Alejandro had crouched low, readying himself to lunge for the nearest of the enemy black dogs. He was still snarling, a vicious thread of sound that was strangely high-pitched and almost inaudible… In fact, it was not a snarl at all, nor any sound a black dog might produce. Nor was it actually coming from Alejandro. This was a new sound, one which had started as a thin, bodiless whine, and was now rapidly turning into a bright hum scattered with piercing phrases of music. This was not the same music that had wrapped Vonhausel up in fog, though. This was something else, something related but not the same… Natividad looked from side to side, searching for its source. The hum was darkening, thickening, swallowing up the musical phrases until those were wholly subsumed, like the sparks of a fire extinguished by too great a darkness. All the black dogs had drawn back, which was good, but Natividad could not feel relief at this apparent reprieve. She felt it wasn’t a reprieve at all.
The dark hum coalesced above Vonhausel’s body, like a swarm of insubstantial black bees made out of shadows and smoke, scattered with crimson glints like reflected fire and silver flickers like flashes of moonlit silver. This strange cloud settled on the body, and sank in, and disappeared. The hum ceased. The silence that followed was deeply shocking, though Natividad could not have explained why. Alejandro shifted to put his bulk between her and the body, and she put an arm across his shoulders both to brace herself and to hold him back.
Vonhausel took a breath and closed his eyes. The silver net of her aparato reappeared, seeming almost to rise out of his body – it was really rising out of his shadow, Natividad realized. It clung to him for another moment, then slid aside as he took another breath. He opened his eyes again, and then moved to get up. He made it to one knee first and stayed there, head down, panting, as her aparato condensed rapidly back into a misty object of light and silver – dimmer than it had been, and smaller, and mottled here and there by indistinct blotches like bruises. It had been corrupted by its fall into the fell dark, that was obvious, but it hadn’t been destroyed. Natividad wondered if she dared run out and get it back – it might still be useful; her mandala had still been useful, and that had been corrupted, too – but then Vonhausel shook his head and got to his feet, and the opportunity was lost.
Vonhausel stood for a long moment, breathing slowly and deeply, his head down. Though he ought to have looked terribly vulnerable, somehow he did not. If Alejandro tried to attack him, Natividad knew she would try her best to stop him. She was terrified of what might happen if her brother attacked Vonhausel, and she didn’t even know why.
Then Vonhausel took one more deep breath, lifted his head, and looked at Natividad. Right at her. And his eyes were exactly the same as they’d been before he’d died – before she’d killed him. Exactly the same. She saw now that the smoky appearance of Vonhausel’s eyes was because he was dead, he was dead, she hadn’t killed him at all because he’d been dead long before she’d ever come here with her special weapon. What was strange was that this realization was kind of a relief even though it also terrified her: she hadn’t killed him, she hadn’t killed anybody. She was glad of that almost as much as she was sorry for it, and the confusion of feeling that resulted made her shudder. She closed her hand tightly on the shaggy pelt of Alejandro’s neck and told herself she shivered only because of the cold.
Vonhausel smiled, a tight smile that suggested she had hurt him somehow even though she hadn’t killed him. Killed him more. She thought she could see, now that she looked for it, that his skin had the kind of waxy appearance that she’d seen in dead people. But he wasn’t like those awful dead things he’d made out of Zachariah and Harrison. Nothing was left, as far as she could tell, of the people they’d been: they were pure shadow now. But Vonhausel… His shadow might have come back out of the fell dark to reclaim his body, but his soul had come with it. She was sure this was true.
“Stupid little girl,” Vonhausel said to her. He ignored Alejandro contemptuously, speaking only to Natividad. He shifted a foot as though to kick at her aparato, but then did not touch it after all. Maybe he was nervous about touching it, though as far as she could see he had no reason to be. She wished she had it back in her hands, but she didn’t know what in the world she could do with it anyway.
Vonhausel smiled at her. “Stupid little Pure bitch. Nothing can kill me. If you’d been paying attention, you might have realized that before using some ridiculous Pure weapon made of light and good intentions. Don’t you know what they say about good intentions?”