Chapter 14
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
I could heal my mate with my own blood. Watching Ambrose’s wound seal itself up was equal parts fascinating and horrifying.
That it caused him so much pain wracked me with guilt, but I kept my bleeding arm over his stomach and let him scream.
My relief was so great when he stopped, when the wound healed completely, that I couldn’t stop my tears from falling.
Scooping Ambrose into my arms, I held him close, not caring that I still bled and ached everywhere.
I hadn’t been sure how much longer I might’ve been able to fight Oisian.
As I’d watched Ambrose bleeding to death, I’d known I would ask Oisian to finish me.
But now my little mate was healed, and I didn’t care about my pains.
“What the fuck just happened?” Ambrose asked as he clung to my neck.
“Hellhounds can heal their mates through blood,” Oisian answered. “How did you not know that, Brother?”
“Brothers?” Ambrose made to lean back, so I reluctantly let him.
“In kind,” I said as we both stood up. “He’s not of my litter.”
“Oh. But you have siblings? That’s cool.”
Perhaps he was a bit delirious from being so close to death. I went to put a hand on him, keep him close, only to have to stop and relocate my middle finger.
“Oh shit, Saph! You’re still hurt.” Ambrose’s hands fluttered like he wasn’t sure if he could or should touch me. “What can we do for you?”
“I’m already healing.” Slower than he had, but I didn’t mind that at all.
He finally touched me, his little hands petting my face. “Okay. That’s good. Okay.”
I hugged him because he sounded like he needed to be held. That he took deep breaths and sighed into my fur as he leaned heavily told me I’d been right.
The sudden sounds of feasting mouths had me looking over at where Gaufrid had stood.
The ghouls, freed from Gaufrid’s spell, were devouring his deceased flesh like they might not have eaten in far too long.
When Oisian killed him, his damned soul had returned to Hell, leaving only a mortal husk behind.
Normally, we hellhounds consumed that flesh to burn it to ash, but Oisian hadn’t, and I couldn’t blame him.
I had no doubt that the ghouls would obliterate all trace of Gaufrid by full moonrise.
Ambrose made a gagging noise and turned away from the feast. “Is, um, anyone else hurt? Does anyone need medical attention? Holy shit, Diego!”
One of the many humans who had come in leathers and helmets stood nearby with half of his helmet broken away. “Nah, I’m good,” he said, his voice jovial. “One of ’em threw me into a tree but I’m fine.”
“Huh-uh,” Ambrose said, pointing at him. “You’re going to a hospital. I’m not having you take that helmet off only to discover you’ve shattered your skull or something.”
“There’s a few more who could use an exam,” one of the witches said. “I’ll take anyone who wants to go in my van.”
“I don’t have insurance, though,” someone cradling their arm said.
Ambrose took his wallet from his back pocket and handed over a card to the witch. “I’m paying. Just remember seventeen-oh-one.”
When Ambrose made to walk away, I found myself lunging for him, dragging him back into my arms. He made an oomph sound as he thumped against my chest, but I couldn’t fight the need to keep him close. “I nearly lost you,” I whispered into his hair.
I felt him nod against me, and then he wrapped his arms around me and pressed closer. At least he didn’t mind me clinging to him for a bit longer.
But then I heard the gate creak open and everything in me fought against my instinct to spring into action. I didn’t want to leave Ambrose, regardless of which bold soul thought to free itself from Hell here and after what we’d just done. The arrogance. The audacity.
“Mother?”
I snapped my gaze to Oisian, startled to my core to hear him say that.
We might not have been born of the same litter, but all hellhounds shared the same mother.
I had not seen her in a millennium, not since I was sent to guard my first gate.
But there she stood, still looking more human than hellhound and all demon.
She smiled, and a shiver went through me as my tail began to wag without permission.
“What great things you’ve done,” she said with a voice like thunder. “Ah, my good boys, how proud I am of you both.”
Oisian wiggled and stumbled over to her, looking like a giant puppy and whimpering with the need to be petted. I wanted to do the same, but feared looking like him in front of Ambrose. And I couldn’t release him yet. Not yet.
“Is that really your mother?” Ambrose asked.
