knows me by name, refills my water and asks if I’d like something stronger. She’s cute, but I know from past encounters she has a boyfriend and it’s serious enough that she stopped flirting with me the minute I asked about him. I should’ve found a new place to frequent but I like being within walking distance of my apartment so there’s never that awkward pause at the curb while my date decides whether or not to get in my car.

Not that I’ve taken any of them home lately, anyway.

I tell the waitress I’m fine. She tries not to show it, but she feels sorry for me because it’s obvious I’ve been stood up. I don’t know what’s worse—picking cat hair off my tongue or drinking so much damn water waiting for Deena that I’ll have to pee before I leave alone.

The waitress walks away, and I am about to text my friend something spiteful since Deena bailed on me, when my phone buzzes in my hand.

Be there in five.

Deena doesn’t ask if I’m still waiting—twenty minutes after our date was supposed to start—or apologize, or even give me a reason why she’s late. It’s annoying. I’m annoyed but I’m also relieved, and I wave the waitress back over and ask for two glasses of red wine. She gives me a knowing smile that I hope Deena will wipe off her face before the waitress walks away with a nod. The wine is on the table, I’ve taken a few sips, and the minutes pass. Five. Six. Seven. Twelve. I’m officially pissed and about to leave a twenty on the table and just walk the fuck out when the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen strides through the front doors.

I stop, half-standing, as she looks around like she’s looking for someone, then she sees me and…she smiles. And it’s the smile of an angel or a devil or something equally wonderful and terrifying because she’s smiling at me like she knows me and she’s walking over to my table. I stand the rest of the way as she says:

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

Nothing but a few stuttered syllables make it out of my mouth, and she smiles wider and sits in front of the second glass of wine that I’ve downed between minutes eight and ten when I was sure Deena wasn’t coming.

“You look exactly like your picture,” she says.

“You look—” I stop, my gaze trailing over the siren’s bright red hair tumbling over both shoulders and the breasts stressing the seams of a skintight black dress. She’s easily the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.

“You look nothing like your picture,” I finally say.

“I know,” she says with a pout of her cherry red lips. “I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

Can I forgive her? Short of finding out she’s a serial killer, I’d forgive this woman of anything. Maybe even that.

The waitress returns and is visibly surprised—not only that a woman actually showed up, but that this woman is sitting with me and hasn’t taken one look at my completely average brown hair, completely average build, and completely average height and turned on her bright red heels and ran out. Deena reaches a finger into the wine glass in front of her and scrapes it along the bottom, coming up with a drop of red wine that she licks off the tip of her finger before telling the waitress that we need two glasses of the same, and make it quick because she owes me a few apologies.

“I have a confession to make,” she says when we’re alone. “I’m not Deena.”

“No kidding,” I whisper.

“My name is Nykki. Deena is a friend of mine who agreed to help me out so I could meet you.”

“Why would you want to meet me?”

Her face softens and she gently touches my hand.

“You know how hard it is to meet good people. Men usually take one look at me and just want to get me into bed.”

She gestures to her body, her breasts nearly resting on the table, the creamy skin of her flawless neck, those lips that turn up in a tentative smile as if I might refuse her—ME, the loser gaping like one of those goddamn dogs in a cartoon with my tongue rolled out on the white tablecloth. This woman, this siren, could have any man crawling on his hands and knees to worship her, and I want to. I want to worship her with my hands, my tongue, my whole body. My soul.

“I’m hoping that you’re different. I’m hoping that you’re more.”

I’ll be anything you want me to be, I almost say. Instead I nod my head and force a smile, force my fingers to curl around her offered hand, and say, “I hope so too.”

We sip wine and order dinner. I usually get the chicken roulade, but Nykki orders veal—extra, extra rare—and I know chicken isn’t the kind of food her lover would eat, so I order the steak—medium rare—and marvel at the way her mouth savors every tender bite as if it’s the most satisfying meal she’s ever eaten, before mopping the young blood off her plate with a dinner roll.

A dribble of pink slips from the corner of her mouth and for the briefest moment I stop fantasizing about what else she could do with those lips and wonder what kind of woman actually enjoys the taste of blood. It’s a small thing—not cat hair in my mouth or a moustache—but enough to give me pause until she flicks her gaze up to mine, and those emerald eyes say bedroom, so I gently wipe the trickle of pink off her chin with my knuckles and decide that I’d offer up my own vein if she wanted a drink.

A drink…of my blood?

I shake the thought away. I’ve seen too much this summer. Grisly murders, fires, people eating people…it’s no wonder the macabre is only a breath away, even in the company of a goddess like Nykki.

