Black Dog (32 page)

 

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.

One of the crosses Natividad had used to anchor her mandala stood in sight, some distance away to the right of the black forest where the Dimilioc wolves crouched, hidden, to observe. The cross burned with the same pale light so that Alejandro, in his black dog shape, hated to look at it. He didn't even like looking anywhere in its general direction.

Some of the townspeople had foolishly not bothered to come into the circle of protection, or had not come in quickly enough. Human bodies lay sprawled here and there amid wide spatters of blood that were now freezing into crimson drops in the violent cold. One of the bodies, a young woman, lay in a huge pool of crystallized blood near the outside edge of the mandala. Her hands were stretched out toward it, the tips of her fingers only inches away from its protection: too far. She had been torn nearly in half by some terrible blow that had come down on her from behind.

No human townspeople were visible inside the mandala. They had retreated into their church, Alejandro assumed. A good stone church, Natividad had said. The sort of church made to withstand not only the intangible hatred emanating from the fell dark, but also the more physical threats of hellfire and the deadly influence of demon-souled vampires.

Vonhausel's black dogs pressed against the mandala with the intangible weight of their shadows, the smoke of their breath rising in dark wisps through the gusts of snow. There were at least twenty of them, larger and far more tightly controlled than those that ran back and forth. The others, the ones that ran along the curve of the mandala, waiting for it to fail, paused sometimes to cry aloud to the blank sky and blowing snow. Those would be weaker black dogs and the moon-bound shifters.

Keziah had been partly right, because though there were many black dogs, there were more of those little shifters. They were small compared to true black dogs, no larger than their human forms, but they were fast and savage. Their mad cries were filled with murder-lust. For the three nights and two days of the full moon, the shifters would run in black dog form. For Vonhausel's purpose, shifters – nearly mindless, burning with hatred and bloodlust, devoted to slaughter for the sheer love of slaughter and utterly heedless of their own survival – must be
even better
than true black dogs.

Against all those black dogs and those that had been moon-bound, ten Dimilioc wolves. Counting even little Amira. And counting Thaddeus. Alejandro swung his head around to stare at the newest wolf.

So did Grayson.

Thaddeus stared back just long enough to demonstrate his strength, then turned his head aside in deliberate submission. He straightened, the bones of his limbs lengthening, his powerful clawed paws becoming hands that could grip. He dropped his silver knife from between jet black fangs, caught it, threw the sheath aside, and stood in his half-man half-beast shape, his shadow gathered thickly about him, his eyes glowing with hellfire and bloodlust. If Thaddeus was afraid of the odds they faced, of what would happen to his family if Dimilioc lost here, Alejandro could see no sign of it. If he meant to betray Dimilioc and use that silver blade of his to finish what he had begun with Ezekiel… Alejandro could see no sign of that, either.

Grayson looked at each Dimilioc wolf in turn. They met his powerful gaze for one burning moment and then turned to stare out at the enemy. They would run out to attack; should they attack the moon-bound shifters first, because they would be easier prey; or the strongest of the black dogs, because they were the most dangerous? Either way, Alejandro saw no way they could enter such a battle with any hope of victory.

Grayson gave a low snarling croon to make them all look at him. Then he led the way, all of his wolves falling in behind him. But he did not lead them straight out to battle as Alejandro had expected, but rather in a path that curved back and around through the woods and came out at last from the precise east – from exactly behind Natividad's cross, Alejandro understood at last. From the direction that repelled the gaze and the attention of any black dog; the one direction in which Vonhausel's pack was blind.

Alejandro was ashamed he had not thought of that himself. But his black dog shadow had not wanted to look at or think about the cross anchoring this quarter of Natividad's mandala. Besides that, his shadow was fully absorbed in the lust for battle, in the longing for blood and death. It would have preferred to hunt among a crowd of weak humans, it would have liked prey better than strong adversaries – but if faced with real opponents, it was glad enough to fight. It did not press against Alejandro's control, it did not really want to turn against the Dimilioc wolves; it agreed that the time for that was past.

Alejandro's black dog also thought that maybe Thaddeus
would
betray them. It did not mind that, either; it thought the huge black dog would turn first against Ezekiel and then, if Alejandro was watchful, he could attack him from behind and tear out his spine and cast him into the fell dark, and thus be rid of a strong rival while putting Ezekiel and all Dimilioc in his debt. Alejandro looked forward to the moment Thaddeus turned – at least, his shadow looked forward to it. He pulled his own awareness apart from his black dog's enough to be able to find Grayson, watch the Dimilioc Master for the cue to attack.

Grayson gave that signal by the simple expedient of bounding out of the uncomfortable light of the cross and falling on the strongest of the nearby black dogs like a puma on a rat. He bowled the black dog over with his weight and the shock of the attack, ripping through his belly with scything black claws, tearing out his guts and shattering his spine in that same ferocious blow. The black dog died without returning even a single blow of his own. His body writhed and twisted back toward his human shape as his shadow, struggling furiously, pulled free and dispersed back into the fell dark. Grayson did not watch, but flung himself onto a second enemy.

Though no one had talked over the tactics they would use, Alejandro saw that Harrison first, and then Zachariah, and finally Ezekiel, raced past Grayson. Each in turn lunged to attack the next closest enemy black dog, and the one after that, and the one after that – Harrison took his opponent almost as much by surprise as Grayson had and tore him up almost as quickly; Zachariah's opponent, immediately on the defensive, also went down. Only Ezekiel's enemy had time to fully brace himself for the attack, but Alejandro saw that it didn't matter – the black dog might as well have been a puppy in his first
cambio de cuerpo
. Ezekiel feinted twice and then slid through the black dog's defenses with an attack that looked at first like another feint, but wasn't.

