by Rhea Watson
It was almost… sexy?
I swallowed hard, ignoring the heat in my cheeks and the pleasurable twist in my belly. Intriguing. Not sexy—interesting. Sure, let’s go with that.
“Well done, Gunnar,” I praised, sauntering down the last few steps to join them on the landing. “Excellent work.”
The hellhound backed off, but only slightly, still using his massive body to block Kenneth’s various escape routes. He had already proven to be quick on his feet, adaptable and persistent. If Kenneth wanted to run again, he wasn’t going to make it far.
And from the look in his eye, the slight tremble of that push-broom mustache, the soul of a serial killer at our feet knew it.
“Kenneth Miller,” I said in my very best reaper’s lilt, our eyes locked, “I’m here to take you away.”
The fear in his gaze vanished, replaced by a raw fury that chilled me to the core—because that look must have been what his victims saw just before he butchered them. Cut them into pieces. Mailed parts of them back to their families. Defiled their corpses.
“Fuck you, bitch,” Kenneth sneered, clawing up the corner to a crouched position. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Then, for the first time in my reaping career, a human soul spat at me.
The wet blob landed on the hem of my billowing black robe, and, taken aback, the best response I could manage was to blink down at it. I’d been called all sorts of names, experienced every kind of emotion—but to be spit upon… Well, it was certainly new.
Gunnar snapped out of the lull before I could, charging at Kenneth, all teeth and muscle and rage, tackling him to the ground and snapping a hair’s width from his face. Burly, almost demonic growls reverberated through the stairwell, and I felt their rumbling depth between my thighs.
Spittle painted Kenneth Miller’s cheeks, and he cowered as far into the concrete as he could, a hand up to shield himself from Gunnar’s wrath.
Surprise raced down my spine and pooled hotly in my core. Ever since our little talk in the dining hall, things had been strained between Gunnar and me, to the point that I worried it would affect today.
Yet here he was—defending me?
Defending my honor?
The fire in my cheeks exploded, scorching across every inch of skin as I lunged forward. A gentle hand on his raised hackles had the hellhound retreating, but just barely, allowing only enough space for me to kneel in front of the recoiling soul.
“Kenneth Miller,” I said once more, every word punctuated by my hellhound’s soft snarls, the gravity of the situation emphasized when I positioned my scythe’s blade at his throat. “It’s time to leave this realm and face judgment for the life you chose to live.”
I cast Gunnar a sidelong glance, and without uttering a single command, he moved closer and slid into a lie-down position so that we were at roughly the same height…
Like he just knew what I needed.
As the former serial killer—and future flayed soul—started to weep at my feet, I wrapped my scythe arm around Gunnar, his heart thundering inside that great broad chest, and gripped Kenneth’s sweat-stained T-shirt with my free hand, ensuring he wasn’t going anywhere without me.
And together, we disappeared, headed to Purgatory without delay—where an awaiting Peter would drag Kenneth fucking Miller straight to Hell.
15
Knox
The forest was quiet today.
And not the usual quiet of a sleepy morning, birds in their nests, squirrels in their trees, serpents underground. A gentle dusting of mist coated the ground as I approached the tree line, making my paws slick and muddying the natural scent of the wood. Not a single cedar moved, their usual whisper dead beneath a bleak sky. Had the familiar morning chorus greeted me, muted but present, I might have thought it was just the changing of the seasons—a cool day, a grey day, the clouds thicker than the air around me. It could all point toward a day better spent indoors, the overcast sky ready to shatter at any moment.
Only that wasn’t the case.
Having spent the last two months inside the confines of this ward, I knew better. I knew my territory.
Better yet, I knew the telltale signs of danger.
The silence that greeted me as I crossed through the trees suggested a greater predator than any hellhound stalked the shadows. Something frightening enough to hush the entire forest.
Something worth dealing with—alone, while Gunnar and Declan enjoyed their breakfast.
