Oh. It was a stake. A stake, of course. He wanted to laugh, but he also wanted to throw up. The wooden stakes they used in stupid movies were nothing like this filigreed rod of light and shadow and caged corruption. This thing was just . . . really disturbing.
“There,” said Natividad, sitting back on her heels. “That should work.” Then she looked up at Ezekiel again and her eyes widened. “Madre de dios! What happened?”
“What do you think?” snapped Ezekiel, his voice tight and exhausted. “It got a piece of my shadow.”
“Can it do that?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. But clearly it did.”
“But,” said Natividad, and stopped. She looked at Ezekiel and then, helplessly, at her knife. At the thing which had been her knife. She said, “I guess I kind of did the same thing. Only I used . . . I think I used Alejandro’s shadow. The part of it . . . the part of it I still held.” She looked back up at Ezekiel, her eyes flinching. “What will that do to him? If I put a little bit of his shadow in that?”
Ezekiel only shook his head.
“Not very nice,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t . . . it won’t hurt him, I don’t think it will, he’s not even here, that was just a little bit of his shadow and he’s so far away . . .”
“I think we are in far more danger than your brother, no matter what is happening there,” Keziah snapped. “Did it work? Because that other mandala, I think it will not hold very much longer. I think it will break very soon.”
Natividad started to reach out toward the thing she had made, but drew her hand back without touching it. She said in the same small voice, “It’s an aparato para parar las sombra y luz de enlace a través de magica del vampiro. If I did it right. It’s meant to bind light and shadow. It’s got my magic in it, and Alejandro’s magic, and that awful vampire magic that Ezekiel brought me just now.”
“Does it?” said Ezekiel, his tone very neutral.
Natividad said apologetically, “I mean, I could see what the vampire did to you, sort of, so I kind of did that. Not really the same way.” She shivered. “I wouldn’t want to do it the same way. No wonder, no wonder they call them vampiros, only I thought it was just blood and, and the corruption, but I didn’t know it could take part of your, your—” she waved her hand helplessly, unable to put what she meant into words.
“Shadow,” muttered Ezekiel.
Natividad shook her head. “Self,” she said. “Soul. It’s awful, but I kind of see what it did, and if I did it right—” she looked at her knife again, though she still didn’t touch it. “It’s meant to, to, I don’t know, pull vampire magic out of the world? Make a hole in the vampire, in what it is, so vampire magic will pour away, into the fell dark—sort of. I think! If I did it right! But I don’t know what else it might do. To, to any black dogs whose shadow is caught up in it. Or in the vampire.” She looked helplessly at Ezekiel.
He started to lever himself to his feet. “We’ll find out.”
“Do not be so stupid! You cannot even shift!” snapped Keziah. She turned around at last, beautiful and fierce and bitter. She took Justin’s breath away. “I will have to take that weapon. Who else? I will take it. I will kill the vampire—if it works as Natividad says.” She glared at Natividad.
Justin thought it was a pity to spike all this heroism, but he half raised a hand and said, interrupting both Natividad’s protest and Ezekiel’s sharp response, “How exactly is anyone going to get close to the vampire carrying that thing? Because it seems to me any vampire, especially one that’s into stealing other peoples’ shadows or souls or magic or whatever, has got to be able to tell that that—” he pointed at it— “is serious bad news with an extra helping of bad news on the side, and in case you’ve all forgotten? There’s a lot of monsters out there and only a few of us in here. Even if we were all in tip-top shape, these would not look like good odds to your friendly neighborhood bookie.”
There was a pause. Natividad said at last, “It’s not a black dog thing at all, I was going to say so, but maybe I can make—” and then a silent, motionless boom shook the world, and she bent forward, her hands over her eyes. Justin staggered and grabbed the back of the couch to keep from falling. He felt exactly like Natividad looked: like someone had driven an intangible but gigantic icepick into his skull. It didn’t hurt—it didn’t exactly hurt—but every nerve in his body seemed to try to tighten up into a ball all at the same time.
