A Feral Darkness

by Doranna Durgin

  In its prime it had been an active, low-key boarding barn. And if she fixed a few important things—like this gate from one section of the horse runs to another—she might yet get a few co-op boarders in here. A few more dollars of income, though she'd likely eat it all with upkeep.

  And in the meantime, worried about Elizabeth, she found it mightily satisfying to drill and hammer and bang things around with vigor, and then step back to find she had managed to construct something in the process.

  The gate wasn't a thing of beauty. Weathered old boards, horse-nibbled and greyed, clashed with the stout new crosspieces. But it hung true enough to open and close easily, and the new latch snicked shut with a satisfying firmness. She'd add a chain; that would discourage horses who were clever with their tongues. She stood back, admired it, and looked around for something else into which she could pound nails.

  And discovered that there, between the big double-sliding doors leading into the grain and tack area, stood her brother. Silhouetted against the early evening light, his shape—a little taller than her, arms a little akimbo, left shoulder slightly lower than the right, receding temples in his bushy hair evident even in outline from this angle—was too familiar to be obscured by such a thing as lack of three-dimensional detail.

  "Russell," she said simply, a single word that encompassed both surprise and welcome, and hid the sigh she felt inside. Russell was not there to support her in her anger and sadness. He might think he was, but that's not the way it would turn out.

  "Need some help?" he asked.

  "I'm done, I guess." Fix-it puttering was a solitary chore, she'd always felt. She bent at the waist, limber enough to gather the tools without crouching down—but not quite endowed with enough hands.

  "Here," he said, and came to take the drill and drill bit case from her so she could deal with the rest. "Sorry you didn't hear me drive up. Some fierce little watch dog you've got out there." Not, he meant, with that lightly sarcastic tone. "Odd little fellow. One of your strays?"

  "Yes," she said, no longer rising to a jibe she might have lunged for as a teen. "He's a good dog."

  "I figured as much. The kids are playing with him. Last I saw they'd taken him out to the old paddock to toss sticks for him."

  Brenna stashed the tools in the old tack room and latched the door. "They won't have much luck. He's pretty clueless. He's good for a tussle with kids, though. They amuse him. Is Marie here, too?" She hoped. At five and seven, the boys were just a little too young to be left alone off home turf, and a little too wild to trust—they'd likely pull down one of the old fences and proudly present the results to her while Russell beamed.

  "Nope," Russell said. "She's not feeling well tonight."

  Wanted a well-deserved break from the boys, Brenna thought. Russell loved them dearly, but he counted his contribution to parenting as the sperm he'd donated and the hours he put into his flooring store to support them. She took them through the gate she'd just reinstalled, pausing to watch it click into place—yesss—and led Russell out the back way to discover that Druid had already learned an important lesson—Russell's boys did not equal Emily's girls. He was willing to romp, but he shadowed rather than interacted with them. That suited Brenna. She leaned against her stack of old, greyed hay and watched.

  "Sorry about your friend," Russell said, shifting awkwardly and finally putting out an arm to lean against the hay.

  "Thanks," Brenna said. "I guess it's made the news, then?" They'd wanted to stick a microphone in Brenna's face at the store, to ask questions like what's it like to know it could have been you? but Roger had forbidden it and for once she was just as glad for his Pets!-protective management.

  They hadn't bothered her here. She guessed it wasn't the same without the store as background.

  "Oh, yeah." Russell nodded, distracted, as he discovered her shooting targets jammed between the hay bales and pulled them out. "What's this?"

  As if it weren't perfectly obvious, and as if he weren't really asking for an explanation—justification—of why she was target shooting.

  "Targets," she said simply, taking them from him and putting them back where they'd been. "They stay dry in there."

  "You know, you can always stay with Marie and me if you get worried about being out here alone."

  That startled her into giving him a surprised look. "Worried? Are you here because Mom told you I was worried?"

  "I'm here," he said, "because Mom is worried. About the dog packs, and she told me you'd lost your hound in some weird way."

