CHAPTER 2
“HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.” THE TALL, THIN SPIRE OF a woman that was Patrice Lane, Biohazard’s in-house medmage, crossed her arms on her chest. She seemed even taller from where I sat, huddled on the slope under my cloak. The cold seeped through the fabric of my jeans and my butt had turned into a chunk of ice.
The telephone pole had become a mass of flesh-colored fur. Around it the entire parking lot was covered in my glyphs. I had used up all of Cash’s chalk.
The pole slowly rained skin-colored fuzz. The same crap spread in a circle around its base. The fire had died down to mere coals, and the fuzz had spilled over it in several places, pooling against the first ring of glyphs. I’d chopped off the wires going from the pole after completing the second circle of glyphs and threw them into the ward. The fuzz had swallowed them so completely, you’d never know they were there.
Medmages and medtechs swarmed the scene. Biohazard was technically part of PAD, but practically speaking, it had its own separate quarters and its own chain of command, and Patrice was pretty far up that chain.
Patrice raised her arm and I felt a faint pulse of magic. “I can’t feel a thing past the chalk,” she said, her breath escaping in a cloud of pale vapor.
“That’s the idea.”
“Smart-ass.” Patrice surveyed my handiwork and shook her head. “Look at it crawl. Persistent blight, isn’t he?”
That was why I’d made the second circle in case the first failed, and then it occurred to me that the telephone pole could take a dive. The wards of the first two circles extended only about eight feet up, and if the pole fell, the disease would land outside the barrier, so I drew the third ward circle. It had been a very wide circle, too, because the pole was painfully tall, about thirty feet. Four medtechs now walked along the outer circle’s perimeter, waving censers which trailed purifying smoke. I’d sunk everything I had into those wards. Right now a kitten could touch me with her paw and score a total knockout.
A young male medtech crouched by me and raised a small white flower in a pot to my lips. Five white petals streaked with thin green veins leading to a ring of fuzzy stalks, each tipped with a small yellow dot. A bog star. The tech whispered an incantation and said in a practiced cadence, “Take a deep breath and exhale.”
I blew on the flower. The petals remained snow-white. If I had been infected, the bog star would’ve turned brown and withered.
The tech checked the color of the petals against a paper card and chanted low under his breath. “One more time—deep breath and exhale.”
I obediently exhaled.
He took away the bog star. “Look into my eyes.”
I did. He peered deeply into my irises.
“Clear. You have beautiful eyes.”
“And she has a big, sharp sword.” Patrice snorted. “Be gone, creature.”
The medtech rose. “She’s clean,” he called in the direction of the tavern. “You can speak with her now.”
The dark-haired woman, who’d brought the chalk to me hours earlier, stepped out of the bar and carried a glass of whiskey. “I’m Maggie. Here.” She offered the glass to me. “Seagram’s Seven Crown.”
“Thank you, I don’t drink.”
“Since when?” Patrice raised her eyebrows.
Maggie held the whiskey to me. “You need it. We watched you crawl around on your hands and knees for hours. It must hurt and you’ve got to be frozen solid.”
The parking lot proved a bit rougher than anticipated. Crawling back and forth drawing glyphs had shredded my already worn-out jeans into nothing. I could see my skin through the holes in the fabric and it was bloody. Normally leaving traces of my blood at the scene would’ve sent me into panic. Once separated from the body, blood couldn’t be masked, and in my case, advertising the magic of my blood-line meant a death sentence. But I knew how tonight would end, and so I didn’t worry. What little blood I left on the asphalt would be obliterated very soon.
I took the whiskey and smiled at Maggie, which took some effort since my lips were frozen. “Did you finally get the phone working?”
She shook her head. “It’s still out.”
“How did you contact Biohazard?”
Maggie pursed her narrow lips. “We didn’t.”
I turned to Patrice. The medmage frowned at the circle. “Pat, how did you know to come here?”
“An anonymous tipster called it in,” she murmured, her eyes fixed on the pole. “Something is happening . . .”
With a loud crack, the utility pole snapped. The dark-haired woman gasped. The techs dashed back, waving their censers.
The pole spun in place, fuzz swirling around its top, teetered, and plunged. It smashed against the invisible wall of the first two ward circles, toppled over it, and slid down, dumping the flesh-colored shit onto the asphalt. The pole top rammed the third line of glyphs. Magic boomed through my skull. A cloud of fuzz exploded against the ward in an ugly burst and fluttered down harmlessly to settle at the chalk line as the pole rolled to a stop.
