Ewww. I didn’t want to spend a boat ride talking to this guy. He was, as I’d said, an asshole. He was gonna kill someone, accidentally or not, and I really didn’t want to have him on my party boat.
“Or,” the man in black continued, “you can have the perfectly good hellhound next to you deal with him.”
I looked down at the hellhound. His teeth were still bared at the man in black, but when he looked toward the asshole, he growled low in his throat again. Then he looked up at me, his tongue lolling out like he was a friendly dog.
I knew what the man in black meant, though. I had to choose whether to let this guy reunite with his loved ones and find peace across the river, or whether to let him meet a gruesome end at the jaws of a fiery dog.
Well, shit.
Chapter 11
Corbin
I didn’t trustthe man in black, and I couldn’t seem to change back into my human form, though I expected I could leave Sebbie’s dream if I tried to.
Although this wasn’t exactly a dream, and he wasn’t exactly Sebbie. Well, hewasSebbie, but he was also more.
But I wasn’t going to leave him here with the man in black, or with the soul standing in front of us. Not that I thought the soul could hurt him, but he seemed distressed to see it.
The mortal soul was… gray. Not hellbound, but definitely not clear and pure either. Usually, hellhounds literally couldn’t kill souls that weren’t hellbound. It was a free will thing. We had free will in our human natures, but our hellhound natures didnothave free will. They were predestined to kill hellbound souls, so they couldn’t do anything else.
Wilder and I had discussed it once, and he thought it was a failsafe. No one wanted rotten afterlifers running amok, so it made sense that our powers could only be used for their specific purpose. Of course, we could defend ourselves. We could, I suppose, also kill someone the old fashioned way, just like humans could, but it wasn’t like anyone had tried.
We didn’t want to kill innocent people. It was… repulsive to even think about.
This place was different, though. I could sense that. I had a job here, just like I did on the mortal plane. My job was to do Sebbie’s bidding.
Although that wasn’t accurate, either. I had thechoiceto do Sebbie’s bidding. If he asked me to dispose of the gray soul in front of me, I could do it. I could also choose not to do it, but I understood that would mean leaving his dream that wasn’t really a dream, and leaving Sebbie to deal with the man in front of him.
I didn’t want him to have to do that.
I felt the rightness of letting Sebbie decide this man’s fate. This soul was in his caretaking, and he could see the pieces of it far better than I could. He would decide what to do with it, and I knew that his decision would be a fair and just one.
I trusted Sebbie.
Sebbie, however, did not look happy. In fact, he looked a bit like he wanted to throw a temper tantrum, and it made me want to pull him into a hug. I growled softly, rubbing against his leg.
He looked down at me. “Well, this is a shit choice.”
I growled in agreement, then rubbed against his leg again in support.
He sighed. “Fuck.” He looked at the man in black. “You really can’t just decide for me?”
“This is your place, Sebbie. The decision is yours, as it has always been. I would not take that from you, even if you asked me to,” the man said.
Sebbie huffed and looked back at the gray soul, and then he snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face.
“Shit!” the guy said, looking frantically around him. “What the fuck?”
Sebbie sighed exasperatedly. “You’re dead. You’re also an asshole, because you were about to kill your dad.”
The man looked at Sebbie, and Sebbie banged his staff against the ground once. The man’s eyes took on a far away look, and I could see pictures of the past in his eyes—it was an eerie thing to watch.
“I was high,” he murmured. “I was high most of the time at the end. I was sober for a while, but…” he trailed off, his voice rough. “Da tried to get me help, and it worked for a bit, but after Ma died… I guess we were both lost. We fought a lot. We fought even when I was sober. We fought even more when I drank. Then I started the drugs again.”
The man’s eyes were wet, and a single tear fell from one eye. “You’re right. I would have killed him. I didn’twantto kill him. I would have regretted it. But I would have done it just the same. I wassoangry. Angry about Ma dying, angry that he wouldn’t give me money, angry that he seemed to have given up on me. I was angry that I had given up on myself.”
Memories flowed faster and faster in his eyes, the effect almost dizzying. The man fell to his knees, an anguished cry escaping him. He sobbed openly now, shudders wracking his entire body.
