Pure Magic (Black Dog Book 3) (3 page)

Justin could only shake his head, but Ethan, smiling with savage humor, said “That’s right, Father. Demons. Don’t worry about it, though; they’re gone now.”

Father Mark and Justin both began to speak and both stopped. Justin was sure they both wanted to ask something on the order of
And are
you
a demon, then?
But probably that wouldn’t be at all smart.

Then a sharp crunching sound from outside interrupted them and removed the temptation to ask stupid questions. Justin stood very still, listening. Someone stepping on glass or shattered wood. In just an instant, another werewolf was going to surge into this house, and there was no longer even a door in place to slow it down—

Ezekiel stepped through the doorway. He took in the missing bodies, the pooling blood, Ethan with his ham sandwich, and Father Mark and Justin huddling together in the midst of all the mess and destruction. He didn’t seem impressed by any of it. He merely said, to Justin, “You’ve had time to catch your breath, I hope, because it’s well past time to leave.”

“In a rush, are we?” said Ethan. “You weren’t in much of a hurry about your hunt.”

“I encountered complications.” Ezekiel didn’t even glance at the other young man. He was studying Father Mark and frowning.

Ethan set the rest of his snack aside. “Complications?” And, after a moment, when Ezekiel did not answer, he went on, “Yeah, there’s another complication right here, isn’t there? What do you want to do about the priest?”

It took Justin a moment to believe he’d heard the young man correctly. Then he took a fresh grip on his butter knife and stepped in front of Father Mark, who made an inarticulate sound and began to try to straighten up.

Ezekiel raised a pale eyebrow at him, but said to Ethan, “We don’t need to do anything about him at all. He’s not important.”

“You think Grayson will agree?”

“Yes,” Ezekiel said flatly. “That’s what I think.”

Ethan shrugged. “Whatever you say. If Grayson’s pissed off, it won’t be
my
problem.”

“Exactly,” said the other young man, and added, speaking now to Justin, “
You
now.
You’re
important. Were you heading for Dimilioc?”

“He wasn’t. He doesn’t know anything,” said Ethan. He gave Justin an unreadable look. “Not about himself, not about Dimilioc. He’s completely clueless. Don’t ask me how he’s lived this long without knowing anything about anything, but I’d lay odds he doesn’t.”

Ezekiel tilted his head to the side, regarding Justin with narrow-eyed curiosity. He said after a moment, “That right? Your mother left you so ignorant?”

Justin stared back at him. “Watch what you say about my mother.”

There was a slight pause. Then Ezekiel smiled, thinly but with real humor. “You’ve got guts, kid. Good for you. But, trust me on this, you do not actually want us to walk away and leave you here alone. You do not want that. You may not have to worry about the vampires or their damned blood kin anymore, but you might have noticed that now we’ve got a problem with strays. And you’re Pure. You’re going to draw them like terriers after a little mouse, do you realize that? It does not matter what you do or where you go or how clever you are with magic. You are going to get yourself killed, and until you do, you’re a danger to everyone around you. You understand me?”

“Wow, that sounds scary,” Justin said recklessly. “But I’ve been fine till now, so I don’t know why that should change. You walking away and leaving me alone sounds like a great idea.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Why are we arguing? Tell the kid how it’s going to be and let’s get on.”

“Listen, I’m
not
—” Justin began. At the same time, Father Mark said sharply, “You can’t just
kidnap
—”

Interrupting them both, Ezekiel strode across the room and closed a hand on Justin’s upper arm. Though Justin brought the butter knife up into a half-hearted guard position, the werewolf caught his wrist as well and twisted with inexorable strength, forcing him to drop it. From mere inches away, he met Justin’s eyes and said softly, “I can do anything I want. You can’t stop me. Can you?”

Justin, furious and terrified, strained, briefly, against the werewolf’s grip. It was like trying to shove against steel.

“And what I want to do,” Ezekiel said, still in that soft, dangerous voice, “is take you to Dimilioc, where, whether you believe me or not, you will be safe. Dimilioc protects the Pure. We really do. But we do not have time to stand here and argue. Therefore you will be quiet and cooperate, or I will kill the priest after all. Which I do not want to do. So don’t force me to it. Do you understand?”

“Now, look, son—” began Father Mark.

“Shut up,” the young werewolf said, without looking at him.

