The Stone Warriors: Damian Read Free

this was what her life had come to, gratitude for a blood-soaked strap that still worked.
    A soft growl had her spinning in a crouch to find one of the hounds eyeing her hungrily. She’d no sooner clocked his position than the other one showed himself, prowling out of the darkness, lips pulled back in a snarl that bared terrifying fangs below a pair of red-drenched eyes.
    She waited for them to come to her. The blood leaking from her shoulder should be drawing them like a magnet, sending a signal to their tiny brains that their prey was wounded, vulnerable. But they didn’t move from their watchful crouches, and Casey realized something. Every instinct was telling them to attack and kill, but whoever was running them was holding them back. It was because of the Talisman. It was not only valuable, but unstable.
    She didn’t know what would set it off, and she’d bet her enemies didn’t either. It could be triggered by something as ordinary as a stray bullet or a deep graze from a hound’s fang. And once triggered, it would emit an electronic pulse that could wreak havoc on today’s technological society. The death and destruction could be terrible. And it would take a power much greater than she possessed to shut it down.
    Its potentially disastrous nature was why she’d been sent to retrieve the thing. Her boss, Nick Katsaros, ran a team that was funded by the FBI and existed solely to find and retrieve the various magical artifacts scattered throughout the world. Magic and the FBI might seem an odd fit, but it frequently made her life a lot easier. Like when she needed to slip weapons through customs or reassure the local law enforcement that it was perfectly okay for her to engage in the breaking and entering of a private home or institution, or even the occasional gunfight, like tonight.
    Casey was only one of Nick’s hunters, but she’d been with him long enough and had proved herself often enough, that he trusted her to go after the really significant pieces. Especially the ones with unknown magic. But someone had dropped the ball on this mission, because the background information they had on the collector was simply wrong. Shit. Hellhounds?
    And now she was crouched in an alley, with the deadly artifact that she’d stolen suddenly acting as her best defense against the very people she’d stolen it from. How fucked up was that?
    Her pursuers came into view behind the hounds, nothing but flashes of movement as they kept to the shadows and doorways, mindful of her weapon. Casey scooted back a few feet until she was mostly hidden behind the dumpster. They might not want to shoot, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. Especially if one of them thought he was a sharpshooter and decided to go for a headshot. She leaned out from the dumpster’s cover and sighted down the alley, waiting for one of her enemies to show his face. They couldn’t shoot her, for fear of hitting the Talisman, but she sure as hell could shoot them.
    Someone moved out of the shadows, scurrying for the next cover. Casey quickly lined up her shot with both hands, and pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded like a bloody melon, and he dropped to the ground. It was always best to go for a headshot when dealing with magic users. Too many of them could recover from even the most severe wound to their body. But no one could survive a hollow point to the brain, and she was a very good shot.
    Down the alley, one of her pursuers swore violently. “Just slide over the pack with the device,” a voice called. “We don’t care about you.”
    Casey didn’t waste the energy it would take to voice her skepticism. They probably wouldn’t shoot her once she got rid of the backpack—they’d loose the hounds. The two beasts remained totally focused on her, snarling non-stop, their powerful muscles bunched as they fought their handler’s control, waiting for the release they knew instinctively would come. The freedom to attack and kill their