A Feral Darkness

by Doranna Durgin

  Not that she ever had. Ever.

  In any case, she'd take him into work tomorrow—stealing a few moments with the tub and dryers was a job benefit for any groomer—scrub him up, clean up the tags, and see what she had to work with. Along with a few phone calls to animal control and the local volunteer adoption group, it would probably be enough to have this fellow home by tomorrow night.

  She left the wet collar around his wet neck and pulled out one of the smaller wire crates; a touch too small for him, but for one night he could deal with it. The sharp noise of the shuffled crates put him on edge; his huge ears went from alert to wary as he moved to the far wall, his body hunched and poised for escape—even if there was nowhere to escape to, not this time. Still, no point in making it hard for him; she took the crate into the kitchen and assembled it there, flipping the sides into place with practiced ease and snicking the fasteners into place. She had planned to keep him in the kitchen, anyway—he was too wet to stay out in the cold dog room.

  Unlike Sunny, who had been outside quite long enough to take care of her needs. Sunny whined and moaned and threw herself at the door if Brenna tried to keep her inside on a cold night; the most she could enforce was the compromise of the dog room.

  Brenna tossed a few towels into the bottom of the new crate and went out to reel Sunny in and crate her with an outlandish bone. She'd been intending to use a slip-lead on the Cardi, but when he got a glimpse of the crate, he pushed his way through the partially open door and installed himself in his new quarters.

  Brenna put a hand on her hip and made a face at him. "So you're crate-trained. Show-off." She freed her hair from her sweatshirt and debated whether or not to feed him—he'd need it, but she didn't want to dump food down him when he'd been stressed—and ended up giving him a scant handful of kibble. "Make yourself at home," she told him, deciding she wasn't going to be spooked away from her tub. "I've been waiting for my own bath all day, and I'm about to have it."

  He met her gaze for a few moments, and then deliberately turned to the kibble, nuzzling it first and finally settling in to eat with a cat-like finickiness.

  "I guess I know when I'm dismissed," she said, but couldn't help but linger to watch him, so at home in her own kitchen, the very picture of a content dog. It was almost enough to make her forget the strange circumstances of his arrival.

  But not quite.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  CHAPTER 4

  PERTH

  An Initiation

  Early afternoon found her in the Pets! parking lot—a shared lot in a strip mall that no longer held the sparkle of fresh construction but hadn't quite descended into rattiness. Bills paid, laundry done, and she'd even found some old boards in the barn to lay over the mud hole between the house and the car shed. The Cardigan had jumped readily into her pickup to sit on the towel she'd laid over the seat, happy enough to be in the car, happy enough to keep her company. Happy enough to hop out again, onto the warm asphalt of a spring day that had actually chosen to be sunny.

  Which left Brenna entirely unprepared when he took one look at the Pets! storefront and screamed like a panicked child.

  He tried to bolt, couldn't, and flopped at the end of the leash like an enraged fish out of water, issuing bloodcurdling screams, foaming at the mouth—and whew, there he went—blowing his anal glands on top of it all. Of course, he could hardly pitch a protest of these proportions and not release his anal glands.

  In a way, Brenna supposed she was lucky. They were lucky. He was in an empty parking space, and not in the path of careless parking lot traffic. And unlike the average dog owner, she'd seen this kind of thing before. She'd had dogs squirt out the tub, screaming in outrage; she'd had cats ping-pong across the wall like something out of The Exorcist. She'd dealt with pets in all stages of temper tantrum and protest. So now she held the end of the leash and rolled her eyes and tried to figure out what had set him off while she waited for it to end.

  Not that he hadn't been through enough. The night hadn't been easy on either of them. She had emerged from the tub to find him sleepy and satisfied, and he'd even, after some hesitation, accepted the longe line rigging for his outs before bed. But—dry now, if still muddy—he hadn't been so happy about returning to the crate. Once inside, he had given her a look, a this isn't the way it's supposed to be look, and she'd almost let him out.

