Page 85 of Hounded

On the ground floor, he swung a wide turn toward the wall of automatic doors. Uniformed officers closed in from the corners of the room. When one pulled a pistol from his duty belt, I sped up. I did not want to add another bullet wound to my collection of scars.

Joss charged through the open doorway where he nearly collided with a family of four entering in stride. He spun to avoid the small child at the end of the line, then exited onto the canopied sidewalk outside.

“Stop! Police!” Came a voice from behind me.

I didn’t pause to look back as I traced Joss’s trail out of the building.

A line of yellow cabs idled at the curb, and Joss had stopped at the first one. He piled into the backseat while squawking at the confused cabbie, who stood outside the vehicle with his hands raised, shaking his head in response to Joss’s frantic shouts.

“Drive, man!” Joss shrieked. “Get in the damn car!”

Dashing forward, I rounded the hood of the taxi and passed the stunned driver. I dove in through the opendoor, rocking the gearshift into drive and stomping on the accelerator. Our lurching advance swung the door shut.

“Thank you. Thank you, man. You saved my life,” Joss blubbered from the rear of the cab.

I focused on navigating the one-way traffic lanes leading away from the terminal but, when I snuck a glance in the rearview, I found Joss looking back.

“No…” He moaned and slouched dramatically forward, shielding his face with his hands.

Through the window behind him, security guards spilled into the open. The abandoned cab driver dropped to the ground, but none of them paid him any mind. The guards shouted into their walkies, then lowered their guns as the taxi sped out of range.

Slowing would give Joss a chance to bail from the car, so I stepped on the gas and watched the speedometer climb while I navigated a roundabout headed toward the main roads.

Joss gulped and wheezed in a way that made me wonder if a heart attack might finish him off before I could.

“Hey, listen,” he said between gasps. “Listen!” He surged into the gap between the front seats. “What do you want? You want money? I’ve got money. Or I could… I could make you famous! You wanna be famous?”

“Is that what she offered you?” I asked idly.

Joss blinked. “She who?”

“Moira.”

We were pushing 50 MPH when I steered out of the LaGuardia parking area and onto the adjacent access road. Streetlamps beamed from above, spotlighting thepavement. I glanced out the passenger window to scan the tarmac lined with runways.

Joss clawed at the sides of the front seats. He pressed in until I could see his stricken face in my peripheral.

“Th-the demon?” he sputtered. “That’s her name?”

I nodded. I didn’t share that information with many people, but it seemed Joss had the right to know.

The artist bobbed his head frantically. “Yeah, she said she’d give me, uh fame, fortune… The same shit everybody wants.”

A scoffing noise slipped out of me as my hound began to pace. Too much talking, not enough action. In the absence of an available turn lane, I cut the headlights and steered the cab off the access road, bumping through grass toward the runways.

Beside me, Joss rambled on. “Look, dude, I’m loaded, okay? I can set you up for life.”

In my time in Moira’s service, I’d learned that a human soul had only as much value as its owner assigned it, and it was never a fair trade. Joss was a young man, no more than forty, so his bout of success must have been brief. Money and fame only mattered as long as you were alive to enjoy them.

When we rolled onto the tarmac at the edge of the airfield, Joss wailed. “You don’t have to do this, man.”

I heaved a breath. “I do.”

“Why?”

Blinking red lights warned me away from the taxiing planes as we put distance between ourselves and the LaGuardia airport. I was stalling, and my hound knew it. He nipped at me with stinging bites that made my handstighten on the steering wheel.

“You made a deal,” I said through gritted teeth. “So did I.”

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