Shadows (38 page)

Val and Arnie were using him for some kind of focus. Now I could feel sharp little splinters of whatever-it-was glancing off him, sliding toward me.

If you didn’t know Majid, you might think he was only a cat.

Only a cat
would have run away.

I hoped Casimir and Jill and the dogs were running away as hard as they could.

WOOP. BANG. WOOP. I thought they sounded like they were getting tired—the woops and bangs. Like when we got out of here—
when
—maybe the army guys wouldn’t be able to turn them back on again.

I’d’ve almost said that Majid was having trouble holding his leg up at that angle. A perfectly normal cat-washing-leg angle.

There were at least three different voices. Maybe four or five. I could hear them through the plastic wrap.

“—evil spirit!”

“Get real, it’s a cat. An unholy big cat.”

“—twice?”

“We don’t have evil spirits. This is Newworld, you moron.”

“Then what about those shadowy things? The ones that aren’t dogs.”

“They
are
dogs. They’re just—”

“—cobey. The rules change with a big one. You know there’s a fourth one over at—”

“—a fifth at Nofield—”

“Yeah, it’s why we’re so short-handed. Why they’re sending everyone who’s left here. But it’s still only—”

“—not. Where are Paolo and Jamal?”

“Five—when’s the last time we had five?”

“—this unit twenty years, never—”

“My dad said that Genecor didn’t get everyone—”

The plastic wrap caved so suddenly the guys with rifles all staggered forward. I could see the quality of the light change as whatever it was fell apart. The road seemed to have disappeared; there were saplings down all over the place, and brush—and three big army trucks parked at funny angles. But there were seven or eight guys with rifles now, facing us. No, ten. And one of them was shivering, and his eyes were so wide and crazy I could see them from where I was, hiding in the shadow behind the door.

The siren stopped.

About half the lights went out. Not the ones on the open doors. Not the ones shining on Majid.

I thought I saw a lot of shadows, spilled on the ground, racing outward. Some flung themselves into the suddenly flimsy-looking heaps of brush and scrub. Some of them shot off to the right, as if following someone. Some of them joggled and slithered back toward Majid and the door.

“—evil spirit if you like.” This was the shouting, authoritative voice I’d heard first. “I don’t dreeping care. We need to get back in there since Paolo and Jamal are too dumb to live. So go ahead and shoot it if it makes you happy. Or anything else you see. It’s just a couple of illegal magicians. We’d be doing ourselves a favor. If they’ve got out, then they’re dangerous, you know?”

What?

Several more riflemen came trotting forward. They were lined up now like a firing squad.

No way out.

The crazy guy’s rifle came down and pointed at Majid and the doors the fastest. . . .

But werewolf reflexes are a lot faster than human ones. Takahiro had already bounded forward and was in midair over Majid’s head, his silver-white fur shining like the moon in the lights, when several rifles fired. I should have dropped to the floor, but I’m not used to being shot at. I watched in horror as several bullets missed and caromed with tiny evil screaming noises against the corridor walls behind me—and then our Hounds of the Baskervilles unit burst out of somewhere and knocked several of the riflemen over. I’d never seen Bella snarl before. Jonesie bit someone and threw him down like a dog toy. It took me a minute to realize that they were draped with
gruuaa
—and that the soldiers couldn’t see them properly. Monsters. Shadowy things that weren’t dogs. I could barely see dark brown Dov, but I saw where he’d been when more soldiers behind the riflemen fell down, yelling and kicking. More confusion.

More bullets
wheeeeeeeed
gruesomely past me, and a few thudded into the walls—but at least two of them struck.

Not Majid. Not me. Takahiro. Majid bushed out his fur till he was as big as Dov and
ran
—and Val and Arnie picked me up, one under each armpit, and ran like fury. The Baskerville unit turned and flung themselves back into the fray—Mongo was beside me—no—he turned
back—Mongo!
But I saw—I thought I saw Mongo
ram
Takahiro as the next volley came past. That volley missed.

But there were too many of them, and some of them were looking at us. More riflemen were lining up. I just saw Takahiro stop and rear up on his hind legs, the blood
pouring
down his neck and chest, his eyes more dazzling-bright than the emergency lights, more beautiful than a dragon or a unicorn out of a fairy tale. I swear he got bigger and bigger till he was as tall as a tree, and his shining curved fangs were as long as swords, and then Val and Arnie were dragging me through grass and little saplings, and I realized I was hoarse with screaming Takahiro’s name.

