Page 25

The Making of The Bloodhound

ALEXIARES

“Keep moving, my friend.” Tiago’s hand fell on the top of my pack.

The trees that lined the highway were dying. Teardrops of frost hung from their branches. Glass from the shattered windows of abandoned cars crunched under his boots as he passed me. Here we were, St. Cloud. This was our end goal. So why didn’t the ease of comfort overwhelm me as I stood before a sign telling us where to go?

“You go ahead, I’ll catch up.”

Tiago halted up ahead, a tease of a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. It was the best he could do since Dahlia. Since Evander. “If I listened to every lie that came out of your mouth, we would have never become friends.”

“Who said we’re friends?” I asked, still not moving from where I’d come to a stop.

The pink lining the sky was misleading. A beautiful ending to a day filled with darkness. It felt like we took turns being the strong one, trying to keep the other going. Today was his turn. It had been mine the last week. I just couldn’t quite bring myself to care. Without Evander, I wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing this for. Tiago was strong. He didn’t need me to survive.

That wasn’t what friendship was. He was the first friend I’d ever had, but had taught me a lot during our time on the road. Friendship wasn’t built on need—it was built on want. I wanted to be there for him. Wanted to make sure he would be okay. So I’d followed him to the only place we knew to go.

“If you want to be more than that, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to buy me dinner first.” He swooped in behind me, pushing on the back of the head and over toward the clear path on the road. “This is it. A new start.” Hope glistened in his eyes for the first time in months.

“Doesn’t seem like much,” I grumbled honestly. We needed to tamper our expectations, keep them realistic.

He sighed, irritated at the consistent negativity I’d been feeding into the ‘universe.’ The whole manifestation kick he was on was starting to get on my damn nerves. Where had hoping for food or shelter gotten us lately?

“Enough, Alexi. It’s getting colder, and it does not appear that it’s going to warm up anytime soon.” Tiago motioned to the barren tundra leading to the city. “Look around. It’s supposed to be nearing spring. Do you see anything other than trees? Any blooms, animals ? We need food, a roof over our heads. Some sort of consistency. This could be the last stop for us. Don’t make me go in alone, man. Me and you. We’re in this together.”

I glanced toward my friend. He was right—we had nothing to lose but our lives. After the losses we suffered, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to either of us. Tiago had warmed up to me early on. It was easy for him to share the details of his personal life. Our first night together, the phone lines had cut on for a moment.

The raw, agonizing, pain filled yell that had escaped him when he realized his brother was gone was so familiar, yet foreign to me. I hadn’t ever felt that strongly about the death of a loved one. Even with my mother, her loss stung, sure, but she’d never really been a mother to me. It wasn’t until Evander until I’d recognized it for what it was; your soul shattering. Breaking. Tearing a wound irreparably deep.

What I’d come to appreciate about Tiago was his will to go on. He was relentless in his decision to keep going, to keep moving forward. Though he posed it as if he was doing me a favor, I knew when it came down to it, he himself wanted to survive. He wanted to live, no matter how much the guilt haunted him. It was a tough thing to process. But I feared that if he lost one more person, he may not see things that way anymore. As any good friend would, I followed him through the tangled maze of cars toward the new beginning he was hoping for.

We heard her first. The eerie sound of a woman singing. Her voice ricocheted off metal sculptures stacked with sharp objects meant to impale. She danced around the traps, her focus on angling glass near the base to reflect the sun.

The woman halted in her steps and pulled out a Walkman. Ducking behind the sculpture closest to us, our breathing hitched as we kept watch, scoping out the situation. There was no one else around. The walls up ahead were incomplete in most areas. Though a metal slab of a gate blocked the main road in, everything beyond it was absent of life. Her singing continued as we shifted back onto the path inside.

She tensed the moment she sensed our approach. Like idiots, we’d closed in on her unarmed. The consequences came quick as she drew her weapon from her holster in the blink of an eye. Blonde hair surrounded her pointed face resembling a golden halo. Ice-blue eyes met mine, creasing at the sides from her wicked grin.

