Black Dog Short Stories Read online

  The first black dog burst from a narrow alleyway on the other side of the street and hurled himself toward the woman, closely followed by a second. They were huge, not actually much like dogs: far too big even for mastiffs, black claws too long and too sharp for any dog—to experienced eyes, they didn’t look like any natural animal at all. Their skulls was broad, their muzzles blunt and set with savage fangs as black as their claws; their eyes blazed with red fire. They separated as they rushed forward, coming at Melanie from two directions at once—more teamwork than one expected from stray black dogs. One lunged up and over a parked car, leaving gouges and slashes not just in the paintwork, but also in the metal itself.

  Melanie tucked herself down against the arm of the bench, her arms wrapped tight around her legs, her face pressed against her knees. She didn’t make a sound.

  Ezekiel was moving almost before the first black dog had lunged into the open. His shadow moved with him and around him, clinging to him, wanting to rise. He let it come, let the change take him, hot and furious; the new grasses charred and smoked where his feet fell. His claws tore the earth.

  Both black dogs had stopped in the middle of the street, rearing up on their hind legs, snarling, trying to frighten Melanie and make her run. They knew she was Pure; any black dog would smell her Purity. They hated her and longed to kill her, but they also wanted the helpless flight of doomed prey to sweeten the blood. Melanie still did not move, but the black dogs were not experienced enough to wonder why. They were far too focused on their prey to sense Ezekiel.

  He took the first with one blow, his claws tearing through shaggy pelt and muscle and ripping across the spine: the surest blow for an instant kill. The black dog screamed, black ichor and then red blood spraying as his body twisted into human form, one limb and then another, half his face and then the rest, grotesquely piecemeal. The great, smoky cloud of his shadow rose free, struggling to cling to the dying human body but unable to retain purchase, dispersing in the air. The human who had hosted it within his soul, of course, was simply dead.

  The second black dog swung around, slashing. He was fast and strong, but Ezekiel simply ducked, folding himself down into his much smaller human form, letting the black dog’s blow whip over his head, then letting his shadow rise again. The black dog had not expected to miss his strike and found himself seriously overextended.

  Ezekiel would have liked to play with his prey for a little while—he, too, relished the chase and the hunt and the kill—but Melanie would not like to watch such sport. So he tore out the black dog’s throat and three of his cervical vertebrae with one economical blow. Then he dismissed his own shadow and stood back as this black dog, dying, writhed and twisted into his human form.

  “You let them get too close,” Melanie said, not looking up. Her voice didn’t shake, but her body trembled with reaction.

  Ezekiel was amused. “How would you know? You didn’t watch. You never watch.”

  “I felt them.” The woman cautiously lifted her head, flinching from the bodies that lay contorted and human in the street. “Oh, God. Just kids. Poor boys.”

  Ezekiel lifted a contemptuous eyebrow. “Strays. Savages. They don’t deserve your pity.”

  “But they do. They never had training, never had the Beschwichtigand, never even knew their shadows could be controlled. Born to the wrong mothers—”

  “Whom they probably killed.”

  “Probably. Poor things.” She might have meant the mothers or the dead black dogs. She likely meant both. She got to her feet, stiffly. She rubbed her eyes hard, then dropped her hands and looked up at the red-streaked sky. To Ezekiel, the red looked like blood. He had no idea what the sky looked like to Melanie.

  She said again, “You let them get way too close to me.”

  Ezekiel wanted to go to her, touch her shoulder. More than her shoulder—killing put him in the mood. But she wouldn’t welcome even a friend’s touch from him now, and certainly not more. She’d made her choice, and it hadn’t been him. He stood still. But he said, “I let them get exactly close enough. I would never have let them touch you. But I’m sorry if you were frightened.”

  “I wasn’t frightened,” Melanie said, though she must know Ezekiel could tell she lied. She didn’t look at him. “I want to go home.”

  “Soon. One more.”

  “We should forget the last stray,” she protested, though she followed obediently when he turned and walked away. “That one’s been quiet enough. Who cares about him, as long as he doesn’t kill a lot of people, make headlines, stir things up? We could just go straight to the airport, be home by morning . . . ” her tone was wistful.

