A Day at the Pound
This is a prologue/preface/idontknowwhat for this thing I'm working on that refuses to be more than preslash. >_> *sigh* I need a swift kick in the butt. ^_^ And someone to convince me that I want to finish something, anything this before I attempt fox dragons.
A Day at the Pound
Virgil bit his lip as yet another dog groveled at Catherton’s massively booted feet. He couldn’t truly blame the beasts. Catherton was a good head taller than him and a great deal more muscular. He'd barely fit in the carriage that they'd taken to reach this place.
Clearly, Catherton looked to be the alpha male in this situation.
Truth was, however, that Catherton was little better than a flunky of powerful, more influential men. One of the many, many persons of ill repute that his idiot brother had managed to fall in with over the course of his spoiled rotten little life. For the purpose of this outing however, he was the one flunky that Virgil could use to his advantage.
Catherton’s half brother was the Dogcatcher who ran this particular pound, and for this favor to Virgil, Catherton expected to get a purebred pointer puppy out of the deal. As if Catherton had the first clue on how to care for a plant, let alone a live, helpless creature.
Virgil wanted to punch the smug grin off the Neanderthal’s face.
It would be easy to blame idiot brother, Burke, entirely for this, but the deeper Burke dragged them into it, the more Virgil had come to realize that there were bigger forces at work here. Burke had just been a convenient patsy to exploit.
Their father had been the best dog seller on the east coast. The best breeders had trusted him with their dogs and buyers had eagerly sought him out. Virgil had learned it all at his knee, had taken up the business after he had passed away.
Virgil knew dogs almost as well as he knew people.
Dogs needed a master to fixate on, people to be surrounded by, or they lost their humanity and became little better than animals. They needed human touch and a person to focus their energies on, in order to maintain human thought and human form. Without that, they slowly went mad, spiraling downward until they weren’t even able to shift from their dog self into their human self. Dogs were more than a simple tool to be used or a exotic pet to be displayed. The bond went deeper than that, and Virgil had learned full well how essential it was that a dog be paired up with an owner that could sense and understand his dog’s needs.
Virgil needed dogs because it made his life make sense.
But that wasn’t what kept criminals like Catherton swarming around Burke like flies. It was the connections. Virgil knew every reputable and sought after breeder on the east coast. His father had spent a lifetime making sure that the Downing name was synonymous with top notch, high quality dogs. The man thoroughly researched, interviewed and reviewed every prospective buyer to make sure that each buyer was suitably matched to the dog, gaining the trust of Breeders, who tended to be an overly protective lot.
What his stupid, idiotic brother didn’t quite grasp was that none of the men he played cards with or raced horses against were interested in the money he didn’t have. They all wanted the Downing name, the Downing contacts.
They entered another cage that consisted of little more than chicken wire and a packed dirt floor, and yet another dog bared its throat to Catherton, and Virgil went through the motions of carefully inspecting a dog he already knew he had no intention of taking. Half these dogs, he was sure, weren’t even capable of adopting human forms anymore. Some were feral, snarling and biting in madness. Others were obedient but the vacant look in their eyes spoke of years of neglect and a loss of humanity. The conditions of the pound alone spoke to the knowledge that no one in the facilty clearly saw a second chance for any of these poor souls. Wind whistled through hastily nailed together planks, the cages barely gave some dogs room to move, let alone shift. The smell of dead animals and feces hung heavily in the air. No one expected there to be a shred of humanity in any of these creatures. To that end though, the dog he’d come to find was one of the unfortunate few that held onto his humanity but that no longer had an owner to keep him fixated in it.
Not that it didn’t break his heart to see them all here, but he was playing too dangerous a game to be worrying about things he couldn’t change.
He’d told Francis that he was going to write a manual on the care of dogs. With a name like Downing attached to it, it ought to be a good seller on the market, but he knew that wasn’t why Francis had been interested. Burke had put him in the middle of these intrigues long enough for Virgil to recognize a player when he saw one. The trouble was, Virgil hadn’t quite puzzled out exactly where Francis stood.
Hell’s bells, he wasn’t even sure where he stood anymore.
He sold dogs who were little better than puppies to men who most certainly didn’t deserve them and who most assuredly would not take care of them in the manner that dogs needed care. That kept his sorry brother alive to live another day, which Burke hadn’t managed yet to make better than the previous. However, Virgil couldn’t allow these men to take those dogs and just do as they pleased.
There was the Downing reputation-the one his father had spent a life time building-to consider. Burke had already done enough damage to it.
