Page 36 of Hounded (Fire & Brimstone)

36

Loren

The storage unit was like a shrine. I wanted out of it, but I didn’t leave. Indy had gone almost an hour ago, headed back to the trailer, or the club, or to rub elbows with Evander; I didn’t know.

I cared, though. It would have been easier if I didn’t. Then, perhaps I could have gone on with my day instead of returning to my seat on the coarse cement floor with my cellphone in hand, scrolling the hundreds of photos stored on it.

They said what I couldn’t and remembered what Indy didn’t. They told our story.

My perusal was interrupted when the phone buzzed with an incoming call. The sight of the single letter M as the ID chilled my blood. After a moment’s debate, I sent it to voicemail.

I swiped further down the gallery to older images, several taken after Indy had braided his feathers into my hair. It was one of his favorite pastimes, and I enjoyed it more than I would admit. It was an excuse to be near him, softly touching and talking, and he never failed to slip kisses onto my neck or nibble on my ears until I was burning up with blush.

The cell hummed again, and I grit my teeth.

M.

When I’d gotten the phone back from Indy, there had been no missed calls or messages. I couldn’t decide if the delay had given her fury time to fester, or if she was less bothered by my escape than I thought.

On the fourth buzz, I selected Ignore, and the phone fell quiet in my grasp.

It was foolish. Cowardly. A delay of what I knew to be inevitable.

When the phone rang a third time, I was prepared to refuse it again when I noticed a different name scrolling across the screen: S. Sullivan.

I answered it on the speaker, and Sully’s voice came across the line.

“Loren? Where are you?”

The alarm in her voice stirred the same in me. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

Whitney was my first thought. He’d found the gallery. Sniffed Sully out as a person of interest in the phoenix hunt.

Would he torture her? Kill her?

I wasn’t sure what the witch had as means of self-defense, but I would pick Whitney over any other combatant seven days out of seven. He was swift, efficient, and successful, which gave me temporary relief. If Whitney had, indeed, come for Sully, she wouldn’t have survived long enough to call me.

“Lore, I’m sorry.” Sully sucked a breath. “Indy’s here, and I… He needs your help. Now.”

I pounded my fist against the gallery’s door hard enough to rattle the windows all the way down the storefront. It was dark inside, strange for midday and that, combined with the scant details I’d been given over the phone, tied a knot in my gut.

I was ready to punch through the glass and twist the deadbolt myself when Sully scurried into view. She looked pale, shaken, and she fumbled with the lock before letting me inside.

“Where is he?” I asked while scanning the shadowy gallery. I didn’t see Indy, but I smelled him. My hound snapped to attention, snorting at the bitter stink. The scent was wrong. Indy’s honeyed aroma had gone dark, like syrup scorching. Burning.

Bile surged into my throat.

Not again.

Not so soon.

Shouldering past Sully, I raced into the gallery. I called Indy’s name, choked with fear as bitter as the acid that coated my tongue.

Art displays blocked my view, and I ducked and wove around them. When thin wisps of smoke became visible in the air, I almost stopped in my tracks.

I couldn’t face this.

If Indy was dead or dying, burning up and starting this goddamned cycle all over again, it would ruin me. I was neck-deep in the hole he left me in last time. One more heap of dirt piled on my head would bury me.

But I forced myself to move until my ears pricked to the sounds of quiet crying. I rushed ahead, dodging partition walls I would have rather knocked down in my haste. When I sidestepped the final barrier, I saw Indy at last.

He was intact. Unharmed. Kneeling on the floor in a ring of singed carpet. His petite frame looked even more so, tucked in tight with his head hung low.

When I came into view, he glanced up. Amidst the smoke and the tears cutting glistening channels down his cheeks, his eyes were wide and pleading. Afraid. More terrified than I’d ever seen him, and it shattered every ounce of my control.

I bolted forward and dropped to my knees before him. He sagged against me, sobbing one moment and struggling the next, clinging on then pushing me away, screaming.

“What happened?” I turned on Sully, who stood by, stricken. “What did you do?”

She failed to reply as Indy wadded my shirt in his fists. He shoved back far enough to catch my gaze while trembling and sniffing wet breaths.

His expression softened with recognition. But it was deeper than that. More aware than he should have been after only the few weeks since we’d met this lifetime.

“Lore?” he rasped.

It was all I could do to stammer, “What is it, Doll?”

He blinked long, tear-clumped lashes, and his mouth formed a mournful smile. “I’m sorry, baby.” He shook his head. “I didn’t wanna leave you.”

