“Ah!” said Ezekiel. “Your ulterior motive appears! An interrogation over the eggs and butter! Nearly seven years ago. I was almost fourteen.”
“Fourteen!” Natividad looked at him quickly. Ezekiel was leaning against the refrigerator, looking relaxed and amused and not at all offended. He was watching her steadily. Though his tone was light, there was no mockery in his eyes. She was sure he was telling the truth. It was hard to believe. “You were younger than I am!” she protested.
“There wasn’t a black wolf in Dimilioc who could take me, one on one.” Ezekiel’s voice was cool, completely matter-of-fact. “I knew that. I enjoyed it. I believe it amused Thos to have a child for his executioner, but I certainly didn’t object. I liked having the older black wolves look aside from me.”
Black dogs did like people to be afraid of them. Natividad stirred the dough together into a shaggy mass and scraped it out onto the floured counter. She didn’t say anything.
“I expect Thos also liked the idea of training a black wolf pup to be exactly the executioner he wished. He’d been Dimilioc’s executioner himself, once. He had strong ideas about the role, which he naturally passed on to me.”
“Oh,” said Natividad. She kneaded the bread dough, forcefully.
“He also undoubtedly wanted to instill the habit of obedience in a pup he thought might otherwise eventually be a rival. I imagine he also thought it desirable to separate me from other potential rivals. The Dimilioc executioner is everyone’s worst nightmare, and certainly no one’s friend.” Ezekiel paused and then added, “I didn’t understand any of this at the time, of course.”
“Oh,” said Natividad again.
“It didn’t work out very well for him in the end,” Ezekiel said, his tone bland. “Working out your frustrations, are you?”
Natividad blinked down at the bread dough, which had become nicely silky and elastic. “It’s very therapeutic,” she said austerely. “You should try it sometime. Much better than killing people.”
Ezekiel grinned, that flashing grin that was so unlike the smile he wore when he was threatening people. “Speak for yourself.” Then the grin disappeared. He pushed himself away from the refrigerator, took a step toward her. Natividad stared at him, taken by surprise. He seemed suddenly both taller and older. He said, the mockery gone from his voice, “I won’t hurt you. You know that. I won’t hurt your brother, either, if I can help it. I won’t kill him. Even if he pushes me. Which I think he will, eventually.”
“He thinks he has to… to protect me,” Natividad explained, feeling awkward and suddenly breathless. She wanted to take a step back, but she couldn’t because that would be retreating and you never retreated from black dogs. If you did, they might chase you. Of course, she sort of had the idea Ezekiel would chase her no matter what she did. She held her hands up, powdery with flour, to warn him back.
“Someone needs to protect you. Little kitten, little Pure girl, surrounded by all the big bad Dimilioc wolves.” Ezekiel reached out with slow deliberation to touch her cheek, ignoring the floury palm she put on his chest to keep him at a distance. His chest was hard with muscle under Natividad’s hand. She swallowed.
He said softly, his tone deliberately, mockingly, husky, “You had better depend on me to protect you, little kitten. Otherwise you’ll be shooting people with your mama’s gun and your brother’s silver ammunition, and we can’t have that.”
Natividad laughed. She couldn’t help it.
There was a stifled sound from the doorway, and they both turned.
Alejandro stood there, staring at them both. Natividad twitched guiltily and stepped hastily backward, though she wasn’t guilty of anything, so it wasn’t fair. Ezekiel gave a little mocking tilt of his head and smiled his slight, dangerous smile. He didn’t step back at all.
Alejandro stared at Ezekiel. After that first searing look, he didn’t glance again at Natividad.
“Well?” Ezekiel asked him softly. “There’s still plenty of time left in the day, if you want to fight me.”
Alejandro glared at him.
“I won’t hurt you too badly. Nothing your shadow can’t carry away for you.”
Alejandro took a long, slow breath. He let it out. Then he turned his head aside and lowered his gaze. Natividad felt the effort of that submissive gesture in her own body. She swallowed, wanting to apologize, although she had nothing to apologize for and anyway she didn’t dare say a word.
