Page 41 of Hounded: Ashes to Ashes

“I beg your pardon?”

He balked, and I realized I may have misstepped. Loren never liked to discuss the details of his Faustian bargain, any of the numerous times I’d asked. I assumed it was because he thought I would be jealous of his ex.

I had plenty of thoughts and feelings about the man Loren sold his soul for, despite knowing little about him. But it didn’t make me jealous so much as sad. Loren wrestled with a lot of shame even now, and I could draw a direct line of correlation to him being treated like a secret, kept out of sight and out of mind unless his married lover wanted to get his dick wet.

Of course, Loren never explained it so crudely. He was an apologist for the bastard, forever making excuses.

“It was a different time.”

“He gave me a good life.”

“I loved him.”

That one stung.

“Your deal,” I repeated to Whitney. “With Moira. What was it for?”

Curving his palms around the coffee mug, the hellhound shifted back on the couch. “I was a soldier. The captain of a cavalry unit with nearly fifty men under my command. We came to war, to retain the king’s command of his colonies.” He flashed a derisive smirk. “I’m sure you’re aware how that went.”

I nodded. Big win for the home team; not so much for our neighbors from across the pond.

Whitney continued, “I had taken a scouting party to a wooded area outside of Boston.” His jaw flexed, and he cast his gaze aside. “We were ambushed. My men were dying all around me, crying to God or their mothers. But no god came. Instead, a devil in the guise of a battlefield nurse.”

“Moira,” I confirmed.

Whitney’s shoulders slumped. It was the first time I’d seen him with anything less than perfect posture.

“She told me I could ease their suffering,” he said. “Save their lives. The ones who weren’t already lost…”

His forehead creased as he delved deeper into thought, remembering vividly enough it appeared to pain him. Then the strain left his face, and he was placid once more. Resigned, as he’d said before. Content?

He met my gaze. “Surely my one soul wasn’t worth more than so many others.”

It was sad but also noble. It made him a good leader, a good man, willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. And his reward for being so good was eternity on the end of a demoness’s leash. My lip curled at the thought.

“I guess she got less generous over time,” I muttered. “You saved a bunch of innocent soldiers. Loren gave some emotional terrorist an extra twenty years of life.”

That seemed to lighten the mood, and Whitney chuckled.

“I thought him quite foolish for that,” he said, pondering until he tipped his head toward me. “But you… trading your tears to a demon for the sake of a damned soul? That was foolish, too.”

Putting it that way, it seemed I’d made my own kind of deal. And I’d gotten what I wanted out of it. I supposed Whitney and Loren got what they wanted, too.

Across from me, Whitney considered his coffee again but didn’t drink any. It was like he’d forgotten how.

“What about you?” he asked. “How did you become what you are?”

I shrugged. “Maybe I was born this way.”

That information didn’t come with my recent influx of memories. Thinking back, I wasn’t sure I’d ever known. Loren had told me about myself a dozen times over the decades, but my origin had never been a topic of discussion. Sully might have had answers in her vast library, but I had no interest in pursuing them. In my experience, the past was usually better left there.

That didn’t stop me from using drugs to steal glimpses of my own history, or from thinking again about my next fix a phone call away.

I scrubbed my fingernails up my arm, scratching at something that wasn’t quite an itch. “It’s good that you were a soldier, though,” I said, trying to corral my runaway thoughts. “We might need that.”

Whitney arched a skeptical brow. “How so?”

“You know strategy. If we have to fight Nero, or the witch, or the bad hellhounds, that’s kind of like a war.”

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