Pure Magic (Black Dog Book 3)

by Rachel Neumeier

  They burned the cemeterio and the children’s play yard, and set afire the white-painted fences that surrounded the whole property. Norteamericanos loved trees; they planted big trees along their streets and among their graves. The big firs in the cemeterio burned like gigantic torches, with towering flames and a crackling roar.

  “That gives us a time limit,” Ezekiel said. He was laughing, not out loud but with silent black-dog laughter, violent and cruel. “Ten minutes till the school catches, if the wind doesn’t change. Go!” He slapped Ethan on the shoulder, jerked his head toward Alejandro, and loped away toward the van through the smoke. Alejandro hoped he knew how to wire the vehicle, if the keys weren’t in it—he hadn’t thought to ask—but that van was Ezekiel’s problem. His was the roof. He shuddered as he let his shadow rise through him. Natividad’s delicate net clung even as his shadow rose, expanding and melting at the same time; he could feel the glittering beads as cool points in the fire. They didn’t hurt him, though, and they didn’t burn away at the touch of his burning shadow. Those beads felt like silver that had been blooded for him, but sharper and more glittering; the whole aparato felt like a spider’s teleraña, only spangled with chips of ice. He could taste Natividad in it.

  The black dog’s confidence and bloodlust filled him, only a little constrained by the Pure magic in the teleraña. He loved the fire and longed to see the buildings blaze up in a violent conflagration, but there was something to do first. Yes. Enemies to tear apart. He shook his head, beginning to lose the clarity of human thought. But he remembered enough, understood enough. He leaped to the roof of the human building and tilted his head this way and that, trying to hear Dimilioc’s enemies below.

  Away on the other side of the building, there was a sudden grinding roar and then a shattering, ripping crash. Alejandro laughed and tore into the roof, slamming through shingles and timbers alike with powerful ripping blows. He had no idea what might be waiting below, but he no longer cared. Somewhere below him, someone was screaming, a human woman, and a black dog’s keening snarl answered.

  Alejandro flung jagged wood out of his way and plunged into the dark close space of an attic. He wanted to set it burning, but there was some reason not to burn this building, so he only reared up and slammed down upon the attic floor with all his weight. And plummeted down again in a half-controlled fall, amid an avalanche of broken plaster and splintered wood and pink cottony stuff. He landed on his feet, lightly, carrying his weight in his shadow while destruction rained around him.

  He looked around. He was in a room filled with desks. A schoolroom, yes, the building was a school, he remembered that now. The room was deserted, but somewhere close, black dogs were fighting. The woman was no longer screaming, but a human man was shouting. If there were words in those shouts, Alejandro could not distinguish them; he had lost human language. He didn’t care. He flung himself forward, seeking the sounds of battle, longing for blood and killing.

  There was certainly blood and killing. It was a large windowless room, filled with the remnants of long tables and plastic chairs, now mostly bent, broken, or half-melted. Five human people cowered behind the debris, though it could afford them little protection. Alejandro noted them, decided they were harmless, and dismissed them utterly from his mind. The large white van had buried itself in the wall opposite the main door—the doorway was also shattered—and even from across the room, Alejandro could feel the cold burning silver of the harpoons that stood in the vehicle’s side and in the ruins of the nearby wall. That caught his attention far more firmly than any random human people.

  Neither of those weapons had hit Ezekiel, however. The verdugo was there: shifting with his usual smooth fluidity between human and black dog, pressing an attack against half a dozen black dogs and three humans. Whether in human or black dog form, he seemed strangely insubstantial; his shadow seemed to trail above him and a step behind him. It seemed bigger than it should, darker and yet somehow thinner. It was hard to see the shadow, hard to see Ezekiel within it, hard to track the movements of either Ezekiel or of his shadow.

  This was Natividad’s teleraña, Alejandro realized at last, and wondered what their enemies saw, if the teleraña looked so strange even to him.

