Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

“I have no idea,” Remy answered as he watched Jackie, her face wearing an expression of supreme unease. She was staring at a point somewhere behind him, at something that seemed to have frozen her in place. Remy started to turn, as the lights began to flicker, a sound like an angry hive of bees filling the room.

The barn then went completely dark and somebody cried out, the dogs all reacting in a cacophony of high-pitched yips and booming barks.

The lights momentarily returned, before they started to flicker again, and Remy saw that Jackie was gone, her clipboard lying abandoned on the floor, the door at the back of the barn swinging in the evening breeze.

The room was in chaos with dogs barking crazily, straining at their leashes, as their owners struggled to maintain control. The owners could feel it too: the presence of something unnatural. Remy watched as a few of them dragged their dogs toward the exit, and he started across the room to the swinging back door. Then he noticed that Marlowe was still by his side and he stopped.

“I want you to stay here,” he told the dog, kneeling at eye level.

“Help you,” Marlowe said eagerly. “Find scary Jackie.”

“No, I need you to be a good dog and stay here,” Remy replied firmly.

“Good dog?” Marlowe asked with a tilt of his head.

“Yes, a good dog will stay here and do as he’s told.”

He saw that Marlowe was about to argue, but then the dog sat down just inside the door.

“Good boy,” Remy said, darting out into the night. “I’ll be back.”

The cold nighttime air felt charged, but it was the frenzied barking of multiple dogs in the distance that told Remy where to go.

He moved across the back lot, past an obstacle course of some kind, and toward a larger, single-story structure that was the kennel. The closer he got, the louder and more frantic the dogs became. Remy listened to the barks, hearing the panicked message in their cries. They all had one thing in common: they were all concerned for Jackie’s safety.

He reached the back of the kennel, and saw the open door. That strange sensation still clung to the air, and he followed its trail into the building, senses on full alert.

It was even louder inside, the dogs frantically carrying on in response to what was playing out before them. Remy came around a section of cages, catching a glimpse of the woman in the blue sweat suit with the jet-black dye job, standing over the unconscious form of Jackie Kinney.

He stepped into the aisle and caught the woman’s attention. A look of surprise passed across her features, before she looked back to the unconscious woman on the floor.

“Huh,” she said, eyes fixed to Jackie Kinney. “Petey was right, it was you.”

Remy cautiously moved closer.

The older woman looked at him from the corner of her eye. “He said that we had to do this now, or we wouldn’t get the chance . . . that you were here to stop us.”

He stopped moving, watching as her lipstick-covered lips twisted in a crazy smile.

“Did you see the look on her face when I said our names?” the old woman asked Remy. “Patricia Ventura and Petey.” She returned her intense stare to Jackie, still lying motionless upon the ground. “It was like she’d seen a ghost.”

Strangely, the dogs in the kennel stopped barking. Remy could feel their eyes upon him, as they stared out through the mesh of their cages.

“Are you Patricia Ventura?” he asked her.

She nodded. “I am.”

Something moved in the shadows by the floor, and Remy watched as the tiny black dog approached Jackie’s body, its small shape suddenly shifting and blending, seeming to absorb the shadows around it, transforming into something monstrous that reached down with a black, clawed hand to the unconscious dog trainer, hauling her up from the floor.

“And this is Petey,” Patricia said.

Remy lunged toward the creature that seemed to be composed entirely of shadow. As much as he hated to do it, he tapped into the nature that resided deep within, drawing upon the power of Heaven at the core of his being, coaxing the Seraphim forward to help him deal with the fearsome threat he was about to confront.

Through a warrior’s eyes, Remy watched as the creature called Petey reacted, its movements quicksilver fast. Jackie’s body was cast aside, and Petey came at him, immersing him in the darkness of its mass.

The black of the beast seeped through his clothes, and into his flesh, permeating his very soul, and Remy felt an anger— a rage —that threatened to overwhelm him, and to unleash the full fury of the angelic essence that was held in check within the human guise that he wore.

An angelic essence that, if roused to anger, could burn the world to a cinder.

Marlowe was a good dog, he really was, but still he stood at the open door, tempted to go farther. The Labrador lifted his snout and sniffed at the air. His Remy was there on the wind, but there was something else as well.

Something that made the hackles of black fur around his thick neck stand on end, something that could only mean that his Remy might need him.

Marlowe started to go forward, but heard his master’s words again warning him to stay where he was. If he was a good dog he would do what his Remy asked of him.

He hesitated momentarily, not wanting to be bad, but could not help himself.

Remy had dropped to his knees, arms wrapped tightly around himself as he tried to keep the destructive potential of his angelic nature inside.

It was so angry right now; it wanted to come out. . . . It wanted to come out and burn the world and everybody on it. And then it wanted to move on to Heaven.

“I call it Petey,” the old woman said. She was wringing her hands, old eyes fixed to the living shadow as it expanded and contracted in the air beside her. “But I know it isn’t really him.”

Jackie Kinney was starting to come around, her moans just a precursor to the horrors to come, Remy was sure. He had to get control of himself, to push the power of the Seraphim back down deep inside himself where it couldn’t do any harm before he could help her.

But it was just so damned angry.

“I think it was the grief that called it,” Patricia began to explain. “My grandfather from the old country called it the Bad Hour . . . some kind of spirit or demon or whatever, that came when the anger . . . when the grief was just too strong to control.”

Through burning eyes Remy watched the living shadow churn and shift its form to that of the little black dog again, before transforming back to its more monstrous shape. It then surged down to the woman moaning on the ground and snatched her up, holding her body aloft in the grip of shadow.

The kennel dogs had started to react again, snarling and baring their teeth through the screened doors of their kennels. It was apparent that they too had been touched by the anger exuded by the black beast . . . the thing called the Bad Hour.

“It was her that did it,” Patricia accused, eyes fixed to Jackie hanging in the air in front of her. “She was responsible for all of this.”

The living shadow let out a fearsome growl, shaking the dog trainer’s body like a rag doll. Jackie moaned in both pain and mortal terror.

“How?” Remy managed, still fighting to keep his more volatile nature in check. He needed to know what this was all about. Maybe in knowing he would find a way to defeat the beast, as well as the anger that crippled him.

“I trusted her,” Patricia said with a quiver of rage in her voice. “I trusted her with my Petey and she killed him.”

The old woman was crying now, and the shadow thing—this Bad Hour—extended a tendril of darkness to her, tenderly stroking her face, as if savoring her tears and sadness.