“It’s not your job to protect her anymore,” Ezekiel said, still very softly. There was no mockery in his tone at all, now. “When you put her into Grayson’s hands, you gave that up. It’s not your job, it’s not your right, and you can’t protect her from me anyway. Nor does she need your protection.” He paused, then said with sudden exasperation, “You’re not a child and I don’t think you’re a fool. What did you think would happen when you brought her to Dimilioc?”
Alejandro said nothing.
“It’s not the same when it’s for real,” Natividad said, not very coherently.
“It’s always for real,” Ezekiel said. “All the time.” He paused, then jerked his head sharply toward the door. “You can apologize to your sister later. Get out.” When Alejandro did not move, he smiled and added, his light voice flicking like a whip, “I really don’t advise that. I really don’t. Get out.”
Alejandro took a stiff step back toward the door. Another. He darted one swift unreadable look at Natividad and was gone.
Ezekiel looked away, the tension running out of him like water. Natividad hadn’t even been aware he was tense, until she saw that. He slanted a quick, sideways look at her face. “I’ll apologize now,” he said. “I don’t, often, so I hope you appreciate it. I’m sorry. I should have known your brother was there.”
Natividad wondered if she should feel flattered because she’d distracted him. She actually sort of did. She also felt embarrassed. She said, “It wasn’t your fault. Or his.”
“Certainly not yours,” Ezekiel said. His voice was once more light, unconcerned, amused. Now that he’d recovered his balance, he looked at her directly. “I should leave you alone. You’ll be alright?”
Natividad realized he was actually worried that Alejandro might be angry enough to hit her or something. She said emphatically, “You don’t have to worry about that. But… you don’t have to leave. I mean, if you want a cinnamon roll.”
There was a short pause. Then Ezekiel said, “I love cinnamon rolls,” and pulled a kitchen stool around so he could watch her put the dough in a bowl to rise and start getting out the things to make the icing.
6
Embarrassment and anger and shame were not good companions for the journey from Dimilioc to Chicago. Alejandro knew it. He met Ezekiel at dawn, just as ordered, and pretended hard to a cool indifference, as though that awkward encounter in the kitchen had never happened. Avoiding the subject felt like cowardice. But he was sure that bringing it up would be worse.
They drove through Lewis and then past Brighton while it was still dark, and boarded Dimilioc’s little plane at Newport while the clouds above were still pink and gold with the dawn. Alejandro was embarrassed again because he had not guessed that Dimilioc owned its own planes. They were small planes, but even so Alejandro revised his estimate of Dimilioc’s wealth upward.
Ezekiel flew the plane. Of course.
Despite his youth, the Dimilioc verdugo flew exactly the way Alejandro would have expected: with disdainful competence. He barely seemed to pay any attention to the instruments on the flight deck, but somehow he always seemed to correct for any errant gust of wind almost before it ever touched the plane.
Despite everything, Alejandro discovered that he loved flying. He loved the speed of it, the edge of danger, the roar of the motor and behind that the half-heard sound of the rushing wind. He loved the long rolling view of the world below and the towering clouds that turned into fog when they flew into them. He thought this was something he loved, something clean that his black d
og did not care about at all, something his shadow did not touch. He wished Miguel and Natividad could be here. Someday they must certainly fly. Except that Natividad would probably love it so much she would insist on flying lessons and her own plane. Alejandro smiled at the thought. That was exactly what she would want.
“Like it, do you? Want to learn to fly?” There was an edge of mockery to the question, but Ezekiel’s tone was not actually hostile.
This seemed a peace offering, or at least an offer of civility. Alejandro kept his own tone polite. “I was thinking that it may be a good thing Natividad never realized how much fun she could have if she badgered a crop duster into giving her lessons.”
Ezekiel tilted his head. “She’d like flying, would she? I’ll have to teach her.”
That thought made Alejandro flinch. Natividad would want Ezekiel to teach her to fly. Alejandro had not intended to throw his sister back into Ezekiel’s company. He said, “Natividad–”
“Stop,” said Ezekiel. “Say the wrong thing now, and I promise you, we’ll take this up again later, when I’ve leisure for it.”
