The Hunting Beast, Part 1
by Martin H Slusser

JANISSARY PROJECT: Book XI
The Hunting Beast

With the setting of the sun true darkness closed in, and the night was his.

The shon:gili loped through a scabby line of black willows. He slowed, ducking off into an old warehouse. The river was close enough to smell the oily reek of dead fish and the methane stench of rotting sewerage.

February, the weather was damp with a hunt of rain. Miles away in the hills, the land yet lay in the icy grip of winter, the snows deep and life hardscrabble rough.

The deep, muttered rumble of growling hound came to the cupped ears. Then the dog whined, claws scratching through a black layer of dead leaves and decaying axle grease.

The nostrils on the shon:gili’s muzzle flared to take the scent. The dog was by no means fat. In this place, nothing was. Yet, neither was it hungry. It had a scent that clung to it of rich, cooked food, and of humans. The shadow of the animal was large and husky.

In the back of the shon:gili’s mind, Carl whispered, Rottweiller. Maybe a Leopard hound.

A scowl baring the shon:gili’s fangs, it sniffed again. Carl demanded the shon:gili leave, but the demon stilled it. Carl began screaming. The shon:gili winced. Something snapped in his head, and the voice of Carl was silent.

Claws ripped Carl away to a deep, black pit within the mind of the shon:gili. Heat breathed around him. Old memories and sorrows haunted this place. Voices of people he once knew, of love, of hatred, lived in this place. Above his head, light flashed. He leaped at it.

“Let me out. You shit, get me out of here.”

His mother’s mocking laughter grew louder. The memory of her hate flashed and burned.

Carl pounded his fists on the walls of the pit. He screamed and cursed. The light flashed again, drifting down and splitting into a pair of lights. To his horror, he was seeing a memory of what the shon:gili stared at with an unblinking gaze.

Beyond the dog was an upright patch of red. Someone was coming after the dog.

“Oh, God, no,” he said sinking to his knees.

The shon:gili inched forward. The dog was nosing along a trail and began to whine. It had the scent, then. The quiet sounds of carefully placed moccasins came over the surface of the leaves. Prey was close.

Starved from the effects of change, the shon:gili lay crouched between a leaking barrel of oil and a crumbling steel I-beam. The yellow eyes were round with warning, waiting, hungry for the death of the human. And the mocking voice Carl’s mother’s grew louder.

Huddled under a small pile of quilts and blankets, Benny lay beside Sue. He smiled at the soft, dreamy look her face held in sleep. On the dresser was a small brown bottle that, to Benny’s distaste, looked too much like the one Carl’s own mother, and later, Leda Melancowski, used to keep Carl under her control. She was still in pain. The contents weren’t quite the same. This one held a far more powerful drug and no cocaine.

Viva la coca. Benny shuddered.

One drop and Sue was in lala land. Carl was so jaded the entire contents of the other bottle only calmed him. The addition of boldo weed made him controllable. Combined with that and Leda’s orders, the coca made him eager after the women that paid hundreds in folding money for the big stud. Man, but they paid. Since the guy was only eleven, women paid for a chance at him.

And Anna drew him out of that. She gave him love and taught the giant to trust.

And Benny got the man killed.

Benny closed his eyes.

Memories of black, oily smoke drifting across Route 309 crowded into his mind. The stench of burning pork and melting plastic. The eager snap of flames. Old man Ryan ‘The Spider,’ trying to claim Benny while Carl’s remains writhed and withered in a shroud of burning fuel and flames.

With a low groan, he slid from the bed. Sue murmured, edging her slight body deeper into the warmth left by Benny.

Naked, he stood over the bed. One hand reached out to take the bottle. One drop and he would sleep. And dream. Nothing worked. Nothing would ever kill the dreams of the big man’s death. Shuddering with hate, Benny clutched the bottle.

His fist snapped up. Benny hesitated. Sue needed it. Instead of throwing the bottle through the scabby walls, he gently replaced it on the dresser.

One drop . . . Benny shivered but it wasn’t so much from the chill of an unheated room.

That way was too easy an answer. Every pimp and two-bit creep knew it, and now in one form or another, the world was deeply under the claws of the Party.

“Benny?”

At that sleepy murmur, he shot a look at the bed. Sue was smiling. Her eyes were heavy with sleep but tinged with worry.

“Sorry.” He made a slow, awkward gesture. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Silly. Had me a bad dream and now I’m cold.”

Benny eased back into the bed. Sue put her arms around him.

“Hold me?” she said.

His arms crept around her, and she giggled into his chest.

“I won’t break, honey. Hold me closer.”

He was sixteen, in bed with a world class foxy babe, and nothing was going to happen unless he had a bad accident. More or less keeping that part of him away from her, he held her closer, and she sighed, drifting away to sleep again.

Despite the pain he was in, Benny drifted off to sleep. He scowled and smelled death. A dog? Carl was attacking a dog. In the dreams, Benny’s eyes widened in a flash of panic. Shon:gili.

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