by wildbow
But Rachel hadn’t been equipped for these things, would never be equipped for school or manners or piano. She fought back, challenged her foster-mother’s authority at every turn, and when she was punished for this, she fought back twice as hard.
She might have gone insane if it wasn’t for Rollo. She’d stumbled onto the mangy, hostile puppy in an alley between her after-school classes and home. After earning his trust with scraps of her lunch over the course of days and weeks, she brought him home and chained him up at the very back of the expansive backyard, out of sight of the house.
She had stayed quiet when her foster-mother complained about the neighbor dog’s barking, feeling a confused mixture of smugness and terror every time it came up. Her lunch money went towards buying the dog scraps of food, guessing at what he needed, and this sacrifice of her lunches coupled with the frequent lack of dinner left her getting headaches and her stomach growling constantly during school. She would wake up at four in the morning to visit him and play with him, and the lack of sleep left her so tired she would drift asleep in the middle of class.
But a dog couldn’t be chained to a tree, not for twenty-two hours out of every day. She’d seen him grow increasingly agitated and unhappy, to the point that she couldn’t play with him without him hurting her. So she’d untied him to take him for a walk. He’d slipped free and headed for the house. Her blood running cold, she’d chased after him.
When she caught up to him, she found him in the pool; she couldn’t swim, and he couldn’t climb out. She’d pleaded with Rollo to come out of the pool, tried to run around the pool’s edge to get to him so she could pull him free, but he’d been scared, and swam away from her.
Then the plastic cover of the pool began to slide closed. When Rachel had looked to the house, she’d seen her foster-mother standing on the other side of the sliding glass door that opened into the backyard, her finger on the switch. Slowly, gradually, despite her screams and banging on the locked door, the cover had slid over Rollo’s head, trapping him. For nearly a minute, there was the bulge beneath the cover of Rollo’s head as he swam in tight circles, his sounds of distress muffled.
Her foster-mother’s punishments always matched the crimes. There could be no doubt Rachel knew the dog from her pleading and shouts, and having a dog was against the rules. Or maybe it wasn’t even that. Maybe it was the fact that she was making a disturbance at five in the morning, or the realization that the barking that had plagued her foster mother for so long was Rachel’s fault. Whatever the reason, the dog was to be disposed of, much in the same way as a plate of dinner was thrown out for holding a fork the wrong way or sitting at the table with her legs too far apart.
She’d woken to her power in that moment of panic. Fed by her power, Rollo had grown enough to tear through the cover. He’d then torn through her foster mother. The shrill screaming of her foster siblings indoors had drawn his attention, and he went after them too, pouncing on them like any excitable dog might do with a mouse or rabbit. He’d torn through door frames and walls, and an entire section of the house and collapsed in on her foster family. In one fell swoop, she lost the closest things she had to a home and family. It hadn’t been perfect, it had been nightmarish at times, but she’d had so little for so long, she found herself clinging to the scraps she did have. She ran, then, and she kept running for a long time after that.
Her breath hitched as she drew in a breath. She shook her head violently, to shake away the tears. She had stopped screaming, but her dogs were making up for it as their voices had joined hers and continued long after she’d stopped, almost drowning out Angelica’s howls.
So many bad memories. Memories she wished she could purge from herself, scour from her brain with fire and bleach and steel bristled brushes.
She was unhappy because humans were pack animals, she decided. Taylor and Lisa and Brian could smile and laugh because they had their pack, they had their family members and they had each other. Alec was more of a loner, but he could still joke and laugh with Brian. They had their pack, their dynamic. She wasn’t really a part of it.
Bitch knew that she wasn’t a lone wolf by choice the way that Alec was. There was a void there, some part of her that craved that human connection because she was a human and that’s what humans needed. The way things had played out, things she had no control over, she’d never had a chance to figure out how to deal with people, how to invite them in to fill that void. Friendships and family, conversations and jokes, being close to others and knowing when to speak up and when to stay quiet? They were treacherous things, littered with complicated nuances, bad associations and worse memories. Even if she somehow got something right, she always managed to fuck it up sooner than later. Easier to leave it alone, easier to stay back and not try. And if they got in her face, if they challenged her and didn’t let her keep them at arm’s length? It was easier to fall back on what worked and what she knew than it was to try to guess how to respond. Violence. Threats. It earned her respect, if nothing else.
Then Taylor had made overtures at friendship. Taylor had invited herself into that place, that void, and had stayed when Bitch fucked up. The scrawny kid had stood her ground instead of running when Bitch called her out on something. And maybe, just a little, in some small way, Bitch had gotten a glimpse at what she’d been missing out on.
Only to find out it was a ploy. An act, so that Taylor could get the group’s confidence.
And now the others had forgiven her? So easily? She could see them fawning over the little traitor. And there was nothing she could do about it. They liked Taylor more. They would keep Taylor on the team and make Bitch leave if it came down to it. She knew it in her gut.