Alejandro closed his mouth. Ezekiel’s hands, resting on the controls of the plane, had not tensed. His tone, still light and cool and amused, had not changed. Nevertheless, Alejandro knew that the Dimilioc verdugo meant that threat seriously.
After a while, as though there had been no pause, Ezekiel said, without apparent rancor, “I’ve no intention of hurting her, you know. Now…” and his voice took on a razor edge of threat “whether you believe that or not, shut up about it.”
The dangerous edge in those last words made bright fear run down Alejandro’s spine and set the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. His silence felt like cowardice; it felt like he was abandoning Natividad. But he did not dare defy Ezekiel Korte.
Alejandro was not afraid of Ezekiel because he thought the verdugo would kill him here and now. He was simply afraid of him. He’d thought he’d begun to get over that simple physical fear and now found he had not, and was ashamed that he had not, but the shame made no difference. And he knew that Ezekiel must be aware of all of this.
Ezekiel turned back to the plane’s instruments. “I’ll show you the controls,” he said, his voice rough, but no longer holding that razor sharp threat. “It would be useful if you could fly this thing.”
Alejandro made no attempt to answer, but he paid attention. Even if he hadn’t been interested, he wouldn’t have dared do otherwise.
The plane landed in Chicago almost on time. There was no snow in this city, but everything – the vast lake they had seen from the plane, and the ground, and all the buildings, and the sky above – was gray and unpleasant. The air felt heavier despite the wind, and everything smelled thickly of car exhaust. It was nearly 5 o’clock in the afternoon. In Vermont, it would have been dark. Even here, it would soon be dusk, and the heavy moon would rise for the first night of its full strength. Alejandro thought he could already feel the moon’s tidal pull, for all that the moon itself still lay hidden in the light above.
“Get a map,” Ezekiel said, waving Alejandro toward a kiosk as they made their way out of the airport. “Chicago’s pretty easy to get around in, but get a map anyway. We should have a car waiting for us. They’ll have lost their record of it, I expect, but try not to kill anyone at the rental place no matter how much they deserve it.”
Chicago had tremendously crowded highways looping around in all directions, but Ezekiel only glanced at the map. Though Alejandro held it folded to what he thought was the right page, Ezekiel left him in no doubt about his superfluity.
“Williams lives outside Chicago proper. In fact, he lives, if our information is correct, west and north of a town called Joliet.” Ezekiel took an exit without seeming to pay any attention to it, as though he drove this way all the time and knew exactly where he was going. “This time of day, it’ll take us quite a while just to get out of the city, never mind all the way to the Williams’ place. I want to get back to the airport no later than midnight, so we’ll have to move things along once we get there.”
Alejandro nodded.
“You know what your role is?”
“To do what you tell me, I guess,” Alejandro answered, then flinched, expecting an amused, scornful, “Is that what you guess?”
But Ezekiel said, his tone merely eficiente, “Yes, but not only that. I’ll deal with Williams, but if I have to take him the hard way, you’ll keep his wife safe – keep her from running, stop her from shooting me if she’s had the same bright idea as your brother. You’re used to handling your temper around your sister, your brother. Grayson assumed you can do this. Tell me now if there’s a problem with this assumption.”
A role he could actually play. A useful role. That was both unexpected and welcome. Alejandro said, “No. No problem.”
“Then this should go perfectly smoothly,” said Ezekiel, his tone once more slightly mocking.
Thaddeus Williams and his wife turned out to live way, way out of the city, where the air smelled of turned earth and cows and growing things. Alejandro liked this much better than the bewildering crowded city, though it was a poor area. They found the place eventually: a trailer, not a house. Other trailers and ramshackle houses were scattered back along the road, though none were actually in sight.
The car already parked in front of the trailer was a battered Chevy. Clotheslines stretched between rusty poles, though nothing hung on the lines in the chill damp. Beyond the clotheslines, pieces of broken bricks outlined neat beds within a small garden, bare in this season. Alejandro was surprised by a surge of homesickness. This place only lacked half a dozen gallinas pecking around in the garden to give it very much the feeling of his mother’s village.
