HellHound: Dark Love Anthology, #3

By Gareth Mayers

Hans is a walking nuclear reactor.

But no one knows he's out there.

Until now.

In a vast, icy wasteland, a lone supersoldier stumbles upon the wreckage of a warship. Inside, everyone is dead — all except her.

She calls herself Rose Ross. It's the only thing she can remember. Stuck out there together, they can't be sure of each other's intentions — and true strength.

Hans knows he only wants to help her. And with a killer creature on the loose, he can only hope she recovers her memories fast.

But that might just bring more trouble…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gareth Mayers
• Release date: Apr 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215522011

Book preview

Hellhound

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Scorned

Gareth Mayers

GemMine Publishing

Contents

Prologue

1. Hunter

2. Prey

3. Encounter

4. Township

5. Berserk

6. Monster

7. Discovered

8. Control

9. Schestragora

10. Climb

11. Closer

12. Zenith

13. Rats

14. Extermination

15. Fear

16. Caught

17. Oneness

18. Day

19. Ambush

20. Spectre

21. History

22. Capital

23. Attack

24. Escape

25. Rebels

26. Infiltration

27. Brink

28. Hell

Epilogue

Thank you from Rose

S&M (Preview)

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Copyright

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Prologue

When our scientists were tasked with creating biological weapons of mass destruction, Project HellHound was their answer.

The HellHounds were the First Horseman. They were doom-bringers — soldiers created by weaving the human genome with dangerous synthetic elements. The result was a walking nuclear reactor.

Able to produce, store, and absorb colossal amounts of radiation, the HellHound soldiers could focus this power into destructive beams of energy, reducing everything in their path to intense flame and white ash. But their preferred battle tactic was Hell’s Advance. It was a phrase that when uttered stirred people to cowardice in battle and ripped hope from the common man. It was a promise of death and destruction. For many, it was the last thing they felt in this world.

The HellHounds would advance in a phalanx formation and before the enemy ever saw them coming, they would feel the intense heat radiating off them — a harbinger of the monsters to follow. By the time the HellHounds were in range of enemy weapons, the heat was already melting guns and scorching men alive inside their tanks. And by the time it was over, the earth itself had been irreparably scorched.

The radiation that they generated caused plants to wither, animals to fall sick, mutate, and if they were lucky, die of radiation poisoning. Each time they were deployed, they left a long streak of charred crust in their wake, as if the Devil himself had run a finger across the land.

But even with all that destruction, the planet’s first biological arms race didn’t end there. Rival agencies, after years of spying and research, birthed the Second Horseman.

It took the codename: The Geist. The Geists brought with them a never-before-seen power, one with the potential to bring their enemies to their knees.

Telepathy.

They could debilitate the HellHounds from a distance with a mere thought. Worse still, they could control the enemy and even alter their mental state. With the potential to turn the HellHounds back on their owners, The Geists became the new power balance.

And then, the Third Horseman appeared...

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Hunter

The hunter scouted out the terrain with a scanner he had built by retrofitting a pair of binoculars with complex scanning technology. Now the binoculars could detect specific signals and gentle vibrations in the air. It was even equipped with infrared and thermal imaging.

With temperatures plummeting well below zero, the frozen tundra he made his hunting grounds was one of the most inhospitable environments anywhere on the planet. Out here, only a few creatures could survive the tortuous cold.

A flicker of movement through the scope followed by a soft beeping from the scanner drew his attention. He tossed the binoculars to the ground and grabbed his rifle, taking careful aim through the scope.

A brief pause followed as he took his shot. Then a sharp hiss split the silence as the rifle issued an invisible beam of energy ammunition, discerned only by the distortion it made as it travelled through the air.

He hit his mark — a perfect shot, as usual — and the animal slumped to the ground off in the distance. Gathering his equipment, he toyed with the thought that its death was inevitable one way or another, before advancing to claim his prize.

And he was right. Despite managing to beat the temperatures, the beast was an abomination — not meant to exist at all. As he drew closer, he could see it clearly. The sad shape of what might have once been called a sea lion stared up wetly at him with swollen pupils, as if mourning its own sorrowful life. The thing was grotesque. Its patchy coat gave way to tumorous bulges of blubber and several extra flippers (although some were dwarfed and others misshapen).

