Feeling like a total asshole, Val hopped into his truck and slammed his head against the headrest. He gripped the steering wheel, squeezed his eyes shut, and breathed hard through his nostrils. To drown out the sound of Bishop’s baying, Valor cranked up the radio and tore down the driveway.
Bishop was a desperate Hound. Valor was too. The twins were one-half of their pack and without them, everything felt wrong. Broken.
Several weeks ago, an imposter came into their home, drugged and poisoned Bishop, and used him as a vessel to house malanum. Bishop lost all control and killed five people who tried to help him. That wasn’t his fault, it was Valor’s. He should have never jeopardized others to save his Hound, but the pack was Val’s first and only priority. Bishop was his second in command and in need of help. Valor made the decision, put in the calls, and led the way to Bishop’s room. Valor pleaded for help that night. Was willing to do anything in the world to get Bishop better. To see his Hound be possessed by evil so terrifying there was yet a name to describe it made Valor an extremely desperate man.
That night, under the ministrations of several malanum that had taken over Bishop’s body, five people were murdered. Then Eli made number six. At least Valor was able to bring him back that day. Thanks to the Voodoo Man, Jack, they were able to expel the malanum from Bishop and heal him too. But the cost was great for all of them. And unfortunately, Bishop was still paying the price.
The guilt that Hell Hound bore caused him to sink deeper and deeper into depression. Valor knew if they didn’t find the twins soon, Bishop was going to check out for good. He wasn’t going to live without his pack, and each day that ticked by, Bishop’s depression grew darker. Soon, there would be no light at the end of his tunnel and Valor was determined to not let it get that far.
Bishop was convinced the twins were dead by his hands. Valor wasn’t so sure though, and every time he tried to argue with Bishop about it, they wound up fighting.
Death might be the reason, but Valor refused to believe it. There was no blood. No trace of a struggle anywhere. They just… vanished. It made no sense.
The twins would never abandon the pack. Things might not have been perfect between the four of them, but Valor refused to accept that Sebastian and Drake would break away without saying why first.
Any lead, any whisper, anything they could use to get closer to where the other half of the pack was, Valor and Bishop have chased it for weeks. And coming home empty handed every night was finally taking its toll on the two of them.
Maiden, Mother and Crone, what a joke this was. Having psychic friends was not without some frustrating moments. Half of what they “saw” was just illusion anyway. To discern real from fantasy, a vision versus dream, was infuriating for all involved. Yet Valor couldn’t risk not following every single lead, which was why he was going on another wild goose chase tonight – back to The Blue Lizard.
He pulled into a parking garage, beat feet to the venue, paid the cover charge and entered. The place smelled like sweat, beer and cigarettes. Valor surveyed the area, keeping his aggression under control. He didn’t like places like this. It was too loud. Too crowded. Too annoying.
“Oh you’re getting on that stage, damnit!” a brunette yelled as she dragged a blonde through the door.
“I’m not doing it, Viv. I only came back to get my phone.”
“I can’t believe you fell down an entire flight of steps and I can’t believe I missed it.”
“Shut up and stop talking about it. I want to forget it ever happened.”
“Bet you don’t wanna forget Bishop though, huh?”
Valor’s growl ripped out of his mouth. So Bishop came here earlier as he said, but been too busy flirting to notice if Chloe’s lead was a good one or not? Val wasn’t sure how to feel about it. He told Bishop to unfuck himself, which he didn’t do, but looks like he came close. Maybe… Val’s eyes narrowed at the booze behind the bar. Or had Bishop just ordered tequila all night and left half-numbed and blind to his surroundings?
It didn’t even matter anymore. Valor walked on, ignoring the rest of the women’s conversation and continued scanning the area. Sniffing out a scent would be hard in a place like this. Too many variables. Not to mention the doors were wide open. Even in winter, this place was nothing but hot bodies and stage lights.