“Woah,” Tiago said, taking a slow step forward with his arms out in front of him. “We aren’t zombies, relax.”

With all our layers, who knew what the fuck she saw us as. The only thing you could make out for certain was a small sliver of our faces. I’d stopped being able to feel my legs fifty miles and one week ago.

Her laugh was chirped, not quite a giggle yet sinister all the same. “I know.” She holstered her gun, tossing her hair back over her shoulders.

Tiago took a slow, deliberate look at our surroundings, his eyes finally settling on the woman. She was reading him too. The way her gaze lingered on every detail in an attempt to decode him. His eyes flickered over her face, narrowing at the slight tension in her shoulders.

“?Qué te pasa?” I asked, wondering if he saw something that I did not.

“Este lugar,” he mumbled, his hands motioning to the deserted landscape. “Está mal. Algo no anda bien.”

Sure, it wasn’t what I expected of the so-called promise land we’d heard about on the road, but maybe it was just a front to keep those not wanted away. “?Te gustaría explicar más?”

“Where is everyone?” Tiago asked her, cutting to the chase.

She shrugged, her pretty eyes wavered over to me, the whites around her iris slightly unsettling even at a distance. “Not here, obviously.”

“Look around, Alexiares,” Tiago tried to reason with me. “Debería haber gente. Todo parece abandonado.”

We’d kept to ourselves for the most part, but from what I’d seen during my time with my friend, hesitancy to accept a new face was out of character. The fear of attachment preventing him from seeing things clearly. This place wasn’t about scenic landscapes or the buzz of society, it was about survival. For what purpose, hell if I knew. The only thing that I was certain of was that Tiago was set on living, and St. Cloud was the opportunity for him to do so.

“Si ella está aquí sola, supongo que es más seguro que cualquier otro lugar en el que estemos solos,” I said, seeing the logic in what he wanted to assume as a threat.

An objectively beautiful woman that felt safe enough to be alone meant there was little to fear. That was good, wasn’t it? Trying to read into the finer details had become a habit for the two of us. Missing those smaller signs had only led to life ending consequences before, but maybe there was a point when too much skepticism could produce the same damning results.

Tiago shook his head, not seeing things the same way. “Yes. Ella está aquí sola, ella es la amenaza.”

Piercing blue eyes drilled into Tiago who remained unfazed. Even in his grief, the gravity of seriousness that reflected in his features was unnatural. I watched the two of them, curious about how the situation would play out. If we weren’t allowed to stay, I’d go with him, but as I studied the woman, I found her attitude oddly captivating. There was a defiant spark in her gaze, a casual confidence that was both intriguing and refreshing. It stirred something deep within me, something primal akin to flight or fight.

She couldn’t understand what we were saying and didn’t try to hide it. Her wicked expression was unmasked and genuine. The absence of fear in her struck me. For the first time, someone looked at me without any hint of fear. The rarity of it was disarming.

“Earphones on, all alone. Her senses cut off. We can’t trust this,” Tiago said in a hushed tone.

“Is there a problem, boys?” she asked, twirling the blonde hair underneath her beanie. “Not what you were expecting?”

Tiago retreated, refusing to give her his back. “We’re mistaken. Our apologies. We did not mean to startle you.”

A frown of genuine confusion consumed her round lips. “Why would I be startled?” She closed the gap between us once more. There was a swagger in her gait when she moved. Slowly, she tore her icy gaze from my friend and over to me. It felt like the first time she truly noticed me as her eyes trailed over me. Marking every detail. “There’s only two of you. I’ve taken more with less.”

I gripped Tiago’s arm, holding him in place. Over the last few weeks, we’d done our best to cover our bases, explore our options from the corners of towns we passed through and homes we lingered outside of. This was as safe as the world was going to get. We wouldn’t get another chance at this. “You got a name?”

“Finley,” she winked, biting down on her bottom lip. Her golden hair whipped in the wind with the toss of her head toward the city. “Don’t you forget it, sweetheart.”