He did not raise his voice, but somehow his quiet tone carried enough intensity that Father Mark stopped almost mid-word. Justin had no idea how Ezekiel did it, but he thought he would have shut up, too, if it had been him. He stared into the werewolf’s eyes. Ezekiel stared back, patient and ruthless.

“You will cooperate,” Ezekiel said to Justin. “You’ll come along nicely. I won’t kill anyone. I swear to you, you won’t be harmed in any way. Nor anyone else. But you won’t try to walk away or make a scene or anything of the kind. No Pure tricks, if you do know any. No magic tangle-you-up nonsense, none of that. That’s the bargain. Understand?”

Justin absolutely did not understand, but he spared a glance for Father Mark. Then he nodded.

The werewolf barely smiled. “Good.” He let Justin go and gave Father Mark a brief look, faintly apologetic. “Justin will be fine. So will you, I expect. Once Justin’s gone, there shouldn’t be much to draw a stray back here. Rather the reverse. Still, you might fix a crucifix above every door and every window, just in case his scent lingers.”

Father Mark squinted at him. “A crucifix. Right.
Are
you a demon, then, son?”

Ezekiel shrugged. “Only half. Not the half that’s in control.” He beckoned to Justin and turned away, his whole attitude expressing his confidence that everything was going to go exactly according to plan from this moment forward.

Justin hesitated. Then he picked up the butter knife and put it in his pocket, trying to be unobtrusive. He was pretty sure both Ezekiel and Ethan noticed, but neither commented. Justin looked around, feeling lost and uncertain. “My things . . . the hotel . . .”

“Your things are replaceable. You do not want to go back to your hotel just now. Trust me on this.” Ezekiel took his arm in a hard grip that just missed being painful and propelled him easily toward the door and out into the night. Justin’s quick, half-desperate glance back showed him only a rectangle of homey yellow light rapidly disappearing behind him, like the last hope of an ordinary life.

“It’s a trap,” Natividad said.

She spoke a little more loudly than she’d intended. Her voice echoed within the confines of the van, taking on an unexpected hollow reverberation that made her words sound too significant. Almost like prophecy.

Natividad didn’t believe in prophecy. But even so, she wished Alejandro had not gone out into the dark to survey the territory of their enemies. She wished—though this wasn’t exactly nice of her—that it was Keziah out there instead of her brother. From her slow smile, Keziah, sitting across the van from Natividad, knew exactly how she felt. Natividad could feel her face heat and was pretty sure she was blushing, but she tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed the smile.

Keziah’s little sister, Amira, shivered as though she, too, had heard something fateful in Natividad’s warning. But Keziah only arched one narrow black eyebrow in elegant mockery and said, “Oh, indeed, a trap! Who would have thought it?”

Which was fair.

Natividad had thought everything would get better once Vonhausel was dead. Vonhausel was dead, all the vampires and their horrible blood kin were dead, what could be left to fear? She’d really thought everyone would be safe forever.

She should have known better.

She had never guessed before just how many vicious black dogs might have fled Russia and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and everywhere, driven out by the people they had preyed on for so long. She hadn’t realized, until Grayson explained it, how the very strongest of those black dogs would come here to try to destroy Dimilioc.

Dimilioc had stopped black dogs taking over towns and ruling like kings and eating people—so here, there weren’t any great hordes of ordinary people hunting black dogs with silver bullets. Of course the strongest black dogs would want to take this chance to destroy Dimilioc and establish a safe territory, a place from which they could find ways to re-establish their power even now that the vampire miasma was gone.

Now that she understood that, Natividad wasn’t sure exactly how the very small number of black dogs left to Dimilioc could possibly stop them.

From the moment Natividad realized they’d found the magic of a living Pure woman mingled with black dog shadows, from the moment she had found her
trouvez
prickling with moonlight as well as the too-heavy darkness of black dogs, she had known these were not ordinary strays. Stray black dogs would attack the Pure, yes. That was what strays
did
. But keep a Pure woman alive, take her back to the center of their territory? That meant restraint and intention and planning.

That was why Alejandro had gone alone to make a first, careful survey of this quiet-seeming house in its apparently peaceful neighborhood.

