The younger black dogs nodded. Ian looked sullen, Jim Gotz resigned. But both of them turned and loped away, straight up the road, melting into their black dog forms as they moved, making no effort to conceal themselves.
Grayson signaled James back and Carter and Rip out before them. James strode away in human form, almost jauntily, which was all an act; he couldn’t possibly like taking the rear position. But obviously Grayson had no one else he could trust to come last, keep out of it, and if necessary get out and back to Étienne with the tale. Or Herrod. Or both. Yeah, good idea keeping James out of it. Miguel had to agree about that.
The other two flowed through the afternoon sunlight in their black dog forms, dark and smoldering and vicious. Miguel wouldn’t have wanted to face them. It was hard to imagine anyone human, witch or not, withstanding this many black dogs.
Grayson hadn’t shifted. Alejandro hadn’t either, though his face and hands and shoulders were a little distorted and his eyes fiery and inhuman. His control was pretty good, better than it had been a couple years ago; he would not shift the rest of the way unless he decided to.
Théo Callot was still fully in his human form, except for his crimson eyes. He stayed close to Stéphanie, as Alejandro stayed close to Natividad. Miguel reached under his jacket to touch the small handgun he carried. The feel of it was reassuring. The knowledge of the silver bullets with which it was loaded. Even though he knew guns and silver bullets weren’t necessarily all that useful against the kind of witch Justin and Keziah had run into.
He hoped he wouldn’t have a chance to use it. But he was pretty sure that their plan, such as it was, would get more and more disarranged, because plans always did. So, yeah, a gun was a pretty reassuring thing to have.
It wasn’t quite a campground after all. It also wasn’t nearly as close as Miguel might have wished. A mile or two was all very well for a black dog, but for a normal person like Miguel—or a Pure girl like his twin—a mile or two uphill was tedious. Four or five miles was worse than tedious; it was exhausting and way too slow. After the first little bit, Alejandro carried Natividad, and Théo Callot carried his wife. What surprised Miguel was that Grayson himself proved willing to carry Miguel, without apparent offense. Miguel certainly didn’t comment. It was the best he could do: pretend to not really notice that the Master of Dimilioc had picked him up and carried him like a man carrying a child.
So it didn’t take very long at all to cover those last miles.
Miguel had half expected more bad luck. Twisted ankles—though that wouldn’t be a problem for a black dog. They wouldn’t twist their ankles, and if they did, they could let their shadows take away the injury. Black dogs were really lucky in some ways. Not so lucky at all in other ways, sure, but magical healing would be pretty cool.
But not even black dogs would be immune to other kinds of bad luck. Rockslides, for example. Explosives. Bear traps.
Yeah, he was getting a little too nervous, obviously, because that one was just silly.
It wasn’t silly at all to worry about snipers and silver bullets, though. Miguel tried to guess whether Grayson was considering that possibility. It was impossible to tell. The Master’s calm was unbreakable as ever.
That might be one reason he’d had his black dogs spread out, though. And a reason he’d kept Natividad and Stéphanie back here near him. Black dog senses were acute. If anything happened, if anyone sprang some kind of trap, Grayson’s little group ought to know about it practically as soon as it happened.
But nothing happened. Nothing that Miguel could sense. Broken stone and sand along the road; that might be a quarry. Another, smaller road, hardly more than an impression, which Miguel wouldn’t have noticed if not for the dusting of snow lying more smoothly along the road. A couple scrubby trees. Nothing nothing nothing, and finally the road curved around a tumble of broken reddish stone and opened up into a wide, nearly flat parking lot. A couple hundred feet farther on, the mountain itself loomed upright; off to one side the ground fell away in a sharp arroyo. And crammed back against the cliffs, a scattering of ugly buildings, looking totally out of place and totally deserted.