  Ezekiel said, not quite politely, “And will you explain to Thos why we left a stray roaming free in this city, or would you leave that to me?” He tried to smother his annoyance. She was Pure. Her hesitancy wasn’t her fault. But she knew they couldn’t leave Madison with the job unfinished. He wanted to snap at her. He wanted to grab her, shake her, shout at her. He moved a step farther away from her instead.

  “I know,” Melanie said, not quite coherently. “I know, all right?”

  “Only one more. We’ll do him tonight, go to the airport right after. We can still be home tomorrow.” He couldn’t quite stop himself from adding, “Daniel will be glad to see you, I’m sure.”

  Melanie didn’t exactly flinch, but she darted a glance at his face and away.

  Ezekiel wasn’t quite sure how to read that glance. He looked away. In the near distance, sirens wailed. He put out a hand, not quite touching Melanie’s arm, gesturing her toward a parked car.

  “That belongs to someone,” she said, not very firmly.

  Ezekiel lifted an eyebrow. “Not even you care. Whoever owns it, we need it more. You’re too tired to walk any farther tonight.” Ezekiel cut through the lock with a delicately elongated claw of sharp-edged shadow, reached across to unlock the passenger-side door, and went around to lift the hood and hotwire the ignition. The sirens approached, but several streets over: not an immediate concern. He got in behind the wheel and glanced sidelong at Melanie. “You have our direction?”

  “Yes, yes . . . I will. Just a minute . . .” she had taken a small hand mirror out of her back pocket, the glass shimmering with silvery light. A trouvez. She’d done the finding magic the same night they’d arrived in Madison; it was still halfway in place. She passed her hand across the mirror and peered into it. “Left up there at the light.”

  “Left?” Ezekiel was surprised: left would take them toward one of the decent parts of Madison, not the dismal mostly-deserted streets in which he’d have expected to find a stray black dog. But Melanie gave him an impatient shrug, so he said nothing more, but turned left and left the sirens behind.

  Madison’s remaining stray proved to be very little like the brutes who had attacked Melanie. He was a little older: thirty at least. That was surprising. They died young, these wild black dogs who had never learned control and had no idea of Dimilioc law. Until they broke it too egregiously, of course, and found the Dimilioc executioner suddenly behind them.

  This black dog was not only older than the other strays, he actually looked more or less civilized. He was a tall man with a bony, angular face. He wore good jeans and a plain white tee-shirt. He could have passed both for nearly human and nearly respectable in almost any company. And he was in human form, despite the nearly full moon, which explained why he’d never come to Dimilioc’s attention: he plainly had a good deal more control than most strays.

  The black dog plainly knew what Melanie was as soon as he opened his front door and caught her scent, but though she backed away fast to draw him out, he didn’t let his shadow up and he didn’t attack her. Instead, he looked past her immediately, nostrils flaring, obviously looking for Ezekiel. He found him, too, amid the ordinary shadows of the night, though Ezekiel had expected to strike unseen as the black dog came out into the night after Melanie.

  Since he’d been spotted, however, Ezekiel met the
black dog’s eyes and smiled.

  The black dog’s hand closed so hard on the edge of his door that the wood cracked. He’d had a black dog father to teach him, Ezekiel surmised—unusual, but sometimes a stray black dog actually raised a son rather than abandoning him. Whatever the story might have been, this man plainly knew who Ezekiel was: the Dimilioc executioner, who showed no mercy to Dimilioc’s enemies. Ezekiel Korte, who for three years now had been Thos Korte’s killer.

  This black dog had sense enough not to fight and control enough not to run. He backed up instead, wordlessly yielding his place in the doorway as Ezekiel walked forward. He backed farther, down the hallway and into a dimly lit living room with a carpet that was old but clean, a single leather recliner, a small table holding a sweating bottle of beer, and, to one side, an ancient black-and-white television, the picture flickering. The sound was on, but turned very low. A paperback book lay open, face down on the arm of the chair. Ezekiel couldn’t read the title.

  Ezekiel looked around, still smiling. He said, “How nice.”

