Page 1 of Hounded (Fire & Brimstone)

1

Loren

When he told me goodbye that morning, I wondered if he knew.

Did he plan the scene I would return home to? A pile of ashes on the bed and the smoke detector screaming?

My phoenix was gone.

The blanket and sheets were scorched in a ring around what had been his body, burned through to the coiled metal springs of the mattress. He’d complained about that; said memory foam was better. I’d seen no need to replace it till now.

The air was thick and stifling, still hazy. It reeked of singed linens and the plastic headliner of the RV melting in the bedroom loft. I choked on it, gagging until I fell against the wall, dry heaving.

I didn’t understand. We should have had years left together.

Then I found the pills.

A baggie on the bedside table next to an empty bottle of water.

Sorrow shifted into searing rage, and I wished I could have burned, too. Instead, I screamed. I screamed at Indy for leaving me too soon, and at myself because I couldn’t stop it. I screamed, but the anguish wouldn’t leave, so I sobbed and sat on the floor so tucked up I could rest my head on my knees. I thought he was happy. We were happy. Why did he want to die?

When I could breathe again, I called the hospital. The woman on the other end of the line waited for me to get my thoughts in order, to ask questions without hearing their answers, to confess how profoundly I had failed.

Clutching the phone, I nodded through my half of the conversation as though the woman from the hospital could see me. Despite her talking, discussing things like success rates and duration of stay, the trailer felt quiet. She was still talking when the gray, ashen spot on the bed began to glow with new life.

I sobbed again, a strangled sound, and the woman asked if I was all right. I nodded. She didn’t see.

Tears soaked my face, and my nose ran, leaving me sucking snotty breaths and wiping my mouth and cheeks with my shirt sleeve. It was soggy by the time Indy’s bones began to reform. They snapped into place one vertebrae, rib, and joint at a time. His body reassembled the way it had a dozen times before.

Organs sprouted from nothing. Red lumps of meat filled his torso and nestled inside the cage of his ribs. His lungs didn’t inflate. His heart didn’t beat. Not yet.

Muscles knit together, canvassing his body with lean strips of sinew. When they reached his face, filling his cheeks and surrounding sightless eyes, I turned away .

“We’ll be there in two hours,” I told the woman on the phone. Then I hung up.

When Indy was fully reformed, I helped him get dressed. We packed a bag with comfortable clothes and a toothbrush and toothpaste… Other things I wasn’t sure they would let him have.

The woman on the phone had said there was a list of approved items we could bring with us on the website. I didn’t read it.

Indy’s hair was soft and brown as I ran a comb through it—never a brush, it ruined his curls—and he let me wrap my arms around his shoulders. I hung off him, draped across his back with my head ducked so he wouldn’t see me crying in the bathroom mirror. He must have felt my tears soaking through his shirt, but he didn’t ask why. He didn’t say anything.

Once he could stand and walk, I led him to the parking lot, holding his hand too tight. My palms were sweaty when I released him to open the passenger door of my Chevy C10. As I guided him up the step side, he looked at me with trust in his warm, golden eyes. I couldn’t hold his gaze.

The hellhound within me had been distant throughout the ordeal. He had smelled the smoke before I did, knew before I entered the trailer that we would be walking into disaster. But he’d seen this cycle repeated same as I had, and perhaps he understood what I didn’t. While I mourned, he sat silent in the recesses of my mind.

Car rides excited him, though. He was like a real dog that way. He wanted me to hang my head out the window so he could scent the breeze. But it was cold and foggy, so I kept the windows rolled up and cranked the defrost on high, flooding the truck’s cab with wet heat.

In past lives, Indy liked to turn on classic rock so loud the truck’s speakers rattled and my sensitive ears ached. He sang along to Journey and Queen and gushed about how Freddie Mercury was an icon.

Today, there was no music. We rode in silence.

I was sweating by the time we pulled into the parking lot of Hopeful Horizons Rehabilitation Center. My fingers felt numb as I turned off the ignition and pocketed the keys. They jingled against my thigh while I grabbed Indy’s duffel bag from the backseat and shouldered it. Sliding out onto the ground, I walked around to the passenger side and opened the door.

Indy was distracted, studying the glittering feather that dangled from the rearview mirror. He didn’t recognize it as one of his own.

“Ready, Doll?” I asked.