Natividad was staring not at the nearest building, but beyond it, toward a larger, flat-roofed building at the far end of the parking area. The building on which she focused looked more like a warehouse than anything else. Maybe it contained some of the more expensive equipment used to work the quarry they’d passed. There was a loading dock in the front. The metal stairs leading up the loading dock looked half rusted through. The door had a dent in it, visible even from this distance, where it looked like someone had pounded for admittance with a hammer. It had also been torn practically off its hinges and left hanging, but Miguel was pretty sure that was more recent. As in, minutes old. That was the kind of damage an impatient black dog would do, and Ian, and Jim were no longer in sight. He couldn’t think where else they might have gone. None of the other ugly prefab buildings seemed a likely target.
This was certainly no campground. It looked more like some kind of industrial park or something, and not very inviting even for that. The buildings were mostly set right back against the mountain, which came down here in a series of short, broken, near-vertical cliffs before falling away in a gentler slope to the south. The short alleys between the buildings were cluttered with trash, broken furniture, rusted machinery and a dumpster that had somehow been knocked over on its side. The whole appearance of the place was slovenly. Certainly nothing about the scene added much to the view.
But he immediately spotted the black dog tracks. Not much like animal tracks. A little like the tracks of a giant wolf, but broad and blurred and with the impression of much more impressive claws.
None of those buildings, including the one those tracks headed for, offered an obvious back door. Built right up against the mountain like that, as far as Miguel could tell, it would be pretty tricky to cut around and come in some sneakier way. If sneakiness was even necessary. To a first glance all the buildings seemed abandoned. The one the tracks pointed to had half its high windows boarded up and the other half broken out. But now that Miguel looked, he could see, along with the tracks of the black dogs, tire tracks that led up to the delivery entrance in a confusing coming-and-going snarl. The snow had been coming down in light flurries most of the day and all day yesterday, but to Miguel some of those tracks looked recent. Also, the snow over near that building was dirty, streaked with gray and black as though someone had thrown ashes and dirt across it. Maybe someone had.
Other than the black dog tracks and the torn-up door, there was no sign of Ian or Jim. Not Carter or Rip either. No human footprints. Miguel assumed they had all headed for that building because of the tire tracks and the dirt, but he couldn’t guess what they might have found inside. There was no sound of fighting. No sound at all, to Miguel’s human ears, except the wind. Even that had died down now. The heavy overcast was breaking up; afternoon sunlight lanced down through ragged openings in the clouds. The light turned the cliffs a muddy pink and mercilessly picked out the ugliness of the buildings.
“I think—” Miguel began. But before he could actually say anything, a black dog’s angry roar cut through the fraught quiet. Miguel couldn’t tell whose voice it was; it didn’t sound like anyone he knew. Higher pitched than most, almost more a scream than a roar.
Grayson nodded to Stéphanie, who took her maraña and cast it into the air in front of them, where it spread out and dissipated, a lot like mist burning off in bright sunlight. This produced no effect that Miguel could see, but he supposed it probably did something, hopefully useful. Grayson seemed satisfied. He drew the rest of them off to one side, toward the dubious shelter of the nearest building, a smaller one whose corrugated roof had been torn loose along one side and clattered in the rising breeze. The noise set Miguel’s teeth on edge. He tried to ignore it. Beside him, Alejandro was tense and edgy. He gripped Natividad’s arm with one hand, but Natividad tugged herself free, found a silver knife—
it looked more like a letter opener to Miguel—and rapidly began to draw a protective circle around them all.
“We are most unlikely to stay here in this exact place,” Stéphanie told her sharply. “And we do not even know such things will discommode a witch.”
Natividad didn’t pause. “We don’t know they won’t, and we can always draw another circle somewhere else, and another one after that. And maybe we’ll be happy to have circles we can run back to.” She completed the circle, straightened up, and looked at Grayson. “I still have my aparato.”
“Hold it ready,” the Master told her grimly.
