Black Dog Short Stories (7 page)

      The day after Étienne left, Miguel came back from helping his sister and Cassie move furniture around in the guest room Cassie had picked—she wanted every single thing over ten pounds moved, and then moved again—and found Ezekiel Korte waiting for him in his room.

     Ezekiel was sitting in Miguel’s best chair—his only chair actually—playing solitaire on his computer. He glanced up when Miguel came in, though, and one corner of his mouth crooked upward. He looked faintly bored, faintly amused, and just a little bit scary because Ezekiel always looked a little bit scary.

     “What do you . . . uh, can I do something for you?” asked Miguel.

     “You’ve got some interesting files on here. Very broad-ranging. That big compilation of black dog activity out west is especially impressive.”

     “I’m supposed to collate that. For Grayson.”

     “Of course. I know he values the work you do for him.”  Ezekiel stood up, a smooth, effortless motion, like a spring uncoiling. “He wants to see you. Now.”

     “Uh . . .” said Miguel. “Right.”  He didn’t say,
So why’d he send you?
He didn’t ask,
So why didn’t he pick up a house phone and call me?
Sometimes a question was better left unanswered. Besides, maybe the answer was,
No reason
, and why borrow trouble?

     Grayson was in the conference room he used as a study. He was working on something, some kind of spreadsheet or something, Miguel could glimpse the open file. There were papers, maps and lists and things, all over his desk and half the long table. The door was open. He looked up when Ezekiel tapped on the door frame, gave a short nod, set down the pencil he held in one hand, and leaned back in his chair. He looked tired, Miguel thought. And impatient. And not amused at all. But that might have just been him. Grayson Lanning was not a man who often looked amused.

     Ezekiel slid into the room and leaned his hip against the edge of the table, perfectly relaxed and comfortable. Miguel thought about taking a chair to show that he was also relaxed and comfortable. Then he thought better of it. He said, “Sir?” in his most innocent tone.

     Grayson said without preliminary, “I had intended to send Étienne Lumondiere to Denver in six months. Or a year. I intended to send him with ten black dogs to support him, not five. Now I’ve been forced to send him early, with far less support than he needs and yet more than I could afford to give him. If he fails to establish control in the west, he will be embarrassed, but Dimilioc will be weakened.”

     Miguel said nothing. It seemed the wisest course.

     “I do not care to see my options constrained because of the self-indulgent tantrums of a clever boy who thinks he knows Dimilioc’s necessities better than I do,” Grayson added.

     “If you didn’t
want
to send him to Denver—” Miguel began.

     “You shamed him in front of me. I was forced to punish him. Now I am required both to demonstrate my continuing trust in his strength and ability, and to offer him a chance to win back my personal regard. Do you think he would be satisfied by some meaningless gesture?”

     This seemed like another good opportunity for Miguel to keep his mouth shut.

     Grayson said, even more grimly, “Thos Korte always considered a riding crop appropriate for human kin he wished to punish. Whatever else one may say for the method, it was certainly effective. And even humans rarely sustain any permanent injury from such punishment. They were nearly always back on their feet within a week or so, as I recall.”

     Miguel found himself glancing involuntarily at Ezekiel, who smiled. It was a scary smile. Miguel wrenched his attention back to Grayson. “I—” he began, and then stopped and made himself think. He said after a moment, “I didn’t mean to do anything to put Dimilioc at a disadvantage. I knew you would want to get Étienne Lumondiere out of the house eventually. I figured now would be as good a time as any.”  He hesitated, then shook his head. “You wouldn’t have sent him now if you thought he couldn’t succeed. Or that his absence would put us in a real bind. But I’m sorry if I—if I misjudged.”

     Grayson leaned forward, folding his big hands on his desk. “I don’t like being led, Miguel. I don’t like being handled. I most particularly do not like to be considered
stupid
.”

     No, Miguel bet he didn’t. He tried not to look at Ezekiel. He said, “No, sir.”  It was surprisingly easy to sound humble, this time.   

     Grayson leaned back in his chair again. He said, his tone very level, “I notice the W’s in the library are out of order.”

     Miguel stared at him.

     “I think you had better put that section in order. In fact, I think you may take all the books back off the shelves, re-dust them, and put them back on the shelves, this time in perfect order. You had better start with the A’s in order to be sure every single volume is precisely in its proper place.”

     Miguel found his mouth was open, and closed it.

     “I notice this task took you several days when you did it for Étienne. You will not need to hurry when you do it for me. I will expect the job to take you a month.”

     “A month!” Miguel exclaimed, and shut his mouth again.

