Black Dog (4 page)

 

CHAPTER
6

I
was seventeen when I left Bear Hollow, Tennessee, for the last time. I had one dress, one pair of shoes, and two dollars that I'd saved working since I was barely fourteen mending and taking in washing with my mother.

I had never seen electric light or indoor plumbing, but I was no dummy. I worked my way to New Orleans, mending clothes for rich women and cleaning houses when I had to, watching children, anything that paid the bills and didn't involve putting my legs in the air for strange men. Prohibition was going strong, and my grandmother had made the best moonshine in Bear Hollow, so it wasn't hard to set up a little shack in the bayous of St. Bernard Parish and watch the money roll in.

She was the one who told me about haints, about the black dogs that prowled the swamps where she grew up, deep in Cajun country. About the
rougarou,
the beast with red eyes who'd consume you, body and soul.

I guessed it was only fitting I'd ended up back there. And I made a good life for myself until I died.

After I became a hound, I'd catch glimpses sometimes of that mirror-­still bayou water, silvered by the moon. Of the things moving in the cypress swamps, ruffling the hanging moss with their passage. No matter where I went, from Anchorage to Juarez and most every back road in between, part of me was always back in that bayou. It wasn't strange to me. After all, it was where I'd left my soul.

Cold water smacked
me in the face, and I choked, sucking in sour-­tasting fabric.

Leo yanked a black cloth sack off my head. I hissed as harsh light abused my dark-­adapted eyes, and bared my teeth at him.

“Calm down,” he said. “You've been napping for a while, and I need to talk to you.”

My head was still muzzy from the tranquilizers, but everything snapped into focus pretty quickly. I was in a chair, two-­legged again, chained down hand and foot. Smells of oil and hot metal and the lack of any furniture besides my chair and a rusty metal table told me I was probably in one of the hundreds of abandoned gas stations that littered the Mojave.

“You keep saying that, and then you keep knocking me out,” I told Leo. He disappeared from the pool of light and wheeled a ratty old rolling chair to face me. He sat, taking a flat silver flask from his pocket and sipping before tucking it away.

“It's hard to talk when all you want to do is shift and rip me apart.”

He was right. I wanted to shift more than anything, the craving like claws in my brain. I was frightened and hurt, and the hound in me knew the right response. Shifting in these chains was going to be a bitch—­I could easily snap all the bones in my arm, and then I'd be a three-­legged dog. That wasn't much more use than a chained-­up woman.

Leo got up and disappeared again. This time he brought back a mechanic's cart covered with a rag. “You're the third hellhound I've caught,” he said. He tossed the rag on the ground, and metal instruments gleamed.

I felt my teeth start to grow, and my muscles rippled under my shirt. Leo flinched a little. Good. At least I knew there was something that could get to him. “This is a hobby for you?” I snarled. I could still be hurt, especially like this. Get hurt bad enough, and I wouldn't be able to shift anymore. I'd be fucked, even if I did somehow convince Leo to take the chains off.

“No,” he said. “This is my job.”

He switched on a soldering iron and laid it back on the cart next to the knives and the sharp, silver needle-­nose pliers. “I'm hoping I won't need any of this,” Leo said. “I'm hoping that you're not like the other hounds, and that you'll actually listen before you start foaming at the mouth. But if not, I can't have you running back to your reaper and telling him all about me.”

“Gary already knows about you,” I said.

Leo frowned, tapping the pliers against the palm of his hand. “Beg your pardon?”

“My reaper. His name is Gary.”

He threw the pliers back on the tray, and I tried not to flinch at the clank. “That's kind of disappointing. I was expecting something like . . . I don't know, Balthazar or Raven or something. ‘Gary' sounds like an insurance salesman.”

“Yeah, he's a salesman,” I muttered. “And he knows all about what you're doing here.”

“Tell me, Ava.” He sat down in the chair and rolled close, close enough that we could have touched. “What
am
I doing here?” He smelled hot, like desert wind, tinged with vodka and cigarettes and something else, that dusty stink that warlocks give off.

“Making deadheads,” I said. “Fucking with the blood suppliers. Beyond that I really don't care.”

“I hate to tell you, but raising the dead and annoying vampires is hardly a master plan.” Leo snorted. “Gary sics you on someone and you just do as you're told.” He tested the iron with the pad of his finger.

“Is this the part where you tell me how pathetic I am, being some Hellspawn's lapdog?” I said. “Because you can save your breath. I know.”