Patrice let out a breath.
“I made the third circle twelve feet high,” I told her. “It isn’t going anywhere, even if it really wants to.”
“That does it.” Patrice rolled up her sleeves. “Did you put anything into those wards that might fry me if I cross them?”
“Nope. It’s just a simple containment ward. Feel free to waltz right in.”
“Good.” She strode down the slope to the glyphs, waving her hand at the tech team fussing with some equipment on the side. “Never mind. It’s too aggressive. We’ll do a live probe, it’s faster.”
She tossed back her blond hair and stepped into the circle. The chalk glyphs ignited with a faint blue glow. The ward masked her magic, and I could feel nothing past it, but whatever Patrice was working up had to be heavy-duty.
The fuzz shivered. Thin tendrils stretched toward Patrice.
I wondered who’d called Biohazard. Somebody called. Maybe it was just a good Samaritan passing by.
And maybe I would sprout wings and fly.
Maggie leaned over to me. “How can she enter but the disease can’t leave?”
“Because of the way I made the ward. Wards both keep things in and keep them out. It’s basically a barrier and you can rig it several ways. This one has a high magic threshold. The disease that killed Joshua is very potent. It’s heavily saturated with magic, so it can’t cross. Patrice is a human, which makes her less magical by definition, and so she can go back and forth as she pleases.”
“So couldn’t we just wait it out until the magic wave falls and the disease dies?”
“Nobody knows what will happen to the disease once the magic falls. It might die or it might mutate and turn into a plague. Don’t worry. Patrice will nuke it.”
In the circle, Patrice raised her hands. “It is I, Patrice, who commands you, it is I who demands obedience. Show yourself to me!”
A dark shadow rolled over the fleshy fur, spreading into a mottled patina over the pole and the remnants of the body. Patrice stepped back out of the circle. The techs swarmed her with smoke and flowers.
“Syphilis,” I heard her say. “Lots and lots of magically delicious syphilis. It’s alive and hungry. We’re going to need napalm.”
Maggie glanced at the still untouched whiskey in my glass. I raised it to my lips and took a sip to make her happy. Fire rolled down my throat. A few seconds later, I could feel my fingertips again. Woo, back in business.
“Did they clear all of you?” I asked.
She nodded. “Nobody was infected. A few guys had broken bones, but that’s all. They let everyone go.”
Thank the Universe for small favors.
Maggie shuddered. “I don’t understand. Why us? What did we ever do to anybody?”
She was looking for comfort in the wrong place. I was numb and exhausted, and the stone in my chest hurt.
Maggie shook her head. Her shoulders hunched.
“Sometimes there is no reason,” I said. “Just a bad roll of the dice.”
Her face was drained of all expression. I knew what she was thinking: broken furniture, busted wall, and a bad reputation. The Steel Horse would forever be known as the joint where the plague almost started.
“Look over there.”
She glanced in the direction of my nod. Inside the bar, Cash pulled apart a broken table.
“You’re alive. He’s alive. You’re together. Everything else can be fixed. It can always be worse. Much, much worse.” Trust me on this.
“You’re right.”
For a while we sat in silence and then Maggie took a deep breath as if she was going to say something and clamped her mouth shut.
“What is it?”
“The thing in the cellar,” she said.
“Ah.” I pushed upright. I’d rested enough. “Let’s go take care of that.”
We went in through the hole in the wall. The techs had evaluated and released most of the patrons, who were only too happy to clear off. The tavern lay virtually empty. Most of the furniture hadn’t survived the brawl. An icy draft swept through the open doors and windows to blow out of the ruined wall. Despite the unplanned but vigorous ventilation, the place stank of vomit.
Cash leaned against the bar. Long shadows lined his haggard face. He looked worn out, like he’d aged a year overnight. Maggie paused by him. He took her hand into his. It must’ve twisted them into knots to sit there for hours, watching each other’s faces for the first signs of infection.
They were killing me. If I could’ve gotten a hold of Curran right now, I would have punched him in the face for making me think I could have that and then taking it away from me.