Then Alejandro lost track of Ezekiel's battle because he leaped into one of his own: Ethan had flung himself into a struggle with a black dog who overmatched him, so Alejandro lunged to take the black dog from behind, and then Thaddeus, though already battling an enemy of his own, crouched and spun and slashed his silver blade at their opponent, casually, in passing, opening a huge wound from his belly to halfway up his chest. The black dog screamed and scrambled backward, black ichor streaming from the slash, and then scarlet blood as the shock of the injury forced him into human form. But his human shape, though brawny for a human, was easy prey: before he could reclaim his shadow, Ethan tore his head off. The shadow writhed, crying voicelessly, then diffused like smoke in the cold air. Thaddeus dispatched his own opponent and freed that shadow as well before the first had altogether dispersed.

Alejandro, triumphant, wanted to laugh – he wanted to lift his head and howl challenge and threat across all this frozen country. His black dog, exultant and sly, smug in the confidence of its own strength, was happy now to fight alongside Ethan and thought it was clever to use Thaddeus's blooded knife against their enemies. When Ethan spun to face a new enemy, Alejandro separated from him only so that they could take the black dog from both sides and drive him onto Thaddeus's silver knife.

Another kill, and another, and then suddenly shifters crowded everywhere. Not one could be over two hundred pounds, most much less, but they were all mad with bloodlust, and there were so many of them. There were true black dogs among them, too, some of those heavier and stronger than either Ethan or Alejandro. Everything dissolved into a whirling confusion of slashing coal-black fangs and terrible claws, furnace heat beating through the air.

If not for Thaddeus and Ethan, Alejandro might not have survived that first wild struggle. Alejandro did not recognize this at once; he had little attention to spare for anything but battle and blood and death. But he and Ethan and Thaddeus found themselves continuing to fight as a team, foreign though that notion was to any normal black dog. Over and over, Ethan and Alejandro attacked to draw a black dog's attention, Thaddeus ripped him up with his silver blade, and then one of them finished the enemy without difficulty.

Several times Alejandro took serious wounds, or Ethan did, or once an enemy black dog even tore claws across Thaddeus's back and smashed all his ribs on one side. But when any of the Dimilioc wolves was injured, he could fall out of his shadow, let his black dog carry away his wounds while his team protected him. Then he could call up his shadow again, shift through the
cambio de cuerpo
, and leap again for the throat of an enemy.

Alejandro was aware, dimly, at a remove, that Grayson and Harrison and Zachariah had formed a similar team. Even though he knew how formidable the three oldest Dimilioc wolves must be, even though he would never have expected to match them, he was furiously jealous that they were destroying enemies faster than
his
team. But Grayson could force black dogs into their human forms, Alejandro saw him do that again and again, and though he tried to do that himself, he couldn't now find the trick of it or else these enemies were too strong. His failure fed his jealousy, but that was alright; his rage only made him fight more ferociously.

Keziah and Amira also fought together, which did not surprise Alejandro, except that Benedict had somehow become a part of their team. Maybe Keziah was smart enough to realize that having a third black dog for her team might keep them all alive, and pragmatic enough to ally with the only Dimilioc wolf available to fill the role.

Whether Keziah had recruited Benedict on purpose or otherwise, her team was cutting through their gathered enemies almost as efficiently as Grayson's triumvirate. Keziah had been right about her little sister, for Amira, though so small, was blindingly fast – and, amazingly, fearless and savage in battle. She and Benedict drove one enemy after another into Keziah's slashing claws, for Keziah, not at all to Alejandro's surprise, was the killer for her team. She was not so very much larger than her sister, but just as fast, and she seemed to have a real instinct for the killing blow. She cut down one enemy after another, tearing them to ribbons, leaving them to twist, dying, back into human shape. Keziah's deadliness made Alejandro's black dog even more furious, though he was also savagely pleased by Dimilioc's superiority.

Grayson had said that, about demonstrating Dimilioc's superiority, but Alejandro had not understood. He understood it now. No wonder Grayson had not been worried about facing forty black dogs with only ten. He was sure now that they would win, would crush their enemies, would spill their blood out on the snow and howl after their dispersing shadows – part of that was his black dog's arrogant blood lust, but part of it was his own growing confidence.

Of all the Dimilioc wolves, only Ezekiel fought alone, in a deadly whirl of blood and ichor, with a clear space always around him because the enemy black dogs tried to keep away from him.

And Ezekiel did take them down. For the first time, Alejandro really understood that the Dimilioc
verdugo
had never for a moment been at risk from Thaddeus, silver blade or no. He was as brutally strong as Thaddeus himself and as fast as Keziah, and so profoundly in control of his shadow that, as long as he was not killed outright, he could let his black dog carry his injuries away and then instantly bring it back – and somehow no blow he took ever seemed to be a killing blow. Twice in ten seconds Alejandro saw one of Ezekiel's opponents lunge into a blow that should have torn him in half, but Ezekiel flicked into his much smaller human shape and ducked low to let the strike go over his head, then pulled himself instantly into his black dog form to strike his enemy from an unexpected direction. Both times, Ezekiel dealt so ferocious a blow that he left his enemy struggling and dying in human form, the freed shadow shredding away on the wind.