Page 23

Indy

About a block into our return trip to the car, I took Loren’s hand and heaved a sigh of relief when he didn’t stop me.

We didn’t talk, though.

I’d lost my appetite for Truth or Dare, and I kept thinking about Travis’s sad life and him asking about my story.

It was a long one. A fucking saga.

But most people, it seemed, determined the value a journey by its destination.

Its end. The happily ever after that might have been impossible for a creature like me.

I didn’t truly have an end.

Loren didn’t, either.

We just went on and on, forever.

Happily?

I gave Loren’s fingers a squeeze then sidestepped to walk more closely beside him.

I wished he would kiss my cheek or put his arm around my waist, but the handholding was already a concession.

I could tell from the way he fixed his gaze forward and notably away from me.

He might as well have been wearing blinders.

At the next intersection, he stopped.

I glanced from the lit walk sign to the idling cars waiting for us to cross.

The timer counted down from ten.

“Lore?” I nudged him with my elbow, but only his eyes moved, angling toward a nearby alley where a privacy fence obscured our view.

His nose crinkled in a sniff, the kind of inhale that was meant to savor the air.

He smelled something.

Heard something, too, that caused his chin to tip toward that same dark alleyway.

The crossing sign had all but timed out when Loren jerked on my arm, hauling me abruptly forward.

“Lore!” I protested, but he didn’t stop.

Cars honked as we raced across their path.

I was moving at hellhound speed, or trying to, which involved a lot of stumbling and staggering and eventually being lifted so my feet merely skimmed the ground.

Over the rumbling of traffic and Loren’s boots scuffing the pavement, I finally tuned in to what must have lured him: a woman, screaming.

But the noise was behind us, coming from the alley we were rapidly moving away from.

We weren’t superheroes or anything.

Not vigilantes committed to justice, but we also weren’t the kind of douchebags to abandon a stranger who clearly needed help.

At least, I wasn’t.

“Loren, what the hell? I know you can hear that,” I said and set my heels so hard it was a wonder my rubber soles didn’t start to smoke.

It drew him to a halt, and his head whipped to pin me with eyes so wide I could see the whites all around them.

“Baby, what is it?” I asked.

“Hounds,” he said. A harsh whisper.

Evander said this would happen.

Now that the hellhounds were loose, they would roam Earth and wreak havoc.

Cause chaos, do harm.

Another panicked cry rang out.

“They’re hurting someone,” I said.

“Someone,” Loren agreed with a nod.

“Not you.”

He pulled on me again, but my stance was set.

He could drag or pick me up and carry me, and I got the feeling he would do exactly that if I didn’t get words out fast.

“Lore, we have to help her,” I said.

“No.”

I swung my head toward the source of the commotion, then faced Loren again and found him unmoved.

“Seriously?” I pressed.

When he didn’t reply, I jerked free of his grasp and blurted, “If you won’t, I will.”

Another scream pierced the air, and I took off.

I must have caught Loren on his heels, because it should have been no problem to catch up with me.

Then again, I was much faster in trainers than my usual platforms, so maybe I was quicker than I realized.

Traffic flowed through the intersection, and I sprinted into it, ducking and dodging like Frogger.

Horns blared, but it seemed as risky to stop as to keep going, so I rushed ahead.

Before I made it to the alley, I questioned myself.

I’d barged in on another hound attack recently, saved Loren by reducing an entire pack to ash.

But that happened out of instinct, and I hadn’t been able to tap into that wild energy since.

Even when Evander cornered me on a street not far from here.

I’d threatened to scream.

Blow my rape whistle.

Raise a ruckus. But that wasn’t enough to save anyone.

Skidding into the alley, I spotted the fence that obscured the conflict from view.

If my wings would work, I could fly over it, then descend like an airstrike from Heaven and raze the bad guys to the ground.

I didn’t have wings, though.

Or tears. Or any idea of what to do as a chorus of canine yelps echoed off the brick walls on either side of me, and a body crested the top of the fence.

A petite woman with long brown hair and a dagger in her hand was trying to claw her way over the weathered pickets.

Black blood flecked her face and streaked her bare arms as they stretched across.

I raced forward and grabbed her hands, starting to pull at the same time Loren called out from behind me.

“Indy, don’t!”

The woman’s eyes went from me to him, panicked and pleading.

Loren leaped between us, looking ready to shove her back to the other side before my heave combined with her push brought her tumbling over.

She spilled onto the damp asphalt, clutching the knife as she scrambled to stand.

A swing of Loren’s arm knocked me backward, but I managed to keep my feet while the situation played out before me.

The girl was upright but staggered, and Loren had drawn his glaive.

He situated his hands on the weapon’s shaft, readying to swing.

Judging by his pose and the angle of his intended attack, he would cut the woman cleanly in half.

I shouted his name and barreled forward, colliding with a shove against his back.

He barely budged, but I succeeded in delaying his attack and in giving three more people time to lunge over the fence.

Another woman and two men squared off across from us, all baring their teeth and wielding a variety of weapons.

The trend of disinterest continued when their attention glossed over me and pinpointed Loren.

My heart knocked against my ribs.

I’d gotten him out of danger once; this time, I’d led him into it.

The injured woman hobbled aside, likely considering making a break for it.

Loren snarled and leveled his glaive at the other three, tracking rapidly from one assailant to the next.

Everyone paused, and I thought for a moment they might take turns in an organized, civilized fashion.

Instead, it was a brawl.

Silver flashed as swords cut through the air.

The accompanying racket made me fear we’d alert all of Brooklyn.

