Natividad dropped the sandwich, which under the circumstances was quite a sacrifice even with a sandwich like that one. She buried her face in her hands, sobbing. That was laying the silly girl thing on a little thick, but she made it look real. Maybe she actually was crying. Throwing away food was reason enough for tears, and he was sure she really was worried about Ezekiel. Black dogs needed a lot of food. If it were anyone but Ezekiel, if they hadn’t fed him, he might be starting to lose control of his shadow. Even Ezekiel might be having trouble, given the shape he’d been in last Miguel had seen him. Especially since he had to be practically wild with fury by now.
Miguel straightened and turned back to Senator Connelly, shrugging helplessly. “She gets like this. I can’t help it. She’s worried about Ezekiel. If you brought him here so she could see him, maybe she’d calm down.”
The senator drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, looking far from convinced. Natividad sobbed louder.
“And you know, black dogs do need a lot of food,” Miguel said earnestly. “Or they get really tough to handle.”
The senator flicked a hand impatiently. “Anything that reacts that violently to silver can be handled. But I want to see her handle him. If you think you can manage her? If you can’t...” he let that trail off ominously. His voice was still smooth and beautiful, but he looked at Natividad with enough visible contempt that Miguel longed to hit him. Really, the senator was trying to be a supervillain. It would have been funny if they hadn’t all been his prisoners.
“Sure,” Miguel said. It wasn’t hard to sound cowed. “Sure. Absolutely.” He took another hasty bite of his sandwich as though afraid the senator might order all the food taken away, punishment for his prisoners being annoying so early in the morning. Actually, that did seem like just the kind of thing he’d do.
Natividad had quieted again. It was probably hard to keep that up, if she’d been at it all night. She was trembling. Exhausted or hungry or scared, or maybe struggling not to hope too much that Miguel had a plan. He sure hoped he did know what he was doing.
He said earnestly to the senator, “Look, don’t be mad at her! It doesn’t really matter if she’s crying. You don’t need her to try to control a black dog, you know? It’s not what she does, it’s what she is.” He hesitated, like someone with a weak hand trying to decide how many cards to turn over. “I could show you,” he offered at last, as though reluctantly. He thought hard about how he’d feel if there was no hope of escape, if his life and Natividad’s depended on what the senator might do if, say, he decided he’d learned enough from Miguel that he didn’t need him. Or if he decided he’d had enough of crying girls and decided to chain Natividad up without food until she stopped acting like such a baby.
Actually, it wasn’t hard at all to imagine the senator acting like that. Though maybe not in this military base, surrounded by people who weren’t his. Miguel didn’t look at Lieutenant Santibañez. He was sure Senator Connelly didn’t want to be reminded he didn’t have a completely free hand here, plus Miguel wanted to feel as scared and helpless as possible, to help him act scared and helpless. So Miguel kept his attention on the senator instead, flinchingly, as though he were thoroughly cowed. From the covert satisfaction in the senator’s expression, the man liked prisoners to cower. Yeah, big man, bullying punk kids.
No matter how pathetic Senator Supervillain was, though, if Miguel hadn’t been focused on getting away, he would have been sincerely terrified of him. If they failed to get away...they wouldn’t fail. They didn’t dare fail.
“Look,” he offered again, “I’ll show you. And then you can let me go, right? You don’t need me. I’m not Pura.” Be contemptuous of me, he willed the senator. I’m willing to leave my sister in your hands as long as you let me go. I’m a coward and not very bright and you don’t have to worry about me at all.
He didn’t dare glance at Lieutenant Santibañez. Skepticism could spread, if the senator noticed somebody else doubted Miguel’s act.
Senator Connelly didn’t look at the Special Forces lieutenant. Nor did he make any promises to Miguel. Probably figured he didn’t have to. He said abruptly to Igor Two, “Go get the black dog.” Then he said to Miguel, “Have another sandwich. If you can’t show me how to get that black dog under control, it’ll be the last one you get.”
Miguel nodded quickly. “It won’t be any problem,” he promised. “Those black dogs, they think they’re so tough, but they can’t say no to the Pure.” Then he bent over Natividad and said in a lower tone, but still loud enough to be overheard, “Look, don’t be stupid. Eat something while you got the chance, hear me? And don’t worry about Ezekiel. He’s not one of us anyway.”
