Dog Boys by de Lint Charles

Author:de Lint, Charles [Charles, de Lint,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780920623169
Publisher: Triskell Press
Published: 2012-11-07T13:30:00+00:00

When I come to, I’m lying on my back on something soft. I’m so disoriented that I panic and lunge up off what turns out to be the couch in my own living room. I blink in the bright light at all the people moving around. It takes me a moment to realize that they’re trying to clean up the mess the bandas left.

“Hey,” a voice says.

I turn in Reuben’s direction.

You okay? he asks.

The voice is in my head now and it all comes back. The bandas attacking our house. Me turning into—what? Some kind of wolf or dog? Chewing on the gangbangers’ arms. The taste of their blood…

“Going…to be…sick…”

“Johnny?” Reuben says.

“On it.”

A tall Kikimi I don’t know hoists me to my feet and walks me fast down the hall to the bathroom. The bottoms of my feet hurt with every step, but I feel weirdly comforted by his arm around my shoulders. Like I’m safe.

I lose that stew Rita’s grandmother made for us.

I hear running water and Johnny hands me a wet facecloth. I clean my mouth. He leaves me to brush my teeth.

When I limp out of the bathroom, Rita’s leaning against the wall. She pushes away from it.

“I’m so sorry you got involved in all of this.” she says. “If I’d had any idea…”

I make a vague wave with my hand.

“I involved myself,” I say. “You couldn’t have known what would happen.”

“You’re taking it really well.”

I give her a weak smile. “Tell me that tomorrow, when it’s all had a chance to sink in.”

I start to hobble back to the living room. Rita steps up and puts her arm under mine and around my waist to help support me. I get a different kind of comfort from the press of her body against mine. I guess I’m projecting what I feel because Reuben looks up when I come in and grins knowingly.

I pretend to ignore him.

“My parents are going to kill me,” I say instead.

Reuben, Señora Young Deer and their friends have done a really good job cleaning things up, but there’s no ignoring the missing picture window, nor the broken coffee table that one of the bandas must have damaged in their mad effort to escape—me, I realize.

I sit down in the nearest chair. The weight of everything that’s happened is too much to carry, standing on my cut feet.

“So what am I now?” I ask the room in general.

Johnny and the other Indians all look to Reuben.

“One of us,” Reuben says. “A dog boy. Is that such a bad thing?”

“I don’t know. Am I going to pull a Hulk every time I get mad and turn into a dog?”

Everybody laughs, but Reuben answers me seriously.

“This isn’t some little favour you did for us,” he says. “It’s major. You saved my niece and my aunt. And you’ve become one of us. We’ll take care of you. We’ll teach you how to control the dog under your skin. Anything you need, we’re here to help.”

I give a slow nod.

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