Page 5 of How to Hack a Hellhound
I did like things clean. And neat. And orderly.
Which is why I was not pleased about Quinton not going home.
When the mess was burned to nothing but ashes, I walked over and hit the start button on the robot vacuum I’d bought, glancing down to make sure there were no stray blood droplets on the floor. My old robot vacuum had taken it upon itself to autorun, only a hellbound mortal had still been in the room, dripping blood, and I had been out grabbing some breakfast. The results had been… unfortunate. It had dragged blood across the entire floor, including the carpet, which was of course ruined.
That robot vacuum might have accidentally met a fiery death for its poorly timed decision, but the newer upgraded model I bought didn’t make such mistakes. While it started cleaning up the ashes, I put a call in to Dexter.
“What is Toby doing?” I asked without preamble.
“Having a ‘guys night’ with his friends,” Dex answered.
“Why is he bringing Quinton?”
“Uh… I don’t know?” Dex answered.
Typical. “Watch over them,” I commanded, and Dex merely snorted before hanging up. Asshole.
Dex wasn’t the brightest flame in the house fire, especially when it came to dealing with humans, but I knew he’d protect Toby and his friends. And it wasn’t like I could really claim any expertise in the human area, either. I didn’t interact with humans much outside of the internet, aside from the usual torture and death stuff.
And watching Quinton. But that was a new hobby.
I’d managed to get ahold of the security footage from the mansion where Quinton was rescued, and of course, they’d had cameras throughout the house and the wine cellar. They all went to private servers, but that wasn’t a problem. I’d watched the footage before erasing its existence, and the minute I’d seen Dex open the door in the cellar, I’d been captivated by the short, wiry guy who had thrown himself out of the room at Dex, scratching and biting.
He was so feisty, and I was enthralled by his energy.
Then there was what I saw with my other talent. Hellhounds could sniff out evil. It’s how we worked. Or at least it was supposed to be how we worked.
When computers had first been invented, I’d taken to them immediately. I’d seen the potential for human depravity, but I’d also seen the potential for hunting down our prey. I don’t know exactly when it started, but I had feelings about those Iinteracted with online. I just figured it was intuition. Yes, that oneseemsevil, and then I’d find them in person, and I’d smell the rot.
It didn’t take long before I realized I wasalwaysright. I could tell the hellbound souls from the innocents. I thought I was just good at reading into interactions with humans, but then I started to be able to do it without interacting at all. Just watching their online footprint, reading their mundane emails, or watching them on camera gave me a sense of their souls. It was… almost like a flavor. It was like my hellhound turned into an algorithm that could trace evil.
And the moment I’d seen Quinton burst through that door, my hellhound had perked right up. He was most definitelynota hellbound soul. His flavor was exotic and alluring, though, and I wanted more.
I was used to getting what I wanted. So I watched him, and I only became more captivated by him. It wasn’t hard to clone his phone, or to hack into his laptop so I could watch him through his camera.
Not that I neglected my other duties, of course. I checked on all of Toby’s friends, but I had no desire to dig deeper into their lives. I did look a little more into Aiden, especially since he was Quinton’s roommate, and he presented his own problems. Nevertheless, I wasn’t terribly concerned about that. We could handle anything that got thrown at us.
My phone rang, and I wasn’t surprised when a blocked number showed up. I picked up without speaking.
“I see your human manners haven’t improved much,” a gruff voice chided.
“You could have been a telemarketer. No reason to say hello to the bots,” I answered.
Wilder gave a bark of laughter at that. “Boy, don’t pretend that you haven’t blocked all telemarketers from this number somehow. You always were the best with all the technology shit.”
I just smiled. Wilder was, in every way that counted, my father. He was also utterly without bullshit, so when he praised you, you damn well knew you’d earned it.
Wilder had adopted all of us when we were young hellhounds, because we all didn’t fit into our lives for one reason or another. We were now effectively a tight-knit pack, but we’d been working separately for quite awhile—humans got suspicious when you didn’t age.
“Seems like my boys have been busy from the last message you sent. Fill me in,” he said.
I had given him a rough summary in a message, but I went into detail now, telling him how we all felt good about Paradise Falls as a new home base. I also filled him in on Dexter’s human neighbor that he’d decided to keep.
Wilder grunted. “It’s not unheard of for a hellhound to mate a human. Not that Toby is exactly mortal anymore if Dex has claimed him.”
I didn’t quite know what to do with that statement, and if Wilder didn’t want to explain, he wouldn’t. I was never sure if that was because he just didn’t feel like explaining or because he just didn’t know. He was one of the original hellhounds, and he’d probably forgotten more than I’d ever know in my lifetime, no matter how many centuries long it might be.
“Will you come?” I asked instead. I knew everyone would be happy if Wilder joined us, but I also knew he often had a lot of shit going on. He had devoted decades to raising us into the hellhounds we were, and he deserved a chance to go off and do whatever he wanted.
