Black Dog (37 page)

After the first room, this one was not such a surprise. There was very little furniture, only the bed and a single table with a tall, angular lamp standing beside it. The table was very plain, like the ones in the other room, but painted in a pale color. Not white, though. A pale gray. A statue, maybe eighteen inches high, stood on the table. It was not exactly like a Buddha because the figure was standing and slim instead of seated and fat, but it sort of reminded Natividad of a Buddha anyway – although it held a spear in one hand, which didn't seem very Buddhist.

The bed was low, raised less than a foot off the floor, which was carpeted in the same dove-gray as the other room. The bedcovers – sheets and blankets and bedspread alike – were all a dark charcoal gray. Ezekiel lay in abandoned exhaustion across the bed, on his back. His hands lay empty and open, one arm crooked back by his cheek and the other flung out straight. His head was thrown back, his throat exposed. He didn't stir. That he hadn't woken when Natividad entered the room told her even more clearly how desperately he needed sleep.

The top sheet – to Natividad's relief, more or less, now that other possibilities abruptly suggested themselves to her – lay across his legs and hips and came halfway up his stomach. His hair, damp from a bath, was a pale yellow: the exact color of
mantaquilla
– rich butter. His shoulders and neck were white against the dark sheets, except where the line of that nasty cut from Thaddeus's knife showed. Someone had stitched it up. The black stitches looked awful and ugly against his pale skin, but no other wounds marked him. Ezekiel might have sustained horrible injuries – of course he must have – but obviously nothing else dealt by a silver weapon. Nothing his black shadow had been unable to carry away.

Though Ezekiel might not show many wounds, the hollows of his face had deepened over the past couple of days. He looked thin and worn. It was easy, usually, to forget how young he was. But, asleep like this, his shadow hidden by the dimness of the room, his air of impatient disdain eased away by sleep, Ezekiel looked not only young, but also vulnerable, even helpless.

If she just strolled across the room and tapped him on the shoulder, though, Natividad suspected he would suddenly not look young or vulnerable or harmless at
all
. There was probably a better way to wake him up. A way that didn't involve getting too close.

Though, looking at Ezekiel like this, she didn't want to wake him up at all. Not just because he obviously needed sleep or because he might be angry when he woke, but also because then he would know that she had intruded on his privacy. Natividad might be safe to wake him – more or less safe – but she found she bitterly resented Grayson's order to do it.

Her embarrassment at her intrusion deepened as she hesitated, yet how could she just sneak away? Grayson would
look
at her and want to know why she hadn't got Ezekiel for him like he'd ordered, and what would she say? That she'd been too embarrassed to wake him up?

Natividad took a quick breath and switched the lights on, then clapped her hands and immediately dropped to sit cross-legged on the floor so she would look as harmless as possible.

He was across the room so fast that she barely saw him move, didn't have time to duck, barely had time to flinch. His eyes were a pale burning yellow with wicked pinpoint pupils, utterly inhuman. One long hand closed hard on her shoulder, pinning her back against the wall. Long black claws glittered on his other hand, foreshortened now into something that was almost a paw, ready to slash across her face or throat.

Natividad closed her eyes.

The blow didn't fall. She had
known
he wouldn't hit her, she'd known it from the first, but it still took a few seconds to make herself open her eyes again.

He knelt on one knee in front of her. His eyes, looking into hers with an intensity she could not read, was not sure she
wanted
to read, were again a completely human blue. Natividad had to force herself to look away from the concentrated ferocity of his stare. This was harder than she'd expected – harder than it should have been. Once she had lowered her eyes, she saw that though Ezekiel might not have let go of her, he had dropped his other hand to rest on the floor, and now that hand, too, was completely human again.

“Natividad,” he said. His tone was light, cool, faintly mocking – utterly at odds with the violence of his response to her clap. Releasing her, he stood – an economical, fluid movement, but not nearly so fast as his initial lunge off the bed.