A low growl rumbled in my chest at the thought of the spread Hazel had prepared for us today. Nothing out of the ordinary: eggs, crispy bacon, salted tomatoes, and sourdough buns. All good. All filling. All delicious and nutritious, the sustenance she provided making the pack strong in a way I never could before.
The food was fine.
The reaper was not.
For she had turned my pack against me—perhaps without even realizing it. In my study of her, the white-haired beauty had never struck me as the malicious type. She had likely coaxed Gunnar and Declan into her thrall unintentionally, but she’d done so all the same.
Declan had mated with her, as I suspected he would when the opportunity and the hunger presented itself. The likelihood of him abandoning her now was slim, which would make our escape harder than it was already. Gunnar, meanwhile, hadn’t fucking shut up since his first field test, describing every bit of the hunt to me in agonizing detail, spending hours on the tablet researching a human murderer by the name of Kenneth Miller.
“I brought him to his doom,” he’d insisted, shoving the screen in my face, forcing me to look at the dead eyes of a human I didn’t give two shits about.
All my shits I gave to them—my boys, my pack—and Declan had fallen for a reaper, while Gunnar had fallen for the thrill of the hunt.
My beta hadn’t said as much, of course.
Declan still refused to talk about it, but he had stunk of sex and her when they returned from their outing that violently stormy night last week.
Hazel had them, whether they would admit it or not. But I knew it. And from the way she smiled around them, hopeful and earnest, her expression tinged with relief—she knew it too.
Which meant I would have to work harder to free them. A gilded cage was still a cage, after all.
But how?
How could I dissuade them when both hellhounds had what they craved?
And how long would it take for Gunnar to mount her, his and Declan’s desire for the reaper clogging up the pack bond whenever she was within sight—within scenting distance, even. Packs shared their mates, and from the intense physical response she elicited from all of us, it was only a matter of time…
We had to get the fuck out of here before then.
Without my beta and his keen mind, however, I struggled to find the answer. Dozens of possibilities had already been nixed, not worth our time or energy, and the deeper Gunnar and Declan sank into her clutches, the less likely either were to propose anything new.
Frustrated, I patrolled the vast stretch of land inside the ward regularly now, headed out just after sunrise and returning once the pack had eaten breakfast. I needed time to think—and space to do it in without her scent and her eyes and her fucking smile muddling it all up.
The quiet had me tenser than usual as I padded into the green depths, taking the same route as always, a hint of a path worn into the forest floor by my enormous paws. Even on the celestial plane, I had grown accustomed to forest critters skittering away as I approached, but this morning there was no scrabbling of claws along branches or up bark, no warning chirps of little birds, no chaotic flutter of a dozen wings taking off into the sky.
Eventually, I reached the ward. Nosing along its base, I followed it, careful not to get too close lest it singe a whisker. Nothing smelled out of place, but I felt it in my bones, the stillness in the cool, humid air, like every living thing around me held its breath, waiting for it to be over.
Whatever it might be.
I’d jus
t scaled a fallen tree trunk, half inside the ward, its feathery top outside, when something finally caught my eye. A figure beyond the ward, small but distinctly humanoid. I glanced to the side, curious, then flinched back with a startled snarl, every part of me stiffening for a fight.
There, on the other side of the shimmering ward, was a woman—or, at the very least, a creature who had once been a woman. She hovered just above the ground in tattered clothes, a gnarled mess of tangled black hair snaking down her figure. But it was that face that startled me: deathly white flesh hung off to her bones, her cheeks sunken and worn away to the point that I could see her rotten teeth. Black beady eyes stared back at me, unblinking, and slowly she rotated her head to the side, studying me.
Possessiveness spiked in my chest, a need to protect my territory against outsiders forcing me right up to the ward, so close its burning magic heated my twitching nose. We stood toe to toe for a few slow beats—until she started screaming.
