Black Dog Short Stories

by Rachel Neumeier

  Keziah found a moonstone bracelet at one place, but the bracelet had a silver chain, so she couldn’t try it on. She asked for platinum, but they didn’t have one like that. Keziah frowned so fiercely at the girl in the shop that the girl actually took a step backward, so Natividad touched the back of Keziah’s hand and wished she would be calm. She whispered that if she wanted the bracelet, Natividad could blood the silver for her. Then she hesitated because on second thought, if Keziah wore a silver bracelet, blooded or not, it would make every other black dog in Dimilioc uncomfortable. On third thought, though, Keziah might like that idea.

  Keziah transferred her frown to Natividad, who couldn’t quite figure out what was in the older girl’s mind. It would have been much easier to go shopping with Alejandro, really.

  The girl in the shop said maybe they could make a bracelet to order. So Keziah said that she would think about it, in an abrupt tone that meant she was still angry and stalked out of the shop, with Natividad hurrying to keep up.

  After that Natividad thought maybe she had better pick the shops for a while. So she insisted on visiting a place that sold old books, but though she bought Miguel a book about European history and also a book about Japanese art, she couldn’t find anything she was sure her twin would really think was special. Nor anything at all for Alejandro.

  “But maybe Amira would like a book of fairy tales?” she suggested. “This one is pretty. Look at the pictures. I like this one with all the cisnes. I don’t know the word in English . . .”

  Keziah said scornfully, refusing to look, “A book? Black dog children do not like books.”

  Natividad nodded, not arguing. “I know, but sometimes Alejandro used to like to listen to Mamá read stories.”

  But it was a mistake to say this because even after so long it was painful to think about Mamá, about the evenings when their whole family had gathered to listen to her read aloud. Keziah looked like she might be remembering painful things, too. Natividad quickly led the way out of the shop.

  She found a place that sold the most amazing kinds of soap. She lingered over a kind that was supposed to smell of chocolate, and it really did, too. She loved it, but she wasn’t sure she really wanted to use soap that smelled of chocolate. She bought a nice smooth bar of soap that smelled of roses instead.

  After that there was a place that sold the most amazing, complicated puzzles, made of all these cut-out pieces of stiff paper that you put together to make a picture or build a castle. She lingered over one on display, already put together to make a great cathedral. Maybe Miguel would like this kind of puzzle? She longed to get him one, but was not sure. Her twin was obviously aburrió these days; he was restless, he didn’t have anything to do now that they had joined Dimilioc, when before he had spent a lot of time helping Papá keep track of what was going on with the war. It was hard for him now. Maybe a puzzle would make him happier.

  “A tedious exercise in pointlessness,” Keziah said dismissively. “When you finish, what do you have? A paper artwork that would be far more beautiful if it had never been cut to pieces in the first place.” She insisted on moving on to a shop that sold clothing. She made Natividad wait while she tried on a loose-knit sweater, and a blouse with swirls of glitter on it, and a skirt cut on a sharp diagonal. That shop was more crowded, and many of the people seemed impatient. When Keziah reached for another skirt, the last one on the rack, a young woman older than she was tried to bump her out of the way and get it first. Keziah didn’t give way, of course. Not only did she not move, she caught the other woman’s wrist and forced her back a step. From the woman’s expression, which changed from outraged to shocked, Keziah’s grip was probably just short of crushing.

  “Careful!” Natividad said, and amended that quickly to, “You don’t want to drop that skirt!” so it wouldn’t seem like she was trying to give Keziah orders.

  Keziah’s gave Natividad a look and deliberately opened her hand, letting the skirt crumple to the floor. Then she stepped on it. The young woman gasped, maybe in surprise and maybe just in pain from her wrist. She looked like she was about to make up her mind to scream or shout or something, any minute.

  Natividad said hastily, “Let’s go somewhere else, okay? I’m hungry, aren’t you?”

  So Keziah let the woman go, fortunately without dropping her on the floor and stepping on her, and strolled out like she’d meant to leave right then anyway. Then they walked a few blocks west because Natividad wanted to see the lake. They ate Thai food at a place overlooking the lake.

