The adrenaline was leaving me. That was the problem with adrenaline—it borrowed energy from tomorrow, and the interest rate was predatory.
My knees turned into water. Not metaphorically. I physically felt the cartilage dissolve, leaving me standing on two pillars of trembling jelly. The cold from the rain wasn't just on my skin anymore; it had migrated inward, settling in the marrow of my bones. My teeth chattered. Click~~~click~~~click~~~. A broken typewriter trying to spell out my resignation letter to the universe.
The wolf - Fenrisulfr, the Eater of Worlds, the thing that had just swallowed the horizon - was still staring at me.
It sat on its haunches. The movement caused a minor earthquake in the foyer, shaking dust from the crystal chandelier. Its head was the size of a hatchback. Its breath hit me in gusts, hot and wet, carrying the scent of raw meat, copper, and something older - the smell of a grave that had been open too long.
I should have been dead. I should have been a red stain on the Persian rug.
But I wasn't. Because I had thrown a pen. And it had brought it back.
"Good... boy?" I whispered.
My voice cracked. Dry leaves being stepped on in a dead forest.
The wolf tilted its head. The massive ears, tattered from a thousand ancient wars, twitched. It let out a sound - a low, rumbling whine that vibrated through the soles of my wet shoes. It was the sound of a tectonic plate asking for a treat.
Then the headache hit.
It didn't creep up. It was a nail gun to the forehead.
I gasped, clutching my temples. The darkness of the foyer fractured. Lines of burning red light seared themselves onto my retinas. No screen. No hologram. Invisible scalpels carved letters into the back of my eyes, smelling of ozone and burnt neurons.
[PATIENT IDENTIFIED: FENRISULFR]
[SPECIES: Divine Beast (Canis Majoris Trauma)]
[DIAGNOSIS: Severe Separation Anxiety (Stage IV)]
[SYMPTOMS: Hyper-fixation on intruders, destructive play, howling at the void.]
[PRESCRIPTION: Physical Assurance. (Pet the damn dog, Victor.)]
The text pulsed, oozing a digital sludge that made me want to vomit. The letters weren't just visual; they had weight. They pressed against my optic nerve, a physical intrusion demanding compliance.
Separation anxiety?
I looked at the monster. I looked at the claws that were currently digging gouges into the hardwood floor—gouges deep enough to plant potatoes in. I looked at the saliva dripping from its jaws, sizzling as it hit the varnish.
"You're diagnosing the apocalypse with puppy issues," I hissed at the air.
The System ignored me. It just throbbed faster, the red light intensifying until it washed out the rest of the room.
[WARNING: Patient cortisol levels rising. Destructive outburst imminent. Apply tactile therapy immediately.]
The wolf let out a bark. It wasn't a woof. It was a sonic boom. The stained glass window behind me exploded outward, showering the driveway with shards of saints and martyrs. The noise slapped me, leaving my ears ringing with a high-pitched whine that harmonized with my terror.
Fenrir looked at the broken window, then back at me. It whined again. Louder. It was vibrating. The sheer kinetic energy of its anxiety was heating up the room, turning the damp foyer into a sauna.
"Okay," I said. "Okay. I'm doing it."
I took a step forward. My shoes squelched. A pathetic sound in the face of a god.
This was suicide. This was the part of the horror movie where the audience screams at the screen. Don't touch the murder-beast, you idiot. Run. Die tired, but run.
But the red text was burning a hole in my visual cortex. [APPLY TACTILE THERAPY.]
I lifted my hand.
It was shaking. And not just a little tremor. It was vibrating at a frequency that could probably shatter wine glasses. My fingers were locked in a spasm of pure, distilled terror. Every nerve ending in my arm was firing a retreat signal, but my body was locked in a forward stumble.
I reached out toward the snout.
The heat coming off the creature was intense. An open oven door. The fur wasn't soft. It was coarse, steel wool soaked in oil.
My hand hovered inches from its nose. I couldn't do it. My survival instinct was screaming, pulling the emergency brake, flooding my system with cortisol.
Click~~~click~~~click~~~. My teeth were loud in the silence.
Fenrir moved.
It thrust its snout forward, bridging the gap.
Wham.
The impact nearly snapped my wrist. The giant wet nose smashed into my palm, pinning my hand against its face.
I froze. I waited for the bite. I waited for the teeth to shear through my radius and ulna, to feel the snap of bone and the spray of arterial blood.
But the bite didn't come.
Instead, the wolf closed its eyes. It let out a long, shuddering sigh that smelled of ozone and old blood. Its massive body, a coiled spring of lethal muscle, suddenly went slack. It leaned into my hand, putting all its weight on me.
I staggered, bracing my legs to keep from being crushed by the affection of a god.
My hand was still shaking violently against its snout.
Fenrir's eyes opened - slits of molten gold. It looked at my vibrating hand. It didn't see fear. It didn't see a terrified human about to wet himself.
It saw - felt - the vibration.
The wolf grunted in approval. It pushed harder against my palm, chasing the tremor.
