Hellhound (31 page)

Ashton twisted my way, still running. The moonlight
illuminated his dark eyes, reflecting off them so they appeared white. The
marks on his left cheek and throat caught my attention. My face tightened with
fury when I registered the wounds inflicted by my claw. Claw marks were like
fingerprints to me, and mine possessed a unique and specific grate. I
recognized my own handiwork anywhere.

I took off after him. His speed increased, and so did
mine. His body curled in on itself as smoke filtered out of his pores. Those
were the distinct telltale signs of a tracker about to take to the skies. Now
was a time to be thankful for Claudius’s nagging to take Antonio’s essence
because sudden and unparalleled minion speed was invaluable.  

Nearly silent, I moved so fast that I startled Ashton
when I appeared in front of him, stopping him dead in his tracks. He must’ve
lost concentration, because the smoke dithered, not knowing what to do just
yet.

“Why are you running?”

He shook his head, sweat beaded down his temples.
“Have to get to the Council for something important.”

“Don’t you know that I brought in Demetrius?”

He made a face, as if he had to think of the right
words. “Ah, yes. I received a transmission about his return and his innocence.
I guess you got what you wanted, Selene. Your lover’s name restored, your
assignment finished, and we don’t have to be partners anymore.”

“Partners? Where in the world have you been? You
didn’t do anything. Aside from that, I need to ask you a few questions.”

“In regards to?”

“Where you really were during the murders.”

His face hardened. “Are you accusing me of something?”

“Yes,” I replied flatly. “You lied to Damares about
where you were, because you sure weren’t with Lydia during the morning of the
crime. Why did you need an alibi?”

“I didn’t have an alibi, and I panicked that the Council
would accuse me of something. I couldn’t say that I was with Lydia because they
ran through her memories and would know that I lied. Damares was my second best
choice, since others were already being gathered into the meeting hall before I
could ask someone else.”

“You’re lying to me.” Because he wouldn’t have known
that Lydia’s memories would be seen at that point in time when he approached
Damares. In fact, he shouldn’t have known that Lydia was even a witness.

Ashton looked around.

“I don’t like liars,” I said.

“That’s all there is to it.”

“How did you know that Lydia was going to enter the cerebral
chamber?”

He paused to ponder on a response. Ah, so Ashton
wasn’t as quick a thinker as he thought he was. Liars never were once the
questions started rolling.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“The truth, Ashton. Were you in that room? Were you
the tracker whose smoke left the throne room through the vents?”

My attention to detail struck a chord. I didn’t give
him a chance to reply when he stuttered over broken words.

“Did you kill them? Who was your accomplice?”

“What? No.”

I took a step forward. “Liar, liar. I don’t like being
lied to,” I growled, my fangs extending to show just how upset I was. I reached
to my back for my loyal companion, the crescent. I would make Ashton talk one
way or another.

Before Ashton took a step away to flee, I grabbed his jaw,
practically crushing it, and whipped his face away from me. Four jagged silver
scars ran deep across his face, and one across his throat.

“How did you get those?” I snarled.

“A fight with a worthless beast,” he snapped back and shoved
me.

Then he took off, the smoke gathering around his body,
preparing to transform him into a cloud. I knew that once he took to the skies,
I wouldn’t be able to bring him back.

I sprinted after Ashton, who ran slower than usual
because his body was in mid-transformation.

“You killed them!” I screeched.

Ashton stumbled, clutching his ears at the sound. He
was about to get a taste of what a vexed Hellhound would do to the man who
ruined her life and led her to destroy her lover. The ideas raced through my
mind of what I would do to him once my claws wrapped around his thick, corded
neck. I would claw him to pieces, including an eye or two, and rip out random
chunks of flesh with my bare fangs. I would cram my hand into his brain while
the other sunk into his heart and drain him. I bathed in fury, drenched with
wrath, drowned in anger.

Ashton stumbled to his feet, making one last dismal
attempt to escape. He wouldn’t leave the ground. In fact, in a short amount of
time, he would find his final resting place buried in a pitiful grave somewhere
where his rotting flesh would feed insects more worthy than him.

Ashton killed my father. I knew this to be true. He
was the reason why I killed my lover. Now it was his turn to face a brutal
death.

“I’m going to kill you!” I shrieked.

Ashton started to take off when I lunged for him, and
not a moment too soon. Two arrows whipped through the air. One embedded itself
in Ashton’s throat, while the other went through his head. He went down flaying
and screaming, but died within seconds.

I landed on top of his body, his face in the dirt,
while I straddled his hips. He lifted his head to breath, choked on blood while
his right hand grasped the wooden arrow that went in sideways through his neck.
He froze. Black blood flowed like a river, glistening in the waning moonlight.
He was dead.

Grabbing Ashton by the hair, a large clump of it
sticking through my clenched fingers, I snapped his head back and then rammed
it into the ground. His body was still after death claimed him, but I wanted to
get at least one raw act of violence against him. I jerked my head to the right,
the direction of the arrows. I made out an archer from my clan who perched on a
sturdy tree limb some distance away.

Archers were known to have precision accuracy. They
aimed for the leg or shoulder, most notably the joints to hinder the invader.
They made few mistakes, like killing a man when they were only supposed to
wound a viable threat long enough to keep him from escaping. Archers didn’t
kill on purpose, unless they were given the kill order.

The archers usually perched on their high places in
the domicile towers, shooting only when provoked, sighting a sure threat, or
under order. What were they doing here on the premises so far from the domicile
and alone?

Whatever the reason, the archer took my kill from me
and prevented the full memory retrieval by damaging Ashton’s brain in the
process. I wasn’t about to let them take everything from me.

