Enter the Hound: The Origin of Inu

Chapter 21: Should’ve Known Better

 

            For the first time in her life, Singles Awareness Day—known to many as “Valentine’s Day—was not a miserable holiday for Inu.  Despite it falling on a Monday, Frostfire made the day very special for her.  He walked her to class, made a very special lunch for the two of them to share, and did all the little things that let her know that she was loved and appreciated.  It was a different experience for her, to say the very least, and she wasn’t entirely comfortable with it at first.  She also knew Frostfire wasn’t finished; he had made it clear that he had plans for this evening involving her, a bottle of Riesling, and chocolate.  Knowing this, she had little choice but to get used to being the center of attention and affection.

            Somehow, she was sure she’d manage.

            When she got back to her apartment after class, she discovered a message from Nadine on her answering machine.

            “I regret what I said before I…you know…disappeared for awhile,” said the voice on the machine.  “I’m so sorry, Ashley-chan.  Please, can we talk?  Call me back, okay?  I just…I’m sorry….”

            Inu heard nothing strange in Nadine’s voice on the phone, though she did note with some relief that Nadine had used her real name in the message.  She was due to meet Frostfire at the sushi bar at 7:00, and it was already 4:30.  She didn’t have much time, but she was fairly certain she could manage an hour with Nadine if she showered and dressed early.  She called Nadine and told her she would be able to talk for a little while at the coffee shop across the street from the sushi bar.  Nadine laughed over the phone and teased her about how well her relationship with Cori-O was going.  It was as if Nadine had never disappeared.  She sounded just the same as she had before the Genome incident.  Inu looked forward to talking with Nadine in person.  Maybe then things would go back to something resembling normal once and for all.

 

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            Aria hung up the phone and glared at it in disgust.  She’d had to let Nadine out of her dark corner in order to convince Inu to meet with her.  She despised Nadine and wanted her dead, but no matter how many times she killed that bitch, she kept coming back.

            The phone rang, and Aria grabbed it, intending to tell whoever was on the other end to get bent.  The connection was bad and full of static, though, and such a response would have been wasted.

            “Please,” the voice said.  The voice was faint, yet she had no problems deciphering it through the popping, crackling mess of static.  “Please, don’t do this.”

            “Oh, ha ha, buddy,” Aria sneered.  “A little early to be making drunken crank calls, don’t you think?”

            “Please…don’t….”

            “Why should you care what I do?”

            “Please,” the voice whined.  The voice on the other end of the line sounded desperate and strained, as if just making the call was a strain.  “Please, don’t hurt her?”

            “Hurt who?”

            “Don’t hurt Ashley-chan.”

            Aria froze.  Her jaw set and her nostrils flared.  Turning and glaring daggers at the receiver, Aria suddenly became aware that it was beeping.  Seconds later, an automatic message clicked on asking to please hang up the telephone.  She saw red.  That little bitch Nadine...oh, yes…she was responsible for this.  Nadine had read one Stephen King book too many, yes she had.  The old phone call from the mind; yes, that was a King classic.

            “I am not amused, Nadine,” she growled at the receiver.  “No, not amused at all.  Just for that, I may have to hurt your precious Ashley-chan a little more than I had planned.”

            “Please, don’t,” Nadine whispered from the back of Aria’s mind, her voice seeming to come from the receiver.  Aria laughed harshly.

            “Don’t tempt me, Nadine,” said Aria.  “I can’t kill her.  Master wants her alive.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t break every bone in her body before handing her over, and we both know that I have no problem with that.  One more word from you, and your Ashley-chan is toast.”

            Whimpering, Nadine retreated to her dark corner and curled up in a ball.  Aria flashed her twisted smile at the beeping receiver and slammed it down into the cradle.  She grabbed her jacket and left the frat house through the little used side door in the kitchen.  She didn’t want to be sure to get to the coffee shop ahead of Inu.

            In her haste to leave, she failed to notice Jack standing just behind her in the doorway leading to the living room.  He frowned as he watched her leave, and pulled out his cell phone to make a call.

 

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            It required taking the world’s fastest shower and risking many gouges with her razor as she touched up her legs, but it was worth it.  Inu went from “merely pretty” to “extremely date worthy” in record time.  Her hair was spiked and fuzzy, making her ears look tiny and cute.  Her make-up was light and accentuated her blue eyes.  She wore a simple cubic zirconia necklace and earring set that she had purchased years before but had never had occasion to wear.  She wore light tan thigh-high tights that wouldn’t run if breathed on the wrong way, and low heels so she wouldn’t kill herself walking to and from her car.  And to complete the package: the little black dress.  She had never understood the whole “little black dress” thing—she hated dresses in general, to be perfectly honest—but she was willing to do it for Frostfire.  She smiled, wondering what his reaction would be when he saw her.  For that matter, she wondered what Nadine would say when she walked into the coffee shop looking entirely overdressed.

