Shadow Twin

by Rachel Neumeier

  Pity the senator wasn’t likely to make some helpfully revealing speech, the way bad guys did in movies. Now that I have you in my power, Mr. Bond, let me explain my evil plan...yeah, no, probably that kind of idiotic monologue was too much to hope for. Though he could try to get these people talking and just see what he could get out of them.

  The senator was too important to say a word himself. He sat in a chair against the wall, one ankle resting on the opposite knee, his cold gaze on Miguel, and let a flunky rap out questions and demands for him.

  “You work with these creatures, these black dogs,” snapped the flunky, whose name Miguel didn’t know. It wasn’t a question, it wasn’t even a statement. In his mouth, it was more an accusation.

  The flunky was on his feet, across the narrow table from Miguel, leaning forward aggressively. At least, he probably thought he was radiating aggression. A real tough guy in his own mind. To someone who had grown up around black dogs, the poor guy’s efforts to be all scary were kind of sad.

  The flunky was a young guy, maybe ten years older than Miguel. Weedy-looking, pale-skinned, the kind of desk jockey who’d probably never walked farther than from his desk to his boss’s office in his life. Small mouth, thin little mustache. Nice shirt, though. With a tie. Probably ties were a required component of the official flunky uniform. The tie was red, the shirt white, the rest of the suit black—probably the outfit was also supposed to work for the tough-guy look.

  It was important to remember that the flunky might be smarter than he looked. It was important to remember that Senator Bad Guy was almost certainly smarter than would’ve been convenient.

  “Well, yeah?” Miguel tried to imagine what politico types might think about Mexican kids—Mexico, torn by a hundred years of black dog territorial battles and with its government even more corrupted by vampires than Norteamérica, hardly had a real government at all. Things were getting better, but it’d be a job, building a real country out of what was left of Mexico. Miguel could pretty well guess that an American politician would assume any Mexican kid had to be an ignorant punk. He played to that assumption by aiming for the sweet spot somewhere between sarcastic and scared.

  He was sitting where he’d been put, in an uncomfortable plastic chair on the other side of the table, lower than the Senator’s chair. Really, these people were so transparent it was almost funny. Not quite, though. One of his wrists was handcuffed to the narrow metal arm of the chair, as though they thought he was dangerous. Why they thought they needed the Special Forces guys in the room when Miguel was handcuffed to the chair, that was just one of life’s little mysteries. Unless they were using the Special Forces dudes to try to intimidate Miguel. Or maybe using Miguel to demonstrate to the Special Forces that Senator Bad Guy was in control. On reflection, Miguel wouldn’t have put that past Connelly. Important to keep in mind that the senator was probably pretty smart.

  He said, kind of hastily like he was definitely intimidated, “I mean, monsters? Anybody would work with ’em and do just what they said. They would’ve torn out my guts.” Leaning forward, he lowered his voice to a more confidential tone, like he was nervous of being overheard. “They do that, you know? To ordinary people. If you get in their way. You ever seen somebody with their guts torn out? They’d’ve done it to me first time I stepped on somebody’s toe except Natividad’s my sister and she wouldn’t like it. They don’t like to waste girls like her, you know?”

  “Girls like her,” said the flunky, with a quick, not very subtle glance at Senator Connelly. “Tell us about girls like your sister.”

  Miguel didn’t have to work hard to look intimidated and young. He did have to work at looking kind of dim. Scared and not too bright, a kid who wouldn’t have the nerve to lie even if he had the brains: that was the kind of impression Miguel wanted to give. He said in his most earnest tone, “It’s not like she can help it, you know? She’s just a girl, what’s she supposed to do? Listen, she’s okay, right? You’ve got the black dog in a separate cell, right? You’re keeping him away from her?”

  “He really, really wants to see your sister,” the flunky told Miguel.

  He said it like a threat—like he enjoyed making threats. Big man’s lackey, throwing borrowed weight around like it was his, even uglier than the senator doing it himself. But he’d just told Miguel that Ezekiel was alive, probably on his feet, and almost certainly in his right mind. Miguel ducked his head and tried not to look like he’d figured any of that out.