  Almost. But a second look at his dry but no less grimy state brought her up short, and she murmured an apology and took herself to bed—not quite as soon as Emily's children despite her intentions, and exhausted to the bone. Maybe she'd even sleep in, despite her body's natural greet-the-dawn inclinations; she'd certainly sleep hard.

  Or maybe not. Maybe it was the dog's fussing that woke her; maybe it was something else. But this time, when she went to the kitchen to check him, she couldn't harden herself to the plea in his eyes. She let him out and grabbed one of the towels; he seemed glad to follow her to the den, and just as glad to settle on the towel she spread before the couch—although he didn't truly relax until she plopped herself down in the worn cushions and drawn the afghan over herself. Eventually, she let one hand fall to rest on his shoulders, and they dozed that way.

  But not for long.

  She didn't know what brought her to alert, just that the dog had sensed it, too. He was a tight bundle of muscles anchored to her touch, and she felt his fear creep right up her arm and curl around her heart. It thumped in her ears; the rest of the house was utter silence, and yet there was a pressure in her head as if a giant black fist squeezed the house and everything in it. And the moments pounded on and she thought surely the fear would ease, her heart would slow, but it never did.

  It stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and only then did she start shaking. Only then did the Cardigan let a whine slip out. She reacted automatically, and for both of them. She forgot about his grubby state and she lifted the afghan in silent invitation. He jumped up without hesitation and snuggled in next to her, water-bottle warm and smelling just like the swampy mud he'd run through. She turned to her side, giving him more room, and then lay awake feeling the rise and fall of his ribs against hers and the puff of his breath on her forearm. Somebody's pet, all right.

  Why did he seem to think he was hers?

  And why, she now wondered grimly in the Pets! parking lot, couldn't he just remember how he had trusted her the night before? And just how damn long could he keep this up, anyway?

  A woman with a Shih-Tsu waddling along beside hesitated for a horrified look at the Cardigan's antics; Brenna gave her a forbearing smile and a little shrug. A few moments after that, the dog eased off into wary cease-fire, panting, attractive little bubbles of spit on his lips.

  "Are we done?" Brenna asked him, as sardonically as she could muster. And with much relief, because someone else was approaching from behind, and she didn't think she could pull off another forbearing smile. "Look, dog, I'm already giving up my day off for you—"

  "Trouble?"

  She didn't recognize the voice, but a glance showed her trouble, all right. The dog must have thought so, too, for as the glazed look left his eyes and he focused on the new arrival, he went into instant action, shrieking and flopping, thirty-five pounds of idiot at the end of the leash. Brenna felt an odd moment of disorientation, a wrongness, and for a moment her world teetered with him. And then she caught herself. She looked at the man—Roger's friend from the day before, with a cell phone in one hand, a gym bag in the other, a pager visible on his belt through the gaping front zipper of his leather jacket, and a reasonably solicitous look on his face.

  "Why, no," she said, with an edge of sarcasm so fine he might or might not perceive it. Trouble? As if it weren't obvious, and as if he'd taken for granted she couldn't handle trouble on her own.

  He shifted the gym bag in his grip, easing back on one leg to narrow his eyes at her—eyes easily as blue as hers, hair easily as dark, glinting with nearly hidden chestnut in the spring sun. And as recognition ca
me into those eyes, the solicitous expression faded. "You're one of the groomers."

  "And you're the man who was talking to Roger yesterday." She didn't mention the look he'd given her; he knew he'd done it. And though she was tempted, it would take her just a little too close to bitchy than she liked.

  And who wouldn't be, with a manic dog jerking her arm around—though he was once again settling—spooky things ruining her sleep, a day off slipping away, and Mr. Scruffy adding his presence on top of it all? It was his hair, she decided—a nice style but ready for a trim—or maybe that he evidently hadn't shaved today.

  And he grinned at her words, but it wasn't in apology, it was...it was...

  She didn't know what it was. Acknowledgment of some sort?

  "Good luck with the dog," he said, clearly abdicating the unspoken offer of help. He nodded at the dog. "Interesting kind of storm for Winnal's day, I suppose." And without explaining either comment, he turned on his heel and left, heading for a pale blue SUV with some sort of logo on its side.