At the door, two Biohazard techs packed away an m-scanner. The m-scanner registered residual magic at the scene and spat it out in various colors: purple for vampire, blue for human, green for shapeshifter. It was imprecise and finicky, but it was the best tool for magic analysis we had. I stopped by the team and flashed my Order ID. “Anything?”
The female tech offered me a stack of printouts. “Patrice said for you to have a copy.”
“Thanks.” I flipped through them. Every single one showed a bright blue slice streaking across the paper like a lightning bolt, cutting across pale traces of green. The green were the shapeshifters, and judging by the watered-down color of the signatures, they had taken off at the beginning of the fight, leaving behind only weak residual magic. Not surprising. The Pack had a strict policy regarding unlawful behavior, and nothing good ever came from a drunken brawl in a border bar.
I studied the blue. Human mundane, basic human magic. Mages registered blue, healers, empaths . . . I registered blue. Unless you had a really good scanner.
“Maggie, how many people would you say were here when this happened?”
She shrugged at the bar. “About fifty.”
Fifty. But only one human magic signature.
I glanced at Cash. “I need to talk to your people.”
He headed behind the bar to a narrow stairway leading down. I followed. At the bottom of the stairway Vik and the bigger bouncer guarded the door secured by a large deadbolt.
I sat at the top of the stairs. “My name’s Kate.”
“Vik.”
“Toby.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I know it had to be hell to keep everyone put for this long and I appreciate how you’ve handled it.”
“We had a good crowd tonight,” Cash said. “Most of them were regulars.”
“Yeah,” Vik said. “If we’d gotten a lot of out-of-towners, there would’ve been blood.”
“Can you tell me how it started?”
“Someone hit me with a chair,” Vik said. “That’s when I got into it.”
“A man came into the bar,” Toby said.
“What did he look like?”
“Tall. Big guy.”
Tall was a given. I’d gotten a good look at Joshua’s body while I was crawling around the parking lot. Joshua had been five-ten and his feet were about six inches off the ground. Whoever nailed him to that pole probably held him at his own eye level, which made our guy close to six and a half feet tall.
Cash disappeared for a minute and returned with five glasses. More whiskey.
“What did the big guy wear?”
The three men and Maggie knocked back their glasses. There was collective grimacing and clearing of throats. I sipped mine a bit. Like drinking fire spiced with crushed glass.
“A cloak,” Toby offered.
“Like this?” I fingered my own long plain dark gray affair. Most fighters wore cloaks. Used properly, the cloak could confuse the attacker by obscuring your movements. It could shield, smother, and kill. It doubled as a blanket in a pinch for the person or for the mule. Unfortunately it also made a dramatic fashion statement and was easy to make. Every two-bit bravo had one.
“His was one of those hooded cloaks, long and brown. And torn up at the bottom,” Toby said.
“Did you get a look at his face?”
Toby shook his head. “He kept the hood on the whole time. Didn’t see the face or the hair.”
Great. I was looking for the proverbial “guy in a cloak.” He was as elusive as the legendary “white truck” had been when cars still filled the roadways. All sorts of crazy driving accidents had been blamed on the mysterious white truck, just as all sorts of random crimes had been perpetrated by “some guy in a cloak” with his hood pulled over his face.
Toby cleared his throat again. “Like I said, I didn’t see his face. I saw his hands, though—they were dark. About this color.” He nodded at the whiskey in my glass. “He came in, stood at the bar, sized up the crowd for a while, and then came up next to Joshua. They said a few words.”
“Did you hear what he said?”
“I did,” Cash said. “He whispered. He said, ‘Do you want to be a god? I have room for two more.’ ”
Oh boy. “What did Joshua say?”
Cash’s eyes were mournful. “He said, ‘Hell yeah.’ And then the man punched him off his feet and the whole place went to hell.”
Hell yeah. Famous last words. Some guy sidles up to you in a bar and offers you godhood. And you say yes. Dumb. Over thirty years had passed since the Shift. By now every moron should know to watch their mouth and not accept bargains with random strangers, because when you said yes to magic, your word was binding, whether you meant it or not. A life wasted. All I could do now was to find the killer and punish him. Just once I would’ve liked to be there before this sort of shit happened so I could nip it in the bud.
“That’s when all the shapeshifters left,” Maggie said.
“That’s right.” Cash nodded. “They ran out of here like their tails were on fire.”
