Logan turned and saw the thing come exploding out from within the trees. Technically, it was running, he knew, and yet it seemed to be flying a couple of feet above the ground, its big furious bounds so powerful that its feet didn’t appear to touch the ground.
It was a mongrel. Not in the same way that Taggart was, though. This thing wasn’t a random mish-mash of mismatched bits and pieces, it was a carefully orchestrated living nightmare. If Dr Frankenstein had turned his back on monster-making and gone into animal husbandry, this thing would be his pièce de résistance.
It was part Rottweiler, part German Shepherd, part Hellhound, and almost certainly had a wee bit of werewolf ancestry a couple of generations back.
And it was running at Logan very quickly indeed.
He had two options, he knew. Three, if you counted shitting himself, but he’d ruled that one out. The two he’d been left with were familiar to anyone who’d done his job and walked in his shoes. It was the choice that all polis everywhere were faced with all the time.
Fight or flight.
Stand his ground, or run for his life.
He could get in the car. He could shut the dog outside.
Its claws would make a mess of the paintwork, though, and there was no saying it couldn’t bite right through the metal.
And it could definitely bite through foam padding and fake fur, regardless of what Tyler had managed to tell himself.
Standing his ground in the face of this wild beast was dangerous, though.
Standing his ground was madness, in fact.
“Boss, hurry! Get in, I’ll hold him off.”
The snarling missile streaked towards them, its barking so frenzied now that its eyes were threatening to pop right out of their sockets. It had seen Tyler, but had clearly decided that the best course of action was to completely ignore him.
An animal after Logan’s own heart.
Actually, given the look on the fucking thing’s face, and the size of its teeth, it might literally have been after his heart. But, there was no backing down now. No chickening out. Showing fear would only make the situation worse.
Which, considering how bad it was already shaping up to be, didn’t bear thinking about.
Logan stood tall, his feet planted. He stared the dog down as it chewed up the ground between them, its jaws slavering and snapping. The fur on the back of its neck was standing so tall it looked like someone had given the animal a Mohican.
It was ten feet away now. Eight. Five.
Tyler’s nerve went. He pulled open the back door of the car, and tried to climb in, but the cumbersome suit meant he ended up wedged in the doorway with his big furry backside presented like a delicious banquet.
“Shite, shite, not my arse! Not my arse!” he wailed from beneath the headpiece, twisting to give himself a view of the approaching beast.
But his arse remained untroubled. The dog was fixated on Logan. Its hind legs kicked, propelling it into the air as it launched its attack on the DCI.
There was a hand movement. It was fast, but through the fogged-up plastic lenses of Dinny the Drink-Driving Squirrel, it looked slow, deliberate, and calculated.
There was a yelp as Logan’s enormous hand clamped around the dog’s throat, jerking it to a stop in mid-flight. This was followed by a second louder yelp a moment later when the animal was slammed, back-first, onto the ground and pinned there.
“Get down!” he bellowed, staring into the dog’s bulbous, bloodshot eyes. He grabbed its collar to give him a better hold as it wriggled and thrashed beneath him, “And you can cut that shite out right now,” he warned it.
With his free hand, he fished in his pocket and produced a small handful of dog treats. He held them out to the mutt, his hand flat so his fingers were safely out of reach of its teeth, then nodded approvingly as it scoffed them down.
“There. See? Was there any need to throw a paddy like that? It’s not a problem.”
He let the dog sniff at his hand for a moment, then fished out some more of the treats. This time, though, rather than let the mutt devour them all at once, he let it have just one, which was gobbled down so quickly that it was practically inhaled.
“Right, you want more? Stop being an arsehole,” Logan told the animal, his voice a kindly sing-song designed to calm and soothe the beast.
He unhooked the hand that had been pinning the dog down by the collar, and ran the back of his fingers in circles on its chest, ready to grab again should the aggression return. It turned its head, but rather than locking on his throat, its eyes went to the treats.
Logan held out another. Then, when the dog went to lunge, he pulled it away. “Gently,” he said, then he held it out again. This time, the dog slowly brought its muzzle closer, pincered the treat between its front teeth, and carefully withdrew before swallowing.