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“Carnage was good at it?”

Sentinel lets out a breath through his nose. “Carnage was fucking exceptional.”

Something about the way he says it makes my chest tighten.

“He was bigger than most of them before he’d finished growing stronger and faster. And then they figured out what his roar could do.” Sentinel’s eyes shift toward Carnage’s bike before coming back to me. “Hell thought it had built itself the perfect weapon.”

“Thought?”

“Turns out the perfect weapon had opinions.”

That sounds enough like Carnage that a small smile pulls at my mouth.

Sentinel catches it. “Yeah. Exactly.” He folds his arms again. “Carnage would fight anything they put in front of him… demons, hellspawn, other hounds. Give him something dangerous and tell him to put it down, he’d go through it like it was made of fucking paper. But eventually they gave him an order he wouldn’t follow.”

“What order?”

Sentinel goes quiet for a second. “They sent him after a soul.” My smile disappears. “Someone Hell claimed belonged to them. Carnage tracked him down, cornered him, and figured out pretty fucking quickly the guy hadn’t done anything deserving of what they wanted Carnage to do to him.”

“So, he let him go?”

“Yep.”

Something warm moves through me before I can stop it.

Sentinel gives a humorless laugh. “Hell wasn’t exactly big on independent decision-making. They dragged Carnage back, chained him up, and spent weeks trying to teach him what happens to hounds who forget their place.”

My fingers curl around the edge of the workbench. “What did they do to him?”

Sentinel’s eyes meet mine. “Everything they thought would break him.”

I suddenly don’t want any more details.

Judging by Sentinel’s face, he isn’t going to give them to me anyway.

“It didn’t work,” he continues. “If anything, they made him worse. He came out of those chains fucking furious, and when they tried to force him to finish the hunt, Carnage finally used the roar against them.”

I straighten. “Against Hell?”

“Against a piece of it.” Sentinel rubs a hand over his jaw. “Collapsed half the holding level. Took out three wardens, blew apart the gates, and damn near opened a path straight into the mortal realm.”

“Jesus.”

“Different department.”

A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.

Sentinel gives me half a grin. “Sorry, angel joke.”

“Terrible angel joke.”

“They usually are.” The smile fades from his face almost as quickly as it came. “Hell cast him out after that. Stripped his rank, burned their mark off him, and dumped him topside with nothing except the hellhound they couldn’t take away and a roar he’d learned everybody was fucking terrified of.”

I think about Carnage asleep down the hall. “How old was he?”

Sentinel’s eyes drop, and with that my stomach sinks before he answers.

“Young enough that somebody should’ve been looking after him instead of using him.”