Page 107 of Hounded: Ashes to Ashes

It was innate, obsessive, the way I needed him. Indy romanticized it, saying we were twin flames or crossed stars. But it didn’t bear explanation. Suffice it to say he was mine, and I was his, and while he’d rushed to tell me how he’d always loved me and always would, even in Heaven, I had no doubts.

I sensed it in his absence, here, where the air was thick with grief because Indy was gone, and I knew—for the first time ever, I was certain—he would not come back.

My certainty didn’t change my instincts or break the habit I’d honed over decades. So, despite there being no ashes, not even a wisp of him over which to keep vigil, I did what I always did. I sank to my knees in the middle of Sully’s living room floor,and I waited. But, instead of looking forward to my phoenix’s beginning, I prepared for my own end.

My hound let out a breathy whine as he settled inside me. I hoped he understood because I didn’t intend to explain. He’d witnessed it. He’d howled and cried and clawed at the cage of my ribs when Evander arrived to take Indy away. His frothing jaws snapped, and I felt every tooth sink in as he tried to tear through me to get to his treasure.

Still, we remained intact. Bound until the bitter end, sharing sorrow and nursing wounds that didn’t show on my skin.

Whitney was dead.

Nero’s savage attack at the bowling alley had shaken me to my core. It was a vengeance he’d nearly visited on me all those weeks in captivity when I’d defied his orders to lead him to Indy, then suffered for my stubbornness.

I succeeded. And failed. It seemed impossible to have one without a little of the other. I was always loving and losing, striving and falling short, wanting what I could never fully have.

The fate of the other hounds remained a mystery, and a potentially grim one. I’d been willing to run. Take Indy and leave the rest. Burn the damn city to the ground to save my beloved. Why should I care for a world that had never cared for me?

As an gay immigrant sinner with a soul sworn to Hell, I was far from desirable in the place I’d made my home. Even before I made my deal with Moira, I was tainted. Too quiet, too sad, too unskilled to be of much use. But Indy loved me, and it ached how much I loved him, too.

I might have sat there forever. Let my body rot down to bones in the too-quiet apartment, staring at the void and waiting for the end. But then Sully came out.

She was the friend Indy made for me. The person I needed because a life lived between deaths could be so lonely. She was here. She survived. Whitney saved her.

“Lore?” Her voice sounded scratchy as she padded forward, searching the living area for things and people she wouldn’t find.

I’d worried she was hurt. In her unconscious state, it had been impossible to know what damage had been done, but she seemed well enough. Physically. After she found out what had happened while she’d been asleep, we would both be wearing new scars on the inside.

She came closer, hugging her arms around her middle while worry pulled at her face. “Loren, where are they? How did we get back here? What happened?”

The questions sounded raw as they hung in the air.

“Gone.” I gulped at the thickness forming in my throat. “Everyone’s gone.”

It was half an answer at best, but enough to drop Sully beside me. She grabbed my arm and pulled on it until I met her frantic gaze with my weary one.

“What about Indy?” she asked. “And Whitney…?”

I’d already said everyone, and I couldn’t bring myself to say it again.

Sully’s fingers dug into my arm, squeezing painfully hard as she asked, “How?”

It took several deep breaths and as many dragging seconds before I could answer. The words were halting and as succinct as I tended to be, but also free of tears. I was grateful for that. Relieved to be able to get through it without crumbling.

Sully’s eyes, on the other hand, were fully glossed and leaking long before I finished explaining. Her lips fell apart, speechless and quivering with a pain I thought I could taste.

Finally, she sucked a wet breath and dragged her arm across her face. “Why am I always the last one to know about this stuff?” she asked without condemnation. “I have opinions, you know. Advice…” Tears choked her, and she slumped forward to hug me.

When I told Whitney I was sending Indy away, I’d thought about having someone to mourn with. I just didn’t expect to be grieving him, as well.

Sully’s body pressed against mine as a welcome warmth that helped dispel the cold. I wrapped my arms around her, and we sat until my legs went numb.

The knock at the door made the second one of the night, and my hound stirred with a low growl. I tucked Sully against my chest and glared across the room, braced for the worst.

It didn’t seem like Nero would knock. Hounds on the prowl were more likely to scale the fire escape and break in through the window or kick the door off its hinges and invade. That must have been Sully’s thought, as well, as she sprang to standing.

“I thought you said…?” She flicked a glance at me, and I remembered Indy being equally optimistic that my fellow hounds, our would-be pack, had managed to survive.

I pushed up after her and drew my glaive from a pocket of shadow. If it was Nero playing at civility, I couldn’t destroy him. But I could hurt him. I would remove his arm or leg before he ripped the soul out of me.

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