Cole stopped at the top of the stairs.
Donna was already halfway down, one hand on the rail, service pistol out, and the basement under her feet smelled like old hymnals and something three days dead.
She looked up at him.
Her face was flat in the way it got when she was deciding how much of the job to do herself.
“It barked,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Deacon Howell’s been missing since Sunday.
His dog’s been missing since Saturday.
The dog came back Monday night and walked into the church like it owned the place.
It’s been in the basement since then.
It barks.
It doesn’t eat.
It doesn’t come when called.”
Cole came down three steps.
The smell got worse.
Wet fur and rotting meat and something else underneath, chemical and wrong.
“You called me,” he said.
“I called you.” Donna looked at the pistol in her hand.
“Because I read the file on the Oakdale thing.
And the one before that.
And I’m gonna remember that it barked.”
Cole stopped.
Donna was still looking at the pistol.
“You gonna tell me what I’m looking at,” she said, “or you gonna make me guess?”
The basement door was closed at the bottom of the stairs.
The barking came from behind it.
Three short sounds, then silence, then three more.
Mechanical.
Wrong.
“Skinwalker,” Cole said.
Donna didn’t move.
“It ate the dog,” Cole said.
“Probably ate the deacon too.
It’s wearing the dog now.
It’ll bark because that’s what dogs do, but it won’t eat because it already did.”
“Skinwalker.”
“Yeah.”
Donna put the pistol back in the holster and turned to look at him.
Her face was still flat.
“You do this a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“The Oakdale thing.
The one before that.
The barn fire in Embarrass.
You do this.”
“Yeah.”
She nodded once.
“Okay.”
Cole came down the rest of the stairs.
Donna moved aside to let him reach the door.
The barking stopped.
The silence after it was worse.
“Silver,” Cole said.
“That’s what kills it.
You got silver on you?”
“I got a badge.”
“That’ll do.” Cole pulled the knife from his belt.
The blade was silver-plated, a gift from a pawnbroker in Sioux City who’d owed him a favor he couldn’t name.
“I’m gonna open the door.
You’re gonna stay behind me.
If it gets past me, you put the badge in its mouth and you hold it there till it stops moving.”
Donna looked at the knife.
“And you?”
“I’m gonna put this in its throat.”
“Okay.”
Cole’s hand was on the knob when Donna spoke again.
“Brenner.”
He looked back.
“Next time you come through Hibbing,” she said, “you bring better cover.”
The door opened.
The dog was a golden retriever.
It sat in the center of the basement floor with its tail curled around its legs and its head tilted at an angle no living dog would hold.
Its eyes were black all the way through.
No whites.
No iris.
Just black.
It looked at Cole and opened its mouth.
The barking didn’t come from the mouth.
It came from somewhere behind the teeth, deeper, like a recording played through a throat that had forgotten how to shape sound.
Cole stepped into the basement.
The dog stood.
Its legs moved wrong.
Joints bending places they shouldn’t.
It took three steps toward him and the smell rolled off it in a wave.
Donna was behind him.
He could hear her breathing.
Steady.
Even.
The skinwalker lunged.
Cole dropped low and drove the knife up into the soft place under the jaw.
The blade went in clean.
The skinwalker made a sound like tearing fabric and its front legs buckled.
Cole twisted the knife and pulled it sideways and the thing wearing the dog’s skin came apart.
It hit the floor in two pieces.
The dog-shape collapsed into fur and bone and the thing underneath spilled out.
Gray.
Slick.
Human-shaped but not human.
Cole stepped back and the smell was everywhere now, thick enough to choke on.
Donna made a small sound behind him.
Not a scream.
Not a gasp.
Just a sound.
Cole turned.
She was standing in the doorway with her hand over her mouth.
Her eyes were on the floor.
On the gray thing that had been wearing the dog.
“Donna.”
She looked at him.
Her hand dropped.
“You okay?” Cole said.
“No.” She looked at the floor again.
“Not even a little.”
“Yeah.”
“The deacon?”
Cole looked at the corner of the basement.
There was a pile of cloth there.
A black shirt.
A collar.
He didn’t look closer.
“Yeah,” he said.
Donna nodded.
She stepped into the basement and looked at the skinwalker’s body for a long time.
Then she looked at Cole.
“You’re gonna teach me,” she said.
“Donna”
“You’re gonna teach me how to see these things coming.
You’re gonna teach me the signs.
You’re gonna teach me what kills what.” She crossed her arms.
“Because I’m not writing another two-line report that doesn’t match what I saw.
And I’m not letting you do this alone in my county.”
Cole put the knife back in his belt.
The skinwalker was still on the floor.
The deacon was still in the corner.
Donna was still looking at him with her arms crossed and her face flat.
They sat in Donna’s squad car in the church parking lot.
The basement was sealed.
The coroner was on the way.
Donna had made the call herself and her voice had been steady the whole time.
Cole’s truck was parked three spaces over.
The notebook was in it.
The Enochian was in it.
The record of every deferral and every deal and every name Heaven might already know.
Donna was looking at her hands.
“Monsters,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Real ones.”
“Yeah.”
“And you hunt them.”
“Yeah.”
She looked at him.
“Why?”
Cole counted the cars in the lot.
Four.
A sedan, a pickup, Donna’s squad car, his truck.
The math was clean.
“Because they’re there,” he said.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one I got.”
Donna was quiet for a long time.
Then she reached over and put her hand on his wrist.
Just rested it there.
Her thumb was on his pulse.
“I’m gonna need more than that,” she said.
“Not today.
But soon.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re gonna tell me.”
“Yeah.”
She let go of his wrist and opened the car door.
“I gotta go deal with the coroner.
You got somewhere to be?”
“Davenport.”
“Then go.” She looked at him one more time.
“And Brenner?
Don’t lie to me again.
I can see your tells now.”
Cole watched her walk back toward the church.
The coroner’s van pulled into the lot.
Donna met it at the door and her voice carried across the pavement, steady and professional and clean.
He started his truck and pulled out of the lot.
The notebook was still on the seat.
He opened it to a blank page and wrote at the top: Donna knows.
Underneath, in smaller letters: Partial truth.
Monsters real.
My job.
Nothing about Heaven.
Nothing about the deals.
He closed the notebook and drove south.
The road was empty.
The sky was the color of old dishwater.
Davenport waited, and the banker’s print waited, and the work waited.
But Donna knew now.
And she’d held the line.
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Read more chapters for free at unwrittenrealm.com
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TL;DR —
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead
Gold / $9 / 15 ahead
Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait
That’s it.