Black Dog (3 page)

Natividad opened the door on the opposite side of the car, very carefully and slowly. She wanted to hide in the car forever and never get out again, but of course she couldn't. Alejandro needed her. She knew it. That was why she had the courage to get out. He snarled at her as she came around the front of the vehicle, a long ugly sound with a wicked hiss in it.

“Hush,” said Natividad. She put a hand on her brother's massive shoulder, feeling the muscles rock-hard under his shaggy pelt. “Hush. We're alright.
Somos bien
. There aren't any more, isn't that right? Only the two and you killed them both. Isn't that right? We're safe. It's alright now.” She thought he understood her. He lost language when his black dog came up, but she thought he understood her anyway. She looked past him, checking on Miguel. Her twin was halfway back to the car, bringing the woman with him. She didn't try to get away from him. She looked stunned. Natividad knew how she felt.

“We're alright,” Natividad said to Miguel, then suddenly found herself almost in tears, which was ridiculous because
now
everything was
fine
. She leaned shakily against the car, rubbing a hand hard across her mouth. The bodies crumpled in the snow looked completely human now. The black ichor had all burned away, leaving only red spatters across the snow and the car and everything.

Alejandro's massive head turned from side to side, his nostrils flaring as he scented the air for more enemies. But at last he shifted, slowly, and with some unpleasant fits and starts, back toward his human form. It took several minutes, during which Miguel, with cool practicality, dragged both bodies away behind a hedge and began kicking snow over the worst of the blood. It was already bitterly cold. Natividad had almost forgotten, until she saw the blood freezing into crystals in the snow, how cold it was. Shivering, glad of her mittens, she got a handful of snow and began to scrub the blood off the car. She glanced at Miguel and then at the woman who had sold them the car, wondering what they could do about her. She would obviously call the police as soon as they were gone…

“
Now
I believe your father was from Lewis,” the woman said, her voice shaky but emphatic. She stared at the blood, cast a horrified glance at the half-concealed bodies, and
didn't
look at Alejandro at all, which must have taken quite an effort. “I sure
do
. Oh, my God. I never… My
God
, in broad daylight… Jesus
Christ
.”

Alejandro straightened at last, looking almost entirely human. He stared at the woman. She met his gaze for a moment with horrified wonder, but looked away again before Miguel, once more at her side, needed to warn her about that. She said rapidly, “I don't know anything, I don't
want
to know anything, I don't
care
what you people do, anyway
they
attacked
you
, not that it's any of my business, alright? Take the car, just take it, that's fine, I don't care, somebody else can find the bodies, it won't be the first time lately, alright?”

“Alejandro…” Natividad began.

“You won't call the police,” said Miguel. Though he spoke to the woman, his raised-eyebrow look was for Natividad.

“No. No! I swear I won't! I swear!”

The woman was starting to cry, which was kind of awful. Natividad said quickly, “She's telling the truth, you know. She really is. You must be able to tell that as well as I can, 'Jandro.” That was why her twin had made the woman deny it, of course: so Natividad and Alejandro could hear the truth in her voice. She patted her brother anxiously on the arm. The human shape of his arm was reassuring, but his muscles were still hard with tension.

“We can leave right now, get out of town immediately,” Miguel put in smoothly. “Anyway, I bet the police here don't
want
to interfere with Dimilioc. Whatever they know or don't know or have figured out since the war, you know there's got to be a long, long tradition in this town of staying way out of Dimilioc business.”

Alejandro rubbed his hands across his face. The anger was ebbing at last, or at least he was getting it under control. He dropped his hands, stared at Natividad for a moment, and then said, his voice gritty with the remnants of black dog rage,
“Me de igual
.
Está bien
.”

“Right,” said Natividad, relieved. “Right.
Bien
.” She patted his shoulder.

Natividad thought the woman might change her mind and call the police after all as soon as they were gone, but she didn't say so. Anyway, Miguel was right, of course. The people of Newport, including the police, undoubtedly did have a long tradition of staying out of Dimilioc business, so probably there would be no trouble. Or not from the
police
. Natividad wished she knew whether those black dogs could possibly have belonged to Vonhausel. But Vonhausel shouldn't have dared trespass on Dimilioc territory. She looked at Miguel.

“They can't be Vonhausel's,” her twin said, answering her exact fear. “Right on the edge of the Kingdom Forest? I don't believe it. They were strays.” But despite his firm tone, Miguel was frowning. He said abruptly, “Dimilioc should have tighter control than this. Strays, here? I wonder how strong Dimilioc actually
is
,
now…” But then, as Alejandro shifted his weight, Miguel fell abruptly silent.

Natividad said nothing. She didn't want Alejandro to know how scared she still was. Then he would be angry again, and his shadow would press at him, and she didn't dare cost him even a shred of his control. They had this good car now, and soon they would be at Dimilioc, and then her brother would need every bit of his control. So, Natividad tried to think of cheerful things – hot chocolate, say. Except then she thought of Mamá's kitchen, and Mamá, and that was worse. So, then she tried to think of nothing at all.

 

2

 

The car finally got irretrievably stuck a few miles north of Lewis, on a nameless road that twisted up the sides of steep rocky hills and then chopped its way back down again.

Miguel was much better with cars and driving than either Alejandro or Natividad, and someone had to drive, but the road got worse and worse, and Natividad was not surprised when her twin finally lost control on one particularly steep curvy bit. When the car skidded, Alejandro put out an arm to brace her, and Miguel took his foot off the gas, and the car slid gently sideways off the road and tucked itself into a snowdrift at the base of a granite ridge. The gentle impact was little worse than when the bus had hit potholes in parking lots on their way north. Natividad uttered a small scream, mostly to tease her twin. Miguel winced, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said to both of them. “Sorry. It's not like normal driving. I thought I slowed down enough.”

