Black Dog (14 page)

Thank God and the Virgin for the little fool's
audacia
. That audacity had very likely saved all their lives. But,
Madre de Dios
, if the Dimilioc Master had guessed, if Ezekiel had found that gun before this fight… Alejandro found himself snarling under his breath, racing toward the house. If Grayson did not kill Miguel, he was going to do it
himself
.

 

 

5

 

Once the shooting was done, Natividad got Miguel to put the gun down as quickly as she could. Then there was nothing to do but wait for trouble to arrive. Natividad only hoped she could help keep the trouble from getting too big and serious.

She'd had no idea her twin had brought a gun with them into Dimilioc, no idea how he'd gotten it past Ezekiel Korte – loaded with silver ammunition, even! But she had a
very good
idea how the Dimilioc black wolves were going to respond to that particular bit of smuggling. She didn't know whether Miguel had been totally stupid to smuggle a silver-loaded gun into Dimilioc, or totally brilliant. Although if he hadn't, they might all be dead now, so she guessed he'd been brilliant.

Which didn't mean he wasn't going to be in big, serious trouble.

They waited in a big room on the second floor, right above the front door; a formal room with heavy furniture and gloomy landscape paintings and, which was the important thing, a sliding glass door that let onto a wide balcony. From the balcony, Miguel had been able to direct his fire straight into a crowd of enemies only forty or fifty feet away. But he'd come inside again now. He stood in the middle of the room, his arms at his sides, his gaze fixed on the floor. Natividad hovered anxiously to one side. The gun lay on a table, spent casings piled neatly beside it. It was their mother's light little .22 pistol. Miguel was a good shot, but Natividad had to admit, hitting anything at all with that gun at forty feet was amazing.

Alejandro arrived first, which was good, or should have been good, but he was really angry – scarily angry. He was still mostly in his black dog form when he strode through the doorway, which wasn't a good sign, though he was gathering himself into human form as he moved. He was dripping with ichor and blood from horrible deep slashes Natividad couldn't bring herself to look at, but his shadow carried away his injuries as he shifted. Usually he'd clean himself up when he shifted, but this time he had been too badly wounded or else he was too angry, because even after the change blood still spattered his clothing. Black ichor smoked against his skin as it burned away, but he didn't seem to notice. His black dog's anger still surrounded him like choking ash. He strode forward, not even seeming to notice Natividad, and grabbed Miguel. It was a human hand that closed hard on Miguel's arm, but when Alejandro lifted his other hand to hit him, black claws extended from the tips of broad, blunt fingers.

Natividad jumped forward to catch his hand. “Alejandro!”

Miguel flinched, but didn't try to get away or defend himself. He bowed his head, a meek attitude both he and Natividad used to defuse black dog aggression. It was all show, and even Alejandro knew it, really, but sometimes you had to put on a show with black dogs, and they had to let you get away with it.

Alejandro, jaw clenched, shaking with rage, nevertheless lowered his hand. Natividad let him go, cautiously. Their older brother had never hit Miguel, never since they had all been children, but for a second she had really thought he might. But Alejandro only shook him once instead, hard, and let him go. Even then, though, and even with Natividad right there, it took him a moment to get rid of his claws and force his hand back into a fully human shape. When he spoke, the growl of the black dog was still in the back of his throat. “Fool!
Estupide
!
You brought Mamá's gun
here
? With
silver bullets
? What if the Dimilioc
lobos
had found it? What would they think?”

Miguel started to answer, but Grayson Lanning spoke first. “We might have thought,” the Dimilioc Master's deep voice said from the doorway, gravelly with the echoes of his change, “that whatever pretty speeches you made, you had come here hunting black wolves.”

Grayson was in human form, but his eyes still burned a dark and fiery crimson, utterly inhuman. All his injuries were gone – well, nearly gone. One must have nearly exceeded his shadow's ability to absorb it, for it showed even on his human body: a wide red weal that ran across his throat and disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt. His shadow clung close to him, smelling of ash and blood, but he was obviously in perfect control of himself.