“Maybe if you paid closer attention to instructions, your only friend wouldn’t be dead.”

“Finley!” Cael slammed his fist against the long table in the center of Finley’s lab.

“ Dad ,” she mocked, a shrill cackle passing through her viscous red lips. “What? Is telling the truth such a bad thing? He needs to hear this, and maybe he won’t kill the next one he makes.”

I winced. It still hurt though over a year had passed. The truth more times than not stung. There was no point in finding sadness in her words, for I had no one to blame but myself, and the one person I would give anything to have a chance to kill. I deserved this pain. Embraced it. Pain was weakness, but it was also bliss.

“I followed your orders to the letter, Finny,” I ground out. She’d been in a mood for over a month and I was growing tired of being on the receiving end of her cruelty.

Finley had two sides to her: hot and cold. She was either vindictive and angry, or calm and collected. Never sweet, but genuine in a way that made it easy to forgive some of her worst moments. I’d been through worse, and she only inflicted what I allowed. It eased the pain of some of the harder memories. The ones that made me scream in the darkness of the night.

She swayed over to me, cupping my chin and planting a soft kiss on my lips. Blonde hair brushed against my cheeks as she pulled back to study me, searching with nothing but ice in her blue eyes. “Yet, you still failed me.”

I stared down the bridge of my nose, meeting the eye of the woman who had somehow become my wife. It had all happened so fast. A whirlwind of a year that had resulted in a role I now occupied with no clue on how I’d gotten here. Actually, I could. By not listening to my friend. To turning a back to Tiago and his warnings not only in life, but in his death as well. Had I listened to him two years ago … no. I couldn’t let myself think that way. There was no guarantee Tiago would have ever made it this far. At least you wouldn’t have been the one to kill him .

“Failed your daddy. Failed your mommy. Evander …” Finley’s hands traced the vials filled with blue and clear fluids along the brick walls.

“That’s enough.” Cael’s words were quiet but firm as he pushed up from his stool. He grimaced slightly at the movement. Just barely distinguishable from the usual jerkiness, but enough for me to notice it, along with the cough he now attempted to cover with the constant clearing of his throat. “What’s done is done, Finley. Let it rest in the past and focus on how to move us forward.”

“Our people are starving,” Finley reasoned, her tone sliding into one of a spoiled brat who wasn’t getting her way. “I am focusing on how to move us forward. Had my disappointment of a husband managed to secure our next resource from Madison, we’d be one step closer to that goal. Instead, he lost them to … What was it this time—Gunfire? Molotov cocktail?—outside St. Paul. Again. After I specifically told him to avoid that barbaric little wasteland. Which by the way, common sense would tell you to find a new route considering you’ve lost three out of the last eight I sent you to fetch.”

It was a paradox really. How I could find such thrill in the sound of her voice, a small, pathetic tendril of comfort, yet hate it all the same. No matter how hard I tried or the crazy shit she put me through, I couldn’t figure out how to stop loving the woman on the other end. That’s what love was though, messy. A choice you had to make daily. Work is what my mother always described it as.

One moment the two of us were casually hooking up in the late nights at her lab and the next she was calling me her husband. The bronze ring on my left hand burned with my irritation. It was hard to find love in a symbol that had only woven us together in a way that confined me, trapped me … suffocated me . She would help me control my magic, the power that had killed the last sliver of good within me along with my best friend. But not without a cost. Her help was conditional, and the other nine silver rings on my fingers proved that. Our weeks of fun were short-lived. Finley couldn’t keep up her facade for long.

Before the hookups had been the shameless bouts of flirtation she’d sent my way to the disapproval of none other than Tiago. He always had a way of convincing me to take a step back to evaluate, not try to settle down, especially with the she-devil. He’d called her that from the first day we’d met her in what felt like forever ago. After the war had been different. I needed another constant in this life that always seemed to be changing.

“Did you, babe?” I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, instructions were unclear over your screeching and?—”

“Dammit.” Cael’s pale fingers wrapped around his cane. He slammed it into the floor then hobbled over to his daughter. She was the opposite of him in every way. “There is one enemy here yet the two of you will tear each other’s throats apart before they have a chance to strike next.”