Natividad knew her brother was fine. She
did
know that. She always knew, these days; ever since the moment last winter when, in desperation, she had risked everything to take his shadow and braid it into her magic as a weapon and a shield against their enemies. Even after she had given it back, a little bit of her brother’s shadow continued to cling to her, an impossible thread of darkness woven into her light, which she did not know how to unweave again. She wasn’t even perfectly certain she wanted to be rid of that dark thread. Because now she always knew when her brother was well. At moments like this, it was a certainty she cherished.

She said to Keziah, “I know! But, I mean . . . if this is a trap, shouldn’t we call for help? We don’t
need
to spring it, you know!”

Keziah tilted her head, considering this. She had curled, graceful as a cat, on the best of the cushions that lined the floor of the van. Her long fingers were linked around one slim drawn-up knee. The heavy braid of her black, black hair and the delicate trembling of her crystal-and-moonstone earrings accented her long throat and the fine-boned beauty of her elegant, triangular features.

If Natividad had posed like that, it would have made her look . . . well, posed. As though she were deliberately and rather clumsily trying to look seductive and sexy. Keziah, on the other hand, just looked like that
all the time
. Keziah was not an easy girl to like. Though they were getting along pretty well, actually, these days.

Even so, Natividad wished Ezekiel were here instead of Keziah. Natividad wouldn’t have been afraid of traps if Ezekiel had been here. She missed his strength and confidence, and the ironic look that would come into his eyes when he realized Dimilioc’s enemies had laid a trap for him, and . . . she just missed him.

She wondered if he was missing her, too, tonight. And then made herself stop, because that was just ridiculous. Of course Ezekiel, off on his own assignment, would only be thinking about that. He wouldn’t be thinking about her at all. If he knew how often she thought about him, he would probably . . . well, actually, he would no doubt think that was just fine.

Not that she would let on. Ever.

And in the meantime,
she
had a mission, which
she
ought to be thinking about. Unless she could get Keziah to agree that they should just slip away without springing any traps that Dimilioc’s enemies had set for them.

Amira shivered again, and Keziah’s expression softened. She put an arm around her little sister’s shoulders, pulling her gently into a brief, careful embrace before letting her go again with a reassuring pat. “It does not matter,” she promised Amira. “Natividad will work her magic, and you and I, we will turn this trap back on our enemies. They will be sorry they challenged
us
.”

Keziah sounded quite unafraid. Amira nodded, happier. Amira never looked really happy, but that was the scar. It ran from the corner of the little girl’s mouth all the way across her cheek toward her ear. It pulled her mouth sideways, so that no smile could look normal on her face. Natividad had no idea how Amira had been scarred like that—well, no; she knew the cut must have been made with a silver knife, and she suspected someone had cut the child deliberately. She didn’t know for sure. It was just something everyone thought, because Amira was so timid and Keziah so fierce. She hated to think of it. She hoped at least that Keziah had killed whoever had done that to her little sister. But she would never dare ask. Keziah was the
last
person anybody would ask about something like that.

Keziah and Amira both suddenly turned their heads toward the back of the van, and after a moment Natividad, too, heard the light rattle and click as someone turned a key in the van’s lock. Then Alejandro quietly opened the door and stepped up into the van. Natividad let her breath out with relief.

Alejandro was much taller than Natividad, which was only fair because he was older. But he was also tall simply because he’d gotten Papá’s height, and Natividad took very much after Mamá’s family.

But Alejandro did look very Mexican. Not as much as Natividad, but enough that it was hard to see their father’s American blood in him unless you knew it was there. But their father’s blood was important, because he had been a Toland, from one of the most important Dimilioc bloodlines. That was an advantage Keziah would never be able to claim.

Alejandro soundlessly closed the van door behind him, glanced around at the rest of them, and said without preamble, “This is certainly a trap.”

Keziah rolled her beautiful dark eyes. Natividad said quickly, before her brother could take issue with Keziah’s attitude, “Yes, of course! But what did you find, ’Jandro? Can we just slip away? Or
is
there a Pure woman here that we need to rescue?”

Her brother, who had been staring narrowly at Keziah, allowed himself to be distracted. He crossed the narrow space and crouched down by Natividad’s side, studying her
trouvez
. But it showed nothing now but a faint glimmer of cool moonlight. “What did your magic show you?” he asked her. “Something different?”

“It was hard to see,” Natividad said apologetically. “A white dove, in a birdcage made of burning wire. I saw that. The wires break and fly through the dark like arrows. There is dark all around, and in the dark, red eyes burning. Black dogs, watching from the dark. So I know they are watching for us.”