A goddess, I realize. That’s what she is. A goddess.

And the goddess says she wants to take me home.

Not to my home, but to hers. She asks almost shyly if I’ll come, as if I would do the gentlemanly thing and refuse. Maybe I should, but I won’t. I can’t. And that smile changes from shy to something wicked that makes me feel like prey.

We’re a few blocks from the restaurant when a car alarm sounds in the distance. She stops and abruptly faces me.

“I have another confession to make.”

Immediately I’m gripped by fear. I don’t want anything to ruin this. I’m waiting for her to tell me she’s actually married, or used to be a man, or really is a serial killer, so I try to make light of the mood by asking, “What? Do you have like a hundred cats, or something?”

“Cats?” her eyes widen in disgust. “Ew, gross. No.”

“Oh, thank god,” I mutter, though I’d probably forgive her for it—even if it meant fishing cat hair from my mashed potatoes for the rest of my life.

“No, it’s…I have dogs.”

“You—have dogs?”

“Six. I have six dogs.”

This is not what I was expecting. There isn’t a trace of dog hair on her dress. I also know she lives in an apartment, and I’ve never heard of a landlord allowing six dogs.

“Are they…Chihuahuas? Pomeranians? What?”

“No, no, nothing so domestic. They’re hounds of a particular sort, actually. Are you mad?”

“Why would I be mad that you have dogs?”

“They can be a little…imposing.”

“I’m not afraid of your dogs, Nykki.”

Her porcelain cheeks flush with her smile. She laces her fingers with mine and we continue walking, talking easily, enjoying the late summer evening. Another car alarm sounds from somewhere down the block. I think I hear breaking glass and a scream, and am about to ask if she heard it too when Nykki stops and surprises me with a kiss. The feel of her soft but insistent lips stifles any questions, any possible objections, her tongue sweeping away the last of my common sense from the corners of my mouth.

No one has ever kissed me like that before. I’m dizzy when we part, her taste lingering on my tongue and in my lungs, as if I’ve taken a breath from her body, or she’s given a breath to me, and it’s sweet and a little smoky, and reminds me of cherry pipe tobacco. I think I hear more glass breaking. There’s definitely shouting from somewhere behind us or in front of us…I can’t be sure. In the back of my mind, behind the cherry tobacco smoke, I think I should call it in. I’m still a cop, even if I’m not on duty. Something is happening but I don’t know what and Nykki isn’t worried, so I let her pull me the rest of the way to her apartment.

It’s fully dark outside when we arrive, and there is no light on the outside of her apartment building, so it takes a beat to realize that my shoes are crunching on glass from the shattered front door.

“Oh my god,” I say. “What happened? Was this like this when you left?”

It’s too dark to be sure, but I think I see drops and smears of blood on some of the glass shards and the cement walkway beneath them.

“I was afraid of this,” Nykki says.

“Of what?”

“My dogs got out.”

“What? Your dogs did this?”

She turns her head to me so quickly I get whipped in the face by her hair, and she tugs my hand in her grip, bringing her other hand to my waist and drawing me against her body.

“They’ve been cooped up for too long. I meant to let them out myself, but it’s not easy to do on my own.”

Nykki pulls the broken door open, and I follow her into what I assume is a blackened foyer.

“Come on. The lights are out on the stairs,” Nykki explains. “Stay close to me.”

“I have a flashlight on my phone—” I start to say, pulling my cellphone from my pocket for the first time since we left the restaurant. No. That can’t be right. I have seventeen unread messages and eight missed calls. “Holy shit, Nykki—”

“Watch your step,” she says.

“Stop, wait—something is going on. I have to call the station,” I insist.

“When we get to my apartment. It’s at the top of the stairs.”

I follow her up the first step in the dark. On the second step my foot slips and I reach out for the wall on my left to steady me.

“Are you okay?” she asks, so close I feel her breath on my face.

“Something’s on the stairs. What the hell is this?”

“It’s my neighbors,” she sighs. “They’re absolute pigs.”

“Wait a second so I can turn my flashlight on—”

“No!” she exclaims. “No, I don’t want you to see it.”

“What don’t you want me to see?”

“The way I live. Please, just give me a chance to explain. Let’s get upstairs and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Tell me what? I don’t understand.”