  "No one ever saw that dog pack," Brenna said. "A lot of people assumed it. Could have been a particularly bad-acting coyote. You know they're in this area now." Words for Russell. She knew better than to believe either explanation.

  "A coyote? Kill a dog the size of that red hound you had?" Russell gave her an annoyed big-brother look. "I haven't been living in town long enough for you to pull that one on me, Brenna."

  She shrugged, rubbing her hands up and down her goose-bumping arms. Working, she'd been warm enough. Standing in the shadow of the barn, she wasn't.

  "The point is, she's beginning to wonder if it was a mistake to let you have this place."

  A prickle of alarm made the goose-bumps bigger. "I've kept it up just fine. It's what I was doing when you got here, in case you didn't notice."

  "That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about you out here alone all the time."

  "I was alone when we decided I'd stay in the house," Brenna said, keeping her tone even only with the greatest of determination. I don't need this. I don't need this now. Sensitive brother Russell, coming to stomp all over her when she just needed someone to accept her and feel with her. Masera wouldn't stand for this shit.

  That last thought startled her enough that she almost didn't hear Russell say, "We didn't think you'd stay alone." But nothing could have blocked out the implications of that one, as belatedly as they came to her.

  "What? You thought I'd find myself a man? Settle down like you did and start a family? Give up work and stay at home to raise kids? That's bullshit, Russell."

  "Shhh," he said, giving the boys a hasty look and evidently deciding they were out of earshot. Still, he kept his voice lowered. "It's not bullshit, Brenna. It's my life. It's a good life."

  "That's not your life, it's Marie's life. And you don't know anything about it!"

  The boys stopped running at that, looked back at them with questioning faces. Redheads, both of them, with profuse freckles and Marie's fair skin, and no more understanding of their Aunt Brenna than their father had. Russell gestured them out and they ran to the hand pump by the water trough, where they discovered the well in perfect working order. Brenna doubted that Marie would share their delight when they slopped into the house.

  Then again, Marie had resigned herself to kids will be kids long ago and truly seemed happy with it. Brenna could understand that, even envy it a little. She only wished Marie and Russell were capable of doing the same for her. "Listen, Russell," she said. "I don't live my life to suit you. I don't even live it to suit Mom. I'm sorry if that's some big disappointment to you both, but you might try being glad that there's someone who is willing to live here and keep the place up—keep it in the family."

  "Quit thinking only of yourself," Russell said, once again managing to startle her. "It's Mom who has to worry about you. And me."

  "But I'm fine—"

  "And I'm telling you, we've been talking. The deed was never transferred to your name, you know. Mom might decide to sell the place."

  Fury booted aside any common sense she might have had. "And whose idea was this, Russell? Hers, or yours? Has someone made you an offer on this place, is that it?"

  Parker, ohmygod, Rob Parker.

  He'd said he had ways. He'd apparently meant it. She knew her brother too well to think this was coming from nowhere, or from any sudden concern about her life. And at that she did lower her voice, though she couldn't stop it from shaking, and she
couldn't keep from closing on him, forcing him to back up as she pointed him through the run-in opening. "Get out, Russell. Get out now. No one's selling anything, you can count on that. This is my home."

  He looked like he wanted to protest, his mouth open, his head primed to shake at her.

  He didn't. He called the boys, and though they gave her innocent and heartbreakingly cheerful farewells, she could only bring herself to return a brief wave. Druid stood by her side, his happy tail slowly lowering as he looked up at her and divined her mood.

  "Hwoo?" he said, in one of his weird little whining questions. Brenna knelt to rub his ears and kiss the neat white forehead splot that ended his broad blaze.

  "I wish you really could understand," she said. "You'd probably have the answers."

  She'd call her mother. Russell was slick, was the consummate salesman with years of experience in deals and dealing, but he probably hadn't told Rhona about the buyer. Probably didn't know it was the same person who'd trashed the land while Brenna's father lay dying, probably hadn't bothered to find out that Parker, behind his good old farmboy talk and his charming smile and his disarming conservative-looking mustache, was police blotter material.

