Chapter 3
Scottish Coast, Earth Realm
Moonlight illuminated the dirt path as Uri took in deep, cleansing breaths of fresh salty air. He tilted his face up to the brisk ocean breeze cooling his skin, which still smelled like sex. He hadn’t had time to shower since Havoc had made it clear the hound’s needs were urgent.
Rolling his shoulders wasn’t doing anything to release any of the tension in his body, mainly because shoulders weren’t the fucking problem. The issue was his damned dick, the bastard was never fully sated anymore. He should have stayed at the club and taken another, but when his Goddess had gone, he’d lost interest. He’d been too busy fighting the desire to track her down and pull her sexy body beneath his.
He wondered what she was doing now. His mind conjured up a fantasy of his Alexandra spread and bare in candlelight, lying across a stone altar in one of the ancient temples. White silk curtains billowed out toward the sea as she moaned and writhed. Her dark hair fanned out around her smooth naked flesh as sexy half-lidded eyes beckoned him. In his mind he watched her back bow as she worked frantic fingers over her clit in a greedy attempt to gain release.
He groaned at his vivid imagination and then bit off a curse. Now he needed to lose a damn hard-on before taking the hell beast to hunt bad guys in the city.
A dose of reality did the trick, because there was no way the Goddess was alone and pining for his touch. His mind was fucked up. She was the most gorgeous female he’d ever seen, which meant she likely had several mortal lovers, so why she played their game remained a puzzle.
Why the hell was he so damned obsessed with her? It was going to drive him insane. They’d never once spoken, not even before the Exile. All they knew of each other was the game.
He shook off the thoughts and questions. He had to deal with the hound’s needs and get a damned shower before crashing for a few hours.
He’d allow Havoc a few more minutes to root around in the dirt before taking him into a city. Cities were the perfect feeding ground for the animal’s needs, but the pup was always cooped up in his place day or night depending on Uri’s patrols, so he took more time to get the animal some fresh air in whatever time zone was dark at that given moment.
He knew he was playing with fire letting the beast out in public, even at night. He was forced to plant a different image into the mind of any human that saw the hound. If Havoc’s eyes weren’t bright crimson and his fur a slick-looking black, humans would’ve likely mistaken him for a Doberman the size of a Great Dane, but the red eyes were definitely too otherworldly for daylight hours.
As long as the pup kept his hellfire to himself, Uri could keep him out of sight and everything would stay fine. He doubted Drake was going to see it that way though, which was something he needed to deal with at some point.
For now, the animal needed to feed off evil energies to survive. Once Uri had figured out Havoc wasn’t inherently evil or changed by his food source, they’d gotten into a sort of habit. And allowing the beast to feed off human predators lurking in dark alleyways was rewarding as hell since Uri himself couldn’t harm the bastards without consequences.
He shook his head at what had become of his existence. Housing a hell beast?
Fuck.
Blowing out a breath, he watched Havoc wag his bobbed tail as he stuck his snout in the bushes. Dirt began flying a second later as the animal attempted to uncover something.
The pup had been near death when Uri’d saved his ass in Hell Realm. A dragon had just chewed Havoc’s mother to bits and was making its way toward the newly birthed pup. Uri had battled the beast before teleporting onto its back and slamming his blade deep into scales and the hard bone of its skull. That was his damned job in Hell Realm. Killing the beasts before their masters sent them out to Heaven or Tetartos Realms. Yet he hadn’t killed the pup; when the little creature had whined and Uri looked into his eyes, there’d been something about the beast. He hadn’t fucking looked evil, and Uri caved in to some odd instinct, taking the goo-covered pup home with him.
He shook his head, wondering what he’d been thinking. Hellhounds had been a collective pain in the Guardians’ asses for centuries. The beasts were all blood-bonded to the purely evil Tria, demon-spawn triplets of the incestuous coupling of Ares and Artemis, who’d been imprisoned in the bowels of Hell Realm before the Creators had returned all those millennia ago. The story was that the twisted bastards—Than, Phobos and Deimos—were impossible to kill, so they’d been imprisoned instead. It was decades later that the assholes somehow found a way to cause chaos from their cage and they’d been doing it ever since. The Tria spent their demented existence casting out hell beasts to the two Realms closest to Hell, Heaven and Tetartos, while sending demon souls to Earth. He guessed the Guardians should be thankful not to have to deal with hell creatures causing destruction in the massive populations of humans, but he wished they could just find a way to kill the source of their problems and be done with all of it.
