Pure Magic (Black Dog Book 3)

by Rachel Neumeier

  “But there are a lot of strays now and we needed his strength, and he has a lot of control, he did even as a stray, and at the time we had a Pure woman with us to do the Beschwichtigan for him—”

  Grayson gave the phone a stern look, interrupting this tumble of words. “You had a Pure woman? And lost her?”

  There was a short pause before the other black dog said, his tone more subdued, “She—we—that is—”

  “You failed to protect your Pure woman,” concluded Grayson. He tapped the fingers of one hand on his desk.

  Natividad laid her hand on his shoulder, and the rhythm of the tapping slowed.

  “We tried to protect her,” Christopher protested, but not with a lot of force. He sounded nervous and guilty. “And we tried to find others of the Pure, but . . .” his voice trailed off.

  Grayson made a wordless growling sound and then said, grimly, “Go on. The vampire?”

  “I know we thought we got them all,” Christopher said unhappily. “I’m sure you thought the same, sir. Master. But then we picked up blood kin spoor in El Paso, right, so we thought, well, maybe one of the lesser vampires hid way down in Mexico or Central America somewhere and we missed it, none of us had many of the Pure left to search for vampires or blood kin by that time, right? And I guess that’s what happened, because Marshall—” he stopped abruptly. Then he said, “I don’t know if it was a master, but it came down right on us, on Marshall and me and Rubio, right outside our house, and you could tell right away it was powerful.” The young voice sounded haunted.

  “You caught vampire scent?”

  “Hot iron and old blood,” said the other black dog, still sounding subdued. “It could have been black dogs, only I thought I also caught a trace of sulfur, but . . . I don’t know. Maybe I just thought so, afterward.”

  Grayson gave Natividad a considering, speculative look.

  “I guess it must be a vampire,” she said, answering that look. “I mean, they’d know the difference if it was just blood kin.” You must have missed one, she didn’t say. That was abundantly clear, and Grayson would hardly care to have anybody point it out. They knew that Vonhausel had made some kind of alliance with a vampire in the south. Maybe it had been this one, this vampire, and maybe it had got some black dog magic from Vonhausel. Maybe that was why Dimilioc had missed it. She actually thought that seemed pretty likely. She gave Miguel a raised-eyebrow look, suspecting he, too, was thinking about Vonhausel and horrible blends of black dog and vampire magic.

  “I cannot send you Ezekiel Korte immediately,” Grayson told the young black dog. “He is away just now, handling another urgent problem for me. It would undeniably be useful to restore Dimilioc’s reach in the south, however. And if this is indeed a vampire, we shall certainly wish to see that it is destroyed before it is able to establish itself.” He paused, considering.

  “Or we could just bring all these black dogs here,” suggested Miguel. “We could tell the human authorities about El Paso’s new vampire, let them take care of it, now that they know how, more or less. Fort Bliss is right there, isn’t it? They’d know what to do with a vampire—”

  “Shall we invite humans to intervene in Dimilioc matters? Admit Dimilioc weakness? Encourage humans to resume the war? We assuredly do not wish the humans to feel that they are still threatened by creatures out of the fell dark.”

  Miguel paused. “Well,” he said at last, reluctantly, “That’s a point.”

  Grayson said to Christopher, “You will get out of El Paso immediately. Go north, into New Mexico. To Carlsbad perhaps. That should do. I shall send someone. I will expect you to provide a full account to my black wolf and then provide any assistance required to eliminate this vampire. Until my wolf arrives, I suggest discretion. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.” Christopher’s voice plainly conveyed worry. “We’re already near Carlsbad actually. But if we don’t have help soon, Master, I think your wolf won’t find us here when he finally comes to Texas, but only blood kin and—and, I beg your pardon, but I’m afraid he may also find, in the end, only the fell dark.”

  “Yes,” Grayson said patiently. “I think you may take it as a given that I do understand how to hunt vampires.”

