Black Dog(119)

It was about ten miles from Dimilioc to Lewis. She remembered that. Sheriff Pearson’s car was much better than the one they had bought with their little store of money, and the wish she had put on the road still held, and so actually it was not that hard to drive. Except for the black dogs, from which she kept trying to flinch, so that again and again she had to stop herself twitching the steering wheel one way or the other. There was no sense in flinching. She knew things would only get worse. More dangerous. Scarier. Knowing this didn’t help. Knowing that everything would be over if she did everything right and if Vonhausel did everything she expected, that helped.

She tried not to let herself think about Vonhausel doing something unexpected instead. She definitely didn’t want to think about what his black dogs might do to her even if she did absolutely everything right. She tried not to think about that. She wouldn’t. She didn’t.

Except sometimes she couldn’t stop her mind from going to Alejandro, to Miguel, about what her brothers would think and feel when they knew what she’d done, where she’d gone. Alejandro would be so angry, so afraid for her. It would be even worse for Miguel. He would blame himself, he would think it was his fault. She hadn’t even left a note to tell him it wasn’t, that this wasn’t something a black dog or an ordinary human could do. Only someone who was Pure. She should have left a note.

She should have left one for Grayson, too. He had tried so hard to protect her. She should have left a note explaining that really the Pure weren’t supposed to be protected. That really they were supposed to protect other people. Mamá had taught her that. Mamá’s whole life had taught her that, and then at the end Natividad hadn’t done anything but hide. This time would be different.

But she hadn’t left any notes for anybody. Now she tried not to think about her brothers at all. Those thoughts were bad ones. They made her feel weak and young and stupid and afraid.

And thinking about Ezekiel was somehow almost worse. She knew he would take her death even harder, if she died. But really he hardly knew her. She told herself so, and tried to believe it. Any Pure girl would suit him, he would find another one to court, he could flatter any Pure girl and make her feel special. It was stupid that knowing that made her want to cry.

She saw the first opening of the road in front of her, a high blackness that spread out above the denser blackness of the trees. She had come to the cleared land that surrounded Lewis. The lower blockier darkness that stood against the sky: that must be the edge of town. The black dogs came up on either side of her, keeping pace with her car. She slowed a little, and a little more, letting them think that she was afraid to arrive where they meant her to go. She did not let herself think, not ever, not for a second, that this was true.

There should have been lights before her, showing where the houses stood and the roads lay. But there were no lights. Not ordinary lights. Only blacker shapes looming closer out of the black night, and a disturbing dull red glow behind the layers of blackness, like coals just before they guttered and dimmed and burned out. That glow did not combat the dark, but somehow made it seem darker than ever. It made the night seem dense, like a black dog’s shadow.

She took her foot off the gas pedal as she passed the first of the empty buildings, allowing the car to coast forward under no power, only its own inertia. The car rolled past the scorched line where she had drawn her mandala. That narrow crack in the earth lay like the mark of a whip across the road. On either side, the snow was trampled and melted to show winter-barren earth that had been torn up in the fighting and then frozen again, jagged and hard as iron.

The red glow was not exactly brighter here, but it was more distinct. The air smelled of ash and burning even through the car’s closed windows; of charred wood and smoke and a deeper, grittier scent, like burned earth and stone. Two of the black dogs ran in front of her car, turning their heads to stare at her, snapping at the air to frighten her. Or maybe that was a kind of black dog laughter. They wanted her to turn and drive into the center of Lewis. She had to remind herself very firmly that she wanted that, too. Now that she was here, this seemed so unbelievable that she half wondered whether she had just dreamed her plan to come here. Maybe she had dreamed this whole unspeakable drive. Maybe she was dreaming now.

But she knew she was not dreaming. She steered cautiously because it was dark and the streets here were filled with chunks of things: broken bricks and shattered stones and pieces of timber; the town’s sole octagonal stop sign that glowed red as blood in her headlights, uprooted like a young tree so that she had to drive across it… Natividad turned carefully around one last corner and found the ruined church before her, dozens of black dogs gathered at the base of the rubble. She took her foot off the gas again, coasting gently to a halt. Nearly all the waiting black dogs turned their broad heads to stare at her. Their lips curled back from shining jet-black fangs in snarls that were also laughter; their eyes flared with all the colors of fire. Some of them were true black dogs, she saw; but some were the smaller moon-bound shifters and others were different again: too quiet and still and just, well, different. She studied those black dogs uneasily, wondering if they could be the kind Miguel had guessed might exist: dead black dogs, possessed now only by their shadows. She stared at the closest of the too-quiet creatures. Was it just her imagination that it seemed to lack something undefinable that any black dog, even a stray lost to bloodlust, ought to possess? An essential humanity, a memory of having been human? She wasn’t sure, but looking at that black dog made her uneasy. She looked away from it, trying to find Malvern Vonhausel instead. He had to be here somewhere, surely.