To Kill An Angel (20 page)

The lifeless boar’s corpse had only just slipped from my fingertips when something hit me from the left and from behind at the same time.  Face down in the leaves, I scrambled to get turned over, but it seemed as though there were too many mouths and hooves tearing at me to allow for me to move.

I kicked with my legs and made contact at least once with something firm, but my struggles didn’t seem to even slow the ravenous creatures that bit at me.  I felt a slobbering mouth at my neck just before two thick tusks penetrated the skin there.

As if it were magnified a thousand times, I heard the hungry chomping and slopping as it enjoyed my flesh.  And then, as quickly as they’d come upon me, with a roar, they were gone.

Dazedly, my blood still swimming with adrenaline and fear, I rolled over in time to see Bo tearing the boars into pieces, angrily dispatching limbs and heads this way and that.  As the deafening throb of my pulse slowed in my ears, I watched with pride and appreciation as he quickly dominated the creatures.

Making my way to my feet, the four of us stood looking all around for more pigs, but there were none to be found.  Bo turned to me, taking my face in his hands. 

“Are you alright?”

His eyes searched mine, concern clouding the beauty of his face. 

“I-I’m fine.”

Bo released my face and brushed the hair back away from my neck, gingerly checking my wound.  I knew it was only one of many, but I was too frazzled to think about the rest, too frazzled to really think at all.  I was still in survival mode.

His gaze finally returned to my face and he smiled, a small smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“You’re already starting to heal,” he said in relief.  “I should thank Heather for making it harder for anything to take you from me.”

“Touching moment, lad, but I think we really need to move,” Lucius said, coming to a stop in front of us.

“We’re close to the second mine, aren’t we?” he asked Lucius.

“We are indeed,” Lucius said, turning to lead us on.

“How did you know?” I asked Bo as we followed Lucius as he darted through the trees.

“I’d bet my life that those were some sort of sentries that Sebastian put in the woods to keep us away.”

“He knew we’d come,” I breathed, a sinking feeling dragging at the pit of my stomach.

“So it would seem.”

I saw no reason to voice what I knew we were both thinking.  Somehow Sebastian knew that we’d find Devon, which meant that he knew that we had a way of tracking him.  Could he know about Cade?  How much did he know about what my skin would tell Bo?

I had to put my ruminations aside as Lucius slowed.  I became instantly hyper alert, as did Bo and Annika.  Carefully, thoroughly, we scanned the forest around us, watching and listening. 

When it seemed that there was no herd of wild, possessed boars launching an attack, Lucius moved forward to skirt yet another small hill.  On its east-facing side, a huge opening was carved out, but the mouth was boarded up and littered with warning signs.  It looked as if it had remained undisturbed for a couple of decades at least.

Disappointment and frustration burned in my gut. 

“Obviously he’s not in this one.  No one’s been in there in years,” I ground out through my tightly gritted teeth.

 Bo ran a hand through his hair in a gesture that said he felt as irritated as I.

His sigh was a sharp hiss in the eerily quiet woods.

“Well, maybe I should check anyway.  Maybe Sebastian found a way to get in there without disturbing the entrance.”

I wanted to tell him that I seriously doubted that, but I didn’t.  No extra negativity was needed at this point.

As Bo approached the mouth of the mine a low rumble sounded.  It trembled in the ground beneath my feet and made its way up my legs, tickling the nerves of my calves.  Bo stopped mid-step, but the rumbling continued.  We all watched and listened, and when it appeared that there was no imminent danger, Bo moved to resume his approach.

There was one spot of exposed earth right in front of the mine’s entrance.  It was a fairly large patch of dirt, bare of leaves as if the area had been recently cleared of debris.  And very purposefully, I might add.

The instant Bo’s foot touched the dirt, two hulking wolf-like animals appeared on the crest of the hill above his head.  At least four times as big as the boars, these animals were clearly just as unnatural.  Their heads, easily the size of a horse’s, were dominated by two eyes that glowed orange with a flame that licked at the air around them.  Smoke arose from them in thin, curling tendrils and then disappeared above their enormous ears.

Between their shoulders was an exaggerated hump on which raised hackles stood at attention.  Their especially wide mouths were partially open, baring dozens of razor sharp teeth, much more numerous and deadly than on any dog I’d ever seen. 

As I followed their hairy, black bodies to the ground, I saw that their legs didn’t end in the paws typical of canines.  Instead, these hybrid creatures stood on cloven feet with two large, grasping talons that held them securely to the earth of the hill.

Other than paralyzing fear, the only thought in my mind was the question of what these strange animals were.  As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered asking anyway.  Lucius unwittingly answered me with two words.  They were uttered so quietly his breath barely disturbed the air.

“Hell hounds,” he whispered.

I saw Bo slowly move his foot to take another step forward.  The wolf on the left dipped his head to turn his burning stare on Bo.  He growled more loudly and the ground beneath us grumbled in agitation.  The hound’s long tongue licked hungrily at his wet lips and thick globs of sticky drool dropped from its trembling jowls to splatter on the forest floor.  The saliva hissed when it landed, as if searing the earth with acid. 