Ultimately though, there were the dogs to think of, and Virgil couldn't stand the thought that a dog he’d help sell might end up in a place like this.
It made his skin crawl as he watched the flies congregate on the carcass of a dog who had given up.
So, he’d taken meticulous notes, used the money that Burke’s creditors hadn’t wanted, and devised a scheme of rustling dogs from rustlers.
Thus proving that Burke wasn’t the only idiot in the family.
They walked into the ninth pen and yet again the dog bared its throat and exposed its belly to Catherton. Virgil bent to inspect it, feeling even more dejected as he looked at the pup. The brand in its ears confirmed his suspicions. Shepherd breeders, and this breeder in particular, did not let their dogs end up in places like this. Not without one hell of a legal fight with their sellers.
Whoever their broker had been for this, his reputation was on the line. Part of selling meant keeping records, following up. A good seller never let something like this happen to any of the dogs they sold, and a good breeder never dealt with sellers who produced results like this.
Of course, the other explanation was that this dog had never been sold. He suspected that this was where men like Francis came in, but with such little information on the man, it was hard to determine the truth.
Standing, he shook his head to Catherton who shrugged his shoulders in bored irritation.
As wonderful as O’Rourke, Nathan and Louisa were, they couldn’t be in all the places Virgil needed them to be. He needed someone with him at the godawful dinners that pretended at being civilized. He needed someone who wouldn’t look out of the ordinary with him when he was on the streets meeting with his contacts. He needed someone with street grit that could fake proper gentility.
Because he certainly would never be able to teach faked street grit to someone with proper breeding. He barely managed it himself. Most of his contacts had made him for what he was in a manner of minutes.
But teaching a dog to be civilized? That he could do. In his sleep probably, given the number of lessons on the same that he’d gotten as a youngster. If half as much attention had been given to making sure Burke lived up to the family name, neither of them would even be in this position now.
Virgil knew dogs. Didn’t matter what kind, what background or how old they were. Unfortunately, he knew very little about most everything else and no one had yet managed to write a manual on how to infiltrate smuggling rings and navigate illegal black markets.
The tenth pen they went into held a Dane.
A pretty Harlequin, the Dane was black spotted with one patch over an eye that was a ghostly blue while the other dark grey eye was surrounded by white fur. Both eyes watched him silently, not even bothering to spare a glance for Catherton except when the man banged the gate to the pen closed.
Virgil held out a hand, and watched with a small smile as the large dog slunk warily towards him. Again, the Dane spared Catherton a quick glance, but it was to Virgil that he twisted his neck and bared his throat.
Carefully, Virgil ran a hand over the dog’s muzzle and then behind his ears to give him a good scratch. The Dane didn’t lean in to the gesture, and Virgil suspected that on more familiar ground, the dog would have been growling, but neither did he lean away.
“Kinda homely, don’t ya think?” Catherton frowned, drawing back a boot. Casually stepping between Catherton and his new dog, Virgil smiled brightly. True, the creature wasn't beautiful in the classical sense. It was in his depth of character and in the sharply intelligent eyes.
“He doesn’t have to be pretty for my purposes.” Virgil coaxed the dog to stand. “Shift, please.” He said it in the voice his father had taught him, and while the dog did stare at him for a good moment, he did shift.
Leaving in his midst a very, very tall man. Some dogs could pass for human to the untrained and unobservant eye. This dog, however, never would. If it wasn’t the sheer size of the man that gave him away, then the patchy black and white hair on his head would. Other things also marked him for what he was: the way his nose was shaped, the slope of his adam’s apple, and the way he held himself intensely alert.
Like there had been in his dog shape, thin scars raised up on visible patches of skin. He looked scruffy and unkempt and just a little bit wild.
But that was to be expected of a dog found here in the city pound.
A hank of blue black hair fell in front of the pale blue eye, but the Dane did nothing to brush it aside. Merely, he stared at Virgil, intelligent and questioning eyes not bothering to spare Catherton a glance.
“This is the one.” Virgil nodded in satisfaction.
“Finally,” Catherton grumbled, banging the gate open and startling the Dane into jumping. It didn’t matter though.
In the ten years since his father’s death, Virgil had avoided owning a dog. As a seller, he saw all kinds in all shapes and sizes and breeds. It was impossible to choose one out of the hundreds that he'd seen in his life. Besides, listening to his father’s somewhat antiquated advice on following gut instinct and knowing when a dog was the right dog meant waiting until the right dog presented itself.
This? This was the right dog.
