Black Dog (44 page)

Vonhausel tilted his head, casting a quizzical glance at her
aparato
. “What have you brought me?” He lifted his gaze suddenly, caught her eyes as though doing so was a kind of attack.

Natividad felt that it was. She flinched and tucked herself against the side of the car. It took no effort to look like she was too frightened to answer.

“Do you think that will protect you?” Vonhausel asked her. “You little Pure bitches, you do amuse me. You always think so highly of yourselves. You
are
Concepción's child, of course.” He paused, then, when Natividad said nothing, went on, “But your magic is weak, isn't it? Or you were too stupid to learn what your mother might have taught you. What a disappointment to her you must have been. Though in the end even she died as easily as any other human. Though I admit that particular indulgence might have been rather short-sighted. I think you will be rather more useful to me than your mother.” He paused, studying her.

Natividad still did not answer. Despite his scorn, Vonhausel had not reached out to take the
aparato
away from her. She had expected him to grab it first thing. She had
made
it to attract him, to attract any really strong black dog. Maybe he was right about her after all – maybe she
was
stupid. She couldn't have made it right. He didn't even care about the
aparato
at all, he'd barely even
noticed
it, she had put herself in his hands for nothing – she
hadn't
learned what her mother had needed to teach her–

“What
is
that?” he asked her, so suddenly that she jumped and bit her tongue. When she didn't answer at once, he asked again, an impatient edge hardening his smooth voice, “Well, what? Speak, girl!”

“It's… It's a shield,” Natividad whispered. This had seemed much more believable when she'd just
imagined
herself answering some question like that, before she'd left her safe pink room at the Dimilioc house. She could read both anger and contempt in Vonhausel's eyes, in the set of his mouth, but was that because he realized she was lying or just because he was a black dog? She said, not having to
try
to make her voice falter and fade, “My… My mother showed me. It's for vampires really, only it's the strongest thing I know how to make and I thought it would work…” She let her voice trail off into helpless silence.

There was still no clear sign that Vonhausel suspected that she was lying. Only there wasn't any sign that he wanted the thing she'd made, either. He wasn't even looking at it. He was studying her. She ducked her head to avoid meeting his unnatural gaze.

“Stupid little girl,” he said to her. “Grayson Lanning didn't know what he had in his hand, when he gathered you up. Did all his black dogs trail after you like dogs after a bitch in season? I'm sure they did. That's all they thought of you. Is that why you ran from them, pretty little bitch?”

Natividad shuddered, wondering desperately if she could possibly be fast enough to get back into the car and slam the door before he touched her. Probably not. He was so close. But she was poised to try it anyway.

Only then he said in a soft, absent tone, “And such a pretty little shield you've made. So delicate. Not very effective. But I wonder whether I might find some use for it?” He paused and then added, even more softly, speaking now more to himself than to her, “I wonder whether that little thing of yours really is nothing but a shield? Is that what your mother told you it was? It doesn't look like a shield to me.”

His gaze had been caught at last by the
aparato
. It had grown brighter, she realized, and vaguer, and even colder to the touch. It numbed her hands. She caught her breath in a little gasp, and dropped it. She hadn't meant to actually let it go and snatched after it again at once. But dropping it turned out to be the perfect tactic, because Vonhausel moved with black dog speed and precision to seize the thing before it could hit the ground.

It turned in his hand so fast that Natividad didn't really see it turn, only knew that it had moved: it wrapped around Vonhausel's hand and flung itself up his arm. The misty glow surrounding
it flared into sharp-edged brilliance and flicked out like a blown-out match. But the thing itself was not gone. She knew it was still there, really, though she couldn't actually see it, exactly.
Vonhausel
certainly knew it was there. He was trying to shake it loose, tear it off, cast it away. But he obviously couldn't.

A short, sweet phrase of flute music danced in the air, the individual notes like sparks from a new-caught fire. The music trembled just beyond hearing, but Natividad could hear it if she sort of listened sideways. And the black dogs must have heard it, too, or at least perceived it somehow, because they had all frozen into immobility, even the soulless dead creatures that Vonhausel had made out of Zachariah's and Harrison's bodies. Vonhausel was screaming now, a horrible sound that scaled up and up until, like the music, it was something Natividad could only hear in her mind.

Her
aparato
twisted up Vonhausel's arm and then across his whole body. It had become a silvery net of not-exactly-visible light. To Natividad, it seemed as fine and delicate and ephemeral as frost on a window. It had closed around… not Vonhausel's body, she saw now, but his shadow. It clung to his shadow and tore it free of his body. The screaming she couldn't exactly hear was the screaming of the shadow. It
was
a weapon she had made, after all, and it flared bright silver against the thick darkness of the shadow until both the weapon and the shadow went out together with a sudden
snap
that wasn't exactly audible.

Natividad stared at the husk of Vonhausel's body as it trembled and swayed and at last collapsed. He didn't fall all at once, though, but slowly, so that at first she wasn't sure he was falling at all and then she almost thought he might put out his arms after all and catch himself. But he didn't. He was dead, he was gone; he'd gone into the fell dark after his shadow and his body sprawled lifeless and limp across the cracked pavement.

The soft thud his body made as it hit the ground seemed strangely anticlimactic, as though he should have fallen with a tremendous crash, as though the whole world should have been shaken by his fall. But there was nothing like that. Dead, stripped of his shadow and of his life, Vonhausel looked just like anybody. This seemed very strange and unexpectedly disturbing. The way his body sprawled bonelessly at Natividad's feet made her stomach turn suddenly over. She couldn't believe he was dead. She couldn't believe
she
had killed him. She'd come here to do exactly this, but now that it was done, even though she knew she ought to be glad, even though she
was
glad, she was appalled, too. She had never killed anything before, except sometimes a chicken. This was… not the same at all.

