Page 120 of Hounded: Ashes to Ashes

I needed to see him. Glimpse the whites of his goddamned eyes before I cut loose. Wasting my one shot with Nero out of range was giving “if a tree falls in the forest” vibes. If a phoenix blows up in the vacuum of Hell, would it do any good? Would it matter at all?

“I said I came alone,” I repeated, every word a fight to keep my voice from cracking, “and it wasn’t for some elaborate cock tease. You wanna milk me? Juice me like a fucking lemon? Let’s do it!”

The sound of his humorless grunt seemed to circle me like a buzzard making rings above my head.

“You like to talk,” Nero said. “That won’t do.”

He emerged from the shadows in all his unholy splendor. Still absurdly tall, still imposing, but diminished somehow. His gait was a bit unsteady, and his red skin had taken on a deeper shade. I remembered the burns and blisters on Loren’s face and the way the hounds had gone skittering from Evander’s holy light. He must have injured Nero, too, and sent him scurrying back here to recover.

I would have been smug about it, but then his eyes flashed acid green, twin lights in the oppressive dark, and a tendril of fear slipped in again.

The last breath in a stream of unsteady pants whistled out of me while he came closer. His steps were slow, almost hesitant, despite the arrogance in his tone as he carried on speaking.

“We keep our pets muzzled unless we have need of their teeth,” he hissed, “but I don’t have such a use for you. I’d have you silent and weeping. It would make a pretty sight. Precious tears leaking out of pleading eyes, wanting the pain to stop.”

I thought of Loren, my quiet boy, muted and caged, and a swell of rage banished my lingering fear. The fire on my back turned blistering hot, making the chains into ropes of singeing heat. They seared my skin, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever burned like this, if I’d ever felt it. If I would feel it this time while my body was reduced to bones and ash.

“I’ll have to hurt you, you realize.” Nero continued his approach. “It’s the simplest way to obtain what I require. You’ve surrendered yourself to a miserable existence. Do you feel foolish?”

Terror flared again, but my flames scorched right through it. I may have looked like a worm in the dirt in front of this hellish being, but I was more. I was a fucking superhero. Superpowered. A dying star about to light up this dark room.

I waited while Nero walked closer, monologuing about how he would torture me. How I would cry for him. How I would wish for death before it was over.

And I did. I wished for death even though I didn’t want to die.

Nero stopped at the edge of the net. There were only a few feet between us, and I hoped it would be enough. I hopedIwould be enough. To do this right. To make Loren proud.

I curled up as much as I was able, balling every scrap of energy into a molten core in the very heart of me. It built and grew until I must have been glowing. Brighter and hotter than I’d ever been until the world behind my eyelids was a wash of orange red.

And I burned.

Loren

I didn’t knowwhere I was anymore.

In Hell, externally, but my turmoil was internal, spanning the last few days I’d spent bouncing between joy and grief. Loss and gain. Loving Indy had always been a cycle, but now it felt more like a cyclone sucking me up and stealing me from everything that had ever been home.

I’d sent him away, then he’d done the same to me. Each separation stripped off a piece of my soul. The latest shard went with him into Nero’s chambers. Into a fight to the death that I could neither attend nor prevent.

My hound wailed. He was loudest in moments when I was most quiet. Like he wanted me to cry out, too. But I didn’t. I didn’t argue when Indy told me to go. I didn’t tell him goodbye. And I didn’t hurry away from the place where my phoenix would draw his last breath. I practically crawled.

It took everything in me to move my feet one slogging step at a time down the hall with my back turned in what could only feel like abandonment.

We’d been fortunate not to encounter any opposition on the way here, and I hoped that trend would continue. I hadno explanation for my return to Hell, and we hounds weren’t often left to wander these halls. It was suspicious, and while I struggled to care what might happen to me now that Indy was gone, I needed to. I had a new mission: find Whitney.

My job of retrieving contracted souls began and ended there. I found the damned and reaped them, sending them along for Moira to deal with. It was unfortunate work, but I was grateful not to involve myself in the aftermath or pay many visits to the catacombs where Hell stored its human occupants. I knew how to get there, though, and gradually, my feet moved freely enough to make swift progress. To get to Whitney, yes, but also to get back. Even if there was no chance Indy would survive, I wouldn’t leave him here. I would take his ashes and scatter them off the Hoover Dam. Let him fly one more time.

Hell existed in the belly of the universe, but it had lower layers of its own. I descended, taking untraveled corridors and empty stairways down and down and down until my ears popped from the change in pressure.

As I traveled, the textures and terrains seemed to degrade. From the modern finery of the upper floors to the archaic passages below. By the time I reached Hell’s deepest depths, I was walking through a tunnel made of stone and lit by wall-mounted torches.

It felt less like a prison and more like a tomb—uninhabited and pervasively quiet. My feet scuffled and soft breaths puffed, reminding me I was the most alive of all the dead things down here.

And there were so many dead things.

The tunnel opened into a vast cavern. The walls stretched up into an abyss overhead while forming a labyrinth below. Slabs of stone rose from the floor, cut with short, deep shelves enclosed by metal grates. Every shelf held a body. A soul withering away in a space even more cramped than the kennels I loathed. All aperson could do here was lie prostrate with their arms pinned to their sides; there was barely space to turn their heads, hardly room to breathe.

My chest constricted, and I turned my gaze away, relying on my nose to find Whitney’s scent.

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