Black Dog (2 page)

Or what would happen when they were found.

She
would not
allow herself to remember. She breathed deeply. Only after she had again locked the past in the past did she go on to borrow Alejandro's knife, prick her finger, and anchor the mandala with a drop of her blood at each compass point. She did not remember Mamá showing her how to do that – she
would
not remember, and did not, focusing fiercely on the immediate present. As she closed the circle with the last drop of blood, she murmured aloud, “May this cross guard this room and all within, against the dark and the dead and any who come with ill intent.” And then she added, “And this night let it guard us, too, against ill memory and dark dreams.” Her brothers both looked at her sharply, but Natividad pretended not to notice. The mandala closed with a sharp little shock of magic. She nodded firmly to show them that everything was fine.

“The
maraña
,
” Alejandro reminded her, not commenting on her addition. He watched her, worried. He thought she couldn't tell when he worried about her, but she always could.

“I know,” said Natividad. She slipped her
maraña mágica
out of her back pocket and held it up. Folded, it
was about the size of a credit card. She snapped it open and spun it across the door from top to bottom. It clung there, a tangled net of light and shadows, trembling like a dew-spangled spider web, insubstantial as a handful of light but ready to confuse the steps of any enemy who tried to cross it. Natividad didn't dare remind Alejandro about anything in case he thought she was nagging, but she remarked to the air, “If we call out for pizza, we'd better remember to take that down again, or we'll be waiting a long time.”

Miguel looked up, suddenly alert. “Pizza?”

Natividad made a scornful sound, pretending to be offended. “You and pizza! Anybody would think you'd grown up Gringo.”

“It's probably genetic,” Miguel said, pretending his dignity had been injured. “It's not my fault I got the pizza gene and you got the tamale gene. Can we order pizza if we put jalapenos on it? Jalapenos and onions and ham and extra cheese.”

“It's not very good cheese on those pizzas–”

“It wouldn't be very good on anything else, but it's perfect on
those pizzas
.”

“Order whatever you want,” Alejandro said from the other bed. He spoke in Spanish, visibly beginning to relax at last as this casual, ordinary bickering persuaded him that his sister felt safe and cheerful again. “Better than going out.” He rolled over, reached out to snag a pillow, and shut his eyes at last.

Natividad gave her twin a quick grin and an OK sign. Miguel raised a conspiratorial eyebrow and went back to his ads, careful not to rustle the papers.

 

“I like this one,” Miguel announced in the morning, waving a slice of cold pizza illustratively in the air over the newspaper. “See? It's old, but those Korean cars last a long time, and the ad says it's got good tires for snow. It's a little more than you said, but maybe we can bargain the price down. The phone number is the same as the hotel; I mean the first three numbers, so I think the address is maybe not too far away. I bet we could get a map at the desk.”

Natividad had figured out how to use the coffee pot in the room and now she sat on her bed, drinking coffee and watching Miguel finish the pizza. The pizza looked disgusting, but the coffee was good. She would have liked to add cinnamon, but it was alright the way it was. The shower was running. Either Alejandro was feeling safe enough to leave off guarding the room for two minutes, or else he'd realized it was important to look as civilized as possible when they met the Dimilioc black dogs. Natividad was betting on the latter: she didn't think Alejandro
ever
felt safe anymore. She said, “Newport isn't very big, is it? You think we can walk?”

“I'll have to call, find out where this is.” Miguel looked at the phone but didn't reach for it. Natividad understood perfectly. Black dogs, especially when they were nervous, liked to feel like they made all the important decisions. Her twin would wait until he could ask Alejandro for permission to make that call. He finished the slice of pizza instead. Then he looked wistfully at the last piece in the box, but he didn't touch it in case Alejandro might want it.

“Maybe we can stop somewhere for cinnamon rolls or something,” Natividad suggested.

Miguel made a face. “Those cinnamon rolls! Too much sugary goo.”

“I got the cinnamon roll gene,” Natividad said smugly. “All
you
got was the gene for pizza.
Cold
pizza.” She pretended to shudder. Then, since Alejandro had opened the bathroom door in a puff of steam, she went to see what things she might have clean. Things that would make her look civilized and grown up.