  The man flinched, but Melanie said, “Ezekiel!”

  “Don’t you think it’s nice? So very . . . ordinary.”

  The man ducked his head, avoiding Ezekiel’s gaze. He said, in a deep, harsh voice, his diction surprisingly precise, “I don’t make noise—I don’t hunt in the city—those God-damned black pups, I knew they’d draw Dimilioc attention—”

  “Then you should have run, shouldn’t you?” Ezekiel took a step forward, hoping the man would let his shadow up, that he would at least try to fight.

  Instead, the black dog took another step back. He opened his mouth, but closed it again without speaking. He was beginning to lose language, clearly. Many black dogs did, when the change took them. This one was still trying to cling to his human shape, but his face was beginning to distort, lips peeling back from lengthening black fangs; his shoulders shifting and broadening. But he neither lunged forward nor flung himself wildly away. Still mostly a man, then, and still fighting hard for control of his shadow. As though his paltry control would help him—

  Melanie suddenly moved, catching Ezekiel’s arm, dragging at him. No one else in the world would have dared get between Dimilioc’s executioner and his prey, or would have dared lay a hand on him without invitation. Ezekiel tilted his head, his eyebrows rising, making no move to shake her hand off his arm.

  “I can do the Beschwichtigand,” Melanie said quickly. “Ezekiel, look how good his control is already, you don’t have to kill him, I can do the Beschwichtigand for him, that would finish the job here, wouldn’t it? Thos wouldn’t have to know the details, would he? What difference would it make? Except to me, you know it would make a difference to me—”

  Ezekiel glanced from the girl to the black dog and back again, still smiling. “Is there something in this for me? Would Daniel approve, do you think?”

  Melanie let him go, punched him hard on the arm—the only person in the world who would dare. “God, Ezekiel—”

  “Ah. You’re presuming on my better nature. You think I have one?”

  Melanie didn’t hit him again, but she looked like she wanted to. “Don’t be an ass!”

  Ezekiel laughed. He said impatiently to the black dog, “Get your shadow down, cur. Show me some control. Change now and I will kill you, understand?” He waited while the man fought his shadow down and back, while his face and hands and body slowly recovered their purely human shape. Ezekiel waited with something approaching patience until he could see the man had his shadow in hand. Then he asked, “You’re willing to take the Beschwichtigand? You know what that is?”

  “The Calming,” whispered the other man, his voice thick and his words clumsy. “My father, he told me . . .”

  “But he couldn’t find a Pure woman to work the spell for you?” Melanie said sympathetically. “Well, I can do it now.”

  “Let me just add,” Ezekiel put in, staring hard at the black dog, “if you say yes, you don’t get to change your mind halfway through. You hurt her, I won’t just kill you, I’ll make you into an example for the ages. Do you understand?”

  The black dog understood. He held very still while Melanie opened the window to let in the night air and the moonlight, and drew her pentagram in silver light on the kitchen floor around him. He shuddered with the effort of forcing his shadow to submit, but he did not move out of the pentagram. Ezekiel helped by leaning against the doorjamb, looking as threatening as possible; and Melanie, occupied with braiding moonlight into a silver cord to bind the darkness in the black dog’s soul, never noticed the potential danger at all.

  And when she was finished with the Calming, once she’d reopened the pentagram, Ezekiel said harshly, “Well, dog?”

  The black dog bowed his head, glancing covertly at Ezekiel through his lashes, avoiding the direct look that might be taken as a challenge. But his voice was clearer and more human now, and he looked at Melanie with dawning astonishment—the first time in his life, Ezekiel presumed, that he’d ever seen a Pure woman without wanting to kill her. This was not a change he remembered in himself: Dimilioc black wolves had the Beschwichtigand done when they were infants and never experienced that visceral hatred of the Pure.

  Melanie met the man’s eyes and smiled. She smiled at Ezekiel, too. For that alone, he supposed the trouble and time spent here, even the risk of trouble with Thos, had been worthwhile.

  “Don’t draw Dimilioc attention,” Ezekiel warned the black dog. “Keep clear of stray black dogs who might draw our attention. I don’t have to tell you that if I find you again, I’ll kill you.”