I knew that I didn’t have any time to waste. The
archers were near and would catch up to us in a matter of seconds. I had to
extract what I could, despite the growing cacophony of noise around me and the
gaping wound in Ashton’s head. Others were nearby, perhaps sentinels.

Ashton’s death didn’t fill the void that grew from his
treachery. His death wasn’t enough to satiate my bloodlust, not even enough to
satisfy me in knowing that he was dead.

I clawed my fingers into the back of his head and
dipped in, probing and pushing around the infuriating wooden projectile as
Ashton seized beneath me in involuntary jerks since he was far past dead. His
synapses were still in place, his memories ripe for the picking. His flesh grew
taut over bone and muscle, his body temperature dropped to spare his essence. I
retrieved faster and stole all that I could before a sentinel in the form of a jaguar
rushed me.

My fingers were pried from Ashton’s soupy brains. I
cried out as the giant beast landed on top of me, his paws on my chest as he
snarled and sniffed. I remained on my back without any intention of moving,
because if I did, he would go for the throat. These were basic rules of clan
life.

I looked past him as another sentinel in the shape of
a panther and two archers approached. They fell at Ashton’s side and checked
for vital signs, which he no longer possessed. I could have told them that.

When they agreed Ashton was dead, they came toward us
as the jaguar released me. An archer held out his hand, which I took to show
common gratitude instead of displaying flat out skepticism.

“Are you all right, Selene?”

“Yeah. What are you guys doing out here?”

Without glancing at one another, the second archer
answered, “Usual rounds.”

“Since when do the archers roam the premises like sentinels?”

“We try different things every now and then to keep up
with our skills. Can you imagine being on the same tower every day?” He
appealed to my sense of monotonous boredom.

“Why did you shoot?”

“We heard a scuffle and some yelling, and your
unforgettable banshee cry, so we popped on over to see what the ruckus was
about. We saw you chasing him, and we knew that if the Hellhound was chasing
someone, even someone that we knew, that we’d better stop him.”

I stared at the corpse, which quickly paled. “You
stopped him all right.”

The first archer scratched his head. “Our mistake.”

Mistake perhaps, but more likely that it wasn’t. I
went to Ashton’s body.

“What are you doing?” the first archer asked when I
turned Ashton over onto his back and knelt by his chest.

“I’m going to take his essence.” It was too late to
his memories with an arrow in his brain.

“Oh. Maybe we should take him to the Council, first.”

I glared at him. “He’s dead. Why waste his essence?”

The panther, which I presumed was Angel, trotted over
and sniffed the corpse, then lapped the blood on the ground. Gross, but I guess
when an animal, feed like an animal.

I hoped that while the archers jumped down from their
perches in the trees and ran toward us, that they hadn’t seen me retrieve
Ashton’s memories. If they were under order to kill him on sight, chances were
they were also under order to prevent me from knowing his secrets.

I clawed my fingers over Ashton’s chest.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the second archer
said, looming over us.

The panther growled and stepped in between us. Skilled
archer or not, they didn’t want to go up against a shape-shifter, especially
when that shifter was in the shape of a wild beast. The jaguar just sat in
place, watched the entire thing. It was hard to tell what shifters were
thinking when they were in animal form.

While the panther kept the archers at bay, I quickly
dipped my hand into Ashton’s chest and squeezed, absorbing his powers as the
darkness of his essence crawled up my fingers, hand, and arm.

I felt drunk with a sudden gush of power and stumbled
to my feet once I extracted my hand clean out of his chest. My own chest heaved
as I gathered myself. I rummaged through his pants and shirt, finding his phone
and many calls from Danther. I faced the archers.

“Who gave you the kill order?”

They looked perplexed. “Excuse me?”

“You killed a tracker. Who told you to?”

“We’ve already said that it was a mistake. We were out
here on rounds.”

“I don’t buy that. You archers seldom make a mistake
like this, and both of you made a fatal mistake. What are the chances of that?”

They shrugged, not knowing what else to say. Their
lips were tight and I couldn’t decipher if they had an actual kill order or if
this was some horrible and embarrassing accident.

The archers laid Ashton’s body on top of the jaguar’s
back, who took off to a leisurely sprint in front of us as we followed him back
to the domicile.

The panther shifted back to Angel in humanoid form.
His shirt hung over one shoulder. He zipped up, then buttoned, his jeans. He
glanced at me. Angel didn’t even try flashing that flirtatious grin. My fangs
were still extended.

Angel slipped the shirt over his head and picked up
Ashton by the shoulders while the archers took his legs. Angel could’ve easily
thrown Ashton over his shoulder, but he probably didn’t want to get blood
everywhere.

The jaguar retreated to his grounds.

As soon as we stepped in, the entire lobby was in an
uproar, crowding us. The doctors were called down immediately, but they
couldn’t do anything once they saw that the man was clearly dead. Serph was the
first Elder on sight, but Danther pulled me away to question me. He seemed
nervous.

He spotted me from the waiting area and hauled his
butt to make a beeline for me. He faked an appalled expression when he ran his
eyes over the corpse on the floor. He must’ve been waiting for Ashton, the one
whom he called to inform that Demetrius returned.

“What happened, Selene?” Danther asked.

Angel watched us from his position near the corpse at
the head of the crowd.

“Since I realized that Demetrius wasn’t the killer, I
found gaps in Ashton’s story. When I found him, I wanted to question him but he
ran. Since I was running after him when the archers spotted us, they
immediately viewed him as a threat and shot him...in the throat and head.
Ashton hit the ground and died.”