  She didn't have a chance to note just which logo it was, because the instant he moved, the Cardigan blew his wits again, catching her up in another moment of inexplicable wrongness before she recovered. Poofing her bangs out of her eyes with an exaggerated sigh, she decided she wasn't going to gain anything by waiting for the dog to work through whatever kept triggering him and headed for the store, thankful enough that he was a Cardigan instead of a seventy-pound Lab as he flailed along behind her.

  "Oooh, that's special." Elizabeth, the second shift groomer who caught Brenna's early shift on Brenna's off days, leaned over the counter to admire Brenna's acquisition. "What do you call that breed, the Freaking Mudball?" She looked closer, and reconsidered. "Freaking Mudball with Ears."

  But now that they were inside, the dog settled again, clearly exhausted. His tongue hung long from his mouth, and his sturdy front legs spread wide.

  "Doomed Mudball," Brenna pronounced; Elizabeth knew a Cardigan when she saw one. "Is the tub free?"

  "Only if you clean it when you're through with that," Elizabeth said without hesitation. "I'm done with my baths for the day."

  Brenna did an automatic glance-about before saying darkly, "Don't worry. Roger will schedule you something."

  "No way." Elizabeth popped a thin mint into her mouth from her perpetual stash behind the counter—like Brenna, she rarely had time to eat a full lunch. "I've got two minutes to do paperwork while my first finishes drying, and then I'm clipping for the rest of the afternoon."

  "Take a look at the schedule," Brenna said, nodding at the desk. "See that dog he tried to sneak in yesterday? It was a matted Wheaten."

  Elizabeth made a face. She was a tall young woman, very blonde, with generous features that seemed a little too big for her face; when she twisted them up, she got impressive results. Brenna grinned at her and headed for the tub room.

  The Cardigan followed her like a gentleman, tired but amenable. He stood quietly in the tub—three shampooings it took before the mud didn't run off him anymore—he let her blow the water from his coat with the high-velocity dryer, and he went quietly from her arms into a second-tier crate to sit under the stand dryers while she scrubbed his collar and tags and cleaned up the tub area.

  Finally, she turned to the collar, blotting it dry and taking her first good look at the tags. Rabies tag, though it didn't look quite right to her eye and she couldn't say why; it had the vet clinic—her vet clinic—stamped on the tag, along with Rabies I/II and the serial number. But here was something useful—a round ID tag, phone number and all. She took the collar out to the grooming room and dangled it up before Elizabeth, who was trying to get a smooth clipping line on a perpetual motion Springer. Not her strength—Brenna was the one who specialized in the exacting breed clips. But Elizabeth could take any odd hairy breed and turn it cute or handsome, so she didn't begrudge Brenna her breed certifications.

  Brenna grinned at her from behind the collar. "Score!"

  "What's the deal with him, anyway? That's not a breed you see very often."

  "Showed up on my porch last night," Brenna said. "But he ought to be home tonight." She caught up the receiver from the wall phone, stabbed an unlit outgoing line button, and dialed the number, twirling the collar around her finger as the line rang.

  "I'm sorry, but that number is not in this service area. Please check the number you are dialing and try again."

  "Huh," Brenna frowned at the phone, hanging it up with much less flare. She looked at the tag again. "Number doesn't exist, according to them. But who'd keep a tag with the wrong number on it?"

  "What's the address?"

  Brenna shook her head, running her thumb over the engraving. "There isn't one. Just the phone. Dumb."

  "Well, it'd be fine if the phone worked." Elizabeth's voice came out muffled; her head was in the vicinity of the dog's flank as she fought for control over its foot. Giving up, she straightened and glared into the Springer's eye long enough to bellow in a startling loud voice, "Straighten up!"

  Astonished, the dog stood stock still, watching Elizabeth with wide eyes as she quickly went back to work. "Sometimes it gets 'em, sometimes it doesn't," she said. "I give it three feet's worth of time."

  "Mmmm," Brenna said in agreement, staring at the other side of the ID tag. "Champion Nuadha's Silver Druid."

  Elizabeth snorted. "Yeah, there's a name for you. It'd make more sense if he was blue merle. What was that, New-AHD-ja?"