I nodded, unable to speak or tear my gaze from her.
“You look like her.”
Did I? While most of her was dark gray skin and human features, where she had fur on her head, arms, and six bare breasts was midnight black, like mine. She didn’t have the glow of hellfire within her, but her eyes were like fiery embers. Perhaps he meant the way her fangs showed when she smiled.
“Saph, I’m fine.” Ambrose gave me a little shove. “Go give your mom a kiss.”
He didn’t sound like he was judging Oisian for how he couldn’t seem to stop jumping up to lick Mother’s cheeks and make her laugh. As I rushed over to do the same, I dearly hoped Ambrose wouldn’t mind my ridiculous behavior.
Mother laughed and tried to pet me, too, as I joined Oisian in greeting her. “Silly pups,” she said, and I did feel like the years had melted away and I was again a wiggly puppy begging for her attention.
“I sent Gaufrid back to Hell,” Oisian said excitedly, and I couldn’t fault him wanting her praise.
Mother nodded. “Gaufrid was wreaking havoc in Hell before he found his way back up here. I’ve contained him myself this time. Now, he’ll never get away.”
She patted her belly and a face appeared like it was trying to push free of her skin. While my bite could send a soul to hell, hers could imprison it forever within her gut. Gaufrid would never be free again.
“You deserve rewards,” she went on, “for doing what we failed to do a second time.”
Rewards? That gave me pause. Last time, my reward had been relocation and the promise of an easier life. Until Ambrose, it had been an existence. Easier, yes, but not better. Not until he arrived. Was relocation to be my reward again?
I opened my mouth to refuse, but Oisian spoke first.
“I want to go home,” he said quietly. “My fire’s gone out. I’ve lost the will.”
Mother pulled him in close and kissed his forehead. “I know, baby. It’s alright. Come home and rest. We’ll find something else for you.”
Oisian sighed, and I watched him melt into Mother. Was that how his soul would return? It looked painless and freeing. I silently said goodbye and let him go.
Mother looked to me. “Now for you, dear one.”
“I won’t l-leave A-Ambrose,” I said, though my voice shook.
She cupped my face in her giant hands. “Of course not. You’ll stay here and know the love and joy you’ve found with your mate. And to make sure you can be fully amongst these humans, I’m giving you a new form.”
I’d scarcely managed to wonder what she meant before a firestorm raged from the top of my head down to my toes.
It felt like every cell in me screamed and changed, my voice stolen away so I couldn’t cry out with them.
At least it was quick, but when it was over, I felt a shocking panic building inside as I looked down at myself and saw only pale bare skin.
“Oh, my fuck! What did you do to him?”
That was Ambrose stalking over with rage radiating from his every clenched muscle. I made to reach for him, but the sight of a furless arm with claw-free fingers made me pull away and whimper.
“Look at him! He’s horrified. You can’t do this to him!”
“But he’ll need this form to remain here with you,” Mother insisted. “Would you condemn him to the shadows for the rest of his life?”
“At least give him the choice,” Ambrose pleaded, his eyes full of tears as he looked at me. “Let him be himself when he can and pretend he’s human when he has to.”
I tried to smile at him, so relieved to know he understood. “If this form is what I have to be, I’ll learn to accept it. But my mate fell in love with me as a hellhound, and I don’t want to lose that part of me.” I looked back to Mother, hoping she wouldn’t turn on me for rejecting her gift.
She looked disappointed but she nodded. “Then it’s a form you can take at will,” she said and passed her hand along my hairless back.
The screaming pain returned, but I welcomed it since it meant I was becoming myself again. In a moment, though I was panting and shaky at the end, I was my hellhound self—fur, claws, and fangs restored.
Ambrose crashed into me, nearly climbing me in his quest to hug my neck and hold on. I grabbed him close, and we held each other tightly. Into the ruff of my neck, he said, “I can’t lose my great black beast.”
“You won’t. Not ever.”
“I will also close the gates here and in Ravensgate.”
I looked to Mother again, confused now. “But how can you? Won’t that upset the balance?”
“It will not.”
A new voice, musical and yet menacing, had me looking behind the humans gathered around us.
They looked, too, and screamed at the sight of the angel.