The strawberry blonde caught his attention again. She hadn’t done it on purpose, it was something about her aura. Most folks couldn’t see auras unless they were magically inclined, which Valor most certainly was. This woman’s aura was… ablaze. Pulsing. Panicked.
The protective beast in him roared. Instinct demanded he put himself between her and whatever scared her. But when Valor searched for the threat, there was nothing there. The woman only stared at an empty bar stool. Still, he unhooked his concealed blade and headed towards her. All because he couldn’t see something, didn’t mean there wasn’t something there.
It could be a malanum lurking in the shadows. He should have been able to see it if that was the case, but at this point, nothing would surprise Valor. He coolly held the blade behind his back, prepared to use it if he had to, but hoping that wouldn’t be the case. “Are ye alright, lass?”
Her stoic expression was at total odds with her aura. It blazed brighter as Valor came closer. “Lass? Are ye troubled?”
She swallowed and shook her head. “I’m fine.” She turned away as a man came to sit down at the empty stool. Valor backed off and watched the two women from a distance. Something didn’t feel right…
“Let’s just get out of here, okay? I’m not singing tonight Viv. I just want to go home.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
The fair-haired woman said something to the bartender, grabbed her phone from him, and stuffed it into her back pocket. Valor stepped into the shadows and watched them leave.
Then he followed.
Chapter 4
Numb from too much magic, Sebastian could barely lift his head. Cracking one eye open, he tried to locate his twin and found Drake sprawled out on the stone slab. The place smelled dank with mold, piss, vomit and agony. As he continued to dangle, his feet didn’t touch the ground while his body swayed ever so slightly.
The movement wasn’t from his body, it was from the force of his soul as it reentered him again. This type of power was tricky and came at a horrendous price.
“D,” he rasped. “D, you….still with…me?”
His twin gurgled a response.
If Sebastian had the energy to feel fear, he knew his heart would be jackhammering its way out of his rib cage right about now, but as it was, his was too numb for emotion. Too numb for anything really. His heart felt like a dead bird in its cage instead.
The room they were in was made of stone. No windows. No beds. When they were first brought here, it was freezing, but there was no draft. The coldness wasn’t from the outside, it was from the power of their captor.
“I couldn’t make it,” Sebastian tried to say, but it came out more like, “I cooen mayt.” Nothing felt right. Nothing sounded right. The manacles around his wrists cut him clean down to the bone. Naked, he dangled like a hunk of raw meat ready for the butcher.
His ribs jutted out of his once toned body. His skin was shrouded in several layers of slime, blood and other fluids. The magic those fuckers poured into his system made his skull feel like it had red ants feasting on his brains. And this was just the recovery process. The worst was yet to come.
Again.
“D? You… hear me?”
“Ungh.” Drake’s body stretched along a slab of stone. His right arm dangled over the edge, his left was broken in three places, the bones protruding through his flesh. Had Drake been a human, infection would have taken his life weeks ago. But since Drake and Sebastian were Hell Hounds, they were hard to kill. Hard to tame. Hard to catch.
And hard to find.
Sebastian willed his soul to split off again, an act that hurt like a motherfucker, and he drove it into his twin for
a moment. Drake jolted with the sudden intrusion and gasped. His body went rigid for all of three seconds before collapsing onto the slab again. “Fuck! Stop!”
Sebastian’s soul came back to him once more, and settled into his body with a sigh. Drake didn’t have a soul, so Sebastian shared his. A necessary evil, Drake would say.
Souls were incredibly powerful things with the ability to feel. Drake hated feeling anything. “Don’t Baz… I can’t… take it right now.”
But that soul push would remind Drake what was at stake here. If Drake gave up, Sebastian would too. No living without each other. No fucking way. The quick reminder was all Sebastian could do in their current situation. Talking took too much effort and given that Drake had rods shoved into his ears earlier, Sebastian doubted his brother could hear anything at all right now.
He’d heal. Slowly, but it would happen.
