As I fol owed their hairy, black bodies to the ground, I saw that their legs didn’t end in the paws typical of canines.
Instead, these hybrid creatures stood on cloven feet with two large, grasping talons that held them securely to the earth of the hil .
Other than paralyzing fear, the only thought in my mind was the question of what these strange animals were. As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered asking anyway. Lucius unwittingly answered me with two words. They were uttered so quietly his breath barely disturbed the air.
“Hel hounds,” he whispered.
I saw Bo slowly move his foot to take another step forward. The wolf on the left dipped his head to turn his burning stare on Bo. He growled more loudly and the ground beneath us grumbled in agitation. The hound’s long tongue licked hungrily at his wet lips and thick globs of sticky drool dropped from its trembling jowls to splatter on the forest floor. The saliva hissed when it landed, as if searing the earth with acid.
Bo took one more step forward and the wolf’s flaming eyes blazed hotter, tiny sparks flying from their red-orange centers. As it stared at Bo, the putrid smel of burning flesh began to saturate the air and Bo began to stagger backward.
A sizzling sound crackled and spit into the tense moment and Bo fel to his knees with a strangled cry. He raised one hand as if to shield himself from the glare of the dog and it was then that I realized from where both the smel and the sound had arisen.
Bo’s exposed hand and arm were blistered and blackened, as though they had been burned to a crisp. My breath hitched painful y in my chest when I saw his face turn to the side and it looked no better than his hand.
“Bo!” I cried lunging forward.
I had no idea what my plan was; I just knew that I had to get to him, had to help him. I knew that I had to save him, like he’d saved me so many times.
I made it several steps before I heard his strained voice.
“Ridley, stay back,” he cautioned, but I didn’t listen.
I fel at his side just as he toppled over, his head fal ing right into my hands. His face was charred and completely unrecognizable. My heart squeezed inside my chest just before I felt a searing heat scorching the skin of my neck and shoulders. In my mind’s eye, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the hound’s fiery gaze was now upon me where I knelt with Bo’s head in my lap.
Gritting my teeth against the pain, I hunched forward, covering as much of Bo as I could with my own body and bracing myself as the hel hound tried to burn me alive.
“Ridley, no!” I heard Bo croak throatily, his voice dry and rough.
At his words, I opened eyes I hadn’t even been aware of closing and I saw one already healed ebony orb looking up at me.
“I won’t let you die for me,” he breathed.
I sucked in a gasp as the pain at my neck worked its way up the back of my head, tearing into my scalp like a thousand needles. I wouldn’t let them make me scream. Not in front of Bo. I’d be strong to the end.
“It’s better than spending one minute of my life without you,” I managed.
I squeezed my eyes shut again and barely felt the movement of Bo in my arms, the pain was so intense. And then I was weightless and my face was on fire.
I cracked my eyelids and saw the hounds above me. Bo had taken me in his arms and was struggling to his feet. The heat baked my corneas, rendering my vision blurry. Bo cried out as he straightened with me in his arms.
I don’t know how he managed it. He was burned so badly, even the slightest movement must’ve been excruciating. And yet he persisted until he was upright, with me in his arms, trying to make it to the safety of the mine’s entrance.
As if warning Bo not to make another move, I heard the deep, threatening bark of the two hounds, crying out in unison. But stil , Bo moved on, taking another hard-won step forward.
The heat on my face dissipated and I cracked my lids again, just in time to see the two huge hel hounds take their eyes from us just long enough to leap from their perch atop the hil and land on the ground behind us. As soon as their attention was focused tightly on us again, I felt the heat rise once more. I knew that we didn’t stand a chance against the two animals. They carried hel itself in their fiery eyes.
I thought blearily of praying, but I lacked the focus to form any kind of plea. God and angels and destiny swirled lazily inside my head as my flesh melted under the intensity of the hounds’ flaming gaze.
Then I was sailing through the air. The brief gust of wind felt like heaven on my burning skin, but it was short-lived.
Next, I felt resistance as the boards that crossed the mine’s entrance gave way beneath my weight. The crunch and splinter of breaking wood blocked out Bo’s cry for just a moment before I landed with a thud on the cool dirt of the mine floor.
I scrambled to sit up as Bo’s cries echoed al around me, bouncing around inside the tube and finding their way back to my ears from a thousand different directions. Each cry hit my heart like throwing knives, pelting me with their torturous blades.
Turning, I looked back for Bo, but he wasn’t in the mine with me. He was barely standing on the outside of it, facing me, the hel hounds now between us.
One hound turned to come after me, but when his huge muzzle entered the mine’s mouth, he screamed with an ear-splitting cry that lanced through my head like a hot poker through butter. He stumbled back and tried again, but whined when his cloven foot touched the earth inside the mine.
Not prepared to endure any pain himself, the huge beast turned his attention back toward the fading Bo. My bleeding heart leapt up into my throat when the other hound raised his front leg and pawed at Bo, his mighty talons tearing easily through Bo’s clothes and flesh. Bo crumbled to his knees.
Across the space between us, Bo’s singed eyes met mine and time stopped for us. Bo teetered on his knees for what felt like an eternity before he began to fal forward. An invisible fist gripped my heart, squeezing tighter and tighter with every inch of Bo’s decent until he fel flat on his stomach with his face buried in the dirt at the hound’s feet.
The squeal of a banshee broke through the horror of the moment, Lucius and Annika sweeping in from out of my field of view, each grabbing one of Bo’s arms and then leaping into the mine with him in tow.
The trio skidded to a halt not far from where I sat, but I only saw one body come to a stop—Bo’s.
Fighting against the pain of my burns, I crawled to his side and rol ed him onto his back. His face was charred, his lips black and cracked. His eyelids were al but swol en shut now and his singed shirt hung in tatters from his bloody chest and shoulders. Although it tore at my guts to see him this way, it was easy for me to look past al that. It was easy for me to see the handsome face of the person I loved most on the planet, the person I loved more than my own life.