  All three of the human men in the room were armed with harpoon guns, though two of them had clearly already fired and missed; they were trying frantically to reload. One of these Alejandro recognized: the young, nervous man from the earlier encounter. He was still nervous, and clumsy with it, slow to re-load his weapon. Plainly he had reason to be nervous, for two of Ezekiel’s enemies had already been killed. Blood pooled near the bodies, but black ichor had spattered across the floor and the ruined furniture and the walls, even the ceiling, so at least one of those bodies had belonged to a black dog. The ichor smoked, burning swiftly away to ash and nothing.

  Alejandro began to hurl himself forward at the largest of the enemy black dogs, but hesitated. There was something—he was supposed to—he did not remember, but then Ezekiel slid neatly, human-small, beneath a raking blow from one of the other black dogs, instantly exploded back into his black dog form, and tore open his enemy’s belly and flank.

  The black dog shrieked and jerked away, struggling to reclaim his human form, to let his shadow carry away those terrible wounds, and Alejandro remembered at last that he was supposed to stop that from happening. He snarled, furiously resentful: he wanted to fight! But Ezekiel had been clear. Even in his black dog form, Alejandro was not willing to court Ezekiel’s anger. He crouched where he was, flinging his shadow out and across the injured black dog. That one had managed the shift to human, and his shadow had taken away his wounds; he was now uninjured and trying to change back. Alejandro smothered his shadow, holding him in human form. The black dog fought Alejandro’s control; his shadow fought for solidity, for embodiment. But Alejandro held him, and held him, and Ezekiel whirled back from a different struggle and ripped the black dog’s head off a fraction before he could shake free of Alejandro’s control.

  Ezekiel flung the head across the full length of the room to smash into one of the human men just before he could shoot Alejandro with a silver-tipped harpoon.

  Alejandro hadn’t even seen that threat. He was furious: how dare Ezekiel save him from a threat he hadn’t even seen? And how could he fight, if he had to keep track of those humans as well as their real enemies?

  Then Ethan, his shadow seeming to flutter around him, insubstantial as a dark mist, tore a massive hole through one wall, flung himself into the room, spun in a tight circle to find out where everyone was, and leaped for the nearest harpoon-wielding man. The man whirled, trying to shoot him, but the harpoon went wide—his aim confused by the teleraña mágica or simply by fear, Alejandro couldn’t tell—and Ethan bore him down and tore him apart in a ruin of red blood and white bone.

  After that it was all over, though the enemy black dogs did not seem to realize that immediately. Alejandro helped Ethan stalk and kill another of the human men, and the third fled. After that, Alejandro did not fight at all. He stalked the edges of the battle, trapping one black dog after another in human form as each was injured. Two of those fled, also, taking advantage of a rare moment when Ezekiel was wounded and shifting to let his shadow carry the injury away. Ethan might have killed at least one of those, but he seemed distracted. Alejandro only realized that Ethan was watching for other men with silver-tipped harpoons, or perhaps with ordinary guns loaded with silver ammunition, when an armed man crept cautiously to the doorway through which Ezekiel had brought the van.

  Alejandro did not see the man, but Ethan did. He roared, and flames rushed up from the ruined door, forcing the man back before he could shoot. Ethan went after that human, shouldering through flaming wreckage, and Alejandro was so furiously angry that he had not thought to watch for such an obvious threat that he found it almost easy to force the last of the black dogs into human form, leaving him an easy kill for Ezekiel. Who did not take that kill, however, but only pinn
ed the black dog down with one massive, clawed forefoot and stared at Alejandro and then at the burning doorway, until Alejandro finally remembered that they had not intended to burn this building and went, glowering, to smother the fire with his physical bulk and the insubstantial weight of his heavy shadow.

  “He told me nothing useful. But he cursed in Russian. These are certainly Dacha wolves,” Ezekiel told Alejandro, when at last he decided that the fire was out and that their enemies were all fled. “You marked, of course, that the Chernaya Volchitza herself was not in this building, nor did she take part in this battle at all.”

  Alejandro sorted out these words with a certain amount of difficulty. Language, especially English, was just hard when he took his black dog form. But he tried to understand. Before joining Dimilioc, he had always accepted the loss of language when he shifted, but then he had seen that Grayson did not lose language that way. Neither did Ezekiel nor even Ethan. It was stupid and lazy not to do better. A Dimilioc black wolf should do better. Anybody who might someday be Master of Dimilioc must do better.

