Hell Bent: Hound of Hades, #5

By Z.J. Cannon and Zoe Cannon

Another day, another demon...

 

When humans start showing up dead after visiting Manhattan's hottest new club, Mal's mission seems simple enough: find whatever supernatural critter is responsible, and show them the consequences of intruding on Hades's territory. Mal isn't complaining—between moving in with Bastian and dealing with the fallout of Melinoë's attack, she could use an easy job.

 

But the more she investigates, the less simple it becomes. Because someone wanted Mal to find out about these deaths. Someone with the power to command creatures that even the gods fear. Someone with a plan that could tear apart the divine and mortal realms alike—a plan that is missing only its final piece: Mal herself.

 

Mal would never betray Hades. At least that's what she always thought. But everyone has their price... and somebody may have found hers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Z.J. Cannon
• Release date: May 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201760359

Book preview

Chapter 1

Kimmy struggled through the door of Bastian’s apartment, grunting as the oversized cardboard box threatened to slip out of her hands. She let it fall to the ground with a thud. There, she panted. Done.

I set the wooden nightstand down next to the box. If I had known the thing was too big to fit in a cab, I might have made other plans. Plans that didn’t involve clutching the ungainly piece of furniture in my arms all the way here from my apartment, and getting dirty looks from anyone unlucky enough to have to sit next to me on the subway. I was pretty sure it had gotten a few new scratches in the process, although to be honest, it had been so banged up when I grabbed it out of a pile of free stuff a couple of years ago that I couldn’t tell for sure even if I squinted. I don’t see why you’re complaining, I grumbled. From where I’m standing, you had the easy job.

All I said was, ‘Done,’ said Kimmy. And don’t you have super strength?

The gods don’t enhance us beyond what an ordinary human can do. I have regular old human strength. Just… a lot of it. Enough to put me on par with the average—or above-average—bodybuilder or Olympic athlete. But I didn’t need to share that particular detail. Sure, the nightstand might not have been that heavy to me, but I still had the right to complain. That thing had sharp corners, one of which had been poking me in the leg for the past ten blocks.

Ordinary humans have to work for their strength, Lissa pointed out from behind us. You don’t. She set a threadbare backpack carefully down on top of the cardboard box.

What, doing the bidding of the god of the underworld doesn’t count as work to you? Yesterday I followed a Marked of Sekhmet all the way out to New Jersey to see if he was going to meet with one of Zeus’s people. New Jersey. A couple hours at the gym would have been a walk in the park compared to that.

And did he? Lissa asked, her brow drawing together. Do we need to worry?

I shook my head. He was meeting a woman. A woman who, as far as I could tell, had nothing to do with the gods. This was strictly personal business. And when I say ‘personal,’ I mean I had to overhear things all the brain bleach in the world won’t scrub out of my head.

The point is, Kimmy said, sounding much too satisfied with herself, you have an unfair advantage in the strength department. Hades’s High Priestess herself confirms it. She briefly interrupted the smug look she was sending in my direction to shoot Lissa a smile gooey enough to give everyone in a three-mile radius diabetes. Therefore, you should have been carrying all this stuff yourself.

She only agreed with you because she likes you better. Anyway, she works for Hades too, and she wasn’t carrying anything except that backpack. I don’t see you complaining about that.

She doesn’t have super strength, Kimmy answered, with maddening logic.

And that’s not all I was carrying, Lissa added. You left something behind. I spotted it just in time. She reached into the backpack and pulled out… oh. Oh no. Not here. Not in front of real live people.

Kimmy’s eyes widened. Is that…

Lissa held the mangy teddy bear out to me. I thought you might miss him if he got left behind.

You thought wrong, I growled. I snatched the bear from her hands. There was a reason I hadn’t packed it. I had been meaning to get rid of that thing for years. Not least because something—I suspected the apartment’s resident mice—had chewed off one of its ears, causing stuffing to spill out whenever it shifted position. I had found it in the same pile of free stuff as the nightstand, and grabbed it in a fit of sentimentality, unable to consign the sad-eyed creature to an ignominious end in the back of a garbage truck.

Ridiculous, of course. Its eyes weren’t sad, they were plastic masquerading as glass. Its matted fur wasn’t a sign that it needed love, but evidence that the bear was long past its prime. Now was as good a time as any to do what I should have done in the first place, and give the creature a swift and merciful end. I turned toward Bastian’s trash can—and stopped. If he saw it in there, he was bound to say something, and then I would have to give him the whole embarrassing story.