He held out a hand and waited patiently as the dog stared hard at him before placing his in Virgil's. Grinning, Virgil curled his fingers around the big hand, tugging the dog forward. "Come on, let's go home."
A Day at the Pound
Virgil bit his lip as yet another dog groveled at Catherton’s massively booted feet. He couldn’t truly blame the beasts. Catherton was a good head taller than him and a great deal more muscular. He'd barely fit in the carriage that they'd taken to reach this place.
Clearly, Catherton looked to be the alpha male in this situation.
Truth was, however, that Catherton was little better than a flunky of powerful, more influential men. One of the many, many persons of ill repute that his idiot brother had managed to fall in with over the course of his spoiled rotten little life. For the purpose of this outing however, he was the one flunky that Virgil could use to his advantage.
Catherton’s half brother was the Dogcatcher who ran this particular pound, and for this favor to Virgil, Catherton expected to get a purebred pointer puppy out of the deal. As if Catherton had the first clue on how to care for a plant, let alone a live, helpless creature.
Virgil wanted to punch the smug grin off the Neanderthal’s face.
It would be easy to blame idiot brother, Burke, entirely for this, but the deeper Burke dragged them into it, the more Virgil had come to realize that there were bigger forces at work here. Burke had just been a convenient patsy to exploit.
Their father had been the best dog seller on the east coast. The best breeders had trusted him with their dogs and buyers had eagerly sought him out. Virgil had learned it all at his knee, had taken up the business after he had passed away.
Virgil knew dogs almost as well as he knew people.
Dogs needed a master to fixate on, people to be surrounded by, or they lost their humanity and became little better than animals. They needed human touch and a person to focus their energies on, in order to maintain human thought and human form. Without that, they slowly went mad, spiraling downward until they weren’t even able to shift from their dog self into their human self. Dogs were more than a simple tool to be used or a exotic pet to be displayed. The bond went deeper than that, and Virgil had learned full well how essential it was that a dog be paired up with an owner that could sense and understand his dog’s needs.
Virgil needed dogs because it made his life make sense.
But that wasn’t what kept criminals like Catherton swarming around Burke like flies. It was the connections. Virgil knew every reputable and sought after breeder on the east coast. His father had spent a lifetime making sure that the Downing name was synonymous with top notch, high quality dogs. The man thoroughly researched, interviewed and reviewed every prospective buyer to make sure that each buyer was suitably matched to the dog, gaining the trust of Breeders, who tended to be an overly protective lot.
What his stupid, idiotic brother didn’t quite grasp was that none of the men he played cards with or raced horses against were interested in the money he didn’t have. They all wanted the Downing name, the Downing contacts.
They entered another cage that consisted of little more than chicken wire and a packed dirt floor, and yet another dog bared its throat to Catherton, and Virgil went through the motions of carefully inspecting a dog he already knew he had no intention of taking. Half these dogs, he was sure, weren’t even capable of adopting human forms anymore. Some were feral, snarling and biting in madness. Others were obedient but the vacant look in their eyes spoke of years of neglect and a loss of humanity. The conditions of the pound alone spoke to the knowledge that no one in the facilty clearly saw a second chance for any of these poor souls. Wind whistled through hastily nailed together planks, the cages barely gave some dogs room to move, let alone shift. The smell of dead animals and feces hung heavily in the air. No one expected there to be a shred of humanity in any of these creatures. To that end though, the dog he’d come to find was one of the unfortunate few that held onto his humanity but that no longer had an owner to keep him fixated in it.
Not that it didn’t break his heart to see them all here, but he was playing too dangerous a game to be worrying about things he couldn’t change.
He’d told Francis that he was going to write a manual on the care of dogs. With a name like Downing attached to it, it ought to be a good seller on the market, but he knew that wasn’t why Francis had been interested. Burke had put him in the middle of these intrigues long enough for Virgil to recognize a player when he saw one. The trouble was, Virgil hadn’t quite puzzled out exactly where Francis stood.
Hell’s bells, he wasn’t even sure where he stood anymore.
He sold dogs who were little better than puppies to men who most certainly didn’t deserve them and who most assuredly would not take care of them in the manner that dogs needed care. That kept his sorry brother alive to live another day, which Burke hadn’t managed yet to make better than the previous. However, Virgil couldn’t allow these men to take those dogs and just do as they pleased.
There was the Downing reputation-the one his father had spent a life time building-to consider. Burke had already done enough damage to it.
Ultimately though, there were the dogs to think of, and Virgil couldn't stand the thought that a dog he’d help sell might end up in a place like this.