     “If you work at it for, oh, six hours a day. You may start today. I am sure the books will be the better for being thoroughly dusted. And the shelves can be polished properly. I don’t believe you attended to that adequately for Étienne. Three or four coats of that pleasant lemon polish should be adequate. You may put the books back on the shelves after each coat, so that people may find what they wish to read without searching through stacks on the floor. This will, of course, require you to take all the books off the shelves and put them back on repeatedly. I’m sure you will prove equal to the task.”

     “But—” said Miguel. “My work—the reports I’m supposed to collect for you—you said—I thought—”

     Grayson raised his heavy eyebrows  “That work is indeed important to me and to Dimilioc. I’m perfectly certain you will manage to complete
all
your duties satisfactorily. Yes?”

     “Right,” muttered Miguel. “Yes, sir.”

     “Cassandra Pearson likes to read, I know. I think she will be joining you in this little task.”

     Miguel was surprised again, this time in a good way.

     “You may wish to work in silence, however. If you distract each other, then you will find yourselves working in the library on alternate days. If that occurs, I imagine the job will take twice as long to complete.”

     Ah. That wasn’t so good. Miguel took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

     “Then we will not need to impose on Ezekiel’s time.”

     Miguel glanced that way again, involuntarily. Ezekiel was still smiling. “No,” Miguel said. “Sir.”

     “Good.”  Grayson paused. Then he said, even more quietly, “Next time you have a concern, Miguel, perhaps you will discuss it with me openly.”

     Miguel swallowed, nodded, and retreated from the field, not in very good order. In fact,
routed comprehensively
was about right. Who would ever have expected a black dog, even
Grayson
, to
notice
every little thing?

     But it wasn’t all bad. Cassie Pearson turned out to know sign language. Miguel figured that in a month, he would know it pretty well, too.   

     Thaddeus knew exactly why the Master of Dimilioc had picked him, just him and no one else, to help clean the worst of the cur black dogs out of Chicago.  It sure wasn’t because Thaddeus knew the city. At the moment, they were hunting just east of Chinatown, an area he didn’t even know well. He had lived most of his life down near Joliet, and exploring other black dogs’ territories definitely hadn’t been a thing. Besides, before the war, all of downtown had belonged to the vampires and their blood kin and no black dog would dare venture anywhere near vampire territory. 

     Then Dimilioc had started the war, and finished it, too, if just barely. Now here Thaddeus was, back in Illinois, with the Dimilioc Master at his back, and everything was different.

     Dimilioc had rules. Thaddeus was still figuring them out. He had grown up with rules, sure, but those rules had been simple. Easy to understand. Keep to yourself; defend your territory; don’t kill too many people; most important of all, don’t let vicious young black dog curs draw Dimilioc attention. Those had been the rules Thaddeus had learned from his father. Those had been the rules for any black dog born outside Dimilioc who wanted to live to get old.

     Now Thaddeus was part of Dimilioc himself, and all the rules were different.

     Not the first time he’d had the rules change on him, though. Except before, it hadn’t been Dimilioc who set all his rules tumbling. The first time, it had been DeAnn.

      Thaddeus first met DeAnn when he was twelve and she was nine. His dad had taken him hunting way outside their normal territory, tracking down a pair of black dogs who were just too noisy and too brutal to leave alone. Usually Dan Williams didn’t take his son hunting above Bolingbrook, that was pretty close to the northern edge of their territory, but this was a bad situation, black dogs in no-man’s-land drawing way too much notice.

     Regular people weren’t the problem. Normal people didn’t know, couldn’t know, regular people didn’t see bad stuff right out plain. The news was all about dog packs and pit bulls on the one hand and an especially violent serial rapist on the other. But all of it was really these black dogs, and Thaddeus’s father said if they let it go on, eventually someone from Dimilioc, maybe the Dimilioc executioner his own damn self, would come down from the east and take care of the problem personally. And if that happened, most likely he would take his time about it, track down and kill every single black dog in Chicago and for fifty miles around. They could do that, the black wolves of Dimilioc. They
would
do it, if the curs got too noisy. It was impossible to hide from them because they had ways of tracking you down, even if you were very quiet.

     So Dan Williams took his son hunting.

     Downtown was vampire territory, had always been vampire territory. The blood kin would get any black dog who ventured there. North, past Waukegan and all the way up to Milwaukee, was the territory of a black dog, a man named Conrad, who, along with a handful of curs he held tight under his thumb, kept down the noise in that region. Way out west toward DeKalb, a black dog woman named Schoen—no one ever called her anything else and Thaddeus didn’t know her first name—held a small territory all by herself and killed anyone who tried her borders.