Whoever was doing this had a twisted streak that could make the devil cringe. Sebastian clung to the fact that whoever the fucker was would pay dearly for what they were doing to him and Drake. It was only a matter of time before their alpha, Valor, found them. That Hound wouldn’t rest until he got his Hounds back. Bishop too. Christ, that inked up Hound was a bull in a china shop when he set his sights on something he wanted. There would be no stopping those two until they found the twins. Sebastian clung to that thought like a piece of driftwood in the stormy sea.
There was no saving themselves from this. The twins had tried repeatedly, but whatever shit their enemy put into them stripped so much of their Hell Hound powers, escape was futile.
Drake twitched on the stone slab. It was a minimal movement, but Sebastian caught it.
“Baz,” Drake murmured.
“I’m… here, D.”
“I can’t…keep… going…”
Fear shot down Sebastian’s spine and he popped both eyes open to stare at his brother. “You will.”
Drake’s head tilted to the left and his right eye cracked open so they could look at each other. “Save yourself… and leave… me.”
In case Drake hadn’t noticed, Baz could no sooner save himself than he could save his broken, busted up brother. There was no hope in this room. No way out.
“We came…” Sebastian coughed, the burst of muscle contractions causing his body to scream in agony from the open wounds seeping blood onto the floor. He winced and damn if he didn’t cough again before whimpering like a wounded animal. After a couple of careful breathes he continued, “We came into this world together. We left it together. We do this… together.”
“We’re going to die, Baz.”
“So fucking be it.”
“I don’t… want that…for…”
A door opened and in stepped their captors. One was a large man with tribal tattoos on his arms; the other was smaller with beady eyes and thinning hair.
Agony wasn’t a blow to the foot with a ball peen hammer - a sharp slam, the crunch of bones, that searing pain that ripped up your leg and through your entire body, causing your eyes to peel wide as you screamed out. No, no, no. Real agony was a monster that devoured you from the inside out – it ate your hope and ability to think straight. It clawed your courage to shreds and spat out the shards of your once powerful roar, while you’re blind and helpless to fight against it.
Sebastian experienced such agony right now. As he heard his brother gurgle in protest, the pain Sebastian felt for not being able to do anything other than dangle was excruciating for him. The wounded Hound in him still had the instinct to protect. This was his twin, too, his fucking other half. No matter how hard Baz tried to fight against his restraints, he couldn’t free himself, which meant he couldn’t protect his brother. To rip his limbs off wouldn’t help them, either. He couldn’t hold a weapon with a bloody stump for fuck’s sake.
Suddenly Baz felt like he was on the tilt-a-whirl. The room spun when someone flipped him over and brought his sorry ass to the slab.
Thank god, Baz thought. They were going to hang Drake up and start on him now. If Baz had the option, he’d always choose himself over Drake taking the hit. They swapped the twins every now and then, usually after one was too close to dying. The rotation gave both Hounds a chance to semi-heal or for the magic they experimented with to either wear off or sink in. Drake was finally going to get a break.
Baz barely felt the restraints as he was tied down. He was too busy watching his brother get strung up like a carcass in hunting season. Blood flowed freely from Drake’s once muscular form. He moaned incoherently as they pulled the lever and hoisted his body up high enough for his feet to not touch the floor anymore.
Then Baz’s attention was pulled towards the direction of another horror. The tall man with dead eyes and tattoos lit something on fire and produced a small fillet knife. With a slash, he opened Baz’s gut and shoved his hand inside, burying the fire into his belly. Baz tensed, his eyes bulged and mouth opened wide. Searing white-hot pain lanced him from tongue to toes. He sucked in a ragged breath and bayed. The fire they put in him set him ablaze with sensations too intense to handle. Every nerve ending he had fired off at the same time. Every inch of his body, every bone, vein, muscle, and molecule he fucking owned screamed for it to STOP! STOP! STOP!
