Black Dog (16 page)

What St Walburga had been trying to do was cleanse the black dog taint from the unborn daughter of a black dog woman. She had succeeded, sort of. And sort of failed. That had not been a miracle, or that was the decision of the Church, though Mamá had always said maybe the magic had been divinely inspired. But everyone agreed the saint had made a powerful spell that no one else exactly understood. On Walpurgisnacht, the Pure as well as German peasants still laid out gifts of honey and wheat for the saint, and with similar prayers.

Later, when she was an abbess at Heidenheim in Germany, St Walburga, with the first of the Pure girls who had become nuns at the abbey there, had also developed the
Beschwichtigend
.
The
Aplacando
,
Mamá called it, the Calming: the magic that protected a black dog from his most savage urges, especially the bloodlust that drove black dogs to hunt and kill the Pure. Very soon after that, some black dogs had realized the advantage the Pure could bring them: not merely better control over their own shadows, but also black dog sons born with superior control and, if they were lucky, Pure daughters who could bind families together and let a civilized black dog patrimony carry on from one generation to the next. Gehorsam had been founded in Heidenheim, first of the black wolf Houses; and Dimilioc in Britain; and Lumondiere in France; and much later, and not the same, the Dacha in Russia.

But despite the
Aplacando
, it was no wonder that many black dog women, whose sons were always destroyed by their shadows and half of whose daughters were stillborn, hated any Pure girl they might meet. Natividad looked at the table, though she guessed it was hopeless to try to appease Keziah.

“You knew, when James made you my offer, that Dimilioc values the Pure,” Grayson told the girl. “You knew it when you came here. I do not want to lose you. You and your sister are both valuable. But you are not more valuable to Dimilioc than Natividad Toland. You need not like one another. But you must be civil. And, preferably, not homicidal. I expect you both to permit Natividad to work the
Beschwichtigend
for you. I'm perfectly certain James explained that this would be a necessary condition for anyone wishing to belong to Dimilioc.”

Amira looked away. But Keziah said, her voice smooth, beautiful, and chillingly indifferent, “Of course. We knew it anyway. Everyone knows that you Dimilioc wolves breed for Purity. You want your sons to rule their shadows and your daughters born with light in their hands. That's well enough, for those who care about such things. Whatever Dimilioc wishes is well enough.”

“Indeed,” Grayson said, with a slight, ironic lift of his eyebrows. He glanced around the table. “Dimilioc now numbers ten wolves. This is an improvement, but, as has recently become clear, far from adequate if we are to be challenged by a determined enemy.” He looked grimly at Alejandro. “Perhaps now is an appropriate time to hear a less condensed version of your father's relationship with Malvern Vonhausel. And your own.”

Natividad saw her black dog brother stop himself from glancing at Miguel. He met Grayson Lanning's hard stare and said, carefully, “This Vonhausel, he was our father's enemy forever, and our mother's. Of course he has forced other black dogs into a shadow pack, or he would not have been able to kill Papá. But I did not think he would bring them and follow us here. I did not think Dimilioc would have so few black wolves to face him.”

“And volunteered nothing, even when you saw how few Dimilioc wolves remain,” Grayson said, his tone still grim.

Zachariah leaned back in his chair, ostentatiously relaxed, deliberately breaking the gathering tension. “Malvern Vonhausel,” he said thoughtfully. “He was a strong black wolf. Not so personally strong as to be a threat, as I recall. He couldn't have forced so many strays to follow him. Not then. But he was ambitious. I remember that. Ambitious to find a way to harness black dog magic, codify it… make it
useful
, as Pure magic is useful. He wanted to work out a far more aggressive kind of magic. He quarreled with Edward about that, because he wanted to use the Pure in his studies. Just one or two, he said: a reasonable sacrifice if we could gain a better understanding of demonic magic. Edward was vehemently opposed, but Thos was interested, James, do you remember?”

“That whole thing was before my time, a bit,” James Mallory said. “You and Harrison were Vonhausel's contemporaries, not me. I remember the quarrel, but the reason for it, that's something else, isn't it?”

