Page 20 of Hounded
It was complicated to be hunting and killing people who made the same mistake I had. Sometimes things were clean-cut, other times I tried not to think about it. A person could hardly enter a demonic contract by accident. My conscience was comforted by the assurance that my victims were well and truly damned long before I got to them.
“Sully, you know I don’t like to talk about this stuff,” I said.
She tipped her head to the side and replied with obvious sarcasm. “No problem. It’s only the most interesting thing about you.”
I rolled my eyes. “I could do with being a little less interesting.”
We arrived in front of the Urban Easel. Inside, dozens of artworks were on display. One of Indy’s watercolor pieces hung on the side wall. Pastel pinks and yellows swirled in an abstract design flecked with shimmering gold.
Sully and Indy could talk for hours about “the delicate balance between chaos and order” or “the sense of ambiguity that invites interpretation.” It mostly went over my head, but I was practiced at nodding at the appropriate times and giving opinions beyond blue being my favorite color.
Passing the gallery, Sully advanced to the door tucked between street-level storefronts. It allowed admittance tothe brownstone apartments that occupied the second and third floors, including Sully’s flat.
I reconsidered her offer to stay. The sagging leather sofa in her living room promised a more comfortable night’s sleep than the cab of my truck, and I didn’t hate the idea of a reprieve from the last two months of solitude. But, while Sully made for pleasant company, hers was not the company I wanted most.
She pulled the door open, then propped it against her foot while fixing me with a sympathetic smile.
“I’m sure he’s a really bad cop,” she said, concluding a conversation I thought we had already finished. Her dark brown eyes met mine. “Be safe. Text me when you get home or wherever you decide to crash. My door’s always open.”
I dipped my chin in a nod.
She waved me close, and I bent to let her kiss my cheek. With that, she stepped inside, and the door fell shut behind her.
Stuffing my hands in my jeans’ pockets, I started down the street. What I’d told Whitney hadn’t been entirely true. I’d been distracted lately, yes, but not so much as to have forgone my responsibilities. I sniffed the cop out months ago, before Indy died. He worked the night beat a mile or so from here. With any luck, he would be on duty soon and sorely unprepared for a hellhound to come calling.
8
Loren
I found Lieutenant DaleAbernathy in a sketchy part of town near the clubs where drugs flowed freely and prostitutes loitered on shadowy street corners. It came as a surprise that an established police presence hadn’t done more to scare away the seedy element. That was what I thought until I spent a few hours tailing the lieutenant on his rounds. He threw a jacket over his uniform, didn’t flash his badge and, when he wandered back to his blacked-out patrol car with a hooker in tow, she wasn’t wearing handcuffs.
Sully was right; he was a bad cop.
Finding my marks was the easy part. If I was within a mile or so, I could sniff them out. I’d learned to recognize the taint Moira put on her victims’ souls. It was overly sweet, like wilting roses with a touch of decay.
Abernathy had that smell. Whitney did, too. Since my fellow hellhound was almost a century older than me, I knew that our mistress’s influence didn’t fade with time, so I must have borne her scent, as well.
I sat on the platform of a corroded fire escape withmy glaive stretched across my lap. My fingers rolled along the cool metal shaft. Made of dusky gray steel and forged from darkness, the weapon was always close at hand. Every hellhound had a weapon, though the types varied. Whitney wielded a military saber, a one-handed sword that struck lightning quick, slashing through midsections and raking up exposed ribs. I’d seen others equipped with daggers, battleaxes, and broad, two-handed swords that rent the air with great, staggering swings.
My glaive was almost six feet long with a curved blade on one end. Not quite as hooked as a reaper’s sickle, it was suited to sweeping blows that severed limbs and lopped off heads. In my hundred years in Moira’s service, I’d used the weapon to send countless souls on the swift journey to Hell.
I’d attended my share of contract signings, as well. Demons were powerful, but their reign was limited to Hell. They needed escorts to visit Earth and, even then, could only stay here for a short time. That was where we hounds came in. Like guide dogs, we shepherded our demon masters or mistresses to and from the mortal plane.
On the street below, the lieutenant started his car but left the headlights off as he rolled around the corner into a narrow alley. Boxed in on three sides, he made himself vulnerable. But the prostitute was an unforeseen obstacle.
Whatever they were up to wouldn’t take long, but I needed to get closer in the meantime. Once the officer satisfied his carnal urges, I would have him right where I wanted him.
Sliding down the fire escape’s corroded ladder, Idropped onto the sidewalk. With my polearm tucked tightly to my side, it was almost obscured by the darkness that fell across Brooklyn. I walked quickly, passing the line of people gathered outside a strip club.
Techno music thrummed, riding waves through the air. Car horns honked, adding to an uncomfortable cacophony that made my sensitive ears ring. I steered away from all of it and crossed the road at a gap in traffic.
Pressing against the brick and glass exterior of a 24-hour drugstore, I rounded the corner into the alley. My hound panted and paced inside me as we closed in on what, to him, was a ball to be fetched.
Hunt, he urged.
I could practically feel his drool dripping down my spine.
I shushed him and twisted my hand around the shaft of my glaive, taking up a post around the edge of the building where streetlamps failed to dispel the encroaching night.
