Page 33

Loren

It felt like this when he died.

When I watched him burn down to powdery ash that I then tried to corral or contain for fear the breeze might scatter it.

Carry his remains away like crisp autumn leaves and take him far from me.

But the wind didn’t steal him.

He wasn’t taken at all.

I gave him up. Because I had to.

Because I loved him.

Because it was my purpose to protect him.

Even at the expense of myself.

It was innate, obsessive, the way I needed him.

Indy romanticized it, saying we were twin flames or crossed stars.

But it didn’t bear explanation.

Suffice it to say he was mine, and I was his, and while he’d rushed to tell me how he’d always loved me and always would, even in Heaven, I had no doubts.

I sensed it in his absence, here, where the air was thick with grief because Indy was gone, and I knew—for the first time ever, I was certain—he would not come back.

My certainty didn’t change my instincts or break the habit I’d honed over decades.

So, despite there being no ashes, not even a wisp of him over which to keep vigil, I did what I always did.

I sank to my knees in the middle of Sully’s living room floor, and I waited.

But, instead of looking forward to my phoenix’s beginning, I prepared for my own end.

My hound let out a breathy whine as he settled inside me.

I hoped he understood because I didn’t intend to explain.

He’d witnessed it. He’d howled and cried and clawed at the cage of my ribs when Evander arrived to take Indy away.

His frothing jaws snapped, and I felt every tooth sink in as he tried to tear through me to get to his treasure.

Still, we remained intact.

Bound until the bitter end, sharing sorrow and nursing wounds that didn’t show on my skin.

Whitney was dead.

Nero’s savage attack at the bowling alley had shaken me to my core.

It was a vengeance he’d nearly visited on me all those weeks in captivity when I’d defied his orders to lead him to Indy, then suffered for my stubbornness.

I succeeded. And failed.

It seemed impossible to have one without a little of the other.

I was always loving and losing, striving and falling short, wanting what I could never fully have.

The fate of the other hounds remained a mystery, and a potentially grim one.

I’d been willing to run.

Take Indy and leave the rest. Burn the damn city to the ground to save my beloved.

Why should I care for a world that had never cared for me?

As an gay immigrant sinner with a soul sworn to Hell, I was far from desirable in the place I’d made my home.

Even before I made my deal with Moira, I was tainted.

Too quiet, too sad, too unskilled to be of much use.

But Indy loved me, and it ached how much I loved him, too.

I might have sat there forever.

Let my body rot down to bones in the too-quiet apartment, staring at the void and waiting for the end.

But then Sully came out.

She was the friend Indy made for me.

The person I needed because a life lived between deaths could be so lonely.

She was here. She survived.

Whitney saved her.

“Lore?” Her voice sounded scratchy as she padded forward, searching the living area for things and people she wouldn’t find.

I’d worried she was hurt.

In her unconscious state, it had been impossible to know what damage had been done, but she seemed well enough.

Physically. After she found out what had happened while she’d been asleep, we would both be wearing new scars on the inside.

She came closer, hugging her arms around her middle while worry pulled at her face.

“Loren, where are they? How did we get back here? What happened?”

The questions sounded raw as they hung in the air.

“Gone.” I gulped at the thickness forming in my throat.

“Everyone’s gone.”

It was half an answer at best, but enough to drop Sully beside me.

She grabbed my arm and pulled on it until I met her frantic gaze with my weary one.

“What about Indy?” she asked.

“And Whitney…?”

I’d already said everyone, and I couldn’t bring myself to say it again.

Sully’s fingers dug into my arm, squeezing painfully hard as she asked, “How?”

It took several deep breaths and as many dragging seconds before I could answer.

The words were halting and as succinct as I tended to be, but also free of tears.

I was grateful for that.

Relieved to be able to get through it without crumbling.

Sully’s eyes, on the other hand, were fully glossed and leaking long before I finished explaining.

Her lips fell apart, speechless and quivering with a pain I thought I could taste.

