Page 84 of Jagged Souls

A horror he can’t outrun.

Krypto launches himself at Leno’s body, jumping on top of him and excitedly licking his face. The twins keep their hands low, but their fingers dance with magic as they keep our brother together under his dog’s weight.

Krypto barks, a stress noise. He knows now something isn’t right.

His back end stills.

His tail drops.

He lies down with a whine.

Licks Leno’s face again.

Tries nudging him to get him to move.

Another whine rips from his throat.

Maddox arrives, breathless and shaky. “Krypto, boy, he’s gone,” he says as he takes a step towards him. He kneels down, but the dog immediately snarls at him.

He’s protecting Leno when Leno cannot.

When we failed to.

I crouch down to tell him my brother’s last words.

“Good…” But my throat closes on that whispered word. I can’t bring myself to finish the sentence my brother never got a chance to.

“Good boy,” Enoch says into the thick silence as he stays standing. “You’re such a good boy watching out for him, but you have to let him go now. Leno would want you to let him go, boy.”

“You have to let him go,” Maddox says as he sits back on his ass, his knees up, one arm wrapped around them, the other picking at the dead ground, the decaying plants and bare dirt that Antonio left in his wake.

I look at that damn daffodil from before. It closed at some point during all this, but it opens now, under my gaze. Giving me that little bit of comfort. That feeling that Leno is still here with us.

I need more than it can give…

“Come on, boy,” Enoch says. “You have to get off him. We need to take him into our shadows.”

To return his magic from where it came.

To keep his presence with us forever.

“Krypto…” Maddox says. “Come here, boy.”

The dog just whines and licks Leno’s face repeatedly.

“Should we lift him off?” Ezriel asks softly.

I shake my head as I rise. “No. Let him come to terms with it.”

Twenty-Two

HIM

As much as I want to mourn my brother properly, I can’t. An army of fire ants are crawling beneath my skin, urging me to move. To run. To get the fuck out of here.

My wife is in the Plane of Monsters.

In complete darkness. Alone. Trapped in a nine-by-nine-foot cage with monsters all around her.