“So, what’s the plan? Do you keep me alive until he finds me?”

Was this killing machine what would have shown up on Halloween if I’d dialed IYD then? I couldn’t see it being any use against the LM and the Fae Princes, but if I’d summoned it during the riots, or even shortly after instead of holing up in the church, it certainly could have cleared my path and led me somewhere safe, where the LM might never have found me.

I examined it. It stared back through matted, bloodied hair. Rage blazed in its gaze, and something wilder, more frightening. It took me a moment to realize it was madness. The thing was one link in a chain away from total insanity.

It had to be IYD. There was no other explanation for it. How had Barrons captured the thing? How did he make it obey him? How had he kept it from killing him? By mystical means? As usual where Barrons was concerned, I had nothing but questions and no answers. When I was finally back in my own world, he wasn’t getting out of answering some. I knew what he kept beneath his garage now, and I wanted to know more.

As I studied its savage face, the eyes deep with psychotic rage, its powerful body built for killing, I realized I was no longer afraid of it. I knew in my bones the thing was not going to kill me. It was going to slaughter and decimate every living thing around me, and piss, and probably collect anything of mine I was careless enough to let get away from me. It might even want to kill me, but it wouldn’t, because it was IYD and its sole purpose was to make sure I didn’t die.

I felt like half the weight of the world had just slid from my shoulders. I could do this. I had a weapon I hadn’t known about: a guardian demon. It occurred to me that I didn’t even need to retrieve my stones. Barrons could get them when he showed up. There went another quarter of the world off my back.

I got on with my search for food. The monster trailed me most of the time. Occasionally something rustled in the distance, and it would tear off through the trees. I began to hold my ears when that happened. I love animals and hated that it was killing everything. I wished Barrons could have taught it to discriminate.

I found berries in the undergrowth and nuts on low-hanging branches in a grove of slender silvery-barked trees. After I gorged, I gathered them, tying as many of the sweet nuts into my hobo pouch as I could. In a gentle brook, I found fish eggs. A big yuck, but protein nonetheless.

Mid-morning, the monster herded me back toward the river, then began snarling and snapping at me, driving me upstream. I figured it had some Barrons-esque agenda.

It “herded” me for several hours. The terrain changed drastically. The forest thickened, the riverbank fell away, and by the time the monster finally let me stop, I was high on top of a sheer rocky cliff that dropped sharply, well over a hundred feet, to white-capped rapids below. The river no longer tumbled; it roared and crashed, filling the gorge with soft thunder.

I stretched out in a sunny patch on the bank and ate half of my last protein bar. I considered getting up and trying to explore, but I wasn’t sure the monster would permit it.

It sniffed the ground around me for a moment, then stalked downstream and sprawled sleek and deadly on the ground. I guessed it was tired from so much killing.

Feeling a little desperate for the sound of a voice, I talked to it. I told it stories about growing up in the South. I told it about all the fine plans I’d had for my life.

I told it how everything had gone so damned wrong and I’d begun losing one thing after another. I told it about the hell of losing my mind and will to the Unseelie Princes and about Barrons bringing me back. I even told it about my recent trip home to Ashford with V’lane, and what I’d learned there, and that I’d begun to fear there might actually be something wrong with me. I told it things I would never have told a sentient being, baring my deepest feelings and worries. It was cathartic to get it all off my chest, even to a dumb beast.

I dozed, too, and woke about a half hour before the sun plummeted to the horizon, cloaking the forest in night.

The monster rose on all fours, stalked over, urinated around me, and melted into the blackness, black on black, with crimson eyes.

I’d been “tucked in” for the night.

I woke several times, startled by one sound or another. Once I ascertained that nothing was lurking beyond my circle, I fell back asleep again.

Near dawn, I was awakened by a storm in the distance, moving closer.

A hundred feet below me, the river swelled to a deafening crescendo of rapids crashing against the sheer walls of the rocky gorge.

The sky crackled with lightning. Thunder rolled, and I braced myself for a drenching, but the storm stayed on the opposite side of the river and passed me by.