The Dog

By The Shadower

AN: The Jack Napier mentioned here has no connection to Jack Napier/The Joker in the movie, Batman. This is one of hopefully a series involving Napier and other recurring characters. This is my first original fic, with original characters, so please review. Finally, I am reluctant to categorize Napier as human or demon or any other label, though there are certainly supernatural properties to him, so please draw your own conclusions as to his basic nature, at least until it becomes more clear. Napier is intended to be a subject of interpretation, so please feel free to interpret.

Prologue

THE QUAKING MAN sat locked in his upstairs bedroom. He gazed out of his window, looking out at the sea, and feeling like an animal caught in a trap, small and scared and unable to escape. He felt a kind of deep sadness tinged with fear. What he had once cared about was now lost, and now he had only to wait for his own impending death.

Ocean surrounded him and he found it horrible. All of the wonder and beauty it had once contained now seemed to have turned to terror and menace. It was the creature that trapped him on this island, the thing that had trapped and killed all the others.

He pushed aside his unease and sat back to wait. It wouldn't be long now, and the locked door would be no obstacle to those wishing him dead.

MAX ran growling over the shore, after the rabbit fleeing him. He caught the rabbit in his teeth and it uttered a small sound of pain and terror deep in its throat. His teeth tore through it, until its throat was ripped apart and it's organs collapsed and mixed with its bones. He then allowed the rabbit to fall onto the sand.

He turned on his heel and traipsed away, leaving it there to be found later. As he had done before. As he had been taught to do.

TERRENCE clung to the board for dear life, his heart pounding. He struggled to maintain a grip on it in the icy water. It was the only thing he had been able to grab on to when that great brown dog had risen out of the ocean, like a sea monster in the Odyssey, and bit into the boat's central board. He shivered at the memory, and tightened his grip.

NAPIER stood looking up at the lighted window. He almost smiled. The time was coming. Soon the travel agent would be dead, one of many paying for the sin that took place all those years ago. He felt the soft fur of a dog under his hand, and, with nothing more than a whispered command, the two of them began to walk toward the house.

AN: Please review and tell me how you liked it.