Black Dog by Caitlin Kittredge Read Free Book Online Page A

enjoy.”
    â€œCan I ask you something?” I said. Leo nodded, fishing in his pockets and pulling out a squashed pack of smokes. He offered me one, but I shook my head.
    â€œDid Marty the metathrope have anything to do with this?” I said. Leo’s laughter sent a warm feeling up and down my spine. How fucked up was it that a Russian leg breaker who raised zombies on the side and had just finished spot-­welding my skin was calming me down? It wasn’t like I held the torture against him, I reasoned. For most Hellspawn, what he’d done to me would be foreplay.
    â€œMarty’s a lovable nut job, but he’s way too chatty for my liking,” he said. “If he knew me, your reaper would know me.”
    â€œGood,” I said. “One less person I have to kill when I get out of here.”
    Leo leaned back and managed to look like he owned the room, even though it was a shitty garage and we were the only ­people in it. “So you’ll help me?”
    â€œI told you,” I said. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t.”
    â€œSee, I think that’s bullshit,” Leo said. “You couldn’t stop me from hurting you. I have all the power here. I could make you hurt so much you’d forget your own name, but I won’t. I choose to try and persuade you.”
    â€œI hope you’re better at cutting than talking,” I said. “Because this is not changing my mind.” Hounds didn’t turn on reapers. Reapers made them, and we served them. Unconditionally. Turning on your reaper was a taboo that had only one outcome. Reapers were our masters. That was that.
    â€œYou can choose to fight back,” Leo said. “You can choose to tell this Gary, this asshole who sent you here to be ripped apart by a deadhead without a second thought, that you’re not a slave.”
    He tilted his head, his black eyes catching the light and reflecting my pale face back at me. “Tell me that you’re fine with this. Tell me that you’re truly happy being a hound, like the others, and this’ll be over. Tell me being Gary’s dog is everything you want.”
    I felt something like a rock land in my stomach. Usually I didn’t think about anything except the job, the next contract to collect on. I didn’t think about me and Gary, beyond what he’d do if I failed him.
    I sure as fuck didn’t think about how I’d ended up like this, how I’d gone from dying in the mud, broken and bloody, to a hellhound bound to Gary.
    That was how Gary got me, after all. I was afraid, of dying, of crossing, of finding out what was waiting for me. I let him take my soul and turn me into his monster, together for a hundred years and a hundred more—­the same deal every hound got with their reaper.
    I was less than halfway through my sentence, and I was already skating so close to the edge of death I could see across the chasm to the day I’d spend eternity in the Pit.
    All that stuff I didn’t usually think about knotted up, squeezing a sound from me that was less than a whimper.
    â€œAva.” Leo’s fingers wrapped around my arm and squeezed. His hand was hot and hard and strong, and when I managed to meet his eyes, I felt wet, stinging tears slide down my face.
    â€œI hate him,” I whispered.
    â€œI know,” Leo said, reaching out and brushing away a tear with his thumb. “Believe me, Ava. I know what it is to be under someone’s boot.”
    I choked on whatever was making my throat tight. I refused to call it fear or especially grief. I didn’t feel anymore. I’d left all that with my broken body, there in the mud, when Gary took me in.
    Nothing I could tell Gary was going to save me. I’d known that as soon as I’d showed up in Vegas. I was already on thin ice because of Bob Dobkins and this was the kill shot.
    This was my life, had been for more lifetimes than any human got. And I