I nearly tumbled straight into him, but caught myself and froze, mere inches away. As I looked into the commissioner’s face, the glamour melted away. He looked as he had always looked, but my mind finally allowed me to see the features I had been forcefully ignoring until now. Above a grotesquely wide mouth full of too many sharp teeth, the bridge of his nose curved upward into a severe brow. His ears, which bent slightly under the brim of the hat, were pointed, and his skin was blotched and leathery. Hard, crooked cheekbones skewed the whole of his face in a disturbing angle. Most frightening of all was that horrible mouth and the jagged, bloodstained teeth—teeth that called to mind broken bottles and razor blades. He laughed, and his breath reeked with the coppery stench of the blood. He was a cat, toying with his prey before the kill.
There could be no escape, but my feet pulled me backward anyway. I tripped, landing at the base of an old tree. Jackaby’s books fell from my hands to the muddy roots. Swift’s lip twisted up in a final, wicked smirk, and vicious, bloodstained claws extended from his fingertips. Done playing with me, the cat pounced.
And so did the dog.
Swift was in the air, his horrible fangs and claws arcing toward me, when the massive hound hammered into him from the side. The two slammed into the ground and rolled. Swift’s cane bounced away, his dark coat whipping and tangling around the shaggy brown fur of the beast. They ground to a stop, the enormous dog pinning the commissioner’s shoulders under two heavy paws. It growled and snapped at the commissioner, who snarled back and ducked away from the hound’s jaws. Swift’s legs squeaked once beneath the hairy creature, and then the massive hound flew backward, the heavy iron boots cracking hard off its ribs. The beast collided with a broad tree and thudded to the ground, letting out a very human groan.
His handsome face had warped and vanished beneath the fur, but those warm brown eyes were still unmistakable. They were full of fear and pain and humanity as he shook off the impact and tried to reorient himself. Swift was up and behind him in seconds, claws out and teeth gnashing before the shaggy hound had even pushed itself to its feet. The dog was moving far too slowly. Someone screamed, “Charlie!” and I realized it was me.
The commissioner shot me a poisonous glance before lunging toward his target, but it was just enough of a pause for the hound to whip around, so that the attack glanced off his flank instead of striking his jugular. Three lines of red blossomed across Charlie’s shoulder. A few inches closer and Swift surely would have opened the hound’s throat.
The two circled each other. Charlie moved stiffly, as though the first kick had bruised or even broken his ribs. He waited for Swift to launch the next attack.
It came in a blur. The commissioner feigned a wide swipe with his wicked claws, but as Charlie ducked to avoid it, Swift kicked hard, catching his opponent solidly across the jaw. Charlie yelped in pain, and Swift cackled. He easily quickstepped around Charlie’s retaliatory bite, and came at the hound from the other side with another feigned slice and a brutal kick. This time, Charlie predicted the move, and he caught the commissioner’s ankle in his massive jaws and shook.
The commissioner hit the ground on his back, flailing with one hand and holding his bloody hat on with the other. Charlie did not release him, growling through clamped jaws as he continued dragging his opponent back and forth across the ground like a human paintbrush. He had scrubbed the moss from a six-foot swath of earth when a loud ping rang the hound’s teeth like a dinner bell, and his head shot back. Swift hopped to his feet, bits of metal and leather straps hanging loosely at odd angles around his knee. He ripped the mangled remnants of the brace from his leg and glared at the great hound.
His iron shoes dug into the freshly churned dirt and he waited, like a sprinter listening for the starting pistol. Charlie lowered himself, and his lips peeled back in a vicious growl. In a blur, Swift was behind him, and the dog’s teeth snapped at the empty air. Swift had carved a chunk out of the hound’s ear, and it bled dark ribbons through his shaggy coat. Again and again Swift darted around Charlie, piercing gashes and pounding kicks into his shaggy hide from every direction. Charlie spun and snarled and bit. He was keeping himself low, and protected from any serious wounds, but for all his ferocity, he was no match for Swift. It would only be a matter of time.
At last, the barrage of fast attacks paused. Swift taunted his opponent arrogantly, tipping his hat in mock cordiality and smiling wickedly, and then he turned his back to the hound and stepped away. “You’re good,” he said, amused.
Though panting heavily and covered in patches of deep red, Charlie held his stance, watching the commissioner’s movements.
“Monsters like us shouldn’t be brawling with one another, though, should we?” the commissioner continued, still facing away and sauntering to the center of the clearing. “We have so much more in common, after all. And a pup like you, so far from your pack—you could use a strong master. I tell you what, when I’m through with this one”—he waved a nonchalant hand in my general direction—“you’re welcome to finish off the scraps.”
Swift’s casual steps had brought him to the spot where his cane had landed. He stooped to pick it up, not presenting even the slightest defense, his back still wide-open. I caught the treacherous glint in his eye as he leaned down slowly, wrapping his fingers around the metal rod. Charlie took the bait and threw himself toward the commissioner in one powerful bound.
In a flash, Swift had pulled the broad hand grip from the cane and thrown it aside, revealing a long, flat blade on the end of the shaft. The metal cane was braced and waiting for its target before Charlie could stop his own momentum. It lodged itself in the hound’s right side, piercing clean through and out his back, just below his shoulder blade. Charlie bellowed in pain and sank onto the iron pike.
Swift stood and sauntered around the beast’s head, tutting softly to his victim. Without warning, he grimaced and kicked the glistening metal with a sharp clank where it protruded from Charlie’s hide. “Bad dog!” he yelled.
Charlie whimpered and shuddered. His whole body was shivering, his paws twitching.
“A few inches to the left and you’d be finished, you mangy mutt. Now I have to put you down myself.”
And there they were, not twenty feet from my stunned stupor. The horrible, grotesque form of Commissioner Swift knelt over Charlie’s soft, bloody head. He was drawing his claws down Charlie’s cheek in a sickening caress, savoring the kill, and Charlie had abandoned resistance. I wanted to scream or run or . . . or anything, but I was just a foolish girl, lost in the woods, and this was not one of the adventures in my books.
Books. Jackaby’s books still lay where they had fallen on the muddy roots. My shaking fingers found the closest leather spine, and they let fly before my mind had even considered the decision. The hefty volume turned slowly through the air, the pages whipping slightly as it spun like a wounded bird toward the commissioner’s grisly face. I was twenty feet away from my target. The book landed at fifteen. The commissioner paused to raise an unimpressed eyebrow in my direction.