Must Love Hellhounds Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  The Britlingens Go to Hell

  Angels’ Judgment

  Cadre of Ten

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Magic Mourns

  Blind Spot

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Praise for the authors of Must Love Hellhounds

  #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

  CHARLAINE HARRIS

  “. . . [has] the sure touch of a master.” —Crescent Blues

  “Harris weaves storytelling magic.”—Lynn Hightower

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  NALINI SINGH

  “Paranormal romance at its best.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Nalini Singh continues to dazzle and ensnare new readers.”

  —A Romance Review

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  ILONA ANDREWS

  “Andrews . . . demonstrates her mastery at balancing dark humor, clever mystery, and supernatural jeopardy. Andrews is the total package!” —Romantic Times

  “Andrews’s edgy series stands apart from similar fantasies . . . owing to its complex world building and skilled characterizations.” —Library Journal

  National Bestselling Author

  MELJEAN BROOK

  “A fascinating series.” —Nalini Singh

  “Brook . . . creates fantastic, death-defying love . . . extremely erotic . . . with a paranormal twist.” —Fresh Fiction

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  This is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Collection copyright © 2009 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / September 2009

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Harris, Charlaine.

  Must love hellhounds / Charlaine Harris, Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, Meljean Brook.—Berkley

  trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14007-9

  1. Hell—Fiction. 2. Vampires—Fiction. I. Singh, Nalini. II. Andrews, Ilona. III. Brook,

  Meljean. IV. Title.

  PS3558.A6427M87 2009

  813’.54—dc22

  2009018735

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  The Britlingens Go to Hell

  Charlaine Harris

  Batanya and Clovache were cleaning their armor in one of the courtyards of the Britlingen Collective, which sits atop a hill in the ancient city of Spauling. It was a fine summer day, and they sat on benches that they’d positioned to catch the sun.

  “I’m as pale as a pooka belly,” Clovache said.

  “Not quite,” Batanya said, after looking at Clovache rather seriously. Batanya was the older of the two; she was twenty-eight to Clovache’s twenty-four. Batanya was pale, too, since she spent most of her time in armor of one kind or another, but that didn’t bother Batanya.

  “Oh, thank you. Not quite,” Clovache said, imitating Batanya’s husky voice. It was a pretty bad imitation. Batanya smiled. She and Clovache had worked together for five years, and there wasn’t much they didn’t know about each other. They had both done most of their growing up within the Collective walls.

  “You are a bit like a pooka, though. Your hair is the same color as the back fur, and you like the night life better than the daylight. But I’m sure you wouldn’t taste as good deep-fried.”

  Clovache stretched out a foot to kick Batanya, very lightly. “We’ll go out to eat later,” she said. “How about Pooka Palace?”

  Batanya nodded. “Unless Trovis is there. If he’s in the place, I’m leaving.”

  The two women worked in a friendly silence for a few minutes. They were polishing what they called their “liquid armor,” the most popular single item of body defense in the Britlingen’s huge collection. Liquid armor wasn’t really liquid. It resembled a wet suit more than anything, but it was considerably easier to don. There was a keypad the size of a credit card on the chest. It allowed for communication with anyone else wearing a similar suit, and it had a personal sequence programmed into it that allowed only one wearer to use the armor. The material would toughen when the sequence was pressed in, to allow the wearer to be almost invulnerable; without this procedure, the armor was ineffective. The protocol had been added to prevent the armor from being stolen. Before the code had been added, a few Britlingens had been murdered for their armor. It was used in cooler weather. The two women had already cleaned their summer-weight gear.

  Batanya had turned her suit inside out and was cleaning the inner surface with a pleasant-scented solvent from a large green pot. Clovache was using the all-purpose cleaner on the hardened pieces that could be strapped on over the liquid armor.

  Clovache threw a finished piece down on the towel she’d spread on the ground and picked up another one. “Hard drill this morning,” she observed.

  “Trovis was not in a good mood,” Batanya said.

  “And why would that be?” Clovache asked, trying to sound innocent.

  Batanya flushed a little, causing the scar that ran across her right cheek to stand out. Clovache had heard people tease Batanya about the scar, but they only did it once. “He tried to jump me in the bathroom last night. I had to give him an elbow to the gut. Trovis is making a fool of himself.”