  So Alejandro tried to listen and understand, though the balance between human understanding and black dog temper was very thin. Eventually he thought he caught the sense of what Ezekiel had said. Then he understood that Ezekiel was right, and that it was important. He had not realized the woman black dog was not here. But of course that was true. And surprising. The battle would have been much more difficult if she had been here. He could not have forced her shadow under—she would very likely have done that to him instead. Then he might be lying here dead instead of this Russian black dog.

  Ezekiel, seeming utterly untouched by any concern, stepped over the body and strolled coolly through the devastated room. His glance lingered on every door and the huge hole Ethan had torn through the wall, alert for any sign of danger. But everything was quiet, except for the slow curling of smoke from the smothered fire and the occasional quiet clink of some fragment of wood or tile or plastic falling. And the low, stifled breathing of the humans, still cowering in their illusory safety behind the wrecked tables. Ezekiel was heading that way, though not with any urgency.

  Ethan shoved his way back into the room, tossing aside several chunks of dangling wood and plaster. He showed no sign of injury, so he plainly had not been shot with silver, though there was no way of knowing whether he had caught and killed the fleeing human. He turned his massive head to examine the quiet room. He carried with him the scents of ash and burnt clay and anger, so Alejandro knew his temper was still uncertain. Alejandro looked away from him, slouching instead after Ezekiel. He did not try to reclaim his human form; he liked the ferocious confidence that surged through his corazón, his heart, the fiery heat of the ichor in his veins, the strength of his powerful shoulders and haunches.

  Ezekiel came to the wreckage sheltering the humans, studied the overturned tables for a moment, and then lifted the nearest out of his way as easily as though it had been made of paper rather than wood and metal. Then he held a hand down toward the nearest human. He looked cool and self-possessed and not at all as though he had just been tearing apart Dimilioc’s enemies. The human—a woman, neither old nor young, in a torn suit of blue-gray and black—moved slowly to take his hand, and he lifted her easily to her feet.

  “You’re not hurt,” he said, not quite a question. His voice, light and ironic, held no trace of black dog thunder. “I wouldn’t think Dacha wolves would publicly murder a lot of people. Except as a matter of policy, of course, if they believed it would be to their advantage.”

  “Dacha?” asked the woman, shaky but alert. Behind her, the other humans, all male, were making clumsy attempts to get up. One of them had a cámera, a big one, clearly a professional’s cámera, which he was making slow, fumbling attempts to examine and use.

  Ezekiel ignored the men, which meant, of course, that he thought it as well to let the man take pictures. Though he ignored all the males, he gave the reportera a slight smile. “A Russian house. Certainly they seem to have chosen deplorable tactics in their bid for power in this country. We have without question dealt them a severe blow today, however, so perhaps we may hope their misguided attempt to challenge Dimilioc is at an end.” Ignoring Alejandro’s derisive snarl, he helped the woman step over the twisted remains of a couple of chairs.

  “You—you’re—” said the woman.

  “Dimilioc,” Ezekiel said courteously. “Indeed.” He glanced around. “I’m afraid this building may have suffered a certain amount of structural damage. Alejandro, Ethan, if you would ensure that this area is secure, so that these people may safely depart?”

  Having the roof collapse on top of them would probably not contribute to the sort of media impression Ezekiel was plainly trying to shape. And Ezekiel probably also wanted to demonstrate—not so much his authority, but specifically his authority over the monsters that stood openly behind him. Not all werewolves are dangerous to you. We’re on your side. We’re not a threat, he was telling this reportera and her companions, and through them whatever audience would eventually see those pictures the cameraman was taking. Alejandro wanted to laugh. Such a lie. But an important lie. He swung away, making a show of stalking the perimeter of the room. It was all a pantomima. They all knew very well the black dogs from The Dacha were gone.

  “We missed the Chernaya Volchitza, didn’t get even a glimpse of her, damn her shadow’s eyes,” Ezekiel said, much later. They were lounging in human form on the balcony of a good hotel on the eastern edge of Boston. It was chilly, but black dogs didn’t really feel the cold, and all of them preferred to be outside when possible. They were all in human form, of course. For one thing, the balcony was not that large.

