“I’m retiring, but this was my work car. It’s old, but it’s a good one. It can handle the roads as long as the snow doesn’t get too deep. It’ll get you to Lewis, right enough. Got family there, do you?” The woman’s eyebrows went up on that last. She didn’t sound exactly doubtful, but Natividad thought that was just because she was polite.
“Papá was from there,” Natividad assured her. “He met Mamá in Mexico.”
“Of course.” The woman’s gaze lingered on Natividad’s face. “Your mama was a beautiful woman, I can see.” Then, possibly noticing Natividad suddenly blink hard, she turned briskly back to Miguel. “You’ll get to Lewis alright, I expect. Good thing you didn’t wait to come in right at Christmas, there’ll be a lot more snow by then. But it’s easy enough. You take state highway 105 east just like it says here, but then you jog south a mile or so on Derby Line Road. You’re going to skirt along the western edge of Derby Lake, then take highway 111 east and a bit south. Let me draw you a map.” She fished in her purse for a pad and pencil. “See, you’ll go right through Island Pond and Brighton, that’s all one town these days so don’t let yourselves be confused by the signs.”
“Yes, ma’am. I mean, no, ma’am,” Miguel promised. “I won’t.”
“You sure you’re old enough to drive, young man? Well, never mind. Look here, the highway goes off this way, but you’ll take McConnell Pond Road north and then keep on it. It’ll turn into Eagle Nest Road and then into Upper Tin Shack Road, but you just keep on and you’ll get to Lewis alright.” The woman hesitated, glancing at Natividad. “You know – you do know, that’s all the Kingdom Forest, really? Lewis is right on the edge of the Forest. It’s no place for…” she stopped again and finished, “Well, if you’ve family there, you’ll be alright.”
Natividad tried to guess what the woman had intended to say. No place for foreigners? Mexicans? Kids? Ordinary humans? She wondered how much a mail driver might have learned about Dimilioc in twenty years of delivering letters and packages to Lewis and Brighton and Island Pond and all those little towns and villages in Dimilioc’s territory.
“Thanks for the directions,” Miguel said, his tone bland. He opened the back door of the car and threw in their pack, then shut the door again and looked at Natividad. She began to count out the bills. Everyone was distracted by the sight of all that money. At least, Natividad thought afterward that that was why none of them, not even Alejandro, realized the black dogs were there until they attacked.
There were two of them, though in the first instant of the attack Natividad thought there were more because they took up so much space and moved so fast. They were huge, more like mastiffs than wolves, with broad heads and heavy shoulders, and blunt muzzles set with jet black fangs. To experienced eyes, they didn’t look like any natural animal at all – they were much too big, their eyes blazed fiery gold and red, and the snow exploded into steam with each bounding footfall as they rushed forward.
Black dogs usually didn’t work together very well, but these separated as they rushed forward, the larger attacking Alejandro and the smaller lunging up and over a parked car to get to Natividad. She saw, in that one frozen moment, how his long black claws, almost bearlike, left gouges and slashes not just in the paintwork, but even in the metal itself.
Without thinking, she ducked backward into the car they had just bought, slammed the door, and locked it – she knew in her mind how little protection the fragile metal and glass could provide, but it might slow the black dog down a little. She drew a pentagram on the car window with a shaking hand, whispering words of warding – that was better protection than the car itself, and the black dog veered away, screaming with frustration and hatred, his voice rising to an inhuman keen that ended in a hiss. Rearing up on his hind legs, he swayed back and forth, torn between bloodlust and the dread of Pure magic.
Miguel knew better than to stay close to Natividad during a black dog attack. He looked horrified, but he also jerked the woman who had sold them the car almost off her feet in his rush to get them both away from Natividad’s attacker and back to the dubious safety of her house. Natividad was as horrified as her twin looked: Miguel couldn’t ward the house, and that wooden door would be no protection at all. The black dog dropped back to all fours and rushed after them, and she could see he would catch them before they reached the house. He would kill Miguel and the woman, and then come back to deal with Natividad at his leisure. The other one would kill Alejandro and together they would get her out of the car somehow–