My palm grazed his thigh, and he glanced at me, freckle-faced and so damn pretty that it stirred fresh pain in my heart. The rehab center loomed across the lot. The pictures online made it look like a nice place. Easy to fake that stuff, past life Indy would have said, ever the skeptic. He would have scoffed at the photos of smiling staff members and amenities like the activity center and butterfly garden, would have told me how lame it all was, and that the lame would rub off on him if I left him here.

But I had to. It was all I could do.

Inside, I approached the front desk while Indy gawked at what, to him, was a brand-new world. The waiting room was bland, with white walls and linoleum tile floors and rows of padded chairs. Magazines piled on intermittent end tables, and the TV on the wall broadcast the news in closed captioning.

“Lorenzo Moretti.” I introduced myself to the receptionist. “I called.”

The woman smiled sympathetically while I stammered through a retelling of what I’d described over the phone. Words like “amphetamines” and “overdose” were choked by burgeoning tears. I hugged the bag of Indy’s things against my side, determined to get through at least a few sentences while the woman nodded along.

“Is he admitting himself?” She looked at Indy standing complacently at my side.

He would have to. I had no proof of my claims. He looked fine. Fresh and new, with no sign of the addiction that had followed him for over a century. A cursory internet search had informed me I needed a court order to force him to come here, which was no easy feat for two men with fake IDs and little more than names to prove they existed.

I bobbed my head to the receptionist’s question, and she passed a clipboard under the Plexiglas divider.

She tapped a pen to the topmost page. “He’ll need to sign these.”

My mouth was dry as I took the clipboard and offered it to Indy, whose brow furrowed.

“Sign your name,” I mumbled.

He took the pen, waggling it and watching the chain attached to one end coil like a snake. I didn’t rush him, couldn’t bring myself to say a word until his amber eyes fixed on me and he said, “I don’t know my name. ”

A lump clogged my throat. “Indy,” I forced out. “Just Indy. But you sign it like the letters N. D.”

He’d signed countless paintings and sketches, claiming ownership of beautiful things. He’d signed the sticky notes he left for me on the fridge or the bathroom mirror, reminders as if I were the forgetful one.

Now, he signed the intake papers with those same fluid strokes. They looked stark and black on the white paper.

Taking the clipboard, I slid it across the counter without looking at the receptionist, or Indy, or anything.

“Have a seat,” the woman’s voice chased me as I turned away.

I eased Indy into a chair facing the TV and set his bag beside his feet. Crouching in front of him, I swept the brown curls off his forehead and smoothed the front of his shirt. The lavender button-down was usually reserved for date nights because he thought I liked it when he dressed up. In truth, I liked him every way, but he was at his best in baggy sweatshirts and ripped jeans, fussing over the easel and canvas in our trailer until every inch of him was splotched in paint. He looked like art to me, vibrantly alive. Maybe that was why it hurt so much every time he died.

While I brushed my thumb across his cheek, he stared at me blankly. Awareness would come soon, and I selfishly hoped to be gone by then. I didn’t want this to be the first thing he remembered; I didn’t want him to know I’d abandoned him.

I paused on my way to standing and kissed the top of his head, then turned away and circled the room. It should have been spacious and empty with only the two of us in it, but it felt like a shrinking cage. My hound panted, and so did I, forced to walk when I wanted to run away from this. It wasn’t too late to change my mind.

My hound perked at the thought, and I shook my head.

Over the last few lifetimes, Indy’s addiction had gotten progressively worse. I’d come home too many times to find him strung out. Once he’d fallen unconscious in the shower and laid on the floor soaked in cold water until I dragged him out. He’d even overdosed before. I’d found him seizing, his body twitching while foam bubbled from his lips.

I should have brought him here then. But when I suggested as much, he fought me, cursed at me, and swung his fists until I caught him up and held him. Then he told me he was afraid and made me promise not to leave him.

Yet here I was, doing exactly that.

The door leading to the back part of the facility opened with a beep. A white-coated doctor and a nurse in blue scrubs walked out. I rushed to Indy’s side and stood next to him with my hand on his shoulder as the newcomers approached.

“Mister…” The doctor glanced at the paper he held.

“Indy,” I explained, flustered enough that my cheeks warmed. “It’s Indy.”

The doctor didn’t ask for anything more while the nurse bent and lifted the packed duffel bag from the floor. It took all my self-control not to snatch it away from her. I didn’t want her to take it. Didn’t want them to take him .