  “Yes,” whispered the man. “No. I understand.”

  “Get out of Madison. Go south, or west. Or both. There’s room here and there for a quiet black dog. So stay quiet. Understand?”

  The black dog met his eyes for an instant before looking down again. “Believe me,” he said, his deep voice husky, “putting a great deal more space between me and Dimilioc is my new ambition.”

  “Good,” said Ezekiel, and beckoned to Melanie. “Home by noon tomorrow,” he reminded her. “Unless we get stopped for speeding on the way to the airport.”

  “You could let me drive,” Melanie said, though with resignation because she knew he wouldn’t. She smiled at the black dog once more, nodded, and headed for the door. “Much better than just slaughtering everyone,” she said to Ezekiel, over her shoulder.

  “Not for me,” Ezekiel said, but the black dog didn’t attack him when he turned his back, so he regretfully gave up any chance of a fight and followed Melanie out of the house.

  Dimilioc was set amid the Vermont mountains, in the part of the state sometimes called the Northeast Kingdom, though the humans who called it by that name had no idea how apt a name it was. At this time of year, the maples were still dormant, the firs and spruce black-green against the barren hardwoods.

  The Dimilioc house stood alone on a rise amid the forest, the trees cleared back around it to open up all the approaches. It was a huge structure with two wings and three stories, large enough to house nearly a hundred humans if they were friendly, or perhaps half so many black wolves, who seldom were.

  Ezekiel swung the big SUV around the long curve of the drive and parked in front of the generous porch. The plane flight had been fine, but the drive from Newport had been unpleasant: sleet and freezing rain all the way, every road worse than the one before, until he’d been genuinely tempted to abandon the SUV and run the rest of the way to Dimilioc in his other form. But Melanie couldn’t run across country and he could hardly leave her in a Newport hotel. So he had cursed the weather and had driven ever more slowly and carefully because if he wrecked the SUV, he would have to kill the first fool who laughed. Which was fine, but Melanie wouldn’t like it.

  Stupid to care, when she cared only for Daniel. But he drove carefully anyway, and was absurdly relieved when he could finally take his foot off the gas and coast gently to a halt directly before the wide porch.

  “
Mind the steps,” he warned her.

  She rolled her eyes, cheerfully scornful. “Do you want to hold my hand while I brave the treacherous ascent?” Then, as his crooked smile told her how that had sounded, she added hastily, “Too bad!” She leaped out of the car and fled up the steps without assistance, laughing. Happy. Happy to be home, happy because, of course, Daniel was waiting for her.

  Ezekiel left the SUV for someone else to put away in the garage and followed more slowly.

  But Daniel wasn’t waiting for Melanie in the atrium, though Ezekiel had called ahead from Newport. Nor was he waiting in the hallway beyond, nor in the kitchen. Melanie, enthusiasm undimmed, turned toward the stairs that led up to the private apartments on the second floor, but one of the Lanning cousins caught them before she could run up the stairs. The cousin was human, a boy barely out of his teens. He flinched away from Ezekiel, but that was nothing unusual. But then his eyes slid away from Melanie’s as well, and that was strange. Ezekiel frowned. Melanie said, questioningly, “Matt?”

  “Thos wants you,” the cousin muttered. “As soon as you came in, he said.”

  Ezekiel sighed.

  “Poor Ezekiel!” Melanie said, laughing, but she meant it, too. “I’ll put some hot chocolate on for you, shall I, as soon as I find Daniel—”

  “I meant, you,” Matt said. “Both of you.” He ducked his head at Ezekiel’s sudden sharp glance. “Don’t know anything about it,” he protested, and backed clumsily through the door, tripping over nothing in his hurry to escape.

  “What do you suppose?” Melanie said. She had gone pale. She looked at Ezekiel. “Thos found out we didn’t kill that last stray? But—”

  “He hasn’t had time to find out. But if he has, it was my decision, not yours.”

  Melanie took a quick breath and nodded. It was like her to say we, to claim part ownership in that defiance of Thos Korte’s order. It was a measure of her fear of the Dimilioc Master that she was willing to let Ezekiel take the blame for it now.