Another roar, this one rising to a real scream as someone, Miguel guessed, was forced into human form. Someone was shouting...someone was chanting, in Latin, it sounded like...he held hard to Alejandro’s arm, not to try to restrain his brother—that would be impossible—but for simple comfort. In front of Miguel, Natividad was trembling. The back of Miguel’s neck prickled with plain animal fear, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. And he couldn’t think. He didn’t have enough information, there was nothing to think about.
Another screaming roar, and this time Natividad jerked back, her eyes widening. “¡Eso es Ezekiel!”
It didn’t sound like Ezekiel to Miguel, but he took her word for it. He also grabbed her hand in case she ran out of the circle and toward whatever was going on in that building. He said urgently to Grayson, “Listen, Master, if Ezekiel kills everybody in there except the bad guys, I bet we’ll feel pretty stupid for waiting out here with everyone who might be able to force him into human shape!” Immediately he knew he’d handled it badly; he should have said the same thing, but in different words and a much meeker tone; he should have made it sound like a question somehow. He didn’t look at Grayson, didn’t dare. He flinched when the Master raised a hand, ducking his head, except he knew, he knew, they had to go in. They should have backed out of this place the moment the tires had gone flat, that had been the moment to retreat and regroup and wait for reinforcements. Now it was too late and forward was the only way left.
But Grayson only snatched Natividad into the curve of one thickening arm, collected Alejandro with a fiery glance, and ran, yes, forward. Leaving Théo Callot to protect his wife and, presumably, Miguel. Which was all very well, but no. Miguel headed out without waiting to see if the other two would follow. Scared as he was, there was just no choice anymore, because he could not possibly retreat without knowing what was going on. “Just a peek through the door,” he muttered, to no one. That was the sensible strategy now. See if he could get a look at what was happening in there, and if it looked like the bad guys were winning, he could try to get away with enough information that Herrod and his people might be able to do something actually useful. With no black dogs to help. Except maybe Théo Callot, if he stayed out here with his wife, which was probably the sensible thing to do; and James, of course, figuring he was still out there somewhere.
He was pretty sure they could have come up with a better plan. If he’d tried harder, he could surely have come up with something better. And made Grayson listen. Somehow.
He ducked forward, hurrying toward the loading dock and the torn-up entrance. Since it was a little late to try for sneaky, he went with fast. Until he got to the door. Sneaky would probably be a lot more important once he was inside. From the sound of it, a lot was going on in there now; black dogs were roaring and snarling and someone was shouting in Latin, which he ought to have learned, and someone in English but not clearly enough for Miguel to understand his words.
Then someone started screaming, a horrible thin sound that made Miguel flinch and hesitate.
It was curiosity that drove him on as much as terror for his twin and for Alejandro and for the rest of them. Maybe no one would even notice him at all if he was careful. Though careful sounded a ridiculous idea when he thought of going in there.
Dropping to his knees, Miguel threw himself through the doorway and to the side, getting out of the way as well as he could, trying to get some idea of what was going on without being spotted himself.
-9-
Natividad clung to Grayson’s shaggy forelimb as he leaped forward. She refused to close her eyes even for a second in case she missed spotting Ezekiel. She clenched one hand around her new espejo and her other hand around the roughness of her sisal handbag and held tight to Grayson with her arms and legs.
The Master carried her as though she weighed nothing. He ran on three legs almost as fast and smoothly as he could have on four. She felt every footfall like a drumbeat, like her own heartbeat. Her heart thudded, her mouth was dry, but she felt oddly separate from her terror. She couldn’t really believe any of this was actually happening, though she knew it was. Even though part of her was terrified, she knew Grayson would keep her safe, keep them all safe. Somewhere, very close now, Ezekiel was desperate and furious and hating everything and everyone. His hatred beat through her like her a separate heartbeat. She felt sick with it, she had felt sick with hatred and despair ever since the tires had blown, but she wouldn’t admit it.
