Black Dog (30 page)

Authors: Caitlin Kittredge

BOOK: Black Dog

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“And Leo?” I persisted. Uriel pointed at the elevator.

“He's already free.”

I went to the door and pressed the black button set into the featureless wall. I didn't think the Fallen deserved to be wiped out wholesale, but I also didn't think somebody who lied to me and told me I was always going to be a slave deserved my undying loyalty, either. Who was responsible for what happened to me in Bayou St. Charles a century ago, and the time before that, and the time before that, even if he didn't remember.

If getting out alive took agreeing to be Uriel's personal Fallen hit squad, then I'd do it. I'd do anything to survive. That wasn't the hound. That was me. The person I'd been all those millennia ago when Azrael had snatched me up and twisted me into the hound of Hell.

“Ava,” Uriel called as the elevator doors rolled back. I turned. Shadowed as he was by the light of his office, he looked downright spooky, like a bird of prey watching me from a high wire.

“Yeah?” I whispered.

“If you try and fuck me over, there won't be a place in Hell or on Earth you can hide from me,” Uriel said cheerfully. “I'll find you and I'll make you suffer.”

The doors rolled shut before I could respond and I jabbed the top button, collapsing against the wall with my heart pounding. In the last twelve hours I'd been kidnapped by Lilith, traveled to Hell for the first time, almost been stranded in the Hellspawn equivalent of a supermax, and met an angel who would probably peel my skin like a grape if I crossed him.

And I was going to have to. Because scary as Uriel was, I was through being somebody's bitch. Nobody got to tell me to kill on command, ever again.

The doors rolled back and the lights flickered as I stepped out, and I winced as bright desert sun hit my eyes. I was standing on the side of the highway, the brown and red rolling hills of the Mojave spread out as far as the eye could see. The tall chain fences of the Nevada Proving Ground stood far away down a hill, but I was free of Tartarus. The crossroads had brought me back.

The air was hot and dusty and full of diesel fumes from the trucks rumbling in the distance as they headed down the mountain grade toward Vegas, and it had never smelled better.

I lifted my face and felt the hot sun.

I was alive
. I'd never let myself think of it like that, not since that night so many years ago. It might not be the way I'd wanted it, but I was alive and that was beautiful and I kind of wanted to scream.

I opened my eyes when a car rumbled to a stop on the shoulder of the highway. It was low and black, classic muscle that grumbled like it was alive, white exhaust snorting from the tailpipe. The headlights were crimson, and as the window lowered I leaned down to tell the driver I didn't need a ride. I gasped instead.

“Hey,” Leo said. “You look a little lost.”

I yanked open the door and dove across the seat, wrapping my arms around him and squeezing. Leo grunted but put his arm around me in return. “If somebody had told me being dead would be this sweet I wouldn't have tried so hard to stay alive.”

I sat back, looking at him. “Leo, you knowâÂ”

“I know,” he cut me off.

“And Lucifer and Lilith .Â .Â .”

“Lilith went through the gate right along with you and her boyfriend and she didn't come back out,” Leo said coldly. “I made sure of it.” He reached over and opened the glove box. The interior of the car was as black as the outside, the glove box lined with satin. A small leather-Âbound black notebook sat inside. I picked it up and paged through it. The pages were blank, but as I looked, a name floated into view on the first page, followed by another, and another, so many that they crowded together in dizzying, indecipherable text.

“As far as anyone on this earth might care,” Leo said, putting the car in gear but not releasing the brake, “I died back there in Oklahoma. Now it's just you and me.”

“And a whole bunch of reapers with no leader who probably want your balls on a nice silver tray for sending Lilith to Tartarus,” I said.

Leo looked at me. “Hey, if you don't want this, you can walk away.”

I should have told him. Right there in the car, I should have told him the truth about Uriel and what I'd agreed to do. I should have told him everything.

But I didn't. I was alive. I had time, time to figure out what I was going to do about Uriel's ultimatum and about Clint's death sentence and about what Leo and I were supposed to do with this new ledger, weighted with the names of all those who had escaped from Tartarus.

Not to mention I had Leo. I'd never met anyone like him, and I didn't talk because I wanted to stay there, right there in the car with him, for as long as was humanly possible. I'd felt invisible until I met him, because he was who I was meant to stand beside, our souls irretrievably linked by Azrael.

Azrael was probably going to be sorry he'd ever brought us to Hell in the first place.

“I'm ready,” I told Leo. “Where are we going?”

He accelerated onto the highway, heading east. “Got an address in that book for a place called Head Office. It's in Minneapolis. Figured that's as good a place to start as any.”

I was quiet for a moment, and he looked at me as the road unfurled outside. “Ava?”

