“Now,” said Grayson Lanning said to him, “let your own shadow rise.”
Alejandro had almost forgotten the Dimilioc Master. His gaze jerked that way, startled, when the Master spoke. He felt the blood rise into his face, and told himself the heat there was anger and not shame. His shadow was ready to be angry. It rose, hot and fast, and the shame fell away. The uncertainty burned like dry grass in a fire as his body molded itself to his shadow. He stretched and yawned, enjoying the deadly, confident strength of the black dog. He stared around the room looking for someone to kill… Grayson Lanning met his eyes with a complete absence of fear that made him pause despite his confidence.
But he thought he could kill Ethan Lanning, perhaps. He was eager to try. He stared at the youngest of the Dimilioc wolves, looking for any sign of fear, of uncertainty. When Ethan met his gaze without showing either, he whined, disappointed – then snarled, a long singing snarl, trying to make the other flinch. He eased forward a pace, flexing a broad foot, thinking about the brutal rake of claws, the spilling blood, the scents of burning and ash and death.
Ezekiel stood up and looked at him, only that, and he stopped, recognizing that the other was stronger. Where Alejandro in his human form might have been angry or frightened or ashamed, his black dog only acknowledged the other’s strength, accepted it, found no urgent reason to challenge it, and turned away from the fight.
He found himself looking again at Grayson Lanning. Grayson looked fearlessly into his fiery eyes and said, “Now put down your shadow, Alejandro, do you hear? Come back up.”
For a long, long moment these words did not make any sense. Alejandro heard the Dimilioc Master, but Grayson might as well have snarled like an animal rather than spoken in any human language. Then the Master patiently repeated, “Come back up,” and suddenly the sounds reordered themselves into understandable speech – into a command.
The black-dog shadow did not want to yield to any command. It recognized Grayson’s strength, but not his authority. Besides, it did not want to subside back into shadow, to give way to the human form – not so soon after rising, not while the night waited outside this house. It stared out the wide window, at the darkness that filled the world. Even if it could not kill any Dimilioc wolf, maybe it could crash through the glass and fall into the night. It could run across the snow, find some living creature with sweet blood to hunt… Run all the way back to that town… A house crowded with ordinary humans would provide an exciting hunt…
This, at least, was a familiar urge. Alejandro blocked it with the forceful skill of long practice. He locked his gaze on Grayson’s, caught at the dim memory of his human body, knocked his black dog off balance while it was momentarily checked by its awareness of the Dimilioc Master’s strength, and struck out of the shadow that enfolded him, back toward his human form, as a swimmer might strike for the surface of a lake far above.
It felt like that, coming out of the shadow, sliding from the black dog back into his human body. Like coming into air when he might have drowned. Like pulling free of gripping hands.
In another way, reclaiming his human body felt like accepting a prison, or like drowning.
It had made him sick, that change, when he was a child – the difference between the shadow and his own body. Eventually he had learned to step from one shape to the other, from one mind to the other, from black dog to human and back again, with reasonable ease. But it was always harder to come back through his shadow than it was to let the shadow rise. He held very still for a long moment, his eyes closed, one hand gripping the back of a chair for balance, waiting for his body and his soul to accept human shape once more.
Then he opened his eyes and looked at Grayson Lanning.
The Master of Dimilioc turned his head to meet the fiery gaze of Ezekiel’s black wolf. “And would you call that control?”
Ezekiel laughed silently, black fangs gleaming, and straightened easily, with flawless control, back into his human form. His smile held no less malice in human form. He said smoothly, looking at Alejandro and not at Grayson, “Who could fail to be impressed?”
Alejandro could not quite keep from flinching, could not quite force himself to meet Ezekiel’s mocking stare. He told himself that was only sensible, that he must be careful, that the moment after the cambio de cuerpo was a dangerous time to meet any black dog’s gaze. That was all true. But he knew that was not why he lowered his gaze.
“Take him down,” ordered Grayson. “Bring the human boy.”
Alejandro wanted to protest, which was stupid. He wanted to ask for reassurance, which was childish. He lowered his eyes and obeyed Ezekiel’s gesture. It was hard to walk past the American, hard to leave the Dimilioc executioner at his back – he did not like to do that even though the rational part of his mind knew it made no difference. His black dog liked it even less. It trembled as the shadow of a leaf might tremble. A dying leaf, as the leaves must come down in the autumn, cuando se caen las hojas, in this land of winter. He told himself that Ezekiel would not see his shadow tremble. But he knew the verdugo would in fact see it. He did not look into the young American’s face. It might have been dangerous to look at him, but that was not why Alejandro avoided his gaze, and he knew Ezekiel would know that also.