Bo took one more step forward and the wolf’s flaming eyes blazed hotter, tiny sparks flying from their red-orange centers.  As it stared at Bo, the putrid smell of burning flesh began to saturate the air and Bo began to stagger backward.

A sizzling sound crackled and spit into the tense moment and Bo fell to his knees with a strangled cry.  He raised one hand as if to shield himself from the glare of the dog and it was then that I realized from where both the smell and the sound had arisen.

Bo’s exposed hand and arm were blistered and blackened, as though they had been burned to a crisp.  My breath hitched painfully in my chest when I saw his face turn to the side and it looked no better than his hand.

“Bo!” I cried lunging forward. 

I had no idea what my plan was; I just knew that I had to get to him, had to help him.  I knew that I had to save him, like he’d saved me so many times.

I made it several steps before I heard his strained voice.

“Ridley, stay back,” he cautioned, but I didn’t listen.

I fell at his side just as he toppled over, his head falling right into my hands.  His face was charred and completely unrecognizable.  My heart squeezed inside my chest just before I felt a searing heat scorching the skin of my neck and shoulders.  In my mind’s eye, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the hound’s fiery gaze was now upon me where I knelt with Bo’s head in my lap.

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I hunched forward, covering as much of Bo as I could with my own body and bracing myself as the hell hound tried to burn me alive.

“Ridley, no!” I heard Bo croak throatily, his voice dry and rough.

At his words, I opened eyes I hadn’t even been aware of closing and I saw one already healed ebony orb looking up at me.

“I won’t let you die for me,” he breathed.

I sucked in a gasp as the pain at my neck worked its way up the back of my head, tearing into my scalp like a thousand needles.  I wouldn’t let them make me scream.  Not in front of Bo.  I’d be strong to the end.

“It’s better than spending one minute of my life without you,” I managed.

I squeezed my eyes shut again and barely felt the movement of Bo in my arms, the pain was so intense.  And then I was weightless and my face was on fire. 

I cracked my eyelids and saw the hounds above me.  Bo had taken me in his arms and was struggling to his feet.  The heat baked my corneas, rendering my vision blurry.  Bo cried out as he straightened with me in his arms. 

I don’t know how he managed it.  He was burned so badly, even the slightest movement must’ve been excruciating.  And yet he persisted until he was upright, with me in his arms, trying to make it to the safety of the mine’s entrance. 

As if warning Bo not to make another move, I heard the deep, threatening bark of the two hounds, crying out in unison.  But still, Bo moved on, taking another hard-won step forward. 

The heat on my face dissipated and I cracked my lids again, just in time to see the two huge hell hounds take their eyes from us just long enough to leap from their perch atop the hill and land on the ground behind us.  As soon as their attention was focused tightly on us again, I felt the heat rise once more.  I knew that we didn’t stand a chance against the two animals.  They carried hell itself in their fiery eyes.

I thought blearily of praying, but I lacked the focus to form any kind of plea.  God and angels and destiny swirled lazily inside my head as my flesh melted under the intensity of the hounds’ flaming gaze.

Then I was sailing through the air.  The brief gust of wind felt like heaven on my burning skin, but it was short-lived.  Next, I felt resistance as the boards that crossed the mine’s entrance gave way beneath my weight.  The crunch and splinter of breaking wood blocked out Bo’s cry for just a moment before I landed with a thud on the cool dirt of the mine floor.

I scrambled to sit up as Bo’s cries echoed all around me, bouncing around inside the tube and finding their way back to my ears from a thousand different directions.  Each cry hit my heart like throwing knives, pelting me with their torturous blades.

Turning, I looked back for Bo, but he wasn’t in the mine with me.  He was barely standing on the outside of it, facing me, the hell hounds now between us. 

One hound turned to come after me, but when his huge muzzle entered the mine’s mouth, he screamed with an ear-splitting cry that lanced through my head like a hot poker through butter.  He stumbled back and tried again, but whined when his cloven foot touched the earth inside the mine. 

Not prepared to endure any pain himself, the huge beast turned his attention back toward the fading Bo.  My bleeding heart leapt up into my throat when the other hound raised his front leg and pawed at Bo, his mighty talons tearing easily through Bo’s clothes and flesh.  Bo crumbled to his knees.

Across the space between us, Bo’s singed eyes met mine and time stopped for us.  Bo teetered on his knees for what felt like an eternity before he began to fall forward.  An invisible fist gripped my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter with every inch of Bo’s decent until he fell flat on his stomach with his face buried in the dirt at the hound’s feet.

The squeal of a banshee broke through the horror of the moment, Lucius and Annika sweeping in from out of my field of view, each grabbing one of Bo’s arms and then leaping into the mine with him in tow.

The trio skidded to a halt not far from where I sat, but I only saw one body come to a stop—Bo’s.

Fighting against the pain of my burns, I crawled to his side and rolled him onto his back.  His face was charred, his lips black and cracked.  His eyelids were all but swollen shut now and his singed shirt hung in tatters from his bloody chest and shoulders.  Although it tore at my guts to see him this way, it was easy for me to look past all that.  It was easy for me to see the handsome face of the person I loved most on the planet, the person I loved more than my own life.