Black Dog

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Black dog brothers,” the sheriff guessed.

  “One,” Natividad corrected. “The other is human.” She looked out at the whirling snowflakes. They were coming down even more densely now, and the clouds had thickened so that they still needed their headlights even though it should have been full daylight.

  “I’ll get you back safe,” Sheriff Pearson promised her. He patted the steering wheel. “This girl can go up and over anything that doesn’t need a plow – and we can mount a plow on her, if the snow gets that deep.”

  One plowed snow, like a field in the spring? Natividad tried to visualize this. It was a strange image. It didn’t make sense to cut furrows in the snow, so she supposed he meant something else. Shoving it out of the way, maybe. How deep would snow have to get, before one had to plow it? Natividad had thought that the knee-high snow they’d hiked through on their way to Dimilioc was deep enough. She wondered how deep it could get. Hip high, chest high, head high? Higher? That was hard to imagine, but what if it kept snowing and didn’t stop? Would Ezekiel and Alejandro be able to get back?

  She said impulsively, “Stop, stop for a moment?” And, to Pearson’s startled, wary glance, “It’s nothing, there’s nothing, only stop just for a moment, will you?”

  The sheriff eased off on the gas pedal, letting his big vehicle coast to a halt at the top of a hill. He killed the engine. Silence immediately pressed in around them. It was not a welcoming silence. Natividad peered into the dim light under the trees, barely able to see through the falling snow. She wished the sheriff had silver bullets. She wished she’d thought to stop in her room and get her maraña mágica. A way to confuse the steps of her enemies would be better than nothing – if there were enemies. She was sure there weren’t. She told herself that, very firmly. She said, “Watch the woods, OK? If you see anything, yell, right?”

  “You–”

  “I’ll only be a minute,” Natividad said. She opened her door and slid down into the snow before she could change her mind. It was shockingly cold. She had a hard time remembering between one venture outside and the next how cold it really was here. The air felt like ice in her throat. She ought to have remembered her coat – a lot of good it did her, back in her room – well, the cold was another reason to hurry, if she needed one.

  Stooping, she ran her hand through the snow on the surface of the road. Then, shivering, she knelt, scooped as much snow as possible out of the way, and drew a line on the packed ice below. Another line, parallel to the first. Straight, clean lines of light, showing the way the road ran, reinforcing its road-ness. Roads were for people to come and go. She said, “Que esta carretera escoga a los viajeros.” She drew a pentagram between her two lines, stood up straight, and lifted her hands, palm up, toward the sky. She repeated, only this time in English, “May this road welcome travelers who come with good will in their hearts. May they find their way safely to their journey’s end.” Light, pale and cold, filled her hands. The snow still fell all around, but somehow seemed to blow sideways and away from the road.

  Smiling, Natividad said “Bueno.” She walked back around to the open passenger’s door.

  Sheriff Pearson started the car again. He said softly, fervently, “I swear I’ll do everything I can to get you back to Dimilioc safely, but God, I’m glad you came with me.”

  Natividad was surprised. “You’ve had Pure women work with you before – you’ve had somebody put protection around your homes and along your roads, surely? I mean… you have, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve never seen anyone do what you just did,” Pearson said. He drove on in silence for a few minutes while the snow came down harder and harder, and yet didn’t accumulate on the road before them. At last he added, “It’s why we support Dimilioc – even when a bastard like Thos Korte is Master. We support Dimilioc because it protects people like you.” The sheriff paused, then added more briskly, “Alright: tell me what you can do for Lewis. What do you need from me, from us?” He took out a cell phone and waited expectantly.

  Natividad thought about what she could do. About what she could do even if she didn’t have a lot of time. About really big circles. How would Mamá have done this? She closed her eyes and tried to let the memories come.

  “Pure magic is for defense,” Mamá’s voice said, out of memory. Mamá looked up at her and smiled, patting the ground. Natividad had nodded – she knew that. She had knelt down in the dusty sunlight of the afternoon. The sun-warmed carpet of needles beneath the pines smelled sharp. It was a good smell that mingled with the dusty scent of the hot earth and the tang of wood smoke and the fragrance of the chilies one of the neighbors was smoking over a slow fire: it smelled like home, and peace, and childhood.

