Page 110 of Hounded: Ashes to Ashes

Turning away, the angel rounded the desk to a stack of papers on the far corner. He lifted and jostled them, seeking any excuse to avoid my glare.

“Fat chance,” I spat. Though, Whitney’s death had been so abrupt it was shocking. It may have been better than being sent back to Hell to be caged and confined or tormented eternally. But neither option was acceptable. Neither was okay.

I shook my head. “They don’t deserve that. We have to help them. We have to go back.”

Planting my palms on the floor helped me stabilize and feel more than the headrush stirring my neurons into a flurry. Everything was moving inside me, racing like blood through a second set of veins. It crackled with pleasant heat, pulsing out through my fingertips in a way that felt familiar. Felt like…

Home, the voice inside me sang. It trilled and chirped like a goddamned canary, and the sounds made me pause. I sat on the ground with my body primed for fire, feeling alive for the first time in decades.

I glanced toward the window to find that Evander’s heavenly office came with a decent view. Beyond the wall of glass, cloudsbillowed like sparkling snowbanks. It was like the whole world was white. Specks of cornflower blue poked through, creating a limitless sky. Not exactly the golden roads and mansions touted by the Christian faith, but somehow more stunning.

The voice, the phoenix spirit that had, mere minutes ago, been in its death throes, blossomed with life. It swelled and filled me, crowding around my heart like an internal embrace.

Being high was like this. Euphoric. Weightless. Drugs made Brooklyn’s gritty streets as bright as the world outside Evander’s window, and it seemed this was what I’d been chasing all along. This impossible levity.

I blinked, raking my fingers through the carpet in an effort to tether myself to reality.Myreality, where my boyfriend was about to be attacked by a murderous demon and his pack of feral hellhounds.

“Indigo.”

Evander’s summons broke me from my stupor.

I tore my gaze away from the sea of sky and looked at him. The second my eyes locked on his pale blue ones, the pervasive feeling of betrayal stoked the fire in my gut.

“You can’t go back,” he said. “You are a valuable asset to Heaven and must remain here where you are safe. Where your powers are preserved. You feel them, don’t you?”

I did. Of-fucking-course I did.

But this place, these powers, theywerethe high I was determined to quit. The addiction was the same and just as likely to sweep me away from what mattered most.

“I’m an asset,” I repeated while standing with support from the clunky metal desk. Putting my back to the window and the splendor beyond, I aimed a narrow gaze at the angel. “If I’m so valuable,” I began, “why didn’t you snap me up before now?”

Evander’s head rocked back like he’d been expecting the question, bracing for it. “Because then the higher powers would realize I didn’t destroy you,” he replied.

“Destroy me?” I echoed.

The angel set down the papers he’d been shuffling. Everything on the desk was immaculately arranged, like dots on a grid. The wall behind him was the same. Every item and piece of art was perfectly spaced and structured. They were the kinds of things you could buy at an office supply store. Motivational posters in plain, black frames surrounded one canvas. It was a splash of color in the otherwise drab space, textured from an actual paintbrush and, in the bottom corner, it was signed. N.D.

“There were other phoenixes,” Evander said. “Centuries ago. You’re quite an old soul, Indigo.” His wistful smile was the most genuine emotion I’d seen on him so far. “I was your guardian, but when Heaven decided they had no further use for you or your kind, they ordered an extermination.”

He frowned as if the thought pained him. “I defied that order. You were dying even then, and I didn’t expect you to tarry long. But then came Lorenzo.”

My first glimpse of Loren had been a dark one. The lifetime in which he’d found me had been full of pain, confusion, and fear. I didn’t have words to explain the experience of being trapped and kept, caged like some inhuman thing and left in a dark, smelly cellar. It broke my mind, but I knew enough to recognize my savior when he looked at me with empathy in his eyes. Loren didn’t feel sorry for me. Not quite. More like he understood how it felt to be diminished, exploited, and abused.

I’d spent the next hundred years learning exactly how well he understood.

“It was an unexpected turn of events,” Evander continued, “but not an unpleasant one. I allowed it for as long as I could.” His smile had faded, leaving a sorrowful shadow in its wake.

Did he regret snatching me away from my home? Cutting off the roots I’d sunk so deep into the earth and left there?

“But things have changed,” I murmured.

The angel nodded. “The phoenix’s soul-cleansing ability was… unintended. And too easily exploited by our enemies. If you were seized by Hell, the consequences could be dire.”

I glanced at the canvas again. My art was hanging on a wall in Heaven. If I thought hard, beyond the years spent in the dank basement turned torture chamber, I remembered more. Life before Loren came in flashes, and Evander was there, giving credence to his claims. We had been friends.

The thought wormed into my brain, and it made me sad. Another loss gone unnoticed till now. Something else forgotten.

“But I’m dying.” I let out a petering breath. “All outta juice. How many souls could I possibly cleanse?”

---