Like every other creature that roamed the icy wasteland, it had been tainted by radiation. And with each generation born, they would only grow more misshapen. The HellHounds had forever altered nature. Certain plants had withered from existence, and others had sprouted in their place. Animals had become mutated echoes of their former selves. There appeared to be no rhyme or reason to it, and if there were, nobody cared enough to investigate.

The hunter couldn’t take his eyes off the sea lion. He wanted to feel some sort of remorse, but of course, he couldn’t. Brushing loose strands of hair from his face, he hauled it over one shoulder. It wasn’t a hard task as he was a large man, well-above average height and broad-backed.

And he was handsome: blond-haired, blue-eyed and rugged.

Alone, he had hashed out a peaceful life in this permafrost wasteland. Despite its flaws, it was a serene world, filled with white as far as the eye could see. Out here, the only thing on the air was deathly silence, save for the occasional cracking of ice and howling wind.

As he hauled his prey to the trailer wagon he had brought with him, he glanced around for the hole it had come up from. He would mark it for future hunts. Using a gravity coupling, he attached the wagon to his hoverbike and took a long, last gaze at the sun. It stood frozen in time as it languished in the sky, always in a perpetual state of setting so that the atmosphere was awash in an ethereal orange glow.

He watched for a while, enchanted. But a dark smudge on the horizon, nearly hidden within a thicket of blustering snow, caught his eye. Tugging on his binoculars, he took a closer look.

The silhouette of a ship slid into focus. Ships rarely made it this far out here, and this one seemed to have run aground. With a wry smile, he got onto his bike and sped off in its direction. The vessel was likely to be full of supplies and lots of frozen crewmen; a prime opportunity for scavenging.

Speeding nearer and nearer revealed that something wasn’t quite right. It hadn’t run aground.

It had crashed.

Even more intriguing was that this was no ordinary sailboat. It was a destroyer battleship. The hunter pulled up and stopped a short hop away from it. The impact on the ice had ripped its hull wide open, a detail which struck him as a little unusual.

But all was quiet. It seemed as if no one was even on board. Still, he wasn’t taking chances. He drew his weapon, making a few quick modifications to reconfigure it to its assault rifle setting. If he had to discharge it for any reason, the inside of the ship promised him a close-quarters fight, and a sniper rifle was no use in such.

He entered the ship stealthily, soundlessly navigating a path. Snowy winds blew in from the gaping mouth of the hull, spreading a layer of frost along the hallways nearest it and making the metal floors and walls groan in complaint. With the temperatures dropping every minute, the ship was an open casket.

Arriving at the engine room, he saw the first body: a man, maybe late forties, his body sitting just in the hallway. He nudged the body with his foot and, getting no response, started a few medical checks. His brow furrowed. The man didn’t look right.

Perhaps he’d died when the ship came down? Or maybe he’d survived the crash, but then the cold had done him in. Whatever had claimed his life had left him with an odd expression on his face; mid-retch, as though he were just about to vomit.

His tongue lolled between slack jaws and his eyeballs bulged almost comically. Everything about it indicated asphyxiation.

It was strange, but many scenarios could have played out during or after the crash, so it made little sense to worry about it.

Turning away from the corpse, the hunter ventured deeper into the belly of the ship. It wasn’t long before he came upon a second body — and bearing the same marks as the first.

This time he hesitated. One body with the strange markings upon death was one thing, but two? That suggested a pattern. But he was just here to salvage, not get caught up in any mystery-solving.

Despite his uncertainty, he pushed ahead to the kitchen. More bodies. Strewn asunder and wearing that morbid face. By now he was as eager as a man could be to claim what he could and make himself scarce.

The cupboard in the canteen turned out to be a gold mine of canned food and non-perishables. Wasting no time, he found some burlap sacks and crammed them full of provisions. After he’d gotten all the haul that he could carry, he slung the bags over his shoulder and made his way off the vessel.

He left the way he had come and made it outside the creaking ship in record time. As he stepped back onto the ice, a flicker of purple in his peripheral made him stop. He glanced down and there, snagged on the jagged opening in the hull, were thin, violet cloth fibres. Getting down on one knee, he wiped away some of the fresh snowfall to reveal footprints heading off onto the open tundra. He secured the pilfered goods onto the wagon beside the carcass and kicked the hoverbike’s ignition into gear. Staring into the vast white distance, he paused. Whoever had made the prints was still alive. But did he really want to go looking for trouble now?