A jostle against my hand announced Indy rising to his feet. His head swiveled from the medical staff to me and back again. For the first time in this life, something more than blind faith overtook his features. He frowned.

“What are you doing?” His question could have been for any of us.

Cognition flashed in his eyes, making them sharp and hard.

“We’re at the hospital.” I reached for him again. “You’re sick.”

He swatted me away. “Bullshit. I’m not sick.”

I recoiled, welling up with fresh tears. The doctors stepped back, too, from what must have been a sight. Indy was 5’6” and petite, small-boned like the fiery bird that he was. I towered nine inches over his head and was more than able to face him down or restrain him but, in this moment, I felt small.

“Indy,” I tried again, my voice a croak.

He spun toward the staff members, his hands fisting. “Who are you people?” he demanded.

They looked at me, perplexed.

“He… he doesn’t remember things,” I said. “It’s a side effect…”

Of what? Immortality? That was not a truth I was prepared to reveal.

When I touched his arm, Indy shoved me back. “Get the fuck away from me!”

“We may need sedation,” the doctor murmured softly enough that I shouldn’t have heard, but my hound’s ears picked up everything.

“No, you don’t,” I urged, feeling hot and cold all over. Panic and sorrow pulled like tug-of-war, leaving me stuck in a miserable middle ground. “Please don’t do that. He’s scared, is all.” I stood like a wall with my back to Indy, worried he might bolt out of the clinic and half-hoping he would.

Despite my protest, the nurse retreated through the door, swiping a keycard and eliciting the mechanical beep that made me flinch.

“Indy.” The doctor pressed forward again. “You need to calm down.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” he snapped.

I wanted to carry him out of here. Overflow with apologies because this was my fault. I shouldn’t have brought him. I knew he didn’t want this, but I was afraid. We both were.

The nurse returned with a syringe in her hand. Two male orderlies flanked her.

Turning, I grabbed Indy’s shoulders and pinned his gaze with my own.

“I love you,” I told him.

He forgot so many things, but I needed him to remember that.

Indy’s brows dropped, and he shrugged me off. I was surprised he didn’t punch me.

“I don’t even know you!” he shouted.

The orderlies brushed past, cutting into the narrow space between Indy and me.

I was panting again, choking, strangling.

The two men overwhelmed him, grabbing him and trapping his arms to his sides.

He kicked out, hitting one in the shin. The orderly staggered, and Indy bent then lurched forward to headbutt the man in the gut.

With a whooshing grunt, the orderly fell to the floor.

Everything was a scramble then. The injured orderly surged to his feet and rejoined the fray with the doctor right behind him. It took all three of the men to shove Indy into a chair and hold him down while the nurse stabbed the syringe into his bicep.

I spun away, hugging my arms around my middle and squeezing my eyes shut. Hot and cold and fear and panic and deep, dark dread ate at my insides until I felt hollow.

He would never forgive me for this.

When I opened my eyes again, the waiting room was vacant and so, so quiet.

The receptionist tapped away on her keyboard without looking up.

I stood for too long, eager to leave but not ready to go.

Assuming all went well, it was a sixty-day program. Two months felt like eternity considering Indy and I hadn’t been apart for more than a few days in the past century. The thought of going back to the trailer alone was daunting. I didn’t sleep well without him. My mind made for poor company, taking me to places I didn’t want to go and dwelling there. Endless years of living gave me too many memories.

Sometimes I wished I could be like my phoenix and forget.

Finally, I willed my feet to shuffle toward the exit. The journey through the parking lot to my truck seemed to drag on for miles. When I finally clambered into the driver’s seat, I felt drained.

My hound was resigned as I started the engine and shifted into drive. I took the long way home, traversing the rain-slick, two-lane highway that wound around walls of crumbling shale and stands of pine trees. Clouds covered the sun, letting only patches of bleak light filter through. It was not enough to brighten my dull and dreary thoughts.

I didn’t turn on the radio and didn’t dare glance at the empty seat beside me. I simply stared at the road ahead until I couldn’t see at all through the film of scalding tears.

With a rough jerk on the wheel, I steered the truck onto the shoulder and slowed to a stop. Then I sat, idling, slouched in my seat while my breaths clouded in the air.

Indy was gone.

It was quiet.

And, for the first time in a hundred years, I was alone.