Something’s wrong. It isn’t just the slippery stairs underneath my feet, the squishy pieces of…something I occasionally step on, the harder pieces that crack beneath my shoes. It’s a coppery smell I recognize but can’t place, the messages on my phone I haven’t checked—more than I’d get in a week if things weren’t going to hell. It’s a fuzziness in my head that I don’t think is the wine. Her kiss still lingers on my mouth, so I follow Nykki, who leads me through the dark, her own heels crunching and squishing on each stair until we reach the top and even though I don’t want to embarrass her I finally ask, “What is that smell?”

Her apartment door is open. It’s mostly dark inside, but there’s a light from somewhere in back, and I think I can see—

I hear the crack of my skull and feel the pain at the back of my head for a split second before the world goes black.

My neck aches from the weight of my head lolling from side to side. There’s a sharp, stabbing pain at the back of my head and a dull throb through the rest. When I peel my heavy eyelids open, I see…

What is that?

It takes a moment for the severed limb to come into focus. It’s a calf with a butterfly tattoo on the ankle and a gold ring on the second toe.

I vomit. Tonight’s steak and mashed potatoes roll up my throat and out my mouth in a brown slurry that gets stuck between my teeth and lips. I’m dragging my tongue through the chunks and spitting it into the wet mess on the front of my collared shirt when I hear:

“Such a messy boy.”

Nykki is standing across the room in a doorway, watching me. I’m momentarily mortified by what I must look like with vomit on my chin, throat, and running down my chest, so I try lifting my hands to wipe it off and find my wrists bound with rope to the arms of a wooden chair.

“What the hell?”

I try to stand but my ankles are tied to the legs of the chair, and my attention shoots to Nykki who is smiling softly, holding a red rag in her hand.

“Let me get you cleaned up.”

She’s still wearing the black dress from dinner, her breasts still threatening the seams, not a strand of her bright red hair out of place. She’s still so goddamn beautiful I almost forget I’m tied up or that I puked all over myself or that the reason I puked is the severed limb on the floor that looks as if something with very sharp teeth has chewed it from the body it belonged to.

Barbara’s body—Barbie, her friends called her. Barbie with the butterfly tattoo.

Nykki pushes off the doorframe and slinks over to me. I tense as she runs the damp rag along my chin. She sighs as she works and I smell the sweet smokiness of her breath, and I hate that I’m thinking about kissing her and thinking that I might offend her perfect mouth with the puke chunks stuck in my teeth.

“I should’ve cleaned before you came but I was already running so late,” she says as she gently, lovingly collects the vomit and begins unbuttoning my soiled shirt. “I didn’t want to lose you before we even met.”

“What is that?” I choke out, nodding my head to the gnawed limb on the floor. “Is that—”

“A leg? Yeah. Angel usually leaves a trail, I’m afraid. I’ll take care of it, just as soon as I take care of you.”

“An…Angel?”

“I have six dogs, remember?”

“Six dogs,” I whisper. I’m staring at the limb, at the bone coming out the top around the mangled flesh, when Nykki uses the tip of a crimson fingernail to cut a strip in my shirt down the right arm, then the left, so the whole thing falls away and doesn’t disturb the ropes on my wrists. She lifts the soiled pieces from where they collect around my waist and finishes wiping my chest with the rag. I finally look away from the leg as her lips press a warm kiss to my collarbone.

“Much better.”

I flush at the contact and feel a rush of calm through my body. She’s smiling at me in a way that is both sympathetic and sexy, and I’m torn between terror at being half-naked and bound, and wishing she’d kiss my lips again.

“How…” I breathe. Nothing else comes out. She walks away and bends to collect the leg.

“I’m going to put this in Angel’s crate. Then we’ll talk.”

She rounds the corner into the next room and in her absence, I start feeling like myself again. Terror, as it should, seeps in. I pull at the ropes on my wrists until they burn red marks into my skin. They’re tied so tight I’ll bleed long before they break so I save my energy and swallow a few deep breaths. I need to stay calm—real calm, clear calm, not whatever fuzziness I feel when Nykki gets close and I forget that I’m in trouble.

Because that’s what this is. A whole fucking lot of trouble. But I’m not helpless. Even bound to a damn chair, I’m not helpless. I’m a cop, damnit. And I have training and skills that are going to save my life today. Once I’ve settled my breathing and relaxed my hands from their white-knuckled grip on the armrests, I look around. With Nykki gone I’m not distracted by her presence, and when I start to take in my surroundings, I wish like hell that I was.

I’m in a living room—or what is left of one. Simple furniture—couch, chair, end table. Cheap paintings on the walls. A Beatle’s poster beside a TV mounted across from the couch.