That was the only reason I returned it to the backpack. It had nothing to do with the mournful look I could still see in its eyes. And if I tucked it into its hiding place with a little more care than was absolutely necessary, well, nobody else had to know.

Kimmy opened her mouth to speak. I quelled her with a glare. Not. A. Word.

She held up her hands in mock surrender. I didn’t say anything.

Remember which of us has super strength, I said. And which of us is armed. Hint: they’re both the same person, and it isn’t you.

Oh, so now you’re willing to admit—

The look I gave her this time was the same one I had used to coax information out of rival Marked in more than one interrogation.

Kimmy cleared her throat and averted her eyes, looking down at the box and nightstand. So, she said, too brightly. This is everything, right?

I followed her gaze. Even in Bastian’s kitchen, which was hardly oversized even by Manhattan standards, the pile looked small and sad all of a sudden. That’s everything, I confirmed. All my worldly possessions, minus the nightstand itself, could fit inside a single cardboard box with room to spare.

All except my mattress, which was still back at the apartment, lying on the floor of the pantry that passed as my bedroom. Or had passed as my bedroom. And would again, I reminded myself. This was a temporary situation.

A week ago, I had been enjoying the rare luxury of a long shower when I had heard a scream from the living room. I had rushed out, wrapped in a towel and hair dripping with shampoo, to find a stranger lying on the floor, flailing his hands against an imaginary enemy while Kimmy looked down at him goggle-eyed. A quick call to Ginevra, the temple’s senior Marked, had confirmed that Hades had finally plucked a new potential Marked from the underworld and dropped him unceremoniously into the middle of the temple—which also happened to be my apartment. Which was great—super strength or not, Ginevra and I couldn’t keep up with all the threats to Hades’s territory on our own—except that until his training was done, he would be confined to the temple. And in our shoebox-sized apartment, the only space available for his training was… my bedroom. Which Ginevra had promptly volunteered on my behalf.

She had assured me she didn’t plan to give this new recruit the full year of training most of us got—we needed him in the field too badly for that. What she hadn’t told me was how long she planned on training him—or, and this was the part I really cared about, how long she would need to repurpose my room for that training.

I had accepted the temporary loss of my bedroom—very temporary, if I had any say in the matter, which I was pretty sure I didn’t. But as I looked down at the sum total of the last five years of my life, I craved that mattress with the intensity of a preschooler ogling a bag of Halloween candy. Which was stupider than the fact that I hadn’t gone ahead and tossed the teddy bear. Even when I had first gotten that mattress, it had been marginally less comfortable than lying on a pile of rocks, and that was before it had been chewed apart by mice and hellhounds alike. Setting aside the fact that there was no room for it here among Bastian’s piles of books, the only place that thing belonged was in a landfill.

That didn’t stop me from turning toward the still-open door. I changed my mind. I’m going back for the mattress. You guys don’t need to wait around for me—get going before you miss your movie.

Lissa turned in a slow circle, scrutinizing the apartment as if she expected to find a hidden room somewhere. When she didn’t, she turned to me with a quizzical frown. But where are you going to put it?

More to the point, said Kimmy, wearing a matching frown, why do you need it? There’s no way Bastian has been living here all this time without a bed.

He has a bed. His. I want mine.

It’s not like you won’t be sharing his one way or the other. Kimmy waggled her eyebrows. That gesture always looked as out of place on her freshly-scrubbed face as the mustache from a dollar-store disguise kit, but that didn’t stop her from using it. Isn’t that one of the side benefits of this arrangement? You won’t need to worry about our apartment rules anymore.

It’s not like you care about those rules these days anyway, I muttered. Not since she had gotten together with Lissa, at least. Granted, the rules only covered bringing guys home. They had nothing to say about girls, let alone ones who already lived there. But if I hadn’t said what I said, I might have said something else. Something that would have opened up a conversation I intensely did not want to have while standing in this kitchen, staring at the pathetic artifacts of my mortal life. Something that might have revealed the way Kimmy’s words made my stomach clench and my breathing grow tight and ragged.

Kimmy blinked and took a step back. I didn’t know Kimmy and I were causing that much of a problem, she said, her voice suddenly subdued.

My words must have come out a lot harsher than I intended. Sorry. You guys are fine. Really. Better than fine—I’m happy for you. That was nothing less than the truth, but saying it now, like this, made it sound like I was protesting too much. I opted to move on before I could do any more damage that I already had. I’m a bit on edge, that’s all. With the move and everything.

