He lunged for me, and I danced backward, cursing my three-inch heels. Thick fingers closed around my right wrist and Rent-a-goon jerked me forward with a sudden twisting motion. Pain shot through my arm.
I aimed at his right thigh as he pulled his fist back. I squeezed the trigger. His fist slammed into my left cheekbone. Blood poured from the goblin’s leg. Profanity poured from my mouth. We hit the ground at the same time, puddled rainwater soaking through my jeans instantly.
I made it up first, already scrambling out of reach, but Rent-a-goon stood too, steady in his sensible work boots, though he favored his injured leg. He spat something in a guttural tongue, and while I didn’t speak goblin, I was pretty sure I’d just shouted several of the very same words in English.
Rent-a-goon limped toward me, fists clenched. His eyes gleamed in fury, rain dripping from thick, dark brows. I fired into his left thigh this time.
He went down again, harder than before. His teeth cracked together as his hip hit the pavement, his left leg somehow twisted beneath his torso. Rent-a-goon wasn’t out, but he was down. For quite a while, hopefully. If the others went down that easily, I’d be home in time to stream an episode of “I Love the 80s” before bed.
“It’s nothing personal.” I smiled down at him as I shoved soaked strands of hair back from my face and kicked off my sandals. The concrete was rough and cold against my bare feet, and rain pelted me in near-freezing gusts. “You took the wrong job this time. Happens to us all eventually.”
The goblin’s furious guttural babble followed me as I backed away from him, headed for the building. But then a familiar deep growl crawled across my skin, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. I turned slowly, already aiming the goblin’s gun because I knew what I’d find.
Sure enough, halfway between me and the warehouse door stood aseriouslyscary guard dog, tall like a greyhound, yet thick like a Rottweiler. Some trick of the lighting made him appear black in places and a deep midnight red in others. And somehow his coat looked short and curly one moment, and long and straight the next. The only thing I was sure of was his size. Which was big.Damnbig. More like a small horse than a large dog. But that growl was definitely canine.
Cujo had nothing on this beast.
His eyes were bright spots of crimson, like the pupils in a bad photograph. They stared straight into mine, and I was suddenly certain there was true intelligence behind those red orbs. Cunning, and actual anger.
Sweat formed on my palms despite the cold and the rain.
Rent-a-goon shifted on the concrete behind me, and I glanced at him over my shoulder, my new gun still trained on the dog. When I turned to face Cujo again, I found him hurtling toward me across the parking lot, glistening saliva dripping from viciously pointed, needle-sharp teeth. Upright ears lay flat against his head. But he was no longer growling. The dog raced toward me in utter silence, a predator on the prowl.
As I brought my free hand up to steady my aim, lightning flashed across the night sky, momentarily illuminating the warehouse, the parking lot, and the surrounding empty fields. In that flash, Cujo’s fur disappeared. Completely. His pelt and skin were there one instant, gone the next, exposing a bloody configuration of bare muscles, stretching and contracting with every movement he made.
Holy shit. Forget the gun. I should have brought a fucking exorcist.
TWO
“Whatisthat thing?” I demanded, sighting down the barrel of the gun.
“Orthus,faas!” the goblin shouted, and I recognized the German command for a dog to attack.
Fuck!My breath stuck in my throat. My heart tried to claw its way out of my body.
Blinking, I rubbed rain from my eyes so I could aim, and when I looked again, the dog was back to normal—except that he was still snarling and racing toward me, massive paws splashing in tiny puddles, obviously hell-bent on my destruction.
My pulse thundered in my ears. The closer the dog came to the flood of light around the fallen goblin, the redder his drenched coat appeared. But at least hehadfur now.
Seconds from impact, I spread my bare feet for better balance. But as I began to squeeze the trigger, aiming for the center of Cujo’s—no,Orthus’s—forehead, the dog started to slow.
I hesitated with the trigger halfway depressed as an imaginary devil danced gleefully on my shoulder, urging me to fire. But I couldn’t do it. In the fierce glare of the security light, I’d noticed an unmistakable change in the dog. A shift in his expression and his gait. As I watched, pistol still aimed and ready, he slowed to a stop ten feet away, blinking at me warily.
“What are you waiting for, you stupid mutt?” Rent-a-goon shouted. At the edge of my vision—I wasn’t about to take my focus from the dog—the goblin pulled himself across the wet concrete by both hands. “Rip her fucking throat out!”
Orthus glanced at him briefly, as if the interruption wasn’t really worth his attention, then his gaze shifted back to me. His tail twitched, and I almost pulled the trigger, startled by the sudden movement. But then the dog sat back on his hindquarters.
Lightning flashed again, and in the sudden, brief brightness, Orthus was instantly furless again, flashing red eyes rolling in bare, exposed sockets.
I’d seen a lot of strange things in my time on Earth—things that would have sent most humans screaming into the bowels of the nearest sanitarium—but I’d never seenanything like the creature in front of me. At his joints, impossibly white bone showed through thick ropes of bare, bloody muscle. His toes ended in sharp black claws, which looked grotesquely long with no fur to cover the portion not usually seen. But the worst by far was his face. Or rather, his skull, because his face was entirely gone. No flesh, no eyelids, and no soft black nose. With no features, there was nothing to even hint at an expression. Nothing but clean white bone and brutally sharp, curved teeth.
Shit. I hadn’t imagined it.
Light faded from the sky, and once again the dog was clad in odd reddish fur. Raindrops splattered on my face as Orthus and I stared at each other over the barrel of the confiscated gun. Weirdly, he seemed as confused and unsettled by me as I was by him.
“Faas, Orthus!” Rent-a-goon yelled, and if I’d had another gun, I’d have shot him again, just to shut him up. But I wasn’t willing to take my only weapon off the actual threat to silence a mere aggravation.
Yet instead of attacking, Orthus cocked his head to one side, apparently assessing me. Then he stood and took an odd little side shuffle to his left, clearing a path for me. A path leading directly to the front door of the warehouse.