  Beyond police blotter material.

  Her mother would listen to that, would hear it over Russell's talk of money and his patronizing for Brenna's own good words.

  She had to.

  Druid sighed, a mighty sigh of the sort that only a world-weary dog can make, and Brenna kissed his head again, a loud exaggerated smack of a kiss. "There," she said. "All better."

  As if.

  "Brenna?"

  Emily? Inside the barn? Brenna called back to her and jogged inside, finding herself surprised and thrown off guard once more. As much as Brenna tromped a path through the modest fallow field and the small stand of trees between her place and the upscale housing development that held Emily's home, Emily never came the opposite way. Sometimes she showed up in the family van, the girls in tow and begging to explore Brenna's crammed attic while Emily and Brenna shared a soda and news, but never on foot. Rarely alone.

  "Everything all right?" Brenna asked, her eyes adjusting to the dim interior and not able to see much besides blob of Emily and the particularly pink appliqued vest she wore. Brenna suspected Emily would consider herself undressed if she left the house without at least one homemade item of apparel on her body.

  "I should be asking you," Emily said. "I saw Russell leaving. As if you needed him on top of what's happened to Elizabeth."

  "Yes," Brenna said, leaning on the repaired gate. "He was a treasure, as usual."

  Emily looked away; Brenna could see her well enough, now, to note the strained look around her eyes, the tension at the corners of her mouth. She said, "What?"

  "What do you mean, what?"

  "Oh, don't even try. Here you are in the middle of my barn, come over on foot without the girls. And with that look on your face. As if you could hide that look from me."

  Emily gave her a small smile. A very small smile. She offered a sheaf of rolled-up papers she'd been holding quietly at her side. "I brought these," she said. "More information on rabies, for one. Thought you might like to have it, though from what I hear...I'm not sure it'll apply to what's going on now. And there's some stuff on Mars Nodens. I didn't look at it; I'm not sure how carefully the girls screened it, to tell you the truth."

  "It's probably not quite in their interest range," Brenna said, blowing her bangs out of her eyes and reaching for the roll of paper, squashing it flat and stuffing it in her back pocket beside her braid. "I'm not sure it'll be in my interest range."

  "They did ask why you wanted it," Emily admitted. "I told them you were a unique and strange individual, and we should treasure you as such."

  Brenna laughed out loud. "Thank you so much." She dropped one hand to the latch, clicking it open, easing the gate back, and snicking it closed again, waiting for what Emily really had to say.

  "There," Emily added, looking meaningfully at the gate. "You prove my point entirely."

  "I heed my inner child," Brenna said with a theatrical haughtiness. "And you still haven't answered my question."

  Emily sighed. Now they'd get to it, Brenna knew, and she was right. "Well, three things," Emily said. "One is, can you come over for a cookout this weekend, and two is...we'd rather you didn't bring Druid around just now." She smiled apologetically, but it looked a little sad, as if the request were really an odd, sad focal point to everything that had happened in Brenna's life...and that now seemed to be spreading to encompass the rest of the community.

  "That's what you're worried about?" Brenna said, shocked; inside she felt it, a rejection that didn't make a whit of practical sense but existed all the same. "I suppose I can't blame you for that. I hope you've told them—" for they both knew this was for the girls—"to keep their hands off stray dogs, too."

  Emily scoffed affectionately. "You're a fine one to be saying that, Brenna Lynn Fallon." And Druid whined, as if he agreed, and they both laughed, though Emily's was strained.

  "Don't worry about it," Brenna said. "I'll crate him up. I won't be able to stay as long, but you can bet I'll stay long enough to eat plenty of your food."

  "Of that I have no doubt." Emily smiled, a real smile this time. "Thanks for understanding. We know Druid's okay, but—"

  "Hey, until someone figures out what's going on, none of them is okay," Brenna said. "You know, Roger doesn't know it yet, but I'm not going to book any known biters any more. It's one thing to risk a roughed-up knuckle or two..."