He heard the pup issue an oddly deep whine, a sound that was a mix of dog and something far darker. Uri smiled when he saw Havoc hopping up and down in front of a tree with a small rodent frantically eying the beast from a high branch.
The animal amused him, but he knew keeping the animal had been a mistake. If anything, Uri should have taken the animal to Sirena, the Guardian healer, his sister Guardian was the scientist of the bunch. She would have loved to research Havoc.
He’d learned a lot from the experience, though, because as far as Uri could figure, the entire species of hellhounds were blood-bound to the Tria purely for the demented fucks’ amusement. Havoc had proven without a doubt that the animals weren’t born with some innate evil tendencies as the Guardians had assumed. The Tria had to be making them that way with their tainted blood.
Evil or not, Uri would still get his ass kicked for housing a hell beast on Earth. Not to mention he’d have to tell Drake that he’d blood-bonded with the animal himself. He hadn’t had much of a choice, he’d needed to keep him in check. Aletheia had the ability to bond to anyone, but he’d never done it with a person, much less an animal. His race were universal donors of a sort, which probably had something to do with the whole blood fixation in vampire myth.
Drake would definitely torch something when he found out. Fuck, he’d kick his own ass if he could. He had no idea what was wrong with his head, blood bond? And now he was responsible for a hell beast for life. He shook his head.
All he could think was that at the time he’d probably had too much fucking Jameson and hadn’t seen his little Goddess. Add in the fact that Havoc had been destroying everything in his place and a blood bond had seemed a solid plan. It was either kill the bastard or save the house.
He’d saved the house.
He had to admit it was odd, knowing the feelings of another being, seeing things through the beast’s eyes if he chose. After reining in the hound with the bond, he’d felt Havoc’s need to feed off evil energies. He’d been completely prepared to kill the animal if he went dark like the Gods had when they’d fed off corrupted energy.
Blade at the ready, Uri had been set to put him down. Instead he’d been surprised to learn that the hound somehow metabolized the energy it siphoned. Havoc seemed to have no inclination to feed off those with untainted auras; instead, he hunted the sickest of humanity. Those shrouded in a thick cloud of darkness. It’d taken time to adjust to seeing tainted auras through the beast’s eyes, any auras, not to mention understanding what the fuck he was seeing.
The beast was pulling his weight; he just had to make Drake see that.
Havoc suddenly stopped his jumping. The hound’s ears tilted high; his back went stiff as whiffs of smoke billowed from his mouth. The stance sent Uri on alert. He only did that on a hunt, and even though they were in the middle of nowhere, Uri didn’t doubt the animal’s instincts, so he listened and waited.
Havoc’s stance became more rigid, the nubby tail high as he emitted a low deadly growl. Uri’s neck itched. The beast didn’t usually growl.
Scanning the area, he didn’t detect anything, yet. There were no humans to torment in the middle of the night on a dirt trail, so it wasn’t likely to be possessed—they haunted cities not deserted wilderness. His preternatural hearing picked up the snapping of a branch to the right.
Uri teleported to Havoc, hearing another branch break in the heavily forested area. In a blur of movement, a big bastard, for a human, barreled through at full speed, attempting to take him to the ground. Damn, he’d been wrong, this was definitely a demon-possessed; he really hated that they got a boost of demon strength. Sidestepping the charge, he grabbed the idiot by the back of his black wife-beater shirt, the thing started to rip with the momentum, but Uri got him down and pinned. He was a good couple of inches shorter than Uri, a heavily muscled, bald, black guy, with what were probably prison tats to go with his shiny eyebrow ring.
It was irritating that all he could do was detain the asshole unless he wanted to feel the pain he inflicted tenfold.
