Ezekiel did not trouble with subtlety. He turned off the SUV’s engine, opened his door, got out, and slammed the door behind him. The sound echoed aggressive as a gunshot in the evening quiet.
Then Ezekiel just leaned against the hood, waiting, his arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted in cool disdain. “Go around the back,” he said to Alejandro, and, when Alejandro did not move quickly enough, snapped, “Go!”
The door of the trailer slammed open and a tall man came out in a rush. Alejandro hadn’t known he’d had an image of Thaddeus Williams in his mind until the real man completely failed to match it. Thaddeus turned out to be black, bald, enormous, and gripping a bright silver-alloy knife almost as big as a sword in one hand. His other hand was a massive paw with needle-sharp black claws; his heavy jaw and shoulders also showed signs of the cambio de cuerpo. That he could change just so far and then hold those changes amazed Alejandro; no wonder Grayson Lanning wanted him for Dimilioc–
“Move!” snapped Ezekiel at Alejandro, straightening, and ordered Thaddeus Williams, “Stop right there.”
Alejandro did not stay to see what Thaddeus would do. He sprinted around the trailer just in time to stop the woman there from getting into a truck. He caught her arm, trying not to grip too hard. She did not scream. She whirled and struck at him with a silver knife, a much shorter and slimmer weapon than her husband’s, but more than sufficient to disable a black dog.
It was exactly what Natividad would have done, so Alejandro had half expected it. But this woman was neither as fast nor as agile as Natividad, and besides that she carried some dark, heavy bundle in the curve of her other arm. He evaded her blow, caught and twisted her wrist to make her drop the knife, and dragged her back away from the truck.
Then the bundle tucked under her other arm squirmed around and slashed at him with a second knife, and Alejandro was forced to let go of the woman and leap backward. The little boy – five? six? – fought free of his mother’s frantic grip and landed on the dirt in front of Alejandro, snarling. He was already partly into the cambio, his back hunching, his jaw distorting to accommodate fangs, the scent of ash and burning thick around him.
Alejandro’s shadow tried to rise in response. If it did, Alejandro knew, he would kill this little black pup. His black dog longed to tear the boy away from his shadow, rip him apart into bloody, smoking pieces, then turn on his mother – that was just what it wanted. Alejandro shook with the brutal longing.
“You’re used to handling your temper,” Ezekiel had said. “Tell me now if there’s a problem.” And Alejandro had promised him there was no problem. But he had not expected to have a black dog puppy lunging for him, slashing with a little silver knife and snarling. He snarled back at the boy, fighting his shadow and its vicious longing for blood and death.
He backed up, then backed up again, his shadow crowding him, rising, rising. He could feel his hands twisting, claws stretching out of his fingers; he could feel the burning rise through him, trying to pull him into the cambio de cuerpo. He had lost track of the Pure woman – no, there she was, and she had her own knife back in her hand – she was screaming, running toward him, but he could not make out her words. He had lost the precious trick of human language – he was losing himself. Fury and horror mingled, blurring the boundaries between himself and his shadow. He caught the little boy’s wrist to make him drop his knife. His claws scored the boy’s skin, blood beading along the thin wrist. The scent of blood pulled at his shadow, hard.
And, because he could not stop it, he let his black dog rise. But he did not let it come up through him – he would not. He set a determinedly human jaw and refused. He was not his shadow. He would not be. And instead of letting his black dog come out, he cast it forward across the boy’s shadow, smothering the black pup with his greater strength, crushing the boy’s shadow back and down, forcing him into human shape. It was exactly what Grayson Lanning had done to him, twice. He hadn’t thought he understood what the Dimilioc Master had done until he needed to do it himself and found he actually could.
The boy was screaming in rage and twisting to get away, but he was fully back in his human form, and when he hit Alejandro, it was only with a human hand, clawless and ineffectual. Alejandro picked him up, leaned his head away from the boy’s furious blows, and glared at his mother.
She stopped dead, holding her hands out in front of her body. After a second, realizing she still held the knife, she threw it down. “Don’t…” she said to Alejandro. Her voice was husky with terror. She was a tall woman, big, with a strong-boned plain face, black eyes, short-cropped black hair, and skin the color of caramel. She said again, “Don’t…”