You’ll be fine, Kimmy assured me. Think of it as practice for moving in together for real. If he has any obnoxious habits, like leaving his wet towels on the floor— She paused to give me a significant look that made me picture the towel I had left balled up in the bathroom corner this morning. It’s better to find out now, before it really matters.

I’m going back to get that mattress anyway. Just in case.

Kimmy shook her head. I already made the appointment to have it picked up for recycling. You asked me to, remember? I had Ginevra take it down to the curb while we were carrying everything else out. I’m sure it’s gone by now.

The tightness in my chest grew worse. And what am I supposed to sleep on after I come back?

You said you’d buy a secondhand one online now that you have an actual paycheck. We talked about it yesterday. Kimmy was starting to look worried. Your exact words were, ‘No matter how moldy and vomit-stained it is, at least it won’t have a giant hole in it from a hellhound attack.’ Besides, maybe things will go so well between you and Bastian that you won’t want to come back. Not that we wouldn’t miss you, but neither of us would blame you if you decided you didn’t want to live in a pantry anymore. She paused. Of course, if you decide to stay, someone will still need to handle Lissa’s share of the rent.

I’m coming back, I growled. Kimmy took another step back. This time, so did Lissa, eyeing me like I was a predator and she was trying to gauge whether I was about to pounce.

Much more of this, and I was going to alienate both my roommates so badly that I wouldn’t have a home to come back to. Either that, or they would start asking questions about why exactly I was so broken up about moving out of my little pantry in the temple, where Lissa’s chanting was liable to wake me from what little sleep I managed to grab between missions, and into a place where nothing would wake me but my boyfriend’s snoring. I wasn’t sure which would be worse.

I looked down at the watch I wasn’t wearing. Isn’t your movie starting soon? You should get out of here or you’ll miss the previews.

Kimmy looked down at her own watch, which never left her wrist. You’re right. We need to get out of here. But she paused, looking at me with more concern than I was comfortable with. Are you sure you’ll be okay?

Times like these made me miss the days when our relationship was purely a transactional one, with no conversations that went deeper than an argument over when I was going to pay my share of the rent. I’ll be fine.

Kimmy was still hesitating. I forced a smile onto my face. Better than fine. I’m great. It’s going to be great. Okay, so now I really was protesting too much. And I was sure Kimmy knew it. But I also knew how much she had been looking forward to introducing Lissa to the whole movie theater experience, something bound to send the sheltered High Priestess of Hades into a state of wide-eyed wonder. She started for the door, clasping her fingers in Lissa’s and pulling her along.

If you need any relationship help, give me a call, she said as she stepped out into the hallway. I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Whatever your problem is, I’ll know exactly how to solve it. And if I don’t, I can look it up.

I had done plenty of my own reading, back when I was less cynical about relationships. None of it had told me anything useful about my particular situation. If Kimmy’s books were any different, I would eat my hat—or rather, the whole relationship book, since I hadn’t owned a hat in years. But I gave her a halfhearted nod anyway, and smiled as she closed the door behind her.

As soon as the door latched shut, the smile faded from my face. I looked down at my cardboard box and my single piece of furniture. Then I let my gaze travel around the rest of the apartment. I had spent enough time here over the past couple of months that I knew this place practically as well as I did my own, from the stacks of books that only looked haphazard—woe betide the one who accidentally set a stray volume down on top of the stack on the coffee table instead of the stack by the sink—to the piles of dirty dishes that perpetually filled said sink. The place already felt like mine, in a way. Or at least it had yesterday. I had no plans to read any of the books, and I certainly didn’t intend to do any of the dishes. But this apartment felt like Bastian, down to the last forgotten coffee cup, and that meant it felt like home.

But not today.

Today, all I could see was my small island of possessions besieged on all sides by things that didn’t belong to me. Everywhere my eyes landed, I saw books written in long-dead languages, notes scrawled in handwriting I couldn’t read, and the odd bit of experimental technology I didn’t know how to use—all with the sole purpose of defeating Hades and every other god, wiping out the reason for my existence. And even with the bedroom door closed, I could sense what was in there, looming larger than everything else in the apartment—the bed Kimmy had mentioned, more than big enough for two.

The door creaked as it swung open behind me. I jumped.

Bastian chuckled. I wouldn’t have suspected it was that easy to startle one of the Marked in her own apartment.

