Black Dog (48 page)

Alejandro slid a glance at his sister. She leaned against his side. Her head rested against his shoulder. He wondered what it would be like when she let go of her shadowed circle, released her light and magic. Would his shadow force itself back into his mind and heart and soul, or would it disappear into the fell dark after all the other freed shadows? And if it was lost into the dark, what would that do to him? He thought most likely if that happened he would either cease to be a black dog or die, and he wasn't sure which of those possibilities seemed worse.

Grayson came back toward the center of
the shadowed circle
,
toward Natividad. He did not even glance at Ezekiel. But his
verdugo
nevertheless left off fomenting violence among the thinned ranks of the enemy and came to join him. Behind him, the remaining black dogs gradually settled. Even now there were at least a dozen left, but they seemed very few after the outnumbered hopelessness of the battle.

Thaddeus, now fully in his black dog form, had been resting quietly beside the unconscious Cass Pearson, but turned his head to watch the Master. Ethan limped slowly after Grayson, too lame to conceal his injury. Keziah, who had been lying on the rubble of the church, glanced at Amira, who was clearly hurt but unable, at the moment, to drive back her shadow and force it to carry away her injuries. Then Keziah abruptly got to her feet and slid down toward her little sister. Jagged fragments of stone and brick and splinters of broken timbers showered around her, then she allowed Amira to lean on her as they came down to join the others.

Grayson came to Natividad, shifting out of his black dog form so that when he reached her he was once again in his fully human shape. The Master showed no trace of injury, though he had not entirely shed the black aura of violence or the scents of smoke and burning. He gazed at Alejandro for a long, thoughtful moment. Alejandro, shivering with cold like any ordinary human, stared back at him for a beat before he remembered to look down. It felt very strange to have to
remember
to look away. He had never really understood how ordinary humans could be so dangerously slow to respond to black dog threats. It was strange and unpleasant, like a kind of blindness.

Grayson removed his jacket and handed it to Alejandro without comment. Surprised – he had not expected the Master to realize that he was cold, far less to care – Alejandro took the jacket and shrugged it on. The jacket, or maybe the unexpected kindness, made the cold a little more bearable. Maybe in time – in a lot of time – he could learn to tolerate the cold emptiness inside too, even if he never got his shadow back. He shuddered, and could not tell whether it was from the cold outside or the cold within.

“This is not precisely what I expected, when Keziah told me what Vonhausel had done with our dead,” Grayson said to Natividad. “Nor when she told me what you had done to Vonhausel, nor when she warned me your magic had failed. I see that last warning was mistaken.” He paused, then asked, “You can release this magic you have made here? You can undo it?”

The Master's heavy voice had a dark-edged resonance to it that seemed more than weariness or anger. Alejandro involuntarily glanced up at him again. Was this how ordinary humans heard black dogs all the time? Maybe not, maybe it was something else, something about this night or the shadowed circle or about Grayson himself: if this was how black dogs sounded to humans, how could a black dog ever pass unnoticed among them?

“Yes,” Natividad answered. Her voice was small and weary and did not echo with any surprising resonance. She didn't avoid looking the Master in the face; it obviously didn't occur to her that she ought to. “Yes. I think so. I'm pretty sure. Whenever you like.”

Grayson nodded. There was a world of weariness in that nod, but no visible anger. Turning, the Master crossed his arms over his chest and stared around at the black dogs enclosed in Natividad's circle. Now, at last, with so few enemies remaining and all of those defeated and afraid, Grayson could use the weight of his powerful shadow to roll all of theirs at once under and down. He did that. Alejandro didn't – couldn't – feel it. Not now. But he knew what the Master had done because all around the circle, Vonhausel's black dogs shuddered and cried out, their bodies contorting and twisting as they were forced back into human shape.

Most of the Dimilioc wolves shifted as well, but smoothly: Grayson wasn't forcing any of his own wolves into the
cambio de cuerpo
,
only helping those who wanted to change. Even Ezekiel shifted, which from him was probably an expression of disdain for all their remaining enemies. He was looking at Natividad, his expression odd. After a moment, he said, “Brave little kitten, aren't you? Don't you know daring single-handed assassinations are my job?”