A couch that has been torn to shreds by something with deep claws. The ivory chair beside it is stained brown from whatever has bled out there. The end table is on its side, glass from a shattered lamp underneath it. The TV is hanging off the mount, the screen splintered and bloody as if someone tossed a basketball at it—

Or a severed head.

I shake the thought away. A severed head wouldn’t have crossed my mind if I hadn’t seen the leg with the butterfly tattoo carelessly left on the carpet like one of her dog’s discarded chew toys, or if I hadn’t sifted through a cauldron of soup a few weeks ago for human bones, or helped package the dismembered body of a priest that a man who claimed to be possessed by a demon had chopped into tiny pieces.

I close my eyes and take a few more settling breaths. When I open them again, I notice blood on the floor and walls. On the broken blinds on the window behind me. On the ceiling—the ceiling. I’m sweating despite being shirtless, and I’m getting dizzy trying to understand the blood, and what I think is a massive pawprint on the carpet.

But it can’t be. The goddamn thing is bigger than my head.

“What’s on your mind?”

I jump at the sound of her voice. Nykki is in the doorway again. I should be scared—and I am—but I’m also glad to see her. Like her smile relieves some of the tension in my body and I wonder if things aren’t as bad as they seem.  

“I’m sure you have a million questions,” she says.

“What the fuck happened here?” I breathe.

She appraises the room, a satisfied smile settling on those red lips as she crosses her arms.

“My pups sure know how to rough up a place. This is only temporary, of course. I was hoping we could find something more suitable. Together.” She pauses. “That is, if my dogs approve.”

“What are you talking about? Who are you? Really?”

“Well, Trent…I have another confession to make.”

Nykki kneels in front of me and rests her arms on my legs. I should cower away from her. Everything in me—every cop part of me—screams that this is wrong. But her touch settles the shaking in my veins, the quaking in my body. She smiles.

“I didn’t seek you out to date you. I chose you because I need someone who doesn’t ruffle easily and will do what it takes to get the job done. After everything you’ve seen this year, you were absolutely perfect Trent.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will. But first you need to meet the hounds.”

She stands and presses a kiss to my lips. I kiss her back because I have to, I need to, and her breath on my tongue gives me strength and courage and I know I’ll do anything for this woman. She smiles again, like she knows it, and runs her nails over the ropes that fall away from my wrists and ankles. A tiny, unaffected part of my brain is throwing a tantrum, begging me to subdue her or grab the broken end table and smash it over her head to give me a chance to run, but instead I lace my fingers with hers, ignore the pounding in my skull from where she hit me earlier, and let her lead me through a kitchen and down a dark hallway.

I don’t hear the snarling until we reach the end of the hall.

Nykki opens a door and ushers me inside what used to be a bedroom. Now it’s a kennel, I think. Instead of crates, six giant, iron-barred cages take up the far side of the room, three on the bottom, three on the top. Two cages on the bottom are empty. The iron bars on one have been twisted and pried apart by something impossibly strong. The other’s door simply sits open as if unlatched from the outside.

“I told you my dogs got out—thankfully, only two of them. The twins. They used to be conjoined. Even though they’ve been separated for some time now, they do everything together—including escape.”

My eyes trail from the empty cages to the beasts still locked behind the iron bars, and even the traces of Nykki’s last kiss don’t quell the terror that erupts in my chest. Something warm runs down my legs. It isn’t just the ripped pieces of flesh littering the floor or the blood or the stench—god, the smell—that make me piss myself. It’s the saliva dripping from gaping mouths, pink-stained canines gleaming in wicked smiles, glowing red eyes staring out through the bars at me, through me, as the four remaining hounds take me in.

“They’re marvelous, aren’t they?” Nykki beams with motherly pride at her pack of wild things. “Intelligent. Cunning. Absolutely lethal.”

“Lethal,” I utter.

“That’s why we need to hurry,” she says. “I can’t let the boss know I don’t have them all under my control.”

“Boss,” I whisper. I drag my gaze away from the cages and my attention snags on a picture on the wall. It brings me back to myself long enough to narrow my eyes and ask, “Deena?”

Nykki notices the cockeyed picture of the sweet receptionist with curly brown hair hanging on the wall above where Deena’s bed used to be.

“Yes, well, there really was a Deena,” she admits. “I never said there wasn’t.”

“Was?” I breathe.

“I understand you have questions, but right now I need you to focus.”

Her hand in mine sends a jolt through my body and my head spins in her direction.

“I need a keeper for my hounds. Someone to help me take care of them. Right now that means I need your help returning the twins to the rest of the pack.”