We stumbled into Jill and Casimir—and the rest of the dogs. Jonesie was the last of the dogs to rejoin us: in the light there was something dark on his teeth—it might have been blood. Blood.
So much blood. His white fur red-black with blood.
When Arnie dropped my other arm, I felt Mongo’s head thrust itself under that hand, but I was still screaming. Val wrapped his arms around me and shoved my head down on his shoulder. “Listen to me,” he said into my ear. “Takahiro is a
werewolf.
He is not dead.
He is not dead.
He has covered for us long enough to let us run away. You must run, Maggie. Don’t waste what he’s done for us.”

Another shot rang out. I heard it slice through one of the little trees near us.

I screamed again because I couldn’t help it, but I also nodded, and Val let me go, and we ran, or anyway we stumbled. Val had taken my knapsack. Val and Arnie seemed to know which way we were going. There were still shots shrieking past us, but I almost didn’t notice. I followed Val blindly—he looked back for me every step or two, and sometimes I felt his hand under my arm again, but all I could see or think about was the blood on Takahiro’s chest. So much blood. So much blood . . . Vaguely I knew the story that ordinary bullets couldn’t kill a werewolf—Val should know, he knew real werewolves. Or would he have said that just to make me keep going? If Taks wasn’t dead, why wasn’t he catching up with us? We weren’t going that fast—there was a little part of my brain that wasn’t thinking about Takahiro, but about the bullets, the bullets that were still chasing us, faster than a werewolf, much faster than I could run, half-paralyzed with shock. . . . Even if the bullets didn’t kill him, they must hurt. So much blood . . .

Sssssss whump.
Whump.

I don’t know how long we kept going till we stopped for a rest. I didn’t think I’d heard any bullets in a while. Jill was now the one hanging back with me, putting her hand under my arm when I staggered. I was exhausted, but Taks . . . where was Takahiro?

I’d dropped my algebra book when they shot Takahiro. It had saved my life and rescued Val and Arnie and I’d left it behind.

It hadn’t rescued Takahiro.

• • •

I think we didn’t exactly stop. I think I fell to my knees and couldn’t go any farther, and everyone else stopped too. I heard Val and Arnie talking in low voices: “. . . puzzled them for a while; I can make nav ’tronic go wrong easy as breathing, and your
gruuaa
are still on the job.”

“We’re still leaving a trail of magic the
gruuaa
can’t begin to abolish, nor the six dogs either and one large cat, and when Takahiro rejoins us it will be much, much worse.”

When Takahiro rejoins us.
I took a deep breath.

“Takes an awful lot of critters to damp me, even when I haven’t just been taking out army headquarters,” said Arnie. “Not much we can do about it. Keep going. I can carry Mags a while. She’s not all that much bigger than when I used to give her and Jill piggyback rides.”

I wanted to protest this but I was too tired. Jill was crouched beside me with her arm around me. I think she was pretending we weren’t listening. I hadn’t noticed my face was wet with tears. I thought it had been that way for a while. Mongo was lying next to me with his head in my lap, worrying, wanting something to do to make me feel better. I took his head in my hands. “Mongo, my love,” I said. “If you ever, ever felt like taking the initiative in your life, now is the time. We need all the critters we can get.”

I stood up and took the Dog Commanding Posture. Mongo sat up eagerly.
“Away,”
I said, and threw my arm out in the go-get-those-balky-alpacas-at-the-bottom-of-their-field-
now
gesture. The one that said, and don’t let them give you any nonsense either. Alpacas are notorious for giving herding dogs nonsense.

Mongo disappeared. I looked at Jill. Jill looked at me and gave me a tiny worried smile.

We joined the others. “I can walk a while longer,” I said. “I’m sorry, I’m just a little tired.”

“You have every right to be extremely tired,” said Val. “But we must keep moving.”

“You start folding up, babe, you let me know,” said Arnie. “I bet I remember how to give a good piggyback ride.”