  “Yes, sir,” Christopher said, subdued. He explained where he and the other Dimilioc black dogs were staying: a house a little south of Carlsbad, Natividad gathered. It was a place set in the stark desert, but not like home: this had been the sort of glamorous desert ranch that some of the very wealthy had liked to build, but it had been abandoned during the brief, bitter war between black dogs and vampires, when normal humans had finally realized there really were monsters who hunted them in the dark.

  After he hung up, Grayson leaned back in his wide leather chair and studied the phone with considerable intensity. Natividad had no trouble guessing the general tenor of his thoughts, but was a good deal less certain about what specific decisions he might eventually reach. She said tentatively, “You need to send me, you know, if there really is a master vampire . . . which I guess there must be . . .” she didn’t want to imagine any kind of resumed war. The desperate struggle to wipe out the vampires and the blood kin they had made had been bad enough the first time. She said, “We can’t just chase it back across the border. That wouldn’t be right, and it wouldn’t work anyway, it would just disappear away south somewhere and then come back later. We have to destroy it. And for that you need me.”

  “Out of the question,” said the Dimilioc Master, his tone absent.

  “But—” Natividad began.

  Miguel said, interrupting this argument before it could start, “You know, sir, I’m not sure everyone could have missed a real master vampire as close as Mexico. And, I mean, we were all paying attention. We definitely were.” He meant their family. “We wouldn’t have let a vampire hide anywhere near us, and we can’t have been the only black dogs in Mexico ready to let Dimilioc know if one tried—”

  “Mm,” said Grayson. “More than one Mexican black dog did provide information to Dimilioc, toward the end. We had little choice but to pass much of that information on to the human authorities, by that time.” He fell silent again, frowning, lost in grim memory. Natividad knew the look. Sympathetic despite herself, she rested her hand on his arm.

  “I mean,” said Miguel, speaking just a little bit more loudly, “I think it’s probably just blood kin and maybe one or two lesser vampires, not a real master vampire, but if it is a master vampire, don’t you think you really will need someone Pure to help you destroy it?”

  Grayson turned his heavy gaze at last on Miguel, lifting one eyebrow. Miguel ducked his head and glanced down. Grayson said flatly, “I will not risk Natividad. Certainly not while neither she nor I understand precisely what she is doing with her magic. I think I must indeed send Ezekiel. I don’t wish to recall him from Boston. But if this is a master vampire . . . I may be forced to ask Thaddeus to go to El Paso. With DeAnn. But Thaddeus has no experience against vampires.”

  This was true, Natividad realized. Thaddeus hadn’t been part of Dimilioc during the war. Of course he had surely defended himself and his family against blood kin, but he would hardly have gone out deliberately hunting master vampires. No one had, except Dimilioc and the other black wolves of organized houses. And later human people, of course, had learned some things about how to hunt the monsters: not only the vampires and their blood kin, unfortunately, but stray black dogs, too, and moon-bound cambiadors.

  Grayson said in a more decisive tone, “I shall recall Ezekiel. He and Thaddeus and DeAnn can go south. And the Meade brothers, I think. I shall go to Boston myself.”

  “But Conway!” Natividad protested. “Besides, you know DeAnn’s going to need to adopt that little Pure girl, because who else is there? I’m perfectly fine, I can work ordinary Pure magic, I promise not to try anything, um, anything creative.”

  Grayson gave her a flat stare. “Think, Natividad. You know very well your magic has become . . . compromised, in ways
we do not yet understand. Whether you consciously intend to work creatively or not. I fear you have made yourself vulnerable to demonic influence in ways that are not true for other Pure women. Do you truly wish to venture into the territory of a master vampire?”

  Natividad flinched slightly and closed her mouth.

  The phone buzzed. Not the landline, this time, as she realized after a brief instant of surprise. This was Grayson’s cellphone. He raised a speaking eyebrow, glanced at the caller ID that must be showing on the screen, hit the talk button, and said, “Thaddeus, report.”

  The deep, deep rumble of the other black dog was a sound Natividad almost felt rather than heard. She couldn’t catch even a single word, and Grayson said almost nothing, only, “Yes,” and “Yes,” and “Yes,” and “No,” and then at last, sounding impatient, “Very well, if you must.” Then he put the phone down on his desk, so gently that she suspected he would have preferred to crush it.

