As her body went into a slow spiral downward, she watched red dots explode across the shooter’s forehead, arm, and chest, and they both fell together….

A part of her still lived in that space, always falling. She was in no shape for a possible confrontation, either mentally or physically. It was too soon. She was still healing. And she didn’t have her Glock or any offensive spells prepared.

But she had the dog, and she’d made it a promise that she would make everything okay. She wasn’t going to give it up to more abuse, not without a fight. Sometimes confrontations came whether you were goddamn ready or not, so somehow she was going to have to suck it up and make something good come out of this.

Her mind sped like a race car hurtling down an open highway. The shadow trick wouldn’t work, not indoors. Not now that he knew she and the dog were here. The best defense she had was the other people in the pub… hopefully… and the best offensive spell she had on the fly, if it came to it, was a raw, inelegant curse she’d learned in the backwoods of Kentucky that would knock her down as much as it would flatten the other guy.

Not an optimal choice.

But hopefully it wouldn’t come to that if she could only get outside first, and under the trees, then she was confident she could pull enough shadows around them to hide them from the most intensive scrutiny, if only the damn dog would stop that high, wacky sort of growly-whiny thing it was doing.

She hissed at it. “Shush!”

Ahead of her, the door to the kitchen opened, and a bolt of lightning came toward her.

Lightning, she saw as she blinked rapidly to clear her overloaded vision, which was just barely contained in a lethal male form that moved toward her like Death shadowing a dying woman…

His face. His face.

She knew his face.

The planes and angles so sharp they appeared as if they had been cut from an immortal blade. The indomitable will in those dark, chilling eyes and the ferocity.

The killer’s grace that was purely inhuman, sleek muscles sliding underneath his skin like a python swimming underwater, and oh my gods, he carried so much Power, even more Power than the other male did. He wore all black, the uncompromising clothes outlining every lethal line of his lean body. Once, Sophie had helped the LAPD catch an infamous gang leader who had always worn black, the better to hide all the blood.

The male newcomer recognized her too. She saw the moment it happened.

His eyes narrowed, and that incredible face of his sharpened—really, she wouldn’t have thought he could have looked any sharper or harder, but he did, he did—and he reached up and behind his head, and she knew what he was doing then too.

He was pulling his sword. The one that had dripped crimson with blood in her vision.

Everything crescendoed inside, the terror and the shakes and the sense of doom connected to the realization that she was trapped, with Lightning headed straight at her and Thunder coming up behind, and all that nightmarish PTSD she had bottled up inside her, and the damn dog hadn’t shut up at all. Now it was yodeling.

And she was full up. Full up and overloaded until she shot into a completely different mind space.

Ah, well.

There really was no fixing stupid or healing crazy.

“You!” she spat. Rage blinded her. She hated things that scared her. They made her so angry. She strode toward the terrifying male and shoved him in the chest as hard as she could with her free hand. “You bastard! You attacked me for no reason! Are you nuts—what is wrong with you? Who does that?! Crazy people? Serial killers?”

He raised his hand, and the hilt appeared.

Oh dear, here comes the sword. Better get ready with that curse.

If she could put enough strength into it, they would all go down together. But it was going to take a hell of a lot of strength to bring down these two males. Chances were good she would just piss them off while she knocked herself out.

As Lightning finished drawing his sword, he grabbed her wrist. A liquid, foreign language spilled out of his cruelly beautiful mouth, and she tensed, but it didn’t seem to be a magic spell. He had turned those ferocious eyes onto the dog, and he was…

Telling it off?

The dog bared its teeth at him, and it had a surprising number of teeth. For such a small creature, those fangs looked surprisingly wicked, long and sharp.

Part of her sensed the moment Thunder stepped into the room. Even though her attention was on Lightning, she couldn’t help but know it. Between the two males, there was so much Power in the room, together they could blow out the walls of the building if they wanted to. Hell, they could probably blow out the town.

She tugged at her wrist and struggled to free herself from his hold, but Lightning’s long, bruising fingers were like a manacle.

His hard, deadly eyes lifted to hers. When their eyes met, the shock of connection almost sent her to her knees. In slightly accented English, he ordered, “Drop him.”

“Drop him?” she repeated blankly. “Drop who, the dog? While you’re standing there with your goddamn sword pulled out, so you can, what—chop him in half? Fuck you.”

Both men stared at her. She didn’t let any hint of her intention cross her face when she stepped into his body, quick and smooth, and hauled up her knee.

It was an awesome move. She had practiced it countless times and used it more than once. She was good at it, confident in using it, and she didn’t hesitate. And she was very motivated to land that blow. Maybe it would loosen his grip on her wrist.

But she had used her right knee, on her bad side, and she hadn’t started back to training and conditioning after her hospital stay. The move pulled weakened muscles in her abdomen, so that she groaned in pain as she tried to knee him.