  Natividad had never eaten Thai food before. Keziah ordered quickly for them both, coconut shrimp, and a noodle dish called pad thai, and a chicken curry. The shrimp were wonderful, and the noodles were made of rice which gave them a very different texture from the spaghetti they sometimes had at Dimilioc with tomato sauce, and there was coconut milk in the curry, along with things like lemongrass that Natividad had never heard of. She discovered all this by asking the waitress many questions. The waitress was very nice. Her name was Joan and she was going to school at the University of Vermont and studying horticulture, and she had three younger siblings, and her mother loved complicated jigsaw puzzles—but Keziah made Natividad leave before she found out if the waitress’s mother liked the kind of puzzle that made a sculpture of a cathedral.

  So then they walked back to the shopping area. Keziah said she had decided to get the moonstone bracelet after all. She told Natividad, as though this was a brand-new idea and also as though she was doing her a favor, that Natividad could blood the silver for her so she could wear it. So they went back toward the end of the pedestrian walking area, which was where the jewelry shop was, and got the bracelet, and then came out again, and that was when a big green car jumped over the curb and rushed across the red brick pavers right at them. Keziah caught Natividad around the waist and leaped out of the car’s path so that instead of hitting them, the car ran straight across the street and smashed into a shop on the other side with a great shattering crash of broken glass and wood and a high-pitched squeal of tearing metal. Someone started screaming, and someone else said, “Oh my God—oh my God—” over and over, and a somewhere a child was crying, great gasping wails that sounded frightened rather than hurt.

  Natividad stared at the accident in shock. It was the shop that sold chocolates. The fragrance of chocolate rolled out into the cold air, mingling with the sudden acrid smell of burning plastic and something else underneath that, something even less pleasant, sharp and chemical.

  By this time, Keziah had shoved Natividad back into the doorway of the nearest shop and stepped in front of her, which was fine, she was supposed to protect Natividad after all, but it was also infuriating because Natividad couldn’t see. She stood on her toes, which didn’t help because Keziah was too much taller than she was, so then she ducked and tried to squeeze around Keziah, back onto the sidewalk. But Keziah wouldn’t let her. She said furiously, “Stupid girl! Stay back! Did you not see that car was aimed straight at you?”

  “Aimed!” said Natividad.

  “There was no driver!” said Keziah. “Someone pointed it at you and jammed the accelerator down.” She was not shouting now. She still sounded furious, though. She was scanning the street, both ways but mostly the way the car had come. Natividad could hardly believe Keziah could be right, but she stayed behind the black dog girl anyway. She ducked down so she could see past her, though.

  The child was still wailing, but the screaming had stopped. Someone, a man, was giving urgent orders to Move that damn car and Get that table up off there, but as far as Natividad could see, though lots of people were edging close to the disaster, no one was listening. Fire was crawling over the rear of the car and up the shattered remnants of the front of the shop. She could see everyone was afraid of the fire. That made sense: didn’t cars explode when they caught on fire?

  But Natividad could see a little now, though Keziah still blocked most of her view. She could see that a man, a big man with a beard an
d a leather jacket, didn’t seem afraid that the car might explode. Or maybe he was just desperate—he was shouting—now he was pulling on the car all by himself, trying to lift it, ignoring the fire. Of course he couldn’t move it, an ordinary human man like that. Natividad didn’t understand why he was trying. A woman was holding back a little girl who was trying to go help him, or maybe trying to pull him away –

  Then she understood. She said urgently, “Keziah! There’s someone trapped under that car! Or pinned in front of it, or something!”

  “Yes,” said Keziah. She didn’t look at Natividad. She was staring at the accident, then around at the street, then back at the accident. “A girl. She was sitting there. She was twelve, perhaps.” She went on after a second, “She looked nothing like Amira.”

  “Well, she’s somebody’s sister!” Natividad said.

  “Yes,” said Keziah again. But she added, “I am supposed to protect you.”