  The flunky went on, “He really wants your sister with him. Why is that? What is she? A witch, isn’t she? What exactly can she do?”

  Miguel blinked at him, pretending to be confused by this line of questioning. “She’s not exactly a witch. She’s Pura. Pure. You know about the Pure, right? I mean, people do.” He was fairly certain these people must already know that term. He tried to sound earnest, but not too earnest. Like he wasn’t so scared now and wanted to be helpful, but not so helpful he’d make up mierda just to have something to say. “It’s not so much what she does. She can’t do much, a chica like her. It’s what she is. She can make one black dog do what another one says. That’s what makes a master black dog, you know. Black dogs are really hard to keep down. They fight all the time. They fight each other and they fight the master and they kill ordinary people like me, I mean all the time, there’s no stopping them.”

  He’d got that just right. He could see it go home. Yeah, he bet these politico goons had worked enough with callejero black dogs to believe that one. Miguel was pretty sure Ezekiel wouldn’t do anything to change their minds about black dog obstinacy and violence, either. He went on in the same tone, “A master black dog uses a mujer Pura like my sister to make the others obey. Like a muzzle on a dog that bites, you know? That way the dog can’t bite you.”

  Senator Connelly was leaning forward now. Miguel pretended not to notice. He blinked at the flunky and put a little bit of a whine into his voice, “She’s okay, right? Listen, she’s kind of a blandengue, my sister, but she’s been taught to be that way, you know how it is with a girl, she thinks she’s in love with him.” He lowered his voice confidingly, meeting the flunky’s gaze, one guy to another. “They like girls to think they’re in love. That way a girl will do just what you ask her to do. You know how it is, right?”

  “Sure, yeah, I know.” The flunky, too, lowered his voice. “And what does Ezekiel Korte think of her, Miguel?”

  Now Miguel leaned back, an abrupt little move, flipping a hand dismissively. “Oh, he’s just using her. You know. He thinks she’s something special, all right. Sure he does. Her and any other chica Pura. It’s all the same to him as long as a girl does what she’s told. He turns it on and off. She’s nothing to him really.”

  He thought they might buy that much, buy it at least part way, enough that maybe the first thing they’d try when Ezekiel proved recalcitrant wouldn’t be threatening Natividad. He had to hope they hadn’t already tried that, or that if they had, they hadn’t seen anything that’d contradict Miguel’s line.

  Santibañez had raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t say a word. Miguel pretended not to notice. He gazed earnestly at the flunky, like he’d forgotten Senator Connelly was the guy in charge, but a covert glance let him see intensity in the senator’s eyes, in the set of his mouth. Yeah. Miguel thought—he hoped—he might have set the right kind of hook. Maybe. Or at least gotten the first interested nibble.

  The flunky straightened up and looked over his shoulder at the senator, got the curt wave of a hand, nodded, and said to Miguel, “So, Ezekiel Korte. Tell us about him. He’s not just an ordinary black dog, is he, Miguel?”

  “Ezekiel Korte?” Miguel let the incredulity show in his voice. “I mean, you don’t know who he is?” He leaned forward again conspiratorially. “He’s their assassin. He’s their executioner. The black dog boogie monster, that’s him. You gotta be careful with him. You are being careful, right?”

  “Silver seems to work on him just like on an
y of them—” began the flunky.

  “You’d think he’d be a little young to be anybody’s assassin,” Senator Connelly broke in.

  His voice was deep and smooth, with an unexpected warmth to it. It was the voice of a preacher or a demagogue. Or a serious bad guy in a James Bond movie. Miguel blinked at him as though surprised to be reminded that the senator was even in the room. He tried to look kind of awed that the Great Man would speak directly to him, but wasn’t sure he pulled it off—he’d better keep it subtle anyway, pile it on too deep and Connelly might figure out Miguel was playing him. That wouldn’t be good.