Finally, she sucked a wet breath and dragged her arm across her face.

“Why am I always the last one to know about this stuff?” she asked without condemnation.

“I have opinions, you know. Advice…” Tears choked her, and she slumped forward to hug me.

When I told Whitney I was sending Indy away, I’d thought about having someone to mourn with.

I just didn’t expect to be grieving him, as well.

Sully’s body pressed against mine as a welcome warmth that helped dispel the cold.

I wrapped my arms around her, and we sat until my legs went numb.

The knock at the door made the second one of the night, and my hound stirred with a low growl.

I tucked Sully against my chest and glared across the room, braced for the worst.

It didn’t seem like Nero would knock.

Hounds on the prowl were more likely to scale the fire escape and break in through the window or kick the door off its hinges and invade.

That must have been Sully’s thought, as well, as she sprang to standing.

“I thought you said…?” She flicked a glance at me, and I remembered Indy being equally optimistic that my fellow hounds, our would-be pack, had managed to survive.

I pushed up after her and drew my glaive from a pocket of shadow.

If it was Nero playing at civility, I couldn’t destroy him.

But I could hurt him.

I would remove his arm or leg before he ripped the soul out of me.

Sully let me take the lead and, together, we walked to the door.

At the entry, I stepped aside and situated my grip on the metal shaft of the polearm.

With my back against the wall, I wouldn’t be seen by the newcomer, which gave me the advantage of surprise.

I would have seconds to strike, and Sully would have equal time to choose her next move.

To run, I hoped. Maybe even escape.

I couldn’t stand to lose anyone else today.

We shared a nod before Sully reached for the knob, then pulled the door open inward.

I didn’t see the person on the other side of the frame, but Sully’s expression told me everything I needed to know.

The glaive disappeared, and I stepped around to find Gunnar, Abigail, and Dottie hunkered in the hall outside.

Relief came with a jagged edge of guilt because I would have traded them all to get my treasure back.

“Oh, thank goodness!” Sully threw herself into the huddle, flinging her arms wide and dragging all three hounds into a mutual embrace.

After a brief hug, she pulled back and beckoned them into the apartment, then swiftly shut and locked the door behind them.

With everyone safely inside, a tearful reunion carried on while I stood apart.

I’d been displaced, after all, but not by the other hounds.

I’d done this to myself.

I kept my distance and built my walls so high there would be no scaling them now.

“I’m leaving.” I said it the moment I decided.

Four heads turned toward me in unison, all wearing looks of confusion.

Rather than answer their unspoken question, I asked first, “Where is Nero now?”

The hounds consulted each other.

No one seemed certain enough to reply until Abigail piped up.

“He disappeared.” She twisted her delicate hands.

“From the bowling alley. I think the light sent him back to Hell.”

“Then I’ll find him there.” I gave a curt nod and sidestepped, ready to cut a path toward the closed door.

Sully moved in front of me and set her stance with her fists clenched and her face flushed.

“Lorenzo Moretti, you stop right this instant.” She planted her foot the same way Indy did when he was trying to make a point.

“Stop with your pity party and your martyrdom and just…” She flexed her hands, looking like she wanted to slap me.

Instead, she drew a chest-swelling breath, then spoke through the exhale.

“Quit being ridiculous. If you go to Nero, he’ll kill you.”

“I know,” I replied, but she carried on as if I hadn’t spoken.

“And you may think you’re okay with that because you’re sad right now?—”

“I’m done, Sully.”

I was sad, too, but that rarely changed.

I sometimes felt like sorrow had been born into me.

Like it was some intrinsic piece buried too deeply to dig out.

Not for lack of trying.

I had flayed myself open to find its root.

Reached into the tangled mess of my guts in search of the thing that didn’t belong, only to find it had made its home in my chest and set hooks in my brain.

Indy once told me he saw it there.

I had never been very good at hiding it.

