How the hell was that motherfucker that fast?

I suspect the motherfucker is–

–no, not that Motherfucker. I suspect this motherfucker is Mannequin.

Taylor asking herself this suggests she’s either following Mannequin, or she just arrived at her territory to find him being already there.

I’m guessing the latter.

He wasn’t even trying to avoid my bugs, so I had a sense of where he was as Grue, Bitch and I tore down the street on our dogs.  I rode behind Grue on Sirius, my arms on his shoulders, while Bitch rode Bentley, Lucy’s corpse lying across her lap.

Ah, nope, the former.

And I think he’s not trying to avoid her bugs because he’s deliberately clued Taylor in on what he’s planning, and wants her to follow him, all so she can see it happen.

We’d lost a couple of minutes as we helped Bitch retrieve Lucy’s real body.  It was eerie to see.  When the dogs grew, they really appeared to be adding mass, literally growing and stretching.  Somewhere in the transformation, after they weren’t recognizable as the animals they had once been, their real bodies were reformed inside a placenta-like sac.

…huh. I suppose that’s why they can be injured and not have it carry over, and why they can shed their new mass.

So when a hellhound dies, does it not revert, meaning that to get the real body they had to get it out of the hellhound casing?

Mannequin’s gunshot had opened a hole in Lucy’s chest and penetrated that membrane to kill the real dog within.

Ahh. So is it not possible to kill a hellhound without breaking through the placenta sac?

Or more interestingly, could you kill the hellhound without killing the dog inside, allowing you to dig out a living dog from the dead flesh?

We’d used my knife and Grue’s raw strength to help pull the dog free in a grim sort of anti-childbirth.

I’m afraid she’s stillborn.