“These shapeshifters, do they come often?”
“Once a week for about a year now,” Cash said.
“They drink a lot?”
“One beer each,” Maggie said. “They don’t drink much, but they don’t cause any trouble either. They just sit by themselves in the corner and eat barrels of peanuts. We started charging them for it. They don’t seem to care. I think they all work together, because they come in at the same time.”
In times of trouble, shapeshifters snapped into an us-versus-them mentality. The world fractured into Pack and Not Pack. They would fight to the death for one of their own or to protect their territory. This was their hangout, their place. They should have waded into this fight, and in this case, the Pack Law would be on their side. Instead they took off. Odd. Maybe Curran had come up with some new order forbidding fights. No, that didn’t make sense either. They were shapeshifters, not nuns. If they didn’t blow their steam off once in a while, they’d self-destruct. Curran knew that better than anyone.
I filed this tidbit to puzzle over in the future. Right now the guy in the cloak was my primary concern.
Joshua was killed for a specific purpose. The guy had gone through a lot of trouble, starting a fight, busting walls, arranging Joshua to impersonate a human butterfly, and infecting him. It was unlikely he’d done it just for kicks, which meant he had some sort of a plan and he wouldn’t stop until he followed through with it. Nothing good could possibly come from a plan that involved turning a man into a syphilis incubator.
“We run a quiet tavern,” Maggie said. “Usually guys don’t want to fight here. They just want to get a drink, shoot some pool, and go home. If there is a fight brewing, they’ll talk shit for a while and wait for Toby and Vik to break them up. But this . . . I’ve never seen anything like this. That man threw one punch, and the whole crowd exploded. People were screaming and fighting, and growling like wild animals.”
I looked at Vik. “Did you fight?”
“I did.”
“And you?” I turned to Toby.
“Yeah.”
I glanced to Cash. He nodded. I could tell by their faces they weren’t proud of it. The bouncers were paid to keep a cool head, and Cash was the owner.
“Why did you fight?”
They stared at me.
“I was mad,” Vik offered. “Real mad.”
“Angry,” Toby said.
“Why?”
“Hell if I know.” Vik shrugged.
Interesting. “How long did the fight last?”
“Forever,” Toby said.
“About ten minutes,” Maggie answered.
That’s a long time for a fight. Most bar fights were over in a couple of minutes. “Did it get worse with time?”
She nodded.
“Did anybody see Joshua die?”
“It was all a blur,” Toby said. “I remember hitting somebody’s head against the wall and . . . I don’t even know why I did it. It’s like I couldn’t stop.”
“I saw it.” Maggie hugged herself. “The fight broke out.
Joshua was in the middle of it. He was a big man and he knew what he was doing. I was screaming for them to stop fighting. I was afraid they’d bust up the place. Nobody listened to me. Joshua was mowing people down with his fists and then that man grabbed him and they hit the wall. The man dragged Joshua to the pole, grabbed a crowbar, and stabbed. Joshua was wriggling on the crowbar like a fish. That bastard put his hand on Joshua’s face. A red light flashed and then he walked away. I saw Joshua’s eyes. He was gone.”
This just got better and better.
Maggie hugged herself. Cash put his hand on her shoulder. Neither said anything but I watched the haunted expression ease from Maggie’s face, as if she drew strength from him.
One day I’d find someone to lean on as well. It just wouldn’t be Curran. And I really had to stop thinking about him, because it hurt.
“Did you see any part of the man during the fight? Anything at all?”
Maggie shook her head. “Just the cloak.”
Biohazard’s techs would’ve taken statements before they let the brawlers go. I’d bet a chocolate bar nobody had gotten a look at the John Doe in the cloak.
A ten-minute fight, fifty eyewitnesses, and no description. That had to be some kind of record.
“Okay.” I sighed. “What about the critter in the cellar? What do we know about it?”
“Big,” Vik said. “Hairy. Big teeth.” He held his hands apart, demonstrating teeth with his fingers. “He was like the spawn of hell.”
“How did this spawn get into the cellar?”
The smaller bouncer shrugged. “I was trying to make my way to the bar, where the shotgun was, and then some asswipe hits me with a pool cue and I take a tumble down this stair and hit my head a bit. Once the room stops spinning, I try to get up and I see this huge thing coming down. Wicked fangs, eyes glowing. I’m thinking I was done for. It jumps right over me and into the cellar. I slam the door shut and that’s that.”
