Riley’s Downfall(34)

Never in his life had he seen anyone set a body on fire. The smell was enough to make him gag. It was noxious and made the hairs in Riley’s nose curl from the pure stench that filled the air around him.

“Nice, dick,” the man said as he brushed past Riley and headed toward Eagle.

Riley growled low as he spun on his heel and followed. This asshole was asking for it. He wasn’t sure who he was, but Riley wasn’t going to let anyone walk all over him like he was a mere whelp. He could feel his claws itching to extend and teach this bastard a lesson.

The other hound was down, and his body was burning to a nice crispy fried Cajun meal as Eagle walked toward Riley.

“Pretty gross, huh?”

Gross was an extreme understatement.

“What in the hell is going on, Eagle?” Riley snapped, glancing between the two dead bodies.

“In short,” he said as the two men who had flown in flew out, leaving Riley and Eagle with the mess, “those guys were Dog and Ruthless. They are winged beasts. You just had the pleasure of working with Dog.”

Riley wasn’t sure he wanted to hear any more, but he knew he needed to know what was going on around here. He watched Eagle walk over to the fey who was on the ground, lying as still as death.

“Those hounds we were fighting are from hell. Their bite is not only poisonous,” Eagle said as he lifted the man into his arms, “but smelly as all fuck. I know shifters have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving the bite. Humans have zero. I’m not real sure about fey.”

Riley studied the man in Eagle’s arms and cursed. The male couldn’t be any more than sixteen or seventeen. Why on earth was the kid out here in the middle of the woods in the dead of night? Where were his parents and why had he snuck out?

Nothing was making any sense to Riley.

He felt as though he were the last man to be informed. He was struggling to put all of the pieces together. Why would hellhounds victimize feys? What had the elven people done to warrant such an attack, or was it random? Riley hated all of the unanswered questions spinning around in his head. He wanted answers, and the village was about to wake the fuck up and give them to him.

He was asked to come here and help out. But how could he help when no one was willing to give him a fucking clue as to what was really going on around here? Riley wasn’t stupid. He knew there was more to this than met the eye. He would get the answers he needed or pound the shit out of every resident in this backwoods place.

Eagle carried the man down the dirt path, his steps speedy, but measured. “We have to watch for fever. If he makes it through the next few hours and doesn’t develop a fever, he should be in the clear.”

Riley walked back toward the village, anxious to get to his mate. Sterling was human, vulnerable against the hellhounds. Fuck, he was vulnerable against any of the preternatural creatures that existed in Riley’s world. It hit home just how dangerous his life was for his mate.

Riley had been so damn terrified when he saw the man shift into a dog. If the hound scared him that badly, a bear shifter, Sterling didn’t stand a chance. Riley shuddered to think of anything bad happening to Sterling. The man was innocent, naïve, and wouldn’t know how to handle a large dog. Granted, his mate was great with animals, but Riley knew for a fact that this was one beast Sterling couldn’t tame.

“What about the burning bodies?” Riley asked as he glanced back in the direction they had just come from. Smoke was still billowing up from the freshly burned bodies.

Eagle shook his head. “There is no need to worry about them. Once they are done burning, there won’t be a trace of them anywhere.”

Huh.

As they neared the village, Riley noticed that there were onlookers standing outside their huts. Their eyes were locked onto the body in Eagle’s arms, their eyes narrowed.

“Whose child is this?” he shouted as he slowed his pace and then stopped, pointing at the child in Eagle’s arms.

No one responded.

Riley felt his anger hit an all-time high as he glared at the elves. “He belongs to no one?”

One lone man stepped forward, his face a mask of disgust and hatred. “He belongs to Ishka and Erowyn. You had no right to interfere!”

“Interfere in what?” Riley asked as his entire body chilled. What in the hell was going on around here? What were these people into? His took a few steps forward until he was standing in the middle of everyone, watching most of them glare back at him, while a handful looked terrified.

The man speaking to Riley pointed at the limp man in Eagle’s arms, snarling his words as he spoke. “He was a sacrifice, and you interfered. Now the hounds will descend upon us and kill every last man, woman, and child in our tribe, shifter. I hope you have a better plan.”