Hard to Kill (Hell Hounds Harem Book 6) Page 13

  “Zaza came into the picture when I first tried to raise the dead and he gave me hints about where to find things. The cost was blood. The only commodity I really had at that age anyway.” She tucked her strawberry blonde hair behind her ears. “My dad split us up,” her gaze shifted to Sebastian, “I went to a private school up north and my sister went to another here at home. I was part of a gifted program for students with… above average skills.”

  Pride worked its way around the room. Tilly was as smart as she was sexy. Fuck, they were a lucky bunch of mongrels to have her.

  “I met Liam there,” she turned to Bishop, “that’s my friend you met that day at my dad’s house. He was a great hacker. Terrible poker face, but damned good at reading people.” Her lips turned up into a small smile, “He and I ran an underground gambling ring for a little while. I earned enough money to buy my first seat at a private auction in Maine. Took Liam with me, but he stayed hidden in the back. I’d gone there to bid on a collection of tarot cards. The bid got to twenty-seven thousand dollars before the gavel fell.”

  “You paid twenty-seven grand for a deck of cards?”

  “No, Bishop. Someone else did. I stole the deck.”

  “How?”

  “Liam hacked into the system’s databases and ran the names. From there, it didn’t take a lot of tracking to figure out where the guy lived. I went to his house and stole them while he fucked his date on the hood of his car in the garage. Liam was the date, so he gave me plenty of time to get in and out.”

  This was the second time in ten minutes Bishop had to pick is goddamn jaw up off the floor.

  “Soooo fast forward a little bit. By now, it was my senior year, I’d stolen tons and got nowhere with it. I couldn’t drop out, that didn’t bring enough shame to the family name in my opinion. So I got into enough trouble to rack up infraction after infraction until they finally kicked me out. My father did the walk of shame escorting me out of his alma mater. I was elated, naturally.”

  “Naturally,” Valor huffs. “I canna say I’m impressed with your logic there, lass. All that just to piss your father off?”

  “It wasn’t to piss my father off. It was to help Viv.” Tilly could have turned Valor into a dartboard with the dagger eyes she tossed at him. “My sister was home alone all the time while dad was out travelling the world. He wasn’t around to see that she’d fallen into depression, was battling anorexia, her grades were shit, and she’d gotten pregnant.”

  Tilly thrust her chin out. “She lost the baby super early, so dad never found out. Her anorexia probably had something to do with it.” She stopped talking for so long, Bishop grew nervous. “We never got along so well,” her voice faded to a whisper. “Jealousy and love have a terrible habit of ripping relationships in half. I was jealous Vivian got the childhood without nightmares, could continue dancing while my balance continued to get worse, and then,” she shook her head, “then things got worse from there, I guess.”

  “When did she meet Jimmy?” Drake asked out of nowhere.

  “He was the fucker who knocked her up,” Tilly’s tone was razor sharp, “He married her right after they graduated. His family was stupid rich like ours. They ran in all the same circles. She only knew him, and he fed her enough compliments to get her to cling, before tearing her down to make her helpless. And whenever I would try to step in to intervene, Jimmy was right there telling her I was as crazy as my mother and that I was only trying to drag her down because I felt bad about myself.”

  “Mother. Fucker.” Bishop scrubbed his face. Don’t talk, don’t talk. She needs you to keep listening, Hound.

  “Some things happened on both our ends and on my twenty-third birthday, I made a big fucking mistake. I got ahold of a book and tried a few spells that I wasn’t familiar with. Vivian thought she’d surprise me that night with dinner and a movie. She had a key to my apartment because I wanted her to have a safe place,” she snorted like that was ironic.

  “Why did she need a safe place, Tills?”

  “She never admitted it, but I think Jimmy hit her a few times.”

  Every Hound in the room growled.

  “That was a bad day,” she spoke into her lap. “I tried those spells not knowing she was coming over and…” Tilly looked up at Valor, “I turned on her. The magic in me,” she swirled her finger in circles around her head, “I lost my damn mind. I went crazy, spoke in tongues, and I don’t even know what else. Zaza saved my ass and banished the whatever-the-fuck I’d let into me, but the damage was done. Vivian called our father from the bathroom and when he showed up, I was nearly unconscious on the floor. Made it easy to put me in a car and haul my ass to a mental institution. The fresh cuts and old scars on my arms were just more ammo for them to use against me.”