  “So whatever she has in mind, that trap wasn’t the extent of it,” Ezekiel went on. “This is a woman who’s perfectly willing to lose half a dozen of her wolves in one ambush-gone-wrong, then immediately turn around and set up another trap with blunted teeth. Whatever her actual plan is, it’s more subtle than we’ve seen yet. I’m sure that she’s held back a number of her strongest wolves.”

  “There can’t be that many of ’em left, though,” Ethan said uneasily. “You think?”

  Ezekiel got to his feet, pacing the length of the balcony and turning sharply to come back. Alejandro was careful not to look him in the face; Ezekiel was too plainly angry, disgusted by the way this whole mission was going, even if so far a lot of enemy black dogs had been killed, and everyone who belonged to Dimilioc still lived.

  Ezekiel paced the full length of the balcony again, then stopped, set his fists on his hips, ad gave Ethan a narrow-eyed glare. “A handful of refugees from some minor offshoot of The Dacha? The hell it is. The Dacha owned a good many wolves. I’m starting to think most of them abandoned their own territory and joined Zinaida Kologrivova in her bid to take ours. Or whatever it is that she actually intends. Ethan, you remember the Dacha bloodlines?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Not really. Always figured Lumondiere and Gehorsam were the important houses for us to keep track of.”

  “The war changed that,” Ezekiel said, his tone grim. “Alejandro, your father teach you about this stuff?”

  “Only Dimilioc. Miguel would know these things.” Alejandro realized he should ask Miguel to tell him all those important things. He ought to have thought of that already. It had not occurred to him. Even after Grayson had suggested maybe he was thinking of Alejandro for a possible heir. He should have thought of that then. He glanced down, embarrassed.

  But Ezekiel only gave an amused nod, not seeming irritated. “Well, Miguel. Of course he would. I had to learn all this because Thos definitely believed his executioner should have a rough familiarity with all Dimilioc’s rivals—he thought of all of ’em as enemies waiting to happen, I expect. He was right about that, whatever else you can say about him. Wish I’d paid better attention. All right, let’s see. Sergei Leushin was Anatoliy’s cousin, and The Dacha’s executioner. He could be here. I think he’d have wanted to challenge
me personally, not set up all this nonsense with guns and silver. But Zinaida Kologrivova could be keeping him on a tight leash. And her uncle Valentin Kologrivov. He’s a mean bastard, by all reports. If I recall correctly, he dislikes the Pure—thinks they weaken black dogs, wanted to model The Dacha more after the nastier Middle Eastern families. God knows how he thinks a house can breed for both strength and control without the Pure. Personally, I wonder whether he doesn’t just dislike women. Though apparently he’s made an exception for his niece.”

  Alejandro’s mouth tightened. “They tried to take Natividad.”

  “Yes, and don’t think that doesn’t worry me.”

  “We don’t understand those harpoons yet, either,” commented Ethan. “If they just wanted to kill us all, bullets would be better.”

  Alejandro frowned, realizing this was true.

  Ezekiel gave Ethan an approving glance. “Indeed. I have one or two guesses about that, in fact.” But he did not share these. He said instead, “I think it’s time to call Grayson. Interim reports are often tedious, but I think I’d like a second opinion on all this.”

  But that conversation did not go as anyone expected, not once they finished their part and Grayson began to explain what had been happening at Dimilioc. The part about El Paso was merely alarmante, but the part about Natividad was verdaderamente alarmante.

  “Missing?” Ezekiel said sharply, when Grayson, driven by Ezekiel’s insistence that he needed her in Boston, admitted that she was gone. “What do you mean, she is missing?” His voice had gone tight, sharp, dangerous—not a tone Alejandro would have dared take with Grayson Lanning. Alejandro was vindictively glad that Ezekiel obviously felt no such hesitation, but also afraid. He did not want to imagine Dimilioc with Ezekiel Korte and Grayson Lanning at odds. He said quickly, “She is well, she is fine, I would know if she was frightened or hurt—”