She brushed him off. Ignoring the pit that place had put us in since war. What they had taken from us. From me. “I’m not worried about that little bitch from Monterey. She’s down there and our people are up here. As long as she remains there, then she is none of our concern. They’re weak. I give it another year before their society falls apart. No need to waste our efforts on drawing her out. This life isn’t meant for them, we’re safe.”

“Safety is a state of mind, Finley,” Cael reminded her with utmost patience. “It’s not real. I’ve taught you that.”

“I understand the sentiment but I’m focusing on the facts. Look, I’ve run the numbers, AquaXelium is far beyond my scope of abilities, gifts or not. Even the best know when to take on a mentor, someone more … specialized in their expertise.”

“Mentor.” I huffed a laugh, propping an arm against the counter in the corner to take in another one of her lies.

Cael was a decent man, but he willfully blinded himself to who his daughter had become. Sometimes the old her slipped through, or who I assumed she may have been before life happened. Lately though, that girl seemed gone, replaced with someone who was consumed in testing science and pushing the limits of what was possible with a touch of magic.

The pleasure she found in her mishaps was mildly concerning to the sane individuals of St. Cloud. It was why no one ever questioned her. Not even me. She glared at me, the promise of her rage later demanding my silence.

“What is he talking about?” Cael asked, staring at me with a different, more favorable punishment if I didn’t comply.

I could always leave. I thought about it on every mission she sent me on outside our borders. In the end, I always returned. Where else could I go? Everywhere. Anywhere. That was the answer. I could disappear without a trace tomorrow and Finley would never find me.

It was the entire point of the role she’d forced me into taking, preying on the sinister thoughts that lingered in the back of my mind. She saw the darkness that was instilled in me from a young age and nurtured it, molding me into her little pet. The Bloodhound , or so they called me.

Truth was, I didn’t leave because I was a coward. What would I have left to feel if Finley did not exist? The highs and lows of life would no longer be, only lows would remain and I wasn’t sure if I could handle that. Not with my own promises I’d made to Evander and Tiago in the wake of their deaths.

Finley was rash, occasionally cruel when she got worked up. Some of her morals were questionable, sure, but in the end her actions boiled down to one thing; passion. She only wanted to form a settlement full of survivors and to do that, we had to survive. That goal had never changed for as long as I’d known her.

She sighed, tucking her hair behind her ear at the sight of me prepared to reveal her secrets. Finley could do her best, but nothing would hurt more than knowing that my best friend, my only friend, had died by my hand. My power.

“I was going to tell you when I was able to get it to work.”

“Get what to work?” Cael pressed.

“Collective conscious,” Finley explained what she was attempting to achieve. “If I get the smartest and brightest in one place, create a network that merges into a single mind, we can achieve the impossible. St. Cloud will be unstoppable.”

“This mind being whose, Finley?”

“Hers,” I grumbled in response.

She glared at me. “Well, who else would it be? Our people will be better for it.”

Eyes dark as night widened in horror. “No. It’s not right. These are people, Finley. Innocent children!”

“There is no innocence in this world, daddy, not anymore. It’s a small sacrifice to make for the greater good.” She reached for her father, halting his retreat as he stepped away from her in fear. Finley recognized it for what it was—her father seeing her as everyone else did for the first time. Her bottom lipped wobbled in defense the way it always did when she knew she was fighting a losing battle. “It’s a good plan. It can work. Think of all the problems we have. Our people could be set for life! Two minds are better than one.”

Cael’s head moved from side-side, his eyes scanning the room until they landed on me. I stared back at him, my expression no doubt void of any emotion. I disagreed with Finley’s method, but I was in no place to interfere further. I’d done my part. Saved who I needed to save and killed who I didn’t. I had to think about myself too. The repercussions of my actions. If I gave up this life, this home, then everything was all for nothing. Then they died for nothing.

