“Wh-what are you doing?” she rasped, her voice scratchy from the lack of use.
“Taking you downstairs.”
“No…” All she wanted was to sleep. “Please…”
“This will be good for you, Shadow,” he said so softly, like the whisper of snowflakes falling in winter.
Shadow shut her eyes, exhaustion taking hold, the gnawing in her chest competing with the pain in her fragmented heart.
Moments later, a cool breeze swept over her clammy skin. She opened heavy eyelids to find herself outside on a low-lit terrace she didn’t recognize. Hedori deposited her on a padded lounger. Kira draped another throw over her, adding to the covers that Hedori carried her with.
Night concealed the forest in the distance, but the LED lights underscored parts of the gardens and the rolling lawn.
Shadow sighed. Now what?
A low growl had her frowning. An enormous obscure shape prowled out of the darkness and into the light, taking form.
For the first time in what seemed to be forever, a faint feeling of lightness to see someone sneaked into Shadow’s heart. Everyone called this being a monster, but it had helped her in a moment when nobody ever could. If nothing else, it caused a glimmer of warmth in her chest.
She held out a shaky hand. “Pithius,veni,” she whispered.
The truck size hellhound leaped up the few steps and onto the terrace. The girls and Hedori hastily stepped back.
The hound sat on its haunches, mere inches away, and still so much taller than her.
She reached out and gently ran her fingertips through the fur on its chest. Pithius whined. As soon as she opened her palms and touched him properly, her symbionts latched on. And like a jolt of adrenaline, they greedily drew on the dark energy, powering her up—
Images flashed through her mind, and she reared back, staring into the hellhound’s burning coal-red eyes… A gloomy night. A dark figure. Mammon flung out his hand, power glimmered in a netlike form, trapping a snarling dark shape. Pithius.
But Shadow already knew Mammon had somehow compelled Pithius to attack her. “It’s all right. I don’t blame you. I never did.”
He whined and gently nudged her face with his big, wet snout.
Moments later, her symbionts satiated and quiet for now, she dropped her hands. A low rumble formed in the hound’s chest, sounding like distant thunder. He lowered to the terrace, stretching out and resting his giant-sized head on her lap.
She scratched his hot muzzle. “Why did you come after us in the mountains?”
Old soulssss. Warrior…return.
“You mean Nik?” she asked.
Tartarusss.
And tears blurred her eyes. “H-he doesn’t have them anymore. I do—I mean I did. I fed off them. Like I do with you…I needed them to survive.”
Silence.
Pithius lifted his enormous head toward the forest.
“Why now after all these millennia?” she asked.
Time…different.
Time moves differently. Okay. Got it. “And you have to go back?”
A low whine rolled out as he gently batted her arm again, and she caressed his muzzle once more. “I’m always here for you.”
With a low chuff, Pithius rose and faded like fog into the darkness.
