Page 46 of Hounded (Fire & Brimstone)

46

Loren

I stopped at a service station on my way out of town, about twenty minutes after I left the campground. It took every bit of that time to work through the emotions that plagued me the moment I stepped out of the trailer, and to convince myself this desperate plan wouldn’t get us both killed.

Why hadn’t I told him I loved him? I’d tried to explain everything, meant to cover it all, but left out the most important part.

I knew why I didn’t say it. It made this feel too final, too grim, and that scared me. It was better to pretend our parting was casual and that we would pick up again tomorrow morning. After I made the longest drive of my life.

Climbing out of the truck, I paid at the pump, then opened the gas cap. After unhooking the nozzle and feeding it into the truck’s fuel tank, I pulled my cellphone from my pocket. The battery was nearly dead after days without a charge, but I was glad I hadn’t destroyed the thing after I broke out of Hell. It came in handy now. From the recent calls, I selected Sully’s name and dialed.

I was nervous to reach out considering I hadn’t left things with her on the best of terms. Our last encounter had been at the gallery after she gave Indy the memory charm. I’d lost my temper. I may have even frightened her because I’d been frightened, too.

The phone rang while gas flowed and the numbers on the pump ticked. On the third trill, Sully’s voice came across the line.

“Hi, honey.” She sounded tentative. “I’m glad you called.”

My head bobbed while I debated what to say, where to start, and how to explain. After a handful of seconds, I mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

Sully made a sorrowful sound. “Me, too,” she replied. “You have to know I would never hurt your sweet boy. Not ever.”

I nodded again, and Sully cleared her throat.

“Hey, you wanna get something to eat?” she asked. “I can be at Neighborhood Nosh in ten.”

My lips pursed. I ground the toe of my boot against the parking lot grit, trying to arrange my thoughts before I announced, “Sully, I’m not in New York.”

“Where are you, then?”

“Pennsylvania.”

Traffic whooshed by on the highway, along with semis that made the earth shake. It was loud and quiet all at once.

“Loren, what’s going on?” she asked, knowing me too well not to wonder about the reason for my first ever trip out of Brooklyn. When I didn’t respond, she tagged on, “ Is Indy with you?”

A knot tied in my throat, and I croaked past it. “No.”

“Lore, I’m gonna need you to talk to me," Sully said. "More than your usual monosyllabic bullshit. Why are you in Pennsylvania? And where is Indy?”

My face pinched. I didn’t want to dwell on the series of misfortunes that had led me to this point. I definitely didn't want to rehash it out loud. So, I said it as simply as I could. “Indy and I left New York, but I’m coming back. I need a ward. The hounds found me.”

“They found Indy?” Sully asked.

“ Me .”

“Why you?”

The pump clicked off. I jerked it out of the truck’s tank, then hung it up.

“I’ll be there in six hours,” I said, twisting the gas cap till it clicked. “Can you have something ready by then?”

She hesitated. “Sure, but I still don’t understand. Is everything okay?”

Not really. Not at all.

I opened the truck’s driver door and piled inside, then turned my keys in the ignition. The engine rumbled, still chugging along without the fluids I’d left behind in Ohio.

Silence carried across the phone line until, finally, I cleared my throat. “If I’m not there in six hours, can you come get Indy?”

When Sully spoke, she sounded terribly serious. “Loren, what aren’t you telling me?”

Hunching forward, I rubbed my free hand across my face. It was bruised and speckled with scars from the hellhound attack. Reminders of an encounter I was doing my best to avoid repeating.

“Do you have a pen and paper?” I asked.

“Gimme a minute.” Scuffling sounds came through the speaker before Sully said, “Okay, I’m ready.”

I gave her the name and address of the campground, straining to hear the scratch of the pen jotting letters and numbers to ensure myself she had it down. Then I asked her to read it back to me. She did, and I nodded.

“That’s where Indy is?” she asked.

I bobbed my head again, then remembered she couldn’t see me and replied, “Say you’ll get him.”

My hand fell to the gearshift, ready to move, but I wouldn’t go another mile away from Indy until I had her word.

“Of course, I will,” she said, and a weight lifted off me.

“See you soon, Sully.”

I ended the call and tossed the cell onto the bench seat beside me. It settled into the empty spot where Indy should have been. I shifted into drive, then stretched out my palm and laid it on the upholstery, wishing his warmth lingered there but finding it vacant and cold.

My empty fingers curled closed, and I returned my grip to the steering wheel. I eased on the gas and headed toward the interstate onramp. I picked up speed, aiming for a break in oncoming traffic.

Before I could merge, another car surged out of the open field beside the ramp. It slammed into the truck’s passenger side, rocking it onto two tires. Everything jolted as metal collapsed with a horrible crunching sound. My truck skidded into the stream of vehicles traveling upwards of eighty miles per hour. I stomped the brakes until they screeched and was almost stopped when I saw a bright red semi-truck bearing down.

Its horn blared, long and loud, and then the world went black.

The return to Hell occurred without my knowledge or consent but, as I knelt on the floor of Nero’s chambers with my wrists shackled to my ankles and blood trickling down the side of my face, I understood how I got there.

The wreck was not an accident.

