The tail lights of the lawyer's car were already two blurry red smears in the rain. They faded fast. A bad idea disappearing into the back of a drunk mind. Mr. Sterling hadn't even turned off the engine before he kicked me out. He just slowed down enough to ensure I wouldn't break a leg—probably to avoid a lawsuit—shoved me onto the gravel, and floored it.
Mud splattered across my face. It tasted of rust, cheap fertilizer, and the specific humiliation of being abandoned by a man wearing a toupee.
"Great," I muttered, wiping the sludge from my eyes. "Just... professional."
I stood there, shivering. The rain wasn't just water; it was liquid ice finding its way down the back of my collar, a cold, skeletal finger tracing my spine. My cheap suit—polyester, buy-one-get-one-free, the kind that melts near an open flame—was already soaked through. It clung to my skin. A second, heavier layer of failure.
In my hand, I clutched the deed to Blackwood Manor. Or rather, I clutched a handful of wet pulp that used to be a deed. The ink was running, bleeding gray tears onto my palm. The notary seal was dissolving into a purple bruise on the paper.
I looked up.
Blackwood Manor loomed against the storm. It wasn't a house. It was a tumor made of stone, growing out of the hill. It didn't look built; it looked like it had erupted from the earth in a geological fit of rage. Gargoyles with missing jaws stared down at me. The windows were dark empty eye sockets, except for the occasional flash of lightning that gave them a momentary, strobe-light blink.
"Ninety-nine point five million gold coins," I whispered. The number didn't feel real. A joke. A punchline to a life that had already been a series of bad setups.
My uncle hadn't left me a fortune. He'd left me a deficit. And a house that looked hungry. A house that ate people for breakfast and flossed with their shoelaces.
I stepped onto the porch. The wood groaned under my bunny slippers. Yes, bunny slippers. Pink. Fluffy. The ears were now caked in mud, war-torn veterans of a nursery rhyme. I hadn't had time to change when the lawyers dragged me out of my apartment.
I reached for the door handle. Cold iron, a screaming face. The metal bit into my palm.
"Please don't be locked," I prayed to no one in particular. "Please don't make me break a window. I can't afford the glass. I can't even afford the rock to throw at the glass."
The door wasn't locked. It swung open with a screech that sounded less hinge, more dying violin smashed against a wall.
I stepped inside.
The foyer was huge. You could park a bus in here, assuming the bus didn't mind the smell. It smelled of wet dog. Not the 'oops, Fido got in the rain' kind of wet dog. This was ancient wet dog. The smell of a wolf the size of a minivan that hadn't had a bath since the Bronze Age. It was a smell that had weight. It coated the back of my throat with the taste of copper and old fur.
And dust. Layers of it. It coated everything. Gray snow. The silence was heavy, pressing against my eardrums. It wasn't empty silence; it was the silence of a held breath.
"Hello?" My voice cracked. "Mr. Sterling said the... tenants... were expecting me?"
Silence.
Then, a sound.
Scritch~~~ Scritch~~~Scritch~~~
It came from the darkness at the top of the grand staircase. Knives sharpening on a tombstone. Or maybe bone scraping against granite.
Lightning flashed again.
For a second, the foyer was illuminated in stark, blue-white light. And I saw them.
Two red lights. High up. Way too high up.
They weren't lights. They were eyes.
They were staring right at me.
My heart hammered against my ribs. A bird trapped in a shoebox. Thump...Thump... Thump...
A migraine spiked behind my left eye. Sudden. Brutal. An ice pick driven into my frontal lobe. It wasn't just pain; it was data. Invasive, burning data forcing its way into my optic nerve.
Are those... eyes?
The darkness shifted. A shape detached itself from the shadows. It was massive. Black fur that seemed to absorb the light. Shoulders that were wider than my car.
A growl rumbled through the room. It vibrated in the floorboards, traveling up through the soles of my bunny slippers, rattling my teeth.
Growl.
It wasn't a threat. It was a promise.
My body locked up. Fight or flight? No. My brain chose option C: Freeze and reboot.
I tried to raise my hands. I wanted to say, "I surrender." I wanted to say, "Take the house, I just want a towel."