  “Pure magic is for defense,” Mamá repeated. “But sometimes it can be an aggressive defense.” She had smiled at Natividad, a warm, amused smile that invited Natividad to share the joke. Natividad had grinned in return, because no one could resist Mamá’s smiles.

  But it hadn’t been a joke after all, and not even an aggressive defense had been enough, in the end. The pines had burned like slender torches, twenty-one columns of flame in a circle around the great oak – demonic fire, that burned black at its heart. The air had smelled of burning and bitter ash – in the distance, someone had been screaming…

  Natividad caught her breath, her heart racing. She had been wrong to try to remember; she realized that now. She was trembling. She couldn’t work good strong magic if she was scared. You had to be brave to work Pure magic – she almost remembered Mamá saying Mi hija valianta, and something about courage and strength, something about Pure magic and light and darkness.

  Only right at the end, everything had failed after all.

  She flinched from the memory and said, very quickly, “I can do defensive things. That’s what Pure magic is for, you know? I can’t make you weapons or anything, but I’ll make you a big mandala, a crossed circle.” She was almost sure she could do it. It would have to be a very big circle. But she thought she could do it. She said, firmly, to keep her voice from shaking, “It’s protection, but kind of an aggressive protection, you know? It shoves bad things out, if you do it right. And stops them coming in, of course. Is that OK?”

  “If it works at all, it’s better than OK.”

  Natividad nodded. Mamá had said – she tried to remember without really remembering – something about anchoring really big mandalas, something about the cross… Oh, yes, of course, the cross. “You have a church in your town, don’t you?” she asked. “A Catholic church?” And, at the sheriff’s surprised nod, “Alright, good. That’s what I’m used to – that’ll help. I think I’ll draw a mandala with your church at the center of the cross, you know? I’ll do the biggest mandala I can, but then anybody who lives outside the edge should maybe come in. But a circle to keep out the fell dark, that would help, don’t you think?”

  “If it would keep out black dogs, it will be a great help,” the sheriff assured her fervently. “I’m sure everyone will be very glad to have you draw your circle anywhere you like. You can draw one big enough to enclose the whole town?”

  “Well, nearly. I think so.” Natividad tried not to doubt it. Doubt wouldn’t help. She said quickly, “I can do it, but it won’t work as well against black dogs as it would against vampires. Nothing will. You know that, right? But it’ll work way better than nothing. Mamá said…” She stopped, took a breath, and said, “I want crosses, too.”

  “Crosses?”

  “Yes, to make into, you know…” She didn’t know the words for what she wanted to say. “Aggressive protection” was about as close as she could come. She wasn’t sure there were English words for what she meant. “Mamá taught me to make, well, these things. Aparatos. Tools, I guess. Things to call light, to catch and trap shadows, you know? So they can anchor the mandala. You know about that?”

  “No,” said the sheriff. “But that sounds fine.”

  Natividad was surprised. What in the world had Dimil
ioc’s own Pure women done to protect people, if not made the same kinds of aparatos Mamá had shown her? She said, “Well, what I want is big wooden crosses to anchor the mandala. Wrapped with silver. You probably have crosses like that left over from the war?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “OK,” said Natividad. “Good. Four crosses. The biggest you have. As tall as I am, if you have any that big. We’ll put them at the compass directions. As exactly as possible, so somebody should figure out where on the circle they should go. The crosses can be plain, but Mamá… Mamá always said it’s better if they have writing on them. ‘Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil’ – things like that, you know? And your priest should renew the blessings on them, that’ll help almost as much as the silver.”

  “Crosses, we’ve got,” repeated the sheriff. He nodded. “A plan for where to put your circle and four big crosses.” He smiled at her. “What else?”

  “…I think that’s all.” Natividad rubbed her face. Had she missed anything obvious? If Mamá was here… She wasn’t. She never would be, never again, never… Natividad was on her own. She turned her face away, squeezed her eyes shut, and thought fiercely about mandalas.