The tiny part of my brain still throwing a tantrum remembers the walk to this apartment; the breaking glass and car alarms and screams. Remembers the missed calls and messages on the phone Nykki must’ve taken since it’s not in my pocket. Remembers Deena, and wonders if it’s her body I smell, her entrails littering the bottom of the cages.

Two of these dogs are loose in my neighborhood…

“How do we stop them?” I ask.

“First, we meet my darlings. Phela is leader of the pack. If she accepts you, the others will as well.”

“Accepts me?”

“They’ll answer to you. Follow your commands, as they listen to mine. Together we will control them, keep them fed and contained until…”

“Until what?”

“Until it’s time to let them out.”

“Let them out? Why would we do that? Two got out already. What if they’re killing people—”

“Take a breath, Trent.” Nykki puts her hands on the sides of my face and forces me to stare into her eyes. Some of the hysteria that has been rising in my body ebbs back down. “There are forces at play here that you can’t possibly understand, but I know you’ve seen how this place is changing. You’ve seen the evil. These dogs—my hounds—usher in the end of all that.”

“The—the end?”

“Yes, my dear. The end. But I can’t do this all on my own.” She tightens her grip on my face and brings her mouth within inches of my own so her smoky breath laces my tongue when she says, “I need you, Trent. Can you help me save lives tonight?”

I need you, Trent. My knees buckle at the words. I move in for a kiss but she’s already backing away, taking my arm and bringing me to the cages, to the one in the top left corner.

“This is Phela. She’s the oldest, named after her father Mephistopheles.”

None of the hounds have fur—not in the traditional sense, at least. The one on the bottom is covered in spikes that look like porcupine quills, only thicker, longer. Sharper. The two others on top are covered in scales—one mainly black, the other an iridescent green. But Phela…the leader of the pack…is on fire. Her skin is charred and cracked, a red pulsing light emanating from within her body. Flames roil off her in elegant waves, smoke curling in black tendrils around her legs, between the claws at the end of her massive paws, through the razor-sharp teeth dripping with saliva that sizzles on the iron floor of her cage.

“Phela,” Nykki says to the hound. “This is Trent Walters. And he’s going to take excellent care of you.”

Phela chuffs, a puff of smoke and more boiling saliva spurting from her mouth. The other dogs chuff in unison, a snarling, beastly chorus of feigned disapproval. If I hadn’t already emptied my bladder, I would piss myself again.

“Give him a chance darling,” Nykki coos. “We need him.”

Phela paws at the iron bars and Nykki reaches inside to stroke the hound’s burning flesh.

“I know, darling. Soon. Soon.”

Nykki reaches with her other hand for mine. I see the string of what looks like intestines strung between two of the upper cages, as if the hounds have been fighting over the meat. I smell the blood, bile, and excrement from the chunks of body that that haven’t made it into the bellies of these beasts yet. Horror runs bone-deep in my body, and still I give Nykki my hand and she brings it to Phela’s nose for the creature sniff.

The hound blows a puff of smoke from her snout that singes my palm and I try to pull away, but Nykki holds tight and urges Phela to the edge of the cage. Through the bars, the hound paws at the floor—fighting it like a stubborn child—before begrudgingly smelling my fingers. I wait, wondering if she’ll bite or unleash a breath-full of fire, while Nykki strokes Phela’s face and speaks softly in a language I don’t understand, until the hound grunts and lays her head between her paws in a gesture even I recognize as submission.

Nykki turns to me with her widest smile yet and rewards me with a kiss I barely return.

“Thank hell,” she says. “Now let’s go find the twins.”

We’re walking away from the cages when a sound punches through the room and the closet door buckles from the inside.

“Damnit,” Nykki sighs. “Hold on.”

She grabs a bloodied baseball bat from beside the closet doors, then yanks them open. From where I’m standing, I see a sliver of a bare leg kicking out, then a spray of curly brown hair as the bat hits something hard with a dull thunk. The leg stops kicking and Nykki uses her foot to push the body back inside the closet so she can close the door again.

I don’t know why, after everything else, that it’s this thunk, the sound of the bat cracking against the side of a skull, that breaks the spell, that gives the tantruming part of my brain agency to take over again, but it does and I feel my own head throbbing with renewed vigor as I appraise the bloody bat, the brown hair matted to the wood, hear the clawing and snarling in the cages, feel the cooling piss in my pants, and smell the filth and carnage in the room that used to be Deena’s, and I know it’s poor Deena in that closet—dead or dying because of me, because of the date that we never got to have. I know the hounds that have escaped are out there killing, and that’s my fault too. Somehow it was all my fault because I couldn’t keep this neighborhood safe, couldn’t answer the dozens of calls on my phone from the officers begging me for help on my day off. This whole summer has seen so much death and carnage and all I’ve been able to do is help clean up the bloody mess at the end. I have to do more this time. I have to stop this.

