Black Dog(41)

Miguel started to answer, but Natividad protested first. “Leave me out of it! And don’t you fight Grayson, Alejandro, you hear me? No matter what! Promise me!” She knew already that he wouldn’t promise, and couldn’t, but she glared at him anyway.

“I didn’t shoot until it was obvious I had to,” Miguel put in. He took a step toward Alejandro. “Don’t be angry, ‘Jandro. I tried not to shoot at all. But there were so many against you. If I hadn’t had the gun–”

“I know!” Alejandro snarled, and stalked away, out the door. He stopped in the hallway, facing the wall, obviously wanting to slam his fist right through the fine wood paneling. Then, with a hard, jerky movement, he swung away and strode down the hall. Natividad thought he showed amazing control not to let his shadow rise in the cambio de cuerpo when he was clearly longing for violence.

“He knows I’m right,” Miguel said in a very low voice, meaning for only Natividad to hear him.

“Of course!” she said, looking after Alejandro. “Do you think that helps? Come on! He can’t manage Grayson Lanning by himself.”

Though neither Harrison Lanning nor his son was in the dining room, Grayson and Ezekiel and Zachariah were already there, devouring cold ham and hot biscuits and eggs fried in butter. It seemed incredible that after everything that had happened, the Dimilioc wolves meant to just sit down and go on with their breakfast… but Natividad had to admit, if you wanted to reassure somebody that everything was fine, eggs and biscuits and bacon were one way to do it. The smell was seductive. She hadn’t realized her appetite had returned until presented with the promised biscuits.

But she couldn’t just go in and take a seat. Those guests Ezekiel had mentioned were already there: black dogs they didn’t know, so there was reason to be cautious. Two men, but also, to Natividad’s dismay, two girls, one maybe Alejandro’s age and one younger, just a baby, maybe twelve or thirteen. There weren’t a lot of female black dogs, which was good – Natividad vividly remembered Mamá telling her, A woman shouldn’t ever be born a black dog. Then she had explained why.

Natividad flinched away from thinking about what happened to nearly all of the sons and too many of the daughters of black dog women. Not that either of those girls would welcome pity – especially not from a girl who was Pure. They were probably going to hate her.

They weren’t Mexican, those girls; they looked maybe Egyptian or something. The older one was extraordinarily beautiful and obviously knew it. She wore tight black jeans, low black boots, and a silky white blouse. Her earrings were moonstone and crystal, dangling on fine chains that looked like silver but had to be steel. She had settled into her chair in an explicitly sensual pose, one long leg extended and the other drawn up, her hands linked around her knee. Her head was tilted back, her eyes half closed in an expression of amused contempt, her black hair falling sheer and straight almost to the floor. She had wide-set slanted eyes and broad cheekbones, a small mouth and a pointed chin. She made Natividad think of a praying mantis, not only because of her delicately triangular face, but also because of the violence hidden, barely, behind the stillness she showed on the surface.

The other girl, obviously her sister, was small and delicate and looked like she might also grow into a beauty, except for a long curved scar that started at the corner of her mouth and cut across her cheek toward her ear, pulling her mouth awry. Someone must have cut her with silver, to leave a scar like that. She wasn’t striking sexy poses – and it wasn’t just how young she was: her hair was cropped short with a total lack of attention to how it looked, and she was wearing faded jeans and an equally faded T-shirt that had probably once been black, and no jewelry at all. She was staring down at the table, not in ordinary black-dog submissiveness, but like she was trying to make herself invisible. Natividad felt sorry for her, a scarred young girl black dog with a showy sister like that.

“That’s unexpected,” whispered Miguel, coming up beside Natividad and looking over her shoulder. “They are black dogs, aren’t they? Too bad,” he added, even more quietly, too quietly for anyone farther away than Natividad and Alejandro to hear him, but with considerable fervor. “Look at that girl!”

He meant the older one, of course. Both her brothers were staring at her. Natividad couldn’t even blame them, but they were stupid if they thought a girl like that would want anything to do with either of them. But boys were stupid. Natividad nudged Miguel, frowning hard at him. He raised his eyebrows at her, pretending not to know what she meant. Then he stared at the girl again.