Page 127 of Hounded: Ashes to Ashes

No miracles.

Not for me.

Give it to Indy. Save him the way you should have when I sent him to Heaven. I gave him to you. Trusted you with the most precious thing I’ve ever had, yet we still ended up here.

I lost, and gave, and everyonetook, and no.

As much as I wanted to say all of that, I didn’t breathe a word. I lay as motionless as my phoenix, my eyes shut against the world.

“It may hurt,” Evander warned.

I doubted I would notice.

He touched me then. A tentative hand pressed against my spine, sending a spike of ice straight through to my core. I gasped and bucked back, and Sully shouted something from across the room.

It burned in a way only cold could, searing and spreading through my body.

I was wrong to think I’d be able to ignore it. Even my grief couldn’t overpower this terrible hurt. It was like I was dying, being torn apart physically as well as emotionally. Evander’s frigid fingers burrowed in, and I yelped.

Sully shouted again, and I heard feet thundering closer to the bedside. But I didn’t look, and I couldn’t move, frozen by the angel’s grip while he took from me, purging something that feltintrinsic, removing what had become part of me a hundred years ago.

By the time he withdrew, my tears had soaked the pillow beneath Indy’s head. I was shaking so hard my teeth chattered, and my chest ached through every breath. I felt empty and hollow, but also free.

Gingerly, I rolled over to see the angel standing by with his hand held out. A dusty gray blur of a thing hovered above his upturned palm. It looked soft, wisping with dust and a flap of broad, flat wings. Like a moth, I thought. A bland, gray bug, but it made so much sense.

The hound found Indy. Sniffed him out in a damp cellar tucked beneath Brooklyn’s gritty streets. He guarded our phoenix, whimpered and whined for him, and drew me back to the task of protection over and over again. We were both drawn, it seemed. Like a moth, yes, to a stunning flame.

Seeing it wasn’t enough to convince me. I searched and listened for the second soul that had been inside of me, the beast that haunted my thoughts and possessed my body. But he was gone. I was alone in my own skin, and it was quiet.

Blinking blearily, I watched as Evander raised his hand higher, and the fluttering thing took to the air, making looping circles skyward. It rose until I thought it might collide with the ceiling but, instead, it wisped away like smoke. A candle blown out.

Evander let his arm drop, and I saw Sully beside him with her cheeks flushed and glistening wet.

“What did you do?” I asked the angel in a ragged voice.

Evander nodded at Indy and me huddled on the mattress. “You’re men now,” he replied. “Merely mortals.”

It took several seconds for the words to take on meaning I could comprehend. Even then, I wasn’t sure what he meant.

“I don’t understand.” Or maybe I was reluctant to believe. “Men… Not just me?”

“The phoenix is gone,” Evander said.

“But Indy…?”

Hope was a delicate thing, as fragile as glass, and it contained a future so beautiful I hardly dared to imagine it. To see it shattered would break me, too, so I held my breath and fixed my eyes on the angel’s pale blue ones until he nodded.

“He’ll live, and so will you. For one more life.”

Sully’s audible sob rang in my ears.

“And then?” I practically choked on the words.

“That’s for you to decide,” Evander replied.

I glanced over at Indy with his eyes closed, features slack, and body unmoving. But his heart was beating, and his chest rose and fell, and I washopeful.

My thoughts circled an unbelievable truth. A miracle greater than anything I’d ever dared to pray for. It was hard to breathe, much less speak, but I needed to say it out loud.

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