  Bishop’s heart hammered in his chest. God, no wonder she was so fucking scared of hospitals.

  “It didn’t take long for them to diagnosis my ‘psychotic episode’ as a mental breakdown. Too much stress and yada yada yada. My father never came to visit me. Neither did Viv. Not that I was all that surprised, my father didn’t visit my mother much either. And Vivian felt guilty, so she stayed away instead of facing me.” Tilly swept a tear away.

  Fuck if Bishop didn’t fight everything in him to not scoop her up and hold her. But this story was far from over. He needed to stay put for now.

  “Almost a year after my release, Viv and I talked it out. I let her believe I had a mental breakdown and never said anything about the curse or my foolish attempts to stop it. From then on, any place I stayed in had a lot of bolts and a lock on the closet door. The last thing I wanted to have happen was for me to accidentally hurt someone else. I kept my shit to myself and figured I’d make do with the time we had left together. That’s when I came up with the bucket lists. Best idea ever, too. We grew close and had a blast.”

  Dying of curiosity and wanting to see more of her sweet smile, Bishop asked, “What’s your favorite thing you did with her?”

  “We went skinny dipping in the middle of the night, in the ocean,” she beamed, “after watching Jaws.”

  Bishop laughed so loud it must have scared her because she jumped. “Fuck that sounds like fun, woman.”

  “It was,” she laughed a little more. “That was one time when Viv let her guard down and we just squealed and splashed and forgot about the world.”

  “She was lucky to have you, Tills.”

  She ignored Baz’s compliment. “Viv was the forgiver in the family. She never saw dad’s disappearance as a bad thing. He was trying to make the most of his life, she’d say. So that’s what she did too. I was the only one not wearing rose tinted glasses.” Her smile fell. “I spent my life wasting it. She spent hers living it.”

  Tilly suppressed a sob and this time Bishop did grab her. She went willingly too. “Fuck, Tilly.” To say he was sorry would have been a truth and a lie. He kissed the side of her neck and wrapped his arms around her.

  “After my father died,” she continued in Bishop’s lap, “I had enough money to bid on auctions and pay for what I won. If I was outbid, I stole it or had Liam steal it for me. I continued down the road of curses and treachery. My sister skipped down the lane of luxury and love. In the end, neither one of us got far enough. Fast-forward some more and here we are, boys. Dead. Souls sold. Howling away.”

  She laced her hands through Bishop’s. “Right before I moved in with you was when Viv and I got into a huge fight again. After our father died, everything he had was split fifty-fifty between Viv and me. She and Jimmy wanted to buy me out of my half of our father’s house. That wasn’t going to happen. I tried to prolong it as much as I could, but then shit went sideways and I didn’t get a chance to fix that either.”

  “What’s the big deal about the house?” Drake asked. “It’s just brick and mortar. You should have just let them buy you out. Take the money and leave it all behind you.”

  “Oh I didn’t care about the house or the money, Drake,” she crawled out of Bishop�
��s lap and sat in her own seat again. “It’s what’s buried in the yard I didn’t want them getting.”

  Please don’t say it’s a dead body. Please don’t say it’s a dead body.

  “Every object of magic I’ve ever stolen is buried in that yard. The place is so poisoned I could never have let my sister live there. And if the day of reckoning ever came, I sure as shit didn’t want my sister to be caught in the crosshairs.”

  Valor’s hand dropped to his lap. Now they were all basically picking their mouths up from the floor. “How much is back there, lass?”

  “Enough to make the Devil’s balls tuck in tight.”

  “And,” Valor’s tone turned dark and suspicious, “what were ye saving it all for?”

  “I wasn’t saving it for anything. I was keeping it safe from the world I’d fallen into.” She got up and started pacing. “You have no idea how many people out there covet this stuff, Hounds. I would go with my parents when I was little. My mother taught me what to look for and how to see the real from the fakes. My father taught me the calmness that one needed when placing a million dollar bid on a scrap of canvas. Money was money – easy come, easy go. But power? That’s the stuff that seeped into you. Stained you. Tainted you. Some collectors are twisted individuals. They didn’t collect to appreciate, they collected to annihilate. I was no damn better. I wanted those objects for my own personal gains.”

