Black Dog (6 page)

“Ava!” A hand yanked me backward as the deadhead lunged. Leo pulled me up and shoved me behind him. He had a gun in his other hand. I could have told him that this only works in movies, but I wasn't real invested in keeping him alive.

“You shithead!” I screamed, pushing him hard. He stumbled, almost going down.

“What did I do!” he shouted. “I'm trying to help!”

I pushed my claws out, which hurts like fuck when you're on two legs but can be handy when you're outnumbered and don't have a weapon. “I know you tipped off Gary!” I snarled. “Get the hell away from me before I give those deadheads sushi to munch on.”

“Are you brain damaged?” Leo demanded. “Why the
fuck
would I let a reaper know what I was planning?”

“Should I care?” I shot back. “I see you even brought some company to clean up the evidence once I was dead!”

“Ava.” Leo shoved the gun into his waistband and came toward me, grabbing my arms with a grip that surprised me, coming from a human. I growled, the growl that wasn't fucking around, from the lowest, meanest part of my hound side. He didn't let go, and he was squeezing my cut arm, but after a few seconds of pain his touch got me to relax.

“You're an asshole,” I mumbled.

“I also didn't turn on you,” he said. “Look. Are any of these deadheads interested in you?”

I looked, blinking sweat and old mascara out of my eyes, and saw that the deadheads were only interested in one thing—­my fellow hounds. Two of the deadheads lay on the pavement ripped apart, and a hound had his arm nearly separated at the shoulder.

“It doesn't make any sense,” Leo said. “You and I had a deal. Why would I convince you to help me only to turn around and get you shredded by a reaper?” He pointed behind me, and I saw some more guys in black suits and heavy ink standing by a ­couple of black SUVs. They all had small machine guns dangling from their hands the way rich women carry designer purses.

“I called my father,” Leo said. “I knew things were fucked when the reaper was already here, so I called him and told him to bring the boys out for a snack, all right? That's all that's happening here. I swear.”

Now that I wasn't being slammed repeatedly into hard surfaces, that did make a lot more sense. “You guys put your blood feud on hold to save little old me?”

“The devil you know,” Leo muttered.

“Fine,” I said. “I suggest you do something about Gary and his merry band of black dogs before they realize this is your doing.”

The deadheads weren't faring well. One hound might have been in trouble, but against Gary's star heavies, they were basically just chew toys.

“I'm working on it,” Leo said. A guy who I assumed had to be his father, since they looked pretty much alike, separated by about thirty years and one nasty scar across the guy's neck, shoved between us, looking me up and down.

“Who the hell is this?”

“Leave her alone,” Leo said. “She doesn't have anything to do with anything.”

Leo's father turned his head and spit on the ground, missing my boot by an inch. I was starting to see why Leo wanted to kill him.

“You call me out here to clean up your mess, there better be something for me besides your skinny whore, boy.”

I saw Gary emerge from the office at the same time Leo's father did, saving him from my foot in his balls by way of explaining that I wasn't a sex worker. His jaw went slack and his eyes took on a gleam. “Fuck me,” he said. “Is that a reaper?”

It was my turn to get in front of Leo as Gary drew his Scythe again and started across the parking lot, flanked by Wilson and a hound I didn't know, a big bruiser with a Mohawk the color of blue Kool-­Aid.

“Deal with the hounds,” Leo said in my ear. “I'll handle Gary.”

I glanced back at him, but he seemed serious. Well, it was his funeral. He might not have sold me out, but I still didn't think he had more than an ice cube's chance floating in a hot chocolate made in Hell.

Blue leaped at me, shifting on the fly, and the time for thinking deep thoughts was over. I let him barrel by me, stepping aside and swiping his throat with my claws. Blood erupted, coating my palm and arm halfway to the elbow. Blue coughed once and collapsed, twitching. Arterial red turned black, just a slick shiny spot on the asphalt as he died.

Before I could celebrate, Wilson slammed into me from behind. He might not be graceful, but he had almost a hundred pounds on me, and that was enough.

“Always knew you'd turn someday,” he grunted. “You think you're better than us.”

“Wilson,” I managed, even though he was slamming my head repeatedly into the pavement. “Why are you doing this?”

He stopped, chest heaving, staring at me. The white network of scars across his skull looked like fresh paint in the sunlight. The shifter pack had taken off half his face, and even hellhound healing wasn't perfect.

