Black Dog by Caitlin Kittredge Page B

heads. In the first stall, a skinny biker braced himself against the metal walls while a girl crouched on the stained tiles. He knotted one hand in her frizzy perm, eyes rolling back in his skull, as she bobbed her head like it was on springs. Neither of them paid any attention to me, so I returned the favor.
    The girl I’d followed lit a fresh cigarette, exhaled, and looked me up and down. “You need something, dog?”
    The animal-­urine stink hung heavy around her. Not even the heavy coating of vomit and sex weighing down the bathroom air could hide it. I tilted my head. “You care if I do?”
    â€œNo, but they probably will.” She jerked a thumb at the door. “Are you stupid or what?”
    â€œI’m on the job.” I figured I could leave out all that stuff about Gary being long gone, Leo’s nut job father stealing his Scythe—­all the information that would convey I had no boss, no real Hellspawn backing me up.
    She blew smoke out her nose, a tiny, punk-­rock freight train barreling down the tracks. “Come with me,” she muttered finally.
    We left the bathroom and cut through an opening in the wall. It was quiet here, no music, a warren of rooms built between the old board walls. The shifter girl walked fast, past a door that opened onto a patchwork of filthy mattresses, club members snoring like hibernating bears. I saw another room, lit by bright, harsh bulbs that hurt my eyes with their sudden brilliance. Two bikers in disposable face masks and black latex gloves weighed and sealed opalescent sandwich bags full of meth, stopping to stare at us without blinking as the girl strode by.
    The Road Dog clubhouse, where the party never stopped. If Clint Hicks had washed up here, it’d be a miracle if he had any brains—­or any molars—­left at all. Though it did explain the feral undercurrent in the clubhouse, the feeling I’d come upon jackals surrounding a carcass and sinking their teeth in. Shapeshifter DNA and amphetamines weren’t a winning mix.
    The shifter girl stopped at the last door and hit it three times with her fist. “Billy,” she said. I heard three or four dead bolts snapping, then a shifter in a black T-­shirt cracked the door open. His forearm was almost as thick as my leg, and two scars slashed his bald head, like he’d been picked up by a giant bird of prey and dropped in front of me.
    â€œFuck off, Lolly,” he said. The shifter girl gave him the finger.
    â€œI found this wandering the clubhouse,” she said. “And silly me, I figured Billy would want to know there was a hound in his crib. You’d think they’d learn.”
    The bald guy looked me over, his nostrils flaring. I think there was something about the smell of a hellhound that scared shifters on some elemental level. Sometimes you’re just afraid of things. Your animal brain fought hard for thousands of years to pass the instincts on, the ones that kept you away from dark alleys and dogs that frothed at the mouth.
    â€œYou,” he finally said, pointing at me. “You can come in. The skank stays outside.”
    Lolly sauntered back the way we’d come, casting one long look over her shoulder at me. It was the way you’d take a last look at a beloved pet you had to put down.
    The mountain of shifter at the door pulled it wider, grinning as I edged past him. His two front teeth were rimmed in gold. “Billy,” he said. “We got a visitor.”
    Billy stirred from his seat on an old daybed, piled with enough silk pillows and hippie print blankets to make Stevie Nicks orgasmic. “Seems we do,” he said.
    I looked to my left, catching a glimpse of two more shifters reclining on a swaybacked sofa. The vibe in here was more burnouts’ dorm room than the crank-­fueled orgy in the clubhouse, but these shifters weren’t all fucked up and lazy. They were predators, and I was in their