Leo picked up a pair of rusty scissors and moved around me, cutting away my leather jacket. I growled. “I know a lot of leg breakers, Ava,” he said. “Aside from the Hellspawn blood, you and I do a lot of the same work.” He dropped the leather on the ground and leaned down into my face. His was thin and hard, the sort of face that I'm sure scared the piss out of anyone who got on his bad side. Those eyes, which I'd been stupid enough to think looked warm back in the strip club, were burning now, a dangerous heat that would peel the skin right off you. “Somehow, though, I get the feeling you'll be more receptive than the other two.”

“Why?” I said. I wasn't one to try and talk my way out of things. I wasn't good at talking. That was a reaper's job, but my go-­to options of violence and running away were both shot. “What could you possibly want from me?” I asked Leo. “I can't void contracts, and I'm not going to let you go on about your business here, so you might as well start cutting. I can't help you.”

Leo picked up the iron and brought it over to me. The heat made my heart jump, my pulse pounding against my throat. You can get used to pain, but it never gets easier to take.

“I think you can,” he said. “See, my soul is my own, and this Gary keeps you so in the dark you can't tell me what my business is, so I don't want either of those things from you, Ava.”

I blinked at him. “Then what?” I said, hating the fine edge of desperation that had crept into my voice. Leonid Karpov was a scary motherfucker, human or not, and I didn't relish being vulnerable to him.

“I want to kill your reaper,” Leo said. “And you're going to help me.”

 

CHAPTER
7

I
started to laugh. It bubbled out of me unbidden, echoing off the metal walls of the garage. Almost like I was screaming. “You're funny,” I managed. “Look at you, in your scary hit man suit and your creepy torture chamber. You must be delusional if you think this'll end any way but with you on a one-­way ride to Hell.”

Leo pressed the hot iron to my bicep and then I
was
screaming, so loud I felt it tear out of my throat.

He stopped as abruptly as he'd hurt me in the first place. “I'm not joking, Ava. Your reaper sent you here with no clue about what you'd be facing. Alexi almost killed you, and if I'd wanted ten more deadheads to rip you apart, you'd be pieces in black plastic bags by now. He doesn't give a shit about what happens to a creature like you, Ava, so why would you not jump at the chance to get rid of him?”

Shaking, I worked on not tossing my last meal all over my boots. I forced myself to meet Leo's eyes. “Because it's impossible.”

“It's
not
impossible.” Leo's snarl came close to mine. I could see I'd hit a nerve, so I flinched back.

“Maybe not for you, but I can't help you,” I said. “Gary is my boss. He
owns
me. I'm not going to flip on him for some psychopath human that already tried to kill me once tonight.”

The iron hit me again, on the collarbone, but this time I was prepared for it, and my scream came through gritted teeth.

“Don't be stupid,” Leo snapped. “You're disposable to a reaper. There's always more where you came from. He doesn't care about you, Ava. How can you not see that?”

I breathed in, out. Slow and soft, feeling my heart beat and my blood pump. Reminding myself that I was alive. “I do see it,” I whispered. “What
you
don't see is that I don't have a choice.” I squeezed my eyes shut. Sweat and stress tears flooded down my cheeks. “You think this is bad? Even if I get out of here, what Gary does as punishment for not putting you down will be so much worse. It's not a matter of whether or not we have warm fuzzy feelings for each other.”

The shaking now wasn't entirely from what Leo had done to me. I hated it when I had to think about this, about what I really was and how tight Gary's hold was. “It's about who I'm afraid of. And that's Gary.”

It would always be Gary.

I watched Leo pick up a knife, and sighed. “Now, I was already tortured to death once, so if you're going to do it, just get it over with.”

Leo stopped in midmotion, went completely still as if all his joints had locked up. “You remember dying?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, it's sort of hard to forget.”

Leo set down the knife. Something had changed in his eyes. I didn't know what I'd said, but this was more like I'd imagined—­hard and empty, the cruelty that I expected from warlocks with as much power as Leo had.

“That isn't right,” he said. “Hellhounds have no memory of their human lives.”

“I'm a hellhound,” I said. “And I remember a lot more than I want to.”

Leo narrowed his eyes. “The other two—­in Brooklyn and St. Louis—­remembered nothing of their human existence,” he said. “Sure, they knew they'd died and made contracts with reapers to save themselves, but they had no memory of dying or anything leading up to it.”

“I don't remember everything,” I mumbled. I was oddly embarrassed. I'd never even thought to wonder if Gary's other hounds were like me. I thought for sure that Wilson at least had to be a miserable asshole in life to be such a jackass when I met him.