I have to stop Nykki.

There is still a very real—now very annoyed—part of me that follows at her heels because I’m desperate for more of her. I try to ignore it. I try to focus on the thunk that cleared my head. The throbbing in my skull. The carnage in the kitchen.

The kitchen.

I shove my fist in my mouth to keep from vomiting. It definitely didn’t look this bad before. There isn’t a surface that hasn’t been either ravaged by the hounds or smeared in the brightest blood. Chunks of flesh and twisted bones of all sizes are scattered around the room. The amount of blood pooled beneath the round kitchen table tells me that’s where Barbie bled out while Phela and her brood ripped the poor woman apart.

Deena isn’t far behind.

I’m thinking about the girl in the closet when I kick something that clatters across the floor. Nykki is in front of me, talking—something about me getting dressed and heading out on the hunt for the twins. I’m barely listening as I reach down for the bone shard I just kicked. A femur.

I don’t dwell on how much force it must’ve taken to crack it in half. Having seen the hounds myself, I know they are capable of much worse.

The part of my brain that is desperate for Nykki’s affection is screaming. It’s so loud I’m afraid she can hear it, and she’ll turn and catch me before I have a chance to do this. With the bone in my fist I spot my cell phone on the counter. I hadn’t noticed that before either. It buzzes with another new message. People are dying out there. I know what I need to do.

She’s reaching for my phone when I slam the bone shard through the back of her neck.

Nykki’s body shudders. Her hands go to her throat. When she stumbles in a clumsy circle to look at me, she’s clutching the bone protruding through her skin, her fingers already red with the blood flowing from the wound. I know my eyes are as wide as hers and part of me is just as confused by what I’ve done. But her dizzying effect on me is slipping away because she’s slipping away, her grip on my body and soul finally loosening.  

Blood spurts out of her mouth and onto my face as she croaks, “What have you done?”

Then she falls to the floor, still in that black dress and heels, still stunning with that bright red hair pooled around her even as her own blood mixes with it, matting it to the linoleum. I’m stepping around her, reaching for my phone, when the hounds start to growl. I ignore the dozens of messages and missed calls and dial the precinct directly.

“Hello? Hello? It’s Officer Trent Walters. I need an ambulance—”

“Trent?”

I don’t recognize the voice right away, but I know it’s not the usual dispatcher.

“Yes, Officer Trent Walt—”

“Trent, Jesus, where the hell have you been.”

“Jill? Detective Harding?”

I can’t believe it’s her. She’s never answered the precinct’s emergency line.

“We’ve been trying to reach you. Plank is in chaos. We need you—”

“I know, I know. I don’t have time to explain—I just need an ambulance at…”

“Trent?”

“Fuck, I don’t know where I’m at.”

I turn and leave Nykki on the floor. She’s gurgling, fighting for life as the blood pours out of her mouth and the wound in her neck that I know she can’t come back from. There is one woman in this house I hope to save, so I stalk back down the hall to where the dogs are losing their fucking minds, pawing and clawing and snarling, chewing at the iron bars that won’t hold for long. I hope like hell I have enough time to get Deena out of here.

I throw open the closet door and see her slumped on the floor. Her eyes are open and glazed, her curly brown hair crusted with old blood while new blood seeps from the wound down the side of her face.

“Fuck,” I spit. I forget that I’m on the phone. I can barely hear Detective Harding’s frantic calls on the other end of the line over the snarling in the cages and the roaring in my own head. “Deena? Deena, fuck.”

“Trent—we need you. Trent!”

I take the phone away from my ear and check Deena’s pulse. It’s slow but her heart is still beating.

“Hey,” I say gently, touching the side of her face. “Hey, can you hear me? I’m here to help you.”

As if in answer, Phela blows out a bolt of fire from her mouth. She can’t reach us from where she’s caged, but I bend to shield Deena from the potential blow anyway.

“Trent,” Detective Harding is hollering. I put the phone back up to my ear.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. I’m here. I need an ambulance. I have a woman with major head trauma. I’ll ping my location after we hang up.”

“Trent—”

“Send them as fast as you can. And I need animal control—”

“Trent!” Detective Harding screams, and I plug my other ear to block out some of the dogs’ rabid snarling so I can hear her. “There won’t be any ambulance. Jesus Christ, have you listened to your messages? Do you have any idea what’s going on out there? These…these creatures are attacking people. They’re destroying your neighborhood. We’ve got every available set of boots on the ground. We have every ambulance from every surrounding hospital out on calls. There’s nobody left to send. Where have you been?”

