"Before Dawn"

Chapter 18: Mortifer

The first spread of rock-salt slam into Mortifer's chest and slows him down—but only for a moment. He is unhurt, unfazed. The hellhound lets loose with a series of menacing barks, and they sound like metal chairs being dragged across concrete.

Mortifer lunges at Dawn again.

Dawn fires another round, backpedaling while blasting away—like she'd been trained to do. The rock-salt spread hits the hellhound in the chest again, and still he's not injured or threatened in the least. He looks as though he's the situation comical. Dawn is prepared for this. She already knew that hellhounds don't fall so easily and it that it's going to take more than a few hits with rock-salt to kill it let alone wound it. She has to blast away Mortifer until he weakens, blast away at it with the shotty, her .22, and worst-case-scenario, whack away at him with her blades.

She fires another round and nails Mortifer right in his huge cranium this time. The hellhound no longer looks so amused.

Dawn fires her fourth round and the fifth and final shell in succession, again nailing the hellhound in his head.

Mortifer falters and takes a few disorientated paces backwards. He's hurt! He shakes his head to clear the cobwebs.

Dawn—with her eyes and barrel still pointed at the target—reaches into her cargo pocket for five more shells. She reloads the Shockwave with precision. She's ready to blast the hellhound again and is surprised when Mortifer leaps to his left. In a frenzied panic, she fires off three shells in succession. The spread barely hits her moving target who has broken into a fire-pawed run and increasing the distance from her.

He's on the run!

She goes after him, not able to cover as much ground as quickly as she'd like because of the dark ground—plus he's got four legs to her two.

Mortifer is bolting between gravestones, through weeping-willow branches, and in-and-out of the shadows. Dawn is able to maintain a visual on his black form, thanks to the fire around his paws giving away his position. She can see him just fine, but she can't get close enough to him to blast him with more rock salt.

Then she has a tactical strategy.

Calm down and stop following the damn thing...flank him!

Dawn manages to calm herself down so she could think straight on how to go about cutting Mortifer off. She understands that her prey is son the run, and that all she needs to do now is be patient, calm, unseen, and stealthy—like a predator. Dawn conceals herself in the shadows behind a large gravestone. She peeks from the side of it, and sees the slits of Mortifer's white eyes scanning for her but he has no luck. He takes off, and so does she. Dawn moves from gravestone to gravestone, weeping-willow to the sides of the various tombs, stealthily and undetected. She moves in on Mortifer, amazed at how simple this task is turning out to be. Finally, she flanks the unknowing hellhound and lets the Shockwave go to work. Rock salt slams into gravestones, probably waking the dead that lay beneath them.

And he's already bounding away from Dawn, around and over gravestones, taking her on another wild goose chase. Dawn is determined, though, and she reloads the shotty. Again, she flanks the pesky hellhound, again she fires away, and again, rock salt shells are expended, wasted.

Baaaastard!

Dawn utilizes the exact same tactics, determined to get the job done. Mortifer is moving, and she's flanking, flanking, flanking him. This time, she manages to get danger-close—about twenty feet or so away—without being seen, kneeling over a gravestone with the barrel of the Shockwave aimed at him. Her father and Cat—and even Martha—will be proud as hell of her once this is over. No way she'd miss any of her shots from this range. Suddenly, the hellhound stops, turns, and faces her direction. No. He's looking right at her.

"Only seven left," Mortifer growled.

Dawn had to think about it. Then she figures it out. Only seven shells remaining. But how does he know?

"Rock salt...a threatening offense to my kind. I smelled all twenty of them when I first laid eyes on you...I smelled your sweat when I first laid eyes on you, as I do now...I smelled your blood when I first laid eyes on you, as I do now...and I smelled your fear, as I do now," Mortifer said.

He's right. Dawn is scared shitless now. Much like the expression, it's always darkest before the dawn, she never quite got what being scared shitless was all about. She definitely does now. She feels as though she's acutely constipated, or rather she has no intestines, no digestive system whatsoever.

"Only seven remaining. Not enough to destroy the likes of me, girl."

Dawn—as always—is ballsy, afraid or not. "You're still dead, little doggie," she said.

"Perhaps, had you not utterly wasted the first thirteen shells in following me as I had planned, right into my trap. How stupid you are," Mortifer said.

Dawn blinks in gullible disbelief. She replays the events of running him down and flanking him in her head. It had been easy, too easy. Mortifer had outsmarted and outmaneuvered her, had her blindly following after him, blasting away and wasting her ammunition. In anger and embarrassment—and using the element of surprise to her advantage—she fires the five rounds of rock salt at the hellhound. He takes them all, and is still standing.

A guttural sound rumbles low at first, and then rises from deep within Mortifer's chest. He's looks—angry. "Little, girl," he said. His eyes glow bright white, his flaming paws flare up—whoosh—as if they'd been doused with gasoline. She feels the heat from his body, and the smell of burning leaves nearly makes her gag.

Dawn tries to load the final two shells into the Shockwave, already knowing that she has no time or distance to do so, and that they wouldn't even kill him anyway. Still, she has to try. The shotty is ripped away from Dawn's grasp by Mortifer's mouth before she can get even one of the shells loaded. She stumbles backward and regains her footing in enough time to see Mortifer's muzzle clamp down on the shotgun. He splits it in half and spits the two pieces to the ground.

The Shockwave is dead, will never fire another shell ever again. It has lost its life in the Yorktown Cemetery in the line of duty—and Dawn concludes that she may be next. Her hand goes to the flare gun's pistol-grip. All she needs to do is fire the flare gun, and her father and Cat will come to the rescue and bail her out again. She'll live to fight another day, and be ridiculed and deemed an unworthy hunter until the day comes to once again try and prove herself.

No. No, no, no! Not again!

"I think I'll tarry with you for a while before I taste your flesh, girl," Mortifer said, his ears pinned to the sides of his head. He prances—prances!—toward her. "Your death will be slow and painful!"

Dawn unstraps the .22 from her ankle and rips all of her shots at the advancing hellhound. The bullets do nothing. Absolutely nothing, to dissuade Mortifer. Her charges her now, and she dives to the right to avoid the hellhound. She hits the ground, drops her .22 by design and rolls to her feet, her hands on the hilts of her wakizashis to release them from their scabbards. It's too late. A fiery paw slams into her chest—hard—and sends her flying. She hits the ground, feeling as though she's going to pass out. Her night vision is totally screwed up from the flash of fire from the hellhound's paw when he struck her. Her eyes water, hampering her night-vision even more. She knows Mortifer will be on her again—to tarry with her a while. He's coming for her, taking his time. Dawn's chest is throbbing. She smells the slight singe wafting from her shirt—thank goodness for ""No Burn""—and she can't seem to clear her eyes. She's unable to gauge from which direction Mortifer is coming because her ears are ringing like hell. The distinct rising heat from his body tells her that he's getting closer...and closer...and closer...