  So Miguel met the senator’s gaze, cold compared to the warmth of his voice. He let his own eyes widen just slightly, careful not to overdo it, subtle was better when your enemy was intelligent. He said quickly, “Yeah, he’s young, but he was born that way, I guess. Real strong black dog shadow. Real strong. The old Master of Dimilioc picked him right out of the kiddie pack and trained him personally, that’s what people say.” Enough people that these bastards had probably already heard the story, and if they hadn’t, so what, they weren’t likely to figure out anything important about Ezekiel or Dimilioc just from that. He added, “Ezekiel’s a punk, and he treats my sister like mierda, but he’s the black dog’s assassin all right. Have you ever seen him fight? Cause I have. Usually he holds back a little bit cause he likes to play, you know, but he’s something else when he lets go, believe me.”

  Lieutenant Santibañez still didn’t say a word, though the corner of his mouth twitched. The other Special Forces guy had figured out Miguel was laying down a line of bullshit, too, judging from his particularly stone-faced lack of expression. Miguel carefully didn’t look at either of the Special Forces dudes. He shoved himself back from the table, shrugging his shoulders and avoiding Connelly’s gaze, as though he feared he’d been too disrespectful and might be in trouble for it. Young, he reminded himself. Play young and ignorant, a punk kid who’d been raised by werewolves, hardly literate, probably eats with his fingers.

  “Have you?” said the senator, a touch too thoughtfully for comfort. He got to his feet, jerked his head at the flunky—whose name Miguel still didn’t know—and walked out. The Special Forces guys pivoted and followed the politicos, Santibañez closing the door behind them. Not slamming it. Just a gentle little click, and a second click as the lock engaged. As though it mattered whether the door was locked, when Miguel was still handcuffed to the chair. Maybe that was on purpose: Soften up the stupid kid by making him sit for hours in a stupid plastic chair. Miguel could believe it of the senator. Not of Santibañez, so much.

  He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, re-thinking that whole little conversation: who’d said what and in what tone, how he’d answered and the bait he’d tried to throw out there. He couldn’t decide whether Senator Connelly might have taken that bait—whether he might still. The flunky, call him Igor, was probably smarter than he looked, no matter how easy he’d been to lead. Or he’d seemed easy to lead; Miguel had to watch out he wasn’t being played himself. The senator...hard to guess.

  Then, remembering the cameras in this room, Miguel opened his eyes again and fidgeted restlessly, drummed his fingers on the table, pulled at his shirt, tried to shove the chair back from the table like he’d forgotten it was bolted to the floor. He hoped somebody was watching him, because playing for the cameras was making it hard to think and it would be really annoying if the effort was totally wasted.

  He’d have to play this mostly by ear. Push the senator and see what he did, push again and see where it led. He was shaking, his hands were actually shaking. He hadn’t been like that during the actual interview, but now he was, and he couldn’t seem to stop. How stupid. Nothing was happening now. He gripped his hands together hard, but that didn’t help the shakes. At least if somebody was watching, they’d definitely think he was a scared kid. So, fine.

  Silver seems to work on him just like on any of them. Igor had said that. They’d got Ezekiel imprisoned behind silver, then. Well, of course they knew about silver and black dogs. Everyone knew that much. Miguel couldn’t have hoped for anybody to put Ezekiel behind plain steel. Anybody would’ve laced prison bars with silver. Or the lock on the door, or whatever.

  But this senator and his people, he was pretty sure they hardly knew anything about the Pure. Unless they were playing Miguel, but on a second thought and a third, why bother? He was a kid and cuffed to a damn chair and it just didn’t seem likely they’d think of him as a serious opponent.

  No, most likely they were just as ignorant as they seemed. Or almost. Or close enough. So probably they knew silver could restrain a black dog, but they didn’t know para maldita cosa about the Pure. Miguel turned that over in his mind, feeling the first glimmerings of a real idea trying to take shape.

  Yeah. Not much yet. But it was a start.

  -13-

  One of the Special Forces men accompanied the Dimilioc black wolves. A liaison. That was not a word Alejandro had known, in either Spanish or English, until Colonel Herrod used it. Grayson gave the young man a hard, assessing stare, then nodded and jerked his head toward the van the Dimilioc wolves were taking. Alejandro thought the man was a hostage, offered by Herrod in balance or apology for taking Ezekiel and Natividad, or perhaps for some obscure human reason of his own. He had not truly realized how he depended on Miguel to interpret such gestures for him. Now, without his younger brother to explain what a liaison was and what Herrod meant by offering one to the master, he found he had very little idea what the human motivation might be for such a gesture.

