Black Dog(43)

“And barely in time, we find,” said Zachariah Korte. He looked at Grayson. “I admit I would never have expected that sort of concerted attack from mere strays – even with a Dimilioc exile to lead them.”

Natividad looked quickly at Grayson, but the Dimilioc Master merely ate a bite of ham, not seeming immediately inclined to begin with the hard questions.

Zachariah lifted his shoulders in a minimal shrug. He held the plate of eggs out to Natividad and added, smiling at her, “Your enemies seem disconcertingly determined. Even so, I trust you will not swoon in my arms in revenge if I say that acquiring you is a piece of luck for us all, whatever nuisance has tracked you to our doorstep.”

“Luck, indeed,” said Keziah scornfully. “Of course, we must be pleased to have a Pure bitch to protect from her special enemies.”

“Keziah,” Grayson said, his voice dropping into a register even lower than his usual deep rumble.

The girl lifted elegant eyebrows at the Dimilioc Master. But then, as he did not look away, her eyes dropped.

“It’s not the girl’s fault she’s Pure,” Grayson said. He looked deliberately from Keziah to Amira and back again. “Dimilioc does indeed protect the Pure. We have protected them since St Walburga coaxed the first Pure birth from a black dog mother.”

That was not exactly what Walburga, daughter of St Richard of Wessex and niece of St Boniface of Germany, had been trying to do, nor why she had later been canonized, Natividad thought, but it did explain why she had later been recognized as the patron saint of those attacked by mad dogs and werewolves.

What St Walburga had been trying to do was cleanse the black dog taint from the unborn daughter of a black dog woman. She had succeeded, sort of. And sort of failed. That had not been a miracle, or that was the decision of the Church, though Mamá had always said maybe the magic had been divinely inspired. But everyone agreed the saint had made a powerful spell that no one else exactly understood. On Walpurgisnacht, the Pure as well as German peasants still laid out gifts of honey and wheat for the saint, and with similar prayers.

Later, when she was an abbess at Heidenheim in Germany, St Walburga, with the first of the Pure girls who had become nuns at the abbey there, had also developed the Beschwichtigend. The Aplacando, Mamá called it, the Calming: the magic that protected a black dog from his most savage urges, especially the bloodlust that drove black dogs to hunt and kill the Pure. Very soon after that, some black dogs had realized the advantage the Pure could bring them: not merely better control over their own shadows, but also black dog sons born with superior control and, if they were lucky, Pure daughters who could bind families together and let a civilized black dog patrimony carry on from one generation to the next. Gehorsam had been founded in Heidenheim, first of the black wolf Houses; and Dimilioc in Britain; and Lumondiere in France; and much later, and not the same, the Dacha in Russia.

But despite the Aplacando, it was no wonder that many black dog women, whose sons were always destroyed by their shadows and half of whose daughters were stillborn, hated any Pure girl they might meet. Natividad looked at the table, though she guessed it was hopeless to try to appease Keziah.

“You knew, when James made you my offer, that Dimilioc values the Pure,” Grayson told the girl. “You knew it when you came here. I do not want to lose you. You and your sister are both valuable. But you are not more valuable to Dimilioc than Natividad Toland. You need not like one another. But you must be civil. And, preferably, not homicidal. I expect you both to permit Natividad to work the Beschwichtigend for you. I’m perfectly certain James explained that this would be a necessary condition for anyone wishing to belong to Dimilioc.”

Amira looked away. But Keziah said, her voice smooth, beautiful, and chillingly indifferent, “Of course. We knew it anyway. Everyone knows that you Dimilioc wolves breed for Purity. You want your sons to rule their shadows and your daughters born with light in their hands. That’s well enough, for those who care about such things. Whatever Dimilioc wishes is well enough.”

“Indeed,” Grayson said, with a slight, ironic lift of his eyebrows. He glanced around the table. “Dimilioc now numbers ten wolves. This is an improvement, but, as has recently become clear, far from adequate if we are to be challenged by a determined enemy.” He looked grimly at Alejandro. “Perhaps now is an appropriate time to hear a less condensed version of your father’s relationship with Malvern Vonhausel. And your own.”

Natividad saw her black dog brother stop himself from glancing at Miguel. He met Grayson Lanning’s hard stare and said, carefully, “This Vonhausel, he was our father’s enemy forever, and our mother’s. Of course he has forced other black dogs into a shadow pack, or he would not have been able to kill Papá. But I did not think he would bring them and follow us here. I did not think Dimilioc would have so few black wolves to face him.”