During breaks, I poured water into a bowl and held it for the dog to drink. I was worried he hadn’t eaten or drunk in a while, so I was determined to get him to consume what he needed to, if he wanted to survive.
The dog hesitated at first, refusing to drink the water from the bowl in my hands, but after I told him, “You don’t want to die from dehydration, do you?” he seemed to relent and drank the bowl dry.
Then, after simple online research, I found I could feed him some meat and rice, in case I didn’t have dog food available. When I checked how much dog food cost, I opted to go for the chicken thighs and simple white rice.
Again, the dog seemed unhappy when I brought the plate to his snout. But this time, I didn’t need to convince him to eat, because his hunger seemed to do him in, and he cleaned the plate in less than a minute.
After I got myself some rice and chicken, too, and sprinkled them with salt and some other spices so they had a better taste, I sat on the couch, facing the dog, who narrowed his eyes at my plate.
I found myself smirking. “I don’t know what you are yet,” I informed him, “so I’m treating you like a regular dog for now. Meaning you can’t have spices.”
If the dog was human, I would’ve thought my words pissed him off. He had that kind of look.
After taking a bite of the chicken thigh, I pointed my fork at him and said, “You know, if you’re capable of human speech, you can simply tell me what you are.”
The dog growled in response, but for some reason, I didn’t find him threatening. Usually, such a humongous dog growling at me would’ve made me think twice about my safety, but something about him put me at ease.
Maybe it was the fact he was currently too incapacitated by his wound to actually do anything to me.
“Obviously, you understand me,” I deduced, taking a bite of the rice. “Now the question remains, how can I get you to communicate with me?”
This seemed to annoy him, because he made an irritated huff, and leaned his head down on his large paws and closed his eyes. But his tail was flicking back and forth sharply, like my cat’s used to do when he was agitated.
I wondered if it meant the same for dogs.
After lunch, I got back to my computer, and instead of continuing to work on my new article, I made a slight detour and searched for canine supernatural creatures online before pulling out my thick folder from the desk drawer.
The list was longer than I thought.
Opening the folder, I looked through my own lists. Much like with sigils, I documented all kinds of supernatural creatures I believed—or rather,knew—were real and walking among us, along with the evidence I’d collected for each.
I had mermaids, sorcerers, succubi, and even Harpies, among many others. But when it came to the canine types, there were only three I had listed.
Hellhounds, Aralez, and werewolves.
Hellhoundsreferred to the creatures who served the guardian of Hell, according to many mythologies. They were mostly known as the helpers of Cerberus from Greek mythology, but whether Cerberus, or even Hell, was real, I had yet to find proof. As for hellhounds, though, there was plenty of evidence. What they actuallywere, I didn’t know. I simply named them hellhounds because, according to certain sightings, especially in the Nordic countries, they looked like large dogs with demonic horns.
The Aralez, on the other hand, were creatures from Armenian mythology, depicted as winged, doglike creatures who descended from the heavens to lick the wounds of fallen heroes. According to the testaments I had found, there were reports of terminally ill people who were visited by a large canine-ish creature during one night, and the next day, they were completely healed. Those people, coincidentally, were all very altruistic, helping their communities while seeking no compensation for their good deeds. Thus I named those creatures the Aralez.
Werewolves were self-explanatory, really: creatures who were part wolf, part human. They were quite popular in modern literature, movies, and shows, and there were thousands of people online who claimed to have seen one. There were countless “witness statements” about different kinds of werewolves: those who looked like a nightmare standing on two feet, with fur covering their limbs and sharp teeth, or black wolves with golden eyes and piercing fangs.
Throughout the last several years of researching the supernatural, I had learned one thing for sure: Ironically enough, when so many peoplethought something was real, yet all proofs contrasted with one another, the odds were that something might not actually be real at all.
And even if werewolveswerereal, and I went by the descriptions of those online who claimed to have seen one, the dog didn’t exactly fit any of them—except, perhaps, for his size.
As for hellhounds and Aralez ... well, I highly doubted he was either of those. He was far too pretty to be a hellhound—not to mention the lack of demonic horns, or the fact he was in the States rather than in Norway or something—and yet his temperament didn’t feel like it could belong to an Aralez.
If I was going by my own personal lists, he didn’t fit anything. But searches online showed me plenty of different options, and since I knew that I didn’t even scratch the surface when it came to my supernatural investigations, any of those options could be plausible.
A knock on the door made me jump, snapping me out of my deep thoughts. “Shit,” I murmured as I rose to my feet, ignoring the dog’s stare as I headed to the door and opened it.
There stood a woman in medical gear, holding a black briefcase. She gave me a friendly smile and said, “Miss Colter? I’m Dr. Alicia Danvers.”
“Oh, hi, yes,” I said, blinking rapidly as I returned to reality after my hours-long session staring at the laptop. “Come on in.”
I moved aside, letting the vet inside, and closed the door behind her. She fixed her bushy dark hair into a ponytail and peered at the sofa, where the dog was staring at her with a low growl. “I’m guessing this is the dog in question?”
“Yeah,” I said, moving to crouch by the dog’s head. “Feel free to check him and see what you can do.”