Though they’d not made a peep at the demon amongst them, they were frightened by the angel with its multiple floating eyes, fiery halos, and nearly imperceptible golden form.
They clung to each other and stared in silence now. The angel sighed.
“These gates are too well known to the damned thanks to Gaufrid’s machinations below,” Mother said, “so they must be closed.”
“And rather than open new ones somewhere else,” the angel added, “we will close two gates to Heaven to maintain the balance.”
That there were gates to Heaven shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. What soul would ever want to leave that perfect place?
“You’d be surprised,” the angel said, several of its eyes fixed on me.
I gulped to have its attention and nodded, willing to admit I did not know everything.
“Morning,” Ambrose whispered harshly, “is this what you did?”
Sitting on the grass with an old, very thick book open in front of them, Morning appeared exhausted to their bones but they smiled just the same. “I did, yeah.”
“And you won’t do it again,” the angel said, its voice full of reprimand.
Morning ducked their head a bit sheepishly. “Well, I thought we’d need you to stop Gaufrid.”
“No, you only needed the mate to facilitate that.”
Ambrose gasped. “The angel knows who I am…”
The angel groaned. “Bothersome creatures. Say your goodbyes, Demon.”
Between one blink and the next, the angel was gone.
Mother enveloped Ambrose’s entire head in one hand and cupped my cheek in her other. “Dear boys,” she said with a smile, “I doubt we’ll meet again, so please remember that you are brilliant and brave and loved by those below. Have the happiest of lives.”
I closed my eyes as she kissed my forehead and, when I opened them again, she was gone.
“Will we really never see her again?” Ambrose said sadly.
“Not unless we visit Hell in our afterlife.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Okay.”
My mate, a delicate and beautiful human willing to visit Hell when he could spend eternity in Heaven… I cuddled him close and kissed his sweet mouth.
Though I wished to do far more than kiss now that the dangers were gone and I was free, we had so many guests and fellow warriors to see to first. The woman with the van turned out to be Celestine, and she took six people with her to the local urgent care facility with Ambrose’s credit card.
Morning was given snacks and juice before LaRhonda packed them and the rest of her coven up and drove away.
Diego’s crew left his motorcycle in the drive with the promise of bringing him back to get it once he was declared fit to drive.
Ambrose called Vera to let her know all about what had happened and that everyone was fine.
Once all of that was done, the reality of my freedom settled into me. I could go . I could go anywhere. With Ambrose, of course, but I wouldn’t have to spend my life reading about the wonders of the modern world—I could go see it all. I’d have to look human to do it, but I could go.
“That’s everyone gone,” Ambrose said as he walked into the studio.
“Even the ghouls have, uh, finished, and gone back to Ravensgate. Or at least that’s the direction they shuffled off to.
” He waved out the window toward our own little cemetery.
“I don’t know but I don’t think any of them stayed here. ”
“Ravensgate has fresh corpses for them, so I’m sure they’ve gone there.”
He made a gagging sound before tucking his face into the fur of my chest between my pecs.
He leaned there breathing, and I wondered if he minded that I didn’t smell like brimstone anymore.
I could see in the window’s reflection that my fire was gone, nothing within me burning now. I wasn’t sure that I missed it.
Ambrose looked up at me, concern furrowing his brow. “Did I overstep earlier? With your mother?”
“No,” I said honestly. “You said what I wanted to when I was too overwhelmed to speak.”
He sighed and smiled softly. “Okay. Good. I thought at first that you were just surprised, but then it looked like you wanted to get it all off of you.”
“I did. I could feel the slightest breeze and everything was so cold.”
Ambrose buried his fingers into my fur. “Just so you know, you’re a good-looking human.”
“Oh?” I asked with a smirk. “Would you have me in that form?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’d have you as a ghoul because you’d still be you.”
I kissed him for his sweetness, but licked into his mouth when he moaned for me. “Come on,” he said, taking my hand. “We both desperately need a bath.”
Following him from the room, I had to wonder what it might feel like to have sex in a form without fur. If it had felt like the individual molecules of the air could touch me, what might it feel like to wrap myself around him? Perhaps I might find out someday.