“Did anybody see this beast come in with the man who killed Joshua?”
Nobody said anything. I took it as a no.
“Did it try to get out?”
Both bouncers shook their head.
I rose to my feet and pulled Slayer from my back sheath. The opaque saber caught the blue light of feylanterns. A light mother-of-pearl shimmer ran along the blade. Everybody took a step back.
“Lock the door behind me,” I told them.
“What if you don’t come out?” Maggie asked.
“I’ll come out.” I unlatched the heavy wooden door, opened it, and ducked inside.
Darkness mugged me. I waited, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom.
The cellar lay quiet, steeped in shadows and the thick odor of hops and liquor. Dark curves of large beer kegs defined a narrow path. I moved forward, ready to dodge at any second. My back and knees hurt. The last thing I wanted was something big with teeth the size of Vik’s fingers jumping at me from above.
Nothing but moonlight, crawling through the narrow slit of a high window to my right.
A black shadow stirred against the far wall.
“Hi there.” I shifted my stance.
A low throaty whine answered me. A very plaintive whine, followed by heavy wet panting.
I took another step and paused. No flash of teeth. No glowing eyes.
My nose caught a whiff of fur. Interesting.
I put a bit of excitement in my voice. “Here, boy!”
The dark shadow whined.
“Who’s a good boy? Are you scared? I’m scared.”
A faint sound of a tail sweeping the floor echoed the panting.
I slapped my leg with my palm. “Come here, boy! Let’s be scared together. Come on!”
The shadow rose and trotted over to me. A wet tongue licked my hand. Apparently he was a friendly kind of demonic beast.
I reached into my belt and clicked a lighter. A shaggy canine muzzle greeted me, complete with big black nose and infinitely sad dog eyes. I reached over and slowly patted the dark fur. The dog panted and flopped on the side, exposing his stomach. Wicked fangs and glowing eyes, right. I sighed, flicked the lighter off, and went to rap my knuckles on the door. “It’s me, don’t shoot.”
“Okay,” Cash called out.
A metallic sound announced the deadbolt being slid open. I cracked the door slowly to find myself staring at the business end of the machete. “I’ve got the spawn of hell cornered,” I said. “Can you get me some rope?”
In ten seconds I had a length of chain in my hand thick enough to hold a bear in check. I felt the dog’s neck—no collar. Big surprise. I looped the chain and slid it around his head, and opened the door. The beast docilely followed me into the light.
It stood about thirty inches at the shoulder. Its fur was a mess of dark brown and tan, in a classic Doberman pattern, except his coat wasn’t sleek and shiny but rather a shaggy dense mass of rank curls. Some sort of mongrel, part Doberman, part sheepdog or something long-haired.
Vik turned the color of a ripe apple.
Cash stared at it. “It’s a damn mutt.”
I shrugged. “Probably got scared during the fight and just ran blindly through the bar. He seems friendly enough.”
The dog pressed against my legs, rubbing a small army of fetid bacteria into my jeans.
“We should kill it,” Vik said. “Who knows, it might turn into something nasty.”
I gave him my best version of a deranged stare. “The dog’s evidence. Don’t touch the dog.”
Vik decided he liked his teeth in his mouth and not on the floor and beat a strategic retreat. “Right.”
I’d kill a dog in self-defense. I’d done it and I felt bad about it afterward, but at the time there was no way around it. Killing a mutt who just licked my hand was beyond me. Besides, the dog was evidence. Ten to one, he was a local mongrel who had a panicked reaction to whatever magic John Doe in the cloak had been throwing around. Of course, he could also sprout tentacles in the night and try to murder me. Only time would tell. Until I’d watched him for a few days, the spawn of hell and I were joined at the hip. Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, considering he tried his best to singe away the lining of my nose with his stink.
I took the dog to the medtechs to get cleared of the plague—he passed with flying colors. They drew some blood for further analysis and advised me that he had fleas and smelled bad, just in case I’d failed to notice. Then I took paper and pen from Marigold’s saddlebag and sat down at one of the tables to write out my report.
In the parking lot the inside of my ward circle blazed with orange flames. Three guys in heat-retardant suits waved their arms, chanting the fire into a white-hot rage. I couldn’t even see the pole or Joshua’s body inside the inferno.
