Page 51 of Hounded

“What more would you like to see, sir?” she asked.

Nero turned his back on us and walked toward the windows, where his silhouette cut a black hole in one of the emerald panes.

“I hoped for a bit of savagery.” Nero’s voice echoedthrough the emptiness. “You seem determined to dress them up and teach them manners, but they are animals with fangs and claws. In the arena, they retreat and cower. I want a real battle. A massacre.”

He rounded on us and bared his teeth in a nefarious grin. “I’d wager half your pups aren’t worth the skin that contains them. So, let them strip it off one another,” he said, “while we watch.”

My eyes cut a line to Whitney, wondering how he was receiving the archdemon’s words. His mouth twitched, but the rest of his face remained placid. Maybe in another hundred years, I would be able to guard myself as effectively as he could, or at least give the appearance of it.

Ahead of us, Moira crept closer to Nero. “Perhaps there’s something else they could fight or even kill…”

Whitney let out a rumbling growl. The sound was so unexpected that my head whipped aside, disbelieving while Nero carried on.

“The rest of Hell has no need for glorified house pets or beastly lovers.” He scoffed. “If you can’t find a better use for them, then I believe they should be disposed of.”

Moira stepped back, and her arms spread as though forming a shield between the archdemon and us. “Sir, you can’t—”

“You would do well not to presume to tell me what I can or cannot do,” Nero seethed, barely restrained. “If your hounds do not entertain me, then I shall entertain myself. They are human souls, are they not?” His gesture toward us made me flinch. “They sense and suffer like mortals do?”

“Yes, sir,” Moira replied.

The archdemon stroked his chin. “That could be something. Let the demons have their fun with your invulnerable pets. Tear them apart and watch them put themselves back together.”

Dread pooled in my gut. I’d attended church in my youth, having been raised Catholic by devout parents who made it a priority after arriving in America to find a place of worship. It was the first door we found closed to us, and the last one we expected. But before we’d been banned from the house of God, I learned plenty about Heaven and Hell. Salvation was the only respite from an eternity of torment, and while my existence as a hellhound fit the bill for some form of torture, Nero suggested something worse.

My brain conjured images of shackles and chains and hot iron pokers, then delved into the depths of dank, torchlit torture chambers before a third person entered the dialogue.

“What about hunting?”

Whitney spoke softly, but his accented voice seemed to resound. I whipped aside to find him stiff-backed and staunch, his head level and his eyes fixed on Nero’s.

Not once in a hundred years had I heard Whitney speak out of turn. He was disciplined, a model student in Moira’s obedience school, though seeing him now, I could not deny he was also the bravest man I’d ever known.

Nero’s countenance creased with such rage I thought he might spit fire. “You dare address me unbidden, whelp?”

Whitney stepped forward to stand beside Moira. “What if not fighting but hunting?” He turned an open hand to where I hung back. “Lorenzo is a skilled tracker. He’s found scores of bartered souls and delivered them to Hell. That has merit. And there are plenty of other things on Earth. Fantastical creatures. I caught the scent of a phoenix a few days ago. If the hounds could be put to work that way—”

“Say that again.” Nero cocked his head, flaunting his massive horns.

Whitney paused. “Sir?”

I gagged, fully choked on the bile that surged into my throat. It hung there, burning while resisting my efforts to swallow it down until my eyes were watering and I was starved for air.

The archdemon closed in, towering a full foot over Whitney’s head. “You found a phoenix?” he asked.

Whitney gave the slightest bend backward, enough that I glimpsed his face in profile and found it pinched and uncertain. “I smelled one… briefly. But I lost track of it—”

Nero jerked aside, shifting his attention to Moira. “Why didn’t you mention this?”

Our mistress stalled, and I wished I could see her expression until the hurt in her voice made her feelings clear. “He didn’t tell me…”

Nero threw back his head in a roaring laugh. Still chuckling, he addressed Moira once more. “Perhaps the problem isn’t the hounds at all, ratheryourhandling of them.”

I hadn’t breathed yet. I couldn’t. Everything was wadded up tight, squeezing at my heart, my lungs, mythroat…

“It is a fine idea,” Nero continued while grinning. “Hunting dogs. Let them scour the earth for treasure and claim it for Hell. It will be grand. The demons can pick hounds to be their champions, then set them loose and make it a race. Whoever owns the hound that retrieves the phoenix may keep the bird as a trophy.”

I needed to leave. To crawl out of my body and slink from this room. To run home to Indy and tell him to hide or run far away. But New York was no less safe than New Zealand. Hell had portals all over the world. Sully’s ward provided some security, but not enough.

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