To her, the steam seemed very faintly scented with charcoal and ash. She touched Alejandro's arm in passing, taking the edge off his tension and anger. Pausing, her brother looked down at her and smiled suddenly, the way he could: a swift hard-edged protective smile that said more clearly than words,
I won't let anything bad happen to you
. “I know,” Natividad said. She patted his arm again and went on into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

The water was hot and came down hard, stinging. The shampoo smelled of lemons and pine needles. Natividad used the hotel's blow-dryer – really, American hotels were so thoughtful – and put her hair up, pinning it carefully so it would stay. She chose pink crystal earrings to match her pink blouse. Then she stood and looked at herself in the mirror for a long time, tilting her head one way and another, trying different expressions, trying to see if she looked grown up and confident. She thought she did. She was thinner, now. That made her face look different, more like Mamá's. Only not really.

Turning abruptly, she went out into the main hotel room, and said, just a little too sharply, “Are we ready? Can we go now?”

 

They bought Miguel's second-choice car. It was a little more expensive, but the woman who owned it was telling the truth when she said it was in good shape and would handle snow well. The owner of the first car had lied about those things. It was hard to lie to a black dog, and not so easy to lie to Natividad, either. That man hadn't understood how he'd given himself away, but he'd been too scared of Alejandro to protest when Natividad told him he should be ashamed of himself.

This woman was much nicer. Alejandro stood back, arms crossed over his chest, his attention on the peaceful streets, not looking at the woman because he was trying not to scare her while Miguel and Natividad handled the purchase. Buying the car took almost all the rest of their money, but it was worth it because the woman had delivered mail for twenty years and turned out to know all the roads. She was happy to go over the directions Miguel showed her.

“I'm retiring, but this was my work car. It's old, but it's a good one. It can handle the roads as long as the snow doesn't get too deep. It'll get you to Lewis, right enough. Got family there, do you?” The woman's eyebrows went up on that last. She didn't sound exactly
doubtful
, but Natividad thought that was just because she was polite.

“Papá was from there,” Natividad assured her. “He met Mamá in Mexico.”

“Of course.” The woman's gaze lingered on Natividad's face. “Your mama was a beautiful woman, I can see.” Then, possibly noticing Natividad suddenly blink hard, she turned briskly back to Miguel. “You'll get to Lewis alright, I expect. Good thing you didn't wait to come in right at Christmas, there'll be a lot more snow by then. But it's easy enough. You take state highway 105 east just like it says here, but then you jog south a mile or so on Derby Line Road. You're going to skirt along the western edge of Derby Lake, then take highway 111 east and a bit south. Let me draw you a map.” She fished in her purse for a pad and pencil. “See, you'll go right through Island Pond and Brighton, that's all one town these days so don't let yourselves be confused by the signs.”

“Yes, ma'am. I mean, no, ma'am,” Miguel promised. “I won't.”

“You sure you're old enough to drive, young man? Well, never mind. Look here, the highway goes off this way, but you'll take McConnell Pond Road north and then keep on it. It'll turn into Eagle Nest Road and then into Upper Tin Shack Road, but you just keep on and you'll get to Lewis alright.” The woman hesitated, glancing at Natividad. “You know – you
do
know, that's all the Kingdom Forest, really? Lewis is right on the edge of the Forest. It's no place for…” she stopped again and finished, “Well, if you've family there, you'll be alright.”

Natividad tried to guess what the woman had intended to say. No place for foreigners? Mexicans? Kids? Ordinary humans? She wondered how much a mail driver might have learned about Dimilioc in twenty years of delivering letters and packages to Lewis and Brighton and Island Pond and all those little towns and villages in Dimilioc's territory.

“Thanks for the directions,” Miguel said, his tone bland. He opened the back door of the car and threw in their pack, then shut the door again and looked at Natividad. She began to count out the bills. Everyone was distracted by the sight of all that money. At least, Natividad thought afterward that that was why none of them, not even Alejandro, realized the black dogs were there until they attacked.

