God Hounds

Chapter 14: The Kadlum

“So,” Alice said. Her arms crossed protectively around her as she stood in the orange-kissed, over-natured room of sad quiet and ill meditation. Everyone looked at her and waited. In the messed-up silence, she was the beacon of either mercy, or death. She was lady justice if lady justice had a gun and pointed wherever she liked. “He’s really lost his frickin’ brain, huh?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Ramu said. Her voice was like an old, crackling radio sitting dignifiedly inside the room. She was in that phase for old women where everything they said had to be carefully listened to. She grunted. Her sound of peace and thinking was an ugly and unwelcome hum in the otherwise tranquil space. “No twenty-year-old could react to poison like that,” she said. “Unless the guy’s been sleeping all his life.”

Thirty minutes ago, Aden ate the fruit everyone thought would kill him. Now