He had wondered what they would do if Thaddeus Williams and his wife were not at home. He had not asked only because he was afraid of Ezekiel’s temper if the verdugo did not have a plan for that. But both Thaddeus and his wife were in the trailer: he could smell the ash-and-burnt-clay scent of a black dog, and behind that, the clean, bright scent of a Pure woman.
Ezekiel did not trouble with subtlety. He turned off the SUV’s engine, opened his door, got out, and slammed the door behind him. The sound echoed aggressive as a gunshot in the evening quiet.
Then Ezekiel just leaned against the hood, waiting, his arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted in cool disdain. “Go around the back,” he said to Alejandro, and, when Alejandro did not move quickly enough, snapped, “Go!”
The door of the trailer slammed open and a tall man came out in a rush. Alejandro hadn’t known he’d had an image of Thaddeus Williams in his mind until the real man completely failed to match it. Thaddeus turned out to be black, bald, enormous, and gripping a bright silver-alloy knife almost as big as a sword in one hand. His other hand was a massive paw with needle-sharp black claws; his heavy jaw and shoulders also showed signs of the cambio de cuerpo. That he could change just so far and then hold those changes amazed Alejandro; no wonder Grayson Lanning wanted him for Dimilioc–
“Move!” snapped Ezekiel at Alejandro, straightening, and ordered Thaddeus Williams, “Stop right there.”
Alejandro did not stay to see what Thaddeus would do. He sprinted around the trailer just in time to stop the woman there from getting into a truck. He caught her arm, trying not to grip too hard. She did not scream. She whirled and struck at him with a silver knife, a much shorter and slimmer weapon than her husband’s, but more than sufficient to disable a black dog.
It was exactly what Natividad would have done, so Alejandro had half expected it. But this woman was neither as fast nor as agile as Natividad, and besides that she carried some dark, heavy bundle in the curve of her other arm. He evaded her blow, caught and twisted her wrist to make her drop the knife, and dragged her back away from the truck.
Then the bundle tucked under her other arm squirmed around and slashed at him with a second knife, and Alejandro was forced to let go of the woman and leap backward.
The little boy – five? six? – fought free of his mother’s frantic grip and landed on the dirt in front of Alejandro, snarling. He was already partly into the cambio, his back hunching, his jaw distorting to accommodate fangs, the scent of ash and burning thick around him.
Alejandro’s shadow tried to rise in response. If it did, Alejandro knew, he would kill this little black pup. His black dog longed to tear the boy away from his shadow, rip him apart into bloody, smoking pieces, then turn on his mother – that was just what it wanted. Alejandro shook with the brutal longing.
“You’re used to handling your temper,” Ezekiel had said. “Tell me now if there’s a problem.” And Alejandro had promised him there was no problem. But he had not expected to have a black dog puppy lunging for him, slashing with a little silver knife and snarling. He snarled back at the boy, fighting his shadow and its vicious longing for blood and death.
He backed up, then backed up again, his shadow crowding him, rising, rising. He could feel his hands twisting, claws stretching out of his fingers; he could feel the burning rise through him, trying to pull him into the cambio de cuerpo. He had lost track of the Pure woman – no, there she was, and she had her own knife back in her hand – she was screaming, running toward him, but he could not make out her words. He had lost the precious trick of human language – he was losing himself. Fury and horror mingled, blurring the boundaries between himself and his shadow. He caught the little boy’s wrist to make him drop his knife. His claws scored the boy’s skin, blood beading along the thin wrist. The scent of blood pulled at his shadow, hard.
And, because he could not stop it, he let his black dog rise. But he did not let it come up through him – he would not. He set a determinedly human jaw and refused. He was not his shadow. He would not be. And instead of letting his black dog come out, he cast it forward across the boy’s shadow, smothering the black pup with his greater strength, crushing the boy’s shadow back and down, forcing him into human shape. It was exactly what Grayson Lanning had done to him, twice. He hadn’t thought he understood what the Dimilioc Master had done until he needed to do it himself and found he actually could.
Black Dog Page 14