“You can’t be okay with this?” he asked me, pleading with me to try to reason with a woman who didn’t take kindly to peer feedback.

I fought to remain neutral no matter how much I wanted to meet his stare with a gaze of understanding. I’d felt myself getting attached at the onset of our working relationship, right after the war. His eyes trailed down to the rings I was teasing along my fingers then back to my face. Regret washed over his features.

Of course I wouldn’t say anything, I’d been an experiment for Finley too. Still was with her having yet to find the solution to the problem she had promised to solve. I was no fool. She could if she wanted to. But that was not how Finley worked. Without power, without an edge over those around her, she would unravel. If I didn’t follow her orders, she would take what little control I did have.

Cael cleared his throat, glancing back in her direction. “One more,” he said, making his way to the door. He stood there for a moment, taking a deep sigh with his back to us. “One more and if it doesn’t work, we end this, Finley.”

“You know, you should consider yourself lucky.” A massive Cane Corso lurked at my heels, jaws snarling and lined with drool.

Extended assignments had their perks. The ability to bring Suckerpunch along was, by far, the best one. I’d found him as a puppy right outside the city and in a rare lapse of caution, the little devil had taken on a zombie in my defense. He’d barely been the size of my head at the time but his heart had been mighty. The heart of a warrior, a survivor. So I’d kept him against Finley’s wishes.

In the center of a bed in a dilapidated room, a terrified, sorry excuse of a man trembled uncontrollably. I suppose I should have been thankful to him. The weeks tracking him down had given me the space to clear my head. Figure out what I wanted. If he hadn’t been on the run, who knew if the opportunity to do so would arise? Running from the Bloodhound , I laughed to myself. An ironic name considering Finley hated dogs.

He’d stolen from Finley and Finley hated thieves. Use your best discretion , she’d advised for dealing with him. The designs he’d taken with him had been classified—a project she’d been working on for ages. Two hours and a very long, drawn out round of torture later and he’d revealed he’d burn them.

“Wh-why?” he stammered out, the blood along his nail bed finally clotting to a halt.

I sighed, taking a seat in the chair directly across from him. “Because over the last few days, I’ve decided I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Venting to a dead man was freeing. The comfort of knowing your words would be lost to the soil, buried with the dead.

“You’re not going to kill me?” A pitiful amount of hope pooled in his eyes. Nothing could have made me want to kill him more. Hope was a stupid fucking thing to have in the world in which we lived.

Laughing, I gave Suckerpunch a pat on the head. “I didn’t say that, now, did I?” Suckerpunch grinned up at me, the drool around his mouth dripping onto the moldy carpet.

The man’s teeth clattered, the sound grating the last tendrils of my nerves. He winced as the sheets touched the sensitive skin on the cauterized wounds of his missing toes. “Then what do you mean?”

“You’re my last kill,” I said, my words clipped as if it couldn’t be more obvious. “Can’t keep doing this. Guess you can say the old hound is going into retirement.”

“You said I was lucky.”

Scooting my chair closer to the side of the bed, I leaned over him with scrunched brows as he sunk into the mattress. Tears tumbled down his face, the blubbering of his whimpers growing louder with each passing minute.

“Well, I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar. Here’s the deal. I need leverage. So, you’re going to give me the information I need to earn my freedom. See these rings here?” I asked, holding my hand in front of his face. “Are our gifts really gifts if in the end they cause our downfall? I mean to be powerful is a beautiful, beautiful thing. The consequences of having this much however, can be brutal. Devastating. Makes you do shit that keeps you up at night. Recently I’ve come to the conclusion that I just want peace.”

His cries turned into the torturous wail of a dead man. Backing into the wall behind the bed, he fell silent, the realization of nowhere to hide rooted him in place.

“You’re a great listener, you know that? Feels like a real bonding moment here. Tell you what, I’ll make your death quick.” I flashed him a toothy grin. “But first, I need you to tell me everything you know about Monterey Compound. And before you open your stammering mouth to lie to me, I know that’s where you’re headed. I found your map.”