Terra's Victory (Destiny's Trinities Book 7) by Tracy Cooper-Posey Page A

and desperation, focused on him. Good. He didn’t mind being a target if it meant the boys would be safe.
    He gripped his knife firmly and waited for the hound to commit itself. There was always a moment when they threw their weight forward, to either leap, or ram their way through something with their powerful shoulders. That was the moment when it was possible to divert them.
    A knife in the back of the shoulders would bring them down. It had to be nicely timed, though. Better still was ramming the blade into the back of the head and straight into the brain, what brain there was, only that required room and time to turn as the hound hurtled past, in order to be at the right angle to plunge the knife in. It was also highly risky, because it meant exposing his belly to the thing’s teeth as it went past, because he had to have his knife arm up, ready to bring it down as soon as he could reach the back of the head.
    The safest move, the most reliable one, was the least pleasant version. Rhys settled for that. He flipped the knife in his hand, so the blade was edge up. Like a matador, he waited for the hound to commit itself, so that he could step aside and feel the wind of its passage pluck at his jacket as it passed by.
    He saw the haunches bunch and the thing leapt, a long, low arc. He stepped aside, as he had done at least a hundred times in the last month, got his knife arm out and under the throat as the thing’s chest pushed forward. The hound almost ran onto the knife and Rhys kept turning on his feet, bringing the knife with him, feeling it bite into flesh and drag.
    The hound fell onto the snow and began to kick and scream. The thrashing pushed the fresh snow into little piles around it, while the black blood soaked into the snow, tainting it.
    Rhys heard the other hound yelp, the sound cutting off abruptly, which told him Cora and Aithan had dealt with it successfully. Rhys kept his gaze on the hound, waiting to see the glow in its eyes fade and die. He’d learned to wait and make certain the thing was properly dead. He held the knife out from his side, letting the black blood drip onto the ground away from his clothes.
    In the bright daylight, Rhys could see its hide was scabrous, scarred and bald in places. The fur was thin.
    The sound of a gasping sob drew his attention away from the hound.
    Dobson was standing beside the cruiser with little Mickey in his arms, the boy’s face buried in his father’s belly. Mikey was shaking and Dobson looked pissed.
    Time shifted back to normal and Rhys frowned. What was Dobson pissed about? He’d just saved his boys, for crissake.
    “What sort of monster are you?” Dobson said, his voice low and shaking with his fury. “You couldn’t have used your gun and dealt with the thing neatly? You had to do that in front of my kids?”
    Behind Dobson a crowd was gathering, trying to peer over the cruiser and around Dobson himself, to see the hound and the gruesome mess around it.
    Rhys pushed his spare hand through his hair. The other held the bloody knife. Don’t explain . The caution whispered through his mind. Except that he was suddenly tired of all of it. The constant constraint, the prejudice. Fuck it.
    He bent and picked up a handful of snow and cleaned the knife with it. “I had to make sure,” he told Dobson, not bothering to modulate his voice. “Bullets aren’t sure enough.”
    In fact, he hadn’t even thought to draw his gun. The gun was a human thing. Blades worked better on everything else—vampeen, Grimoré, hounds and all their allies. If the blade was iron, it even worked on the asshole demons who had gone over.
    Dobson’s eyes widened. His mouth worked. There wasn’t a lot of color left in his face, either. “Who are you people?” he demanded, his hold on Mikey tightening.
    Aithan gripped Rhys’ arm. “Shut up. Right now,” he said, his voice low.
    Rhys stared at Dobson, a fury of his own building. To be judged so wrongly irked him. He’d only