It thought I was a massage chair. It thought this seizure of terror was a high-frequency petting technique developed by the ancients.
"Good... boy," I said again, my voice gaining a fraction of stability. "Who's a... good... cosmic horror?"
The tail thumped against the floor. Thump~~~Thump~~~ The floorboards cracked rhythmically. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling like snow.
I was alive. I was holding the nose of a Norse legend, and I was alive.
The System text faded, dissolving into a grey mist in my peripheral vision. The headache receded to a dull throb, leaving behind the taste of copper in my mouth.
"Excellent technique, sir."
The voice didn't come from the wolf. It came from the floor.
I jumped, snatching my hand back. Fenrir growled low in his throat, a subterranean rumble, annoyed at the interruption of service.
"Who's there?" I spun around, slipping on the wet floor and barely keeping my balance.
There was nobody. Just the empty, ruined foyer. The rain, the shadows, the broken glass.
"Down here, sir. If you would be so kind as to lower your gaze. My lumbar support isn't what it used to be."
I looked down.
A floorboard near the staircase was bulging. As I watched, the wood splintered. A twig emerged. Then a branch. Then a root system that rapidly wove itself into the shape of a human foot.
It grew fast - time-lapse fast. Wood and vine twisted together, forming legs, a torso, arms. Moss sprouted instantly to form a jagged, green tuxedo. A face formed last - bark twisting into wrinkles, a knot-hole forming a mouth. The smell hit me then - damp earth, rotting leaves, and the peculiar, sweet scent of a deep forest after a storm.
An old man stood there. He was made of oak and apathy.
He brushed a dead leaf off his shoulder. One of his eyes was a polished dark nut; the other was a monocle that was cracked down the middle.
He ignored the giant wolf completely. He walked-creaked-right past Fenrir's nose.
"You..." I pointed a shaking finger. "You are a tree."
"I am the butler, sir," he corrected, his voice two stones grinding together. "Yggdrasil. But you may call me Ygg. Most do. Before they die."
He stopped in front of me and bowed. A small shower of sawdust fell from his joints.
"Welcome home, Master Corvinus. I must apologize for the state of the foyer. And the kitchen. And the timeline."
"The timeline?"
"The potatoes, sir," Yggdrasil sighed. "You were gone a long time. They have evolved. They have a parliament now. I believe they are drafting a constitution in the pantry. It is quite noisy."
I stared at him. Then I looked at Fenrir, who was now chewing on the remains of the front door frame, spitting out splinters.
"I'm hallucinating," I said. "This is a coma dream. I hit my head in the crash. Any minute now, I'll wake up in a hospital with a tube in my throat."
"If only, sir," Yggdrasil said. He reached into his mossy jacket. The sound of dry bark scraping against bark set my teeth on edge. "A coma would be significantly cheaper."
He pulled out a silver tray. It was tarnished black. On it sat a single envelope.
The envelope was heavy. It looked like it was made of human skin, or perhaps very old parchment. The wax seal was a skull.
"What is this?"
"The welcome package," Yggdrasil said. "And the backlog."
I took the envelope. It felt warm. It pulsed, faintly, like a dying heart.
I tore it open.
There was no letter. No "Welcome to Blackwood Manor." No "Sorry for your loss."
Just a single sheet of paper, filled with numbers. Red numbers. They glowed faintly in the gloom, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air.
[INHERITANCE TAX: 12,000,000 Gold]
[PROPERTY TAX (1944-2024): 28,500,000 Gold]
[ZONING VIOLATION (Harboring Class-A Entities): 5,000,000 Gold]
[LATE FEES: 4,500,000 Gold]
[TOTAL DUE: 50,000,000 Gold]
[PAYMENT DEADLINE: T-Minus 24 Hours]
[FAILURE TO PAY PENALTY: Soul Foreclosure & Eternal Servitude in the Abyssal Mines.]
The paper shook in my hands. This time, it wasn't the cold. It wasn't the adrenaline.
It was the math.
I looked at the number. Fifty million.
I had forty-two dollars in my bank account. And a maxed-out credit card. And a student loan that I had been pretending didn't exist.
"Fifty... million?" I choked. The number felt too big to fit in my mouth.
"Adjusted for inflation, yes," Yggdrasil said. "The Hellfire Bank is quite strict about interest rates. They compound hourly."
I looked at the wolf. It was happily shredding a piece of mahogany molding, tail wagging. It was a monster, yes. But it was a monster that just wanted to play.
I looked at the tree-man. He was picking a termite out of his elbow. He was terrifying, yes. But he was just a butler doing his job.
Then I looked back at the bill.
The bill didn't want to play. The bill didn't have a job. The bill was a cold, mathematical certainty.
"I'm going to die," I said.
"Technically, sir," Yggdrasil said, "death is the easy way out. Foreclosure is much more... administrative."
I slumped against the wall. The cold wetness soaked into my back, but I didn't feel it anymore.
I had survived the wolf. I had survived the crash.
But nobody survives the IRS. Especially the one from Hell.