He was wearing shorts, Natividad was relieved to see. Well, more or less relieved. He didn't seem embarrassed to find her here in his bedroom. But then, he didn't seem angry, either. Or offended, or surprised, or even much interested. She didn't believe all this lack of response.

She said, trying to match his coolness, “I'm sorry to disturb you. But Grayson sent me to say he wants you. Immediately, he said. In the–”

“I know where he is,” Ezekiel said. He didn't
exactly
snap the words. Turning, he walked unhurriedly across the room and, opening a door she had not noticed, reached in for a robe. The robe was medium gray, with here and there touches of odd off-tones: ash-gold and rose-gray and gray-lavender, the colors of the earliest dawn on a stormy day.

The robe looked Japanese to Natividad, but maybe that impression had simply been created by the painting in the other room and the sculpture in this one. It ought to have looked too fancy for Ezekiel. Or maybe not too fancy exactly, but too… too something. But, anyway, whatever she meant, it didn't. It looked exactly right for him. It occurred to her for the first time that everything he wore always looked exactly right for him. She wondered if he chose clothing on purpose to have this effect or whether he would simply look good in anything, including, say, torn blue jeans and a faded plaid shirt.

“What time is it?” Ezekiel asked over his shoulder. He put on the robe and belted it. He still didn't seem embarrassed, but on the other hand he didn't turn and face her again until the robe was belted, either.

“Um,” said Natividad, and looked at her watch. Her stupid pink kitten watch. It had never before occurred to her to be embarrassed about that watch, which Alejandro had bought her because they were running out of money and it was cheap and she needed a watch. She had even thought it was sort of cute. Now, one glimpse of Ezekiel's elegant robe and suddenly she was dying to own a nice watch, something tasteful.

She cleared her throat. “Almost… almost 5. In the afternoon. I think you've had about two hours of sleep. Maybe.”

“Feels like it,” muttered Ezekiel. He studied the contents of his closet for another moment. “Immediately, is it?”

From his tone, this was not exactly a question, but Natividad nodded. Then, because he wasn't watching her, she cleared her throat and said, “Yes.”

Ezekiel turned his head, one eyebrow rising in mocking comment on her nervousness. He walked right into the closet, which must be a lot bigger than Natividad had guessed. His voice emerged, muffled, but now without that frightening edge to it. “I frightened you. I'm sorry. I wasn't properly awake. You don't need to be afraid of me.” He came out of the closet again, now clothed in black jeans and a black T-shirt, the robe draped across his arm.

Natividad had never seen him in jeans and a T-shirt before. The casual clothing, it turned out, did in fact look just as exactly right on him as everything else. “You didn't frighten me,” she told him, which was sort of the truth.

Ezekiel tilted a skeptical eyebrow at her and tossed the robe across the bed. Natividad suppressed an urge to ask him if she could borrow it. When he looked at her, she remembered only belatedly to drop her gaze.

“Natividad…” But then he stopped.

Her gaze was drawn upward by that pause, until she remembered again not to look at Ezekiel's face and made herself look aside. “Um?” She didn't hear him move, didn't know he was right in front of her until he put a finger under her chin and tipped her face up, gently. Startled, Natividad met his eyes. There was no anger in his face, none of the edgy temper that usually rode black dogs. There wasn't any of his usual mockery, either. She could see the weariness in the hollows of his face, in the shadows around his pale eyes, and knew it was a weariness of spirit as much of body.

“Look at me,” he said softly. “Look at me, if you wish. I don't mind.”

He
let
her see his weariness, his grief – it was a deliberate lowering of defenses. He could have hidden all his weakness from her if he'd tried. He was
allowing
her to see right through his hard-held privacy. This was frightening – or not exactly
frightening
. She felt somehow both vulnerable and oddly powerful at the same time. She said, a little breathlessly, “Grayson
did
say, not till my birthday…”

He did not lift his hand away from her face. “Of course. Of course he did.”