  “Trouble?” asked Miguel, alert and interested.

  “No one’s hurt, are they?” asked Natividad, giving her twin a repressive look.

  Grayson sighed. “The black dog they were bringing to Dimilioc seems to have slipped their control. He’s loose in Newport.”

  “Oh, not good,” said Miguel. “How’d he get away?”

  “He injured DeAnn,” Grayson said, his tone very flat. “Thaddeus let him go in order to care for her.”

  “Oh,” said Miguel, subdued, and looked at Natividad. “Then—”

  “Out of the question,” the Dimilioc Master growled.

  “That Christopher Toland, he’s too young to face a master vampire. A bunch of kids and that stray? There’s no way. Whoever goes, they’re going to need a Pure woman, or it will be like fighting blindfolded. I don’t have to go all the way to El Paso, you know. I can just go part of the way! I promise, I can still make simple, ordinary aparatos: a trouvez, a maraña—there’s nothing strange about those when I make them—”

  “Out of the question,” the Dimilioc Master repeated, this time with black dog thunder underlying his words.

  Natividad wanted to argue, but she could see there was no point. All those young black dogs in El Paso might get killed, because she wasn’t able to help them. Her own cousin, whom she had never even met. That was so unfair.

  And Ezekiel would be in danger, too, when he went south. Ezekiel, and whomever Grayson sent with him—not Thaddeus, not if DeAnn was hurt. Maybe Grayson would send Ezekiel alone after all. He might die. He really might. Not even Ezekiel ought to face a master vampire with no backup but a handful of inexperienced black dog youngsters

  But Grayson wouldn’t let her help.

  She hated that. She really, really hated it. But she didn’t know what she could do to make him see she was right.

  -7-

  Justin had had way too much time to think, over the past couple of days.

  Sure, he’d crashed hard that first day. He didn’t even remember any dreams from that part. Not even any nightmares, though he thought he was pretty well entitled to a few nightmares. It might have helped that he’d been so dead tired at first, and that by the time he’d started to recover, Natividad had also woken up for a couple minutes, so everyone was pretty sure she was going to be all right. Justin had been surprised by the intensity of his own relief at that news. He barely knew the girl, but it was as though in the back of his mind he already thought of her as . . . something. Kind of a symbol of Dimilioc, or a good luck charm, or a little sister. Or maybe all three at the same time.

  Not much like Keziah, that was for sure. It would have been easy to picture the two girls as different species, never mind just different kinds of people. He couldn’t quite decide whether he ought to be grateful that Keziah now seemed to be staying out of his way. Far out of his way. Or . . . not that far, actually. Visualizing the house, estimating its basic dimensions, he idly calculated the maximum distance she could be from this particular location, given a straightforward Cartesian volume . . . not very far, actually. Not even in a really big house like this one. But was that too far or not far enough?

  The problem was, Keziah scared him . . . but not really. Maybe after she’d had time to get used to the idea of him even existing, maybe after just the thought of him didn’t set her on edge, maybe he could actually get to know her.

  People did tone it down a notch, usually, around him. People always had. He could see, looking back, once Natividad had explained what the Pure were supposed to do. Or be. Whatever.

  All that fuss about school bullying, online bullying, he’d always thought that must be exaggerated. Now he could see he might have been . . . living in a bubble, in a way. That was an uncomfortable thought. Was it really possible he’d been carrying a bubble with him, big enough that other people fell into it, too? A let’s-be-a-little-bit-nicer bubble that toned down the antagonism between jocks and geeks, that nudged the popular girls to be a little kinder to the shy girls?

  Had his mother carried a bubble like that around with her?

  Looking back on his life, their lives, Justin almost thought that maybe she had. If any of that were true, then the whole neighborhood must really miss her. That was . . . right, actually. They should miss her.

  But if the Pure carried bubbles of niceness around with them, what would that imply about the way the world really was? Strange, uncomfortable thought, that he might not ever have lived in exactly the same world everyone else occupied.

