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.

I scrambled until I had found another, and heaved harder. Swift did not bother to flinch as it sailed wide over his shoulder, but he raised his head to fix me with an arrogant, somewhat scornful look. “Do you mind?”