“Damnit Detective, I’ve been…”

I trail off because I can’t explain any of this, and what she said is sinking in. Help isn’t coming. If two hounds are creating that much havoc, there is no telling what all six will do—what fire-breathing Phela will do—if they all get out, and some of the bars containing them are already starting to bend.

“Never mind,” I say hurriedly. “Detective, listen. Listen, all right? I’m going to send you my location when I hang up—”

“There are no ambulances—”

“Not for a fucking ambulance. Those creatures? There are four more of them locked up in this apartment. They’re caged but in a couple of minutes they’re going to be free and out on the streets.”

With the phone up to my head, I gingerly work my free arm around Deena’s shoulders and drag her to her feet.

“Did you hear me? Detective—”

“I hear you. Did you say four more?”

“Yes, four more. Six total. Six fucking…hell hounds. These aren’t dogs. They—we need fire power. Anything that packs a punch if we hope to put them down.”

“What about your firearm?”

“I don’t have it,” I said. “And it might not be enough.”

Deena is on her feet, leaning into my body, when she starts coming-to. Her eyes are still glazed but she’s able to put one foot in front of the other, stumbling along with me out of the closet, past the dogs, and into the hallway. I glance back as Phela bends one of the iron bars that she’s heated so intensely with her own internal fire that it glows bright orange between her teeth.

“Minutes,” I say into the phone. “We have minutes. Maybe less. Get someone here. With guns and whatever else they’ve got. I’m hanging up to send you the location.”

Detective Harding is saying something I don’t hear when I end the call. A few more buttons and I’ve shared my location with the precinct and pocket my phone so both hands are free to haul Deena from this awful place. Her head rests in the crook of my neck, but by some miracle her legs continue to move, and step after stumbling step brings us to the kitchen where—by some terrible turn of luck—Nykki is still gurgling. Deena whimpers at the sight, and I drag her around Nykki’s prone form, through the living room, and out the front door.

I’ve forgotten about the light being out until we hit the landing and almost topple down the stairs.

Deena’s whimpers become frantic. She’s trying to form words and I realize I’ve brought her from one horror into another—a pitch black stairwell with a shirtless man she doesn’t know. She pushes off of me and flails with clumsy hands to keep me at bay, backing into the opposite wall.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. Deena, it’s me. It’s Trent.”

She’s still frantic and flailing, and I can’t blame her, but we can’t go back inside where there’s light. She might not remember me even without the head wound. It might’ve been Nykki texting me the whole time.

“It’s Trent,” I say anyway. “Trent Walters. I’m a cop.”

She lets me take ahold of one of her hands, and I squeeze it reassuringly.

“I’m a cop. And I’m going to get you out of here, but I need you to trust me.”

I hear her crying even if I can’t see her in the dark. She manages to say, “My he-head.”

“I know. I know. I’m going to get you help. But we have to move.”

“It hurts,” she sobs.

“I know. And I’m so sorry. Listen—did you see the hounds? Did you see them, Deena?”

She chokes on whatever she tries to say.

“They’re going to bust out of those cages in a matter of seconds, and we don’t want to be here when they do. Are you with me? Can I get us out of here?”

She answers by throwing herself into my chest. I put my arm around her shoulders and she puts an arm around my back, and I bring us to the top step.

“We go as fast as we can, but carefully. Okay?”

“Okay,” she cries.

Our feet crunch on whatever is covering the step. I’ve forgotten about that too.

“Hold on, hold on,” I say, and we pause on the first step while I pull my phone out and turn on the flashlight.

Deena lets out a horrified scream. The light shakes in my trembling hand as it illuminates the stairwell that would’ve been better left in the dark.

The stairs are covered in blood and bones, severed limbs, sticky organs…

People. Many, many people.

I walked up these stairs earlier, felt the bones cracking under my weight, shoes slipping on the gore.

“It’s my neighbors,” Nykki had said. “They’re absolute pigs.”

I pull Deena tighter against my side. Her trembling body and the muffled snarls behind us snap me from horror and into brutal determination to get us out before we end up like the other residents in the apartment complex that were dragged from their homes by the twins and ripped to shreds on the very steps that Deena and I begin to descend.

“Hold your breath,” I tell her. “And hold onto me.”

