Free Black Dog Short Stories by Rachel Neumeier Page A

was something terrible. Something very dangerous to black dogs, to him personally, he knew it, he could feel it. And he hated it. Hated, hated, hated . . .
         His father’s hand closed on the back of his neck, hard, claws out just enough to prick through the shaggy pelt. Thaddeus flinched, startled and angry:  he hadn’t even noticed his dad had shifted back to human form. He was big even in that form, not nearly as heavy as Thaddeus’s Beast, but taller, with the black dog’s fire lingering in his eyes. He shook Thaddeus lightly, warning and threat, a reminder of his own strength and authority. “Shift,” he ordered. “Now.”
         Thaddeus swung his head to stare west, then glared at his father. Couldn’t he tell about the  monster?
         “ Shift , Thad. Now .”
         It took several tries and some minutes. Thaddeus wouldn’t have managed it without that grip on the back of his neck, without his father’s insistence and that naked threat. Getting a leash on his Beast wasn’t usually so hard, but the Beast longed to run west and kill whatever that was. It fought him, worse than it had in years. But he managed the change at last, and knelt panting on the hard pavement, surrounded by the torn pieces of their enemy, with the smell of ash and blood thick in the air and his dad still looming over him. Everyone said Thaddeus would probably be even bigger than his father one day, but right now Dan Williams could still do a pretty good job looming. Thaddeus kept his eyes down and his human hands flat on the hot pavement and tried to steady his breathing, expecting any minute for his father to hit him, to yell at him, Don’t I teach you better than that? Fuck, kid, you some stupid lazy cur? Might as well be an animal if you can’t get your Beast chained up!
         Thaddeus knew he would deserve it. He was having trouble just holding his human shape even now that he’d got it back. His Beast pushed and snarled right below the surface of his skin, wanting out, wanting to kill . . . he bit his lip and clenched his hands into fists and pushed it back as hard as he could.
         “Come on,” his dad said abruptly, and hauled him up by the back of the neck and shoved him forward. West, after all. Thaddeus hadn’t expected that, and stumbled, and his dad pulled him up again and said harshly, “Shift back and I’ll beat you bloody, you hear me, Thad? You stay human and you keep your Beast way the fuck underneath. We’re gonna find this woman and you’re not going to kill her, you’re not even gonna to try, you hear me? You keep human and you keep close to me or I’ll chain you up and beat you senseless every day for a week, you hear me?”
         Only that continual mutter of low-voiced threats let Thaddeus keep his Beast under while they closed the distance between themselves and this new thing, this monster-woman that his father obviously knew about even though Thaddeus had never scented anything like her. He knew his father meant every word. His Beast knew it, too, and was just wary enough of the threatened punishment that Thaddeus could manage to keep it back and under. He tried to concentrate on the unfamiliar streets, on the suburbs that stretched out all around them, but it was impossible. Mostly he was just aware of the woman they were tracking.
         She was in the street, out in the moonlight. She looked like an ordinary woman, but Thaddeus could tell she wasn’t. She wasn’t a black dog either. She was something else, some other kind of person. He hated her, but he wasn’t sure why—he could tell by now that it was mostly his Beast that hated her, but he couldn’t tell if it was just his Beast or if part of it was also him. He blinked, and blinked again, trying to look at her better, without the Beast looking through his eyes.
         She looked so ordinary. She was black, though not as dark as Thaddeus or his father. Old, at least thirty. Not pretty, or he thought