At least then maybe someone could do what I’d failed to: help.

Loren was surrounded, outnumbered as he had been at the auto shop but with slightly better odds.

He was holding his own, making swipes with his polearm that kept the other hounds at bay.

I needed to get in there, to make the fight fairer or to end it entirely.

There were only a few things that could permanently kill a hellhound, and phoenix fire was one of them.

Anything Loren did to wound the other hounds would, at worst, send them back to Hell.

From there, they could return again and again in ever greater numbers until they overwhelmed us.

Until they flooded the city and ran us out of it.

My pulse pounded, and I grasped at the air.

I thought about flames.

Attack. Defense. My fantasized aerial assault.

Nothing happened.

No wings sprouted from my shoulders; no sparks flew from my hands.

I stood there, cold and ineffective, while the hellhounds yipped and growled.

Blood splattered the ground.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, but everything was wrong.

I was wrong.

Something shiny flew past. One of the hounds had a thrown weapon.

A spike or small knife that I didn’t get a good look at until it lodged in Loren’s chest. He yelped, and I raced toward the fray, but the backswing of his glaive nearly took me out at the knees.

Loren swept the polearm forward then, pitching wide and low as his aim suffered from his injury.

The blade connected, bisecting the nearest hound above the hips.

The man slid apart, his torso separated from his legs in a gruesome bath of black.

The other two went in rapid succession, one cleaved in half and the other decapitated with such force her disembodied head sailed into the alley wall.

It struck with a wet smack, then tumbled to the ground.

Their ruined bodies wisped into smoke that dissipated in the night air

The girl we had saved remained, and I felt a cool wash of relief until Loren turned his attention toward her.

“Lorenzo,” she gasped and raised her empty hands.

“Loren, I didn’t… I never meant to come here.” She backpedaled but didn’t run while Loren closed the gap between them.

“Yet you came,” he rumbled.

The girl shook her head so her ratted hair swung wildly.

“We were sent,” she sputtered.

“From Hell. The witch… Nero’s witch.”

Loren’s lip curled as the woman babbled on.

“She said to check this city. Said someone stole something from her and brought it here.”

The bag Loren took—the one Sully burned.

Like a magical tracking device, it must have pinged its last known location as Brooklyn, New York, and brought the hounds to our backyard.

“I tried to get away.” The girl gestured to the fence and whatever lay beyond it.

“I don’t want to belong to Nero or Karst.” She shook her head again.

“I want to be free, so I tried to run, but they?—”

“You turned me in to Nero,” Loren cut in, his voice low.

“That was the cost of leaving you alive last time. A price I won’t pay again.”

He adjusted his grip on the glaive while fat tears rolled down the girl’s cheeks.

“Please,” she sobbed.

“If you kill me, I’ll go back to Karst, and you don’t know what he does… He touches me?—”

“I know,” Loren said, just as gruff, just as grim.

“And you don’t care?” She stood there, huddled and desperate, and it was then I noticed her clothes.

Skimpy and sheer, they looked like lingerie, barely covering her tits and ass.

I wasn’t shy about showing a bit of skin, but this was giving shades of slave Leia, or the main character in any given porno.

Moira used to dress Loren up, too.

He always changed as soon as he got home, but I’d caught him in hellish attire once or twice.

It consisted of chest-baring, fitted garments, and he looked delicious in them.

But also miserable. Uncomfortable and exposed.

And she touched him.

Used him the same way I imagined whoever Karst was used this woman.

Loren did know, and he did care.

That was why he stalled with the glaive in mid-air, delaying the killing strike until he quit it entirely.

He released the weapon and threw it toward the ground where it would have clattered if it hadn’t dissolved first. Then, he turned aside and pinched the bridge of his nose with a grimace.

Creeping over to him, I rested my hand on his arm.

“You’re letting her go?” I asked hopefully.

“I’ll leave the state,” the girl said between sniffles.

“The country. You’ll never see me again.”

With his face downcast and his lips pressed in a thin line, Loren looked resigned.

I didn’t like resigned, for myself or anyone else.

“What if she comes with us?” I asked.

“That way you can keep an eye on her. Or Whitney can.”

Or Sully, who was already neck-deep in hellhounds but didn’t seem to mind.

If they kept piling in, though, we might have to get them their own apartment.

“Maybe she can help us,” I added.

The woman brightened at my suggestion.

“Help with what?” she asked.

“Fighting Nero,” I rushed to reply.

“And the witch.”

“You’re going to fight him?” she asked.

“How?”

Releasing Loren’s arm, I ventured into the space between him and the girl.

My proximity all but ensured her safety; he would never do anything violent with me in the way.

“We have a strategy,” I said, sounding far more confident than I should have considering the word “strategy” had only been thrown around loosely and was being overseen by a guy who lost his troops and his soul due to poor battle tactics.

“Well,” I added after a moment, “we’re working on one.”

Loren crowded in behind me and curved his hand around my hip.

It wasn’t the affection I craved, but I would take protective or even possessive in a pinch.

The woman wrapped one arm across her bare midriff and the other over her cleavage, belatedly self-conscious.

“I’ll come with you. To fight Nero. If he’s gone, we can all be free.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Reinforcements, right, Lore?”

Loren grumbled, then pinched a bit of fabric at my waist and gave a tug.

I turned after him and beckoned the girl to follow, too.

She didn’t have a choke chain—those were all gone, from what I’d seen—but her long hair had previously obscured the leather strap buckled around her throat.

It was more cute than cruel, with a little bow and an engraved nametag.

Abigail.

I couldn’t wait to take some bolt cutters to the damned thing.