She is whimpering, her arms shaking so violently I can hardly keep ahold of her. With my free hand, I light the way down the steps. Our shoes squish and slip on intestinal ropes, crack on small bones that might’ve come from hands or toes or…something smaller. I push an intact ribcage aside with the tip of my toe and Deena’s breath catches as it clatters down the steps. We’re halfway down now, and the sounds of the hounds are being drown out by sirens and car alarms. Breaking glass and agonizing screams. We need a plan. My car is parked at my apartment a few blocks away, my gun in the safe beside my bed. If this were the movies, I’d be able to make a call and have this place firebombed.  I’m confident no one is alive inside anyway, except for maybe Nykki who just won’t fucking die.

But this isn’t the movies. This is Plank. We don’t have an armed helicopter or access to bombs or even high-powered weapons. This whole place will fall before the National Guard or anyone else with sufficient fire power can step in. It doesn’t matter, I suppose, because the first thing I need to do—the only thing—is get Deena to a hospital. She’s walking, but the wound on her head is severe, and still dripping blood onto her face and my shirt.

She slips on an organ, something that squishes under her feet and sends her off-balance. I’m trying to steady her when my own feet slip, and I go down on my ass on a step and into the gore. She screams and then cries—not in pain but in pure horror at the blood and guts that now cover her hands and arms. I choke back vomit and bile while I pull us back to our feet, promising her—lying to her—over and over that it’s okay. We’re okay. We’re going to make it.

She’s hysterical and at the point of collapsing so I take her shoulders and scream in her face, “I am not dying here. We are not dying here. We’re almost out. Let’s move.”

It’s my toughest cop voice, which isn’t saying much. But it’s enough. We stumble down the last of the steps to the front door. I push aside the metal frame and our bloody shoes crunch on the broken glass as we finally make it out onto the landing…

…And into a street that’s on fire.

Sirens sound from every direction. The town’s two fire trucks blare from opposite ends of the road, attending to separate fires. One building, another apartment complex by the looks of it, is fully engulfed in flames. I bring Deena to the sidewalk and appraise the hysteria that surrounds us. People running, cars careening through yards since the road is blocked by other cars that tried to leave and failed. Bodies. Some whole. Some in pieces. None quite in the state of carnage that we encountered in the stairwell. There are police cars too. Blue and red lights flash down the block, two blocks north, a block south. Everywhere. They’ve all come. And they’ve all been calling me.

Deena slumps against my side and I know I’m running out of time to save her. Running out of time all together, but there’s so much chaos I don’t know where to look first or what direction to go.

An unholy sound suddenly pierces the night. An ancient howling from down the block and the apartment behind us that rattles my eardrums, vibrates my veins, and shakes the ground beneath our feet. I know then that she’s dead. Nykki. The hounds are howling in mourning of their caretaker—a promise that we humans will suffer. And I believe them.

After an agonizing, earsplitting minute, the howling stops.

“We’ve got to go,” I mutter to Deena. I try pulling her along but she’s frozen, her bloody head looking at something behind us. I hear the chuffing and know what it is before I turn around.

Phela, in all her horrific glory, is standing on the broken glass outside the front door. The molten fire beneath her skin churns like the depths of hell itself and I understand then truly what she is and where she came from.

Phela isn’t the worst thing. Coming out of the dark behind her, bone still protruding from her throat, is Nykki. There’s blood in her hair, on her chin, and down the front of her dress. She’s still beautiful. I hate myself for thinking it, but there’s a part of me that is still ensnared by the enrapturing demon.

“Did you really think you could stop this?”

Nykki’s voice is raspy, the bone in her throat bobbing with every word. She seems annoyed by it, so she rips it out with a snarl and tosses it to the ground.

“Did you really think you could stop me?” Nykki says. I can’t take my eyes off the hole in her neck, can’t fathom how she’s alive and talking to me in spite of it. It wasn’t her death that set the hounds howling. It was her rebirth.

The other three hounds emerge from the shadows to surround Nykki and Phela. Deena’s grip tightens on my arm. She understands it the same time that I do: we are going to die.

“You could’ve had a front row seat, Trent. Remember what I told you? My hounds are here to usher in the end.”

“The end of what?” I breathe.

Nykki runs her fingers along Phela’s blackened skin and the hound responds with a burst of fire from between her teeth.

“The end of life as you know it.”

With a casual but pointed flick of her hand, all four hounds push off the ground and sprint for me and Deena. There’s nowhere to go so I put my arms around her to shield her from the first blow. The last thing I hear before they overtake us, Phela in the lead, is Nykki’s fatal promise:

“And the beginning of hell on earth.”