            Before she left, she called Frostfire and left a message on his voicemail telling him that she was going early to meet Nadine for coffee, and asking if he would meet her here before they had dinner at the sushi bar.  After all, there was always the chance she and Nadine would lose track of time, and she didn’t want to accidentally leave him waiting for her and wondering where she was.

            She arrived at the coffee shop at 5:55, a full five minutes ahead of schedule.  To her surprise, Nadine was already there waiting for her outside the door.

            “Ashley-chan!” Nadine cried.  “Oh my god, you look fantastic!  Since when did you start wearing a dress?”

            Inu laughed.  This was her Nadine.  She stepped forward, smiling and laughing softly as she hugged Nadine.

            “I’m so glad to see you made it back safely,” she said.  “We were worried sick about you.”

            “You really shouldn’t have worried,” Nadine replied, wrapping her arms around Inu and holding her tightly.  “I know how to handle myself.”

            Inu barely had time to register the pin-prick of the needle against her back before the world went dark.

 

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            “I should’ve known better with a girl like you…that I would love everything that you do…

            She awoke to find herself strapped down to a table in a dark room that smelled of old peanut butter and mouse droppings.  She tried to turn her head to get a better look at her surroundings, but it was no use; her head had been secured, too.

            “…and I do…hey hey hey…and I do.”

            A Beatles song was playing on a stereo somewhere in another room, and a man was singing along to it.

            “Whoa, whoa, I never realized what a kiss could me…this could only happen to me…can’t you see…can’t you see…”

            And he was butchering it horribly.  She could hear him dancing around somewhere behind her in the darkness, singing out of tune—was he drunk?  He had to be drunk.  Or maybe horribly tone deaf.  No one was ever that bad on purpose, right?—and making her ears hurt with every sour note.  In the background, she could hear the popping and scratching of a record needle.  The thought occurred to her that at any moment the needle would be dragged sharply across the record in an agonizing screech.  She frowned, vowing to seriously hurt this guy if he did such a thing.  It was bad enough to inflict that kind of sound on her sensitive ears, but no one, NO ONE, desecrated a Beatles record and got away with it!

            “…that when I tell you that I love you…oh…Ah, so you’ve finally decided to rejoin the land of the living.  Welcome back.”

            Inu jerked her constraints in vain.  The man in the shadows stopped dancing and began to approach her.  In a last attempt to free herself, Inu tried to summon her clones.  She was horrified to find that she could not.

            “I’m sorry, but as I’m sure you’ll understand, I simply cannot allow you to call for your doubles,” the man said.  “It wouldn’t be fair, now, would it?  I mean, seven of you and only one of me…”

            “What do you want, Moreau?” Inu growled.

            Emerging at last from the shadows, Dr. Moreau stood beside Inu’s head at the table and gazed down at her thoughtfully.  She looked so much like Harvey, but those eyes…those eyes….

            “She wasn’t full-Japanese, you know,” he said absentmindedly.

            Inu gave him a weird look, as if he had suddenly asked her to recite the names of the Kings and Queens of Cheese from 1776 to present.

            “Kaede,” he continued, ignoring Inu’s expression.  “She wasn’t full-Japanese.  Her great grandfather was a gaijin, a foreigner, from Europe…maybe Ireland…she was never really sure.  That’s why she had those beautiful blue eyes.”

            “…What?”

            “They still haunt me in my sleep, those eyes.”

            “…I’m…sorry?”

            “You have her eyes.”

            Inu blinked.  “Na, und?”

            The short German phrase seemed to catch Moreau’s attention and snap him out of his nostalgia.  “‘Und’,” he said, frowning at Inu, “that means I know where you came from.  You came from two of my prized test subjects.  That means creatures like you can be bred.  The question is, to what end?  I think some tests are in order.”

            He turned and walked away then, singing along with the song again as he went.  Meanwhile, Inu jerked again at her bonds, knowing it was useless and struggling anyway.  She cursed Nadine with every fiber of her being, and she cursed herself for not seeing the trap before she walked into it.

            “And when I ask you to be mine…you’re gonna say you love me to.”

            And for the first time in her life, she cursed that damned song.