Rogue's Pawn Read Online Free Page A

real.
    Observation Number One still stood: I had no fucking clue where I was.
    This might seem to be a fantasy version of Ireland, but it could be Hades’ realm, for all I knew. Which would make me Persephone, trapped here forever if I ate or drank anything. Not to be superstitious, but if I admitted that I’d been somehow transported from Devils Tower to Elsewhere—which would be difficult to argue against—then the Underworld could be as possible as anything else. Or Faerie.
    I racked my brain for the old tales I’d never paid much attention to. There always seemed to be banquets and falling asleep for hundreds of years.
    Regardless, it wasn’t wise to drink water I knew nothing about. I went to wipe my hand on my dress but, feeling suddenly paranoid, turned to wipe it on my coat instead.
    Which was now gone.
    Happily my shoes still lay on the grassy verge, though all alone. As if the coat had never existed.
    Or, as if I had left it behind with the other things. At last, I had another observation to add to my list.
    5. My wishes were coming true.
    Deep, cleansing breaths.
    I gazed at the water, clearing my mind. Let the sound of the ripples soothe you. Relax. There must be some explanation for this.
    Then the angel hairs lifted on the back of my neck in familiar dread.
    No, it can’t be.
    The Dog sat on the opposite bank.
    A high whine rushed past my ears. My face heated to flashpoint. My stomach dropped in panic and every pore prickled with cold sweat.
    He looked unreal, just as in my dreams of the past months, as if carved from volcanic glass. His amber eyes pinned me with fierce intelligence—and satisfaction? Tilting his gleaming head, he seemed to be asking a question. I still didn’t know the answer.
    “This is a dream,” I said out loud. “This is just a new form of the same damn nightmare.”
    I wasn’t naked, though, and not in that bathing chamber. I fervently wished to stay clothed and his jaw parted slightly, revealing a glimpse of white fang, as if he found me amusing.
    And there I was, frozen, forever waiting for the attack.
    My terror transformed into abrupt rage.
    The fury beat against the inside of my forehead. I hated that damn Dog. Stalker Dog. Clearly I had gone over the edge into complete insanity, here in Disney Ireland with Stalker Dog and no birds. And now my wishes were coming true? Fine! Give me some singing birds with my fantasy brook and nightmare Dog!
    The Dog’s jaw snapped shut, ears lifting. We stared at each other across the bright water, which seemed to laugh with storybook joy, oblivious to the creatures around it. The stream’s chuckles were abruptly drowned by a crescendo of singing birds. Birds filled the skies and trees, shrieking song. I clapped my hands over my ears and ducked my head as robins, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, even parrots swooped down, around, darkening the skies.
    My stomach sank in horror. I’d done this. Claws caught my hair. A beak scratched one arm as a mynah and crow attacked each other.
    The Dog still sat on the opposite bank—I saw him in the breaks of the flights of screaming birds, like a fog bank shifting and revealing small glimpses. A bubble seemed to surround him, the birds parting in their wild passage as water around a boulder.
    He stilled and gathered, as if he drew shadows from the woods behind him. His eyes darkened to a fire-orange—the sparking flames of them bored through the birds between us. His hackles rose, haunches bunching as his body tensed. The coal-black lips pulled back again, but in a snarl, teeth somehow sharper-looking than before.
    The attack, at last.
    A low growl spiraled from his body, a sub-audible vibration, a keening wind that at first seemed to be part of the cacophonic bird calls, then rose to a sharper thunder that shook me. That shook everything.
    The birdsong scaled to a single banshee wail, unbearable in intensity. The thunder and keening chorus became a ululating lamentation that I felt might break