Black Dog (49 page)

And she almost thought… She wasn't sure, but she almost thought maybe a tiny bit of her Pure magic might have been tangled and caught in his shadow. That would confuse any black dog. She didn't say anything about it. She wasn't sure, anyway. What she had done to him must be hard enough for a black dog to cope with all by itself, and anyway, she really wasn't sure. At last he managed to smile. Not a very good smile, but something to start with. So, she felt better after that.

She had been so glad her use of his shadow hadn't killed Alejandro that she hadn't worried about what
other
effects her magic might have caused until now, when she finally saw the hidden confusion in his eyes.
Now
she worried, but now it was too late, and anyway she had no idea what she might have done differently. At least now everyone was safe. Alejandro could rest and recover. He
was
safe. She was sure that even a trace of Pure magic left behind in his shadow wouldn't actually hurt him. Almost sure.

So, he was fine.
Everyone
was fine. So, that was reason to be really glad. And she was. Mostly. She never thought about killing Vonhausel. Killing him twice, seeing him fall – she didn't think about it. Though refusing to think about things… She kind of realized now how that had stopped her remembering what Mamá had taught her there at the… at the end. About black dog shadows and Pure magic. She wasn't sure now how much of that she sort of remembered and how much she had figured out on her own.

Once they were finally back at Dimilioc – she seemed always to be coming back to Dimilioc, usually after something awful had happened – once the black dog strays were safely locked up in that awful prison room of old Thos Korte's and everyone else cleaned up and been fed breakfast, lots of good things happened. Cass Pearson, released at last from the moon's grip as the new day dawned, woke up in her proper human body, so she could go back to her father for a little while. She would have to begin learning how to control her shadow, so Natividad supposed she would be around Dimilioc a lot for the next few weeks.

And Lewis might have suffered a lot of damage, but now all the black dogs were gone, the townspeople could go back and start fixing everything. Father McClanahan hugged Natividad before he climbed on the bus to leave and promised her they'd even rebuild the church, reconsecrating every stone as it was laid back in place. So, that was alright.

And, yes, a lot of people had died, but not as many as they'd all thought because it turned out a lot of people had managed to hide in basements and things, and now the final battle of the war really was over. They all hoped it was the final battle, anyway. They thought it was. Sheriff Pearson said they had special equipment to dig graves even in the frozen ground. The people of Lewis could lay their dead properly to rest and then go home and know it was
over
.

So, really, lots of good things. Natividad sat on her pink bed, hugging a frilly pillow and staring out her window at the cloudless sky. She was horribly tired. She sort of wanted to talk to Ezekiel, she sort of wanted to know if he really thought she'd been brave, or just stupid. Maybe if he thought she was brave, maybe that meant he really might like her as a person and not just as a girl who happened to be Pure. Unless he thought she was stupid.

Of course, he would be asleep. He'd said she could wake him up. Obviously that would be stupid and pointless.

She ought to pull the curtains shut and burrow right down into this bed and pull the pink coverlet over her head and sleep for about thirty hours. She wanted to. Miguel was safe in his room and Alejandro was safe in his, they were probably already asleep, and everything was fine. Only, although Natividad was desperately tired, she knew she couldn't sleep.

And if the aftermath of the battle was so bad for her… she wondered about Grayson. He'd lost so much. More than anybody else. Everything, nearly. And she'd so nearly pulled him into a battle where he'd have lost everything else. He hadn't said a word about it. She knew he wouldn't. Of course, everything had turned out alright, but that was mostly luck.

She knew exactly where he would be now. He would be alone. More alone than anybody else in the house. She remembered – it seemed like a long time ago – thinking that about Ezekiel when she'd first seen him, but really it was true of Grayson. Who would both want to intrude on the Master's privacy and dare to? Well, Ezekiel, maybe. But exhausted black dogs, even friends, didn't usually dare seek each other out, lest their control slip. And Ezekiel and Grayson were allies, but they weren't exactly friends.