“Está bien
,” Alejandro reassured his brother. “It doesn't matter.”

He didn't sound angry at all. Natividad guessed her older brother might even be glad that the car had run off the road. He might not mind if there was one delay and then another, so that the moment they came to the heart of Dimilioc remained a moment in the future and not yet
this
moment. She would understand that.
She
was Pure, so she was safe – pretty safe – and Miguel was only human. But Alejandro – black dogs were so
territorial
. Miguel thought it would be OK, but Natividad thought her twin might be too sure of his logical analysis of what Grayson Lanning
ought
to do to really believe he might do something else.

“So, I guess we'll walk the rest of the way,” Miguel said, once they were all sure the car was stuck. He patted the steering wheel wistfully. “Maybe we can get the car back later.” He reached into the back seat for their pack, glancing over his shoulder at Natividad. “It can't be so far now. Three or four miles, maybe. And it's not that cold.”

This was optimistic. It was very cold. No part of Nuevo León ever got so cold, not even the mountains. Here, their breath trailed white and frozen through the brilliant air, puffs of living steam against the stark black branches of the trees. And there was a great deal of snow here. Natividad could not remember snow ever falling at home in Potosi, far less at Hualahuises where Mamá's family had lived.

They pushed their way through knee-deep snow all afternoon. The whole world was white and black: the occasional green of needled pine and the flash of red as a bird flew by only served to accent the bleakness of the winter forest. Natividad could not imagine how the bird could live in this frozen world, where there seemed neither fruit nor seed nor insect nor anything else that might sustain living creatures. She thought this must be a hard country for bird or beast. A hard country for people, too. Even for black dogs.

Yet this cold northern world was not perfectly silent. Pine needles rattled in the occasional breeze; now and then a clump of snow fell softly from a branch. Somewhere not far away a bird called sharply, unmusically. Perhaps the red one, perhaps another; Natividad did not know the birds of this country. They had occasionally seen others through the afternoon: little ones of gray and buff and white; once a small flock of large black ones, like crows but bigger, which might have been ravens.

She stumbled over a snow-covered rock, and Alejandro touched her arm, stopping her. “You are alright?” he asked her. “Not too tired?”

“I'm fine,” Natividad said, waving away any concern, but she could tell from the way that Alejandro looked at her that he didn't believe her. She smiled at him reassuringly, but the smile took a deliberate effort. She
was
tired. And the cold was awful. But she didn't want to make her brothers stop for her sake. Miguel, hovering protectively at her elbow, looked alright, but Miguel had spent his whole life trying to keep up with their older brother. He was not tall, but he was sturdy and strong for an ordinary human, and the cold did not seem to bother him as much as it bothered her.

Alejandro himself, of course, did not really feel the cold. Black dogs didn't. It wasn't fair. Natividad gave Alejandro a look in which she tried to combine scornful amusement and impatience. She said, again, “I'm fine.” Her breath, like Alejandro's, hung in the air, a visible echo of her words.

“She's fine,” Miguel said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

Natividad leaned against her twin, her smile suddenly genuine. “See?”

Alejandro was not convinced. “We could stop, rest. We have not come very far. I think we still have a long way to walk. You should rest. We could make a fire. You have those
cerillos
? Matches?” He looked at Miguel. “We could boil water, have coffee. Eat something. Then you would have not so much to carry.”

Miguel grinned, a flash of white teeth in his dark face. His smile was their father's. Just recently, as Miguel had shot up in height and lost the plump softness of childhood, Natividad had begun to see echoes of their American father's bony features emerging in her twin's face. “I'm fine, too,” Miguel said. “But I wouldn't mind carrying some of this weight on the inside instead of the outside.”

Miguel, though much less strong than Alejandro, was the only one of them carrying a real burden. Natividad carried a shoulder bag with matches and a thermal blanket and some food, and her brothers had insisted on her carrying their small remaining cache of American money. Her twin carried everything else: the little pot to boil water; mugs and powdered cocoa; jerky and nuts. Extra clothes, too – especially for Natividad, of course, which was a little embarrassing, but only a little. It wasn't
her
fault her brothers didn't care about clothes.

Since they had known their car might not be able to get all the way to Dimilioc, they had brought the things she and Miguel might need if the cold got too bad. More than that, they had not wanted to abandon every last trace of their past. Buried in the middle of Miguel's pack, Natividad knew, was Mamá's special wooden flute, wrapped up in Natividad's favorite dress, the one with all the ruffles.

They hadn't had to argue who would carry the pack. Last year, when she and Miguel had been only fourteen, he might have argued. Even Natividad herself might have argued. She might have thought Alejandro should carry the pack because he was the biggest and had the black dog strength. But this year, they all understood that Alejandro could not carry any burden because he needed his hands free.

Alejandro carried only a knife: the silver one she had blooded for him. If worse came to worst, he would fight. If he fought well enough, if Natividad had time to use her
maraña
, then maybe she and Miguel would be able to get away. Lewis was not so far behind them, and if they could get another car, maybe they would be able to get all the way off Dimilioc territory.

The truth was, if worse came to worst, probably they would all die. But that had been so since the day Mamá and Papá had been killed. Even before that, in fact, though they had not known that when they were younger. So short a time ago, when they had all been children, before the war between black dogs and the blood kin had weakened Dimilioc, and Vonhausel had renewed his own war with Papá… Natividad shut those memories away with a sharp effort.

“I'm not too tired,” she said. “I can go on.” She looked at her watch, a cheap one with a black plastic strap and a pink face, and a white kitten to point out the hours and minutes. She put back the hood of her coat and looked at the sky, where the sun lay already low above the horizon. So comfortless and distant, that sun. She could almost believe cold radiated from it, and not warmth at all.