But my fingers were numb. The cold had turned them into useless sausages. My hand—the one holding my Montblanc pen, the only thing of value I actually owned, a graduation gift I'd never used—spasmed.
The pen flew.
It was a beautiful arc. Slow motion. The black resin caught the faint light. It spun, end over end, sailing through the air towards the monster on the stairs.
"No," I squeaked.
My brain screamed. You just threw a pen at a werewolf. You just attacked a monster with office supplies. This is how you die. Not in a blaze of glory, but because of a muscle spasm.
The red eyes widened.
The growl stopped.
The massive shadow froze. The tension in the room snapped.
Then, the monster moved.
It didn't lunge at me. It didn't tear my throat out.
It scrambled.
Claws scrabbled on the hardwood floor, gouging deep trenches into the mahogany. The beast ignored me completely. It threw itself down the stairs, sliding, crashing into the banister, tails wagging so hard it knocked over a suit of armor.
CLANG!
The helmet rolled across the floor, spinning.
The wolf—because that's what it was, a tank-sized wolf—skidded across the dusty floor, chasing the pen. It moved with the grace of a collapsing building.
Slide... Scramble... Snap...
Jaws that could crush a car engine clamped down on my Montblanc.
Crunch.
There went five hundred dollars.
The pain in my head exploded into text. It wasn't a hallucination. It was searing, burning letters etched onto the back of my eyelids, superimposed over reality, a retinal burn.
ERROR: CORTISOL_SPIKE // SUBJECT_ANALYSIS: INITIATED
TARGET_ID: FENRISULFR [The World Eater]
DIAGNOSIS_RESULT: SEPARATION_ANXIETY_CRITICAL // TOUCH_STARVATION_DETECTED
THERAPY_PROTOCOL: "THE_GOOD_BOY" [Fetch_Command]
resource_missing: STICK // substitution: EXPENSIVE_WRITING_IMPLEMENT
I blinked, trying to clear the burning text from my vision. It faded slowly, leaving a headache that throbbed in time with my pulse.
The wolf turned.
It trotted back to me. The floor shook with every step. Boom~~~Boom~~~Boom~~~. It stopped inches from my face. I could smell its breath—old meat, ozone, and something ancient, the air in a sealed tomb.
It sat down.
A massive, black tail thumped against the floor. Thump...Thump.... Thump... Dust clouds puffed up with each beat, coating my pants in a fresh layer of gray.
The wolf leaned forward. It opened its mouth.
Ptoo...
It spat the mangled remains of my pen onto my muddy bunny slippers. The plastic was chewed. The gold nib was bent into a hook. It was covered in slobber. Thick, viscous slobber. Industrial glue.
The wolf looked at me. Its red eyes weren't filled with malice anymore. They were wide. Expectant. Dilated pupils.
It let out a soft, high-pitched whine.
Woof?
I looked at the pen. I looked at the wolf. I looked at the open door behind me, where the rain was still pouring down, offering a cold, wet escape back to a life of debt and failure.
My brain tried to process the shift. Monster. Dog. Monster. Dog. The logic didn't fit. The physics didn't fit. But the slobber on my shoes was very real.
I slowly reached down. My hand was shaking so bad I almost missed the pen. I picked up the slimy, ruined plastic. It was warm.
The wolf's tail wagged faster. A helicopter taking off. Whap...Whap...Whap...
"You..." I whispered. My voice was trembling, barely audible over the rain. "You want me to throw it again?"
The wolf barked. A happy, earth-shaking bark that rattled the windows and sent a fresh cascade of dust falling from the chandelier.
I gripped the slimy pen. I looked at the monster that could kill me with a sneeze. I felt the weight of the debt, the cold of the rain, and the absurdity of the moment crashing down on me.
"Okay," I said. "Okay. Good boy."
I pulled my arm back.
The wolf lowered its head, hind legs bunching up, muscles coiling, steel cables ready to launch.
I threw the pen.
And for the first time since I inherited this cursed debt, I stopped shivering. Not because I was warm. But because I realized something.
The monster wasn't hunting me.
It was just lonely.
And I knew exactly how to treat that. I was a psychologist, after all. Even if my patient was a myth that ate gods, the diagnosis was simple.
He just needed a friend. Or at least, someone to throw the stick.