 
Clovache agreed. “If he’s trying to show you who’s boss, he is a fool,” she said. “And if he keeps it up, I shall go to Flechette and put it to her that Trovis should be removed from his command.”

  “That would make Trovis crazy, which is a good thing,” Batanya said. “But it would make us look weak.”

  Clovache looked startled, but after a moment, she nodded. “I understand. We should be able to eat whatever Trovis puts on the table.” She tested the strength of a strap. “If worse comes to worst, perhaps he’ll have an accident.”

  “Hush your mouth,” Batanya said, genuinely shocked. “After all—”

  “Britlingens don’t kill Britlingens,” Clovache said dutifully. “We leave that to the rest of the world.”

  That was the first lesson a novice learned when he or she came to the fortress.

  “There are exceptions,” Clovache said stubbornly as she gathered up her armor. “And his obsession with you provides one.”

  “Not for you to say.” Batanya stood, the sheet containing all her paraphernalia draped over one shoulder. “I’ll meet you at the gate in a couple of hours?”

  “Surely,” her junior said.

  Later that same afternoon, the two bodyguards strolled down to the Pooka Palace. Batanya grumbled about the narrow streets and their ancient cobblestones, which made it very impractical to keep a hovercraft at the castle. This was a source of grief to Batanya, who loved to drive fast.

  Pooka Palace had opened its outside section in honor of the balmy weather. The place was full of familiar faces from the Collective. Though Britlingens had the run of the city, they tended to linger close to the hilltop castle. Naturally, the shops that clustered in the winding old streets around the base of the hill were mostly dedicated to serving the bodyguards and assassins who lived in the ancient castle. There were a lot of storefronts that advertised repair services, either of armor or of arms. There were magic shops filled with arcane items the witches of the Collective might need or want. There were dark-fronted shops filled with bits of machinery that the mechs found intriguing. There were at least a score of bars and restaurants, but Pooka Palace was Clovache’s favorite.

  Waiting at a fairly clean table was a friend of theirs named Geit, a broad-shouldered and genial man who could swing a sword with enough force to take off a head with one lop. He was an assassin; though Clovache and Batanya were in the bodyguard division, they didn’t discriminate in their friendships as some did.

  Geit had already ordered baskets of fried pooka and fish, and they’d just toasted with three tankards of ale when they saw a child from the castle approaching, wearing the red vest of a messenger. Though walking quickly, the boy was also playing with a conjuring ball; it was clearly a cheap one, but the ball was still charged with enough magic to keep it in the air for a few seconds each time he tossed it up. The child interrupted his play to scan the faces at the tables. He spotted them and trotted over.

  “Lady Warrior, excuse me,” said the child, bowing. “Are you Senior Batanya?”

  “I am, squirt,” Batanya said. She drained her mug of ale. “Who needs what?”

  “Commander Trovis has, ah, requested, that you and your junior come up to the fortress immediately, to the Hall of Contracts.”

  Geit whistled. “But you just got back from a job. Why would Trovis send you out again?”

  “After the last one, I’d hoped we’d rest longer,” Batanya said. “Getting out of that hotel was no fun, especially carrying a client who would burn up in sunlight. Well, we must go, Geit. Have a drink on us.” After hastily finishing their baskets of food (a Britlingen never passes up a chance to eat), she paid the bar tab and looked away as Clovache gave Geit a quick kiss on the cheek. The two women followed the child back up the winding streets to the gate of the Collective. The guards on duty recognized them and nodded to indicate they could reenter without the usual search.

  The Hall of Contracts was conveniently close to the witches’ and mechs’ wing, since witchcraft (enhanced by science) provided the transportation to at least fifty percent of the missions. In fact, Batanya couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone overland to a job.

  The hall itself didn’t look important. It was a just a large room, one wall of which was decorated with some indifferent paintings. This was called the Wall of Shame; the art hung there depicted employees of the Collective who had screwed up in some notable way. (The Britlingen instruction model was heavily weighted toward learning by the mistakes of one’s predecessors.) Aside from the paintings and some benches, there was only a table with a few chairs, a large lightsource, and some writing instruments.

  Trovis was leaning back in one of the wooden chairs, his feet propped on the table. This was inappropriate behavior for the Hall of Contracts, for these contracts were the lifeblood of the Collective. Signing each contract was an important moment. Not only was this the main source of income for the Collective, but each contract might bring about the death of the Britlingens charged with fulfilling it.

