No more than I deserve.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
No grace, no blessing, no escape, no mercy for him, because he'd shown none. Shown none to those women he'd taken and toyed with, and this was the price, yes, this was the price.
No one told me it was the price!
The world had lied. It told him that if he was caught, the most he'd suffer was a lifetime in prison, and with it would come fame, glorious fame, his face in every newspaper.
But there was no fame. No face on a newspaper. No name in a headline. He would die, his deeds unnoticed, his body torn apart in the forest, corpse left to rot and feed wild creatures and hungry earth, because this is what she'd promised him. The last woman. The one whose skin had shimmered when he'd sliced her open. The one who'd spouted madness when he captured her, who'd promised him this ignoble end.
The hounds will come. The Huntsmen will come. You will burn.
No more than he deserved, and he knew it now, as he ran.
Is that not enough? That I know it? I confess. I confess!
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
Isn't that how it worked? Confess and ye shall be saved. Repent and ye shall be forgiven.
He heard the woman's tinkling laughter as he ran. She'd laughed as he'd sliced into her, promised that no matter what he did to her, his death would be a thousand times worse.
He stumbled then. Felt his foot slide out. Felt his brain scream, No! Heard it rip from his lungs. No! I repent! I repent! and the woman's laughter rang out like a trumpet at his ear.
The trumpet of the archangel, on the Day of Judgment, calling him home to heaven.
"Oh, no," her voice whispered in his ear. "This is Judgment Day, but heaven is not where you're going, Michael O'Grady."
He felt the body strike his. A massive furred body, knocking him off his feet, onto his back, and then he saw it, the hound, the giant hound, its eyes blazing fire, jaws opening, fangs slashing down--
Ricky Gallagher. I'm Ricky Gallagher!
Through the wild and swirling vision, Ricky found himself and shouted the words in his head, and he snapped back so fast he felt himself hit the ground, flat on his back, the oomph of the blow exhaled on a single breath.
He blinked hard, pulling back the scattered piece of his psyche, forcing the last remnants of the vision away and--
He felt something moving over him. Something on his chest. He tried to jerk upright, but it shoved him back down and all he could see above him was darkness and then...
Eyes. Blazing red eyes. A massive paw on his chest. A huge shadowy head taking form above his. The head of a hound.
No, damn it. I'm Ricky Gallagher. I'm--
"I don't know if you can understand me, hound," a voice said. "But if you lower those teeth another inch, I'm putting a bullet through your skull."
"Liv," he said, her name coming out as a croak, his throat as tight and dry as if he had been the one shouting prayers and protests.
She moved into his field of vision, her gun pointed at the hound. "You okay? Well, other than being pinned under a giant hound?"
He managed a laugh. "Other than that, yeah. Where--?"
The hound snarled, as if to say, Hey, asshole, did you forget I'm here? and he saw that it was the hound. The injured one. The broken one.
It was and it was not, because when he looked into those fiery eyes, blazing with hate, he didn't need to ask where the Huntsman had gone.