Dark of Night - Flesh and Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

that way Baskerville was very much like both of his grandparents—a combat white shepherd and a fierce but strange Irish wolfhound. The shepherd—whose name had been Ghost—had walked through the valley of the shadow with the ranger on countless missions. Back when the ranger had been a captain in a covert special ops group called the Department of Military Sciences. The wolfhound, Banshee, had been bred by a group of women called Arklight, and they had bred some bizarre qualities into the dog. The pups of Ghost and Banshee had each been powerful and individual, and each of them had gone into combat, too. Baskerville was still young, but all of the intelligence, instinct and ferocity of his forebears was fully alive in him.
    As alive as Joey was dead.
    The ranger flicked a quick look at the corpse, noting the type of damage Baskerville had done, looking for what he called ‘recreational’ damage as opposed to wounds inflicted to win the fight. There was definitely some of that. Baskerville sometimes went too far, dismembering a kill even if it wasn’t food. It was something the ranger would have to work on, and for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, he wanted the dog to be a soldier and not a monster. And, second, he needed to trust the animal. He knew from dealing with his own personal damage and inner demons that the killer within needed to be kept on a leash.
    Baskerville stood on the shoulder of the road, body pointed toward the woods, head turned to watch the ranger approach. The hound did not wag his tail or romp around. He stood like a statue, eyes fixed, mouth smeared with fresh blood.
    “Where?” asked the ranger.
    The dog turned and looked off into the forest and then back at the ranger.
    “Find,” said the man. “My pace.”
    The dog whuffed once, very softly. He always did that, a habit from his grandfather. Ghost had been able to understand a huge number of verbal commands and always seemed to answer with that whuff. A strange and wonderful animal, and Baskerville had all of his best qualities. And some of his grandmother’s more dangerous and enigmatic traits. A weird dog for a weird world, mused the ranger.
    The dog began to move, but then the ranger said, “Wait.”
    He knelt beside the animal, tore off a thick handful of grass and used it to wipe most of the blood away from the animal’s muzzle and fur. Baskerville endured it with all of the bad grace of a child getting chocolate wiped from his face. He even contrived to roll his eyes with exasperation.
    “Stop it,” complained the ranger. “You want to scare that kid even more than she is?”
    He finished and stood, then clicked his tongue once. Baskerville moved off immediately. The ranger looked up and down the road once more and then followed.
     

 
~7~
     
     
    Rachael Elle
     
     
     
    Rachael was stunned for a moment as she hit the ground hard, but she reacted as adrenaline surged, using her legs to push the Orc off, twisting her arm out of its teeth.
    It struggled to its feet, but she was faster, rolling over her shoulder into a crouch, dragging her dagger and holding it ready. She lunged forward, swinging her arm down to try to drive the knife through the Orc’s skull, but her sharp metal blade bounced off, slicing through rotting skin but not penetrating the thick bone. Crying out in frustration as the Orc reached out for her with ragged nails, not phased by her attack, Rachael struggled to push it back, this time driving the dagger down hard through the softer bone at the top of the skull.
    As it slumped to the ground so did she, hands shaking from adrenaline. Then she sat up, her hands running over her arm with feverish intensity to make sure that her leather bracer had held. The teeth marks were indented in the thick leather, but nothing broke through and she almost wept with relief.
    But she couldn’t sit long. One Orc meant more were close behind. She’d learned early on that Orcs seemed to find each other, traveling