“Gary keeps you around as a joke,” I said. In my peripheral vision, Leo accepted a black case from his father, taking out a flat bag full of red—­a hospital blood pack. Alexi probably had an entire bank's worth on ice when Leo had capped him.

“Gary is my master,” Wilson snarled. He shook me a little. It wouldn't take much more pressure to snap my neck.

“Your master did the same shit to you he just did to me,” I said. “He sent you off to do his bidding and didn't give a shit when those lycanthropes almost made you hamburger. Why the fuck do you care about him, Wilson? To Gary, you might as well be a used tissue.”

Leo poured the blood across the ground in a line as Gary came at him, and when the reaper hit the line he bounced back. The ozone taste of black magic hit my tongue, and all the small hairs on my neck lifted like lightning had fried the parking lot.

Gary shook off the impact, but I saw a thin line of black trickle from his nose. Hellspawn bleed black, nasty acid crap with fumes that smell like a mass grave. That Leo had made Gary bleed encouraged me a lot.

Wilson bared his teeth at me. “Gary saved me. That's what you never got. He made me. I owe him my life no matter what.”

There's no point in arguing with thugs, especially happily brainless ones. I hit Wilson in the throat, the soft spot that makes a crunching sound if you do it right. He fell over, and I wriggled out from under him.

Gary still battered Leo's blood line, and it finally gave. Leo waited, watching Gary's Scythe as he advanced.

“Nice work,” Gary said, swiping at his nose. “I'm still going to cut your balls off with this.”

Seeing Leo pinned down and his useless father just standing there, I shifted without thinking about it. It hurt like hell, all my broken bones rearranging themselves into their four-­legged configuration, Gary's cut making me favor my front right leg, but that didn't matter.

Leo poured out more blood, mumbling with his eyes closed, and red smoke started to rise as the stuff bubbled. Gary choked, his eyes watering, but he still came.

Until I hit him and wrapped my jaws around his throat.

Hellspawn blood tastes like sewage, and it burned, so bad that I almost let go. But I didn't. I wrestled Gary to the ground and bit down hard, feeling flesh and tendon and windpipe break under my teeth.

I may see in black and white, but my brain is almost sharper when I'm a hound. All that human fear and worry and indecision washes away, and I know exactly what I have to do. I whipped Gary back and forth, breaking his neck and choking off his scream.

Leo kept mumbling, and I could feel whatever he was conjuring with the blood creeping all over my skin. He opened his eyes at last, and I realized that some of Gary's blood had spattered across his face, fine black droplets like rain on his pale skin.

Before he could move, though, something hit me in the side, a small impact that quickly turned into wretched, burning pain. I went off my feet, and Leo's father pumped another spray of bullets into me for good measure.

He picked up Gary's Scythe and wiped it on the sleeve of his suit. Leo started to say something, but his father said a single word, something that landed on my senses like a hammer blow, and Leo went flying into the hood of his car, smashing it to shit.

I guessed Leo's plan wasn't as brilliant as he'd thought.

Leo's father and his men got back into their cars and drove away, leaving me in a pool of my own blood, surrounded by deadhead parts and bleeding hounds and the reaper I'd just betrayed.

 

CHAPTER
9

B
ullets don't slow Hellspawn down. If you're thinking about warding off a hellhound with some silver-­tipped hollow points or a spray of buckshot dipped in holy water, kiss your gun hand good-­bye now. All bullets do is piss us off. There are metals that can poison a hound, but usually only smart warlocks have weapons that pack the punch.

I was thanking everything I could think of that Leo's father wasn't one of those.

The bullets worked their way out of my side after a few minutes, sticky with my blood. I concentrated on breathing until they were all out, and then got myself up and padded over to Leo. I didn't really want him to see me fuzzy this early in our relationship, but shifting back would have knocked me out, and one of us needed to be conscious.

I nudged Leo with my nose until he muttered and started, coming awake with a groan. “Fuck me,” he said.

I let out a whine to tell him he needed to get up and get moving. Gary wasn't stirring, but I had no way of telling if he was down for good. Between Leo's conjure and my mad-­dog attack, we'd at least managed to dent him. Maybe later, if I survived, I'd celebrate.

Leo looked at me, eyes narrowing. “Ava?”

I bumped his hand again. Leo passed it hesitantly across my head, ruffling the hair. “Christ, that is freaky,” he said. “You're a dog but you've still got your eyes.”

I herded him toward the door of his car, and he stumbled. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I'm only human, give me a break.”

