Black Dog(19)

Since no one had told him what he should do, Alejandro walked the little distance necessary to stand before Grayson’s chair. He glanced up briefly into the Master’s face, then dropped his gaze and stood still.

“Your father raised you,” Grayson said without any preliminary. “Edward Toland. He trained you. Taught you control. You lived as a family – you and your brother and your sister and your mother. And your father. All in the same house. Is that right? Don’t lie to me.”

“Yes, sir,” Alejandro answered. “No, sir. That is the truth.”

“Edward showed you how to deal with stray black dogs and those damned blood kin… Did he teach you to kill them or avoid them?”

“Both, sir. Either. Whatever would be safest for our family.”

“So, he taught you to keep quiet,” Grayson Lanning said thoughtfully. It was not a question. “To live quietly and hunt quietly.” He paused, then said at last, without any change in his deep, calm voice, “I remember your father. We were not precisely contemporaries; I was a boy when he left Dimilioc. But I remember him quite clearly. Edward was a strong man. A decent man. I’ll tell you a truth: I much preferred him to Vonhausel. Thos did not agree, of course.”

Ezekiel said lightly, “Thos was always partial to black wolves of Gehorsam descent. No accounting for taste.”

Alejandro said nothing. He had no idea what response either of them expected.

“Your father had a great deal of control,” the Master continued after a moment. He had paid no attention to Ezekiel’s interruption at all.

Alejandro said, “Papá had to keep tight control over his shadow,” but then stopped abruptly. His grief made it impossible to keep his tone steady.

“Not merely because he feared enemies. Because you and he would have killed everyone in your neighborhood. Is that what you mean?”

Alejandro nodded.

Zachariah Korte said quietly, “Your mother helped with that, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Of course,” said Grayson. “Only a Pure woman could have given your father both a black dog son and a Pure daughter. How fortunate for your family she should have produced a Pure daughter. I imagine that by the time you had grown into a dangerous little puppy, your sister was already old enough to help your control. Is that so?”

Alejandro controlled a strong impulse to ask Grayson what he would do with Natividad. He longed to beg for reassurance. He knew it was a stupid impulse, which made very little difference. He said, “Yes, sir,” and waited again.

“And your control when you do not have your sister by your side? I wonder about that.” Grayson glanced at Ezekiel, who straightened.

Alejandro turned to face the verdugo. He knew very well what was coming. His father had trained him for this. He had expected it. But he found his stomach clenching with fear anyway. He had trusted his father. It was not the same, to face Ezekiel Korte. He did not know how far Ezekiel would go. How far Grayson Lanning would let him go.

Ezekiel came around the chair and walked forward. He was not smiling now. His shadow did not rise, but it gathered around him, dense and heavy. As soon as Ezekiel was close enough, without any apparent emotion, he hit Alejandro across the face. It was an open-handed blow, but hard enough that Alejandro staggered. And it was fast.

Alejandro found himself struggling, to his shame, with a sudden visceral fear of the Dimilioc executioner. The shame was worse because of the verdugo’s youth. He knew he did not have Papá’s strength, he knew he might never be so strong, but he had never expected to be afraid of a black dog his own age. But he was afraid of Ezekiel Korte, with a primitive instinct-driven terror that made everything hard – holding to any shred of control was abruptly ten times more difficult than it should have been. He knew Ezekiel could see that fear in him and he hated that, but even so it was all he could do, when the verdugo hit him a second time, to take the blow without attempting to attack in turn.

He could feel his shadow rise through him, trying to take on shape and substance, trying to force him into the cambio de cuerpo. He knew his face was distorting, his hands, his feet; his shoulders hunched as his body tried to twist itself into the shape that ought to cast its shadow. A thin snarl crept from his throat. It was not a human sound. Alejandro set his teeth against that sound, forcing his shadow down, holding grimly onto human form. He took a third blow, this one to the stomach – if Ezekiel had been using claws, that blow would have had his guts out, and for an instant he was not sure the Dimilioc verdugo had not done it. His terror gave the executioner’s shadow sharp teeth, not only metaphorically.