It made his skin crawl as he watched the flies congregate on the carcass of a dog who had given up.
So, he’d taken meticulous notes, used the money that Burke’s creditors hadn’t wanted, and devised a scheme of rustling dogs from rustlers.
Thus proving that Burke wasn’t the only idiot in the family.
They walked into the ninth pen and yet again the dog bared its throat and exposed its belly to Catherton. Virgil bent to inspect it, feeling even more dejected as he looked at the pup. The brand in its ears confirmed his suspicions. Shepherd breeders, and this breeder in particular, did not let their dogs end up in places like this. Not without one hell of a legal fight with their sellers.
Whoever their broker had been for this, his reputation was on the line. Part of selling meant keeping records, following up. A good seller never let something like this happen to any of the dogs they sold, and a good breeder never dealt with sellers who produced results like this.
Of course, the other explanation was that this dog had never been sold. He suspected that this was where men like Francis came in, but with such little information on the man, it was hard to determine the truth.
Standing, he shook his head to Catherton who shrugged his shoulders in bored irritation.
As wonderful as O’Rourke, Nathan and Louisa were, they couldn’t be in all the places Virgil needed them to be. He needed someone with him at the godawful dinners that pretended at being civilized. He needed someone who wouldn’t look out of the ordinary with him when he was on the streets meeting with his contacts. He needed someone with street grit that could fake proper gentility.
Because he certainly would never be able to teach faked street grit to someone with proper breeding. He barely managed it himself. Most of his contacts had made him for what he was in a manner of minutes.
But teaching a dog to be civilized? That he could do. In his sleep probably, given the number of lessons on the same that he’d gotten as a youngster. If half as much attention had been given to making sure Burke lived up to the family name, neither of them would even be in this position now.
Virgil knew dogs. Didn’t matter what kind, what background or how old they were. Unfortunately, he knew very little about most everything else and no one had yet managed to write a manual on how to infiltrate smuggling rings and navigate illegal black markets.
The tenth pen they went into held a Dane.
A pretty Harlequin, the Dane was black spotted with one patch over an eye that was a ghostly blue while the other dark grey eye was surrounded by white fur. Both eyes watched him silently, not even bothering to spare a glance for Catherton except when the man banged the gate to the pen closed.
Virgil held out a hand, and watched with a small smile as the large dog slunk warily towards him. Again, the Dane spared Catherton a quick glance, but it was to Virgil that he twisted his neck and bared his throat.
Carefully, Virgil ran a hand over the dog’s muzzle and then behind his ears to give him a good scratch. The Dane didn’t lean in to the gesture, and Virgil suspected that on more familiar ground, the dog would have been growling, but neither did he lean away.
“Kinda homely, don’t ya think?” Catherton frowned, drawing back a boot. Casually stepping between Catherton and his new dog, Virgil smiled brightly. True, the creature wasn't beautiful in the classical sense. It was in his depth of character and in the sharply intelligent eyes.
“He doesn’t have to be pretty for my purposes.” Virgil coaxed the dog to stand. “Shift, please.” He said it in the voice his father had taught him, and while the dog did stare at him for a good moment, he did shift.
Leaving in his midst a very, very tall man. Some dogs could pass for human to the untrained and unobservant eye. This dog, however, never would. If it wasn’t the sheer size of the man that gave him away, then the patchy black and white hair on his head would. Other things also marked him for what he was: the way his nose was shaped, the slope of his adam’s apple, and the way he held himself intensely alert.
Like there had been in his dog shape, thin scars raised up on visible patches of skin. He looked scruffy and unkempt and just a little bit wild.
But that was to be expected of a dog found here in the city pound.
A hank of blue black hair fell in front of the pale blue eye, but the Dane did nothing to brush it aside. Merely, he stared at Virgil, intelligent and questioning eyes not bothering to spare Catherton a glance.
“This is the one.” Virgil nodded in satisfaction.
“Finally,” Catherton grumbled, banging the gate open and startling the Dane into jumping. It didn’t matter though.
In the ten years since his father’s death, Virgil had avoided owning a dog. As a seller, he saw all kinds in all shapes and sizes and breeds. It was impossible to choose one out of the hundreds that he'd seen in his life. Besides, listening to his father’s somewhat antiquated advice on following gut instinct and knowing when a dog was the right dog meant waiting until the right dog presented itself.
This? This was the right dog.
He held out a hand and waited patiently as the dog stared hard at him before placing his in Virgil's. Grinning, Virgil curled his fingers around the big hand, tugging the dog forward. "Come on, let's go home."