Zachariah smiled, without much humor. “Well, that's it in a nutshell: Malvern wanted to work out a useful kind of demonic magic.
Thos
hoped he might find a way for black dogs to gain permanent ascendance over vampires and those damned blood kin of theirs. Thos didn't mind breaking eggs, but Edward was dead against anything that would require sacrificing the Pure, and was damned vocal about it.”

“Indeed,” said Grayson. He tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the table. “Yes. I had forgotten the subject of that dispute, but I remember the quarrel.”

“Oh, yes,” Zachariah agreed. “Edward could match Vonhausel, but not Thos, of course. That's the part you remember, I'm sure. There was a huge argument, but a very short fight. After that Edward had no choice but to lower his eyes and hold his tongue.”

“Edward Toland defied Thos, and lived?” Benedict asked, clearly incredulous. “Thos didn't kill him?”

“He couldn't. Remember, this was right after Thos first took the Mastery. He hadn't yet gained the strength he had later.” Zachariah glanced briefly at Ezekiel. His nephew gazed back at him without expression. Zachariah went on, “Edward was popular in the house, especially with the Pure. He had strong support from plenty of black dogs, too. Thos didn't dare kill him.”

“So, he exiled him,” James surmised. “But then, why exile Vonhausel too?”

“You're getting ahead of the story. No, what happened next… The way Harrison and I put it together afterward, what happened was this: Malvern murdered Linda Hammond. You remember that, of course, Grayson, though probably not the story behind it. He murdered her and used her blood somehow to capture her magic… or something. Made something, or worked out something, I don't know. I don't think anyone ever knew exactly what he'd done. Except Thos, perhaps.
He
was apparently happy enough with whatever it was that he was willing to accept Linda's murder. Edward wasn't.”

“But Edward still couldn't fight Thos,” said Benedict. “Right?”

“Exactly. He couldn't. As had been so recently and vividly demonstrated for us all. But immediately afterward, Edward was gone.”

“Yes,” Grayson said slowly. “I remember that. Thos said he'd exiled Edward, and then he exiled Vonhausel as well, with some explanation or other no one believed – I don't remember what. I thought most likely Vonhausel had killed Edward in defiance of Thos's order, and Thos exiled him for that.”

“That's right, that's what everybody thought,” agreed James. “But even at the time, you know, it didn't make sense.
I
always thought Thos himself murdered Edward, then put the blame on Vonhausel and exiled him to hide what he'd done. I was damned sorry about it.”

“But you didn't dare challenge Thos over it,” said Zachariah, then quickly lifted a hand to forestall a hot response. “No, neither did I, and I thought the same, at first. But after Malvern left – left of his own will, mind you; he was gone
before
Thos gave the order of exile, and by all accounts he went in a rage and in a hurry – after that, Harrison and I came to believe that Edward had stolen something of his, and fled with it.” He glanced at Miguel, then at Alejandro. “We decided Malvern had gone after him, and Thos covered everything up after the fact with orders of exile so he'd look like he'd been in control all the time.”

Ezekiel lifted an ironic eyebrow. He had leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched out and ankles crossed, his hands in his pockets. He said nothing, as he had said nothing to any of this account, but Natividad thought he might be trying to make it all make sense in terms of the Thos Korte he'd known. She somehow thought he might be having trouble with that, though she wasn't exactly sure why she thought so.
She
was having trouble imagining what in the world Vonhausel had done with that poor Pure woman's magic when he murdered her. Or thought he'd done, or meant to do. It ought to be impossible for a black dog to make or do anything useful with his shadow magic – but if he hadn't, then what had Papá stolen? However, if Papá had stolen something from Vonhausel, then Mamá must have known, too, and then why hadn't Mamá ever told
her
about it?

She remembered when Mamá had explained about the blood of the Pure, about what the blood kin did with Pure women when they caught them. “Pure blood to break Pure working,” Mamá had said. She had been showing Natividad the pentagrams on the village church: on the windows of blue and pink glass, on the carved wooden door, and on every individual stone at a woman's shoulder height, inside and out. Those stones were head-high for Natividad, who had been about eight. She had reached up to lay her hand on the stone nearest the door. The stone was warm under her hand, only it wasn't really warmth, but a good feeling
like
warmth.