  “I don’t care!” Natividad said energetically. “I think it was an accident! No stray would use a car to attack me, you know that. If a stray was out there, he’d already have attacked! In two seconds I’m going to go help that man move that car, and you can come protect me if you want me to stay safe!”

  Keziah made a sharp, angry gesture with both hands. “This is impossible! This is all impossible!”

  “It was an accident,” Natividad insisted. “Or some random thing, not aimed at me especially, we just got in the way! Keziah, that car is going to explode! Think of that girl—Amira’s age, you said! It wouldn’t take you a second to move that car!”

  “Grayson would be very angry if you were injured.” But Keziah clearly wanted to go help the girl—that surprised Natividad, but she wasn’t going to question it.

  Keziah paused for one more instant, to stare down at Natividad and say sternly, “Draw a mandala. Then stay in it. Do not leave it. Do not watch me. Watch for enemies. If you see anything that looks wrong, call me. You promise this? Because if you promise, then I will step away from you and pretend to be very distracted over there where the car is. Then we will find out if you have an enemy—but you must call me at once if you see anything dangerous, because I truly will be a little bit distracted if I must move that car.”

  “Yes, yes!” That was clever, using Natividad as bait—that would let Keziah do exactly what she wanted, rescue that girl and also make any enemy come out into the open. But Keziah was very clever, always thinking, which wasn’t usual for a black dog, but Keziah was unusual in lots of ways.

  Natividad didn’t have a silver knife or anything with which to draw a proper mandala. She dropped to her knees and drew it with her finger as fast as she could, a tight little circle with just room for her inside, anchored with nothing but smaller mandalas at the cardinal directions. It was a terrible mandala, though she did have a silver coin to set right at the center, which was better than nothing. She felt it spark to life, the cross and then the circle, and tucked her arms around her knees, careful not to break the outer circle.

  Keziah waited just long enough to be sure Natividad had finished her mandala. Then she strode across the street, shoved between two bystanders, stepped easily beneath and around burning rubble, grabbed the desperate, straining man by the arm, and tossed him quite casually away from the car, back toward the safety of the street. Reaching down, she curled her own hands around the burning edge of the undercarriage. Then she straightened, tipping the car up and back on its side, swinging it to the side and flinging it at last, with a grimace of effort, to roll upside down. Flames rose up around her, but she ignored the fire, kicking aside the wreckage of several chairs, bending to lift the girl she found beneath the twisted metal of the table. Natividad tried to watch, but everyone was in the way and she couldn’t see very well, and anyway she wasn’t supposed to watch Keziah—she was supposed to watch for enemies. Which truly made no sense, except that what if there was a callejero after all? Or what if there was a black dog with discipline and control, not a stray at all, but a strong black dog who was an enemy of Dimilioc?

  But it wasn’t a black dog that came for her. Natividad shouldn’t have been surprised. She had known no black dog would use a car to attack anybody. She had known that. So she shouldn’t have been surprised it wasn’t a black dog.

  But she was shocked to see it was one of the blood kin.

  No blood kin should have been here—certainly not here, in Vermont, so close to Dimilioc. Blood kin were made by vampires, and all the vampires were gone. Once their masters had lost the power to hide themselves and their servants beneath the miasma, the blood kin had at last been recognized for the monsters they were, and ordinary people everywhere had destroyed them. Silver was good against the blood kin, and cutting off their heads—there were ways, even for ordinary people, so now all the blood kin were gone, along with the vampires.

  Except plainly a few had hidden, because this one was right here, right out in broad daylight in the middle of the public street, even though blood kin hated sunlight and hated being seen clearly. It must have known it would die if it let itself be recognized, but it had come out anyway.

  Natividad had always known that blood kin could do things on their own, even if they also had to obey the vampire that had made them. They had to be able to make decisions and run things, or they couldn’t have become mayors and school superintendents and so on, the way so many had. Blood kin had always sought positions of power and public trust, because they could corrupt and destroy a city better from the inside, and corrupting and destroying cities was what vampires loved best.

