Chương 10

Lemon's tongue flopped around outside her mouth as she ran up the road as fast as her leash-enhanced paws could go. She'd been going for hours and hours, with only minor breaks for sausages and interesting smells. There had also been this one poop pile that looked like it might be tasty… it certainly smelled tasty, but Hogarth had been quite clear that no matter how tasty poop smelled, Lemon was never, ever, ever supposed to eat it. Or roll in it. For some reason.

After a single, long, lingering sniff, Lemon had begrudgingly left it alone and got back on the road. It was an empty thing, abandoned by everyone besides farm-man. The sun was starting to go down now, and his warnings about being outside at night returned to her. She still wasn't sure exactly what would happen when it got dark, but Lemon wasn't scared. She'd already beaten harpies and a swamp hag just in the last day. The sun went down early in the mountains, and it started getting cold soon after.

Lemon gave herself a good shake, pulled her bag of jerky out of storage (just for some variety), and nosed it open to get a snack while she considered whether or not she wanted to stop early. Another nap did sound good, but she'd already lost a bunch of time earlier, and since Lemon was only vaguely able to keep track of time anyway, she didn't really have a good idea how much was left. Her best bet for reaching the conference on time was to go as quickly as she could.

So, reluctantly, Lemon followed the road as it descended into the valley and around a bend. Tamble's Crossing came into view soon after. The town was nestled between two rock walls and divided in half by the road. Houses lined each side of it, many, many more than Lemon could count. It was way bigger than Wilbourghy, which was honestly Lemon's only basis for comparison. A lot of the houses were really tall, kind of like Hogarth's tower.

Weirdly, there were lights in every single window, always visible only through closed shutters. The air smelled weird too, a strange, stale, sweaty, fear stink she vividly remembered from the time that merchant had tried to cheat Hogarth on the amount of blushing fire hibiscuses he'd ordered and almost gotten smote by lightning. In this case though, it was only the sweaty part, without any of the pee part. It was already dark, but there wasn't a single person in sight.

That wasn't too unusual, since humans couldn't see that well in the dark. Lemon had removed her spectacles charm a little while ago since she could see better at night without it, and now she filled the empty spot on her collar with her levitation feather. It was only situationally useful, but with so many tall buildings, it seemed like a good default option. Lemon padded into the middle of town and looked around. Still no people outside, but she could hear them inside the houses.

At one point, she heard a little boy say, "There's something walking down the street." A moment later, an older man's voice followed it up with a hushed, "Get away from the window!" Lemon took her time looking around. She supposed she could just keep on walking right through town if no one wanted to come out, but there was a definite sense that something was wrong. Everywhere she went, she smelled fear. Fear and… something else she didn't recognize. Whatever it was, she didn't like it.

It turned out there were a lot more smells than she'd originally thought that crossed the line from interesting to just plain bad. A man walked out from between two houses down the street and glanced over at her. Her tail gave an uncertain wag, just a single back and forth, when she made eye contact, but the man looked away and ignored her. He paced around the outside of the house until he came to a stop near the front door and said, "You cannot hide from me forever. Come out now, or it will be worse later."

"You are not welcome here!" a muffled voice yelled back from inside the house.

"I am well aware," the man said dryly.

"I do not demand your welcome, only that which I have claimed as mine. Send her to me." The voice inside the house suggested a few things the man could do that Lemon thought a polite person ought not to have said, and the man gave the house a lazy smile.

"You'll regret this decision." Then the shadows descended on the man until they were so thick that Lemon couldn't see him anymore. A moment later, they cleared and he was gone. Curious, Lemon trotted over to the house and put her nose to the ground to sniff. It mostly smelled like dirt, and the air still had that stink of fear in it, but where the man had been standing, it smelled cold, cold and dead and also hungry. She didn't know quite how to describe it other than that.

She didn't notice while she was smelling, but soon enough, she realized she could hear a kind of chirping, squeaking noise overhead. There were bats hanging off the heaves of the house, and the one next to it, and the next one too, more bats than she'd ever seen at one time. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. They were kind of cute, just hanging there in a row like that.

"Wow, that is a lot of bats though. I bet even Midnight couldn't count them all." Plus, she would just try to kill them. Well, maybe. Midnight had gotten kind of lazy about hunting in the last year or two. When she was younger though, she definitely would have caught a bat or two, even if she wasn't hungry.

"Who's there?" the voice from inside the house called out.

"I'm Lemon," she said back.

"Wait, no. I am Miss Lemon. Did you know there are a bunch of bats hanging off your house?" The voice said more bad words, and a little girl gasped and said reproachfully, "Daddy!"