When Sully shook her head, her dreadlocks swung, and the beads and charms knotted in them seemed to dance.

“No, you’re not,” she said.

It wasn’t a statement so much as a plea, and I responded with one of my own.

“Can I be?” My voice dropped to a whisper.

“Please?”

“Oh, honey…”

Sully’s eyes shone.

She stepped forward, ready to hug me again, but if I let her take hold, I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave.

So, I backpedaled, then flicked a glance at the door.

“Let me go to Nero,” I said, sounding far less determined than I felt.

“Let him do what he wants to me. And you…”

My focus strayed to the trio I’d been trying to ignore.

Gunnar, Dottie, and Abigail were weary, flecked and splattered with dried blood, and wearing ragged clothing.

I’d seen each of them forced into battle in Moira’s training arena, only to emerge similarly bedraggled by their efforts.

It was sobering to think Earth hadn’t been much of a reprieve from Hell.

Like the torment followed them here.

My brow furrowed. “None of you need to die because of this. And if you stay… If I stay, you will.”

Whitney wouldn’t lead them into an ambush, and I was not as good a hound as he was.

Definitely not as good a leader.

But I had learned from him.

He’d been willing to stay so Indy and I could go.

Now, I was doing the opposite with the same intent.

Sully’s locs swung through another fervent head shake.

“I think I speak for all of us when I say this is personal now. I don’t want to run or hide from that horned bastard. I want him to suffer.” The other three nodded in solemn agreement as she continued.

“Even if we can’t beat him, we should try. We should make him regret ever leaving Hell.”

Sully closed the gap to me, and the determination on her face faded into the soft sympathy we’d shared minutes earlier.

“And I’m not letting you give yourself to him, Loren,” she said, quiet but with no less resolve.

“He’s taken enough.”

I glanced past her at Gunnar, Dottie, and Abigail, and it seemed hopeless.

I felt lost, alone, and adrift, but the part of me that wasn’t quite ready to lay down and die agreed with her.

Nero and demons like him had made a sport of demeaning and degrading me for most of my existence.

They wanted to take something as perfect and precious as my phoenix and destroy him.

Now, Indy was gone, Whitney was dead, Sully was in danger, and maybe it wasn’t such a stretch to blame someone besides myself.

Still, I had to tell her, “I’m sorry we brought you into this.”

Sully’s brown eyes shimmered, and her lips curved a wavering smile.

“Don’t be. Knowing you and Indy has been the highlight of my life. I wouldn’t change a minute of it.”

She stepped in and threw her arms around me, pulling me forward then down so she could kiss my cheek.

After we broke apart, she smiled up at me with her eyes shining.

“You know I love you, right?” she said.

It stung like a needle prick in my chest. I did know, and I loved her, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

So, I let my head rise then fall in a nod.

Sully gave me one last squeeze around the middle before spinning toward the rest of our group.

She placed both fists on her hips with a sort of swagger I couldn’t help but admire.

“All right, guys and gals,” she announced.

“We’re gonna face this fucker head-on.”

Dottie flashed a malevolent grin while Gunnar pounded his fist into his opposite palm.

Abigail appeared less certain, but Sully’s confidence must have been contagious because it took only a few seconds for Abigail to join in agreement.

Sully gestured broadly to the room around us.

“I have enough arcane bullshit to turn this apartment into a trap Nero will wish he never walked into. If he leaves, he’s going out in pieces. Sound good?”

“Fuck yeah!” Gunnar crowed and thrust out his hand like a football player in a pregame huddle.

Abigail frowned while Dottie and Sully stacked their hands on top of Gunnar’s.

Wild grins spread from one face to the next.

When Abigail reached in, all four of them looked at me.

It’s a losing fight , I wanted to warn them, but I supposed it always had been, and that had never stopped me before.

Walking forward, I slid in beside Sully and laid my hand on top of the pile.

I might have even smiled a little when Sully boldly declared, “Let’s give ‘em hell.”