No one stopped her, maybe because they were distracted by Alejandro or maybe just because they didn’t care what she did. She might not remember everything the way she should, but she was Mamá’s daughter, and she bent and drew a pentagram right in the ash with the tip of the aparato. It felt strange in her hands; she thought she could feel each of the mottled dark patches that had altered it, patches of rough warmth scattered across its cold smoothness. But she poured its remaining power into her pentagram anyway because the moonlight and starlight were so weak, here where the fires of the fell dark were so close to the ordinary world.
The pentagram came alight as she drew it. Natividad could feel the power in it before she even sent the light pressing outward against the surrounding darkness. The power felt strange, as the power of her mandala had felt strange: not weaker, but different. Its light was strange, too, dabbed and mottled with patches of shadow.
She almost thought she did remember Mamá making a pentagram sort of like this, or, well, not a pentagram. A spiral or a helix, something to draw the eyes of enemies inward. Mamá would have made a spiral to keep Vonhausel’s attention focused on her and Papá, away from her children. But what else… What else might Mamá have meant her spiral to collect? Black dog shadows? Natividad almost thought Mamá had done something… Papá had helped her. Right at the last. When fighting wasn’t enough, when a black dog couldn’t do anything, Papá had done something else, or he’d tried to. Mamá had done something, something with Pure magic and Papá’s shadow… Fire, fire in the dark, and the earth cracking open, and then blood, so much blood…
Alejandro crowded close to Natividad’s pentagram, jostling her, putting the mottled light at his back. He snarled his defiance at them all, and Natividad lost the memory she had almost captured, and was glad. She felt sick with dread and grief.
Vonhausel shook his head, like a chiding adult faced with annoying children. He didn’t seem afraid of the moonlight or the pentagram or the aparato Natividad had made or anything. He didn’t even bother to slide into his black dog form, but walked forward in his human shape. The dull crimson glow from the smoldering fires and the broken earth surrounded him, clung to him, filled his eyes, and dripped from his fingers when he reached out toward Natividad. She cringed. She couldn’t help it. Vonhausel was going to reach right through her pentagram, she knew it: nothing she’d done would even begin to slow him down. Alejandro was crouched, preparing to lunge at him, and he would kill her brother and then he’d do whatever he wanted to her. He’d said she would be useful to him…
Then a long, resonant howl that was almost a roar echoed and re-echoed through the night, and all of Vonhausel’s black dogs lifted their heads, listening. Natividad, listening also, couldn’t believe what she was sure she heard. But the howl echoed again, undeniable, until she had to believe it. Grayson Lanning and all the Dimilioc wolves had come after all.
16
Alejandro was astonished by the arrival of the Dimilioc wolves. He didn’t understand it, but he didn’t wait for the Dimilioc wolves to close with the black dogs of the shadow pack, either. He hurled himself straight at Vonhausel, who in his arrogance was still in his vulnerable human form. But Vonhausel only gave way before his first raking blow, and though Alejandro’s claws ripped right across his belly, his shadow roiled around him and his wounds closed immediately. Vonhausel did not have to use the cambio de cuerpo to get his shadow to carry away his injuries; his shadow could just take them away as they were dealt. Alejandro had never fought anything that could not be wounded. It was like fighting a vampire, only worse. Even the strongest of the vampires and their blood kin had been vulnerable to a black dog’s determined attack.
Nor was Vonhausel going to stop at merely showing off his control over his shadow: he was now allowing himself to slide into the cambio after all. His change was almost as swift and effortless as Ezekiel’s, and from the vicious ferocity of his smile as he changed, he intended to enjoy the blood and death of the Dimilioc wolves, and then enjoy putting their shadows back in their dead bodies. That terrible smile lingered longest, because Vonhausel’s head and face changed last. It was utterly grotesque, that human head and face, changing but still recognizable, on the brutal black dog body. He lunged forward even before he was all the way changed, his jaw lengthening into a muzzle as he leaped, jet-black fangs glinting in the ruddy light of the low-smoldering fires. Alejandro leaped away.