Natividad blinked at him, wordless. But after a moment, she smiled.

Only Keziah did not change. She leaped up to stretch out, contemptuously relaxed, along a broad timber above Grayson's head – as disdainful, and nearly as dangerous, as Ezekiel. Thaddeus pulled himself gradually into human form, seeming nearly as big as a man as he was as a black dog. He lifted Cass Pearson in his arms with no sign of effort and came to lay her down near Natividad's feet. In her proper shape, the girl was fine boned and fragile, with corn-silk hair. Alejandro stared at her. Her exquisite delicacy was an entirely different order of beauty from Keziah's burning splendor. The human girl was unconscious, but her breathing looked steady. Alejandro couldn't tell about her shadow. Maybe she would be alright.

All but one of Vonhausel's black dogs threw themselves to their knees or all the way down to their bellies, pressing their faces against the broken pavement. The man who stayed on his feet had been the quietest black dog, one with good control even after Vonhausel's death and the turn of the battle. He had accepted the forced change without resistance. Now he was a tall man with slender hands, a high-boned face, and close-cropped dark hair outlining his skull. He stood very still for a long moment, then walked slowly toward Grayson.

No. Not toward Grayson. Toward Natividad. She pulled herself away from Alejandro and stared at the stranger, not exactly alarmed, but wary. But then she glanced up at Grayson, then at Ezekiel, and relaxed again.

The black dog dropped to one knee a few feet from them, but he spoke to Natividad rather than the Master. “Good job killing that bastard. That's one good thing to come out of all this.” His tone was light and almost conversational. He even ignored Ezekiel, who had stepped around behind him. He spoke quietly, his vowels soft and round in an accent Alejandro did not recognize. He paused, then shrugged. “I just wanted to say that.”

“It wasn't just me–” said Natividad.

The black dog shrugged again. “Near enough.”

“Étienne Lumondiere,” said Grayson.

The black dog turned to Grayson. He did not seem surprised to be addressed by name. Lumondiere… Alejandro had thought all the Lumondiere black wolves gone into the fell dark, but this one obviously had lived through the war. Only to come, somehow, into Vonhausel's grip, until Natividad had freed him. Now the Frenchman lowered his gaze and waited to hear what the Dimilioc Master would say.

“You are far out of your usual territory,” Grayson observed.

“Yes,” said the black dog, in a calm, amused tone which Alejandro couldn't help but admire. “Yes, and little enough profit I've had from my travels. If I were, by some remarkable chance, able to go home, I think I would never again leave.” He bowed his head low, fixing his gaze on the broken pavement at Grayson's feet.

“You did not come here intending to join Malvern Vonhausel?”

The black dog shrugged. “I came to America to try to find the scattered remnants of my House – several Lumondiere wolves came here during the war. I cannot say what became of the others, but I…” He opened his hands. “As you see. Joining Vonhausel was… Actually, that was a surprise to me.”

Grayson's expression didn't change, yet he somehow looked faintly amused. He looked at Ezekiel, lifting one eyebrow in query.

Ezekiel glanced at Natividad, a look Alejandro couldn't interpret. Then he shrugged. “Spare them all, if you like. It doesn't make any difference to me. I can always kill them later.”

“Let go of your magic,” Grayson told Natividad. “Let it go, and we will all go home.”

“Oh, yes, please!” Natividad said longingly. But then she looked anxiously at Alejandro, reaching to pat his arm. “I can… I have to… But you – I never wanted to take away your shadow, ‘Jandro, and then put it
back
. That's awful. I'm sorry…”

Alejandro touched her cheek. “It's alright. Either way.
Verdaderamente
.”