It’s not mine, I said too quickly.

For as long as you’re here, it’s yours. I won’t have the temple leaving you homeless while they train another one of your kind to oppress the rest of humanity. He kept his tone light enough to make it clear that he was joking—mostly. He leaned in to plant a kiss at the corner of my lips.

I flinched away before I could stop myself.

Bastian drew back with a frown. Are you all right?

Peachy. I yanked at the flaps of the cardboard box until it popped open, purely for something to do with my hands. I should start unpacking.

Bastian took my hand to draw me away from the box. There will be plenty of time for that later. And I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s celebrate your first roommate-free evening with a meal of… He stepped away to paw through the freezer. Fish sticks of unknown provenance, he concluded. Or Chinese takeout, if you prefer.

I could have told him what was making me so uneasy. After all, he already knew. But that would only lead to him reassuring me yet again, with an undertone of hurt at the fact that I still needed it. Right now, I didn’t want reassurance. I wanted not to be here.

I’ll call the Chinese place, said Bastian, mistaking my silence for a reluctance to brave the fish sticks—or, more likely, knowing exactly what was behind my mood and choosing not to press an issue he knew I didn’t want pressed. Kung pao chicken, or—

The phone slipped from his fingers.

What, he said, his voice tightly controlled, is that?

I turned to see where he was looking—and saw a snake, as thick as my bicep and longer than Bastian was tall, slithering out of a kitchen cabinet toward me.

A wave of relief swept over me. I knelt, holding my arm out for the creature. One of Hades’s messengers, I explained, trying to sound disappointed. Looks like I won’t be staying for dinner after all.

Sure enough, when the snake twined around my arm to bring its head level with my ear, it hissed a sharp, Follow. Now.

I stood. Duty calls. See you sometime before sunrise. I hope.

The snake shimmied through the crack under the door. I followed it out to the hallway, faster than strictly necessary, and left the apartment behind.

Chapter 2

I didn’t know where the snake was leading me as I followed it through the darkening streets. All I knew for certain was that whatever it wanted me to find, it wouldn’t be pretty. If Hades had sent a messenger, that meant he had a mission for me—a mission urgent enough that he couldn’t wait for Ginevra, the senior Marked of his temple, to pass it along to me the way she usually did. Blood, death, supernatural mayhem… I was betting on at least two out of three. So much for rewarding myself for my nightstand-transportation efforts with a hot meal and a few minutes to put my feet up. I would be lucky if I managed to snag a couple of hours of sleep tonight. Given that this mission was a high enough priority that Hades hadn’t gone through Ginevra, I would be lucky if I slept at all this week.

And yet I felt lighter with every step. The more distance I put between me and Bastian’s apartment, the more my funk lifted, until I no longer felt like I was moving through fog. Wherever the messenger led me, I was ready. If I hadn’t learned how to handle whatever Hades threw at me by now, I wouldn’t have survived this long. Most Marked don’t.

What was waiting for me back at the apartment, on the other hand… that, I wasn’t ready for. Not even close.

Luckily, the messenger had bought me a few hours. I would have given it a scratch behind the ears in gratitude if it weren’t, you know, a snake. And if it weren’t currently racing through the streets at approximately hundred miles an hour, forcing me to jog to keep up.

Okay, so maybe a hundred miles an hour was a slight exaggeration. The point is, this kind of exertion was not what I needed after spending the evening trekking everything I owned across the city.

Yes, that consisted of one cardboard box and a single nightstand. And yes, my strength may be slightly above average. Shut up.

The sun had sunk almost fully below the horizon when the snake wiggled up to the window of a first-floor apartment and flicked its tongue once, twice, three times against the glass. I recognized the style of building, if not the building itself. It was the type that got advertised in the listings as sleek high-end apartments for an affordable price—affordable being a relative term in Manhattan—aimed squarely at the sort of people whose salary lags behind their idea of their own importance. Anyone who actually came to look at one of the listings would find that sleek meant utilitarian in a dystopian Soviet way, affordable meant that for the price of a small car you would be living in an apartment the size of a small car, and the fact that it had ever been compared to anything that could be described as high-end was a testament to the creative writing abilities of whoever had written the listings. People rented them anyway. They must have, or those buildings wouldn’t have kept springing up all over the place. And one of those gullible renters was either in trouble, or causing some trouble of his own. I was about to find out which.