“Second mandala’s failed,” Ezekiel said. He was on his feet, looking like death served cold. The bones of his face and shoulders and arms distorted and thickened as he reached laboriously for a change that should have been effortless.
Justin dropped to one knee and slapped his palm against the floor, thinking hard about circles that kept out everything, but though he felt magic tremble and stretch through him, it shattered before it could settle—shattered and melted, it felt just like that, as though he’d tried to throw a handful of snowflakes through a furnace—
“You have to be on the ground,” Natividad said faintly. Her hands were still pressed over her face, her voice stifled. “Mandalas have to be anchored in the earth.”
“Now you mention this?” snapped Justin, though he knew that was completely unfair.
“Sí, yes, sorry,” Natividad muttered. Lowering her hands, she added, a little more strongly, “But there are still the wards on the house. We have a few minutes. A few minutes, at least.”
“Yet it is two hours or more until sunrise,” Keziah said tightly, and reached for the weapon Natividad had made. Ezekiel knocked her hand away from it, and she snarled at him, a thin, savage sound. “Fool!”
“You’re the one fit to fight,” Ezekiel snarled, cold as ice, his words slurred in a mouth no longer quite human. “So stay free to fight.”
“No,” snapped Keziah, and reached for the weapon a second time.
Leaping up, Justin caught her arm. She didn’t hit him—he thought she might, but she didn’t. Nor did she jerk her wrist out of his grip, though he could feel the strength of her arm and knew she could effortlessly break his hold. He met her dark-amber eyes, remembered he wasn’t supposed to do that, and did it anyway. He said, knowing it was true, “I don’t think you’ve understood—I’m going to have to do it. No black dog can touch it.”
“You?” said Keziah, and at the same time Natividad said urgently, “Not you, Justin!”
Justin let Keziah go as she pulled away, but shook his head. “Natividad, you’re a lot more valuable than I am. You know things; you can do things. I—what do I know? I didn’t even know you have to anchor a mandala into the earth! But at least I know that thing you made won’t steal my soul if I touch it.” He glanced at it, sidelong, and flinched. “It is pretty awful, though.”
“Vampire magic just is,” Natividad said. “But, Justin—”
“You will not get anywhere near that vampire,” Ezekiel said flatly. “Justin is perfectly correct.” He added to Justin, “Keziah and I will ensure you succeed in reaching it. It will despise you because you are Pure, but it may see your Pure magic and miss seeing that—” he jerked his hand at the weapon— “until it is too late.” He turned again to Natividad, “I assume that thing is simple to use?”
Justin could see Natividad hesitate and knew she was tempted to claim that using her stake against that vampire would require some complex ritual of Pure magic that only she knew. He said, “Don’t try it. I won’t believe it.”
Natividad looked at him and said at last, reluctantly, “No, you just shove it in. Anywhere. Either end first.”
“It’s not very pointy.”
“It doesn’t have to be. It’s magic. But I—”
“No,” snapped Ezekiel and Justin at once, and traded a glance. “Right,” Justin said. He took a deep breath, stepped forward, and touched two fingertips to the stake. It felt . . . horrible. Cold and . . . just horrible. The tactile awareness of it crept up his whole arm. His muscles twitched with a visceral desire to jerk
away. He wanted to snatch his hand back, pick the thing up with tongs, and bury it six feet deep in hallowed ground. Maybe chop it up first, into about a thousand little tiny pieces. And burn the pieces. Bury the ashes . . .
The house shook. No. Not the house. The protective wards drawn upon the house’s stone and wood and glass. Those wards were shaking, a soundless trembling that set Justin’s teeth on edge. He’d drawn half those crosses himself. He suspected he knew whose part of the wards would crumble first, under this assault.
