Chapter One
Sam
It begins like usual, the slightest disturbance to my sleep, making me toss and turn until I’m in that place between rest and wakefulness—not fully coherent, but enough so I could have groggy thoughts.
There is pain, not the kind of pain that would make you squirm, just enough to make you feel uncomfortable. It kind of squirms around in my limbs, like adrenaline, but not as insistent, making my body twitch.
My eyes pop open, and I shoot up off the couch, not bothering to grab a T-shirt or the shorts that lay nearby. I won’t need them. I move silently like a cat—like a hound—to the door and slide the lock over and let myself out. It’s cold out. The air doesn’t shock me back into myself. I don’t even shiver.
Then I’m racing through the yard, over the grass, and past the barn. I hear the horses in their stalls, alerted at my presence, but I ignore them and keep running. My bones come unhinged and realign. My spine stretches, begins to reshape, and my body hunches. Black, thick fur sprouts, replacing the smooth skin of my human arm and then finally the switch in my brain flips.
I am no longer human.
I am hellhound.
But I’m still me.
Only this me can give in to the frustration and sadness that seems to well up inside my human skin until I’m so full and there’s nowhere else for it to go. And so it sloshes there. It soaks in until I feel like I’ll drown.
I hate it.
That’s when the hound takes over. I can’t really deny it. It’s like a summons, a calling, a command. Usually I can tell it no, or push back, but when you’re full of sloshing emotion there’s nowhere to push it back to.
So I give in.
I run.
I lose all thought.
It’s just me, the night, and nothing else. It’s a kind of freedom I’ve never felt before.
And then I wake up.
* * *
I looked down.
I lay in the forest, the dirt and leaves beneath me wet and cold. Confusion clouded my mind at first, until I realized it happened again. How many times had it been now? Four? Five? I honestly couldn’t remember. The nights were starting to blur together to make up one very long nightmare.
You’d think I’d feel better after this kind of run, after this kind of mental release. There’s nothing else like it. To completely shed the skin of who you are, to be able to completely forget every thought and worry that filled you.
But that’s the thing.
I might have purged the feelings that sent me out there, but they were always replaced with something more. Something worse.
I pushed up onto my knees, holding out my arms and hands, looking down.
Please, don’t let it be there.
It was.
Blood, dark and drying, caked my arms and stomach. It outlined my fingernails and was splattered on my palms. I swallowed back a gag.
I stumbled to my feet, looking around for a body. Everything around me was completely undisturbed. There wasn’t even a leaf out of place. The night was alive with the sound of birds and wildlife. No one out here was afraid.
Except for me.
And what was I afraid of?
Me.
I looked over my body, hoping to find a wound, some deep bleeding cut. There wasn’t one. There never is.
And so I headed back home, all the while wondering whose blood covered me and whether or not I killed someone.
Heven
The sweet scent of apples filled the cool air as it rustled through the leaves of the apple trees. The twisting branches were in full bloom, abundant with bright red fruit, and the long paths between the rows of trees were nothing but ankle-high grass dotted with apples already fallen from their stems.
Even through everything this past summer, Sam and I had made this place grow. We found the time to be here, we cherished it, and we kept our special place alive. It was thanking us now with plentiful sweet fruit. But as we stood here in this place that meant so much to us, we weren’t thanking it for the fruit. We asked it for something more.
For all the time we nurtured it, we asked it for the same.
For Logan.
“We ask that you provide a safe haven, that you cocoon this young body in protective soil, that your leaves provide shade in the summer and your roots provide warmth in the winter. We ask for every apple you produce that you equal that in peace for Logan because he deserves no less.”
My voice was husky with sorrow and heavy with pain.
“For this we promise we will continue to water your soil, prune your branches, and respect this land as sacred.”
Sam squeezed my hand and my words fell away. We stared down at the turned earth already beginning to show signs of growth. Mums in every shade were planted in large bunches around the simple concrete plaque dug into the ground, and a white marble cross rose out of the delicate yellow flowers. Silently, Sam twisted off an apple from a nearby branch and set it in the center where the casket had been lowered into the ground. When he straightened, he reached for my hand once more.
I dashed away a tear as we stood there, the breeze embracing us, and the trees rustled their answering promise. Logan’s body would be at peace here and his soul would be at peace in heaven. The real challenge was for us to find the same.
I looked over at Sam, noting the dark rings beneath his eyes and the way his lips drew down. He still had the same golden good looks, but they didn’t glow as they used to.
The death of his little brother hit him hard.
It hit us all hard.
When we came home from hell, from trapping Beelzebub’s soul and Hecate’s old-lady body (by binding her powers with the petals from a flower that grows on an island in hell) in the very cell in which they contained Kimber, we weren’t celebrating. Yes, it was a victory, but that temporary triumph was eclipsed by everything we had to sacrifice to get it. Like the death of Logan, the death of my mother, and the loss of my mother’s soul, which is now chained to the floor of hell. Not to mention I made friends with Riley, an old hellhound frenemy of Sam’s, to help me get Sam out of hell—which he did… but he also stole the Treasure Map and gave it to Beelzebub, the evil prince of hell by whom Riley happens to be enslaved, due to a family curse. I also discovered that I’m the Soul Reaper and meant to release all the captured souls from hell, thus weakening every one of the seven princes of hell.
My head was beginning to hurt. And that wasn’t even the half of it all.
I still remember the look on Gran’s face when I came up the porch steps, looking ravaged, with some people she’d never met and Logan’s body. I started confessing things about hellhounds, fallen angels, witches, and trips to hell. I thought she would grab up the phone and have me committed. At the very least, I thought she would call me crazy.