"Sorry, sweetness. Daddy knows better, and he won't do it again. You just stay close by and make sure, okay?" Lemon levitated herself up slightly so she could peer through the seam between the shutters and saw three humans inside the house. Two were adults, and one was barely more than a puppy.

"Look," she said, pointing at Lemon. The adult woman's head whipped around to face the shutters and she said, "Is that… a golden retriever?"

"Stay back," the man said.

"It could be one of Hollington's tricks." He held up a sword and placed himself between the other two humans and the window.

"Begone, dog!"

"Well that's just rude. I was only trying to help."

"And if that's true, you'll have my sincerest apologies in the morning, but I cannot take the risk that you serve the vampire, not when he's so fixated on my daughter. Now, begone."

"What's a vampire? It is that man who was standing outside your house? He smelled bad."

"Momma says he wants to eat me," the little girl said.

"He wants to what? That's horrible! Vampires sound awful." Lemon wasn't above hunting for a meal, but never humans, especially not the baby humans. What kind of sicko would eat a baby?

"I don't think I like this… what do you call him? Hollington?"

"Alastair Frederick Hollington, to be precise," the man said.

"And that's enough out of you. Be on your way."

"Oh, okay. I'll leave. Um, just so you know, I'm not with the other dog."

"What other dog?" the man asked sharply. Lemon watched a great shaggy black beast, many times bigger than her (but not as big as that bear she'd seen) prowl down the street, its nose glued to the ground. It stopped to sniff around every single house, one a time, and always with a low growl. Occasionally, it would glance up at the bats hanging off the eaves before pacing away to the next house.

"It'll be here in a minute or two. Do you think it works for the vampire?"

"Yes, I think it da-" the man cut himself off and took a deep breath.

"Sorry sweetness. See, Daddy did better? Yes, it works for the vampire." Lemon didn't want to fight the other dog. It was way bigger than her for one thing, and also if there was ever going to be another magical dog, it was that one. She knew first paw how tricky magical dogs could be. On the other paw, if that dog did work for the vampire, then it was a bad dog, and Lemon was obligated to do something about that.

"What do you want to do?" she asked the humans.

"No choice. It won't be stopped just because it doesn't have an invitation in. I'll fight. Take Nemba and go hide," the man ordered.

"And you, dog, get out of here."

"The dog is getting closer," Lemon said, her hackles rising as she watched it sniff around. It had definitely noticed her back, but its tail hadn't so much as twitched. It was mostly ignoring her, in fact. Lemon floated the rest of the way up the house, past the bats hanging on the eves, and reached out with her front paws to scrabble onto the roof. From there, she watched the big dog make its way down the street while the bats just below her squeaked. Three houses to go. Two. One.

The dog paused in the street, nose glued to the ground where the vampire had been standing. A stink of feral bloodthirst rose from its fur, and the ever-present low growl in the back of its throat cut through the dark as it got louder. The fear stink from the humans spiked sharply upwards in response, but beneath that, Lemon could also smell resolve, as well as old leather and steel. The dog pushed up against the door, causing the wood to creak and groan under the pressure.

Above it, Lemon tensed and waited to see what the human would do. He'd told her to go away more than once, but Lemon wouldn't be a good girl if she didn't help when people needed it. She was just waiting to see his strategy, so she could figure out how to help. Any second now, the human would make his move. Any second. Now. Nope, not yet. Okay, now! Lemon huffed an annoyed sigh. What was taking him so long? The bad dog was there, literally at his door. It was now or never.

If the human waited any longer, the dog was going to get inside. It reared up on its back legs and pushed both front paws against the wood, then dragged its nails down the front of the door. A few scratches later, she could tell the door was about ready to break. It wasn't like the thick, heavy, solid doors she had at home (one time she'd gotten her tail pinched in one. That had hurt a lot!), and weren't made to handle something that big trying to break through them. If the human didn't hurry up…

Lemon readied her bark, but she wasn't sure that was going to be enough on its own. The other dog was a lot sturdier than the swamp hag had been. Just to be safe, she also prepared herself to jump. Her feather charm would help her land safely, and if she did it right, she could pounce on the dog just like how Midnight sometimes pounced on her. It could be very difficult to remove something clinging to her back, and she had to figure if it worked on her, it would work on the bad dog.

The wood gave one last tortured groan before it snapped. The dog landed on all fours, half in the house and half out, and the human bellowed as he charged, his foot steps slamming against the floor. And the bats went berserk.