  “His promotion’s gone to his head,” Clovache muttered. “He wouldn’t have dared behave so a halfyear ago.”

  The child scampered off once he’d gotten his tip, and Batanya and Clovache advanced to the table. One of the senior commanders, Flechette, entered from a side door, and since she had a staff in her hands, she used it to sweep Trovis’s legs to the side, neatly knocking him out of his chair.

  “Respect for the room,” she said harshly, as Trovis scrambled to right himself. The two bodyguards kept their faces absolutely blank, which took a lot of effort. Flechette paid no attention to the lower-ranked Trovis’s shock and anger, but threw herself into one of the chairs. Despite Flechette’s apparent age—she looked at least sixty, which few Britlingens attained—she moved like a much younger woman. “You’ve summoned us,” Flechette said. “What have you, Sergeant?”

  Trovis collected himself. If he’d had a weapon, perhaps he would have drawn on his superior, but he’d come to the hall unarmed—an unusual circumstance for a Britlingen, even as poor a Britlingen as Trovis. “This customer has come in person,” he said, biting off his words. He gestured toward a man standing at the rear of the hall, apparently examining one of the paintings—the one of Johanson the Fool, Batanya noted. She was trying to avoid meeting Trovis’s eyes.

  “What happened to this fellow?” asked a light voice, and the stranger turned to look at them inquiringly. He was a couple of inches taller than Batanya, who was of medium height for a woman. The stranger was lightly built, and fair, and wearing clothes that signaled he was from the city-state of Pardua, which lay about two hours’ drive from Spauling. Batanya had visited there on business several times. In Pardua, poor vision was corrected by brilliantly colored and decorated goggles, and the stranger wore a striking pair: a shrieking blue, spotted with artificial purple stones. They made him look remarkably silly.

  Since no one else spoke, Batanya said, “Johanson the Fool walked his client into an ambush. When it was over, he and his client were as full of darts as a pincushion has pins.”

  “I don’t know what a pincushion is, but I take your meaning,” the stranger said. He cast another look at the grisly picture. “I am here to hire two Britlingens as bodyguards. I don’t want to end up like Johanson’s client.” He shuddered elaborately.

  “Very well,” said Flechette. “You understand, clients don’t actually show up at the Collective very often. Usually the contract is negotiated on the witchweb.”

  “Is that right? I’m sorry I broke with proper procedure.” The blond dandy minced over to the table. “I happened to be in Spauling and thought I’d come directly to the source. See what I was getting, in other words.”

  “You would be getting Clovache and her senior, Batanya,” Trovis said, smiling broadly. “After he described the job, Commander Flechette, I knew they would be perfect.”

  “Why?” Flechette said. She had little use for Trovis, and she’d never hidden her opinion. After Batanya and Trovis had both b
een out of commission following a previous set-to, Flechette had begun watching the man like a hawk.

  “They protected their last client under circumstances that no one foresaw,” Trovis said, his voice silky. “Who could not be impressed by their performance? I am sure they can handle this.”

  Flechette eyed Trovis before turning her attention to the client. “What is your goal, stranger? And your name, incidentally.”

  “I’m so sorry! My name is Crick. And I need to retrieve something of mine that I lost in a rather dangerous place.”

  Bodyguards go into tense situations all the time (especially ones of Batanya and Clovache’s caliber), so it wasn’t the word “dangerous” that bothered Batanya: it was the bullshit detector shrilling in her brain. She looked at Clovache, who nodded grimly. Crick was not telling all the truth, certainly; and he was not the silly, rather effeminate Parduan he portrayed himself to be. The oblivious Trovis wouldn’t have spotted the excellent muscle tone in the slender body. The bodyguards had. But clients lied all the time, didn’t they? Batanya shrugged: what could you do? Clovache nodded again: nothing.

  Trovis and Flechette went over the basic contract with the Parduan. It covered the price of transference by witchweb to the site the client chose. It covered the directive of the mission—to get Crick and his property back in one piece. It contained the standard insurance clause, so the treatment of any injuries the bodyguards sustained would be paid for by the client.

  Batanya and Clovache paid attention, because that was part of the deal. All bodyguards had to be aware of what they’d agreed to do, and what they hadn’t. Though the two had stood in the Hall of Contracts dozens of times and listened to exactly the same discussion, this preparation was as much part of the work as getting their weapons ready. No deniability on this job.