“We killed those men,” Alejandro had protested. “Last month, when they came from Monterrey and said our people should pay the other tax.”
“Those were bandidos,” Papá had growled, amused even through the black dog anger. “The other tax! They’re all bandidos in Monterrey! If they will not protect the villages, they should not take money and say they do! That was not a hunt. You said our people. It’s right you should say so. We protect Potosi, from Monterrey bandidos as well as callejeros.”
This was a very complicated thought for a black dog almost in the cambio de cuerpo. Alejandro could never have expressed a thought like that, not while his shadow pressed at him, wanting the hunt and blood. He could only almost understand it, and only around the edges of the black dog’s blood lust. But Papá had been there to think those thoughts and remember who they were, so that Alejandro didn’t have to, not when it was hard, not when it really mattered. Now, Alejandro could only barely even remember that moment, or make sense of it.
Papá was not here. Grayson… Maybe Grayson Lanning thought that way, even when he was fully changed. Alejandro was sure the Dimilioc Master thought that way about Lewis, and about this frozen country.
Harsh as this country must be to human people, it was more welcoming to a black dog who did not suffer from the cold and who could run weightless across the surface of the snow. Though, weight or no, the heat of their bodies melted the snow where they stepped so that they left big, blurred tracks.
The tracks of the Dimilioc wolves were not alone on the surface of the snow. Stray black dogs had left deep trails melted into the snow around Dimilioc and leading to and from Lewis. Many trails. Vonhausel’s brazen desvergüenza – effrontery – was outrageous. But it was also frightening. Alejandro had never imagined their father’s enemy would pursue them so implacably, could hardly believe even now that any black dog would truly pit himself against Dimilioc.
The human part of Alejandro’s awareness, settled in the back of his mind while he ran, also feared that maybe the black dog strays who ran in Vonhausel’s pack might be too strong for the few Dimilioc wolves that followed Grayson Lanning. How many really strong callejeros had there been, before the vampire war? How many now longed to live and hunt free of Dimilioc’s law, how many had been glad to follow a leader with the determination and cleverness to shove Dimilioc over the edge into the fell dark? All the strong black dogs in the Americas, maybe. And Dimilioc had only ten, counting Amira, whom Alejandro was not certain he should count. She was very small for a black dog, hardly larger than an ordinary wolf. And Thaddeus – black dogs loved treachery. He half expected the big black dog to turn on them during this battle, join Vonhausel. He was very glad that Thaddeus’s wife and son were behind them, in the heart of Dimilioc territory. If there were no such hold on the newest Dimilioc wolf, Alejandro knew he would never be able to accept him at his back.
Thaddeus ran in his black wolf form, but he gripped his big silver knife – sheathed in black leather – in his powerful jaws. He would use that strange part-human shape of his to fight; he would use that knife of his against Dimilioc’s enemies. The sheen of fresh black ichor clotting in Ezekiel’s shaggy pelt was a reminder to them all of what that blade could do, though the verdugo ran with a smooth, effortless lope despite that injury. Ezekiel ran as though he could run all the way to Chicago and back without pause and still slaughter Vonhausel and all his black dogs by himself. This did not make Alejandro like the young verdugo any better.
Maybe thirty black dogs had joined together in Vonhausel’s first attack on Dimilioc; Alejandro was sure at least a third of the attackers had been killed. But Vonhausel had found more somewhere, because the human warning had been right: many black dogs crouched along the edge of Natividad’s mandala, and many more ran back and forth along its outside curve, pressing forward and then falling back. It was impossible to count them, there were too many in motion, but Alejandro thought there were at least forty in sight, maybe even closer to fifty.
A dismaying number. Dimilioc wolves were supposed to be the best, the very best, but how could Grayson expect to win against those odds? Alejandro’s own black dog was strong and arrogant; it still thought they might win – but Alejandro himself doubted that every Dimilioc wolf could kill four or five or six black dogs. Yet Grayson did not seem dismayed – none of the older Dimilioc black wolves seemed dismayed. Could they truly be tan seguros de sí mismos, so confident?
The mandala glowed to Alejandro’s black-dog sight: a pale, uneasy luminescence, like moonlight but not really. It had been damaged already, he saw: its light was threaded through with strands of darkness which must have come from the pressure Vonhausel’s black dogs put against it. But it held. Its outer circle cut across streets and yards, right through houses and shops. How strange that would be, to have that circle curve its way through your kitchen or bath.