  “Ye wanted them so ye could find out how to break your curse, that’s hardly being nefarious.”

  “Who says that’s all I did?” Oh her smile was ten kinds of wicked. “And I’ve got it all memorized up here,” she tapped her temple. “Every book, every spell, all the incantations, prophecies, pictures, it’s all in here. That’s a helluva curse to live with too, having a memory like mine.” She turned to look at Baz and frowned. “There was a scroll that predicted the dark angels created by the fallen one would infest the world.”

  Drake guffawed, “The fuck does that even mean?”

  “I think that’s what Baz’s back is about. This world is about to have one helluva second coming, and I’m not talking about Jesus, Hounds. I mean something way bigger and more powerful than the son of God.” She spun and looked at Valor, “Wait, is Jesus real?”

  Valor shrugged, “How the Hell should I ken, lass? I’m a Hell Hound. All I’ve ever seen was the Devil.”

  “Huh,” Tilly waved the distracting thought away. “Well, I believe our Hound was the dark angel of lust up there. Made by Lucifer – the world’s most notorious fallen one.”

  Bishop made a what-the-fuck face. “I think that’s taking shit a little too far, Sweetness. Baz just—”

  “Can’t control his sexual nature when it’s been starved.” Drake jumped in. “But he’s never been that consumed before and he’s never fucking had marks on his back like that until now. And they do look exactly like wings.”

  “Not everything I’ve read was real. But some of it certainly was. It’s sometimes hard to figure out what’s genuine and what’s fake.” Tilly shrugged, “Go talk to Lucifer about it if you don’t think I’m right.”

  “It’s not that we’re doubting you, Sweetness, it’s just,” Bishop tossed his arms up because he had no damn clue how to proceed.

  “She might be right, or… shit,” Baz scrubbed his face and pulled his shirt off. “What’s it fucking look like now?”

  “Faint black lines under your skin,” Valor inspected it. “It’s faded now.”

  “Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s not. Either way, we need to bring this to Lucifer.” Valor sighed. “We need to go now. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can help our Hound.”

  Bishop ran a hand through his hair, “Fuck me, I wasn’t expecting this shit.”

  Tilly stood and shuffled around the coffee table. She didn’t get too far before Bishop yanked her arm and brought her in for a kiss. “That’s a helluva life story, Sweetness.”

  “B-rated horror movie kinda life, huh?”

  He tilted her chin with his forefinger. “What the fuck did we do to deserve you?”

  “Whatever it was,” Valor tugged her away so he could kiss her next, “I’m glad we did it. We should keep doing it, just to make sure we get to keep her.”

  Tilly’s smile was small but warm. After Baz pulled back on his t-shirt, she stared at the twins and jabbed a finger in the air at them. “You two are next in the hot seat.”

  “The fuck does that mean?” Drake scowled.

  “It means enough with the silence. Both of you. All of you, actually. You’re all taking turns on the hot seat when we get back.”

  “Come on, we need to talk to Lucifer,” Valor looked one part crest-fallen, two parts annoyed as hell.

  “I can’t go with you,” Tilly said. “I can’t go back there yet.”

  Yeah, okay, so Drake was exceptionally pissed now. “You need to come down there and tell him what you just told us.”

  “I can’t. We made a deal. I can’t go back yet.”

  “A deal with the Devil?” Bishop asked.

  Tilly nodded and looked over at Sebastian. “You better get down there though, Baz. I’ll wait here.”

  The Hell Hounds were just starting to argue when Drake held up a hand, “I’ll stay with her. No way in fucking Hell are we ever leaving her home alone again.”

  It was nice to know Bishop wasn’t the only bastard who’d been haunted with the guilt of Tilly’s murder. It might have brought her to them for good, but how she got killed wasn’t right. And it hadn’t been avenged yet.

