Mongrel [bxb] | Bad Moon Book III

Chapter 5: infection

For a week, Matt hardly said more than a word to Bailey. He helped heave an old leather couch up to the loft one late night, but for the most part, his father assigned the hound to distant parts of the farm where he wasn't much but a shadow in the sun. Occasionally, Matt saw him pruning the orchards or fixing the decaying boards in the pasture fence, but he was a passing thought. One that passed by more often than Matt would've liked.

For the past two nights, Matt had taken the fostering papers out from the crack beneath his nightstand and paced the kitchen, reading through the pale moonlight of the window. Bailey Walters was taken in at ten years old, fostered to a Jenny and Craig Compton. Socialites at their community church and owners of an antique shop in the city. Three months later, his placement was terminated. No rhyme or reason, just the big, red rubber-stamped words. TERMINATED.

He couldn't bring himself to look any further. Despite his curiosity, Matt was an honest guy. He felt bad snooping around, and a part of him wasn't sure he wanted to know Bailey at all. He was a stranger and sometimes strangers were just meant to be strangers.

"Instincts, princess," Raven would whisper to him on occasion. But when Matt asked what he meant, the ghost in his head was long gone. Sometimes he wondered if Raven was always in him. Some kinda subconscious bullshit that'd been awakened by the whole dyin' thing. He never seemed to have a lot to say about Bailey though, and that was what unnerved Matt the most.

Bailey was an anxiety that'd stuck him down to the bones. Every whistle of wind or rap of a tree limb woke Matt from his sleep. And when he did dream, he dreamed of dark eyes and sharp teeth, glowing like a burnin' thing in the dark.

Bailey was more infection than man.

Matt did catch a glimpse of him, there was never a change to his face. Always emotionless like whatever dark soul was in him couldn't ever reach the surface. He wasn't human, Bailey. Didn't seem like it, at least—not until a Friday evening, when the hound had taken it upon himself to tend to the cows in the pasture.

Matt had been watching through the kitchen window, a cup of luke-warm coffee in his hands. For all of dusk, Bailey sat on the ground in Lucy's isolated field, petting the hard round dome of her pregnant belly. He didn't move, didn't say a word to her—didn't smile when her horrifying serpent tongue wormed over the toe of his boot. He just sat there, brushing down her spotted side with slow fingers, like a robot programmed to do only this one pointless thing.

Matt thought back to the smiling face from his foster papers—the beaming grin and the Bambi eyes. How in the hell was he the same kid from the photo?

"You know, I tried to say hi to him." Jessica's strong chin jabbed into the back of Matt's shoulder, her arms wrapping him from behind. "Do you know what he did?"

Matt watched through the window, the sunlight submerged in the horizon. A breeze laid flat the fields in the distance, swept Bailey's hair up in a twist of wild black flame. Still, no expression.

"Did he glare at you? All he ever seems to do to me."

"He scoffed at me," Jessica said. "Scoffed like it was funny and sad...not so much like I offended him. Makes me wonder, though. What's he doin' here?"

"Dunno," Matt said, her embrace squeezing him hard. He shifted where it pinched under the ribs. "It won't be forever."

"He's been all about Lucy. Seems to really like her."

He did seem to favor the animals on the farm. Even caught him grooming a chicken from time to time. But still, some part of Matt didn't want to admit that there was at least a bit of humanity to Bailey. "Everyone likes Lucy."