  But she had always thought that the blood kin would just die without their vampires to rule them. She had not guessed that any of the blood kin, surviving their masters, could own enough independent will to seek revenge. Maybe this one had even been trying to get to Dimilioc—maybe it had sensed Natividad and decided she was an easier target. Blood kin were smart, just as smart as the people they’d been before the vampire got them; that was why so many had been able to pass for human for so long.

  It was horrible. As soon as it came out in the open, all the people who had been staring at the wreckage of the car and the shop, and most of all at Keziah, turned around and stared at it instead. Something about the blood kin, some instinct bred into people by thousands of years of living with vampires even if they hadn’t known it, pulled all their combined attention toward it. Then the screaming started in earnest, people scrambling back and away in all directions. Except the girl’s father, who ran to get his daughter from Keziah—but Natividad already knew he was very brave.

  Vampires had always made blood kin out of normal people, and for a while after they were made, blood kin looked almost like the people they had been. But there was nothing of that person left in this one. It had been made a long time ago. It was skeletally gaunt, with yellowish papery skin tight across its bones and long yellow fingernails that were like claws. Its eyes were crimson; its teeth, set in a jaw that hinged oddly, were black and pointed. And it moved in a strange disjointed rush, all fits and starts, wanting Natividad but wary of the mandala that surrounded her.

  Natividad ducked her face against her knees and closed her eyes, because if she looked she knew she would try to run, and if she ran it would be on her instantly. Keziah had been right to make her draw a mandala. She was Pure, and for her, safety was something she won by defending her ground. Only she wished she’d had time to make a much, much bigger mandala, and anchor it much, much more strongly into the earth.

  Then Keziah hit the blood kin. She was almost all the way in her black dog form, which was a very fast change for a black dog; only Ezekiel could shift between one step and the next; usually it took minutes for a black dog to change. But Keziah was fast. Only the blood kin was fast, too. It wheeled to meet her, vicious and quick and a lot stronger than anything so emaciated should have been, hissing in a voice like a snake and raking with its yellow claws—Natividad had never heard that blood kin had poisoned claws, but those nasty yell
ow claws looked poisoned. It was horrible, and Keziah wasn’t used to fighting blood kin, certainly not all by herself. She already had a nasty long gash all across her face and neck and shoulder. Natividad jumped to her feet and snatched Keziah’s new moonstone bracelet out of the little pouch it had come in, wove a memory of moonlight into its stones and around its silver chain, and threw it as hard as she could right at the blood kin.

  The bracelet turned over and over, sunlight and the memory of moonlight tangling in its stones and turning them a strange milky golden color. It hit the blood kin on the back, and the monster whirled around, hissing with fury and pain, and Keziah snarled and lunged forward, and the blood kin made a terrible sound, and there was a savage, fast, tumbling blur of shaggy black and gaunt yellow, and then a horrible crimson-eyed head with a narrow vicious jaw flew right at Natividad, who squeaked and ducked, but the head bounced off her mandala and burst into white flames. Black ichor spattered the brick pavers where it rolled, each little drop burning away in its own brief pyre. The smoke smelled like sulfur and rot and hatred.

  “Oh, ugh,” Natividad said, heartfelt.

  Keziah was now fully in her black dog form. She wasn’t as huge as most black dogs, nothing like as big as Alejandro, but she was still more than three times Natividad’s size, and she looked very, very dangerous—which she was. Natividad didn’t blame everyone left in the street from flinching and cowering, even the man with the little girl, who had backed away but hadn’t yet gotten all the way out of the street. He was staring, his eyes wide and horrified.

  Not wanting to see the man’s horror, Natividad looked away, focusing again on Keziah. She had that long, nasty gash across her face and neck and shoulder, but that wound wasn’t serious enough to drive her back into her human form. She didn’t look like she was planning to shift back any time soon. Too angry, too outraged by finding one of the blood kin here where there weren’t supposed to be any—too scared, maybe, because what if there was a vampire somewhere nearby, what if that was why the blood kin had been here? There wasn’t, there couldn’t be, all the vampires were dead—but Keziah was probably thinking that maybe one might be left, because blood kin didn’t usually come just by themselves.