Fucking curse.
This guy really deserved an ass-kicking for pure stupidity alone. This whole thing made no sense. Did the fiend really think he could take on a Guardian?
“How did you find me?” He growled the words. The male didn’t speak. Odd, the demons almost always liked to talk shit through the possessed human. Telling all about the things they would do to you after they took out your intestines, yada, yada, fuck you with your own dick…
Cocking his head, Uri looked at the defiantly silent idiot. Fuck, he didn’t have time for this shit. He was reaching to his pocket to grab a pair of spelled cuffs he’d brought when the dumbass made a sad attempt at bucking to be released. Uri shook his head; the possessed was strong, but not that strong. That was when he heard more movement along with Havoc’s low growl.
Uri whipped Eyebrow’s body up as he heard two more come through the same tree line. Havoc took one down while Uri moved his captive in front of him to take the blow from his buddy. As long as he didn’t inflict the pain, he didn’t get hit with the repercussions. Uri smirked as the wind was knocked from Eyebrow, but the impact dislodged his grip on the asshole.
Back in fighting stance, he rolled his shoulders, enjoying the surge of adrenaline fighting always brought. Checking on Havoc, he saw the animal had a barrel-chested white guy in a filthy white tank top down on the ground. The hound’s teeth had pierced the guy’s neck as Havoc injected him with a paralyzing agent all hellhounds held. Uri grinned as he watched the possessed go limp, screeching in rage. Then the sound abruptly cut off, no more moving or talking for that guy.
Yep, the pup was good for more than just entertainment.
One down, two to go. Both Eyebrow and the new short, stocky guy started circling him. The little guy had a knife and had obviously spent way too much time shriveling his balls with steroids before getting his ass possessed. Uri shook his head, a little surprised they were going on the offensive. Eyebrow lunged first. Uri teleported behind him, toying with him to see what he’d attempt next. Shriveled Balls thought Uri was distracted enough to take a stab at his kidney. No way did they really believe they could succeed.
He blocked the knife swing instead of teleporting. A mistake. Uri pivoted to the left, but Balls held strong, and the bastard’s wrist snapped, son of a bitch. He turned in time to see that Eyebrow was hoping to catch him off guard and inject him with a syringe of… who the fuck knew what.
Havoc growled deep and lunged, taking Eyebrow down. The guy was an inch from injecting Havoc with whatever the fuck was in the syringe. Uri knew he didn’t have time to detain them; he grabbed Havoc and teleported home—was forced to leave before the repercussions from breaking the asshole’s wrist hit. The pain washed over him just as he landed in his bed with a bounce.
Uri immediately mind-linked to Drake with the info that he’d been attacked, sending a mental image of the location. There were three possessed; one had a syringe of something they were trying to inject me with. One guy down. I’m down at the moment. Broke a bastard’s wrist. Shit, he hated admitting that he’d fucked up.
I’ll get someone out there. Get your ass in here when shit’s straight, came Drake’s deep voice in Uri’s mind just as his wrist hit the first regeneration. Only nine more breaks and repairs to go… Perfect.
By the second break, Uri was completely irritated. Knowing he had eight more breaks before he could get to the compound would make anyone angry. He probably should have called in when he was out there instead of toying with the assholes. Suddenly, he felt a nip from the pup, followed by long wet licks to his injured wrist. After injecting him with his paralyzing agent, the beast hopped to the foot of the bed, facing the door. He smiled as he watched the pup guard him. Drake would have conniptions when he realized Uri had not only brought the beast here, he planned to keep him.
Havoc had earned his loyalty, and the thought of Drake’s scowl brought a wider crook to his lips. Yeah, Drake was going to be furious.
The paralyzing agent didn’t really work its full glory since he and Havoc were blood-bonded. Still, the next break didn’t even faze him. Why had they never thought to get some hellhound venom to use like this before?
Got one of your friends, came through his link with Gregoire.
Jax’s confused voice came next. Was there a fucking hellhound out here?
This was going to be fun to explain.
Uri would have to hit his cave for an energy refuel before going in. He’d need it to deal with the ass-kicking to come.