Black Dog Read Online Free PDF

good look on him. He was having fun watching Ivanof smack me around.
    â€œI’m offering a time-­out,” he said. “I know what you are and what you can do. And you know what Alexi can do. I’d say that shaking hands and walking away is your only option right now.”
    â€œYou really want to piss off a hellhound?” I growled. “Maybe your corpse bride here can take me, but you can’t. You’re human.”
    The necromancer shook his head. He looked more like an undertaker than a warlock, nice-­looking dark suit, pristine white shirt, short dark hair that called back to my heyday as a human, when most guy’s hairstyles could deflect bullets. Humans messing with black magic don’t tend to be very put together, so I looked a little longer than I should, trying to find a flaw, but there was none. “The last thing I want is you against me,” the necromancer said, “but I also can’t have you ratting me out to a reaper. So what are we going to do?”
    â€œLet me up so I can kick the shit out of you?” I suggested, but at that point I was just talking. Hellhounds are single-­purpose. If I wasn’t on a collection or doing Gary’s heavy work, I wasn’t much use, and this asshole knew it.
    â€œHow about I buy you coffee?” he said. “And we can talk. Ava. That’s your name, isn’t it?”
    I decided to skip the part about how he knew. Any one of a hundred bottom feeders on Gary’s payroll could have dimed me out. Didn’t mean I wasn’t going to enjoy tearing the throat out of whoever had.
    â€œGood a name as any.”
    The necromancer pulled me to my feet. “Leonid Karpov,” he said, still gripping my hand. After the deadhead, his strength and warmth were surprising. “Most ­people call me Leo.”
    â€œI bet that’s not all they call you,” I said. I was used to going in hard and ending things messily, but if this Leonid guy didn’t want to square off, I could play along until I found out where he was keeping the rest of his deadheads. Maybe even why he’d started a dustup on Gary’s turf in the first place. Then I could go back to breaking heads and taking souls—­the comfortable stuff.
    Leo snapped his fingers at Ivanof, who hissed but followed us out a back door hidden behind a cheap curtain and into the alley off Sahara. Once outside, he went running off, that crooked off-­balance run endemic to the dead.
    â€œYou sure he can find his way home?” I said. “I mean, without stopping for a snack?”
    â€œThey feed when I say,” Leo said. “My control over the dead is absolute.”
    â€œOh, good,” I said. “I might as well pack up and go, then.”
    Leo pointed me ahead of him to a boxy black car in the alley. “I don’t know much of anything about hellhounds, beyond what they can do. I didn’t expect a sense of humor.”
    I stayed put. If he thought I was turning my back on him, Leo was a lot dumber than he looked. He sighed and pulled a key chain out of his pocket. The car started with a hum when he pressed a button. “Ava, if I wanted to hurt you I would have let Alexi finish you off in there.”
    â€œNothing personal,” I said. “Sorry if I don’t trust a complete stranger who used a deadhead to get my attention.”
    Leo shoved the key chain into his pocket. “Fine.”
    He moved faster than a man had any right to, the small black box out of his pocket and leveled at me in the space of half a heartbeat.
    The stun gun leads bit into me just below my clavicle, and the electricity knocked me back onto my ass. Hellhound bodies are designed to take a lot of punishment, even as humans, so it didn’t put me out, but it hurt like a drunken bastard on payday.
    Leonid rolled me onto my back and slipped a pair of disposable cuffs onto my wrist, pulling them tight. “I really am