  Though . . . did anyone really live in the same world? He was already sure that black dogs didn’t live in exactly the same world as ordinary people. Their world was more violent and dangerous and . . . brutal. Dark and sharp-edged, like their shadows. No wonder they wanted to keep the Pure close.

  Although Keziah didn’t seem to want that. Justin still wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen if a black dog was determined to be furious, like Keziah. But in time, maybe he—

  It was disturbing to catch himself thinking things like that. It happened all the time. He’d think: Maybe Keziah and I—

  Just as though he had decided to stay. Just as though that was a done deal. That made him angry, and it scared him. It damn well was not settled, no matter what everyone else might think. Only already, after just a couple of days, Justin was finding it too easy to stop thinking about getting away, stop arguing, just let himself sink into Dimilioc and disappear. That maybe he could leave everything behind, his whole life. Why not? After all, he didn’t much want it back anyway—

  Then he’d catch himself up and think, What the hell is this? Stockholm syndrome or what? This wasn’t him. He wasn’t such a coward that he’d just crawl into a hole and pull it in after him and write off the whole rest of his life just because his damned kidnappers seemed to expect it.

  Except if he never found out for sure whether Natividad had really recovered . . . if he never found out anything else about magic and black dogs and everything . . . if he never actually got another chance to figure Keziah out . . . it wasn’t just the impossibility of getting away, or just cowardice, or just weird psychological syndromes, that kept him here.

  At least, he didn’t think it was. Usually he didn’t think it was.

  He’d met several ordinary people now: Liz and Glenna and a brawny girl taller than he was who said wryly, I’m Brittney. I know, right? Call me Brit. She’d looked him up and down and then told him he should come to town for the spring football game and he could be on the Red team, which was short a couple players.

  Flattering as this was, Justin had the idea anyone over a hundred pounds would probably be welcome on the team. The girls were part of the housekeeping staff that came up to Dimilioc twice a week to clean and do some of the cooking. There was something enormously reassuring about a staff that came up twice a week and then went home again, about girls who let you help vacuum and wanted you to be on their football teams. Justin had to remind himself he didn’t necessarily want to be reassured. It was hard to remember. That was part of the creeping willingn
ess to go along with things, just let things happen. He hated it. Or he thought he ought to hate it.

  Testing the limits of the figurative chain Grayson had him on, he had asked the Master whether he could to go to the game.

  Perhaps next month, Grayson had answered testily, barely glancing up from some sort of list he was going over. If Ethan is here to escort you.

  That made things clear. It sure did. Not in a good way.

  So Justin was glad when Natividad woke up all the way and turned out to be just fine. He really was. He was glad to see Miguel so much less worried. But watching the twins together, watching how comfortable they were with Dimilioc and with each other and how settled they each were in their own lives . . . that was hard. He couldn’t bear how unsettled they made him feel.

  He wasn’t a prisoner, supposedly. So Miguel claimed. Even though he wasn’t allowed to go to a damn football game in a tiny town just a few miles away. The difference between not allowed to leave the house and prisoner seemed a little subtle.

  For such a huge house, it could seem amazingly claustrophobic.

  He would go for a walk, he decided. He could just go for a walk. See if anyone stopped him. Though if he disobeyed Grayson’s orders and got caught, he might find himself a prisoner for real. He wondered if this house had a dungeon tucked away down some narrow, slippery flight of stairs that he hadn’t yet found. It seemed like the sort of house that might.

  On the other hand, everyone said he had a lot of leeway. Because he was Pure. In that case, he could probably get away with going for a walk. Finding that out . . . that would be useful information, too. And if it made Grayson Lanning angry . . . hell, that was fair. Justin was mad enough already himself. He might has well share it around.

  With no more hesitation, Justin turned and walked down the hall toward the stairs.

  He found the outside door with only one wrong turn, which he figured out as soon as he got a good look out a hall window and was able to see a little more of the layout of the house. He went down the stairs slowly. The house really was enormous. But it echoed with emptiness.