Free Infernal Bonds by Holly Evans Page B

looked at the door to my left before I pushed harder. With a heavy sigh his face contorted, his bones snapped and muscles tore as he took on the hound form. He lay at my feet with his head on his front paws and his tail tucked up around him. I could feel his misery in the back of my mind; the guilt was welling up within me.  
    Elise smiled at me and said, “I’m proud of you, Evie.”
    Kadrix shook his head and made a shooing gesture with his hands. “If you don’t mind, I do have other customers.”
    Quin shared a meaningful look with him and I wondered what the sacrifice had been, for the collar. Kadrix shooed us again, and I stood.  
    He said brusquely, “Don’t fret, Evelyn, my payment was the hound’s fire. I know you were worried sick about how I was going to pay my bills.”
    I gave him my sweetest smile and said, “I’m glad to hear you can continue to live in the lap of luxury, my dear elf.”
    With that, I patted my thigh to summon the hound and walked out of the lab with Elise at my side. Quin remained behind, no doubt to have some alchemy lesson. The hound held his head low and dragged his feet a little; the misery sat heavily in the back of my mind. He’d hoped for freedom, and yet there he was, collared once more. Elise and I sat on the edge of a statue. The hound flopped at our feet with a heavy sigh.  
    A playful smile burst across Elise’s lips as she said, “Has Kadrix claimed the kiss from Quin yet?”
    I hadn’t dared ask; it was an odd subject. Kadrix had demanded a kiss from Quin in return for helping me find him when the coven had kidnapped him. I had no choice but to agree to it, despite the fact I’d have quite happily offered him a kiss myself. Elise’s eyes danced at the implied question and potential there. Quin had always been firmly a ladies’ man, yet there was no denying the way Kadrix looked at him. I gave a small shrug and tried to focus on more pressing matters. Quin was happy, and that’s what counted. The more important question was, what were we going to do about the other hellhound?  

Nineteen

    The hound’s misery had eaten at me until I sent him away to run in the park. Elise was oddly calm about the second hellhound; I began to wonder if perhaps it was all melodrama and nothing more. I paused to watch the pink and lavender sky above the red rooves and the bright green buds on the trees, desperate to erupt. I hoped that we’d have a day of full sunshine soon; the city looked spectacular when it exploded with colour.  
    Hellhounds were a fabled beast, something that hunters spoke of in reverent, hushed whispers, much like the demons that controlled them. There had been rumours of hunters of old keeping them, but they were nothing more than rumours told to small children. Yet there I was. They had said that only those with demon blood could bond with a hellhound. I was a purebred human hunter. I wondered how the old hunters had owned the hounds and what had happened to them. I idly traced the engravings on the bracelet, barely realising what I was doing.  
    My life was changing, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do about or with that. My hound had said that his bond with his ex-master had shattered when he came to this plane, that he was able to stay due to a bond with me. I rolled the idea around my mind; that would suggest that someone else was bonded to the other hound. I chewed on my bottom lip. It wasn’t a huge leap in logic to believe that the witch responsible for the ritual was bonded to the hound.  
    I’d been trying to contact the hunters to get as much information as possible. Someone, somewhere had to have some answers. Quin was too busy looking for answers elsewhere. The sky dispelled any trace of the sunset, the pink losing its grip on the horizon in favour of the blue with a smattering of stars. The hunters had ignored my texts and phone calls. They were petty fools with egos that should have gotten them killed years ago, yet they were