Could be any manner of demon.
Well, gee, that’s comforting.
Amusement drifted down the telepathic line. There’s only one way you’re going to know what it is.
Says the man who’s safe on the other side of the door.
The amusement died. If I could swap places, I would.
I know. I shuffled on. The slope continued its gentle downward arc, and the odd assortment of smells neither increased nor decreased. After a minute or so, the tunnel began to widen, and I was able to stand.
I dusted the dirt from my hands and knees, then looked around. The room was small and on the square side of round, and, like the tunnel, shored up by wood. There didn’t appear to be anything hiding in corner shadows, despite the animallike odors haunting the air.
Talk to me, Riley.
I’ve reached the cellar. I took a step, and the sound echoed on the wooden floor. A chill scampered across my skin, though I wasn’t entirely sure why. My gaze caught a white candle sitting in an alcove to my left, and beside it sat a box of matches. I mentioned them to Quinn, and added, Is it safe to light?
Riley, you’re a dhampire with infrared sight. You don’t need candlelight.
It’s a psychological thing. I think this place would feel better with a little regular light.
Do it, then.
I placed one of the bottles near the wall, out of the way, then tucked the other under my arm and grabbed the handily placed box of matches to light the wick. Yellow light flared softly across the darkness, lending weight to the corner shadows but somehow offsetting the odd chill.
There doesn’t appear to be anything here.
Check the floor.
I glanced down. Up until now, part of me had been hoping that Quinn was wrong, that magic wouldn’t play a part in this whole setup. But, as usual, my hopes were dashed.
There’s wax remains of five black candles standing at each of the points of a pentagram that appears drawn onto the floorboards by ash or something like that. Around this, we have fist-sized black stones forming a circle.
The black stones are warding stones. They’re stronger than regular protection circles, but perform the same basic functions.
I studied the nearest stones for a minute, noting the way the black surface seemed to swallow rather than reflect the candlelight. Will the holy water or salt have any effect on them?
On them? No. And depending on the type of spell used, they may even prevent you from putrefying the pentagram and making it unusable.
How?
They form a physical barrier. Place your hand near the stones to see what I mean—but be careful.
I stepped closer to the nearest two stones and raised a hand. Electricity buzzed across my fingertips like little angry flies. As I got closer, mini flickers of red lashed the air, like lightning about to strike. I stopped my hand a whisker away from the barrier, watching the almost angry light show, letting the energy of it flow across my skin. It felt foul. Evil, even.
Not surprising given that the pentagram it protected was being used to call creatures from the dimension of hell itself.
I dropped my hand, shaking it a little to get some warmth back into my fingers and to lose the feel of the power. As I stepped back, something stirred in the shadow-filled corner to my right and the odd mustiness sharpened abruptly.
A low rumble ran across the silence, making the small hairs on my neck stand on end. I reached for the knife, but my fingers had barely closed around the hilt when the shadows found shape.
And what a shape.
It was big and black, with yellow eyes that gleamed with unnatural fire in the pale candlelight and teeth as long as my forearm.
It wasn’t a demon.
It was a hellhound.
Chapter 9
Houston, we have a problem. I was gripping the knife so hard my knuckles positively ached, but I hadn’t yet drawn the blade from the sheath. I had a bad feeling that if I moved, if I so much as twitched, the thing in the corner with the fearsome-looking teeth would attack.
And those teeth looked strong enough to bite me in half.
There’s a demon? Quinn’s tension suddenly flooded the link between us, until I wasn’t sure where his ended and mine began.
If a hellhound is classed as a demon, then, yeah, one of them.
A hellhound is a stronger class of demon, and won’t be stopped by the salt. It can, however, be burned by holy water.
I awkwardly began to undo the lid of the water bottle one-handed. As shields went, it didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence. Particularly when the creature lowered its head and snarled again. The sound rolled around the room, and if I’d been in wolf form, hackles would have risen. This thing might be a demon, but it was a doggy demon, and my wolf soul just didn’t take to being threatened by anything canine.
Which is why I mostly kept my wolf in check. Sometimes she had absolutely no sense.
Do I need to slice its head off to kill it, or will any old well-placed stab work?
Slowly, carefully, I began to draw the knife from the sheath. The rumbling growl got louder, the threat in the creature’s eyes sharper.
I’m afraid you’ll have to take its head off.
