Hearsay Horizons

Do you have any idea how many golden ceremonial knives there are? I don’t recollect enough to narrow it down by culture. I never got a good look at the thing, either. And offering a finder’s fee doesn’t help—as with a lot of things, money complicates things more than it helps. So many fakes. So many iron, steel, even platinum daggers with gold leaf laid to leave the silver crescent edge exposed. That , that glinting in the moonlight, I remember. The devotion and hope and love and fear, so much fear. Bite of the ropes and then the bite of the knife. Lifeblood leaking out silvery in the dim light. The blood stopped, and I didn’t. But the ritual took you instead. So many years looking for this knife, this phylactery. And then looking for you. If you gave me this unlife, this command over necromantic energies that I was never taught to use, then let me employ them to get my answers directly from you. But you didn’t have the knife. And you’re... gone. Your skeletal corpse holds no secrets, ...

 Rat terriers: pretty straightforward. Sheepdog, likewise. Corgi, a little vaguer, but their legs put them out of the way of cow kicks. Bulldogs were bred to attract negative energy. French bulldogs were specifically selected to act as lightning rods for demonic possession. There have been no cases of legitimate demonic possession of a human being within three miles of a French bulldog since the breed was first distinguished in the 1800s. Theories about this abound, but the most common is that the batlike ears attract demonic emanations before they can settle elsewhere. There seems to be no limit to the number of spirits that can inhabit a single French bulldog; the effect persists even when as many as nine have been discovered within a single animal. Why this should be the case—and the fact that none of this seems to affect their behavior in one fashion or the other—will be obvious to owners of the grinning gremlins. << First       <Previous

 They call it the shifter’s plague, although Larkspur knows that’s malicious rumor and perhaps propaganda; the shifters are immune, but she and Snow never saw any way they were responsible. Not that that stopped the mobs. Or, eventually, the killings. The process... That internal, infuriating pain, like a sore tooth or a gimpy nerve, all over, all at once, the need to soothe everything, to chew everywhere. Screaming, but hurting her own ears. Larkspur lies where she eventually fell in the trail when she could no longer lean on Snow. When there was no Snow to lean on. Her nose is full of him, and herself, in a vexing mix that makes her think he’s just out of sight. The new fur, his fur, is a warm hug and a suffocating heat. Slowly, with bones of iron, she tries to pull herself off of the ground. She cannot feel her limbs; it isn’t until her hands are in front of her face as she crawls that she realizes that she has functional fingers. Claws are new. Paw pads are new. Larkspur takes ...