Free The Devil You Need by Sam Cheever

the firm stone of
the floor. The room was dark, so silent that I thought for a moment I was still
in my space-shift. But the area smelled gamey, like…
    A low growl throbbed through the silence, not more than five
feet away from where I stood. Two sets of red eyes glared at me through the
deep black and I squinted to see movement in the dark.
    “Ah, shit.”
    Two low-slung, densely muscled forms started toward me,
their growls turning to saliva-drenched snarls as they opened enormous jaws
filled with impossibly white teeth.
    “Frunk me,” I murmured. “This is definitely going into the shitty
day book.”
    I pulled power into my palms and held it, spitting and
ready. I knew from experience that Hell hounds could move with impossible
speed. They could be on me in the time it took me to blink.
    My only hope was to send power directly into their chests as
they slammed into me. Because if I missed I’d be torn into tiny little pieces
before I could try again.
    The energy spitting in my palms illuminated a circle about
four feet around where I stood. I waited for the hounds to step into the light,
knowing it wouldn’t make my job easier if I could see them, but finding comfort
in the thought nonetheless.
    But the hounds stopped just outside the circle and waited,
temper throbbing in their thick throats in a constant drone. When I realized
they didn’t intend to come closer, I risked speaking. “Dialle?”
    A soft footfall made my gaze shift in the direction of
Dialle’s throne. “Are you all right?”
    A gentle wash of breath, like a sigh, filtered toward me.
“Dialle, talk to me.”
    Light blossomed like the sun, filling the room with
eye-straining illumination. I blinked, stared at the two massive black canines
sitting calmly just a few feet away, their wide, snubbed snouts wet with
slobber and their terrifying gazes locked on my face.
    As my eyes adjusted to the light I cast my gaze toward
Dialle’s throne. What I saw there was more terrifying than the two Hell hounds
could ever be.
    Dialle sat slumped in his throne, his head dropped to his
chest, his limbs sprawled loosely as if he were unconscious. I softly repeated
his name, barely more than a whisper, and his head slowly lifted. His beautiful
face was a portrait in despair, the sexy black eyes completely devoid of color
or passion. He looked like a man just a heartbeat from death. But he had not a
single wound or injury that I could see.
    His wounds were all internal.
    “Oh good Him, Dialle. What have I done to you?”
    He just stared at me, the black gaze dancing icy fingers
down my spine. His once-beautiful hair hung limp and dull around his face and
the clothes he wore draped loosely, like cast-off clothes on a farmer’s scarecrow.
    How far he’d fallen in the few days since I’d left.
    I took a step closer and the Hell hounds snapped, sending
spittle in a wide arc around their massive heads. I jerked to a halt. “Call
them off, Dialle.”
    His cold gaze slid slowly toward the hounds and then back to
me. “Go away, Astra. Leave me alone.”
    “I’m not going anywhere without you. Come with me, Dialle.
Let’s get away from this place and I can make it better. I promise.”
    His black eyes suddenly spiraled with icy, hostile silver.
“You’ll make it better? How? I nurture a cold, dead mating mark in my breast.
No light infuses the mark. Only the oily black of Hell. My court rots around
me, like my cursed soul. The very air I breathe is like poison. I no longer
belong here. There is no making it better, Astra. Unless you’ve come to tell me
you’ve regained your power.”
    I opened my mouth to tell him exactly that, despite the fact
it wasn’t strictly true. In that moment, I realized I’d do anything to save
him. But the doors behind me slammed back against the wall and, startled into
action, the hounds attacked.
    I’d started to turn to see who was coming at me from behind
when the first massive hound hit me, throwing me to the ground and