Lately, their captors were trying a different series of magics on them. Sebastian suspected it required a soul to be stripped and hollowed out, but that couldn’t happen if the body didn’t have a soul, now could it? Survival instincts kicked in and Baz released his soul and shot it into his twin. Baz didn’t have the capacity to see past the red haze of his vision, but he hoped like hell his spirit made it to Drake in time without getting caught. They normally had to touch to make the soul switch, but they weren’t close enough for that right now and Sebastian was fucking desperate.
Like with everything he gave his twin, Drake would keep the soul they shared safe. His brother gurgled and groaned. I’m sorry, Baz wanted to say. But you gotta keep it for now.
Soulless, Baz was as good as dead and he could handle this shit without being scarred for fucking life afterwards.
His body trembled, the chains keeping him locked into place jingled and clanked. Standing by his head, the enemy smiled down at him. Baz’s mind flashed to thoughts of Valor for a hot second. Save me! Find us! Baz fought to escape, his instinct driving him wild to get free. Baz lost control of his bodily functions when a new tool came into sight. He roared with all he had and tried not to flinch as they drove a spike through his forehead.
Tilly and Vivian spent the rest of their evening at a bar down the street from The Blue Lizard. They listened to music, drank ice water - because Tilly needed to lay off the tequila - and then Viv dropped her off at home at half-past three in the morning.
Tonight, Tilly was supposed to cross one item off her bucket list. As she stared at the piece of paper hanging on her fridge, she felt so disappointed in herself for not having gone through with it.
With a gruff sigh, Tilly yanked open her freezer and grabbed the ice cream. Nothing cured regrets like chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Snatching a spoon, she meandered across her studio apartment and straight to the bathroom. This was a double regret night – it was going to not only require ice cream, but bubbles.
What was her second regret? She didn’t even want to talk about it.
Starting the hot bath, she tossed in a bubble bar and stripped down. Sticking one foot, then the other, into the hot water did wonders for her stress. Not even a quarter of the way in and she was already sighing in ecstasy.
Holding a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth, she dipped her ass down next, settled in and laid back. Damn, how can hot water feel this amazing? Her body was so sore from her fall. She probably should have used cold water for the bruising, but fuck it. She’d rather be hot than cold. Closing her eyes, Tilly ran over the series of events that happened earlier – skipping over a couple of the not-so-great parts – and focused on all the good stuff: Bishop.
What a rare, gorgeous, mysterious masterpiec
e of a man. The corners of her mouth turned up as she licked the back of her spoon. Tilly could only imagine what he looked like eating ice cream. He probably licked it slowly… his tongue dragging upwards, causing the ice cream to melt all over the cone from being so close to his sinfully sexy lips. Or maybe he devoured it. Sucked in as much as he could and swallowed it down, ready for more.
Hell, either one of those sounded good to her.
She placed the empty carton on the side of the tub and grabbed a handful of bubbles next. In one big exhale, she blew the tiny suds all over the place. What would Bishop be like in a tub? Wet was the only word that came to mind.
Damn, why didn’t she get his number?
Just howl if you need me. Bishop’s words caressed down her body. His voice, the cadence he used, the way his eyes had darkened… Tilly couldn’t describe how insanely alive she’d felt in that moment.
And all it took was a howl.
Bishop. Lord have mercy. No creature ever looked hotter. No man had ever kissed her so voraciously. Tilly had a healthy sexual appetite, and she had a feeling Bishop could match her, bite for bite. Damn, but heat pooled low in her belly and she clenched her thighs together, scissoring her legs as her imagination ran wild. If I howled, would he actually hear it?
And if he did, would he come to her?
Chapter 5
Bishop howled until his throat felt raw. Even after Valor returned home, Bishop was still in no condition to get the fuck up. On his hands and knees, the Hell Hound looked like he was being electrocuted by the way he convulsed and shook. Bishop howled again, hoping Valor would take mercy on his pathetic ass and help him.
He’d refused Tina, Bishop’s one chance at gaining some balance and he fucking declined it. She’d banged on the front door, rang the bell, screamed for someone to let her in, but he stayed right where he fucking was and refused to budge.
Hard to Find (Hell Hounds Harem Book 4) Page 3