Black Dog Read Online Free PDF Page B

sorry,” he said as I retched from the jolt, trying to get myself back under control. Trying to fight. This was all backward. I was faster and tougher than any warlock, juiced on black magic or not. It took a lot more than a stun gun to put me down.
    Cracked ribs, a deadhead beatdown, and then a stun gun seemed to be working, though.
    â€œStop it,” Leonid said. He slung me over his shoulder like I was luggage while I kicked and snarled. Everything hurt, but if I could just shift, I could shred this fucker. Forget the deadheads. Forget what Gary had sent me to do. I wanted to rip Leo’s head off, plain and simple.
    Leo popped the trunk and dumped me in. I landed on a blanket that smelled like motor oil and fake pine trees.
    â€œIf you’re thinking about going four-­legged, it’s not an option,” he said. “The trunk is warded against anything that expends magic. That includes you.”
    â€œI’m going to fucking kill you,” I rasped. My voice sounded like I’d been screaming for hours.
    â€œScary,” Leo said without expression, and slammed the trunk lid on me.
    I got the handcuffs off in the first ­couple of minutes—­I was still stronger than any human woman, even beaten to a pulp. Escaping the trunk was a different story. I kicked the lid, I screamed, I jiggled the emergency latch until my fingers were raw, but the trunk lock was strong and the latch was disconnected.
    Panting, I looked up at the rough symbols painted on the trunk lid. Magic sigil bullshit all looks the same to me, unless it’s demon language, but when I tried shifting, it was like I’d jumped into a dry swimming pool.
    Lycanthropes literally change their shape, but with me, it’s something else. I’m always the hound. That black dog is always there, creeping in my shadow. If I was the kind of person who nerded out about physics, like Marty back at the motel, I’d probably guess that I existed in both states, and the power given to me when the reaper took my soul and gave me a hound’s allowed the switch. Call it a pocket dimension, call it a dual state, call it Shirley. I’d heard a lot of crackpot theories during my time as a hound, and that was as good as any.
    But Gary didn’t reward theories—­kind of the opposite—­so all I really knew for sure was that it took magic to shift, and it wasn’t there.
    Something I hadn’t felt in a long time crept into me, starting low down in my abdomen and spreading like spiders crawling all over my skin. Leo had actually managed to get the drop on me. I’d always thought I’d go down fighting, finally run up against something bigger and badder than me, but this could be it. One necromancer too smart for his own good, and that would be the period on the sentence Gary had imposed on me.
    Almost a century of bringing trash like Leo to the reaper, and I was going to die in his trunk.
    I let myself have ten seconds of the panic and fear, something I thought I’d almost entirely lost when I became a hound, and then I made myself think as the car rumbled on, picking up speed.
    It didn’t matter what else was going on here—­I could care less what Leo was up to at this point. Back me into a corner and I’ll bite, simple as that.
    Leo was going to wish he’d never had the bright idea to kidnap a hellhound. For about ten seconds, while he watched his own guts spill out before he died.
    I lay still, trying to breathe shallow, until the car finally pulled to a stop. I heard it crunch over gravel and then the absolute silence that told me we were far outside Vegas in the desert.
    Leo’s feet crunched toward the back, and after a moment the trunk latch gave.
    I didn’t even give him a chance to open it. I exploded out of the trunk, ignoring all the parts of me that screamed for mercy, landing on the gravel on all fours.
    The shift came on, but even as my vision started to