I’d been followed, tracked across state lines, and caught by a pack of hellhounds set on me by my irate mistress. It was optimistic to think I could evade them entirely, but I may have succeeded in my higher goal in leading them away from Indy. That was the only thing keeping my head up as the red-skinned archdemon glowered down at me.

Scattered around Nero, nameless hounds watched with varying levels of interest. Abigail was among them, leashed to her master, Karst, and looking sheepish when I caught her gaze. She ran from the auto store, Indy said, the sole survivor of the onslaught of phoenix fire that reduced her comrades to ash.

While she shied from my attention, I returned my focus to Nero. His eyes blazed wrathful orange as he drew a chest-swelling breath, then blew it out so forcefully its heat washed over me.

“Well,” he began, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. “It would seem I backed the wrong horse in this race.”

Moira lurked at the edge of the gathering. Whitney stood beside her, his posture perpetually perfect and his collar tethered to our mistress by the chain in her hand. Realizing he wasn’t with Nero reminded me of his statement when he released me from the kennels. He wanted to return to his home, to the fate he’d embraced far more fully than I had.

It appeared he’d gotten his wish.

Nero appraised me once more. I was barely recovered from the attack in Ohio only to be battered in a multi-car collision. My muscles pulsed and throbbed as they knit themselves together, and my skull ached as it tried to push out a dent from where my head must have cracked against the truck’s window.

“You were first to find the bird, I understand,” the archdemon said. “All on your own.”

I knew better than to think he expected a response. I wasn’t muzzled, but Nero made no secret of his opinions about we hounds and our place in the underworld. So, I held his gaze and pressed my lips in a firm line. Let him assume whatever he liked. For this, I preferred myself silent, too. Less risk of betraying the fragile confidence in which I found myself.

The archdemon walked closer until he towered overhead. His lips curled in a sneer that showed the tips of his sharpened teeth. “My question is,” he rumbled, “if you found the creature, why is it not here now?”

My eyes flicked away. He did want an answer now, and my mind churned through responses that wouldn’t damn me and Indy both. My injuries muddled with growing mental discomfort, and I shifted, testing the chains that held me in the submissive pose.

Nero let out a snarl and grabbed my collar. The links cinched down as he hauled me off the floor to hold me suspended and helplessly restrained.

“Speak, you mindless mongrel!” he roared. Spittle struck my cheek.

My hound cried out, riddled with terror that seeped into every part of me. I jerked and thrashed but could only dangle from the chain putting relentless pressure on my throat.

“He escaped,” I rasped. “The phoenix did. I don’t know where he went.”

Nero’s brows dipped low. “It eluded you? Or did you run away? The way you were found looked rather like you were running.” He shook me like I was little more than a doll in his hand. “Toward or away?” he demanded. “Which was it?”

Air came and went in a wheeze, carrying whispered words. “Away. I saw him destroy the other hounds, and I ran.”

Nero’s gaze narrowed further. I thought he might bore a hole straight through to my soul, but I didn’t dare look away.

I needed him to believe me. Send the hounds the opposite direction, far from Pennsylvania and farther from New York. It was all I could do to mislead them because I was certain my next destination, perhaps my final one, was a cold metal box in the kennels, where I would languish until my mind fragmented and I forgot about Indy. Then, only then, it was a blessing to know that eventually he would forget me again, too.

With a look of disgust, Nero let me drop. My bruised knees knocked against the stone floor, and I toppled forward, unable to catch myself or stop my chin from striking so hard my teeth clicked together in a hard bite.

“Useless,” the archdemon spat.

He spun away, and I watched his retreat while lying stomach-down on the ground.

I stole another glance at Moira and Whitney. I expected my mistress to be vindicated, pleased to see me caught and punished. Instead, she looked concerned, and her worry bled onto me. Whitney maintained his steely stoicism. I’d learn to read him better one day, maybe in another hundred years.

Before me, Nero paced. He scowled and shook his head until he drew up short. When he faced me, determination hardened his features.

“You’ve found it before,” he said without a modicum of doubt. “You will find it again.”

I gaped, dumbstruck by the implication of the archdemon’s statement. But he had more to say.

“You will find the bird,” he repeated with mounting fervor. He walked forward again, coming uncomfortably close while I writhed on the floor. “You will lead me to it. If you fail or try to escape, I will flay the skin from your bones, watch it grow back, then strip it away again.”

He stooped toward me, and I flinched, expecting an attack. Instead, I heard the clink of metal and felt a pull on my collar. I peeked out through eyes I’d squeezed shut and saw the leash trailing from my choke chain to Nero’s hand, and I understood the situation all over again.

Nero didn’t own Whitney anymore. He owned me. And I wasn’t headed to the kennels at all. I was going back to Earth at the archdemon’s heel, tasked with taking him to the phoenix.

My phoenix. My treasure.

Nero jerked the leash, and I craned my neck upward to meet the smoldering embers of his eyes.

“Say ‘Yes, Master,’” he commanded.

My tongue was numb, uncooperative, and dread tunneled so deeply into me I thought I would implode.

Nero wanted me to surrender the thing I held most dear, to deliver Indy to him like a lamb led to slaughter. He wanted me to betray every instinct I had to protect the man I loved and, in doing so, lose my soul all over again.

So, while he glowered down at me, I said what he wanted but, internally, I spoke the truth.

No, Master. Never.