I looked down toward the snake, only to find that it had slithered away into the night. But it had gotten its message across. I tugged at the window, on the off chance that whoever lived here had neglected basic security and left the window unlocked for any would-be robbers who happened by. No such luck. I began the process of forcing the lock—and stopped. I couldn’t see much in the sliver between the curtain and the window frame, but what I could see was a glint of light, as if a lamp was lit in a neighboring room. Lights on meant somebody was home. If somebody was home, that generally meant I would be better off saving the breaking and entering for another time.

But if this could wait, Hades would have gone through Ginevra. Instead, he had sent a messenger.

I sighed. I placed my hand on my gun, to reassure myself that it was there. Then I took off my shoe and hurled it through the window.

Normally a thrown sneaker wouldn’t have been enough to shatter glass. But with my strength behind it, the window gave way without a fight. Glass sprayed inward as the shoe landed on the rug. The sound would draw attention; I couldn’t afford to wait around. Mindful of the jagged edges, I reached in to unlock the window, then pushed it open and clambered inside.

I didn’t know what I was going to find in the apartment—a fellow Marked who would come at me with guns blazing or blade swinging, a terrified civilian cowering in a corner, or someone trying to make a run for it before I had a chance to figure out which category they fell into. I planned for all three by going straight for the apartment door. I stood in front of it, blocking the exit in case of option three, while drawing my gun to guard against option one. Option two, I could handle once I had dealt with the rest.

But I didn’t hear gunshots, or see a flash of steel coming at my throat. No one ran for the door, or the two windows I could see from my carefully-chosen position. I didn’t hear the rush of footsteps, or even a frightened whimper. Come to think of it, I didn’t hear anything at all—unless I wanted to count my own breathing, or the too-loud sound of traffic that reached my ears courtesy of the broken window.

I waited another moment, in case whoever the snake had brought me here for was trying to get me let my guard down. Then I began to tiptoe single-shoed through the apartment, hugging the walls, leading with my weapon.

Before I moved into the living room, I checked the remainder of the shoebox that passed for a kitchen. Including the cabinet under the sink—yes, people have tried it before. They always think they’re being clever, judging by the surprised look each and every one of them has had as I pulled them out. But whoever the snake had brought me here for must have found a more original hiding place, because I found nothing beneath the sink but a box of expired roach baits.

The living room came next. I gave it a quick-once over to ensure that nothing was about to leap out at me, then began a more thorough exploration. My mystery target wasn’t in here, either. But two things were interesting about the living room. The first was that the light was on. This was the light I had seen through the window. Maybe whoever lived here had simply turned it on before they left, in order to deter the criminals of the city from doing exactly what I had done. Or maybe—more likely, given my line of work—the apartment’s owner was already dead, and their killer hadn’t been concerned enough about the environment to turn off the lights on their way out. But I doubted it. If this place were empty, I wouldn’t be here. I would be sitting in the temple, waiting for Ginevra to spit out the details of my mission as fast as humanly possible so that she could get back to training the temple’s newest Marked. Even though he had appeared only a week ago, I could already tell that until his training was done, I would rate a distant second when it came to Ginevra’s priorities. She wanted the newbie ready to do his job as quickly as possible.

Not that I was going to complain about no longer being the focus of Ginevra’s attention. I could do with fewer lectures in my life. Ginevra was trying her best to trust me and Lissa when it came to running the temple, but it didn’t come easily to her. Just like tolerating Ginevra’s stick-up-her-ass attitude didn’t come easily to me. We were working on it. Slowly. But neither of us was likely to get a Christmas card from the other anytime soon.

No, Ginevra’s change of focus bothered me for other reasons. Most having to do with the newest Marked himself. I knew Hades wouldn’t have chosen him if he weren’t the right person for the job. That was what I kept telling myself. But even the gods could be wrong sometimes.

And just because you’re the right person for the job doesn’t mean it’s the right job for you. Maybe he could do what I did. Maybe even with a fraction of the training I had gotten. But that didn’t mean he would come out sane and whole at the end of it.

Ginevra had dismissed my concerns with a wave of her hand. Lissa had listened patiently, and then given me the verbal equivalent of a pat on the head. Hades, as always, was silent, at least when it came to addressing my complaints.

But those worries weren’t helping me figure out what was going on in this apartment. And it wouldn’t improve the newbie’s situation any if he suddenly became one of two Marked of Hades, instead of one of three, because I had gotten myself killed thinking about his training