He winced every time he breathed, and I felt for him. I whined, scratching at the closed door, but Leo shook his head. “We gotta ditch the car,” he said. “My father knows it.”

I scanned the lot for anything else, since my beautiful bike was probably living in the Vegas impound lot by now, and saw the bulb of an enormous taillight protruding from behind the motel office. I let out a bark, one I hoped wouldn't make Leo pee himself. He started, but he kept it together.

“Okay,” he said. “Keys?”

“Can't you jack it?” I said, but it just came out as a long snarl, and Leo recoiled. Shit. I really wished he could speak hellhound.

This was ridiculous. I wasn't going to get anywhere playing Hellspawn
Turner & Hooch
with Leo, so I gritted my teeth and shifted.

He caught me when I started to pitch over, even though I landed on his broken ribs. “Fuck,” I said. “We're quite a pair.”

“I'm sorry,” Leo said. “I had no idea—­”

“I completely understand why you want to shank your dad,” I cut him off.

He nodded, still holding on to me. I wasn't sure if I was propping him up or the other way around. “Let's get the fuck out of here,” Leo said. “We need keys for that thing.”

“What kind of gangster can't wire a car?” I said. Leo's mouth crimped.

“Look, if you need someone to cook up a deadhead or drop some blood conjuring, I'm happy to help, but I never jacked cars. My skills run more to cleaning and disposal, if you get the drift.”

I got it, and felt a little bit of my own smugness that I could do something a badass warlock couldn't, even if it was just petty theft.

The car was a monster, a candy-apple-red Buick Skylark from a time when there was enough metal in the fins alone to build a small aircraft. “I hope you weren't going for inconspicuous,” I said to Leo, breaking the door lock with a sharp jerk. I slid onto the buttery white leather seat and pulled out the ignition wires.

“Something's bothering me,” Leo said.

I stripped the ignition and the solenoid wires and started the delicate courtship of tapping them together until the motor coughed, then grumbled, then caught. “Getting blood out of white leather is your area, I'd think,” I said. “But if it's really getting to you I can try to find a towel to sit on.”

Leo shook his head. “Are you always this calm right after everything goes to shit?”

I wasn't calm. I was numb. But fuck if I was going to let Leo know that.

“It's that call,” he said. “Gary said I called him, but I didn't. I'd say it was my father, but I think he was surprised as I was. Who'd pretend to be me just to get you iced by a reaper?”

I sat back, looking at the tchotchke dangling from the rearview mirror. A big fuzzy pink
M,
for
Marty
.

“You still have that gun?” I said to Leo. He pulled it from his waist and handed it over.

“Full mag, one in the pipe,” he said. I flipped the safety off and stalked back toward the motel office, ignoring the dozen niggling pains that wanted to make me limp.

Marty had come out of hiding and was sweeping up broken glass from his front window, carefully skirting the pieces of deadhead that were scattered around like the world's most morbid store display.

“Why?” I said. He stopped sweeping and bugged his eyes at me.

“Did you really think Gary was going to pat you on the head and give you a corner office?” I said. “And don't you think you should have called him as yourself if you wanted to effectively kiss his ass?”

Leo had said Marty didn't know who he was, but I thought Marty was exactly the kind of prying jerkoff who liked knowing things he shouldn't. It probably got him good and stiff on nights when the Japanese zombie nurse porn just wasn't doing it.

“I don't give a crap about Leo Karpov,” he said. “I just wanted Gary to fuck you up.” He shrugged and went back to sweeping. “I'm a shifter. I hate hellhounds.” Glass he'd collected clattered into his wastebasket. “Here's a tip: next time, be a little nicer. I respond to girls who have manners.”

I shot him right between the eyes. It might not have been the tooth-­and-­nail death I wanted to give him, but I was tired. “Thanks for the tip.”

Leo didn't say anything when I gave him back his gun, and I scooted over to the passenger side of the car. “You drive,” I said. “My arm hurts like a bitch.”

He pulled out of the lot, still silent, and I let the hum of the wheels even out my heartbeat. By the time Vegas had vanished into the shimmering Mojave, I'd managed to convince myself that I might not be fucked. Sure, Leo's father had the Scythe and we were bolting with a stolen car, no cash and dubious survival skills, but I was alive. I felt the air on my face, the drying blood on my skin, my heartbeat, and my breath more sharply than I had in decades.

Being alive was just going to have to be good enough for now.