The Hound stared out into the black of night, looking like he was miles away, lost in thought. His two henchmen was inside the building, fetching the "package". Normally he wouldn't have trusted those two clowns to find their own asses without a map, but he couldn't watch over their shoulders tonight, it took an enormous feat of willpower just to keep his own act together.<br/>He could feel his face twitch again, his upper lip curled up and revealed his fangs. That everything inside of him was in turmoil was one thing, but when his body started to betray him it would be nigh impossible to hide his condition from others. And hide it he must, any failure to keep up his well-maintained facade would be viewed as a sign of weakness by his enemies, and he had plenty of those. The position of Hound, the official legbreaker of the Prince, didn't exactly earn you a lot of friends, and the Hound had always carried out his duties with the zeal of a man who truly loves his job. One could say that the Hound was  black-belted sensei in the gentle art of making enemies, and some of them hated him with such a passion that they would go for his throat at the first sign of something that could be interpreted as weakness.<br/>The Hound knew all this, but all he was able to do was hang on to his sanity by the tips of his fingers.<br/>It all had started with his fight with that horrible, nasty creature calling himself Skuzz. They had both sunk their teeth into eachother, and the Hound had found his opponent's blood to be like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was rich and potent, intoxicating even. He had looked forward to completely draining the brute, and he would've too if Skuzz's posse hadn't intervened.<br/>The second time he had bitten someone that night had also been unprecedented, but it had been a totally unpleasant experience. Drinking the blood of that white haired bitch had been like drinking liquid nitrogen. He had felt his blood start to freeze over. Maybe her shattering his lower jaw as had it been of brittle ice actually had saved him, it certainly seemed to have stopped the cold from spreading. The damage had been horrible but he had managed to regrow the jaw. But it had almost drained him completely. The only thing that kept him going was the small amount of blood he had taken from Skuzz.<br/>That was probably it, the Hound had concluded. Having to survive on nothing but the blood of that weird creature had done something to him. The feeling hadn't gone away even after he had replenished his reserves. At first it had felt great, he had almost been euphoric. He had even had a fit of the giggles while talking to Steiner. That had worried him, what if it had been someone else? Losing it in front of Steiner was no disaster, the little creep was more than half mad himself. But if it happened again, this time in front of someone that actually mattered, well, it could be the end of him.<br/>He looked out the window again and couldn't help but shiver at what he saw. As if his mood swings and facial tics hadn't been bad enough, now he was seeing things too. The bag lady pushing her cart through the snow didn't seem human. She looked like some unholy mix between a human and a bloated cockroach, like some Kafkaesque nightmare.<br/>The Hound forced himself to look away, visibly paler. The man without fear now found himself terrified, fearing for his sanity. The visions had started the same time as his other problems, and they were without a doubt what troubled him most. These days when he looked at the faceless strangers in the crowds he sometimes saw...things, creatures that no longer could be called human. They came in all sizes and shapes, some with animal features, some looked like monsters straight out of a child's nightmare, and some carried themselves with unearthly beauty and grace. And worst of all, he seemed to be the only one who could see it, see what manner of monsters that hid in plain sight, losing themselves in the nameless crowds of the great metropolis. He sometimes had to bite his own lip to stop himself from shouting a warning at the top of his lungs, anything to open the eyes of the fools, to make them see what moved among them. But what good would it do, other than reveal his own madness? No, this was some new torment made especially for him. Maybe some small part of him that still remembered being human once was driving him insane with suppressed guilt over the things he had done since becoming a creature of the night...<br/>He suddenly snapped back to the present. The van was moving, the fools Gustave returned with the prize and he hadn't even noticed. He growled a low growl far back in his throat in displeasure. At this rate his crew would start asking questions sooner rather than later.<br/>A sudden familiar scent stopped him from once again losing himself to dark thoughts. He angrily sniffed in the air, before turning in his seat to look at the people sitting in the back.<br/>"Alright you morons, what the hell did you do? The whole car reeks of cunt!"<br/>