Christopher Moore - A Dirty Job

He figured the hounds must weigh four or five hundred pounds apiece. They were easily twice the size of the biggest dog he’d seen before, a Newfoundland that he’d seen swimming in the Aquatic Park down by the Maritime museum. They had the short fur of a Doberman, the broad shoulders and chest of a rottweiler, but the wide square head and upturned ears of a Great Dane. They were so black that they appeared to actually absorb light, and Charlie had only ever seen one type of creature that did that: the ravens from the Underworld. It was clear that wherever these hounds had come from, it wasn’t from around here. But it was also clear that they were not here to hurt Sophie. She wouldn’t even make a good meal for animals this size, and they certainly could have snapped her in two long before now if they’d meant her harm.

The damage in Sophie’s room the night before might have been caused by the hounds, but they had not been the aggressors. Something had come here to hurt her, and they had protected her, even as they were now. Charlie didn’t care why, he was just grateful that they were on his side. Where they’d been when he first rushed into the room after the window broke, he didn’t know, but it appeared that now that they were here, they were not going to go away.

“Okay, I’m not going to hurt her,” Charlie said. The dog relaxed and backed off a few steps. “She’s going to need to go potty,” Charlie said, feeling a little stupid. He just noticed that they were both wearing wide silver collars, which, strangely, disturbed him more than their size. After the stretching it had gotten over the last year and a half, his Beta Male imagination fit easily around two giant hounds showing up in his little girl’s bedroom, but the idea that someone had put collars on them was throwing him.

There was a knock at the front door and Charlie backed out of the room. “Honey, Daddy will be right back.”

Charlie opened the door and Lily breezed by. “Jane said you have two huge black dogs up here. I need to see.”

“Lily, wait,” Charlie called, but she was across the living room and into Sophie’s room before he could stop her. There was a low growl and she came backing out.

“Oh my fucking God, dude,” she said around a huge grin. “They are so cool. Where did you get them?”

“I didn’t get them anywhere. They were just here.”

Charlie joined Lily just outside the door to Sophie’s room. She turned and grabbed his arm. “Are they, like, instruments of your death dealing or something?”

“Lily, I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t talk about that.”

And they had. In fact, Lily had been great about it. Since she’d first found out about him being a Death Merchant, she’d hardly brought it up at all. She’d also gone on to graduate from high school without getting a major criminal record and enroll in the Culinary Institute, the upside of which was that she actually wore her white chef ’s coat, checked pants, and rubber clogs to work, which tended to soften her makeup and hair, which remained severe, dark, and a little scary.

Sophie giggled and rolled over against one of the hounds. They had been licking her and she was covered with hellish dog spit. Her hair was plastered into a dozen unlikely spikes, making her appear a little like a wide-eyed Animé character.

Sophie saw Lily in the doorway and waved. “Goggie, ’Ily. Goggie,” she said.

“Hi, Sophie. Yes, those are nice doggies,” Lily said, then to Charlie: “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know what to do. They won’t let me near her.”

“That’s good, then. They’re here to protect her.”

Charlie nodded. “I think they are. Something happened last night. You know how the Great Big Book talks about the others ? I think one of them came after her last night, and these guys showed up.”

“I’m impressed. I’d think you’d be more freaked out.”

Charlie didn’t want to tell her that he was worn out from freaking out the day before about his little girl killing an old man with the word kitty . Lily already knew too much, and it was obvious now that whatever lay below was dangerous. “I guess I should be, but they aren’t here to hurt her. I need to go check the library in Berkeley, see if there’s anything about them there. I need to get Sophie away from them.”

Lily laughed. “Yeah, that’s going to happen. Look, I have work and school today, but I’ll go do your research for you tomorrow. In the meantime you can try to make friends with them.”

“I don’t want to make friends with them.”

Lily looked at the hounds, one of whom Sophie was pounding on with her little fists as she laughed gleefully, then looked back at Charlie. “Yes, you do.”

“Yeah, I guess I do,” Charlie said. “Have you ever seen a dog that size before?”

“There are no dogs that size.”

“What do you call those, then?”

“Those aren’t dogs, Asher, those are hellhounds.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know that because before I started learning about herbs and reductions and stuff, I spent my free time reading about the dark side, and those guys come up from time to time.”

“If we know that, then what are you going to do research on?”

“I’m going to try to find out what sent them.” She patted his shoulder. “I have to go open the shop. You go make nice with the goggies.”

“What do I feed them?”

“Purina Hellhound Chow.”

“They make that?”

“What do you think?”

“’Kay,” Charlie said.

It took a couple of hours, but after Sophie started smelling like diaper surprise, one of the giant dogs nosed her toward Charlie as if to say, Clean her up and bring her back . Charlie could feel them watching him as he changed his daughter, grateful that disposable diapers didn’t require pins. If he’d accidentally poked Sophie with a pin, he was sure one of the hellhounds would have bitten his head off. They watched him carefully as he moved her to the breakfast bar, and sat on either side of her high chair as he gave her breakfast.

As an experiment, he made an extra piece of toast and tossed it to one of the hounds. It snapped it out of the air and licked its chops once, eyes now locked on Charlie and the loaf of bread. So Charlie toasted four more slices and the hounds alternately snapped each out of the air so swiftly that Charlie wasn’t sure he didn’t see some sort of vapor from the pressure of their jaws clamping down.

“So, you’re hellish beasts from another dimension, and you like toast. Okay.”

Then, as Charlie started to toast four more slices, he stopped, feeling stupid. “You don’t really care if it’s toasted, do you?” He flipped a slice of bread to the closest of the dogs, who snapped it out of the air. “Okay, that will speed things up.” Charlie fed them the remainder of the loaf of bread. He spread a few slices with a thick coat of peanut butter, which did nothing whatsoever, then a half dozen more he spread with lemon dishwasher gel, which appeared to have no ill effect except that it made them burp neat, aquamarine-colored bubbles.

“Go walk, Daddy,” Sophie said.

“No walk today, sweetie. I think we’ll just stay right here in the apartment and try to figure out our new pals.”

Charlie got Sophie out of her chair, wiped the jelly off her face and out of her hair, then sat down with her on the couch to read to her from the Chronicle ’s classified ads, which was where he plied a large part of his business, other than the Death stuff. But no sooner had he settled into a rhythm than one of the hellhounds came over, took his arm in its mouth, and dragged him into his bedroom, even as he protested, swore, and smacked it in the head with a brass table lamp. The big dog let him go, then stood staring at Charlie’s date book like it had been sprayed with beef gravy.