No.

He wanted to get back home and drink something a little bitter and a little sweet to wash down the feast he was about to have. And what did he owe this stranger, really?

But rather than heading home, and against his better judgement, he sighed and rode off in the direction of the tracks.

Prey

It wasn’t long before he came upon someone collapsed in the snow. He spent a moment on his bike contemplating his next course of action. The urge to strip the body of valuables was strong.

Before he could step down to examine them, the person’s chest fluttered suddenly. They were still alive, but just barely. He climbed down and went over. It was then that he saw something that piqued his interest: the curve of hips sailing up to meet two supple breasts. It was a woman.

The hunter reassessed his options as he drank in what was essentially the rarest game in this godforsaken country. The sight of a woman’s flesh struck a deep chord within his loins, and her skin was dark, easily discernible against the permafrost so that he violated every exposed inch of it with his gaze. Dressed in silk underwear seen hazily through a purple lace nightgown, she was more than merely unprepared for the trip.

His instinct was to help her, but he wasn’t sure if it was for the right reasons. He hoped his motives were altruistic, but knew that whatever humanity he’d had, had died a long time ago. It was much more likely that his desire to assist her sprang from far baser instincts.

Ogling her half-naked body only made his mind conjure up twisted fantasies. Honestly, it was as if she were begging to be taken advantage of.

Pulling off his winter cloak, he picked her up and wrapped her in it. Shrugging off the freezing winds, he loaded her onto the back of the hoverbike and hopped in front. As his fingers graced the handlebars, the craft came to life and they sped off to his campsite.

His home was nestled far inland, where blizzard-like conditions were the norm. Nothing ventured that way, simply because nothing could survive out there. Yet, this was exactly where this strange loner had set up his abode: a bungalow crafted from metallic alloys and moulded into the shape of an igloo.

It stood battered day and night by the elements as the only sentinel to these abandoned stomping grounds. Inside, it was mostly bare, but the hunter preferred it that way.

On entering, the wooden plank floor, an array of animal furs scattered across it, would creak lightly when you walked. Besides a simple table, only a few cupboards and a sink lined the far wall, and a chiminea sat at the very centre where a futon was folded out. Someone with a keen eye or a sharp nose might even notice that huddled in a corner, a hand-built armchair perfumed the air with its smoky musk.

Getting the woman inside as quickly as possible, the hunter lay her on the futon next to the cast iron chiminea, half-filled with smooth, black stones.

Then he placed a hand over the shiny collection of stones, and a moment later they glowed red-hot. The chiminea itself started giving off a faint orange glow, at which point he removed his hand and closed its caged door.

Turning back to the woman, he peeled off her wet clothes and saw to wringing them over the sink. Once that was done and he’d found a set of dry ones, he returned to sit in his chair. Its smooth, brain-tanned leather remained cool even as the chiminea smouldered.

With nothing left to do but wait, the hunter watched his guest expectantly. As he stared, the room gradually warmed, and eventually, the young woman’s face started showing signs of awakening. Her facial expressions flashed up and her eyes twitched under their veils. Then her eyelids lifted, and she bolted up gasping.

A shrill white noise exploded in the hunter’s ears and his hands flew to his head. Immense pain split through his brain and he dropped to his knees. His vision swam and as it went dark, he saw her get up and walk towards him.

Encounter

When he awoke, his head was throbbing. Groggily, he tried taking in his surroundings. All he could tell was that he was lying spread-eagle on the futon under a thick blanket of animal-skin, and that something smelled like lavender.

As his vision focused, he realised what he’d been smelling.

The woman was snuggled in beside him under the blanket. Her body against his felt as smooth as velvet, and the soft lavender scent wafted from her auburn hair. It was enough to distract him momentarily from the thunderous headache splitting his skull. The chiminea had gone cold. So he had been out for at least four hours. He lay still for a moment until he felt her gentle breaths against his chin.

Good. She was still alive.

Shifting slightly to get up, he tried his best not to wake her. But as soon as he made even