It was only a minute or two later when the first rabbit dashed across our path. Bella turned into a blur and snatched it out of the
air,
and brought it to me, unhurt, kicking like sixteen pistons, and obviously terrified out of its mind. I looked around for Val. “Say
yalarinda orfuy la
and then put your hand on its head,” he said.

“Uh—
yar,
” I said.

“Yalarinda orfuy la.”

I got it the second time. Bella was the most patient of dogs, but I didn’t want to try her too far. Reluctantly I reached out to touch the frantic bunny. It went limp. I took it from Bella. Its little heart was going five hundred beats a minute, but its ears were relaxed and it snuggled up against me like I was its favorite littermate. Fleas, I thought. “Good
girrrrrrl,
” I said. Bella was too dignified for mad tail-wagging, but she flattened her ears briefly. She caught the second rabbit too, and the third. We were up to five rabbits—Athena caught one of them, and we put the other three Baskervilles back on lead (Casimir having
amazingly
tucked the leads in his knapsack) rather to their disgust, but nothing was going to escape Jonesie’s jaws still breathing, and I didn’t know about the other two.

There was a pause after the fifth rabbit, and then the first sheep came hurtling through. Val shouted something—it was
yalarinda
again with something else—and then there was a second sheep, and a third.

And a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. At about that point I lost count.

“I can’t hold them long,” said Val, sounding pretty strained. “It’s not much more than a conjurer’s trick, what I’m doing. And I haven’t time to teach Maggie to contain something so large.”

“Where are they coming from?” said Arnie, sounding kind of amazed. “Are you calling them?”

“No,” said Val. “It’s Mongo, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, with a lump in my throat for my very fabulous dog. “I told him to—to herd what he could find toward me.”

Casimir said, “A
mgdaga
is resourceful, and has good friends.”

About six more sheep went streaming past us in a mob, but this time there was a black and white shadow racing parallel on their flank. He managed to turn them, but rather than dodging past us as you’d expect they plunged into the middle of us, possibly because there were a dozen or so sheep there already. Uproar. Between Val and Mongo nobody got knocked over, although I thought Jonesie was going to have a heart attack. You could see him thinking,
I’d have order in ten seconds. Try me.

If I’d been a real shepherd, I would have been telling my heroic dog what to do now, but I didn’t have the faintest idea. He dropped in behind us, creeping along in classic style, as if he’d been watching the Teach Your Dog Herding videos with me—which he had, of course, but I hadn’t realized he’d been paying attention. Also, sheep-herding usually happens in a field in daylight, with sheep that know the drill, and this was patchy scrubland in the dark, with sheep that probably hadn’t seen a dog or a shepherd in a couple of generations.

When a sheep began to drift off to one side or another Mongo was on the job instantly. There was one especially large, especially raggedy one that didn’t like its present circumstances at all, despite Val’s conjurer’s trick, and kept trying to make a bolt for it. Mongo wasn’t having any of that, and I was afraid if I tried to tell him to let that one go we’d lose the rest of them—Mongo and I hadn’t practiced much but the basic
bring them over there to here and stop.

Val managed to comb a handful of the rebel sheep’s wool loose with his fingers, trotting along beside it as it tried to get away from him. It stopped and stamped at Mongo, but Mongo eeled around behind it and it shot forward and bumped into another sheep.
Baaaa,
said the bumped-into sheep. Jill and Bella and Athena were now walking along one side of our weird herd, and Casimir with Jonesie, Dov and Eld on leads were on the other side. Arnie was leading, with four sleeping bunnies down his shirt: two in front and two behind. I doubted the shirt would recover. I was carrying the fifth, wrapped up in the hem of my Mongo-stretched T-shirt.

Val and I were bringing up the rear, Val so he could keep an eye on the sheep. I kept looking over my shoulder. I might have been looking for Mongo, but Mongo was more often to one side than behind us. I was looking for Takahiro.

Val was spinning the wool out roughly between his fingers in a long sort of whorl, longer, longer, longer, and then looping it around in a big circle. I could hear him muttering, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I thought there were some extra
gruuaa
draped over him—to the extent that I could see them in this light I thought most of them were clustered around Arnie. Val seemed to get what he wanted, and trotted after the devil sheep again—which was now trying to barge its way through the middle of the herd, like someone trying to jump the line. Val worked his way up beside it, pulled his loop over its head and let it fall around its neck.