She gazed into his face for another moment. Then at last she tried to smile, closed her eyes and did something to the shadowed circle that surrounded them all. It dissolved into the air, silver moonlight and black shadow and little flickers of crimson fire. Alejandro threw his head back as the darkness came across his sight; fire-edged shadows smothered him, he could not breathe, he was falling, he would die… His sister's hand gripped his, one point of reference in the dark. Another hand, painfully strong, closed on his shoulder… The darkness shifted around him and snapped into focus with a shock that was almost but not quite physical. He drew a breath filled with familiar heat and anger, and recognized himself at last, his
self
defined by the constant need to draw the border between himself and his shadow, and more clearly than ever by his shadow's absence.

Grayson looked at him closely. Then, frowning, he let him go and stepped back, his expression closed and neutral. “Good,” he said to Natividad, and walked away.

“Alejandro…” Natividad said tentatively, not quite a question.

“Yes,” said Alejandro. He got to his feet, and lifted his sister to hers with easy, familiar strength.

 

 

17

 

Natividad didn't know which surprised her more: that Grayson should think for one minute about sparing the rest of Vonhausel's black dogs or that Ezekiel shouldn't care one way or the other. She had time to think about it during the long ride back to the Dimilioc house, though, and she decided that really neither reaction should have surprised her. Grayson had already made it very clear that he wanted to recruit a lot more black dogs, and probably Ezekiel thought she wouldn't like watching him slaughter them. Or maybe he was just too tired to care. Anyway, he was totally right: he really could kill them all later. Probably he would kill some of them. They couldn't all be from a civilized House like Étienne Lumondiere.

Of the rest, she suspected that Thaddeus approved of Grayson's decision, but Keziah definitely did not. She had said so straight out, which, Natividad had decided, was one thing Grayson actually liked about the Saudi girl – that she would argue with him. She said that guarding prisoners was stupid, they were all tired; what was the point of slaughtering their enemies at Dimilioc where they would have to actually dig graves, or else build a huge bonfire and either way it was too much trouble; they should kill them all now and throw the bodies into the chasm Vonhausel had opened in the earth, that was a fitting end for the strays he'd ruled. But Grayson didn't change his mind, and at last Keziah shrugged angrily and said why should she care, as long as
she
didn't have to bury the corpses later, but if any of the black dogs gave
her
a moment's trouble on the way back to Dimilioc, she'd just kill him right then and throw his body into the snow and it could wait for spring to rot.

That was certainly clear enough, and maybe it was why Grayson gave Keziah and not Ezekiel charge of the prisoners on the way back. They were all bound in silver, and if it burned them, no one much cared. They wouldn't have to wear it long, at least. They rode in a bus, but not the one Natividad and everybody else occupied. The townspeople Grayson had brought to the battle mostly did not come back to Dimilioc at all, now that it was so much safer in town, but Sheriff Pearson rode back with them, to be near his daughter. Cassie had changed again, which was too bad. The shadows of the undead black dogs were all the way gone, Natividad was sure of that, but the shifter's corrupted shadow had come back up to its living body when Natividad had let go of her magic. Thaddeus sat next to Cassie, one broad hand gripping the back of her neck, preventing her from attacking her father or anyone else. But she seemed less vicious now, perhaps because she had fought enough to satiate even her shadow, or perhaps because of the brief respite from it that Natividad's magic had given her.

Natividad sat between her twin and Alejandro. She was still shivering with reaction to everything. It was hard to believe that they were really safe and that this time no black dogs would run out of the forest to attack them. The bright sun and cloudless sky helped with that. So did Miguel. Her twin didn't ask her any questions or try to say anything comforting. He told her instead about the way it felt to cling to a black dog as it raced through the forest, the rushing dark and cold wind, the bunch and spring of muscles under him, so much more fluid and strange than the feel of riding a saddled pony. The bulk and heat of the black dog and the way he'd clung so tight to Thaddeus's shaggy pelt that his fingers had cramped.

That was what Natividad wanted: harmless chatter that didn't grate along nerves still raw from… from everything. She could see the flow of Miguel's talk working on Alejandro, too, so that he could slowly relax. The sharp whiplash changes he'd undergone, from black dog to nearly human and then back again, had obviously confused and upset him.