Free Guardian Hound by Leah Cutter Page B

need Oma to tell him that he needed to be careful and always keep one ear cocked for Rudi, and that he needed to leave everything just as he’d found it.
    Lukas waited another two months, scenting the air carefully every day and every night, making sure no hound or shadow was near, before he decided to try changing back into his human form, just for a break.
    The night was quiet; only the occasional truck rumbled on the far-off highway. Rudi slept soundly and no neighbors were stirring.
    Lukas stood behind the big elm tree in the backyard, hidden from the house and all the windows, before he finally let loose of his hound form.
    It felt like stretching after a long night’s sleep, standing up to his full height. His human form had grown, he realized, even though it had been only four months. He opened his arms to the night air, breathing deeply, his nose dull but his skin alive. The ground felt cold underneath his bare feet. How odd it was to wiggle his toes.
    Then the shadows attacked.
    Like in his dream, they buzzed around him like gnats, seeking to violate him. He shivered in shock, looking around the garden. Where had they come from, and so quickly? Neither he nor Hamlin had scented them at all.
    Down, down , Hamlin commanded.
    With a last desperate stretch, Lukas obeyed, wrapping his arms across his chest as he shrank down, changing back into his Scottie dog form, shedding shadows with a final shake. Even the short attack had exhausted him, and he stood on trembling legs, panting.
    Hamlin held their nose high in the air, untangling the scent of the shadows.
    It was still a wet smell, sand and mold and ash, but something else threaded through the scent, something he’d only smelled once before but had sworn to remember.
    It came to him slowly.
    Oma. The potion he’d taken.
    Now he knew why she’d looked so sad.
    She’d cursed him with shadows so he’d never be able to change back to human form, not until she lifted it.
    Why had she cursed him with the one thing that he was destined to destroy? Was it to make him more familiar with them? Or had they tricked her, somehow?
    Deep inside, Lukas howled, shaking with anger and fear.
    It was unfair. All of it.
    Yet, all he could do was wait.
    # # #
    Lukas waited ten years before he received the first sign that his banishment was nearing an end.

Chapter Five
    Germany, 1970s to Eleven Years Ago
    Rudi
    Rudi waited, anxious and alone, in the magic practice room after Lady Metzler, the king’s mother, had told the rest of the class they could go. He’d failed the latest test. Magic slipped through his fingers as if they were still paws. He couldn’t hold on to any of it. He hoped he hadn’t failed so badly he’d be sent home immediately instead of at the end of the summer. He’d already missed the big Fourth of July party at home, celebrating the United States bicentennial. To be sent there now, in disgrace…Rudi shivered.
    His life couldn’t get any worse.
    The room smelled of rosemary, straw, twine, dried roses, and all the other boys from the hound clan, sent there for the summer to learn. It looked more like the chemistry lab at his high school back in Pennsylvania than what he’d imagined a room for learning magic looked like: It had porcelain sinks, stainless steel tables, and white cabinets with frosted glass doors lining the walls.
    Magic had been nothing like his dreams, or his favorite books, like Andre Norton, Susan Cooper, or even Ray Bradbury. It was like trying to catch a single drop of oil in a boiling pot of water.
    His dad had been so hopeful, sending Rudi back to Germany to stay with his aunt and uncle, be presented to the new king of the hound clan, and spend the summer learning. The new king wasn’t that much older than Rudi, barely out of high school himself, but he’d looked so solemn sitting on the great stone throne in the court, with curly black hair and eyes bluer than the summer sky. The