Natividad jumped out of her pink frilly bed before she could change her mind, and went to find something clean to wear.

 

She found Grayson, not exactly to her surprise, in the big room with the fireplace. Alone, so she had been right about that. She had only known him… had it really been less than a week? That was… That was really unbelievable.

Grayson didn't glance around at Natividad. He was sitting in one of the big chairs, his hands resting on his thighs. He was staring into the fire. To Natividad, he didn't look as though he was exactly worried. Or troubled – exactly. But he had lit a fire in the big fireplace; he, who could not be cold. He had lit it for comfort, then. Natividad hoped it comforted him. She doubted it could.

She walked across the room and, as she had the other time, sat down silently on the floor by his feet. She leaned her cheek against his knee, hoping to give him a measure of peace. Maybe she succeeded, because after a moment, he let his breath out in a long sigh and rested one of his broad hands on her hair.

She had not realized until that moment that she had stopped being even a little bit afraid of Grayson. That was kind of a surprise. She wondered when it had happened. Then she stopped thinking about it and just settled herself into the quiet stillness that was part of being Pure – so much a part that even all the violence and death of the past days hadn't broken it.

That was how Ezekiel found them, when he opened the door and stepped into the room.

At first Natividad didn't realize how it might look to him. Even after the warning stillness, brilliant with tension and danger, made her lift her head and turn to look at him, even when she saw Ezekiel's eyes change from winter blue to pale flame-gold, she didn't understand immediately. Then she figured it out, but she still didn't understand just how bad a problem they had. Of course she knew that Ezekiel had been pressed far past any normal black dog's breaking point, but he wasn't a normal black dog and she hadn't realized that he, too, had a breaking point or that he might actually have reached it. Grayson, of course, knew both those things far better than she. That was why he was on his feet and tossing her away to safety, already halfway into his own change, when Ezekiel hurtled across the room and smashed into him.

Ezekiel had shifted so fast that he was already fully in his black dog shape when he hit Grayson. Even though Grayson was the more massive when fully shifted, when Ezekiel actually slammed into Grayson, he was much bigger than the half-changed Master – and he already had jet-black fangs and terrible claws, the better to rip out Grayson's throat or slash his spine into pieces. Which he was definitely trying to do, both, and he would have, too, except that Grayson shoved his half-human arm into Ezekiel's jaws as he went down, and then twisted and threw the other black dog half across the room with a powerful kick delivered with legs that were almost entirely the heavily muscled limbs of a black dog. Blood and black ichor sprayed across the carpet – both of them were injured – but Ezekiel twisted in midair, flickering from black dog to human and back again before he landed, shedding his injuries and launching himself once more at Grayson before the still-wounded Master had even regained his feet.

Natividad finally got enough of her breath back to scream, which was useless and stupid, except she distracted Ezekiel just enough that Grayson was able, barely, to meet his charge. So she screamed again, just in case it might actually help, but it didn't seem to: Ezekiel and Grayson crashed together and ripped at each other. Ezekiel was going to kill Grayson. Natividad knew there couldn't be any other outcome. The grief of it tore her apart – not only grief for Grayson, but for Dimilioc, which would never hold without the Master; and for Ezekiel, who would surely never recover from the knowledge of what he'd done.

Everything was so fast. She wasn't a black dog, she couldn't follow every move, but there was a brutal exchange of blows and afterward Grayson was down, with horrible gashes all across his chest and side, and Ezekiel was rearing above him. In the next instant he would plunge down with all his immense strength and weight and his terrible black claws would tear Grayson in half. Natividad knew he was going to do it and she screamed again, weeping as well, and this time her cry had a word in it, and the word she cried out was Grayson's name.