The magic crashed. It simply vanished from the world in a single blink. The inferno in the parking lot began to die down. The guys in flame-retardant suits switched to flamethrowers and went on burning.
Patrice came up. “Nice dog.”
“He’s evidence,” I told her.
“What’s his name?”
I looked at the mutt, who promptly licked my hand. “No clue.”
“You should name him Watson,” Patrice said. “Then you can tell him ‘Elementary, Watson,’ when you solve a case in a blaze of intellectual glory.”
Intellectual glory. Yeah, right. I waved my write-up at her. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Deal.”
I handed her my notes. “The perpetrator is male, olive complexion, approximately six feet six inches tall, wears a long, sweeping cloak with a tattered hem, and likes to keep his hood on.”
She grimaced. “Don’t tell me. A guy in a cloak did it.”
I nodded. “Looks that way. Other fun characteristics are preternaturally hardy constitution and superhuman strength. There were roughly fifty people in the bar, but the m-scanner registered only one magic signature, probably our murderer. Fifty violent guys and nobody used magic.”
“Sounds unlikely,” Patrice said.
“It was a big brutal brawl. Nobody can explain to me why they started fighting, but apparently they went from zero to sixty in three seconds. I think our dude in a cloak emanates something that hits people on a very basic level. Makes them really aggressive. It’s also possible that animals run away from him, but we only have one test subject.” I petted the demon dog. “Your turn.”
Patrice sighed. “He’s a Mary.”
I nodded. Marys, so named after Typhoid Mary, were disease vectors—individuals who either spread or induced disease.
“A very, very strong one,” Patrice said. “Our guy didn’t just infect—and we can’t say for sure that he did, since the victim could have been syphilitic prior to the fight—but he actually gave the disease life, making it more potent and almost self-aware. The last time I saw this was during a flare. It takes a great deal of power to make a disease into an entity.”
Godlike power, to be exact. Except that no gods were prowling Atlanta’s streets. They only came out to play during a flare, which occurred roughly every seven years, and we had just gotten over the latest one. Besides, if he’d been a god, the m-scan would’ve registered silver, not blue.
“We have to find him now.” Patrice’s face was grim. “He has pandemic potential. The man’s a catastrophe in progress.”
We both knew that the trail had gone cold. I’d missed the chance to go after him, because I was busy crawling around and trying to keep his handiwork from infecting the city. He would strike again and he would kill. It wasn’t a question of if, but a question of how many.
“I’ll put an alert out,” Patrice said.
Find a guy in a cloak without any eyewitness sketches and apprehend him before he contaminates the whole city. Piece of cake.
“Can you find out more about the Good Samaritan who called it in as well?” I asked.
“Why?”
“You’re Joe Blow. You walk by and see me crawl around the fuzzy pole drawing shit on the pavement. Are you going to figure out immediately that I’m trying to contain a virulent plague?”
Patrice pursed her lips. “Not likely.”
“Whoever called it in knew what I was doing and knew enough to call Biohazard, but didn’t stick around. I’d like to know why.”
Half an hour later, I dropped Marigold in the Order’s stables and surrendered the dust bunny to the assistant stable master, who also was in charge of collecting all living “evidence.” We had a slight disagreement as to the living status of the dust bunny, until I suggested that he let it out of the cage to settle the issue. They were still trying to catch it when I left.
I dragged the dog into my apartment and into my shower, where I waged chemical warfare on his fur. Unfortunately, he insisted on shaking himself every thirty seconds. I had to rinse him four times before the water ran clear, and by the end of it, a wet spray blanketed every inch of my bathroom walls, my drain was full of dog hair, and the beast smelled only marginally better. He’d managed to lick me in the face twice in gratitude. His tongue stank, too.
“I hate you,” I told him before giving him leftover bologna from the fridge. “You stink, you slobber, and you think I’m a nice person.”
The dog wolfed down the bologna and wagged his tail. He really was an odd-looking mutt. Once the diagnostics from Biohazard came back, if he was just a regular dog, I’d have to find him a nice home. Pets didn’t do well with me. I wasn’t even home enough to keep them from starving.
I checked my messages—nothing, as usual—took a shower, and crawled into bed. The dog flopped on the floor. The last thing I remembered before passing out was the sound of his tail sweeping the rug.