Alejandro spun about at Grayson's first words, putting himself between the Dimilioc Master and Miguel, so fast Natividad hardly saw him move. His own shadow was surging upward again in response to this new threat. His jaw began to distort into a muzzle, his bones to shorten and thicken, his back to bow with the change.

“No!” cried Natividad, darting forward to catch his wrist again, now really frightened. She tried to get between Alejandro and the Master, knowing neither of them would hurt
her
, but Alejandro shook her away, snarling. Natividad clung to his arm, refusing to be protected, and her brother snarled again, his rage terrifying–

“No,” said Grayson, without emphasis. The Master did not physically move, but his power slammed through the room like a soundless sledgehammer coming down. Even Natividad felt it, and Alejandro actually staggered. The Master's power smothered her brother's shadow, forcing it down, forcing Alejandro back into his human form.

Alejandro straightened, panting, clearly sick with the stress of too many changes coming too quickly one on another – and maybe, Natividad thought, with the knowledge of his own powerlessness. He tried to speak, but the change had made human language foreign to his tongue –and now, though he tried, he could not shape coherent words. Natividad still held his arm. She shook her head when Alejandro tried to shove her back. “No,” she went on quickly, praying it was true, “No,
está bien
, ‘Jandro. The Master won't harm us.”

“You sound very confident of that,” Grayson said, his tone harsh with anger, or maybe just with the echo of his black dog. “What
is
this you brought us? Is
this
Malvern Vonhausel, with upwards of
thirty
black dogs under his shadow? This is a detail I do not recall you mentioning! Now he has come here and seen that we are weak, do you think he will go away again?”

When he put it like that, it did sound bad. Natividad stared at him, trying not to look frightened because it was always dangerous to be afraid of black dogs, even if they were your friends. Even if they were your family. And the Dimilioc Master was neither.

“We didn't know how many wolves Dimilioc had lost,” Miguel protested. “How could we know?” He walked forward, touched Alejandro on the arm in passing, and faced Grayson. He dropped to his knees before the Master, turning his head to expose his throat in formal submission.

Grayson stared down at him, but did not, at least, seem inclined to hit him. “Well, boy,” he rumbled at last. “You feared your father's enemy enough to bring a weapon, I see.
Silver
bullets. Shall I understand that Edward actually encouraged you to involve yourself in black dog battles?”

“Not exactly, sir, but Papá thought we should be able to defend ourselves, especially when the war–”

“Do not parse law with me, boy! Did your father never teach you that our human kin
stay out of the fighting
?
Which is for your own safety, boy; humans take their
own
wounds!”

“Staying back from the fighting didn't protect
your
human kin,” Miguel pointed out, his calm voice sliding like an unexpected knife through the Master's anger.

Grayson, taken aback, stared down at Miguel in a silence that might, Natividad was afraid, become far more dangerous than his previous anger. She shuddered, shifting closer to Alejandro, grateful for the arm he put around her shoulders.

Miguel said quickly, “Forgive me, sir, but it's the truth! It
is
the truth, and anyway, if I broke black dog laws, they're Dimilioc laws, made in a different time, when Dimilioc owned the world. They're your laws, you can change them – you
have
to change them.” His voice rose with the urgency of his need to persuade the Master. “It's different now! Those laws only made sense when there were lots of Dimilioc wolves! Everything's different now!” Forgetting himself, he looked up into the Master's face and met his hard, dangerous stare.

Natividad tensed, and beside her Alejandro went stone-still, but Grayson still did not hit Miguel, who, remembering caution, looked down again. He said stubbornly, “If you will trust your human kin to use guns loaded with silver, then we can be an asset to you, not a vulnerability. Sir, please
,
respectfully, you're right about Vonhausel not just going away again – I don't think he will, sir, no. Wouldn't this be a good time to change outdated laws to match the world as it is now?”

