Babs speaks up. “You can stay with me tonight.”
“Thanks, Babs.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What’s a hex dog? And you can move around at will?”
“We can move around if Babs or the guards say we can move around,” Connie answers. “And as for the hex dogs? You’ll find out.”
They go back to their chess game, and it’s clear that nobody’s going to tell me anything. I want to go wandering around, but nobody else is getting up, so I think I probably have to stay where I’ve been planted. I look around, though, and see Corwin on the very top level, leaning over the railing and looking down the shaft. I wave to him, and a man standing beside him, another inmate, glares down at me. He puts a hand on Corwin’s shoulder and pulls him away from the railing and into the cell.
One of the guards turns on the television, and the sound is loud. It echoes and bounces off the concrete walls so that the other inmates start shouting so they can be heard. The din completely conceals any noises from upstairs, and I wonder what’s happening to my boy.
I risk it. I stand up and head toward the stairs. A brunette with only one eye grabs my wrist and stops me.
“Leave ‘em be,” she advises. “It don’t do to stick your nose where it don’t belong.”
“He’s my…”
“Ain’t nobody your nothin’ now,” she says. She shakes her head. “You got a lot to learn, pumpkin, and you’d better start learnin’ it.”
I try to pull my wrist away, but she won’t let go, so I cast a spell with my other hand that gives her a hard shock. She releases me with a yelp, and all of the other witches move far away from me.
Fine with me.
I charge up the stairs to Corwin’s level, determined to help him. He’s special to me, and I don’t want some bastard touching what isn’t his. The racket from the TV almost drowns out the yelling from the guards, but I can hear them clattering up after me. I pick up the pace until I reach the cell that Corwin got pulled into.
I am unbelievably relieved to find that my boy is not being violated when I get there. The guy that grabbed him is jawing at him like there’s no tomorrow, though, and what I’m hearing sounds really unhinged. Corwin turns to me with a smile just as the guards make it up to our level and grab me. As they pull me away, I can hear my boy calling after me, but I don’t see his face.
I’m dragged down the stairs none too gently, going backward. It’s terrifying, because I’m positive I’ve going to get dumped on my head. The guards don’t drop me, though, and they drag me through the common area and out into the yard to the basement door.
Looks like I’m heading to solitary again.
They haul me into the basement and toss me into one of those stinking, bug-infested holes. This isn’t the one I was in before, and it smells like piss and rotting meat. I cough on the stench.
“Think you can do whatever you want?” one of the guards taunts. “Think again. You’ve used magic twice today. I’m glad you’re going to be down here where we don’t have to hear you screaming.”
I don’t know why, except that I might have lost it just a little, but I scream in his face. He winces and steps back from the sonic blast. I add a little magic to the sound and scream again, and he dives for the door, slamming it shut.
“Guess you heard it anyway, didn’t you, fucker?” I shout. He walks away, dabbing at the blood trickling out of his ear.
I cast to remove the stench and dry up the standing water, and then I do the only thing I can. I sit on the dirt floor and swat mosquitoes, planning all the terrible things I’m going to do someday to the Brotherhood and Jacob Harris.
I wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of an animal sniffing at the door to my holding cell. There’s no light here, but I can see the metal slab door opening. A patch of darkness that’s somehow deeper than the darkness around it slips into the cell with me, and it takes up the entire bottom half of the door. I hear a soft growl.
I have no idea what this thing is.
My instincts tell me to hold very, very still. I hope that it’s like one of those monsters that can only see you when you move. Unfortunately, the way it’s sniffing, I’m pretty certain it can smell me just fine and doesn’t need to see me to figure out where I am.
It approaches, and I realize that I’m looking at a huge black dog made of shadows. It opens eyes like glowing coals, red and shining, and huffs at me. It takes another step toward me, and the telltale smell of sulfur reveals its true nature.
This must be what they call a hex dog. I know it as a hellhound.
It comes closer, and it starts to wag its tail, but stiffly. One of its ears rises, pricked up to listen to me, but the other stays flopped against its head.
“Jiggy?” I ask.
My old friend starts wagging his tail more rapidly, and he trots forward. His hot breath sears my face, and I pull away from his muzzle. He’s just trying to be friendly, though, so I hug him around his massive neck. He pants in happiness and wags that broken tail even faster.
When he was just a pup, my master sent him to me to help me learn some of the finger points of witchery. Jiggy was rambunctious and stupid,