“That you remember anything at all is troubling,” Leo said. I felt my lip twitch back over my teeth.

“I'm so sorry that the information you tortured out of me troubles you,” I said.

“Not me,” Leo said. “But if you do help me, I wouldn't let your boss know that you recall being a human.”

I stayed still and tense as he reached for me, but there was no pain this time. Leo touched my uninjured arm. “Relax, Ava. I don't care that you're a freak. I'm one too. Imagine being the only kid in Brighton Beach who could bring their dead dog back to life.”

“Imagine being the dead dog,” I muttered. Leo laughed. It was kind of shocking, even through the hot pain of the burns on my flesh. He didn't look like a chuckler, and his laugh was clear and genuine, completely at odds with everything else about him.

He took out his flask and held it to my lips. “Drink. It'll take the edge off.”

I didn't disagree with him, so I let the vodka slide down my throat, the chemical burn giving me a shiver.

“Good girl.” He capped the flask and sat down, rolling back and forth so the chair squeaked.

“Is this part of the torture?” I said. Leo shook his head.

“You're a kick in the pants. I'm glad Gary sent you.”

Maybe I could still salvage this. If I could bring something like information on the nut job necromancer plotting his death, I could convince Gary to go easy on me for not shredding the guy when I had the chance.

Maybe.

“So what's your beef with reapers?” I said. “And how exactly do you think you're going to kill one?”

“Reapers are parasites,” Leo said, taking another drink himself. “Parasites with demon magic, but if humans stopped giving up their souls, where would they be then?”

I shrugged. “I'm not the brains of the operation.”

“Clearly you're smart,” Leo said. “Smarter than most hellhounds I've run into.”

I laughed, and it hurt, which was fitting. “That's not a very high bar, trust me.”

“Warlocks can't seem to resist cutting deals with Hellspawn,” Leo said. “I've seen more than one idiot dragged off screaming in the jaws of a hound.”

“But not you,” I said.

Leo's face went from pleasant to furious like a trap snapping shut on my foot. He slammed the flask down on the tray, making all the pointy objects rattle. “I'm nobody's bitch, Ava. Least of all a demon's.”

“You're packing way too much voltage to not have a demon behind you,” I said. “Warlocks who are strictly white don't raise the dead, just to start.”

“Call me gray,” Leo said. Given the chance to talk about himself, he was practically chatting my ear off. “There's a lot of stuff floating around out there. Books, other warlocks. The type who can be convinced to tell you what a demon told them.”

That didn't play. Warlocks are worse than stage magicians—­they never share the tricks up their sleeves. “I'm supposed to believe you tagged a guy like Ivanof and raised him based on some secondhand story?”

Leo's lips parted. “I can be persuasive.”

I wriggled against the chains. Nope, still bone-­crushing tight. “As persuasive as you were with me?”

“I have a skill set a certain kind of person finds valuable,” Leo said. “I didn't enjoy hurting you, if that's what you're asking. I don't
enjoy
hurting anyone. But it doesn't bother me, either.” He slipped out of his suit jacket and slung it on the back of his chair. His black shirt opened at the throat, and I caught ink creeping up above his collar, his wrists, everywhere there was a little bit of skin. Well, there was no rule a Russian gangster couldn't have a hobby.

“I knew your reaper would send someone if his blood dealer went belly up and deadheads started turning tourists into fast food,” Leo said. “And turning Alexi into a deadhead was a bonus, really. Miserable fuck that he was. Did you know he used to dose women with vamp venom when business was slow and drain them while they were out of it? Making him attack but never feed, bend to my will—­that I
did
enjoy.”

“Can I ask you something?” I said. Leo nodded, fishing in his pockets and pulling out a squashed pack of smokes. He offered me one, but I shook my head.

“Did Marty the metathrope have anything to do with this?” I said. Leo's laughter sent a warm feeling up and down my spine. How fucked up was it that a Russian leg breaker who raised zombies on the side and had just finished spot-­welding my skin was calming me down? It wasn't like I held the torture against him, I reasoned. For most Hellspawn, what he'd done to me would be foreplay.

“Marty's a lovable nut job, but he's way too chatty for my liking,” he said. “If he knew me, your reaper would know me.”

“Good,” I said. “One less person I have to kill when I get out of here.”

Leo leaned back and managed to look like he owned the room, even though it was a shitty garage and we were the only ­people in it. “So you'll help me?”