  8

  Lewis was very small. It seemed even smaller than Natividad remembered from their brief pause on the way to Dimilioc, but then they had been too tired and anxious to explore. She looked around as they drove through it now. This town was much more prosperous-looking than Hualahuises, but not very much larger than Potosi. If there were even a hundred families here, that would surprise Natividad.

  There was a tiny brick post office, and an even smaller police station, which looked like somebody’s house and not like a government building at all. She and her brothers had eaten sandwiches at that little place adjacent to the post office. It was a small, shabby diner, only half a dozen tables covered with cheap faded cloths that might once have been yellow, centered with narrow vases holding plastic flowers. But the sandwiches had been good. Also on the main street were a few shops, one with farm equipment and one with coats and sweaters and shoes, old books and children’s toys and little statues in its window, really toda clase de cosas. There was a little grocery store, and a bar that Natividad thought might also be a restaurant. Everything else in sight was a private home, those big American houses, with a lot of space around each as though Americans wanted to pretend they didn’t have neighbors.

  Nearly all the buildings were made of wood, but at the far end of the street, in the center of an open town square, reared a great stone church, far bigger than was reasonable for a town this size. Except, of course, that Lewis was right in Dimilioc’s backyard. No wonder the people who had founded the town here had wanted a big church. A proper Catholic church, too, which was good. Its bell tower was easily the tallest thing in the whole town, and the glass of its windows sparkled blue and red and gold even in the dull light that filtered past the clouds.

  Natividad immediately felt happier, more at home, especially because when she experimentally turned her head to glance at it sideways, she saw that the whole church was immersed in soft light as though illuminated by the glow of the full moon, even though it was daylight and nublado. Overcast. She smiled – then lost the smile, thinking about the Pure woman who must have wrapped those layers of protection around the church. She would be dead now, whoever she had been. The war between black dogs and the blood kin had been terrible for the Pure.

  Sheriff Pearson drove straight past the police station and tucked his big vehicle by the curb in front of the church. It took up enough space for two ordinary cars. He turned off the engine. Immediately the silence of the town seemed to fold itself around them. Natividad realized that she had seen only a few other cars moving on the road, and no one on foot. Was that the snow? Or was everyone so afraid?

  Then someone opened the church door and people flooded out into the town square, young men with shotguns and in their midst a priest, the white collar at his throat a reassurance in any time of trouble. At first it seemed like a crowd, though when Natividad sorted them out, she saw that besides the priest, there were really only three men.

  “Father McClanahan,” Sheriff Pearson said briskly. “He’s worked with the Pure now and then. And my deputies – I only have one, ordinarily, but I thought it just as well to do a little recruiting yesterday. Now I’m glad of it. Shotguns may not be magic, but they slow most things down.” He opened his door and jumped to the street before Natividad could ask him what kind of ammunition those guns were loaded with.

  The priest was a big man with a round, soft face and a rounder, softer body. His thinning hair was reddish, his eyes blue, his nose crooked, his mouth made for smiling. But he wasn’t smiling now. He took Natividad’s hands in his, looked at her with concentrated attention, and said, “Pure, are you, then? Good. That’s good. God knows I spent the night praying Grayson Lanning would send us real help.” Before she could answer, he added to Sheriff Pearson, “How is Cassie?”

  “Fine,” the sheriff said, clearly meaning he didn’t want to talk about it. “Natividad, these men are my deputies – Belliveau, Harris, and Denoux. Well, Denoux? How have things been here? Quiet?”

  The deputy addressed, a stocky man with fair hair and a round face and blue eyes set at a slight slant in his face, shook his head and opened his hands. “Not as quiet as we’d wish, Sheriff. The Stewarts found all their cows slaughtered. Torn up in big chunks, partly eaten, blood everywhere. Not an hour past. They turned around and drove right back here, seeing nothing worse than ravens on the way.”

  “They’re in the rectory now,” Father McClanahan put in. “Thanking God the kids weren’t out making snowmen when the killers came by.”

  Pearson nodded, his mouth tightening.

