Natividad did. Given… Given everything, that saying seemed entirely too applicable. She said nothing.
Vonhausel looked slowly around at the crowd of black dogs. The dead ones stood stolidly and looked back at him without fear, but the ordinary black dogs cowered low and turned their heads aside and tucked their tails… They were terrified of him, which Natividad hadn’t exactly understood before. Now she did. She was sure they were afraid he would kill them and then bring their shadows back to possess their bodies. No wonder he could control them so much better than he should have been able to.
Turning back to Natividad, Vonhausel said, “Now, I believe…”
Alejandro shifted away from her a step and straightened away from his black dog form, his body seeming partly to shrink and partly to dissolve into smoke as he slid into the change. It was not as smooth as he usually managed. He was afraid, that was why, Natividad thought. Fear made a black dog angry, and anger made the black-dog-to-human change harder. And the full moon made it harder, too. But at last Alejandro dragged his human body back out of the darkness and the smoke and stood there in human form, facing Vonhausel, still between him and Natividad. He said, his voice low and husky with the change, “I’ll join you. I want that.”
Natividad stared at him in astonishment. Then she blinked, trying to get control of her face, though she couldn’t decide whether it was better for Vonhausel to know she was surprised or to believe she’d seen that coming.
Alejandro didn’t look at her. All his attention was on Vonhausel. He jerked his head northward, toward Dimilioc. “They can’t win. Anybody can see it. Esos dearriba estan locos, completamente locos – they’re all crazy up there. You’re going to win and they’re going to lose. Only I figure they can lose hard or easy. I’ll tell you all about the house, where everybody sleeps, where you’re likely to find Grayson Lanning, where you’ll find Ezekiel Korte. He’s been recently injured – a silver injury, not fully healed: I can tell you exactly what that injury is.”
“Ah, treason, sweet as blood in the mouth,” said Vonhausel. He was frowning, but he was also listening. “Is that what you want?”
Alejandro angled his head to show the undead black dog his throat. “Maybe you’ve meant to go in, kill them all, or maybe you’ve meant to leave them there, because what difference does it make, now, they’re nothing, you can ignore them and hunt someplace else. But I can make it easy for you to destroy them all. The blood of your enemies is the sweetest blood.” He glanced over toward the unnaturally still black dogs that had been Zachariah and Harrison. “You can do that to all of them. I’ll do everything I can to help you–”
“In the hope I won’t do it to you, pup?” Vonhausel was beginning to sound amused again.
Alejandro reached back without seeming to look, catching Natividad’s arm and pulling her forward, steadying her with a hand under her elbow, though he still didn’t look at her. “To keep her safe,” he said to Vonhausel.
The black dog leader smiled slowly. “Your sister, is it? Are you another of Concepción’s get? Or is this your pretty little bitch? Black dogs should stay with their own kind. Humans are only prey, and the Pure are only human.”
“She’s my sister. The Dimilioc wolves, they want to make her a puta. It’s a whitebread operation up there: they say they value the Pure, but they don’t mean Mexican girls, you know? Lanning promises – they’re worth that!” He spat on the pavement, then went on with savage passion, “No one will ever be part of Dimilioc unless their ancestors came right off the Mayflower, and that’s the truth. And now it’s obvious Dimilioc is going to lose anyway. The Lanning Master…” He spat again. “Aquél pedazo de basura! He doesn’t have a clue.”
“And so you came here to me.” Vonhausel seemed to find this, too, amusing.
“You’re clever, everyone says, and it’s obvious, anyway. I want to be on the winning side – and I want my sister safe.”
Vonhausel laughed. His laugh somehow managed to be even more horrible than his smile, which Natividad wouldn’t have thought possible until she heard it. She tried not to look at him. She focused on her brother instead. He sounded so sincere. Was it possible he could make Vonhausel actually believe all that nonsense?
“You offer me Dimilioc for your sister’s safety,” said Vonhausel to Alejandro. It wasn’t a question, but a statement, and there was something nasty about the way he said it. Then it got worse, because he went on, “But I don’t care about Dimilioc. Grayson Lanning is nothing. His executioner is less than nothing. The long history of Dimilioc, that I value, but…” and he leaned forward, holding out a hand, which he closed slowly into a fist, “I will begin a new history.”