CHAPTER SIX
Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today,
Oh, how I wish he'd go away.
"What's he doing?" Maeve whispered, looking out at Fisk. The witch was walking the ramparts and muttering to himself.
"No idea. He seems agitated," Thorson whispered back.
Lydia didn't like hushed voices at all. She chose her target and let loose. "Daddy, come down from there!" The adults startled.
Nate just smiled. "Are you kidding?" he asked as he swung from one golden bar to the next, high above Lydia's head. Like a kid on the monkey bars, she thought, and disapproved. She hated monkey bars. They were too tall and they pulled her arms out of their sockets. And while Daddy was monkeying around up there he was leaving her and Mama alone down here with him. She huddled under her mother's arm and stole a look at the dogman sitting on Maeve's other side. Thorson had thrown off his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves. 'Cause if you're gonna get locked up you might as well be comfortable. Lydia disapproved even more. He was being unprofessional. He glanced down at her and she shrank back, burrowing into her mother's side.
"Stop that," Maeve whispered but her arm tightened. Lydia felt better. She felt better still when Nate jumped down from the top of the cage and stuck his landing like a pro acrobat right in front of them.
"This is amazing," he said, holding out his arms. He wasn't pale. He wasn't hunched over a cane. He looked like he used to when he posed for the covers of all those pink kissy-kissy books back in his college days. Lydia looked up at her mother. Maeve was smiling at him. "I haven't felt this good in a year," Nate said. "I can walk. I can think. Damn near makes me want to stay." He sat cross legged, also for the first time in a year, facing the others.
"Ew, Daddy, I don't want to stay," Lydia moaned. "I'm just the same here."
"You're lucky," Thorson said. "Once you hit seven years, though, that's it. Bad back. Bad eyes. Misery."
Trapped in close quarters Lydia tried to remain semi-polite to him. She nodded her head and looked serious about the hell of old age. "Yeah," she said. She looked up at the sky to avoid looking at him. She'd never seen stars like that.
Fisk was still pacing and mumbling to himself.
"What happened to you anyway?" Thorson asked Nate as he watched Fisk. "Car wreck?"
Lydia cringed but Nate met Thorson's eyes steadily. "In a way. It was a dogman," he said.
Thorson's eyebrows went up and he gave them his entire attention. "Great."
Nate shook his head. "Not what you think," He almost laughed. "She let out a howl and ran me over with a car."
"A car?" Thorson's jaw dropped and he looked at Lydia. "Felony assault with a vehicle?"
"Yeah," she said. "Because Daddy was winning against the other two."
"Two?"
Lydia's chin went up. "Big ones. Boys. Bigger than you."
Nate was modest. "Well, one was pretty big. The other was the gang toady and the third stayed in the car, like I said. Eh." He waved a hand, dismissing the entire pack. His smile wasn't bitter or hateful in any way. "I'll be good to go in a couple more months. You know how you hit that mid-way point? Once you get over that hump you start to heal faster. I'm finally there, I think."
Thorson stared at him for a moment. "I'm glad you're feeling better," he said. Then he mimed flipping open a notebook. "You know I need details, sir." He licked the tip of an invisible pencil and looked up hopefully.
"Take it away, Lydia," Nate said.
"Huh?" Lydia looked from one parent to the other in horror. Tell the dogman story to a dogman? She didn't want to. And it would be rude, wouldn't it? She looked pleadingly up at her mother.
Maeve gave her a nudge. "Go. You'll feel better."
Well, if he really wanted to know. Lydia took a deep, deep breath. Then, "We were getting gas and the witch and her dogman friends pulled up in this big, red car and she told Daddy to get in, b-word, because he's good looking, and Daddy said yuck so they came after us."
Another deep breath. Lydia remembered the gaping jaws that showed the sharp teeth and strings of spit. She heard the growls and saw the claws that slashed through the air, hurting her daddy. She felt the pain in her arm as her mama jerked her off the ground to run.
Lydia almost gabbled the details. "Mama grabbed me and ran and Daddy fought and won even if that one did get him with a car. Burlie called for help on her cell phone but the witch..." Deep breath. Another deep breath. Her face crumpled. "The witch..."
There was a burst of flame and Lydia saw her sister fall to the ground, the handset of an old payphone swinging back and forth behind her. Blood foamed out of Burlie's mouth.
Lydia made a pitching motion. Then she pointed at her neck. She glared at Thorson as if it were all his fault and then she started to cry.
Maeve went on, rubbing Lydia's back comfortingly. "She threw some sort of flame down Burlie's throat to stop her calling for help but she still managed it. The help arrived but Burlie's vocal cords were damaged." She hugged Lydia and shook her head. "Nate's healing but Burlie isn't." She rested her face against the top of Lydia's head.
"She is, too. She's better," Lydia proclaimed and sniffed. She didn't feel better at all.
"No, she isn't," Maeve said and her face twisted into tears, too. Her resemblance to Lydia was strong.
"The Sodality doesn't tolerate assault," Thorson said. "Especially in cases of attempted coercion." Lydia listened closely. He nodded down at her. "I mean, if you're a bully? The hammer comes down. Sometimes literally." He turned to Nate. "What did they get?" he asked.
"The dogmen turned state's evidence so they got their ability to shapeshift taken away for five years. Five years in jail, too."
Thorson shuddered, the hair on his arms standing straight up. "That's double prison, and pure hell, on a dogman."
Nate went on, "The witch got her powers stripped permanently and will be picking garbage off the highways for the rest of her natural life. Her buddies said it wasn't the first time she'd..." He almost glanced at Lydia. "Tried to run off with someone pretty."
Thorson was still for a moment. "How did you win?" he asked.
Nate shrugged. "I grew up next door to a family of dogmen. Bjorn Hansen was my childhood bully until I took him on. I fought that brat all through grade school. His brother, Niels, was my best friend. I fought him, too." Nate leaned over and tapped his daughter on the knee. She gave him her full attention. "Stand your ground and shout. Don't be afraid. If that doesn't work, crack 'em across the snout with something hard. Their fight goes right out."
"Uuuhhhh," Thorson slapped a hand over his nose.
"See? Just thinking about it is doing him in."
"And that goes for any bully, really," Maeve put in, firmly wiping away her tears.
Stand your ground and don't be afraid, Lydia thought. He'd said it before, even talked about his friends before, but Lydia hadn't listened. Her daddy had stood his ground and look what happened. But he seemed so healthy and handsome right now. Maybe he did know what he was talking about?
"That's just mean. Cracking a man's snout," Thorson said.
Nate patted the cop's shoulder. "I used a tire iron," he said modestly.
Thorson whimpered like a puppy. Nate and Maeve laughed at such a teeny, pathetic sound coming out of such a big man.
He wasn't drooling. He wasn't snarling.
Her spine straightened a bare inch and Lydia stopped crying, too.
Thorson was kinda nice.