Ezekiel came in, quietly, in time to hear Miguel's plea. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his head tilted at a sardonic angle. He completely lacked the echoes of anger and blood that clung to Alejandro and even to Grayson and ought to trail after any black dog who had been fighting. It was a level of control Natividad had not even imagined. He looked poised, cool, unapproachable, and very dangerous – it was more than just physical presence, Natividad thought, though Ezekiel had plenty of that. This was an intense psychic presence, sort of. He just seemed to take up more space than anyone else in the room, even Grayson.

He said into the fraught pause that followed Miguel's words, “The boy has a point.”

Grayson turned his head to stare at Ezekiel. He asked in his hard, gravelly voice, “How did you miss that gun?”

Ezekiel angled his head to the side, showing Grayson his throat. “I have no idea.” He lifted an eyebrow at Miguel. “How did you hide it?”

Miguel hesitated. He said after a moment, “It's a light gun, a LadySmith .22. It was Mamá's gun. I took that one because it would be easy to hide.” He hesitated again, flushing, and then added, “I wrapped it up in Natividad's extra, um, underthings, with a strong rose sachet to hide the scent of the silver.”

Natividad straightened in indignation. “You did what?”

“Well, you like rose scent,” Miguel said to her. He added to Ezekiel, “Then I wrapped all of that in two layers of plastic. I thought even if you looked in the pack, even if you searched it, you'd probably not go through Natividad's, uh, personal things. The gun's so light I thought you might not notice the weight.”

Ezekiel was smiling: a thin, cold sort of smile, but a smile. “Clever. I didn't.” He looked at Grayson. “My mistake. I beg your pardon, Master.”

“Arrogance is your besetting sin, Ezekiel,” the Master said, not angrily. Simply stating a fact. “Next time, you'll remember this.”

“Yes,” said Ezekiel.

“And you,” Grayson growled, once more focusing on Miguel. “You brought that gun and that ammo because you
knew
your father's enemy, having killed him, would stalk you. Is that how it was?”

“Not exactly,” Miguel said in a subdued tone. Alejandro tensed, his weight coming forward on his toes.

“Settle down, pup.” Grayson growled, rather testily, but, to Natividad's relief, without real anger. “I hardly intend to beat answers out of your human brother.”

Natividad almost laughed in nervousness and surprise, but bit her tongue and choked it back to a strangled-sounded cough. Ezekiel tilted a sardonic eyebrow at her, but she couldn't guess what he was thinking. She looked away from him.

“We didn't
know
Vonhausel would come after us,” Miguel protested, but without any great conviction. “Anyway, we
really
didn't know you would have so few wolves here to meet him.”

Alejandro fixed the Master with a brief, hard stare and put a supportive hand on Miguel's shoulder. Natividad said quickly, trying not to sound too anxious, knowing she wasn't able to pull that off, “If anybody can stop Vonhausel, it's Dimilioc. That's still true. Isn't it?”

“I'm not quite confident
he
thinks so,” Ezekiel said, light and sardonic and amused. He glanced sidelong at the Master. “I must admit, I've become quite curious about this Vonhausel.”

“Long before your time,” growled the Dimilioc Master. “Somewhat before mine. The man I remember did not have the strength we saw this morning. One gathers he has become more than a typical vicious hot-blooded stray black dog.” He sounded disgusted, but no longer angry. He gave Alejandro a hard look, but added a curt nod when Alejandro looked down. “Got your shadow under control, pup, do you?”

Natividad gave her brother an anxious look, wondering if he had recovered language enough to answer, but Ezekiel said smoothly before Alejandro could try to answer, “Master, I agree we may wish to discuss many things, including our interesting new enemy and the possibility of revising Dimilioc law to match this brave new world of ours. But possibly of more immediate importance, you may want to, ah, welcome, our newest guests. I believe they are in the dining room. Zachariah is making a second breakfast.”

“How industrious of Zachariah,” growled Grayson. “I presume this is his subtle method of reassuring our… guests.”

“Exactly,” Ezekiel agreed. “Which they may need, after the welcome they've already had. No doubt it's hard to believe Dimilioc's facing an existential threat when it's stuffing you with biscuits and eggs. Nevertheless…”