She needed Sam.
“Do you ever stop bitching?” Sam slid an irritated glance in Aster’s direction and for the millionth time, resisted the urge to strangle the spirit. It was getting damn hard to remind himself of the importance of keeping the warlock’s soul in one piece.
“What do you expect? You picked the longest possible route.”
He’d already explained to Aster the reasoning for it—that they bloody well couldn’t stroll through the middle of the Death Wards and not raise an alarm—but Aster remained stubbornly obtuse. Sam was beginning to think the warlock just liked to complain. A lot.
With a great deal more bitching on Aster’s part, they managed to scale the perimeter wall and leave sector nine behind. From here on out, they’d have to be on high alert and out of reach of the heightened surveillance. He said as much to Aster and received a long diatribe regarding his dubious abilities as a soul collector. He debated shoving Aster’s staff into an available electrical socket and over-amping the warlock’s magnetic field enough to knock him out for a while, but that might be more trouble than it was worth.
“Your hair is too long,” Aster muttered. “You look like a damn hippy.”
Then again…
A shiver of sensation shuttled across Sam’s nerve synapses, putting a skidding halt on his disgruntled musings. Finally, a transmission signal.
“Sam, I need you. Pricilla. Blood…”
The faint ripple of Marabella’s voice in his head startled him as much as her cryptic words. He hadn’t been expecting a telepathic link yet. Those took longer to develop. “Bella?”
“Who the hell is Bella?”
“I’m not talking to you, old man.”
Aster scowled. “Then who are you talking to? Yourself?”
Sam growled. “Do I look like my damn name would be Bella?”
“I don’t know. Maybe your mama’s one of them weird artsy types.”
He struggled to tune out Aster and reestablish the link with Marabella. This time he decided to go strictly with telepathic communication in order to keep the nosy warlock out of the conversation. “Bella, talk to me.”
“Sam, she has me.”
He remembered her previous mention of Pricilla, and a spike of icy foreboding shot down his spine. “How? Where the hell is Cass?” Damn it, his cousin was supposed to be watching over Marabella.
“Pricilla tricked us. Not safe. Hurry.”
A jolt tripped through him as the threads of their link suddenly snapped. “Bella!” He didn’t even realize he’d roared her name out loud until a tug on his shirt whipped his gaze to Aster.
The warlock sent him a dark scowl. “Are you nuts? Keep yelling like that and you’ll have this entire place on top of us before you can get your head out of your ass.”
Even as Aster’s recriminating words hung in the air, the sound of distant, excited howls split the continuous night. Oh. Shit.
He and Aster stared at each other before they both took off running. Thankfully in the same direction. His pounding footsteps and Aster’s silent spirit ones marked a path through the twisting warrens that snaked across the central quadrant of the Death Wards. Aster yelled yet another disparaging remark about Sam’s abilities before demanding why they were now taking the most direct—and dangerous—route.
If not for the necessity of reaching the main gate before the pack of hellhounds descended on it first, Sam would have said fuck it, they were sticking to the shadows. “Save your breath, old man. And keep your ass moving.”
“Old? I’ll show you old. I can smoke you any day.” A cackle tumbled from Aster as he bulleted forward. “Eat my dust, you pansy hippy.”
The baying of the hellhounds grew louder. Sam risked a glance over his shoulder and spotted the rapidly approaching mass of smoking black fur and glowing red eyes.
“Fuuuuuck.” Jerking his attention ahead of him again, he ratcheted up his pace. A pair of oblivious guards crossed his path, and he plowed through them, knocking them aside like a couple of bowling pins. He barreled down the lane, his damn heart and lungs competing for prime real estate in his throat. The mental line between him and Marabella was good as dead, but it didn’t stop him from scrambling to find a dial tone. When that proved useless, he resorted to verbal communication. Not bloody likely she’d hear him from this buttfuck dimension, but apparently desperation made him stupid. No newsflash there. “Bella…if you…can hear me…get that damn line…ready,” he got out between heaving gasps. Shit, he was out of shape. This is what he got for not at least doing some pushups during his six months of imprisonment.
The imposing main wall loomed ahead—a promising beacon. A wailing siren went off, mocking his foolish hope of reaching the gate with only the hellhounds in hot pursuit. He and Aster broke past the last row of residential housing. In his peripheral vision, Sam caught flashes of movement. Excited shouts verified that the infantry had been summoned and were closing in for the capture.
There was no shittin’ way he wasn’t getting off this damn rock. Calling on the last reserves of his energy, he ran like the hounds of hell were tailing his ass. There’s fucking irony for you. Animalistic grunts and gasps bellowed from his chest. For the first time in decades, the desire to not get himself killed outweighed all else.
Beneath his feet, the ground rumbled and shook. The pack of hellhounds had morphed into a legion. The acrid scent of fire and brimstone plumed in the air. Sam lengthened his strides, practically flying now. The sound of grunts and screams drew his attention over his shoulder again. Hellhounds were knocking guards aside left and right. Those who didn’t move out of the beasts’ way were galloped into the ground.
“Bella, damn it, where are you?” He didn’t even want to ponder the possibilities of why she wasn’t answering him. If Pricilla…
No, don’t go there.
He closed the distance between him and the exterior wall. Twenty feet, tops. Shit, he could do this. The door to the main gatehouse swung open, and the guard who’d admitted him earlier stepped out. The kid took one look at the approaching hellhounds and scrambled to duck back inside. Sam leapt forward and wrenched the door from the guard’s hands.
Something massive, hairy and smelling suspiciously like burning ash plowed into Sam, sending him flying through the doorway. A heavy metal clank banged behind him, but he barely registered the slamming of the door as he collided with the registration desk. Its growl menacing, the hellhound bit into the leg of his jeans and dragged him sideways before ramming him into the wall.
Not about to willingly give himself over as the hound’s chew toy, Sam kicked the beast in the head. The hellhound issued an enraged snarl, but it didn’t release him. Its thick, wiry hair bristling and smoking, the hound towed him toward the door. From the corner of his eye, Sam spotted Aster hovering near the desk. The guard was nowhere to be seen.
Sam’s growl nearly matched that of the hellhound. “Some damn help here would be nice.”