The Hellhound’s Mate

Chapter 1

CHAPTER

ONE

“I think you’re going to love this one,” Just Call Me Jenny The Realtor said as she parked her BMW in the circular drive between the porch and the silent fountain.

She gave a little giggle like she did at the end of nearly every sentence, and I had to escape the car immediately or I’d start screaming.

The crisp autumn breeze caught my long black hair the instant I stood up, whipping it away from my face to snap behind me.

I squinted into the sunlight even from behind my small circular sunglasses and stepped away from the vehicle.

A slight twinge of guilt went through me as I shut the door, cutting off the beginning of her spiel about the house beside us.

The woman was excellent about all the tiny details I craved while property-hunting, but goddess, she could ramble.

“So like I was saying—I don’t know if you heard me—” she said as she stepped out of the car, “the main building dates back to 1880, but the family cemetery in the back has headstones from 1786.”

I paused all over. “A cemetery?”

She gulped and nodded, her brown eyes studying my face. “It’s private, just the family members, and there’s a caretaker looking after it already. You won’t have to do a thing.” She smiled uncertainly. “Unless…you want to?”

Did I? I’d never considered owning a cemetery, but it certainly fit with my personal and professional aesthetic.

The age of the place had been a selling point, but to know the plots went back nearly a century further?

I was warming to the idea of owning a cemetery, but not sold on doing any of the maintenance myself.

“How is the caretaking funded?”

Jenny scurried around the car toward me.

“Oh, it’s done by a volunteer. I’ve never met him, but we’ve spoken on the phone a few times now.

Mister Sable is an old friend of the family who helped care for Mister Dodge when he was ill.

Now, he maintains the house, the grounds in general, and the cemetery.

I’m sure he’d be happy to speak with you. ”

“Is he here now?” I looked at the front doors, a pair of dark beasts were carved into the wood that aimed their snarls at the handles. I’d agreed to see this place the moment I saw this gothic revival’s doors online.

“Oh, um,” she said, lowering her voice. “I think there might be a mental condition at work with him. Maybe a sort of…fear of people? He was very shy on the phone and balked completely when I asked to tour the property with him.”

“Ah. Well, that’s fine then.” I certainly didn’t want to alienate free help, regardless of the man’s reasons for isolating himself.

“Let’s go inside,” Jenny said brightly and followed that up with the giggle.

I was fairly certain she was trying to flirt with me, but I was immune to the charms of most women.

Not that I wasn’t open to a new relationship out here in the ’burbs.

I actually tended to fall fast and hard—my past was littered with whirlwind romances.

It was a shame they usually had the shelf-life of a candle.

I followed Jenny inside, petting one of the beasts on the door closest to me as I walked in.

Wolf? Werewolf? I wasn’t sure what sort of canine they were meant to be, but I liked thinking of them as beasts.

On a three-story home painted black with silver trim, spires and towers aplenty, it was a place that needed savage creatures guarding it.

“Oh,” I whispered in awed delight once I stood in the foyer.

Dark wood everywhere, a sweeping staircase to the second floor, tall stained glass windows painting colors on the floors…

I was impressed. And someone had been keeping the place clean and tidy since the previous owner’s death several months ago because there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere.

With furnishings that matched the intention of the architecture—I wasn’t sure if they were all antiques—the spooky grande dame of a house was definitely worth considering.

Jenny grinned at me like she knew she’d set the hook well. I chuckled at her and nodded, holding out an arm for her to begin the tour.

She took me through casual spaces like the kitchen where every effort had been made to make the modern appliances hide behind Victorian designs.

We also went through formal spaces, like the grand dining room, where it seemed no expense had been spared on a massive table and chandeliers dripping with crystals.

I could imagine everything from cooking and relaxing to hosting lavish parties.

At the back of the house was an ornate wrought iron conservatory with plants that were as well-maintained as the rest of the home.

I could name irises and calla lilies, but the other flowers and green plants were a mystery to me.

Some kind of vining plant dripped down from the ceiling like thousands of spiders, and I smiled.

That would be my art studio. If I bought the house, of course.

A buzzing sound from somewhere on her person had me refocusing on Jenny.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a wince as she got her phone out of her pocket, “I need to take this. You can see the cemetery from here, but we can walk through it once I’m back.”

Absently, I gave her a nod, already zeroing in on the few headstones I could see outside through the wavy glass windows. Was that a weeping willow out there? I loved those. If there was a bench beneath it, I could see myself sitting out there at dusk, dreaming up new paintings.

Damn, I really was vibing with this entire place and I hadn’t been there an hour yet! Could it be that I’d found my home? Jenny had said I’d know when I knew. Could she have been right?

Suddenly, there came the sound of metal grating against metal.

I looked up and all around, expecting to see a window opening or a door.

But…there was no evidence of movement and no open anything.

I stepped sideways to look out from the conservatory to see if Jenny had done something, but she was talking on her phone like nothing was amiss.