There were two of them, though in the first instant of the attack Natividad thought there were more because they took up so much space and moved so fast. They were huge, more like mastiffs than wolves, with broad heads and heavy shoulders, and blunt muzzles set with jet black fangs. To experienced eyes, they didn't look like any natural animal at all – they were much too big, their eyes blazed fiery gold and red, and the snow exploded into steam with each bounding footfall as they rushed forward.

Black dogs usually didn't work together very well, but these separated as they rushed forward, the larger attacking Alejandro and the smaller lunging up and over a parked car to get to Natividad. She saw, in that one frozen moment, how his long black claws, almost bearlike, left gouges and slashes not just in the paintwork, but even in the metal itself.

Without thinking, she ducked backward into the car they had just bought, slammed the door, and locked it – she knew in her mind how little protection the fragile metal and glass could provide, but it might slow the black dog down a
little
.
She drew a pentagram on the car window with a shaking hand, whispering words of warding – that was better protection than the car itself, and the black dog veered away, screaming with frustration and hatred, his voice rising to an inhuman keen that ended in a hiss. Rearing up on his hind legs, he swayed back and forth, torn between bloodlust and the dread of Pure magic.

Miguel knew better than to stay close to Natividad during a black dog attack. He looked horrified, but he also jerked the woman who had sold them the car almost off her feet in his rush to get them both away from Natividad's attacker and back to the dubious safety of her house. Natividad was as horrified as her twin looked:
Miguel
couldn't ward the house, and that wooden door would be no protection at all. The black dog dropped back to all fours and rushed after them, and she could see he would catch them before they reached the house. He would kill Miguel and the woman, and then come back to deal with Natividad at his leisure. The other one would kill Alejandro and together they would get her out of the car somehow–

Alejandro caught the black dog before he had gone three strides. Alejandro, Natividad realized instantly, was
glad
to fight – fiercely glad of the chance to let go of all his hard control, all the tight-held fury and frustration of the journey, all the grief and rage he had carried from Nuevo León. His shadow had come up fast and hard, bringing with it the
cambio de cuerpo
,
the change of body, in plenty of time to meet the attack. Alejandro was lost in the battle-lust of his black dog shadow – but he had not for an instant forgotten about his sister or brother.

He had not stayed to meet his own attacker. He must have ducked and gotten away, because now he leaped onto the hood of Natividad's car, and then the roof – the thin metal boomed and deformed under the impact – and then flung himself from that height down upon the black dog pursuing Miguel. Alejandro did not flinch from Natividad's magic, but their other attacker, coming after him, was forced to take precious seconds to go around the car rather than over, and in that time Alejandro tore into the smaller one, who had plainly not looked for attack from the rear. Alejandro's claws tore across his spine, and his massive jaws crushed and tore the black dog's neck. The creature cried out, collapsing, dying, his body contorting and twisting back into human shape, horribly piecemeal so that half his body and the lower part of his face were still black dog when the rest was human. Black ichor and red blood spattered the snow, and the black dog's shadow, torn free from his body, shredded into the cold air, dispersing, gone.

Alejandro did not pause to roar his triumph, but whirled to meet their remaining attacker. Alejandro's jaws dripped with ichor, fire flickered behind his black fangs, the powerful muscles of his shoulders bunched and rippled as he lowered his massive head. His snarl was a terrible, ripping sound of threat and bloodlust.

His opponent hurled himself forward, shrieking his rage and hatred.

Alejandro leaped away sideways, then pivoted and met him after all. Natividad thought she could almost feel the shock of their collision, even from inside the car. Then there was a
real
impact, as Alejandro flung his enemy into the side of the vehicle. The car's back door
crumped
inward. Natividad screamed, a small, embarrassing sound, and pressed her hands over her mouth, shrinking back. But her magic flared as the black dog hit the warded car and the black dog shrieked again, this time in pain as well as fury. In that instant, while he struggled to get clear, Alejandro tore into him in deadly earnest. There was a fast series of blows Natividad couldn't follow, and then black ichor sprayed, smoking, against the windows of the car. Both black dogs vanished below the level of her sight, and only one rose again.