  "NWUH-dja," she said absently, looking at the name and thinking Elizabeth was right. Silver could describe merle, but not a black, white and brown tri-color. Elizabeth grabbed the collar to look with vast uncertainty at the tag.

  "Noowahja?" she said, coming close. "Do you think?"

  Counter-intuitive as the pronunciation was, Brenna didn't doubt it—although as she retrieved the collar, she gave it her own thoughtful look. She ought to doubt it.

  But she didn't.

  So she tucked the question away to think about later, and stuck her head in the tub room to offer an experimental, "Hey, Druid!"

  From behind the wind of the dryers, he got to his feet, cocking his head at her. No mistaking that. "Never mind," she told him, and retreated to the grooming room. "Druid for a call name, that's not too bad. But you'd think anyone with a champion would make it easier to return him!"

  "No kidding. All right, Springer, you've had your last chance," Elizabeth said with some exasperation, as her fourth attempt to trim under the dog's tail was met with a spinning tactic. "At least I got all the feet done," she said, shortening the noose and using a second noose to secure the dog to the front of the grooming elbow. "If these people would just handle their dogs—"

  "Yeah, yeah, you're preaching to the choir here." But Brenna slid Druid's collar down her arm and let it dangle at her elbow while she went to the Springer's head and distracted her with kissy-kissy noises. Fortunately, the dog was fundamentally sweet if uncivilized, and she was glad enough to squint her eyes with happiness at Brenna's attentions—although the tail-wagging didn't necessarily make things much easier for Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth moved on to the dog's head and ears, and Brenna went back to check the Cardigan, flipping off the dryers and rolling them out of the way. She laughed, then, at the somewhat stunned look on his face; with all the dryers on him, his coat was as fly-away as it could get. Except for his haunches, which of course he'd been sitting on.

  She considered the temperature—nice for early March, mid-fifties—and decided against taking him out in it without some spot-drying. A few moments on one of the tables was all it took, and then she stepped back to consider her new charge.

  "He's got a lot more white on him than I thought," Elizabeth admitted, pausing in her own work.

  Or than Brenna had thought. No way, under the mud, to see how broad his blaze was, how symmetrically it encompassed his muzzle, narrowed just enough to miss his eyes, and broadened again at his forehead. Or to see the dark freckles on the b
ridge of his nose, or how richly his brown cheek patches stood out against the black on the rest of his head. He had a white bib and undercarriage, and except for brown points, a white tail tip, and a jagged white collar, the rest of him was sleek black. Black, aside from his ears. The interior of one was stark white; the other light brown. But it was the backs of those huge ears that were so beguiling, mostly white with thick brown freckles. Utterly unexpected, utterly charming.

  And his eyes. Coming from a clean face, they looked softer, more open. Big love-me eyes that followed her every movement.

  He's somebody else's dog.

  Brenna gave a sudden sharp shake of her head. "Gotta figure out who owns him."

  "Yeah," Elizabeth said, her voice knowing. "Better do it fast, too."

  Brenna made a face at her, absently fingering the collar and its tags. No actual license; that didn't surprise her. An ID tag was what got a dog home again, and a license cost money to replace. Sunny didn't carry her license either, just the rabies and ID tags. She looked again at the rabies tag, still not quite sure what wasn't right about it, and the Lakeridge clinic name caught her eye. If the clinic kept track of which dog had what vaccine serial number, then...

  The Cardigan—Ch. Nuadha's Silver Druid with no silver—decided she wasn't going to fuss with him anymore and eased his bottom down on the table. She kept an eye on him as she called the clinic, picking the number out from the emergency list by the phone. "Hi," she said when Donna the receptionist picked up the phone and identified herself. "Listen, I've got a stray here with one of your rabies tags. Can you identify the owner from the number?"

  "If the tag isn't outdated. What's the number?"

  Brenna gave Elizabeth a thumbs-up as the other groomer looked up from her work to eavesdrop, and held the tag so the engraving showed clearly in the light, reading off a five-digit number and waiting expectantly for the sound of Donna's fingers at the keyboard.