But then her attention was jerked away from the thing she'd done because the air began to vibrate with a disturbing new sound, a sound like the howling of wolves set to music, only turned dark and bitter. This sound wasn't just in her head: it was deep and loud and getting deeper and louder all the time. It shook dust and ash into the air. The pavement and rubble surrounding the gaping crack across the road began to break up and crumble into the chasm. The fire-edged darkness within that chasm seemed to creep out into the night. Natividad shuddered and crept back along the side of the car.

At her movement, all the black dogs, who had been staring fixedly at Vonhausel's body, turned and looked at her. She froze. She thought it was fading, it
was
fading. She knew the black dogs would do something as soon as it had stopped. Some of them, the weaker ones, would just run, put distance between themselves and all the magic and power that had been loosed here. But a lot of them would probably fight. That was what black dogs did if no one stronger controlled them: they fought for dominance and for the pleasure of killing, and then they went out and hunted helpless prey because they loved slaughter better even than fighting with one another. Without Vonhausel, there was no one strong enough to hold so many black dogs.

Or… maybe there might be, sort of. Natividad turned her head the tiny degree necessary to look at the dead shadow-ridden black dogs that had been Zachariah and Harrison. They, too, were staring at Vonhausel's body. She'd hoped they would collapse when their master died, but of course they hadn't. That would have made everything too easy. What
they
would do now, she could not begin to guess. Would they want to butcher the ordinary black dogs, or would they want to rule them and use them as Vonhausel had, or would they want something else entirely?

There were more undead black dogs scattered here and there among the ordinary ones, too. Natividad recognized them, now that she knew what to look for. They were more completely still than any living black dog could be. They were more… more something. Or less something. More foreign, maybe, and less human.

It finally occurred to Natividad that she should actually get back in the car, that she could even try to drive away. Probably the black dogs wouldn't let her go, but she ought to
try
. She slid a covert glance sideways, toward the open door of the car. So near. She took a small step that way, trying to slide along unobtrusively.

Every moon-bound shifter and black dog in the whole crowd swung its heavy head around to stare at her, even the dead ones. Natividad stopped as though physically pinned in place by the weight of all those fiery eyes. Heat pounded around her until she half expected to see flames flickering out of the pavement, melting the shattered blacktop to molten tar. When she drew a breath, the air tasted of smoke and bitter ash. It choked her. She stifled a cough, afraid that if she made a sound they would all be on her at once.

She had not really expected to survive the night, but she realized now that she had never really believed, not even for a second, that she would actually
die
. Not until she had seen Vonhausel and the undead black dogs that followed him. And
really
not until now, when the brutal attention of dozens of black dogs came down on her like the weight of the darkness given substance and heft.
Now
she believed it. These black dogs were going to tear her apart before they turned on each other. She stood helpless and horrified before them, not so much afraid, now – although she was afraid – but stricken at the thought of Miguel, of Alejandro, of how her brothers would feel when they knew…

A blur of black through the darkness, hot and furious, and Alejandro hurtled straight over the top of Sheriff Pearson's huge car and came down in front of Natividad with a controlled lightness that seemed impossible for a creature his size. Every black dog in the crowd surrounding her gave way, wary and astonished, maybe expecting all the Dimilioc wolves to come over the car in his wake. Natividad thought they might – she hoped they would – but they didn't. Alejandro had come alone.

 

15

 

Natividad was sure her brother was going to die. He crouched in front of her, snarling around at all the gathered black dogs with furious loathing. He would fight, but how could he win? Vonhausel's black dogs would tear him apart and then – much easier – they would tear her apart, too.

Would the Dimilioc wolves come here, later, find the marks of the fight and guess what had happened? Would Miguel ever know? It would be worst of all if he didn't know, if he had to guess and wonder and imagine – if he wasn't even sure whether she and Alejandro were dead or not,
that
would be the
worst
– but Keziah was supposed to be out here somewhere. She would be watching. She could tell everyone what had happened. It was almost a relief to remember that.

Several of Vonhausel's black dogs edged forward, their eyes burning with fire and the savage joy of killing. The shadow-wolf that had been Harrison stalked toward her as well, and that was even worse, because there was nothing recognizable in those dead eyes. She felt she was being stared at by death itself, only it was really something worse than death, because death was just death but this thing was really evil.

Alejandro swiveled around to face first one and then another of their enemies, trying not to leave Natividad exposed. She looked with longing at the open car door only steps away, but was afraid to move.

Alejandro had crouched low, readying himself to lunge for the nearest of the enemy black dogs. He was still snarling, a vicious thread of sound that was strangely high-pitched and almost inaudible… In fact, it was not a snarl at all, nor any sound a black dog might produce. Nor was it actually coming from Alejandro. This was a new sound, one which had started as a thin, bodiless whine, and was now rapidly turning into a bright hum scattered with piercing phrases of music. This was not the same music that had wrapped Vonhausel up in fog, though. This was something else, something related but not the same… Natividad looked from side to side, searching for its source. The hum was darkening, thickening, swallowing up the musical phrases until those were wholly subsumed, like the sparks of a fire extinguished by too great a darkness. All the black dogs had drawn back, which was good, but Natividad could not feel relief at this apparent reprieve. She felt it wasn't a reprieve at all.

The dark hum coalesced above Vonhausel's body, like a swarm of insubstantial black bees made out of shadows and smoke, scattered with crimson glints like reflected fire and silver flickers like flashes of moonlit silver. This strange cloud settled on the body, and sank in, and disappeared. The hum ceased. The silence that followed was deeply shocking, though Natividad could not have explained why. Alejandro shifted to put his bulk between her and the body, and she put an arm across his shoulders both to brace herself and to hold him back.