Alayke Tru lost everything in her life with a single bullet. All her family is dead. She's ignored by almost everyone. All she wants to do is go home but home doesn't exist anymore.
If Alakye is willing to take the risk, she can disappear in...
"Hellhound mothers don't name their young. Until the puppy first crosses back to the Etheric or what non-magic users call Hell. We call them Etheric Hounds but in the normal human books, they are called Hellhounds." She makes small talk in calm tones about the hellhounds. Puppy tails and ears flop around at her touch.
I didn't know they were Hellhounds. When I fished the puppies out of the trash bag he put them all in. I assumed they were really big puppies like very big Dobermans, Labrador, Rottweiler, Husky mutt mixes, or something really short haired.
The first time I saw them they were in a closed black plastic bag. My Foster brother dropped it onto my bed. The black plastic bag wiggled furiously with eleven little shapes in dark plastic. Less and less air was in the bag and it stops. My foster brother never took his eyes off me as I watched whatever was in the bag run out of air. It was like he needed my pain to validate his existence. The small woof sound ends. A smile of contentment spread across his face. Then he left me alone in the silent room. My foster-brother guessed wrong two were left alive.
He did make his brutal point. This is what would happen if I told.
I took his lesson to heart. He would make it hurt and it would be very, very, slow, and ugly.
The doctor fills the evidence bag with my foster brothers and mine's violence. My eyes snap back up to her voice.
"They are very young to be away from their mother Alayke," she says my name perfectly without pause or hesitation. The cops who read it off my school ID card butchered it. Does she think I stole the puppies? The doctor checks the baby fangs.
"I would put them at a little under three months old." They're both about the size of a cantaloupe.
"She doesn't have all her milk teeth yet. Etheric Hounds can be slow growers." She cleans both of them off.
It's like all of it never happened.
Clean and new.
Can there ever be clean and new?
The doctor puts them on the side table with care. Both puppies make soft whimpers. Their dark blue coat shimmer in the light. Big eyes with floppy ears barely block them. She places two collars around their necks. The doctor whispers words under her breath. Names fill into the collars empty spot. My eyebrows shoot up quickly at her.
"Yes, that was magic," she smiles at me warmly. "Magic is a standard spell done by witchcraft or learnt magic." Bluish light swirls around her fingertip and glows. She heals a small cut on the tip of the puppy's nose. "That is called Magik," she spells the word out to me slowly. "Magik comes from pulling wild Magik inside those users who are able to carry it. You let it go with your will without incantation. Not everyone can shape magic to use it like Magik. One of my gifts happens to be healing."
Her Magik changes color from bluish to a rainbow of light with a flash. She cuts off her power, "a little wild Magik nothing to worry about." She tries to engage me again with her warm smile to ask questions. Her warmth is wasted on me.
"You picked a good name Riverh she acknowledges it. If not it wouldn't show up on the sentient animal's collar." She picks up Riverh with the dark midnight roan blue coat. She has one white spot on her face. It looks like a river with a rock in it.
The doctor checks her over once again, slower, this time, going over each inch. Riverh's blue eyes are pissed off. She seems to not be a fan of handling without a food bribe.The doctor puts her back on the table and she picks up her sister next.
"Ah, this one.... is named.... Rhain?" I don't answer her question as she keeps up the one-sided conversation. Rhain, unlike her sister, Riverh, looks like a single drop of rainwater dropped down onto her eye. The eyes are mismatched one gray, one blue.The one blue eye is bright against her past dark midnight blue roan coat.
Rhain wiggles in the doctor's hands entirely unpleased about being picked up as well. The doctor softly laughs at her rubs her nose against Rhain. She takes a quick whiff of her captor.
I wasn't completely willing to give into the calm she was weaving with her words. The doctor puts her back down; she heads back over to the fridge and sink. The doctor throws her gloves away into another evidence bag. The skin runs and she washes her hands. All her movements are efficient in that way that she could have done it a million times. She turns off the sink and dries her hands.
She opens up the fridge and takes out food. Milk, eggs, yogurt, and some type of ground meat into the bowl.She washes up again and places baby gates up. Riverh and Rhain look at me for permission to eat. I nod at them. They both eat like I've never fed them once in their life.
"It's good that they understand you are head of the pack and ask for your permission to feed. You will have fewer problems if you keep that habit up." The doctor re-gloves with purple gloves, this time. She comes back to me. It's quiet in the room except for the happy eating noises from the puppies. We go back to my silent stalemate from before.
With a soft hesitant voice she says, "I need to take pictures of the bruises and cuts," a knock on the door interrupts her. She raises her voice at the door. "Officer stand down, please. I'm ok; please wait until the examination is complete." In a slight hand motion, she brings up a shield of bluish violet light. The doctor blocks the room off from the intruders. I take my eyes off her and back to the door. The bluish violet light from her protective shield burns my eyes a little.
Click.
Click.
The first flash from the camera goes off.
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*beep*
I tune out the short beep before the click of the shutter. My mind focus on the pond and back to the hunt for fireflies in Sacramento's hot summer nights years ago.