     But these damned stupid black dogs, by luck or some kind of basic cunning, kept to a region bounded on the east by La Grange, in the north by Arlington Heights, in the south by Bolingbrook, and in the west by Aurora, so that they weren’t properly anybody’s problem. But they made trouble, and made trouble, until it was plain someone had to take care of them. And Dan had Thaddeus, who was already, at twelve, big and tough and good in a fight. So his father told Thaddeus they’d do it and get it done, and waited for a good waxing moon that would probably bring out the strays, but that wouldn’t draw the Beasts too hard for Thaddeus to handle his.

     Dan Williams had known just where to hunt, too. “See there, them morons, they let theirselves get predictable,” he told his son. “Never get predictable, kid. Anybody who wants to can track you down, see?”

     Thaddeus had nodded. The two cur black dogs were skulking down Bailey toward a big forest preserve. Probably they wanted to find someone they could chase into the woods and hunt there. Thaddeus would’ve liked to do that himself. Maybe those two curs would get that far and they could have a real hunt. His Beast pressed forward, wanting that. He wanted to let it up and roar forward, but his dad laid a restraining hand on his arm to keep him still.

     “Wait for it,” Dan Williams said. “Wait for it, kid. Let them get past us and focus on that dim old cow over on at the corner of Modaff—see, there?”

     Thaddeus had seen exactly how his dad had used that careless woman as bait for their enemies. That was smart. He told himself he would remember. Let your enemies get past you, let them get distracted by something else. Then they’d be stupid and you could hit them from behind. That was best, hitting your enemies from behind so they couldn’t fight back. He hadn’t had to be taught that part. It was obvious. Maybe they could get just one on their first rush and take their time with the other . . .

     The simple plan worked, too, at first.  Thaddeus and his father hit one of the black dogs from either side and tore him up and left him in pieces, but the other one fled, not west into the woods like he was supposed to, but north. Plus he was fast, that bastard, and it took almost two miles to catch him, and they only got him in the end because he suddenly broke stride and twisted around to the west, across the dark suburban yards, and then they could cut across the angle of his flight, and they caught him all right, and that was that.

     Except that there was something else just a little farther away to the west. Thaddeus realized that the minute he and his dad had made their kill. Something close, very close, way more dangerous than any stupid back dog cur. Not blood kin—Dan Williams and Conrad and that Schoen woman, they all hunted blood kin when they found them out of their own territory, so vampire influence was mostly limited to downtown. Anyway, he knew what blood kin smelled like, felt like. This wasn’t like that. This was something else. Something that just
needed
to be killed, destroyed, wiped right out of the world, crushed so hard no one would ever find even a smear of its blood.

     No wonder their quarry had turned like that, once he caught this scent. Thaddeus dropped the cur’s head, human now the cur was dead, and turned straight west, toward this new thing. It was something terrible. Something very dangerous to black dogs, to him personally, he knew it, he could
feel
it. And he hated it. Hated, hated,
hated
. . .

     His father’s hand closed on the back of his neck, hard, claws out just enough to prick through the shaggy pelt. Thaddeus flinched, startled and angry:  he hadn’t even noticed his dad had shifted back to human form. He was big even in that form, not nearly as heavy as Thaddeus’s Beast, but taller, with the black dog’s fire lingering in his eyes. He shook Thaddeus lightly, warning and threat, a reminder of his own strength and authority. “Shift,” he ordered. “Now.”

     Thaddeus swung his head to stare west, then glared at his father. Couldn’t he
tell
about the  monster?

     “
Shift
, Thad.
Now
.”

     It took several tries and some minutes. Thaddeus wouldn’t have managed it without that grip on the back of his neck, without his father’s insistence and that naked threat. Getting a leash on his Beast wasn’t usually so hard, but the Beast longed to run west and kill whatever that was. It fought him, worse than it had in years. But he managed the change at last, and knelt panting on the hard pavement, surrounded by the torn pieces of their enemy, with the smell of ash and blood thick in the air and his dad still looming over him. Everyone said Thaddeus would probably be even bigger than his father one day, but right now Dan Williams could still do a pretty good job looming. Thaddeus kept his eyes down and his human hands flat on the hot pavement and tried to steady his breathing, expecting any minute for his father to hit him, to yell at him,
Don’t I teach you better than that? Fuck, kid, you some stupid lazy cur? Might as well be an
animal
if you can’t get your Beast chained up!