So she’d done something stupid. She’d tried to get rid of her teammate, and she’d done it in a way that haunted her. More than anything, more than all of the people she’d hurt, the people she’d accidentally killed, or the days she’d scrounged in the trash for food when she’d been homeless, wandering the cities on her own, she hated herself for what she’d done to Taylor. She had acted like the people who haunted her memories, using what should have been a position of trust to try to hurt someone.
And she didn’t know what to do about it.
A gunshot startled her from her thoughts.
“Go!” she shouted. “Go!”
More cracks of gunfire echoed through the night as her pack arrived on the scene. Angelica was there, her form hulking and rippling with muscle to the point that she couldn’t move as fast as she otherwise might. That was fine. Angelica couldn’t move as fast these days, anyways. Not since Fog had hurt her. She was more comfortable like this; she was big, strong and able to move without pain.
Angelica flinched and backed away as the shots came, striking her flesh.
There was another shot, and Bitch saw a flash from the window, a glimpse of a face. Her face twisted with rage. “Attack!” her voice was shrill. She leapt off Bentley’s back so he could go too. “Fetch them! Fetch! Go, go!’
As they’d done at the previous location, her dogs tore through the building. This time, though, they came back with people in their jaws. Arms, legs and torsos in fanged grips. Men, women and children. Some screamed where the dogs didn’t know their own strength and bit too hard.
She found the man she’d seen in the window and stalked over to him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” the man repeated the word.
“You insulting me? You trying to act big?’
“What?” The man’s eyes widened. Was he staring at her, challenging her? Was it a fear response? Was he rallying to fight, trying to get a wider sense of his surroundings? She could only guess.
“No,” he said, his eyes moving around, as if searching for help.
Defiance? Sarcasm? A lie?
“I don’t think you realize how badly you fucked yourself. You. Shot. My. Dog.” She looked at Angelica. Her baby wasn’t acting too hurt, but he’d shot her. He could have killed her, if the bullet landed in
just the right place.
She kicked him in the face, and his head rocked back. Blood fountained from his nose.
“I didn’t know,” he managed, huffing out air, blood spraying at his words, where it had run down to his lips. “Didn’t know she was yours. She was scary, I—I reacted.”
Was he lying? She couldn’t tell. She’d grown up with so many good liars, it felt like everything that sounded honest was a lie. If he was lying, and it was obvious, she’d look weak if she fell for it. Others might not get the message about this being her territory, about her dogs being off-limits. If he wasn’t lying… well, he’d still shot Angelica.
“Nobody hurts my dogs.”
“Please. I have a wife, kids.”
As if family somehow made you better than someone else? The idea nettled Bitch. Life experience had taught her that it was all too often the opposite. People were assholes, people were monsters. The exceptions were all too rare. Far too many of those same people started a family just because they thought it was what they should do, and then they were assholes and monsters to a captive audience.
She kicked him again, in the stomach. He screamed as the kick made his arm, still in Ink’s jaws, wrench the wrong way.
“Angelica,” she ordered. She kicked him in the stomach again. “Paw!”
Angelica stepped forward and placed one paw the breadth of a truck tire down on the man’s pelvis. He howled in agony, his words rapid, desperate and breathless, “Heavy oh god please stop please let me go make it move itscrushingme!”
She looked at him with distaste. It bothered her that the only time she could be absolutely sure what someone meant, what someone wanted, was in circumstances like this.
“Angelica,” she ordered, ducking beneath Angelica’s outstretched limb, kicking him in the kneecap, “Take it.”
Angelica bent and gripped the man’s legs in her teeth, twisting his body further. His body was pressed to the ground by her paw, his arm and legs pulled up and away from it.
She stepped close to Angelica, burying her face in the slick muscle and hard tissues that layered the dog, wrapping her arms as far as they would go around Angelica’s shoulders and neck. Just as her dogs came to trust her as she cared for them, fed them, and nurtured them, she grew closer to them as they shared experiences with her, as they learned and accepted their training. Angelica was one of the dogs she was closest to. The only dog she was this close to. Brutus and Judas had passed, the only dogs she had been with for years.
Her heart broke a little every time she thought about it.
And this man? This family man? He’d thought he could take Angelica away from her?
Without looking at him, her head still pressed to Angelica’s neck, she gave the order, “Hurt him.”
She felt the vibration rattle through Angelica’s head and neck as bone snapped and crunched between her teeth. The man shrieked, there was no better word for it, and others in the vicinity echoed his shrieks with their own.
She gave the hand signal and an order, “Drop him. Dogs, drop them!”
Angelica let the man drop. His shins were cracked, the ends of his legs bent at odd angles. One by one, the other captives were dropped to the ground. Each of the man’s noises of pain was a little smaller and quicker than the last.
“Why can’t you fuckers get it through your skulls?” she called out. “This is my territory!”
“We didn’t know,” someone said. A woman who was clutching a bloody arm to her chest. Her daughter beside her.
“You fucking challenging me on this?”
“No! No. We—we just… how were we supposed to know?”
“Are you retarded or something? It’s obvious,” Bitch couldn’t believe the woman’s stupidity.
“How were we supposed to know!?” the woman raised her voice, sounding plaintive.
“The howling. If you can hear the howling, you’re too fucking close. Leave.”
