Sword of Justice: book 3

Queen of Skye and Shadow series.

Chapter One

A gopher, a feral pig, and a bear all die on a woman’s doorstep.

It sounded like a bad old world joke. But it leapt to my mind just the same in the four seconds I stood frozen in place on my side of the threshold. In light of the fact that there was nothing funny about the sleek, almost cat-like beast that advanced on me from the other side of the door, I wondered that I was even standing there at all with the time to think anything except that I had to get the Hell out of there. Like yesterday.

One paw crossed my threshold, pushing me back out of instinct and nothing else. I had enough time to realize it stood as high as my shoulder, that it had what looked like burning coals in its eye sockets, that the blood that dripped from its jowls sizzled when it hit the threshold.

Then my body decided to function. Slowly at first, for each step the beast took toward me in methodical, predatory movements, my feet shuffled backward.

I couldn’t pivot and run. I wanted to. Desperately. Every bit of DNA and each molecule and atom, every spark in every bit of tissue that regenerated tissue wanted to run like a tornado scraping rocks from the ground.

I knew if I did, I would be dead in seconds.

I knew if I did, I would be dead in seconds.

I didn’t dare take my eyes off the thing, and the closeup, revolting view revealed fur that was so short it looked like nothing more than the fuzz on a peach. It didn’t have the heftiness of a dire wolf, but it had the jowls. The mane of black fur on its scruff was one shade darker than its pelt. A long, catlike tail whipped up behind its haunches as I watched its skin shiver backward over its body the way a snake’s skin undulates as it moves on the ground.

I had to swallow down a sudden rise of bile. I knew what was happening. I knew and I was terrified that inaction would be the death of me just as certain as action would be.
It was loading up the springs in its haunches to leap at me.

It filled the whole damn doorframe and I had nowhere to go to get out of range of those massive legs.

Were those nails five inches long?

Its head lowered. Its eyes gleamed and landed on me. Caught my gaze and held me, pinned, not necessarily mesmerized by them, but caught in a sort of paralysis that everything to do with pure terror.

They were demanding eyes. An ocular weapon that made me think that anything they regarded didn’t live out three minutes past looking into them.

There was intelligence in those eyes. A question posed without words.

“Good doggie?” I whispered.

Not the right words, obviously. I knew it the moment my ears heard them.

In response, the beast squatted backwards for all of the three seconds it took to finally load those massive muscles. My own feet finally unglued from the floor and I staggered backwards, my arms raising in front of me in instinctive defense.

It leapt.