     Thaddeus knew he would deserve it. He was having trouble just holding his human shape even now that he’d got it back. His Beast pushed and snarled right below the surface of his skin, wanting out, wanting to kill . . . he bit his lip and clenched his hands into fists and pushed it back as hard as he could.

     “Come on,” his dad said abruptly, and hauled him up by the back of the neck and shoved him forward. West, after all. Thaddeus hadn’t expected that, and stumbled, and his dad pulled him up again and said harshly, “Shift back and I’ll beat you bloody, you hear me, Thad? You stay human and you keep your Beast
way
the fuck underneath. We’re gonna find this woman and you’re not going to kill her, you’re not even gonna to try, you hear me? You keep human and you keep close to me or I’ll chain you up and beat you senseless every day for a week, you hear me?”

     Only that continual mutter of low-voiced threats let Thaddeus keep his Beast under while they closed the distance between themselves and this new thing, this monster-woman that his father obviously knew about even though Thaddeus had never scented anything like her. He knew his father meant every word. His Beast knew it, too, and was just wary enough of the threatened punishment that Thaddeus could manage to keep it back and under. He tried to concentrate on the unfamiliar streets, on the suburbs that stretched out all around them, but it was impossible. Mostly he was just aware of the woman they were tracking.

     She was in the street, out in the moonlight. She looked like an ordinary woman, but Thaddeus could tell she wasn’t. She wasn’t a black dog either. She was something else, some other kind of person. He hated her, but he wasn’t sure why—he could tell by now that it was mostly his Beast that hated her, but he couldn’t tell if it was
just
his Beast or if part of it was also him. He blinked, and blinked again, trying to look at her better, without the Beast looking through his eyes.

     She looked so ordinary. She was black, though not as dark as Thaddeus or his father. Old, at least thirty. Not pretty, or he thought she wasn’t pretty, it was hard to tell with his Beast hating her and hating her and
hating
her. He was scared of her—or his Beast was, he couldn’t really tell which. The Beast wanted to roar up and lunge across the little remaining distance and tear her in half. But his father still held him; that dangerous, threatening grip on the back of his neck, so Thaddeus was able to keep it under.

     The woman was doing something, walking in a slow circle around her house and its small yard and part of her neighbor’s yard. It was slow, because she was stooping as she went, dragging a knife across the lawn and the sidewalk and the pavement. She bent and cut the line with her knife and edged forward again, moving wearily as though every step took an effort.

     A little kid, a girl with skin half a shade lighter than her mother’s and her hair in tight braids against her head, stood on the porch, watching. The girl’s hands were filled with a tangle of light. Thaddeus hated her, too. He wanted to rush at her and tear her apart, except that his father still held him and anyway he kept losing sight of the girl when he blinked. Something about the light she had in her hands confused his eye and made it hard to keep track of her even though she was standing still.

     “Two of ’em. New here,” grunted Thaddeus’s father. “Yeah. No wonder they’re so damned loud. Anybody can find ’em till she gets that circle laid down. Fucking lucky there ain’t no blood kin way out here. ’Cept she could probably tell, I guess, so it’s not all luck. Us putting that damn cur dog down before it could get her,
that
was luck.”

     Thaddeus barely heard his dad and didn’t understand what he meant. His blood was full of the Beast’s fire. The fire thundered in his veins, wanting out, wanting the hunt and the kill. Nearly all his concentration had to go to keeping his Beast inside, not letting it out.

     “Come on,” said Dan Williams. “Don’t you
dare
shift.”  He pulled his son his forward.

     The woman saw them. She flinched hard and started to step back, then looked quickly along the circle she’d been drawing, and then glanced at the girl on the porch and the open door behind the kid, and then flung another desperate look at Thaddeus’s dad. It was plain even to Thaddeus that she was thinking maybe she had time to finish her circle but that she knew really she didn’t, that she knew how fast a black dog could move and that it was too late for her to do anything, she knew she couldn’t finish her circle or reach her kid or do
anything
—but she didn’t scream or run, she straightened her back and held out her hands, looking straight at Thaddeus’s dad. Moonlight pooled in her hands, so maybe she wasn’t completely harmless, but Thaddeus couldn’t imagine what she meant to do.

              She said, her voice even and surprisingly deep for a woman, “You haven’t shifted. Who are you?”

     Thaddeus hadn’t exactly realized this, although it was very, very obvious and very, very strange. His father
was
still in human form, except for claws that pricked the skin of Thaddeus’s neck. If
his
Beast was pushing him toward killing fury, it didn’t show at all.