“I told you,” I said. “Even if I wanted to, I can't.”

“See, I think that's bullshit,” Leo said. “You couldn't stop me from hurting you. I have all the power here. I could make you hurt so much you'd forget your own name, but I won't. I
choose
to try and persuade you.”

“I hope you're better at cutting than talking,” I said. “Because this is not changing my mind.” Hounds didn't turn on reapers. Reapers made them, and we served them. Unconditionally. Turning on your reaper was a taboo that had only one outcome. Reapers were our masters. That was that.

“You can choose to fight back,” Leo said. “You can choose to tell this Gary, this asshole who sent you here to be ripped apart by a deadhead without a second thought, that you're not a slave.”

He tilted his head, his black eyes catching the light and reflecting my pale face back at me. “Tell me that you're fine with this. Tell me that you're truly happy being a hound, like the others, and this'll be over. Tell me being Gary's dog is everything you want.”

I felt something like a rock land in my stomach. Usually I didn't think about anything except the job, the next contract to collect on. I didn't think about me and Gary, beyond what he'd do if I failed him.

I sure as fuck didn't think about how I'd ended up like this, how I'd gone from dying in the mud, broken and bloody, to a hellhound bound to Gary.

That was how Gary got me, after all. I was afraid, of dying, of crossing, of finding out what was waiting for me. I let him take my soul and turn me into his monster, together for a hundred years and a hundred more—­the same deal every hound got with their reaper.

I was less than halfway through my sentence, and I was already skating so close to the edge of death I could see across the chasm to the day I'd spend eternity in the Pit.

All that stuff I didn't usually think about knotted up, squeezing a sound from me that was less than a whimper.

“Ava.” Leo's fingers wrapped around my arm and squeezed. His hand was hot and hard and strong, and when I managed to meet his eyes, I felt wet, stinging tears slide down my face.

“I hate him,” I whispered.

“I know,” Leo said, reaching out and brushing away a tear with his thumb. “Believe me, Ava. I know what it is to be under someone's boot.”

I choked on whatever was making my throat tight. I refused to call it fear or especially grief. I didn't feel anymore. I'd left all that with my broken body, there in the mud, when Gary took me in.

Nothing I could tell Gary was going to save me. I'd known that as soon as I'd showed up in Vegas. I was already on thin ice because of Bob Dobkins and this was the kill shot.

This was my life, had been for more lifetimes than any human got. And I couldn't do it anymore.

“Tell me what you need,” I said to Leo.

He sat back, his expression so smug it practically dripped. “I don't care about Gary the reaper, for his own sake. He has something I want.”

I waited, quiet. I don't like the conversational games humans play, feeling each other out while they listen to their own voices. I've never been any good at verbal fencing. Leo sighed. “Aren't you going to ask me what it is?”

“I kind of wish you could tell me while wiping that smug look off your face,” I said. It was probably pointless to hope. Leo was the sort of guy for whom smugness was a chronic condition.

“His Scythe.”

I stopped—­breathing, blinking, I think even my heart stuttered on a beat.

“If you help me get it,” Leo continued, “you can kill him with it. And your contract will be void, and you'll be free.” He grazed his fingers down my cheek again, and I didn't even try to move. “Help me, and Gary will never hurt you again.”

This was insane. I'd gotten knocked around and I'd taken temporary leave of my senses, but they were back now, and I had to get the fuck away from Leo Karpov. Colluding with a nut job necromancer to kill your asshole reaper boss was one thing. Stealing a Hellspawn weapon and using it was another. If I was lucky, I'd only spend eternity in the Pit as punishment for even listening to this.

“Don't back out on me now,” Leo said. I'm sure my face was a five-­car pileup of panic. “If you go crawling back, he'll kill you, and you'll never have this chance again.”

He was right, even if I didn't want to hear it. The deep-­down memories of when Gary had found me and turned me into a hound were supplanted by every memory of every time Gary had taken out his rage on me.

They piled up and crashed into the others, turning the inside of my head into a massacre. Fire and blood, fingers snapped, skin peeled off—­he'd even shaved my head once when I'd taken too long to bring in a hoodoo witch hiding in the Georgia mountains, then kicked me out onto the winter street in bare feet, the nicks in my scalp still bleeding.

“Why do you need a reaper's Scythe?” I said softly.

Leo sat back, a crooked smile on his face. There was none of the warmth I'd glimpsed. We were back to the glass-­eyed gangster who'd tortured me without a second thought. “I want to kill my father.”