Her jaw elongated well beyond a human’s natural reach, her tongue forked, her mouth dark—stinking, probably, like death and decay. A familiar callback to my time in Hell. She bellowed a high-pitched challenge, and not a thing around me moved, sensing her just as they sensed me.
She pounded her skeletal hands against the ward, each collision of her fist making the barrier shudder—but it held firm, even when she raked her broken nails across it. My hackles rose at the assault. Dead. A dead thing wanted in, unhurt by the ward’s sting. I snarled back, not an ounce of fear in me, just anger, rage that this thing sought to take what was mine.
“She’s a vengeful spirit.”
Snuck up upon again; my hackles inched even higher. Now that I was aware of her, Hazel’s presence bellowed just as thunderously as the spirit did, only it was a pleasant assault, one I could easily get lost in.
I steeled myself and cast the shrieking woman one last menacing look, a silent statement that her fury was nothing to me, then padded around to face the reaper.
Scythe in hand, Hazel wore her usual dour black attire, only she lacked the excessive material today, moving without her own personal wind billowing through the garment. Black trousers clung to her legs, leaving nothing to the imagination as they wrapped snug to her shapely figure. A loose black shirt hid the rest of her curves, the sleeves long enough to cover half her palms. Hazel supplied us with human clothing that suited our personas—mine muted greys and blacks and whites, finally large enough to fit me. Yet for herself, she always wore such drab pieces, like she wanted to retreat even further from humanity.
Without a breeze to carry her scent away, it hit hard with every step she took, salty and tumultuous as the sea, power churning below her calm surface. So heady. Enthralling.
I huffed her from my nostrils, holding my ground as she approached the ward, those keen brown eyes fixed on the squalling spirit.
“She’ll be a poltergeist soon, something to torment and terrorize,” the reaper mused, sorrow in her gaze and a rigidity along her jaw that suggested some internal conflict. “Give her time… She’s almost there.”
The spirit slammed her body against the ward now, screaming in a foreign tongue, desperate to gain access. When Hazel stopped in front of her, I turned as well, almost taller than the reaper when I rose to my full height. Deranged black eyes soon found mine again, and she fixated on me, hurling herself into the magical barrier, snarling, baiting me for a fight.
My heartbeat quickened. Try me, spirit. I was more than ready for her, almost craving a fight after weeks of domestic docility.
“Spirits can get stuck on one person,” Hazel went on. Did she think I was hanging on her every word? Did she care anymore whether I paid attention or not? Quite against my will, my gaze slid over to her, to the delicate lines of her profile, down to her full lips as she sighed. “They can follow them to the ends of the earth, really. I’ve felt something strange out there lately… Like there’s this, I don’t know, disturbance in the plane. I’ve never felt it before, as if something’s watching me.” She planted her scythe in the forest floor, eyes narrowing at the spirit. “But I think I’ve finally found the source.”
Another surge of possessiveness reared within me, anger burning in my chest, scorching up my throat, forcing my lips to peel back in a snarl—all at the thought of someone tracking Hazel, hunting her through the celestial plane. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught her studying me with a frown, as if she sensed my response, possibly even saw it.
No. With a deep breath, I settled. No, that feeling wasn’t really about her. Protectiveness was in my nature as an alpha—Hazel was just caught in the crossfire now that she lived within my new territory. Nothing more.
“There are angel squadrons responsible for her kind,” Hazel remarked with a dismissive flick of her hand. “All they do is hunt and eliminate rogue spirits, the ones who vanish before we can reap them. But, I mean, since we’re here…” She gripped her scythe and lifted it into a defensive position, her stance shifting ever so slightly as she held it at her side—like she was brandishing a broadsword. “We’ll just dispense with her ourselves.”
Together, then, we would roost the dead thing from my—our—territory. I exhaled a harsh breath, then licked at my jowls, the thought of battle making my mouth water. Despite my body’s response, I could have walked away. Left her to deal with the spirit by herself: surely she was capable.
Indestructible, especially with her scythe.