“You could probably hear that halfway across the city!”
“No fucking shit,” Bitch retorted. The woman was challenging her authority. She had to respond to it, or the woman would keep talking, Bitch would say or do something that made her look stupid, and others would stand up to her. Best to stop that sooner than later. “Socks! Come!”
The woman shrank back, clutching her daughter, as Socks advanced to Bitch’s side.
“Stop,” a voice ordered.
Bitch turned and saw two capes. From New Wave, weren’t they? Brandish and Glory Girl.
Brandish spoke, “Glory Girl, call your sister. At least one of those people needs medical attention, fas—”
She stopped as Bitch whistled as hard as she could. Barking and snarling, her massed dogs charged the heroes.
After being ambushed and taken captive by the ABB, she’d learned her lesson. Hit first, assess the situation later. Besides, what was she going to do? Talk to them?
Brandish flicked her hands out, and beams of light drew into vague sword shapes. As the dogs stampeded towards her she flicked them out to double the length. They drew closer, almost reaching her, and she reconsidered, banishing the weapons to condense herself into a beachball-sized ball of orange-yellow light. The dogs hit her, there was a spray of sparks, and the ball was sent careening down the street and through the wall of a building.
Glory Girl was flying over the stampeding dogs, a cell phone pressed to her ear, in Bitch’s general direction. Ink and Bruno leaped to the side of a building and then leaped from that point toward Glory Girl. She struck Socks across the head, sending him flying to the ground, and Bruno slammed into her, knocking the phone from her grip. She brought her knee up into the dog’s side and pushed herself away before he could drive her down into the ground.
The heroine went for Bitch, who had only Angelica at her side. Angelica positioned herself between enemy and master, and Glory Girl hit the dog broadside. Angelica barely reacted, turning instead to snap at Glory Girl. Her teeth rebounded off the heroine’s outstretched arm, and Glory Girl darted backward, to hover in the air. Catching her breath? Watching the situation?
That wasn’t how you were supposed to fight. Bitch whistled hard, then shouted, “Magic, Lucy, Roxy! Come!”
As the three dogs barreled toward her, she used her power. She felt it extend outward like a vibration from deep inside her. She felt that power shudder and reverberate, as if to let her know it was making contact with them. She could see the effect. Could see them grow larger, see bone and muscle swell and shift.
“Attack!”
In moments, Glory Girl was contending with four dogs. Angelica advanced implacably, Bitch following at a walking pace. The other three were attacking from every direction, cutting off escape routes, leaping onto the side of the building, leaping down, running behind her, or flanking her from the sides.
“Mom!” Glory Girl shouted, a note of panic in her voice.
“Run!” Brandish called out her response. She was facing much the same situation, unable to attack with the relentless pressure the dogs were putting on her. Instead, she changed herself into that ball form where she couldn’t be touched or hurt, flying away with every hit she took, or controlling the direction so she could make her way for an escape route. She managed to find enough pause to lash out at one dog and shout, “Get the wounded!”
Glory Girl caught Roxy around the snout as the dog lunged for her, and threw her down at Lucy. She used the momentary reprieve this granted her to fly straight for the man who’d shot at Angelica, who lay in a heap on the ground.
She stopped mid-flight.
A woman stood over the man’s mangled body, her long hair blowing slightly in the wind. Which seemed wrong. With the light rain, her hair should have been wetter.
Glory Girl looked over her shoulder to see the dogs, looked back to the injured man and the woman, and then flew straight up, disappearing into the gloom of the night sky. She’d left him behind.
The barking and snarling ceased as the fight drew to a close. Each o
f the dogs returned, and Bitch noted a few injuries. A shattered plate of bone here, a gouge where Brandish’s blades had made contact there. Surface damage. It was only the damage that penetrated deep, past the layers her power applied, which risked hurting the dogs or doing permanent damage. Nothing so serious. Bitch breathed a sigh of relief.
She stalked forward, her dogs joining her to form a loose circle around the woman. The crazy bitch was naked from head to toe, and her skin and hair were painted in alternating stripes of white and black, like a zebra… no. Paint would have washed off, and dye wouldn’t be so crisp around the edges. It was a natural coloring.
When the woman looked up at Bitch, her eyes were yellow and bright, reflecting the ambient light like the eyes of a dog or cat might. She smiled, and there wasn’t a trace of tension in her body, as though she’d just woken up in a safe place.
“Who the fuck are you?”
The woman didn’t reply. She crouched down beside the man, then shifted her position so she was sitting sideways, her legs stretched out beside her. Her fingertips traced the man’s injuries, almost lovingly.
“Answer me,” Bitch ordered.
The woman reached over and pressed her index and middle fingers to the man’s eyes. Pressing down, she penetrated the orbs, sliding her fingers down until they were two knuckles deep.
“Hey! Fuck off!”
The woman removed the fingers. Vitreous fluids and blood flowed from the open wounds in the man’s eye sockets.
The woman turned towards her. She didn’t meet Bitch’s eyes, instead looking down at Bitch’s feet. It struck Bitch that the woman was making herself small, was being inoffensive. It made her feel better, strangely.