“Brenner.
You still do the thing with the animals?”
Donna’s voice came through flat and professional, six in the morning, while Cole had a gas-station sandwich in one hand and the phone wedged against his shoulder in a truck-stop lot outside Des Moines cardboard and salt, and he’d been about to throw the rest away.
Her voice was the one that meant she was looking at something she couldn’t write down.
Cole set the sandwich on the dash.
“Yeah.”
“Itasca State Park.
Two campers dead in four days.
Rangers are saying wolves, but there’s no wolves on the trail-cams and the tracks don’t match anything I’ve seen.”
“What do the tracks match?”
“A dog.
A really big dog.
And the bodies” She stopped.
“Can you get here?”
“I can get there.
Where are you?”
“Ranger station.
North entrance.
I’ll be the one not buying the wolf story.”
The line went dead.
Cole finished the sandwich because throwing it out would be a waste, then drove north.
Three hours to Itasca.
The sun came up pale and clean over the flat green country and he counted the exits to keep his hands steady.
Sixteen.
The fourth print in Kearney had landed soft the boy on the bike had missed the car by eight seconds and never knew why his mother had called him home early.
The pool sat at nine now.
He wrote it in the notebook at a rest stop and did not let himself think about the count for more than the time it took to write the number.
Donna was leaning against her cruiser when he pulled into the ranger station lot.
Arms folded.
Badge clipped to her belt.
She walked over to the truck and got in without asking.
“Show me,” Cole said.
She pulled a file from under her arm.
Two eight-by-tens.
He looked at them and his stomach went cold.
Torn throats.
Defensive wounds on the forearms.
Drag marks in the dirt that started at the trail and ended thirty yards into the trees, where the canopy would hide the kill from anyone walking past.
And the tracks.
Paw prints the size of a man’s hand, sunk deep into soft earth.
Four toes.
Claws.
Not a wolf.
A black dog.
Cole set the photos on the seat between them.
“It’s not a wolf.”
“I know it’s not a wolf.”
“It’s a black dog.
Omen-class.
Hellhound-adjacent, but it hunts on its own.
Consecrated iron kills it.
Silver doesn’t.
You can’t shoot it unless the rounds are blessed and you’ve got maybe two seconds before it’s on you.”
Donna looked at him.
“Consecrated iron.”
“Yeah.”
“By a priest.”
“Or someone who knows the words.
I know the words.”
She was quiet for a long time.
Then she said, “Okay.
What else do I need to know?”
And that was the question.
Cole could tell her how to kill the black dog and leave the rest alone.
He could keep the economy the crossroads, the dealers, the rack-and-file structure of Hell and the garrison coldness of Heaven tucked behind his teeth where it had been since Pontiac.
He could give her the hunt and keep the world.
Or he could tell her the truth.
He looked at her hands.
Steady.
“The black dog showed up because someone made a deal,” Cole said.
“Crossroads deal.
You go to a crossroads at midnight with a picture and some graveyard dirt in a box, you bury it, and a demon shows up.
They’ll give you anything you want.
You pay in your soul and however many years the dealer decides the wish is worth.
When the years run out, a hellhound comes for you.
Black dog’s a cousin.
Same branch of the tree.”
Donna did not move.
“There’s a war on,” Cole continued.
“Heaven and Hell.
Started last year, escalated this spring.
Seals breaking.
Demons moving product faster than they used to because the quota went up.
More deals, more hounds, more consequences landing on people who didn’t make the trade.
The black dog?
It’s hunting because the crossroads are hot and something leaked.”
He stopped.
Waited.
Donna looked at the file.
At the photos.
At the paw print that was not a wolf.
“How long have you known this?” she asked.
“Since Pontiac.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
She turned in the seat.
Looked at him.
Her face was very still.
“Don’t lie to me again, Brenner.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.”
Donna nodded once.
Then she opened the door and got out and walked twenty feet to the edge of the lot and threw up in the grass.
Cole stayed in the truck.
Gave her the space.
When she came back her face was pale and her hands were shaking, but she got in and shut the door and said, “Okay.
Consecrated iron.
Where do we get it?”
The black dog had denned in a hollow under a rotted birch log half a mile off the north trail.
Cole could smell it before he saw it wet fur, old blood, the sour burn of something that had crossed over and didn’t belong.
Donna stayed three steps behind him, tire iron in both hands.
He’d blessed it in the truck with words he’d learned from a library book in Marshalltown, and the iron had gone cold under his fingers when the consecration took.
She hadn’t asked how he knew the words.
She’d just held the iron and watched him say them.
The black dog came out low and fast when Cole got within ten yards of the log.
Big as a mastiff, smoke rising off its back, eyes that weren’t eyes but holes where light didn’t land.
Cole dropped and rolled left.
The dog’s claws tore four lines across the dirt where his chest had been.
Donna swung the tire iron in a flat arc and caught it across the ribs.
The dog screamed a sound like wind through a gap in a door and turned on her.
Cole got to his feet and drove the consecrated railroad spike he’d pulled from his pack straight down through the dog’s spine.
It collapsed.
Twitched once.
Went still.
Smoke poured off the body for thirty seconds, thick and black and stinking of burned hair, and then the dog was just a dog.
Dead.
Ordinary.
Donna looked at it.
At Cole.
At the tire iron in her hands.
“Jesus,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“That’s”
“Yeah.”
Leaned against the birch log.
Her hands were still shaking.
Cole pulled the spike free and wiped it on his jeans.
The body would rot fast.
By tomorrow it’d be bones, and by the weekend it’d be gone.
No one would find it.
No one would believe it if they did.
“The campers,” Donna said.
“They made a deal?”
“Someone did.
Or someone nearby did and the black dog went wide looking for the scent.”
“And you can see that.
When someone’s made a deal.”
“Sometimes.”
“But you didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
Donna looked at him for a long time.
Then she picked up the tire iron and started walking back toward the truck.
Cole followed.
They didn’t talk until they were back at the ranger station.
Donna got out, leaned against the hood of her cruiser, and folded her arms.
“I’m not waiting in the car next time,” she said.
“Okay.”
“And you’re gonna tell me the rest.
All of it.
How it works, who you call, what the rules are.
I’m not doing this half-blind.”
“Okay.”
“And if you lie to me again, Brenner, I’m done.
You understand?”
“Yeah.”
She looked at him.
Then she held out her hand.
Cole took it.
Her grip was warm.
Steady.
She held on for three seconds, then let go and got into the cruiser and drove off without looking back.
Cole stood in the lot and watched her taillights disappear down the access road.
His hand was still warm where she’d held it.
He got in the truck.
Drove south.
The notebook was open on the passenger seat and he pulled over at a rest stop twenty miles out to write the line.
Donna: working partner.
Knows the dealer economy.
Knows Heaven/Hell.
Won’t lie to her again.
The pool sat at nine.
The black dog was dead.
Donna had thrown up in the grass and then picked up the tire iron and swung it anyway.
Cole closed the notebook.
Started the engine.
Drove.
The next case was waiting in Mankato.
A revenant in a grain silo.
He’d call Donna when he got there and tell her the rest how to salt a threshold, what iron did to a ghost, the difference between a demon and a ghoul.
She’d ask questions.
He’d answer them.
That was the deal now.
He’d crossed the threshold.
So had she.
No going back.
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TL;DR —
Silver / $6 / 10 ahead
Gold / $9 / 15 ahead
Platinum / $15 / 20 ahead, no weekly wait
That’s it.