Clenching his teeth, he picked up the magic-wrapped rod. Stake. It was a stake, for all it wasn’t pointy. You killed vampires with a stake through the heart. Or, apparently, just by shoving it in anywhere, if you had the right kind of stake. Like this one, which felt as though it were trying to crawl across his skin. He shuddered, and turned to look at Ezekiel, and the door blew in, shattering, and Keziah picked him up and hurtled with him through the window, smashing the window frame and half the wall as she crashed through it. Justin held the stake in both hands, as far from her as he could, fighting his instinct to drop it and cling to her shaggy pelt
Keziah landed heavily, cushioning his fall with her powerful body, set him on his feet, and whirled to snarl upward at the house with furious loathing. Ezekiel crashed down beside her, not quite in his black dog form, but nearly. Natividad clung to him, her arms wrapped around his neck. Her eyes, wide with terror, met Justin’s. She called out to him, but Justin couldn’t hear her: above them, the vampire shrieked, and shrieked again, the sound cutting thin and awful through the night, and he couldn’t hear anything else. He flinched back toward Keziah’s massive form, though he was still careful to keep the stake away from her. She snarled again, hot and powerful at his back, and he wondered how he could ever have thought black dogs were frightening.
The vampire dropped down from the shattered window, half falling and half climbing, moving not like a person or even a primate, but head down and scuttering, like a movie special effect. Justin hardly believed in it, though it was coming right toward them. Keziah shoved him hard and he fell, sprawling, unable to catch himself because he couldn’t, wouldn’t let go of the stake. He half saw Keziah hurl herself toward an opponent bigger and more terrible that she was, one of the zombie black dogs—he was tangentially aware of the rapid, sidelong approach of blood kin, at least a dozen, gaunt and savage, red eyes gleaming. He couldn’t see Ezekiel anywhere, but heard a guttural roar somewhere not far away and guessed Ezekiel would not be able to help, not right away. And the vampire was on the ground, now—skittering forward with abrupt little dashes punctuated by strange reasonless pauses. He thought he could see the shreds of Ezekiel’s shadow tangled in its own magic, which was not dense and heavy like a black dog’s shadow, but made of a horrible clotted emptiness, a kind of violent absence of self or soul.
Natividad dropped to her knees and swept her hands across the grass of the yard, dug her fingers into the grass and earth, cried out words in sharp, rapid Spanish, and threw a double handful of soil at the closest of the blood kin. They sheered away, hissing. Even the vampire hesitated, unless that was just one of its inexplicable pauses.
Justin thought he could make a mandala now, only if he did that, how would the vampire get close to him? He wanted more than anything for it to get farther away, not closer but he was the one with the stake. He got to his feet. His legs felt shaky; his knees wanted to fold up; he wanted to fall to the ground and sob like a baby. More than that, he wanted to throw the stake away, or at least hold it out at arm’s length, as far from his body as he could. Instead he held it down, hiding it along his leg.
Behind him, Keziah screamed. Justin didn’t look. He took a step toward the vampire.
Which darted suddenly sideways and forward and right past him, avoiding him by so much he couldn’t even lunge after it with the stake. It was so fast, horribly fast, and it snatched at Natividad with its horrible yellow claws, hissing and sidling as she threw soil at it, but unlike the blood kin, it wasn’t stopping, it wasn’t going to stop, it was going to shake off her magic and touch her. Justin couldn’t bear to think of its corruption touching her but he knew he couldn’t reach her in time to stop it.
The vampire closed its hands around her neck and arm and picked her up, its jaws gaping wide, long fangs gleaming like obsidian in its mouth. It did not bite her, though, but only dragged her away—away from the fight, away from her friends, away from allies and friends and family and everyone who loved her. Justin could see how hopelessly fast the vampire was; he could measure its strength from the way it jerked Natividad along. He looked desperately for Ezekiel, but Ezekiel, still only partly in black dog form, was battling two of the zombie black dogs, and obviously losing.
Justin shouted, wordlessly, and threw the stake—not at the vampire, exactly, but to Natividad, who put out both hands and caught it without even looking, and shut her eyes, and drove the stake into its chest.
The earth and air cracked open with a sound like the world breaking.