But I wanted to see that thing wither with my own two eyes. Confirm its demise. Because if it got through the ward and Hazel failed to kill it, the tormented soul would latch onto the house—onto Declan, even with his newfound confidence. She would find the weakest among us and torture him because she could.
So, I retreated a few paces, allowing Hazel the space to align her scythe’s curved blade right in front of the wailing spirit, a sliver away from the shimmering ward.
“Are you ready?” she asked with a quick glance my way. Had I been able to make more nuanced expressions in my hellhound form, she might have seen the just fucking do it already twist of my features. Instead, I offered a low, sardonic ruff, body tensed for a fight. With a nod, the reaper sliced through the ward, clean and quick.
And in rushed the screaming spirit—straight for me.
I braced for impact, but she hit so much harder than I’d expected, knocking me off all four paws onto the unforgiving forest floor. As soon as my side collided with mossy earth, I rolled and reared, snapping and snarling at her, my vision tunneled on the screeching banshee on top of me. Her gnarled black hair hung like curtains around my face, her flesh paper-thin, her clothing shredded beneath my claws. High-pitched cries filled the forest, finally sent the birds scattering. Deranged sounds poured from her dry lips, pained and twisted, like some unseen hand forced the air from her lungs.
Even still, as her talons sliced across my sides, I possessed no sympathy. If she could, she’d kill me. Already she watered the ground with my blood; fighting on one’s back was a poor position for a hellhound. We were far better matched in face-to-face combat.
So, I arched and rolled, finally turning the tide in my favor, flipping the squawking spirit onto her back. My teeth found her throat in an instant, but no matter how I tore at her flesh, tasted dirt on my tongue, felt a rush of cold over my teeth, I couldn’t harm her. And from the quirk of her mouth and the look in her black eyes, she knew it.
“Knox, move!”
The command made me bristle, but I followed it all the same, rolling to the side, pain blooming over my ribs, and shot up onto four paws again.
Just in time to see Hazel strike.
She was on the spirit in a flash, an executioner in black as she raised her scythe above her head, then brought it down like a gorgeous, deadly axe. The blade cut clean through the spirit’s warped face, her elongated black mouth, her wild eyes, and the forest trembled when the celestial weapon clunked into its floor.
Silence exploded around us. The spirit remained for a m
oment, head split in two, limbs twitching, until finally her unearthly body dissolved into a white mist, then disappeared as the morning fog broke beneath the first few rays of sunlight.
Splat. Splat. Two droplets of blood fell from the tips of my stained fur onto the stone embedded in the dirt beneath me. As the skirmish became just another violent memory, the pain sharpened, made itself known in the various slashes across my abdomen. I winced with the slightest movement—no need to whine about it, for the pain was temporary.
Always temporary.
And more to come in the future.
“This is why our job is so important,” Hazel remarked shakily, scythe still stuck in the ground. She stared at the spot the spirit had once lay screaming, everything about her tensed. “No one deserves to become that… That is agony. That is eternal torment. She could have gone to Heaven for all we know, but she’s been stuck here.”
I didn’t discount the role of reapers in the grand scheme of things—just the brutal rearing of hellhounds destined to serve underfoot. No soul ought to become what I’d just seen: a shell of their former selves, all the light gone, nothing but black emptiness inside.
But this changed nothing. Not between her and me, and not my plans to get the fuck out of here.
Hazel removed her scythe from the ground with a soft grunt, shouldering it like it weighed as much as a galaxy. When she finally faced me, her pinched expression remained until her gaze blazed across my sides. Then it all fell away, replaced by a swift and sudden concern that just couldn’t be real.
“Oh, Knox…” She started toward me. “You’re bleeding—”
My low growl stopped her dead in her tracks, and her arms fell to her sides, her throat dipping with a noticeable gulp. While deep down I craved her touch, longed to feel those willowy fingers stroke my sides and heal my wounds, there was a bigger game in play…