The Master hadn’t saved Ezekiel. Yet. But he would. She had faith that he would. She had to have faith. Grayson would save him, or she would, and they would kill all their enemies, and everything would be back the way it was supposed to be.
She had never actually wanted to kill anybody since Malvern Vonhausel. Well, except vampires and blood kin, but they didn’t count. Anyway, she did now. She wanted to kill whoever had done such terrible things to Ezekiel, whoever had hurt him, whoever had made him feel like this. She wanted to throw that person and all his allies and friends out beyond the world, into the fell dark where the demons dwelled. She wanted to close the way behind them so they could never get out. The depth of her own hatred and fury stunned her, only it wasn’t hers, not all hers, some of it was Ezekiel’s, but she couldn’t tell what part belonged to her and what was his. Alejandro was also furious, but her brother’s fury was more familiar, more his own, and she clung to that because it was better than what came to her from Ezekiel.
All this went through her mind and heart in one burning instant. Then they were through the door—Alejandro hit it first and sent the whole heavy door spinning aside with a scream of tearing metal—Natividad ducked her face against Grayson’s chest as he leaped over the wreckage in the doorway, through another interior doorway, down a short flight of stairs, and into a great roaring space of lancing light and tangled shadows.
At first Natividad had no idea what was happening or who was present, except she knew when Alejandro came up beside Grayson. They paused there, so she guessed this place was almost as confusing to the black dogs as it was to her.
It was confusing. It was all one big space inside this building. Light spilled through shadows from bare bulbs swinging overhead and brighter, cleaner sunlight streamed in through broken windows and through a big opening torn through the metal wall on the other side of the building, probably just now by Dimilioc wolves because there were an awful lot of black dogs here and surely most of them must be their friends and not enemies. No, both friends and enemies, because they were fighting. That was some of the roaring and some of the screaming and a lot of the confusion.
Between the swaying lights and the battling black dogs and the deafening steady roaring underlying all the rest of the clamor, it took way too long for Natividad to gain any clear idea of what kind of place they had come to. The steady roaring was machinery, she realized at last; blocky mysterious machines loomed, four of them, taller than she was, not far away. Their rumbling engine noise was punctuated by excited human shouts and the snarling of black dogs and, farther away, the barely audible but horrible sound of choked-off screaming.
Black dogs seemed to be everywhere, though mostly not too close. There could not really be so many. She couldn’t tell one from another by eye, but she knew Ezekiel was out there somewhere, only it seemed impossible she should not recognize him. But all the black dogs were struggling and snarlin
g. Black ichor was spattered here and there, smoking; and far too much red blood marked where someone had been injured while in human form.
Rip was in human form, in fact, just trying to get to his feet—he looked all right, but he was probably the source of the blood. He must have been hurt badly in his other shape to be forced to shift in the middle of all this raging violence. That was probably Carter standing over him, protecting him, which was better than she would have thought of Carter, but she thought that was who it was. The smaller black dog trying to get past Carter and finish off Rip was poor Absolon. That made sense, in an awful way.
Though if it hadn’t been Absolon, the witches might have gotten their claws in someone tougher instead, Carter or someone, even Grayson himself, and that would be so much worse.
Even as she watched, appalled, Rip’s shadow came up again and he shook himself back into black dog form and surged past Carter to fight Absolon. There was another black dog, bigger and stronger, attacking them now and she was pretty sure someone was going to get killed.
Then flames blazed up between and around the black dogs, and she lost sight of that particular struggle before she could see how it came out. Smaller fires flickered here and there, except this place was all concrete and metal and almost nothing to burn. But many of the black dogs must be trying to summon fire, because the very air smelled singed. Behind the smell of sulfur and burning, Natividad flinched from the stench of blood and rot. It was a little like the smell of vampires, but that was a dry and withered smell. This was...not worse, exactly. But it was not nice at all. She looked for the source of that nasty stench, though she was afraid of what might be producing it.
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