Alejandro slammed the door open and plunged into the room, with Thaddeus behind him – then they both froze in horror. But the embattled black wolves seemed somehow fallen into a vibrating stillness as well, which Natividad didn't understand: Ezekiel hadn't completed his kill after all, and didn't, and
still
didn't, and that first instant stretched into a full second, and then Grayson was up and using his superior size and weight to hurl Ezekiel off balance, and then their positions were somehow reversed because Ezekiel was the one down, and Grayson was the one with his powerful jaws closed around his opponent's throat. And Ezekiel
was
fighting then, but it was too late, Grayson had him, he was going to kill him – he was going to
kill
him, and he couldn't, he mustn't. Natividad was horrified at the idea that Ezekiel might die, but even worse, if Grayson killed Ezekiel, Natividad was sure he'd never recover. She screamed his name again, this time in a totally different kind of horror, and Grayson turned his burning eyes toward her. There was nothing human in those eyes, but he didn't close his terrible jaws.

And then Alejandro flung his shadow forward and across both Grayson and Ezekiel. Natividad felt it as a smothering darkness that wasn't exactly visible and a bodiless pressure that wasn't anything like weight but somehow forced both the Master and Ezekiel back into human form. It wasn't smooth this time, especially not for Ezekiel. The change was slow and shuddering for Grayson, but for Ezekiel it happened in a series of painful, twisting jolts and convulsions that was horrible to watch.

Grayson got to his feet, slowly, once they were both back in human form. He moved as though it hurt him and as though he didn't care who knew it. Ezekiel did not get up at all. He stayed down, braced on one elbow, his head low. The carpet where he lay was spattered now, like everything else in the room, with black ichor and red blood. He didn't look at Grayson. He didn't look at any of them.

“Cage,” Grayson said, rasping, his voice not at all human. “Now.” He turned a dangerous stare on Alejandro and Thaddeus. They both immediately dropped their eyes. He said harshly, “Once he is secure, leave him be. Is that clear? No black dog is to approach him.” Then he looked away from them, his temper locked down so tight it almost hurt Natividad to watch him. “You,” he said to her. “Come with me.” He stalked away, not moving exactly like a normal human even now, and went through a door across the room.

Natividad threw her brother an urgent look, hardly knowing what she meant to convey, and ran after Grayson.

 

Grayson wanted calm. He wanted her to draw pentagrams on all the windows in his suite, especially his bedroom. Natividad had been curious about what Grayson's suite might tell her about him ever since she'd seen Ezekiel's. This was not the way she had meant to break into the Master's privacy, when she was distracted and anxious and stumbling with exhaustion and he was clinging to his control by a thread so tight she was afraid even to breathe too loudly. She was afraid for him, afraid that grief and anger might still lead him to fall into the terrible dark that always waited for black dogs. But, even so, she couldn't help but be interested.

The bedroom wasn't much like Ezekiel's. The suite wasn't. Where Ezekiel's rooms were Zen, Grayson's were very English. Or what Natividad thought of as English. All polished walnut and antique brass; tables with carved legs and chairs with ornate backs – all probably antique, not that she would know. In the bedroom, a rocking chair with an intricate border of fancy inlay around its worn cushions faced another of those big fireplaces, this one with a hearth of black granite. The bed, with an old-gold coverlet, had an intricately carved headboard and bedposts.

The heaviness of the furnishings and the richness of the colors might have made the suite seem close or oppressive, but the rooms were so big, with high vaulting ceilings, that they seemed instead luxurious and sort of… gracious, Natividad decided, was the word. She had not pictured rooms like these for the Dimilioc Master, but as soon as she saw them she knew they fit him. She wondered whether his wife had furnished these rooms, chosen the colors… They had probably been happy here.

And now his wife was gone, leaving the wrong kind of silence and emptiness. Natividad knew too much about that herself, but Grayson had lost so much more. She was happy to draw the signs for a different kind of silence. For peace. There were already signs on the windows: Stars of David, and, older, fainter traces of pentagrams like hers. And, even older than that, so old even Natividad could barely see them, mandalas – circles with crosses in them, but not a evenly quartered circle such as she was used to, but offset crosses more like the Christian symbol. But all the signs were alike, really. She could tell that when she brushed her hand across them. All of them were meant to bring peace. To quiet the stricken heart.