  It was Carter who explained what the term actually meant, impatiently, when Rip asked. Alejandro was surprised twice, first that Carter knew the word and then that Rip did not seem to mind showing his own ignorance. Maybe because he was obviously the weakest of the black dogs left and so it did not matter. Grayson and James, Carter and Rip, and Alejandro himself. And Carissa, so that was one they had gained. But that was all their wolves now. Jim Gotz, lost to the demon; Ian Olney, killed by his own shadow. Like something from a nightmare, each of them.

  Théo Callot, useless because his wife had been injured. Alejandro could not actually hold him too much to blame for that. It was a different kind of nightmare. If it had been Natividad...Alejandro did not let himself imagine his own response if the demon had struck his sister rather than Stéphanie.

  And Absolon Lumondière, taken by the witch. That might be worse than any of the others.

  But, no. They would get Absolon back. They had recovered Carissa and Ezekiel...Alejandro assumed they had recovered Ezekiel. Or would. Or he would recover himself. Whatever had happened to him, Natividad would do something. She would make it work. And the rest of them would find Absolon and kill that witch.

  They had better. That would at least mean no one needed to explain to Étienne Lumondière how they had lost three of his four wolves, including Étienne’s own young cousin, not to mention Stéphanie Callot, and none of their own people. Alejandro was not sure how Grayson could explain that to Étienne. Not without fighting him. Which he would not want to do, probably.

  It was likely going to be a problem. Especially if Stéphanie Callot did not recover. Or if Théo Callot decided that his wife’s condition was Grayson’s fault and attacked the Master. Then Grayson would probably kill him, and after that Étienne would probably fight Grayson...it would be much better if Stéphanie recovered. Better still if Ezekiel was with Grayson when they finally returned to Denver. Perhaps he would be. Perhaps Grayson would insist on it. If Alejandro were Master, he would insist on it.

  But at the moment, no one was here for this second pursuit of their enemies except those from the main sept. That might have been why Rip was willing to ask. Or maybe because of them all, he was now the least strong and so did not have to care whether anyone saw his ignorancia.

  Or else because Rip had belonged to Carter’s own small pack once and was used to turning to him for explanations. Carter had a
lso been the one to tear up los grupos electrógenos. Alejandro thought maybe he should have realized before that Carter was intelligent as well as ambitious and dangerous. It made more sense now that Grayson did not want to kill him.

  Rip’s question was useful. It meant they all learned the word liaison was French. Apparently a liaison was not exactly the same as a hostage. One was not supposed to kill a liaison. That was the most important difference, in Alejandro’s opinion. If the Master had offered any assurances, Alejandro had not noticed. He wondered if Grayson agreed about that rule. If Colonel Herrod did not return the Dimilioc people he had taken, Alejandro was certain the Master would forget about the difference between a liaison and a hostage. Surely Herrod knew that too. Herrod’s motivation was still obscure, even after Alejandro understood this. Human motivations often seemed strange to a black dog. Alejandro had always depended on Miguel to interpret the things human people did.

  If anything happened to Natividad or to Miguel, he would tear out this liaison’s heart himself, even if the man was not supposed to be a hostage.

  The liaison’s name was Josiah. Josiah Brown. He was a little darker-skinned than Carter, with a broad face. Wide-set eyes, a wide nose, a wide mouth...wide all over. Bajo y fornido. Broad shoulders, powerful hands. As strongly built as the Master. Maybe more.

  Not that it mattered. Any black dog could take a human man apart in a heartbeat. The Special Forces man must know it. But he did not appear to truly believe it, because he was not afraid. A little bit nervous but not actually afraid, so far as Alejandro could tell. His heart rate was a little fast, but not so much as might be expected for a man pulled aside from his trusted companions and set alone in the hands of...not quite enemies. But allies who might soon enough become enemies.