“Who are you?!” Fitz screamed at a heaving man with a hammer in hand and blood stains on his bare chest.

“Eliza, wake up!” Colchester cried out to her while she lay unconscious over the staircase in her Bakunawa form, the red hue of blood a stark contrast to her blue shaded head.

Earlier that day

“Can’t we just up and leave?” Fitz questions, while sitting in a circle in Eliza’s room with the rest of the residents after their breakfast.

“I’ve thought of that too honestly,” Kacey informs and takes a sip of lemonade, “I wish I had a cup of AstroBucks right now,” she groans and takes another sip.

“There’s no transportation to get back,” she adds.

“We have Mandisa’s car,” Jiro yells.

“I’m out of petrol,” she tells him.

“Petrol?” Kacey asks and Mandisa rewords her sentence with the word ‘gas’.

“Can’t we just wait for your real dad?” Akira refers his question to Fitz and she answers that she’s not even sure if he was there to begin with and not the Kapnos demon.

“Can’t we call someone to pick us up?” Fitz asks and Colchester informs her they have no signal.

“What about the town’s people, maybe they can help?” Eliza asks and the residents fell silent unsure of what to say and Gherro appeared leaning against the door with arms folded.

“That’s a no go too, the thing you called a Kapnos demon put everyone under a sleeping spell for God knows how long,” he informs them.

“So we stuck here,” Eliza finalizes.

The rest of the day was spent tidying up their respective rooms, in the shadows a figure of a man lurks downstairs biding his time to make his presence known. After Kacey was done, she lay on her bed and took out the journal. She aimlessly turned the pages though a drawing of a dog caught her attention. I’ve seen this before, she thought to herself. The drawing depicted a large wolf- like dog with pearly white canines, glowing red shaded eyes and black shaggy fur, named Black Shuck. The Tus Dev Scucca is said to be an omen of death as it accompanies you to the afterlife, she reads out loud. It is said that this dog was once a drunkard man who was cursed by God to forever shift into a dog at nighttime.

A crashing sound echoes from downstairs, Kacey rushes to her door leaving the journal to page through to a drawing of a white wolf named the Faerie dog or Tus Dev Pur, a guardian wolf said to accompany souls to the afterlife and have healing abilities.

In Colchester’s room he laid on his bed tossing and turning in his sleep, the white moon outside peered at him in an almost beckoning way. The crashing sound woke him up and he too rushed to the door. In the corridors, Eliza in her Bakunawa form fought a black wolf- like dog.

“What’s going on here?” Colchester demands and Mandisa explains that this dog came from downstairs and attacked Eliza in her room. This obviously made her immensely angry and she turned into the Moon Eater.

“Why are you doing this?” Kacey yells at it while simultaneously trying to hold back Eliza.

“Why are you talking to it like it understands?” Akira asks her also trying to hold back Eliza and Kacey explains that it used to be human it just shape shifts into a Tus dev demon at night.

“A what?!” he yells back in confusion and she shrugs him off.

“Nevermind that, right now we gotta calm down both of them,” Kacey tells him and they both start pulling at Eliza’s tail though she soon swats them away and charges forward to the Tus Dev demon.

“Wait, I have an idea,” Jiro tells them and runs into Eliza’s room. He comes back with her phone in hand and starts playing a Baroque song, this seems to calm her as she in her dragon form slowly makes her way to where the music was coming from, though suddenly the dog turns into a human; a pale skinned man, long black hair, dressed in rugged blue jeans, bare chest and worn out black coat over his shoulders. He pulls out a hammer and delivers a blow to her head.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Who are you?!” Fitz yelled at a heaving man with a hammer in hand and blood stains on his bare chest.

“Eliza, wake up!” Colchester cried out to her while she lay unconscious over the staircase in her Bakunawa form, the red hue of blood a stark contrast to her blue shaded head.

Colchester charges towards the man and he shifts back into the Tus Dev demon, he takes a bite into his neck and he cries out in pain.

“Colchester!” Mandisa sobs and turns Eliza back into a human, naked; Fitz wraps a sheet over her.

The Tus Dev demon makes a break for it, breaking the staircase in the process and disappears through the closed front door. Mandisa goes to Colchester’s aid, holding her hand against his bleeding neck.

“Are you okay?” she whispers and he chuckles at the concern on her face.

“Just a little cut,” he whispers in return and closes his eyes at her soft touch. He asks if Eliza is okay and tells them to put her in warm clothes and in her bed.

“What about you?” Jiro questions him eyeing the blood dripping from his wound.

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine,” Colchester says with a soft voice, a stark contrast to his usual deadpan, as he slowly drifts away.

“Colchester!” Kacey yells and Mandisa tells her to calm down, that he passed out from the pain and suggests they should dress his wound and all just go to bed.

In bed, Colchester has a dream about the day he and his friends got chased once again by Black Shuck.

“Cole, help!” Alan wailing on the ground with an arm stretched out.

“How, can you do that?!” Morris yells at him while he pushes us his glasses as he joins his side.

“He just tripped and fell,” Crowley says and tells the boys that they should go back for him.