Behind and below the vampire, a narrow, endless abyss of empty darkness gaped. A sharp, cold wind sighed out of the emptiness—not really a wind, for it had neither force nor motion, but it was like a wind.
The vampire crouched, half turning, its crimson eyes mad with hatred and loss. But it did not let go of Natividad, even when it crumbled to dust and blew away, into the abyss. Its horrible magic, empty and bodiless, crumbled with it, but the shreds of dense black dog shadow it had stolen were caught by the wind and carried with it into the dark. Natividad cried out and reached after those tatters of shadow—they tangled around her hands. The stake fell, cracking and shattering before it hit the ground, all its light and shadow unraveling. At the last moment Justin thought Natividad tried to pull back, but the wind pressed her forward and the light poured past her and the shadows dragged at her, and she fell somehow into and through the narrow crack that slashed through the world, and disappeared.
-16-
Alejandro was always aware of the pain, of the burn of silver poisoning across his back and around his wrists, of pain that followed him when he shifted and clung to him no matter which form he took. The silver bullet had scored a thin line across his left side, directly across his left shoulder blade, then lodged itself beneath his right shoulder blade. At least one of his ribs had been broken, but worse, the silver had not been removed immediately. That was the cause of this lingering weakness and pain. Alejandro had never been seriously hurt before—at least, never by silver, which dealt wounds that resisted healing. He discovered he hated being injured, and suddenly respected the endurance of ordinary human people, who always had to bear their own injuries. He found that the pain was always in the forefront of his thoughts, distracting and infuriating. Though he tried and tried to reach after his awareness of his sister, the pain got in the way. He was almost sure she was still alive, but that was all.
At least by this time—nearing dawn at last—he could shift. He could stand, and move, and perhaps even fight, if he had no other choice. He knew the necessity might arise. They all knew that. Everyone knew that the Black Wolf of Russia would come here, if she had not been killed or captured. And no one thought she had been killed or captured. That would be too convenient.
Before Alejandro had been able to manage the cambio de cuerpo on his own, Grayson had forced him into black dog form and then back into human shape. Alejandro had not even known it was possible to do that. Roll another black dog’s shadow down and under: that, yes. But to first drag his shadow up and then force it down again: he had not known that was possible. Over and over, the Master had done that. It had not been pleasant. But it was a way of forcing healing, when the injury was too serious for the shadow to carry it away all at once. And any silver-poisoned wound was serious.
There was still this lingering pain and weakness. Alejandro knew it would pass, eventually. But too slowly, far too slowly, for him to go after Natividad and save her from the vampires and blood kin in the south. He ha
d no choice but to leave that to Ezekiel. Nor would he soon be equal to battle with the Russian black dogs, if Zinaida Kologrivova did indeed lead her people against Dimilioc. He knew that, too, and hated his own weakness with bitter fury.
He still could hardly believe his sister had set herself against a vampire, though he had known she was afraid. Even knowing her fear, he had not expected the terrible messages that had been waiting for them at the house, once they finally reached Dimilioc. Plain and brief and terrifying. Natividad had tried so hard to call for help, and no one had heard her, and he had not been able to do anything to help her. And now it was too late.
Alejandro had been so furious with Ezekiel for leaving. He was so glad now that the verdugo had gone after her. Only he did not know whether Ezekiel had got to Natividad in time to help. Except that she was still alive.
But even Ezekiel himself might not be able to protect Natividad against a master vampire. Not well enough to get her away. No doubt it had made many blood kin. Maybe even one or two lesser vampires. Master vampires did not always make lesser vampires, which might someday become rivals or enemies, but they always made blood kin, slaves to protect them during the day and serve them during the night. How many blood kin could Ezekiel alone kill, never mind the vampire itself? Maybe Keziah was also there. But Keziah disliked Natividad. Alejandro did not trust her.
But there was nothing he could do. Whatever was happening in the south would happen. None of them could do anything to help. They could do nothing but wait to see who survived.
If anyone survived.
Pure Magic (Black Dog Book 3) Page 31