Alejandro nodded. “There is also a feel to that house. A heaviness to the shadows. No stupid young
callejero
would have such a dense shadow.”

“So there is at least one old black dog there, and this is his pack,” Keziah murmured. Her eyes glittered with anticipation. “I wonder how many black dogs he holds under his mastery? Enough that we will have a real fight after all, perhaps.”

“A hunt,” whispered Amira unexpectedly. Her words were almost inaudible, but her tone was fierce. “A hunt and then fire, Keziah! We should burn the house down, after!”

Keziah gave her little sister an affectionate glance. “A fire, yes. We should burn the house and let the towering flames blaze through the night as a warning to all those who would dream of defying Dimilioc.” She looked at Alejandro, tossing her head in challenge. “That should please Grayson, do you think so?”

Alejandro grinned in answer, a fierce expression that was almost a snarl.

Black dogs!
Natividad thought. She knew she should have expected this attitude. She couldn’t say anything that might be taken as an attempt to be
mandona
—bossy. It was very important to let black dogs think they were making all the decisions about everything. So she said quickly, before everyone could get too carried away, “We don’t
have
to spring it, you know. We could just slip away. Come back later. With Ezekiel, maybe. With everyone. Think of springing this trap with Ezekiel and Thaddeus and everyone!” There,
that
idea should appeal to black dog ferocity.

Both Keziah and Amira looked tempted, but Alejandro gave Natividad a long look, so that she saw at once he was trying to find a way to tell her something she wouldn’t like. He said at last, “There is your little
palomita blanca
. I saw her, too.” He glanced at Keziah. “The black dog there in the yard
,
he is outside the house to be seen. He is saying,
Come attack me.
” He looked back at Natividad and went on with obvious reluctance, “He has a woman there, dead. A Pure woman. Her blood is thick there on the earth beneath the beech tree. So you see he wants to draw attack. But your little dove, she is the house. A
bebé
, only little, maybe three years old, maybe four. I think that woman was her mother. I think the little one is Pure, like her mamá. She seems to be alone in the room, but—” he shrugged. “All the house is dark except for that one bright room. Of course she is bait.”

Natividad closed her eyes briefly in sorrow for that little girl, torn out of her safe childhood by monsters, her mother no doubt murdered in front of her eyes. It was horrible. It was the worst thing that could happen. She shuddered.

Alejandro touched her cheek, a light, careful touch with the backs of two fingers. His hand was almost but not quite a human hand. His fingers were a little too blunt, the bones of his hand a little too broad, the fingernails a little too much like claws. His shadow was very close to the surface, too close for him to touch her easily. But he saw she was upset, and he
tried
. Natividad wanted to take his hand, but she knew he needed his shadow to be strong right now.

She rubbed her palms across her face instead, and let her breath out. She could mourn for that little girl and her loss
later
, when everyone was safe. She said determinedly, “We have to get that girl out. But this trap—”

“We will break it and take the girl safely,” Alejandro assured her. He went on, speaking now to Keziah, “The room I saw is bright, all the windows open to the night, anybody can look in and see the little one.” He shrugged, a scornful gesture. “They think we’re fools.”

Keziah said coolly, “Or maybe they think we are a different kind of fool. Maybe they think we will say,
This is a trap
. And so we will know that there is an ambush, that there are more than a few strays. Only there is really something else also. Another layer to this trap that we will not see until it is too late.”

Natividad blinked. She hadn’t thought of that, and she knew Alejandro hadn’t. She was suddenly glad Keziah was part of this mission. Most black dogs just flung themselves straight ahead into any battle, but Keziah was twisty in her head. Even if she was angry and distrustful and a little bit scary, she was also always
thinking
, always clever.

Keziah stood up, smooth and elegant like a movement from a dance, and set her hands on her hips. “We
must
spring this trap,” she said to Alejandro. “How else will we know what teeth it has?
You
can spring it. Then Amira and I will break all the teeth out of the trap and kill all our enemies.”

Amira ducked her head and smiled around from behind her sister. Despite the child’s nervousness, it was not a shy smile, but a predatory one. It was the smile of a black dog who is watching her enemy make a mistake. Keziah glanced down and ruffled her sister’ short-cropped hair, a gesture that was almost human-fond. It was gestures like that that made Natividad want to like Keziah.