Chapter 22: The Woe of Community Service

It started when Hellie handed a flyer to a couple as they walked by while I was posting one to a wall, and Teena had gone inside a dorm to drop a few at the front desk.

After I finished, I spotted the couple arguing, and then they started to return. I immediately twisted to Hellie and whispered, “No pouncing, no growling, and definitely no death curses.” Right as they had gotten closer, I turned away from Hellie and smiled big, but the woman bypassed me and directed her attention to Hellie.

“Are you okay?”

“She’s fine,” I said to ease the woman’s worry.

“Let her speak for herself, creep,” the woman instantly snapped back, pushing the flyer into my hands, and then prodded her man to say something.

“You’re a sicko, treating a woman like this. Is this some Halloween-type shit? Can’t you wait till then?”

I felt humiliated reaching into my wallet, but the situation quickly escalated, so I shared my situation awareness card.

They had puzzled looks on their faces. The woman took out her cell and snapped a picture of the backside of the card with the email address. I prepped myself for more verbal assault and maybe questions, but Teena’s return changed things.

“Let them live their truth. We appreciate your concern, but does she look like she’s being harmed or held against her will?”

Hellie was sniffing the air and looking off into the distance when we all directed our attention her way.

“It’s not right. She’s on a chain.”

Teena gently took the woman’s hands and folded hers on top.

“Your concern is misplaced. What you should understand is…Hellie’s giving her trust and expressing herself in the way she desires.” Teena looked deep into the woman’s eyes. “If you were a little more connected to others, you would be willing to support how they want to live in this world.”

Teena handed the woman a flyer.

“Come out and listen to our message. Maybe you’ll find the courage to live your authentic life.”

After listening to Teena, the woman softened and handed back the card. “My apologies.”

Teena motioned for us to follow her, and we did. After we were a few feet away, I looked back, and the girl was standing motionless, eyeing the flyer in her hands.

“Thanks.”

“I hope you aren’t taking their judgment to heart. I commend you two for being honest about your sexual interests.”

“No! Why does everyone think that?”

“Sorry, is Hellie not your girlfriend?”

“No, she’s a childhood friend. After her brother died in an accident, she wrote me, explaining she no longer wanted to live as a human and asking me to take care of her. Right, Hellie?”

I was banking on Hellie remembering our cover story we’d practiced for Weird Nikki.

After a brief moment, Hellie nodded with an expression of sadness.

Good girl. Good girl.

Teena stopped walking and turned to me. “Oh my gosh. That is way more tragic than I realized.”

After hearing my made-up story that I didn’t think through, I felt in my gut that she would chastise me for using Hellie as part of my social experiment.

Teena moved into my personal space. She had a strange look on her face. One I had never seen before—maybe adoration?

“Billy, you are wonderful for taking on such a massive responsibility to help Hellie through her trauma.”

“Please keep that between us. Don’t add it to your write up. It’s personal.”

“Okay, Billy. For you, anything.”

Her words made me drop the flyers I was holding. Immediately, I frantically fumbled to grab them off the ground. Seeing me struggle, Teena assisted, and we laughed as we fought the light wind to gather the flyers.

Suddenly, I heard Hellie growling, and she tugged at the leash, knocking me off balance.

“What’s wrong, girl…err, Hellie?”

“I got these. See what’s wrong with Hellie,” Teena said in a supportive tone.

I turned my attention to Hellie, and she started pulling me, growling louder with each tug, until she started barking. The scant few people walking by hurried away, confused by how real her bark sounded.

“Hey, it’s okay. Calm down. What do you see? What’s bothering you?”

I was afraid she might transform into one of her dog forms based on how she was acting. I knew I couldn’t panic publicly, so I leaned in and whispered to her, “Do not change here.” She wouldn’t stop barking, but thank goodness, she listened. In the distance, a figure stopped and turned around to look at Hellie. When he turned our way, I could see it was Tiny Jem—that asshole who threw the wet sheet on me. When he zeroed in on Hellie, he took off running. In response, Hellie started pulling more, causing me to flounder. I quickly unstrapped the leash from my belt. As soon as I got a firm grip on it, Hellie bolted, dragging me along with her.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to Teena.

I can only imagine how idiotic—or more aptly, disturbing—Hellie and I looked running across the campus.

A five-foot-seven-inch-tall woman was pulling me, a six-foot-tall man, with a leash attached to her throat collar. To add to the bizarre visuals, I could only imagine how silly my overstuffed backpack looked, jostling up and down against my back.

“Hellie, I said slow down a little more.”

From how she kept looking back at me, I knew she was frustrated that I was slowing her down. It took everything in me to keep up. I was getting winded, but I couldn’t let her go.

The last time she became this uncontrollable, she was protecting me from a spying supernatural moth. So this time I trusted her instincts, but I had no idea where this would lead.

