Page 19 of Whiskey, Thieves, and Bastards
“I’ll bring beignets next time.”
“Deal. No beignets, no boat ride. This is it. Don’t piss Cerberus off. Best let Persephone introduce you to her dog or he’ll eat you or set your asshole on fire. Cerberus is a fierce guard dog. Hades and Persephone are the only ones who can call himoff and Persephone is the only person who has broken in he didn’t try to kill. Hades thought she broke his dog, but then he got it.”
We got off the boat and I stopped them. Hades and Persephone portalled here first. I needed to warn them.
“Charon wasn’t being dramatic. Cerberus takes his guard dog duties seriously. Only a few people have ever gotten past him and they didn’t do that unscathed. Persephone is theonlyperson he took to right away and didn’t attack. Cerberus knows and trusts me, but you being with me means nothing without Hades or Persephone telling him you’re safe to pass.”
“I love grumpy dogs,” Benji sighed. “They are just so angry.”
“I mean it, Benji. Cerberus has three heads and they all breathe fire.”
“Benji, this isn’t someone’s bitey chihuahua they keep in their purse. This is the Hound of Hades. I had to stitch your finger up from a four-pound rat dog. Cerberus will take it off,” Cas warned.
“No one is saying you can’t pet him. Just wait for Persephone to introduce you,” Pax said.
“All of you are going to want to stay back, totally still, and don’t make eye contact until Persephone calls him off.”
Because seriously, I’d given Cerberus toys, countless belly rubs, and homemade biscuits. We were friends, but I couldn’t call him off because he wasn’t my dog.
Iloved dogs. They were distant cousins to my wolf, and they weren’t degenerates like cats. Like, if a dog plopped on their back, theytotallywanted you to blow raspberries on their belly. With cats, it was just a ruse to fuck your face up. They did it because giving you an eyebrow scar or disfiguring your nostril was amusing to them.
I still kinda liked cats because even if they weren’t distant cousins to my demon, they probably could be. Like, walking into someone’s house like, I live here now and I’m going to poop in a box in your living room that you will clean to my liking or I’ll shit on your bed was totally a demon thing.
Maybe I should do that to Sheriff Riddle next.
Anyway, I wasdyingto meet the Hound of Hades. Cranky dogs usually loved me. That rat dog that drew blood was an anomaly. I’m pretty sure it had rabies and wasn’t in its right mind, but his owner insisted he was up to date on vaccinations and just hated men. Pbbbttt. Everyone loves me. That dog was just deranged.
We stepped through the entrance of a cave and that’s when I finally saw him. He was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. He looked like a Cane Corso had conjoined triplets with some kind of weird bear. All three heads were growling at us. His lips were pulled back showing some razor-sharp teeth.
He was just sogrompy.Every time I saw angry dogs, I just wanted to make them happy dogs. Sometimes, my attention span was shitty. Sometimes, people warned me about shit and I saw cute, really pissed off, three-headed dogs and forgot all about it.
“Puppy!” I shrieked, poofing myself right in front of him to introduce myself.
Medusa screamed my name right when three heads tried to take a bite out of me. Ooh, he wasangry.Still, I didn’t have to hide my magic here, and I had the reflexes of a degenerate cat. I just turned into smoke and all those teeth passed right through me. Cerberus tried to kill me again when I materialized by blowing fire at me, but I just disappeared again.
There was no sunlight in the Underworld, just a lot of lamps and a moon. Disappearing was easy. Cerberus just didn’t know me yet, and that was why he kept trying to kill me. We were going to be besties after he scented me.
Right now, he was watching me warily trying to figure out how to get me, but we’d get past that. I could forgive him because he was so cute and pissed.
“Down, Cerberus. They are friends,” Persephone said. “You have to be completely insane. Heracles lost a thumb to this dog.”
Medusa ran over to me and before I knew it, she was kissing me. Like,reallykissing me for the first time. If I’d known the trick to getting her to get kissy with me was trying to flirt with Hades’s three-headed, fire-breathing dog, I would have made sure we got to the Underworld long before this.
Damn. She kissed like a wildcat and she tasted like strawberries. I wanted more, but I was only okay with fucking in front of people I trusted and I didn’t want to traumatize Cerberus. Plus, she needed her answers.
Later, little monster. I had a three-headed hellhound to befriend.
“Can I give him treats?”
Because I didn’t just poof to Louisiana to get beer, meat pies, and Doberge cake. I knew I was going to be meeting the best boy ever and he might be a little angry about that, so I stopped by this little shop run by a witch who made dog treats.
“I suppose you might as well now that he nearly bit your arm off and set you on fire. Are they organic?” Persephone asked.
“Duh. He farts fire. I’m not trying to upset his precious little stomach,” I said, making kissy noises at Cerberus.
“I’m trying to decide if I should be uncomfortable or not,” Hades said.
No dog could resist the lure of these treats. My strays loved them and fuck, even my werewolf side wanted to take a nibble sometimes. I was pretty sure the Hound of Hades was going to be putty in my hands soon.
