Chapter Three

Frost Moonscale, the draconic ancestor of The Hemlock Wolf Pack and the Moonscale Dragons

I’d done a lot for the wolf who held my heart after all these years, and I’d do more in the years to come. He’d made sacrifices for me and our family too, but dragging Terrick Lost Fang out of his burning car left a bad taste in my mouth and it wasn’t just the ash. Dragons were used to fire and the elements. I’d seen plenty of guys like him before. Life hurt them and they grew up like a rotating hybrid between a cactus and a porcupine. They shot off barbs and thorns without even knowing it sometimes. Even with the magic ahead of me, I was pretty sure some of those sharp bits would land in Scott and I loathed the idea of him bringing more pain to the little baker. Still, Juda had been right before. He was fertile hope where I saw landfills and even flowers grew from shit.

“You’re a fucking heavy blood sucking elf, aren’t you?” I huffed, pulling him off the shoulder of the road and over the guardrail.

Elves were always heavy. Their magic had once fought dragons on the daily. An unconscious elf might as well be a wild dragon refusing to budge up off your roof. Still I dragged him along until the trees hid us from any passing vehicles. This stretch of highway was dry both of rain and usually of cars, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Any time Juda and I were spotted on Earthside rumors flew wild for years and new flurries of voices flooded in, giving my mate headaches.

Pit hounds weren’t a natural thing. Most folks could never become pit hounds because usually they needed to be in the ‘Pit’ first. Most folks weren’t that bad. Most folks figured out their own bullshit and left me alone. Still, if someone already had an inner beast, they couldn’t become a pit hound because there wasn’t anywhere to shove the runt.

Pit hounds occurred naturally in the wild. They were born in the same litters as the three headed dogs, but came with only one. While the three headed pups would never agree to merge with a person – usually because they had too many brains with too many opposing thoughts, the single headed pups were usually up for the challenge. When things worked out, the pit hound and person were bound for this life and all the lives to come after. When it didn’t work – the person went to the Pit and the pit hound returned home to his pack.

I whistled and the big black dog with glowing icy eyes scampered out of the bushes I told him to wait in. He only had one head, but it was massive, and his muzzle alone was as long as my forearm. This particular good boy had three tails that all wagged in tandem as he circled around the unconscious Terrick Lost Fang.

“What do you think? Is he worth it, boy?” I asked, scratching him behind one of his massive ears.

The pit hound didn’t answer me. He knew what we were here to do, but they were quiet guys and gals for the most part. He barked once and pounced on Terrick’s sleeping chest. He pounced two more times before the pit of his soul cracked wide open and allowed him to sink into the crevice left behind. That would be one helluva wound to heal in the Pit, but if he managed to find himself before the next full moon it would heal up right around the ‘good boy’ now living inside him.

Terrick’s life had been hard, but a hard life didn’t give anyone the right to become a monster. That was something Grady Moore and I still talked in circles. I talked a lot of things in circles with all the folks in my Pit. We all have pain, but we’re all emotional alchemists. Either we turn that pain into something kind, beautiful, or useful or we become those who tore us apart.

I wasn’t about to dump Terrick into Scott’s lap, but I did leave him just outside the Other World gateway in Heartville. He could sniff off his counterpart. Even if his vampyric sense failed him, the pit hound’s nose would always lead him homeward.