Page 120 of Hounded
Loren
After a shared rinse-off,Indy dressed in pajamas and took a pick and a bottle of detangler to my hair. He was sleepy enough that I offered to let him rest in the trailer while I drove, but he insisted on riding in the truck, curled up under a fuzzy blanket with his head in my lap.
It was past midnight, and traffic was light. I consulted the map as I followed the highway leading out of the state. Streetlamps blipped overhead, flooding the truck’s cab with infrequent flashes of yellow.
I was the one reluctant to leave New York, never Indy. He used to gush about airplanes, cross-country bus tours, and cruise ships that could ferry us across the Atlantic. Part of me suspected he had travel in mind when we bought the Airstream. My truck would tow it, as we were proving now, moving the damn thing for the first time in two decades.
I could drive all night and all day tomorrow, too. It would take that long to get to Nevada, which was the state Indy had chosen for our first stop. He claimed he wantedto tour the Hoover Dam, but I knew how close that landmark was to Las Vegas.
Sin City should have been the ideal vacation spot for a hellhound, but the idea of lights that never turned off and tourists swarming the streets like roaches was a Hell all its own. But then there was the thought of walking the strip arm in arm with Indy, seeing things that were new and bright and even beautiful… Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
I’d also done as promised and come clean about everything. It was a longwinded speech about demons and tears and cages in Hell. Indy seemed to take it in stride but had been quiet since. So quiet that it startled me when he spoke up.
“Is that all I’m good for?”
I glanced at him. He had the last of his drive-thru dinner in his lap: a carton of French fries and a vanilla milkshake. The lid was off the shake, and he dunked a long fry into it then swirled it around before popping it in his mouth.
“Being a crybaby is a pretty lame superpower,” he added.
“You’re not a crybaby,” I replied.
He snorted. “It’s gonna take them a long time to get all the tears they want, then.”
I suppressed a grimace at the thought of what lengths Nero might go to siphoning tears from my phoenix. I wondered, too, how much Indy had to give. In previous lifetimes, using his powers taxed him. He would be tired for hours or days after. Once, he unleashed so much fire that it started to burn him, too.
He dipped another fry, then dangled it to drip melty ice cream into his mouth. The fry dropped in after, and he chewed it lazily. “But really, what else do I do?” he asked. “If the other hellhounds come after me, can I blast them with like… eye lasers or finger lightning or something?” He made his thumb and pointer finger into a gun shape and aimed it at the dark landscape outside.
I could tell he was anxious. He’d been pensive during my confession about the phoenix hunt, thinking beyond what I was saying. I’d thought beyond it, too, catastrophized about a future where Indy was as much a slave to Hell as I was, taken and held against his will, tormented, and I could do nothing about it.
My hand stretched across the bench seat to rest on his knee. “I protect you, Indy. Remember? That’s my job.”
He set the shake cup on the dash, then stuffed the fry carton into the open paper bag in the floorboard.
Shifting around, he took my hand and sandwiched it between his. “Doyouhave laser eyes or lightning fingers?” he asked.
I snorted. “No.”
“So, you’d be pretty boring in a fight.” Indy’s mischievous grin made my stomach flip.
I would fight for him. Tear through however many hellhounds it took to send the rest scurrying with their tails between their legs. I would delay the end as long as possible, and I would take him to the Hoover Dam, or Las Vegas, and maybe we could exchange vows in front of some Elvis lookalike. I would give Indy the life he deserved, even if it was a short one.
We fell into silence and, before long, he dozed off. Iglanced at the map laying open across my thigh. The trip from New York to Nevada canvassed most of the United States. It would be the farthest I’d ever gone from home, and the scope of the journey was dizzying.
First Vegas, then where? We couldn’t settle anywhere. Couldn’t stop.
Anxiety and the dread of so muchchangesnuck up on me. It lurked as a shadow in my rearview, reaching toward me with tendrils of panic that told me to turn back. I fixed my gaze ahead—only ahead—and kept one hand on the wheel while the other played with Indy’s hair. The feeling of his curls looping around my fingers kept me grounded. Wherever I stayed or went, I did it for him. We did it together.
Draining the fuel tank of my truck took about three hours, so we stopped often. The hounds could turn up anywhere, but I figured they would target populated areas, so I limited our pitstops to isolated service stations. I paid at the pump and only parked as long as it took to fill up, replace the gas cap, and return to the endless highway.
Indy dozed through the first two stops but, on the third, it was morning, and he roused with a yawn and stretch.
I hung up the pump and slid behind the steering wheel. Indy nestled in a mountain of fleece with only his head poking out. He smacked his lips, clearly cotton-mouthed, and peered at the scene outside the truck.
The sights were limited to dusty plains and the low-slung convenience store that looked to be forgotten by time. Sun-bleached posters for cigarettes and beer were plastered to the windows, and only one other car occupiedthe lot, property of the employee if I were to guess.
“Where are we?” Indy asked.
After starting the truck’s engine, I snagged the map from the driver’s door compartment and shook the wrinkles out. I already knew from the myriad highway signs, but I wanted to show him our progress.