“Grandmamá and Tía Maria drew all those stars,” Mamá explained. “And I and Tía Maria did the mandala around the church yard. This church is the safest place in Potosi. But always remember, a vampire can shatter even our protections if they pour our lifeblood out over our mandala or across the threshold of the church. You must never let the blood kin catch you alive, Natividad, because they will use your death against the innocent if they can.”

Natividad had shivered.

“Do not be afraid. I will show you a better place to hide if they come,” Mamá told her, and took her to the live oak standing inside the circle of young pines. “Twenty-one pines and one oak,” Mamá said. “You may not wish to hide in the church, Natividad: that is for innocent people and children, but there are some things you may do better if you are here and not in the church.” Mamá looked down at Natividad and sighed. “Someday soon I must show you…”

Natividad didn't understand. She was puzzled by that sigh and by something else in her mother's tone, something she did not understand. “Mamá, are you sad?”

“No, no,
mia hija
. No, I am not sad. Only… No, never mind. Put your hands on the tree. Do you feel the pentagrams I carved into the wood when you were born? Also there is a saint's finger-bone buried among the roots. Saint Louisa's bone, they say it was. My Great-grandmamá buried it there when she planted the oak. If you must hide quickly, come here for safety.
With
Alejandro. Come here with your brother if you can. A tangle of shadows can hide you from any who would do harm to you, whether your enemies are blood kin or black dogs.”

Natividad had not understood how shadows could tangle up, or which shadows were supposed to. And when Vonhausel had come with his shadow pack to kill them all, Alejandro had not been at home: he had been miles away, hunting in the desert near Hualahuises, hunting under the moon. She had run to the oak all by herself, through the smoke rolling down the mountain from the burning village. She had tucked herself down in among the oak's heavy roots where they heaved out of the gritty soil, and no one… no one had found her, all that night.

She swallowed, pulling herself, with brutal effort, out of unbearable memory. She rubbing her eyes hard with the back of her hand and looked quickly around the table, trying to be subtle, hoping no one had noticed her sudden struggle with tears.

James was looking grim, and his younger brother Benedict a little bit scared, or maybe confused, or maybe both. Ezekiel was sardonically unreadable, an expression Natividad was sure he practiced in front of a mirror. Keziah looked contemptuous and bored and sexy – she probably practiced that in front of
her
mirror. Every day, probably. When Natividad accidentally met her eyes, her lip curled, and she looked away again with ostentatious indifference, but at least she didn't seem to think anything odd about Natividad's own expression. Her little sister Amira had drawn her legs up and tucked herself back in her chair, trying to be unnoticeable. Grayson tapped one finger gently on the table, frowning with a heavy grimness he probably didn't have to practice.

Zachariah, oldest of them all, looked calm and a little abstracted, with a faintly self-derisive edge to his mouth – he was thinking, probably, of those difficult days: murder and secrecy and a Master he hated, or at least didn't trust; the sort of Master who would let an ambitious Dimilioc black dog get away with killing a Pure woman. He said, “Harrison and I might have taken Thos down right then, if we'd worked together. We did think of it. It would have saved us all a good deal of grief if we'd done it. But everything calmed back down after Edward and Malvern both disappeared, and Thos consolidated his hold, and we lost the moment.”

“If you had tried to fight him then, Thos would have killed you both,” Grayson said, dismissing this putative failure with a curt gesture.

Ezekiel leaned back in his chair, a casual movement that nevertheless gathered all eyes. He said, “So, I'm sure this is all very interesting, but now we must wonder what light Edward's sons might be able to shine on all this ancient history.” He lifted an eyebrow at Alejandro.

Alejandro hesitated.

Miguel said, calmly, “Malvern Vonhausel allied with a blood kin clique. He allied with the blood kin to get access to vampire magic. Papá tried to stop him and then tried to kill him, only he couldn't, and Papá tried to tell Thos Korte, but Thos wouldn't listen, and finally Papá ran south, and met Mamá, and Mamá hid us all. But Vonhausel's making common cause with the blood kin, that was the first move in the war, twenty years before anybody realized it had even started, Papá said.”