  “Agreed,” Bishop turned to Valor, “I’m staying with her, too. Divide and conquer, Hounds. Valor go with Sebastian. You two,” he pointed at Tilly and Drake, “get some fucking shovels. We’re digging up everything Tilly’s buried and sending it to Lucifer to keep safe.”

  It might have been his imagination, but Bishop swore he just heard Tilly mumble, “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Chapter 16

  Valor and Sebastian entered Hell and immediately felt like something was off. Valor pulled out a blade and palmed the thing, keeping his eyes and ears open. They entered Lucifer’s main hall and saw Kalen and Byrne talking. Both had matching frowns and shut the fuck up when they saw Val and Baz.

  “What’s going on, Wolf?”

  Kalen stepped away from Byrne and rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s a situation in Purgatory. Something’s gone real wrong with Asher. Lucifer and his brothers have been trying to heal him, but it’s not looking too good.”

  “Where’s his pack?”

  “With him. I shouldn’t say anything more until we know what the hell it is, but… fuck it,” Kalen leaned in and spoke in low tones, “I don’t know what the hell happened to him in those catacombs, but he hasn’t been the same. In fact, he’s lost his damn mind back there. Mumbling about the end of the world and shit. Then he fucking sprouts wings on his back. Black as ink and etched into his skin like a fucking tattoo. I half thought he’d sprout feathers.”

  Baz stiffened.

  Normally Valor didn't air pack business, but this was different. "Show him," Valor nodded to Baz.

  The Hell Hound tugged his shirt off and turned.

  "Mother of God," Kalen whispered. The Wolf had balls enough to trace his fingers over Sebastian's markings. "Does it hurt?"

  Baz shook his head.

  “How do you feel?"

  "Exhausted. Confused. And horny as hell." Baz swiftly tugged his shirt back on and crossed his arms over his chest. "What about Asher?"

  Kalen's frown deepened, "In much worse shape. His markings are much darker, as are his thoughts. He has enough wrath in his veins to raze the fucking world."

  "Has anyone else suffered like this?" Valor looked at Kalen and then to Byrne. Both of them shook their heads.

  "Tanner's been keeping track of everything as much as he can,” Kalen explained, “There's been a rise in stabbings and other forms of violence. I can't say that's really a red flag nowadays though. Tanner begs to differ, but
I've been dead longer. I've seen the cycle of brutality among the humans."

  Valor agreed with Kalen. They'd been in this world for a long goddamn time. Everything had a cycle. A rise in violence was sadly part of that.

  Baz cleared his throat, "Why is Asher locked away? Did he do something?"

  "He was in far worse shape than you and your brother when he got out of the catacombs. He hasn't been right at all. And Lucifer hasn't been able to use any more of the healing fires on him because," Kalen's mouth clamped shut.

  "Because of Sara?"

  Kalen nodded and looked at the floor. "I'm so fucking mixed up over it, I can't even think straight anymore."

  "It's not just Sara," Valor wanted to make that very clear. "I know Lucifer wants to keep her safe as possible because of the baby, and for that, no one would argue with his decision to save what little power he has left to give to her unborn child. But our maker is no longer stable. Nothing fucking is."

  Kalen's green eyes held Valor's attention for a heartbeat, "You know something about our maker we don't, Valor?"

  What price would he pay for outing Lucifer's secrets now? It didn't matter. It was time to speak out.

  "After what happened with Hell's walls and the malanum and Lucifer wiping out many of our enemies…. It cost him, Hounds. It cost him his balance of good and evil. Too much evil was annihilated that day by the Devil's hand. Now there's more good than evil out there."

  "And that's a bad thing? Having more good than evil?" Byrne's tone was mocking and Valor didn’t appreciate it.

  "Aye," Valor growled. "If our maker is off balance, so shall we be. And if he doesna equalize the good and evil in some way, we'll all go down with him."

  "And so will the rest of the world." Lucifer's voice was deep and ragged. He sauntered into the room, covered in blood and sweat with his brother's right behind him. "That's the motherfucking truth, too, although I'd like to be the one to tell the rest of the packs if you don't mind."

  "What the hell, Satan?" Byrne threw his hands up in the air. "Just... do whatever you need to do to fix it."