Page 121 of Hounded: Ashes to Ashes

Indy’s phoenix aroma was warm and honey-sweet, but Whitney smelled spicier. Like black pepper with a hit of mint that chilled my nostrils. It had been tainted, of course, by the stink of Moira’s corruption. But that would be gone now. His soul was unbound, and his body was no longer a shared property. It seemed to be a blessing until I looked at the dark, caged cavities all around me.

Moira had advised us to be grateful for the life we’d been given. She said she spared us. I hadn’t believed it before now.

As I advanced into the room, I whiffed at the air. I closed my eyes and breathed deeper, seeking frosty mint.

It was a big ask. A long shot. I was certain the souls here were arranged in some orderly fashion, but with bodies stacked high overhead and walling me in on both sides, I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t even see them all, and I didn’t dare call out. Better they stayed asleep and unaware of their own misery.

The farther I got from the entry, the more I wanted to turn back. Every beat of my heart felt like poking a bruise, my nose was too full of smells to sort one from a billion others, and my eyes wouldn’t stop watering.

I wiped my sleeve across them, scowling while striding forward. I walked so far I worried I would get lost down here. And maybe I could accept that, going mad from confusion and stumbling in circles and eventually forgetting what brought me here in the first place.

But I remembered. I always did. So, I carried on, caring less about the slap of my shoes on the floor or my aggravated huffing.Caring so little that a growl rumbled out of me, quiet at first but echoing until it became a shout.

“Whitney!”

I panted and glanced side to side at the crevasses packed with motionless bodies, waiting for one of them to respond.

“Whitney!”

“Here!”

A voice far smaller and hoarser than mine called back, and I stopped short.

“Over here,” he repeated, accented in the way I expected, broken in the way I did not.

Rushing forward, I sniffed deeply, inhaling till my lungs felt apt to burst. But the chill of mint was there. The tingle of pepper. The smell of Whitney without our mistress grew stronger as I barreled past rows and towers of stirring bodies.

Groans and abject cries from those I’d woken assaulted my ears. Like in the kennels, the noises weren’t quite human. But they weren’t animal, either. They sounded like ghosts, wailing incoherently, threatening to drown Whitney’s cries, but I had him now. I smelled him, then I saw him, caged like a corpse in a coffin, his fingers wrapped white-knuckled around the metal grate that kept him prisoner.

I arrived beside the wall where Whitney was stored on a shelf at waist level.

He turned his head toward me, blond hair a mess and his green eyes sunken. Haunted. For all the effort it had taken to arrive, I suddenly wanted to retreat, like touching him would draw me to him and not the other way around.

“This feels familiar,” Whitney rasped. “Except this timeI’mthe one looking out.”

I crouched to inspect the bars between us, looking for a door or lock but finding none. Tentatively, I grabbed the grate, andWhitney caught my fingers before I began to pull. I met his gaze, noting the differences in his visage.

His skin was speckled with blood. Red, not the black that leaked from wounded demons. Besides being tangled and frizzed, his hair was pulled back and tied at the nape of his neck in an old-fashioned style. About as old-fashioned as his clothes, I surmised. Not a suit like the ones Moira put on him. Neither was it the kind of casual outfit he’d donned during his time on Earth. It was a uniform made with a faded red coat and tan pants tucked into a pair of boots.

It must have been what he was wearing when he died.

“Loren, I can’t…” His fingers quivered against mine as he forced a laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see you.”

Rather than answer, I grasped the bars with both hands and heaved backward with every bit of my preternatural strength.

I shouldn’t have expected it to move. I’d kicked and clawed and even gnawed at the doors in the kennels enough to know they didn’t easily give. But those were made to contain hellish beasts and, presumably, these were not, which gave me an advantage.

Pulling free of Whitney, I stepped back. The terror that flashed across his face could only be explained one way: he thought I was leaving him.

Eager to quell that fear, I shook my head and explained the only way I knew how: “Indy sent me.”

His expression relaxed as I reached into the nearest shadow and drew my glaive from it. Palming over the metal shaft, I situated my grip, then turned the blade end toward where Whitney lay.

“Don’t move,” I told him.

He nodded and pulled his hand back, pinning it to his side in a pose so stiff and straight it must have ached.

I swung the glaive around, tensed for resistance I never met. The grate split, then fell away with a clatter.

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