  "You shouldn't be grooming at all," Emily said. "It doesn't take a mauling like poor Elizabeth got. It only takes a scratch, and if the animal's got it and has been licking his paws—"

  "If people were dropping right and left, I wouldn't be grooming," Brenna said. "But it's not like I didn't take the plunge and get inoculated this year. And if I'm not working, I'm not getting paid. And right now..." She looked away, to where the driveway was if she'd had X-ray vision and could look right through the barn. To where her oh-so-solicitous brother had recently been. "Right now, I can't afford to ask favors of family."

  "What is he up to?" Emily asked, crossing her arms over her chest in a most suspicious posture and giving Brenna a fess up look.

  Brenna only laughed. "You're not my mother," she said. "Save that face for the girls. And whatever that third thing is that you're holding on to, give it up."

  "Ah," Emily said. "The really awkward one."

  Brenna made an impatient come-hither gesture. "Just give."

  "It's that fellow from the store. The one I've seen talking to you? The really—okay, I'm a married woman. I won't go there. But you know how Sam hears things..."

  "As if I could not know," Brenna said. But she didn't like where this one was going.

  "Well, he's heard things, all right. And he won't tell me what, because it's just mutterings, expressions, and reactions more than anything. But it could be that this guy's getting in with a bad crowd, Brenna. So just...be careful."

  Brenna hunted down her annoyance and decided it wasn't because of the warning, but what she'd been warned about. "He works at the store," she said, and the annoyance slipped out. "That's all."

  "That's all I thought." Emily gave her a puzzled look, a silent what else?. "But if I worked at the same store with him—well, forewarned is fore-armed, don't you think?"

  Brenna sighed, already sorry for snapping, or coming close to it, and trying to look at Masera from Emily's eyes—Emily, who would be astonished if Brenna said he's only spent one night here with the wicked impulse she barely suppressed. "Yeah. You're right. Best to know." Even if she'd already known. The clues couldn't be hitting her any harder, one after the other. "So I'll see you this weekend, and I'll leave Druid here. I even promise not to lick the girls myself."

  "Oh, now that does put my mind at ease," Emily said as she headed for the door. "It truly does."

  Brenna grinned at the empty space she'd le
ft behind, and yelled after Emily, "Oh, and hey—now that you've figured out how to get here, maybe you should come over more often!"

  "Shut up!" Emily shouted back at her, words flung over her shoulder from the sound of it. Brenna looked at Druid and decided he was in complete agreement with her own perspective, but her smile faded quickly enough.

  "Nuadha's Silver Druid," she said. "Kind of ironic, isn't it, Mister Dog with the Strange Rabies Tag? I get the feeling you're probably the only dog around that is safe for the girls to play with. Not that I understand one damn bit of it."

  He cocked his head at her. Clueless. Of course. She might as well be making strange flying saucer noises through her lips. Which, on second thought, she decided to do, and found that it not only made him cock his head from side to side and back again, but his big ears somehow perked so intently that they looked bigger than ever. "Okay," she said. "That earns you dinner. Let's go."

  That, he understood. Five minutes later she was dumping food into his dish and scraping Spaghetti-Os out of a can for herself, not particularly interested in anything that took longer than three minutes to prepare no matter how wholesome it was. She slid the bowl into the microwave as she called her mother and listened to the phone ring, only belatedly realizing it was bingo night at Sunset Village. Right. Rhona and Ada cleaning up in the dining hall, faster on the draw than half the people there. When the machine clicked on, she left only a brief message, and then poured herself some soda. Druid was done eating by then, and he came into the kitchen through the half-open door from the dog room and looked at her quite expectantly, as though he hadn't been fed for weeks and she had the only food in the house. Brenna looked back at him.

  He belched resoundingly.

  "You know," she said, smirking, "that really does ruin the hungry-dog effect. Back to the drawing board for you. Better yet," she added, pouring herself a soda over lots of ice, "come into the den with me. We can watch the news. Maybe they'll even say something about the rude Pets! manager who won't talk to them."