Crap. That meant getting closer to those needle-sharp, feet-long teeth than anyone with any sort of sense would want to.
The knife finally inched clear of the sheath. The hellhound’s growl reverberated again, a low sound of warning and anger. Tension crawled through my limbs and sweat broke out across my brow. With the knife at the ready, I continued my awkward attempt to undo the water bottle.
The hellhound sprang. I threw myself sideways, hitting the wooden floor harder than necessary and driving the air from my lungs. As I gasped at the shock, the bottle slipped from my hand and rolled away, spurting droplets of water that sizzled and steamed across the floor as it did so. I cursed and lunged after it, only to hear the click of sharp nails tearing wood as the creature came at me again. I rolled away and slashed sideways with the knife. The blade scraped across the hound’s hide, slicing through hair but not skin.It snarled, revealing nasty-looking gums to accompany the nasty teeth. I jumped to my feet, waving the knife in front of me, trying to catch the creature’s attention long enough to try an attack. It was smarter than that. Its gaze stayed on mine, luminous and deadly. The fear stirring my stomach got stronger. I hadn’t signed on to fight creatures of myth and magic. Psychos and rogue vampires were more than enough for me.
The hellhound sprang again. I twisted out of its way, slashing at the soft flesh of his neck, hoping to at least sever something vital. But it shifted at the last moment, becoming something less than substantial, and suddenly it was behind me.
Teeth sank into my flesh, spurting warmth down the back of my leg. I bit back a scream and twisted around, driving the knife blade deep into the creature’s right eye, into his skull.
Blood gushed from the creature’s eye socket, spurting warmly over my fingers. The creature roared and wrenched its head backward, tearing my flesh in the process. Pain flashed white-hot through my body, and my breath hissed through clenched teeth. But I kept a grip on the knife, and forced myself to move—hobble—out of the creature’s immediate reach.
My knife blow had been hard enough, and deep enough, to have struck brain matter. It should have killed it outright. It didn’t, because this was no ordinary beastie. Something I’d partially forgotten in the heat of battle.
The hound shook its head, spraying droplets of blood that hit the force-warding stones and sizzled out of existence. Then it leapt, arcing across the small space that separated us. Again I twisted out of the way, but this time it must have been expecting the move, because it shifted in midair. Its body hit mine, thrusting me forward with incredible force.
I smashed into the wall face-first, crushing my nose and splitting my lip. Blood spurted, the metallic taste filling my mouth and making my stomach stir threateningly. For a moment, everything was red, and I wasn’t sure if it was blood or the angry energy of the nearby warding stones. I pushed away from the wall, felt rather than saw the impetus of the hound’s approach, and dropped flat and rolled. Only to remember the stones. I thrust out a hand, stopping my momentum inches from the warding circle even as I slashed at the air with the knife. The silver blade cut through the flesh of the creature’s underbelly as it sailed over my length, missing the hissing wall of energy by a whisker. Black blood spurted from the creature’s wound, spraying across my face and arms and stinging like acid.
I swore and scrambled away, following the line of stones, using it to protect one side of my body, in much the same way as I might have used a wall. The electricity of it buzzed across my face, and the warning flickers of red fire cut across the shadows, giving the room a sullen angry glow.
Slicing open the hound’s stomach didn’t appear to be slowing it down any, though I don’t know why I expected it to when stabbing a knife into its brain had zero effect. As I stood there, staring at the creature staring at me, the realization came that this was a fight I was never going to win. Not playing it this way. He was too quick, too strong. And he was a demon without living restrictions.
This thing is going to tear me to pieces before I ever get near its neck.
Then use the power of the stones against it.
Won’t that warn our magician that something is going on?
Yes, but if you do not think you can sever its head, then we have little other choice.
Okay. I took a deep breath, then made a sideways leap for the barrier. The hound attacked the minute I moved, slashing out with wickedly barbed claws. I twisted and dropped at the last moment, but the creature’s blow caught my left sleeve and tore into flesh. It didn’t matter, because it was concentrating on me rather than where it was going, and that’s exactly what I wanted. The creature hit the wall of energy and the stones reacted instantly. Red fire erupted, surrounding the hellhound in a whirling, incandescent cauldron of flame, burning it, consuming it, in little more than a blink of the eye, until there was nothing left, not even ash, to scatter lifelessly down to the floor.