What had I heard?

A terrified scream had me snapping my attention back outside to the cemetery. Someone was running toward the house. Someone naked, pale, and…vaguely transparent? It was as if they were solidifying from the feet up with every panicked step they took.

I blinked several times, not trusting my eyes.

I had excellent vision, but that sight was utterly impossible!

I reached over plants to brush my fingertips against a glass panel, expecting to clean it of whatever was making a person on the other side seem incorporeal, but the glass was completely clear.

What the hell was I seeing?

Just as the person took a sharp turn to avoid running into the windows, something large and black slammed into them.

Fangs and teeth tore at the person’s legs, screams rising up from them as their body turned to ash in the creature’s mouth.

What hadn’t solidified seemed to become mist and float away, back the way they’d come.

In just a few snaps of terrible jaws, the beast had destroyed that ghost-like person.

A beast like those on the front doors.

Pitch black from snout to tail, it looked like a wolf that had mutated into something more .

Entirely too many pointed teeth filled a square jaw, and a long blood-red tongue swept out to lick over thin lips.

The inside of its mouth was the deep orange of a flame, and I couldn’t help thinking there might be a furnace within the beast since its chest glowed and flickered like there was a fire inside it, beneath the midnight fur.

It sniffed the air for a moment, big ears swiveling, before it suddenly stood up on its hind legs and… walked away.

Metal creaked alarmingly before it sounded like a heavy door slammed shut.

I was panting as I eased back from the window, my back feeling sweaty, and the hairs all over my body standing at attention.

What had I just witnessed? Had a demonic wolf just eaten a ghost?

No. I scoffed at the very notion. But…I had seen…

something . Something that had looked an awful lot like a beast with fire inside it devouring a spirit.

A spirit that had been trying to escape?

My attention fixed on the one gravestone I could see clearly, I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if the cemetery’s inhabitants were unhappy with their accommodations, while their warden was determined to keep them interred.

“So what do you think, Ambrose?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin as I spun around to see Jenny returning. She flinched, too, and apologized profusely for startling me. I waved it away, my other hand over my pounding heart.

And then I went and said the single most insane thing I’d ever uttered in my life… “Do whatever it takes for me to buy this house.”

I knew there were humans in the mansion, but I wasn’t about to stop doing my job as the only hellhound on the property and let a soul escape Hell.

I was sure no one had been at the back of the house to witness my kill.

Like, eighty percent sure. Maybe seventy.

Usually, when a human spotted me, they screamed.

So maybe I was ninety percent certain I hadn’t been seen since the only screaming had come from the damned.

I lapped up water from the rain-filled planter at the mouth of the mausoleum.

It quenched my thirst and temporarily extinguished the fire inside me that let me do my job of returning the damned to Hell.

When it blazed back to life within me, I knew I wasn’t done yet.

The gate beneath the cemetery was old and the number of souls consigned to Hell grew every day, so I was still needed.

But it would’ve been nice if I could’ve gone on living in the house.

Dodge had known about me for decades and, though he’d treated me like a pet most of the time, he’d been kind to me.

I had been given a room in the basement, access to the library, and truly excellent food.

But Dodge had never married, never produced an heir, and the secrets of the property had gone to the grave with him.

Because of that, whoever had inherited hadn’t even bothered to visit before putting the place up for sale.

And I was back to living in the mausoleum on the edge of the cemetery again.

I walked inside and collapsed onto the unforgiving granite floor with a heavy sigh.

I should be grateful that I’d gotten to live almost like a person for as long as I had but…

Hunting for game took me farther and farther from the center of the property where the gate was—and I would soon reach the boundary that contained me.

I was becoming nocturnal again. And I hadn’t had a good sleep for over a month now.

Rolling onto my back, I tried to stretch out and relax but with a free-standing crypt in the middle of the room, there wasn’t much space for me.

Maybe the new owner wouldn’t notice me. Some never did, to the point that I could stand right in front of them and they’d see nothing.

Others, like Dodge, had made me the moment I stepped into view and had even claimed to have heard the gate open and close just like I could hear.

Actually, I wasn’t sure which version I’d prefer.

Part of me wanted to be left alone to do my duty and nothing more. The rest of me knew of the comforts inside the house, the companionship I’d lost, and wanted that back. Dodge hadn’t been the best of souls, but he’d been good enough. The new owner might be better… Or worse.

I had been enslaved once. A necromancer could do that to me with just a few words, and then use me to take lives.

I’d slaughtered entire villages of people long ago.

Surviving that had earned me the reward of becoming a simple gate guardian on an entirely different continent.

So maybe it would be better if I didn’t risk my luck on the new owner at all.

Just hide away from them and never peek.

I got back to my feet and shook myself. Since not a bit of the souls I devoured fed me, I was hungry. Despite being weary all the way down to my bones, I trotted from the mausoleum in search of something to hunt.