“Hellie, when we catch up to him, we talk.”

I’d had several dealings with her quarry over the years. Tiny Jem was a smarmy bastard with his finger in every pie. I despised him. He had been a third-string bully since high school, occasionally teaming up with The Nameless One. But believe it or not, he and I shared a love for entertainment. We’d haggled a few times over vintage merchandise.

He was… I guess a suitable description would be more excessive in his pastime of collecting than me. I’d heard more than once that he had some effed ties with the dark web, procuring things. He seemed shady enough to be involved with the cult sent to retrieve Rules of the Black Arts for Advanced Users.

I knew it was a wild guess—kind of an indistinct connection to the cult—but he must be guilty of something because he was hot-footing like he was a thug being run down by a police officer.

He had a considerable lead over us from the beginning, and we couldn’t close the gap, but he couldn’t lose us either. Hellie could have easily overtaken him, but the problem was me. I was slowing her down because I wouldn’t let the leash go.

I knew we had to catch him—I trusted Hellie—so I pushed myself to the limit.

Our pursuit led us across the campus—up and down several stairwells, over viaducts, and even through a girl’s dormitory.

When Tiny Jem neared a pair of security guards, I thought he would stop running to make a complaint. But he bolted past them. Not slowing in the least, Hellie bulleted through the guards, wildly knocking one to the side and the other to the ground. When I looked back, I caught the pissed glance of Bob, the security guard, as he picked himself up.

For a moment, I thought we had lost Tiny Jem. But after sniffing vigorously into the air, Hellie caught his scent, and we pursued him into the far reaches of the campus practice fields.

Despite my magical abilities, I had no superhuman prowess like Hellie. All I could do was accept the blame for not being able to catch up to Tiny Jem. Besides, something was off about his pattern. He had plenty of opportunities to hide inside one of the buildings or get help, but he didn’t.

Why?

Maybe he was leading us into a trap.

As we ran across the empty football practice field, I saw Tiny Jem disappear into the neighboring woods.

Not the woods again.

Immediately, panic struck. My mind revisited the mangled corpses of the cult members scattered all over the woods.

“Hellie, stop.”

She was not obeying me, and I was running out of steam. I hated doing it, but I had to do something to establish dominance because I felt we were rushing to our doom.

I let the leash go, and Hellie looked back. I asked her to stop one final time, but she ignored me and kept running.

I had one shot at this. Since I was no longer hindering her, she was moving fast.

I held my right hand out and turned my palm up, extending my index and middle fingers, glued side by side, followed by touching the bottom of my thumb to the fingernail of the ring finger. Then, focusing on Hellie, I pulled my fingers and arm inward. From my point of view, it looked as if Hellie had hit an invisible wall. Then she came reeling backward until I stopped her in front of me. I didn’t read about this, but intuitively I rotated my hand, which turned Hellie around to face me.

“Sit.” I didn’t scream or look angry. I meant what I said, and Hellie knew it and followed my command. I placed my hand on her head, and she calmed. Nightshade had always liked a treat after showing trust.

I dropped my backpack off and rummaged through the pockets until I found a snack.

“Here, you’ll like this. You can stand.”

Hellie stood, and I handed her some jerky. She suspiciously sniffed the treat before happily gobbling it down.

“We can’t charge at everything when we hunt. We need strategies. Plans. Think things through. So that means you can’t run off or act without us being in sync. Together, like one.”

I didn’t know if the concepts were foreign or not, but I knew I needed to communicate with her on a higher level than just commands.

Hellie walked around me in circles twice and barked toward the woods.

She was eager to get back to the chase. I placed my hands on her shoulders to keep her in place. And although I felt weird doing it, I rubbed her behind the ears. She looked at me and smiled. Her frantic energy dissipated.

“The guy we are after is named Tiny Jem. Why are we chasing him? Is he from the cult, like the others you killed protecting me?”

Hellie twisted her head side to side with a blank look.

“Guy, running.” I placed two fingers on my left palm and moved them like legs running. “The cult.” I pulled my hoodie up and acted like one of the attackers. “Give me the book.”

Hellie’s eyes lit up. I’d connected. “Okay, why are we after him? The man in the woods?”

She didn’t divert her attention for a few seconds but then looked down at my backpack, squatted, and started throwing things out until she pulled out Rules of the Black Arts for Advanced Users.

She sat with her legs crossed and placed the book across her legs. After she stopped flipping the pages, she looked up at me. Her stare seemed like an invitation to sit, so I did. I scooted over closer and looked down into the book.

I immediately recognized the page. It was the one Gene had me read before I left his place about Gula, also known as Gluttony, a member of The Theater of Sins.

Hellie ran her hand across the page and then pointed to the woods.

“Tiny Jem is Gula… Gluttony!” I shouted, mystified.