Must Love Hellhounds

is nobody to see us for miles and miles, but you’re blushing. How is that not pure?”
    His smile was pure sin. I shifted closer to him and leaned against his chest, resting my head on his shoulder. He stiffened, surprised, and I snuggled closer, soaking up the warmth of his body with my back. He raised his arm and put it around my shoulders. I concentrated and heard the steady beating of his heart, strong and a little too fast. He was anxious, too.
    “If we get out of this mess alive and undamaged, would you like to spend the night in my apartment or do you want me to stay with you?”
    “Either way will work,” he said softly.
    The six-month storming of my castle had put a definite dent in Raphael’s body armor. It would take me a long time to convince him that he didn’t have to be charming, witty, and sexy around me twenty-four-seven. Some part of me had hoped that once we had sex, everything would smooth itself out. But in the end, he was still insecure and I was still broken. Sex was simple. Being together was a lot more complicated.
    We stood together and watched the sunset.
    The magic crashed.
    “Time to pry Doulos’s shade from that bitch,” Raphael said.
    “You realize that if we’re right and Cerberus is after his corpse, he will follow Doulos wherever we take him?”
    “Yes. But my mother deserves to say her good-byes.”
    He took off his clothes, stood still for a moment, the breeze fanning his perfect form, and opened his mouth. A groan broke free, deepening into a hair-raising growl, as his body stretched and thickened, hard muscle encasing it. Fur sheathed him. He glanced at me and his eyes were completely wild.
    I lifted Boom Baby. Raphael picked up a six-foot metal pole he’d wrenched from the slope on the way here. We headed down through the ravines to the house.
    “Those bullets are the size of a dollar bill,” Raphael said.
    “They are Silver Hawks: armor-piercing, incendiary, explosive, silver-load cartridges. They slice through armor, set things on fire, and explode inside the target, delivering a load of extremely potent silver pellets. Boom Baby fires two hundred of these per minute.”
    An excited snarl rolled ahead of us. The ground trembled in sync with the beat of the giant paws.
    “Can they handle the dog?” he asked.
    “We’re about to find out.” I raised Boom Baby. “Here, Fido . . . Here, boy . . .”
    Ahead, Cerberus rounded the curve and charged us.
    I squeezed the trigger. A high-pitched whine of bullet flurry ripped through the air. Boom Baby bucked in my hands, the recoil hitting me hard. The bullets bit into Cerberus’s chest, punching through the muscle to the heart. Blood flew. The great hellhound ran three more steps, not realizing the lethal swarm had already shredded his life, stumbled, and fell, paws over head. He rolled and slid to a stop five feet from me in a smoking ruin.
    “Nice gun,” Raphael said.
    Five minutes later we reached the electric fence. Raphael braided the fingers of his hands together and offered them to me like a stepping stool. I stepped, pushing hard, and he threw me, adding his strength to my jump. I shot over the fence, flipped in the air, and landed in the dirt. Boom Baby came flying next. I caught it and gently lowered it to the ground. In the cramped quarters inside the house, it would restrict my movements too much. I pulled out my P 226s, the familiar weight of the twin firearms reassuring in my hands. Raphael took a running start, pole in hand, and vaulted over the fence, landing gracefully next to me. There were times when L yc- V came in handy.
    We jogged to the house and I pressed against the side. Raphael hammered a single kick to the door and it flew off its hinges, crashing into the darkness. I cleared the doorway and stepped into the gloom. The door led to a narrow foyer. On the right, stairs led to the second floor. Straight ahead lay a hallway and past it, through a doorway, a sitting room waited steeped in the twilight, the dark bulky shapes of furniture like the spines of sleeping beasts.
    The nauseating stench of undead flesh laced my nostrils. It clung to the floor, permeating the carpets. If smell had color, this reek would drip from the draft in oily, fat drops of black. It was impossible to tell where it came from.
    A moment later I caught another scent entirely: the bitter, clinical scent of embalming fluid. A human body waited for us somewhere in the house.
    My eyes adjusted to the low light. We