Black Dog(127)

“But…” said Alejandro, but then stopped. Natividad knew that this response was not what he had expected and so he floundered, trying to think of a new tactic. She put her hand over his where he held her arm, trying to be supportive, but subtle.

Vonhausel straightened, relaxing. He opened his hand again in a wave that encompassed the dead black dogs that had been Zachariah and Harrison. “I have what I need from Dimilioc: Concepción’s brat, and those. Look at them! They will serve to tear out Dimilioc’s throat. They can’t die – and there are so few true Dimilioc wolves left. Harrison Lanning will hunt his brother, and Zachariah Korte his nephew. It’s a pity I can’t send Benedict Mallory against his brother, but this will do. It will do.” He paused, contemplating this vision with a small smile.

Natividad contemplated it, too. The idea made her want to vomit. She slid a covert glance up at her brother. His grip on her arm tightened until it bruised. She was pretty sure he was as horrified as she, but nothing showed in his expression.

“But if Dimilioc… If you… If they…” Alejandro began, but stopped in confusion.

Natividad said for her brother, “But if you don’t move against Dimilioc yourself, if you just send your… your zombie black dogs against them, what will you be doing?” She was proud that this question came out in an almost steady voice. But she couldn’t keep from flinching when Vonhausel turned his attention to her.

The master of the shadow pack moved his shoulders in a small shrug, glancing around at the broken pavement and up at the ruined church smoldering behind him. “This has been my proving ground. Do you know, I believe there’s no black dog shadow that’s truly beyond reach, if I have the right tools to hand?” He glanced significantly at Natividad. “I hadn’t expected that, but it is so. It opens up so many possibilities.”

He didn’t elaborate, but Alejandro looked down at Natividad. She met his eyes, sure they’d both made the same guess about what Vonhausel meant. If he’d discovered a way to do more than just catch the shadows of fresh-killed black dogs, if he could recall the shadows of the long dead, then everybody had been wrong about a possible war between black dogs and humans. If Vonhausel couldn’t be killed, if his black dogs couldn’t be killed after he brought them back as shadow revenants… maybe he might actually win that war. Or at least, and this was what was important, Vonhausel might really think he could. If he thought that, he wouldn’t hesitate to start it. Could that be possible?

It wasn’t. Surely it wasn’t. Natividad stared at Alejandro, hoping for some sign he didn’t believe it. But her brother’s expression was so carefully blank that to Natividad he looked… not only disturbed, but sick and afraid. Alejandro never looked like that, even when he was sick and afraid.

“You’ll be useful to me,” Vonhausel said to Natividad. “A gift from your mother to me, from beyond the grave. Pure magic to braid into shadow magic: she owes me that for the trouble she caused me. She escaped me, unfortunately, but here you are, in my hand after all! I’m so pleased she taught you how to weave light with shadows before she died.”

Natividad stared at him. He thought she’d made her aparato deliberately to weave together with his shadow? He thought… What did he think? Had Mamá ever let black dog shadows contaminate her work? At the last, had she done something… What had she done? Natividad had tried so hard not to remember, and now she couldn’t, except for brutal flashes of memory: pine trees burning, a towering circle of flames all around her. Oak leaves floating through the air, burning. Screaming, screaming in the dark… Someone had been screaming… Mamá had done something, Papá had fought, but there were too many, he could not reach Mamá, and Mamá had done something… But braiding light with shadows? Natividad couldn’t remember…

Vonhausel added to Alejandro, “You’ll be useful as well, to be sure. Though not in the same way.” He sent a long, measuring look around at his gathered black dogs. All of the living ones crouched down a little lower when their master’s glance fell on them. The undead ones simply stared back with fiery, unreadable eyes. When he lifted a hand, half a dozen of his black dogs began to edge forward.

Alejandro, snarling with incredulous fury, melted into the change, and only then did Natividad understand that Vonhausel meant to kill him right now, right this moment: Vonhausel meant to kill him and then call his shadow back and put it back in the body. He was going to kill Alejandro, but he wasn’t going to leave him dead. She darted forward and sideways and snatched up her aparato from where it had lain, disregarded, since Vonhausel’s return from the fell dark.