through the snow.

What did he want? The knife. The bar. It was all too similar to the scene that had flitted through her head when she’d touched the witch in the morgue. Was this what had happened to Kelly?

He reached one of the cement barriers that marked the parking places, and stopped, apparently deciding his best route from here.

“We got about twenty feet between us and the Keep. You think you can be a good little witch and cooperate? ’Cause if not, I’m gonna have to…” Blue flame sizzled next to Kara’s face. “Hurts like the dickens, and it freezes all your powers. That’s the downside for me. Hard to get top dollar when you can’t perform.”

A snowflake drifted from the blue sky and landed on Kara’s nose. She loved snow — or used to. Now she wondered, would she hate it as much as she hated dogs?

“So, whatcha say? We got a deal? I get my fix and you get a pain-free trip through the portal.”

Another bigger flake plopped onto Kara’s eyelash, then fell, a tiny shock of water into her eye.

Funny. She wasn’t much in a deal-making mood. His arms held her around the biceps, but her hands were still free and with her elbows bent she should be able to use them to shoot whatever power she had over her shoulder and into his face.

She inhaled, thought of Risk, and prepared to fight. Her elbows bent almost of their own accord as energy thrummed into her.

“Aw, no. You oughtn’t to do that.” Blue flared again. Heat seared the side of her face, and the smell of her own hair singing burned her nose.

She wasn’t ready. She could feel it. She needed more time, just a second or two.

No time to think. Screwing her eyes tight against the threatening blue light, she willed all the energy she’d stored down through her arms and out her raised hands.

The man behind her yelped. Jumping sideways, he dragged the knife from her neck to her shoulder as he moved. The stunner snapped and burned a path through her hair. Then Kara was free.

But she couldn’t run. Couldn’t do anything except stand there panting as if she’d finished a marathon in record time. Her assailant crouched a few feet away, his knife clutched in his fist and his stunner on the ground by his feet.

With narrowed eyes, he picked up the weapon. “Can’t be easy. Can it? God forbid I made an easy score now and again.” He rolled a switch on the side of the thing and held it out toward her. “Now see this is going to hurt.” Shaking his head, he scrambled to his feet and limped toward her.

Kara stood there, her breathing slower, but her power drained. She didn’t know how she knew her resources were empty, but she did. She might as well be holding off a grizzly with an unloaded revolver.

Lusse tilted her face to the falling snow, the tiny flakes catching on her silver lashes, and tumbling onto her cheeks where they lay unmoved.

Risk fisted his hand around the bloody bandage. He didn’t have time to be playing games with Lusse. His son was safe for a while at least, but Kara was alone back in the human world where some thief was hunting witches. And he had new things to consider, like Lusse’s promise of a gift of the other hounds and her information on the garms.

“How many portals do you think there are?” he asked.

Blinking, she lowered her face to look at him. “How many? I don’t know. The gods and the garm are very hush-hush about all that.”

“So how does someone know to go to a portal in the first place?”

Air exploded from her mouth. “They just know.”

Her toe tapped against the path. “Perhaps it’s time for you to get back.”

Risk couldn’t agree more. With a nod, he took a small step backward and shimmered away.

Kara staggered backward, stumbling over a cement barrier and falling onto her butt. The man limped toward her, the blue flame of his stunner barely visible against the early afternoon sky.

She groped behind her, coming up with nothing more than a handful of snow. Desperate, she threw it at him. Hissing, it struck the flame and evaporated into steam.

“Now that’s not gonna help any.” He bent down, his knee pressed into her chest, one hand wrapped around her neck. “If you hold still, I’ll zap you in the arm. They say it don’t hurt as bad there.”

Kara flailed upward, her closed fist making contact with the side of his head.

“Shit. That hurt. I’m gonna have to quit being nice to you.” A wild glint in his eyes, he pulled back the hand holding the stunner.

The flame sped toward Kara’s face. She reached up her hand to block it. Her arm collided with his seconds before a loud roar shook the ground beneath them.

The man on top of her fell off, his eyes wide and his face slack. “I wasn’t hurting her. You tell him, witch. I wasn’t going to hurt you, was I?”

Rubbing her arm, Kara scooted her body back, away from her crazed attacker.

“I’m not looking for trouble. Just stopped by for a drink. That’s all,” the man blathered, his eyes fixed on someone or something to her side, out of her vision.

A growl rumbled toward her. The hairs on her arm shooting up at the sound.

It couldn’t be. Not again. Not the dogs.

Risk saw the man leaning over Kara as soon as he ma terialized onto the Guardian’s Keep parking lot. She strug gled as the man moved closer, then jerked again as what looked to be a weapon flared next to her skin.

Rage poured through Risk.

Without pause, he released the iron controls he kept on his hellhound nature — stretched his neck and curled his fingers toward his palms. It took only seconds for the magic that was a part of him to complete his change.

His clothing fell to the ground. Silver hair hung over his eyes. Snarling, he shook it away. His eyes darted, seeing twice in this form as in his weaker human shape.

The pavement was wet and cool beneath his pads. He flexed his broad feet. His muscles ached to run, he ached to run, to feel the air blowing through his fur, to see the blur of cars, houses, trees as he raced after prey. He held his nose to the breeze. Cocked his ears, letting in sound in audible to both humans and mundane dogs.

His prey was here. He could smell him. Hear him.

He turned his massive head toward the scent of desperation and sounds of struggle.

Kara threw up her arm trying to defend herself. Risk didn’t have to see or smell her fear, he could feel it. His muscles tightened, his lips curling away from his teeth.

The man muttered something, then, his glowing weapon gripped in his fist, slashed down toward Kara’s wide eyes.

Risk roared, his anger filling him with heat.

Hunt. Kill. Destroy.

He leaped across the parking lot.

The massive animal stood six feet away, its paws braced apart, its head lowered, lips pulled back revealing shining canines. His glowing eyes were fixed on the man now crab-walking away from her, the stunner still gripped in her attacker’s hand sizzling and popping as he dragged it through the snow.

“She didn’t tell me, she belonged to no forandre. Bad enough I got to deal with the garm and that other. I wouldn’t be poaching on no hellhound’s territory.”

The man was talking to the dog as if it could understand him. Kara pushed herself backward until her body collided with the side of the Guardian’s Keep. The dog seemed focused on the man. Could she escape — run for it? Leave the nasty little man to fend for himself?

She pressed her fingers to her closed eyelids. God help her. It was tempting. She wasn’t sure what the man had planned for her, but she knew it hadn’t been good.

The stunner spit and steamed as it knocked against a hunk of ice dropped some point in the past from under a bar patron’s car.

That thing was wicked. She owed the vile man nothing.

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