  “That was never vampire work,” Father McClanahan said to Natividad, a faint question in his tone. “Black dogs, I guess. But we’ve never had trouble with black dogs before…”

  “With Dimilioc right there on your doorstep, I guess not! But you’re going to have trouble now. Until Dimilioc builds back its strength.” Natividad didn’t want to be so blunt, but it was true. She didn’t want to think about what would happen to Lewis if Dimilioc couldn’t build back, if instead it got overrun by Vonhausel’s black dogs.

  “You trust that damned Lanning bastard?” one of the deputies, Belliveau, asked her. His tone was more than a little hostile. He was clearly the oldest of the three, a man with grizzled hair and a hard mouth.

  Natividad tried not to wince visibly. She said quickly, “Some black dogs, you can trust. My Papá, he was a black dog, you know? And my brother, he is, too.” She looked from one deputy to the next and then the next. Their expressions ranged from intent to suspicious, though Denoux did not look actually hostile and Harris, youngest of the three, gave her a swift grin when she met his eyes. She smiled back and said to all three of the men, as firmly as possible, “If you don’t want to run for Newport, you’d better trust Grayson Lanning, and Dimilioc, and me, because if you don’t have us you don’t have anything. Shotguns and prayers are both good, but they’re not going to be enough.”

  “That’s true, by God,” Father McClanahan said. “That’s true, and we know it.” He looked anxiously around at the three deputies, then back at Natividad. “We don’t know you, young lady, but we know what you are. Don’t worry about us.”

  Natividad nodded, grateful for his support. She said, speaking quickly because she hated what she had to say, “Dimilioc beat them once, you know, those other black dogs, but I don’t think they’re giving up, I really don’t. I think they’re going to stay right here and try again, and as long as black dog strays are gathering in the woods around Lewis, you’re all in a whole lot of trouble. You really ought to leave. Newport…” The men were all shaking their heads.

  “This is our home!” Harris said right out, almost as fierce as a territorial black dog. “We didn’t let those damned vampires drive us out, and we won’t run from
black dogs!”

  Belliveau nodded with grim conviction, and Denoux said, “That’s right, miss. That’s how it is.”

  Natividad supposed after the vampire war, these people probably knew their own minds pretty well. She shrugged. “Then at least you’ve got a good church to anchor my circle. I guess you had some trouble with vampires during the war?” This was met by a grim laugh from the oldest man. She nodded. “Then you’ll want to remember, black dogs aren’t vampires. A church, a good solid church with Pure magic all through it, like this one you’ve got…” She nodded to the ornate building with its clean stone and tall bell tower and finished, “No vampire or vampire magic could get into a church like this one. But black dogs aren’t vampires, you know? A church is pretty safe against black dogs, but not all the way safe. So, a protective circle will give you another line of defense. It won’t keep out everything, but it’ll help, and it’ll give you time so you can figure out other things to do.”

  Sheriff Pearson nodded, and when different people started to ask questions or argue or whatever, the sheriff lifted a hand to stop them. Then he nodded again to Natividad. “You’ll draw your circle. We’ll start in fifteen minutes.” Belliveau began to interrupt, but the sheriff stared him down effortlessly. “We’ll move as fast as we can,” he said flatly. “Grayson Lanning didn’t want Miss Toland to leave Dimilioc House. He’s going to come after her soon enough, I figure. We don’t want half a circle.”

  “Damn black dog son of a bitch,” Belliveau muttered.

  “Don’t say that!” Natividad told him instantly. “Really, don’t. Black dogs walk so close to the edge of Hell anyway. Never damn a black dog, it could happen, do you see? And Grayson’s not your enemy.”

  Belliveau looked first taken aback, and then embarrassed. Father McClanahan said, “Good advice for us all, isn’t it?”

  Denoux added to the older deputy, “Don’t be an ass, Frank. You know nobody would be left alive in this town – hell, this county – if it weren’t for Grayson Lanning and Dimilioc.” He gave Natividad a firm nod and added, “We do know who the enemy is, miss – and who it isn’t.”