Page 20 of Hellhounds Never Lie

That’s when I realized I couldn’t hear or smell anything. At all.

I should have scented Ash. I should have heard his steady breaths.

But there was nothing.

It wasn’t natural. Someone was using magic to hide themselves. And for me to have picked up on it meant they had to be close. Inside the apartment. Possibly inside this room.

My instincts warred with one another. Half of me wanted to crawl over Ash and protect him from whatever was about to happen. And the other half wanted to attack and deal with the threat—because this was undoubtedly a threat.

My need to destroy any potential danger to my little mage won.

I made a show of rolling away from Ash, as if I was moving in my sleep. I hoped it would be enough to draw the attacker’s attention to me. I flung my arm over my eyes, hoping that would be enough to shield my eyes from view when I opened them, because there was no way my eyes weren’t lit up like a fucking forest fire right now. My beast surged through my blood, heating my body, ready to shift and destroy any intruder.

Opening my eyes just a sliver was all I needed to do. Two of my former packmates leaned over the bed, one on each side. Their faces were distorted by a half shift. The one closest to me wore a clunky pendant on a thick chain around his neck. The amulet glowed faintly in the dark with a pale icy blue magic.

It wasn’t the magic that made me move, though. It was everything else. I didn’t need the muted glow of the pendant and the faint light coming in from an outside streetlight to see their gleaming teeth… and the knives in their hands—knives they were lifting over both Ash and me.

Every protective instinct in me fired at once. In an eruption of motion, I rolled over Ash, wrapped my arms around him, then kept tumbling off the other side of the bed. As we fell, we hit one werewolf’s legs. The momentum sent him flying backwards.

We landed on the floor. Hard. I did my best to protect Ash from the worst of the impact, making sure my knees and elbows hit the floor first, trying to cradle him against me. Ash went rigid in my arms, and I knew he had to be screaming but I still couldn’t hear anything.

I shoved him under the bed to protect him while I dealt with the assholes who’d planned to kill us while we slept.

Shifting to my hellhound form took mere seconds. The flickering light of the fire coating my body made ghoulish patterns undulate across the surfaces in the room. The wolf who’d been on the other side of the bed looked stunned. The knife he’d been holding was embedded in the mattress, right where I’d been sleeping. The wolf closest to me was still clambering to his feet.

I roared into the silence, but no sound broke through the strange magic.

The look on my face must have been enough, though. The wolf furthest from me—the one who wore the pendant—blinked once, then ran for the door. The closest one wasn’t so lucky. I opened my mouth and grabbed his leg, sinking my teeth into his flesh. I expected the tangy taste of blood to coat my tongue, but there was nothing. I didn’t taste anything. If I hadn’t felt the denim of his jeans against my tongue and the bulk of his leg keeping my mouth from closing, I would have thought I’d missed and was chewing on air.

Then, in a strange sensation, like when I’d last driven through the mountains, my ears popped. Suddenly, everything—sound, taste, and smell—rushed over me again. The guy with the amulet was about eight feet away now, so that had to be the limit of the talisman’s strange magic. The scent of burning flesh filled my lungs as my fire ate away at the werewolf where my fire met his skin and entered his body. His screams filled the darkness. His boiling blood spurted across my tongue.

When he fainted, probably from the pain, I let go and jumped toward the door. There was still a chance I could catch the other bastard.

Before I breached the threshold, though, Ash’s whimpers stopped me.

I spun around and scanned the room for him. He was still under the bed where I’d shoved him. When I ducked down to peer under the bed, my hellhound’s fire penetrated the darkness to reveal his huddled form. He was a shaking, trembling, whimpering ball.

In the next moment, I shifted to my human form and flipped the mattress and box spring off the bedframe so I could get to him. As soon as I tossed the mattress aside, he erupted upward like a vengeful specter and shot across the room to the wolf I’d caught.

Sparks blasted from his fingers like firecrackers, and I was sure he’d use his considerable magic to incinerate the wolf. Instead, he kicked and clawed.

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Ash screamed at the motionless wolf.

I had half a mind to let him take out his frustration and fear on the intruder, but I couldn’t let him hurt himself.

“Ash,” I whispered as I inched toward him. I didn’t want to scare him any more than he already was. “You’re safe, little witch. You’re safe.”

Then Ash lunged at me. At first, I feared he was attacking me too, mistaking me for one of the intruders, but then his arms and legs wrapped around me with surprising strength as he clung to me. His body trembled against mine. I slid to the floor and held him close. The sparks he’d been shedding subsided the longer I held him.

When he finally calmed, he pulled back and waved his hand through the air, releasing a nearly imperceptible flash of magic. The overhead light came on. I grunted and squinted under the bright light. Ash crawled off me and motioned for me to stand with him. As soon as I was on my feet, he eyed me critically. He patted my body, looked me up and down, and then walked around me to do the same with my back.

As he moved around me, he muttered “What the fuck? What the fuck?” over and over again.

“I’m fine, little witch,” I said. Although I wished the second wolf would come back to try to finish the job. I had a few things I’d like to say and do to him.

I’d always assumed calmness in the face of a difficult situation to be a hellhound trait. After all, no one would want such a powerful species walking around with a hair trigger, but having someone threaten Ash changed everything. My blood churned through me like molten lava, ready to explode and obliterate anyone in its path.

Still, I couldn’t regret staying close to Ash when he needed me.