A lot of people talk to their dogs, but what happens when they talk back?
It's 1984 in Huntington Beach, when fourteen-year-old Orion Echs narrowly escapes a terrifying home invasion and he must flee across California with his only friend, Shadow, a powerful, fiercely protective dog with a mysterious past. Closing in on them is the enigmatic, amoral mercenary Fenrir, a man tortured by arcane abilities, but relentless in his pursuit of prey. Framed for murder, with nowhere to turn for help, Orion and Shadow must choose between a life on the run or to turn the tables on the dark agency pursuing them and transform themselves into something powerful, dangerous. . . deadly.
Beginning a desperate run from the beaches of Southern California to the Eastern Sierra mountains, Orion and Shadow become increasingly aware that they are far from an ordinary boy and his dog. As they begin to understand the dangerous forces closing in on them, they must come to grips with their own abilities before they become the monsters people believe them to be.