“Ezekiel – you don't even want
me
anyway. You only want me because I'm Pure and almost the same age as you…” She stopped, startled and a little shocked because she hadn't meant to say
that
. Even though it was true.

“Is that what you think?” He began to lean forward – he was going to kiss her…

Then his eyes widened. His thin mouth twisted with a strange kind of bitter amusement that Natividad did not understand, and he said, softly but with some force, “Hellfire and damnation.”

“Ezekiel…” Natividad said again, and again did not know what to say, but this time managed to say nothing at all. She had no idea what was going
on
with him.

He dropped his hand. Took a step back. Another. He looked away from her, looked back – ran a distracted hand through his pale hair, still disordered from sleep. He said, “I have to obey him.”

“Well… yes?”

He glanced at her impatiently. “Not because of that! Because… look. Without… Without Zachariah and Harrison, he can't
force
me to do anything. He knows that, I know it. So I
have
to obey him. Damn!” He took a sharp breath and repeated, more softly, “Hellfire and damnation. I can't…” He stopped. She watched the mask of light, unconcerned mockery settle back across his face like he'd never shown her anything else. Then he took a smooth step sideways, opened the door, and stood back, inviting her, with a tip of his head, to go out before him.

“I'm sorry,” Natividad offered, because she was, although it was hard to say for what, exactly. Just for everything. She could see what Ezekiel meant. She liked him better and better – she was beginning to feel
flattered
that he wanted her. Only then it occurred to her that when she'd accused him of only wanting her because she was Pure
,
he hadn't actually
denied
it. She took a quick breath and went past him quickly, not looking at him.

 

Grayson stood up, expressionless, when Ezekiel opened the door. Ezekiel walked into the room, faced him directly, dropped without hesitation to one knee, bowed his head, and said coolly, “Master. I beg your pardon for the delay.”

Grayson nodded curtly, still grimly expressionless. He said to Natividad, “Everyone, here, in an hour. Your brother as well. Both your brothers.”

Natividad nodded, startled and uneasy. But Grayson gave her a dismissive little jerk of the head, and she ducked and fled.

She also decided that if Grayson wanted everybody, all his black dogs, well, somebody else could tell them so. Ezekiel had definitely constituted her quota. She would find Alejandro, and
he
could wake up sleeping black dogs.

 

 

12

 

Natividad had thought her brother would be in his room, but he wasn't. She found him at last in a basement room she hadn't previously known existed. This basement had its own stairway hidden behind a forbidding door of iron-bound black wood, which suggested disquieting things about what might lie below. Natividad would never have tried it, only when she couldn't find Alejandro, she made a mirror in the entranceway of the house into a
trouvez
, a spell of finding. A hand mirror would have been easier to use – she could hardly carry the hallway mirror around with her – but once the glass shimmered with light, she caught the light in her hands, shut her eyes, turned in a circle, thought of Alejandro, and then walked briskly forward without paying any attention to her direction. When she found herself in front of the iron-bound door, she stood blinking at it, sure it would be locked. But its latch gave easily to her hand, revealing a dim, narrow stairway.

The stairway was angular and steep, with uneven treads. It led to a narrow, long, cold room with naked light bulbs dangling on thin chains, casting a harsh too-bright light across walls of unfinished granite and a whole row of cages like the one where they'd spent their first night in this house. All of the cages were much smaller than that one, and all but one were totally bare of furnishings. That one cage, nearest the door, contained a thin mattress and a single prisoner: a small, savage-eyed moon-bound shifter, who lifted her lip with silent loathing, fangs glinting dangerously.

Natividad resisted the urge to retreat back up the stairs. She said to Alejandro, who, beside Ethan Lanning at the far end of the room, was turning to her with surprise, “I guess that's Cass Pearson?”

“
Sí
,” Alejandro said wearily, with a not-very-interested glance at the shifter. “I guess we could move her back to the big cage now. Unless Grayson wants it free for some reason.”