“What are we going to do?” I said quietly. “If it's the same as before, and we just keep running into problems like Lilith? Nothing ever ends well for me, Leo. Ever.”

Leo shrugged. “Then we do what we were made for. We send the problem back to Hell, and we keep on going. It's not like either of us was ever going to have a happy ending, Ava. But we're together, and as far as I'm concerned that's not all bad.”

“For me either,” I said. Leo smiled and opened up the car's throttle. “Hey,” I said, looking through the glove compartment and finding nothing but gum and an antique highway map. “Where's the Scythe?”

Leo gestured around himself. “You're sitting in it.”

I felt my eyebrow go up. “I guess when you're created by the Fallen you get the VIP reaper treatment.”

Leo pulled the familiar black pouch out of his jacket and handed it to me. “Doesn't have much juice anymore. I think icing Lucifer took the sting out of it. It's yours to do what you want with it.”

I took the Scythe and turned it over in my hands. I shivered a little as I remembered the pain when Leo had stabbed me. When Annabelle had used a Scythe on me and when Gary had used his the time before that.

I rolled down the window and chucked the Scythe out as we went around a curve. It flashed once in the sun and disappeared into a ravine. “Minneapolis, huh?” I said. “I hate the cold.”

“Doesn't bother me,” Leo said. “I'm built for it. I'm Russian. Was,” he corrected himself. “I'm gonna have a hard time getting used to that.”

“It gets easier,” I said. Leo reached over and patted my leg.

“I'm glad I have you to show me the ropes.”

“I'm glad we made it long enough for me to show you,” I said, and really meant it. Leo went quiet after that, but I didn't mind. I didn't mind what was waiting for us in Minneapolis, that our time could be cut short if one Hellspawn took it into his head he didn't like the changeover. I didn't even mind that Uriel was expecting me to become his executioner or that I still didn't really know anything about Hell and its obviously FUBAR politics beyond the tiny slice I'd been shown by Lilith.

Those were problems for tomorrow. Right now, today, I was alive, and I could sit here forever with Leo, driving into the rising sun and watching the road slip away, mile after mile, under my wheels.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caitlin Kittredge has written fifteen novels for adults and teens, including the award-Âwinning Iron Codex trilogy. She also writes the horror comic
Coffin Hill
for DC/Vertigo. Caitlin lives in Massachusetts with several spoiled cats and a vast collection of geeky ephemera. When she's not working she enjoys fixing up her 1881 Victorian house and reading extremely nerdy nonfiction books about serial killers, the cold war, fringe science, and anything else that strikes her fancy.

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Advance Praise for
Black Dog

“As dark as hell,
Black Dog
is one wild ride, and I loved every delicious, twisted moment. Caitlin Kittredge is an author at the top of her game. Urban fantasy doesn't get more kick-ass than this.”

âAdam Christopher, author of
Empire State

“Caitlin Kittredge's
Black Dog
reads like
The Sopranos
with all the forces of Heaven and Hell at stake. A riveting, fun, and dangerous ride with angels, demons, necromancers, and a badass heroine to root for!”

âMelissa de la Cruz,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Blue Bloods
and
Witches of East End

“Some books steal your heart, but
Black Dog
will steal your soul. Caitlin Kittredge has given the urban fantasy genre a kick in the faceâshe gives the genre tropes a much-needed upgrade and slathers the whole thing in a heaping helping of horror, humor, and hard-hitting prose. I want more and I want it yesterday.”

âChuck Wendig, author of
Blackbirds

“Mwahahaha . . . That was wicked! Couldn't put it down.
Black Dog
is off the chain and Kittredge is in top form in this dark, twisty trip down a gritty road to Hell.”

âKat Richardson, bestselling author of
Greywalker

“Caitlin Kittredge at her ferocious best.
Black Dog
sinks its teeth and claws into you and doesn't let go. And you won't want it to.”

âRichard Kadrey,
New York Times
bestselling author of the Sandman Slim seriesÂ

Also by Caitlin Kittredge

Black London Series

Street Magic

Demon Bound

Bone Gods

Soul Trade

Devil's Business

Dark Days

Iron Codex Trilogy (for young adults)

The Iron Thorn

The Nightmare Garden

The Mirrored Shard

CREDITS

Cover design by Adam Johnson

Cover photographs: woman Â© by Oshchepkov Konstantin/Shutterstock Images; dog Â© by Volodymyr Burdiak/Shutterstock Images

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

BLACK DOG.
Copyright Â© 2014 by Caitlin Kittredge. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.HarperÂCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please e-Âmail the Special Markets Department at [email protected].

FIRS
T EDITION

ISBN 978-Â0-Â06-Â231691-Â2

EPUB Edition October 2014 ISBN: 9780062316929

14 15 16 17 18
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Australia

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Canada

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