“Never mind that, you were right there with him, Cole, why didn’t you help him?” Morris grips at his shirt.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Crowley attempts to tear the two apart and says, “Let’s just go back,”

“Where are you going?” Morris asks as Cole takes route in the opposite direction.

“Home,” he deadpans and disappears out of sight.

Colchester groggily opens up his eyes as the sun shined in through the curtains and Eliza places a hand to his forehead.

“Are you okay?” she asks and he moves her hand away.

“Yeah I’m okay,” he says and asks how her head felt, putting his palm against her forehead.

“It hurts- wait- actually no- it doesn’t hurt anymore,” Eliza confused and Colchester lets out a chuckle.

“I’m glad you feel better,”

“Remember when you said sometimes you have to muster up the courage to face your problems head on,” Eliza starts off.

“I think now is that time,” she says and leaves the room.

“May I come in?” Mandisa’s voice calls out through the door and Colchester says yes.

“There’s something you should know,” Colchester says and with her finger to her mouth she motions him to be silent

“No- it’s something- I,” he says louder this time and Mandisa takes a seat next to him in the bed.

“What is it?”

“My names Cole, I’m from Colchester, it’s not far from here. I ran away from home at the age of sixteen, I couldn’t live with the fact that I left my friend Alan behind when we got chased by Black Shuck,”

“Do you want us to call you Cole?” she asks and he shakes his head.

“No, I’m alright with Colchester,” he tells her and she nods her head.

“How do you know the name of this demon?”

“Kacey said-“she cuts him off and says that Kacey referred to it as the Tus Dev demon.

“Black Shuck was a legend told in New England, a shape shifting being from man to dog. No one knows why it’s here just that it always hung around graveyards,”

“What happened to your friend, Alan?” she asks and though reluctant he responds.

“We were being chased by Black Shuck one day and Alan tripped and fell, I left him behind,”

“What if that thing hurt him like it did Eliza? I couldn’t live with myself so I ran away from home and the old man who used to live here gave me a place to stay and I’ve been here ever since,” Colchester hangs his head and a comforting squeeze is given to him from Mandisa.

“I think his okay,” she tells him and he pulls away from her.

“How do you know?” confusion etched in his brow.

“The Tus Dev demon is a creature that escorts spirits to the afterlife,” she informs.

“But it hurt Eliza” he points out and Mandisa says she thinks that it did that to provoke him.

“Me?”

“Yes, I think it is after you,”

“I need to go,” he tells her and rushes out of bed.

The sun shines a bright yellow outside and contrasted with the green foliage surrounding the mansion. Colchester runs through the garden and on his way to the woods, he pants though finally makes his way to a cove near a stream.

“I knew you’d be here,” he says to a figure of a man grouched down with a hammer in hand.

“You’ve followed me, from Colchester to New England, why?” he asks and this seems to have caught his attention as he looks his way.

“I don’t really talk to humans,” he grumbles under his breath in a thick British accent.

“But you speaking to me,” he answers in confusion.

“You won’t be human anymore,” he says though this time stands up and points to the white bandage on Colchester’s neck. The pain he felt from before disappeared and he removes the bandage to reveal there was no wound.

“What happened? How-“ he says, frightened and demands a explanation from Black Shuck.

“You just like me now,” Black Shuck groans and mentions something along the lines of training him.

“Just like you? What are you talking about training me?” Colchester asks and runs a hand through his hair.

“You, my friend, are now a Faerie dog-“ before Black Shuck could finish his sentence, Colchester grabs a fistful of his coat.

“What did you do to me?” he growls and Black Shuck removes his hand from his coat to explain himself.

“That day you and your friends saw me, I was actually after you. You see, my partner got caught by some rangers and died. I needed someone to pass on the Faerie dog title and I chose you,”

“Why me?” Colchester asks though clearly apprehensive.

“A hunch,”

“A hunch? You’ve got to be kidding me,” he begins laughing hysterically, straightens himself and asks what happened to his friend Alan and why he’d hurt Eliza.

“I left after you that day and I just needed to provoke you,” Black Shuck says and crouches down in pain on all fours.

“What’s wrong?” Colchester crouches down to aid him and Black Shuck explains that its time to change into his Tus Dev form.

“It’s a rather painful experience,” he groans as his body contorts and takes shape into a large black dog.

“It’s your turn now,”

“How are you doing that? You’re in my mind,” Colchester asks through telepathic connection with Black Shuck.

“You’ll get used to it eventually,”

…

The full moon greeted the residents as they called out to Colchester.

"Wow!" Jiro yells as a magnificent white wolf the size of a young bull materializes in front of them, a cross marked into his brow and his eyes piercing blue.

“Colchester is that you?” Akira asks, stunned.

“He says yes,” Kacey says and they walk over to him, right behind him is Black Shuck.

“He is apologizing for earlier, Eliza,” Mandisa tells her and she says it’s alright.

“Do you wanna come in?” Kacey asks them and Black Shuck says he’d rather stay outside by himself.

“Let’s eat!” Jiro yells and they make their way inside the mansion.