My face washed cold. He looked so sincere, so determined to make me believe what he was saying that I couldn’t help but ask, “Then why did you?”

He let out an agonized whimper. His face contorted, and he pulled so hard on my shirt that I thought he would tear it.

“Indy!” I shook him.

As his body ragdolled, a chunky pendant thumped against his chest. The necklace looked handmade with a glass vial full of a dark purple liquid, beads that might have been bone, and a lock of blue hair braided around the leather cord. It was arcane. Magical.

I snugged one arm around Indy’s waist and freed my other hand to grab the charm.

“What the hell is this?” I thrust it toward Sully, testing the length of the cord.

Her mouth fell open, wordless, but I knew.

She’d made Indy the same offer she made me. I refused it but, of course, he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He was always more brash and ready to run into trouble. He lived like he knew he didn’t have much time, and he wanted to make the most of what he had. I took the opposite approach, trying to guard and cherish every moment. I didn’t want him to suffer, and I never wanted to see him like this.

“Get away from me!” Indy bucked in my grasp.

I glanced at him and found the fondness of earlier replaced by icy indifference. It was the same way he’d looked at Hopeful Horizons the day I dropped him off, when he’d kicked and screamed and said he didn’t know me.

He lashed out with a stinging slap across my jaw. It whipped my head aside, and I stayed there, stunned, until I heard him sobbing anew.

“Oh, no. Oh, shit…” He started to sink and drag me down with him in a rapid collapse.

I caught him by both shoulders and jerked him upright, risking another slap or punch to hold him face-to-face with me.

The shift in position seemed to jar him, and he met my gaze again. His golden eyes were fully round and glossed with tears. He called my name as if I wasn’t right in front of him. One hand fisted in my shirt while the other grabbed my hair and yanked.

“I don’t wanna burn. I don’t wanna die.” Indy’s words were so garbled they were barely comprehensible. “I don’t wanna go…”

He gave another sharp cry, and I seized the vial around his neck and jerked on the cord. It snapped, and a shudder rocked Indy’s tense form. The charm was in my palm for an instant before I tightened my fingers around it. Glass bit into my skin, and my palm flooded with warm, wet blood and the purple liquid leaking out.

Indy’s cries weakened. Another repetition of my name became a pitiful whine as he slumped forward. His painted nails scrabbled like talons across my body.

“Baby?” His voice muffled as he buried his face in my chest. He said it again and again until the word was little more than a sigh drifting out.

I held him, rocking slowly back and forth while cradling his head in my hand. He felt feverish, and his curls were damp with sweat.

“Loren?” It was Sully this time.

I’d heard my own name so many times in the last few minutes that it was beginning to chafe. My eyes cut over to meet hers.

The clicking sound of her swallow was audible to my sensitive ears. “He asked me to make things better…”

I bore my teeth in a snarl. “How is this better?"

She was teary, too, and ghastly pale. She shook her head, and her necklaces clinked together. “I didn’t mean to—”

“I told you no!” The words rocketed out of me on a shout. Indy whimpered, and I shushed him, smoothing the hair back from his forehead.

Sully scanned the blackened spot on the floor, started by a fire I never saw. “Loren, he wanted it,” she said quietly. “I couldn’t just—”

“You hurt him!” I shouted again, my voice edged with grit.

“I didn’t mean to,” Sully repeated. “I would never…”

I tucked Indy in tighter, then looped one arm under his legs so I could lift him as I stood. Once I was on my feet, I spun away and made my body a shield between Sully and Indy.

“Stay away from him.” My brows dipped low in a look of warning. “Away from us.”

She recoiled, so genuinely wounded that I almost regretted it. “You don’t mean that.”

Indy nuzzled against me while breathing steadily in and out. While I hesitated, he peered out from under droopy lids. “Can we go home? ”

Hearing the words “we” and “home” combined stirred my heart.

Did he remember that we belonged together? That my place was with him?

I nodded, then dipped my nose into his hair and breathed him in. The burnt smell seemed to be wearing off as his distress waned, but his amber aura was still masked by the ward. I turned toward the front door.

“Loren!” Sully’s shout scraped my nerves raw.

I faced her once more and simply said, “No.”

No, I didn’t want to hear any more apologies.

No, I wouldn’t take back what I’d said about her staying away.

No, I hadn’t wanted her to use experimental magic on Indy and hurt him .

No.

She gave no further protest as I carried Indy out of the gallery and into the sunshine outside.