Natividad turned her head away and snuffled. Maybe she really did feel awful.
But they both twitched around when the flunky and a couple of other men brought in Ezekiel. These were all the senator’s men—no, there was one Special Forces guy, but they were mostly flunkies. Trained little lapdogs; they’d probably all applaud if Senator Supervillain tortured a black dog to death and then started biting the heads off kittens for an encore.
Because Ezekiel looked awful. Burningly furious, sure, but awful: so thin he was practically pared down to bone and with terrible charred burns on his wrists and hands. He’d looked bad after the black witches had got him, but he looked a lot worse now.
They had him cuffed and chained with silver, no surprise, of course they did, but somehow Miguel had never once imagined they’d use silver cuffs without a heavy leather backing. If there was any backing at all on those cuffs, it was way too thin. He bit down hard on the urge to protest, trying to decide if it’d be in character to point out that if they wanted to use Ezekiel as their own special pet assassin, just a guess, but maybe they’d find it helpful if he weren’t crippled by burns and starved half to death.
Ezekiel’s eyes were the eyes of a black dog, pale burning yellow. His gaze went first to Natividad, flicked back and forth to evaluate the whole room, took in Miguel, and snagged for just a second on the senator—who looked, to Miguel’s quick glance, cautiously satisfied and not nearly as frightened as he should have been. Then his attention went back to Natividad, because of course he hadn’t gotten the memo that he wasn’t supposed to really care about her.
Maybe Miguel could spin it as pure possessiveness. If he had to. But what he really wanted was to get them all free in the next thirty seconds or so and give Senator Supervillain a whole different opinion of black dogs.
Then Natividad jumped to her feet, so silently furious that she’d totally forgotten her hysterical-little-girl act. Miguel lunged up after her, grabbed her arm, and spun her around. The moment wasn’t going to get any better, so he slapped her hard across the mouth, trying not to wince visibly. “Ezekiel doesn’t care about you!” he yelled at her, which would be news to Ezekiel and maybe helpful if the rest of this went wrong.
Natividad was standing stock-still, blinking at Miguel, which was fine, it looked just right actually. Her lip was split, blood welling up, not much blood, but the senator was starting to speak and whatever he said, if he interfered now the chance might be lost forever.
Miguel dabbed the tips of two fingers in his sister’s blood, whirled around, and glared at Ezekiel. He declared furiously, “You don’t care about my sister at all! Just so long as you can use her blood! That’s what you want, isn’t it? The blood of the Pure!” He stomped angrily across the room toward Ezekiel, his bloody fingers held up like a threat or a warning. Ezekiel stood very still, the deadly stillness of a furious predator who sees his prey almost in reach.
And from the doorway, a familiar voice inquired in a cutting tone, “What is going on here? Senator Connelly, I’m sure you have an explanation for this...unbelievable folly.”
It was Colonel Herrod at last, and for an instant Miguel hesitated. But it honestly seemed too late. Too late to revise the plan, too late to try to scrape Ezekiel’s fury back into a box and get him to deal rationally with the
ir enemies. Even if Miguel had been completely, totally, one hundred percent sure that Herrod truly could crush Senator Supervillain like a bug. He was ninety-eight percent sure, but that wasn’t good enough.
Besides, if there was one thing Miguel believed, it was that the senator was a serious enemy, and that serious enemies were better dead than merely defeated.
He took the two remaining steps, reached out, and smeared Natividad’s blood across Ezekiel’s handcuffs and down the silver chain that linked them.
It was only a little, tiny bit of blood. A few drops. Miguel didn’t know that it would be enough, but he knew quite a bit about the theory behind Pure magic and he thought it would.
The senator was saying something, blustering, his voice raised. Colonel Herrod was being freezingly polite back at him. Miguel couldn’t spare attention for either of them. Natividad was whispering, her hurried words tumbling over each other, impossible to overhear except that Miguel knew exactly what she was saying: “Mi sangre con la suya, my sombra con la suya, mi vida con la suya!” By that time one of the men holding Ezekiel had seized Miguel’s arm and pushed him back, which showed good instincts but he was too late, it didn’t matter. Except one of the Igors, not as stupid as he looked, was heading for Natividad, obviously to shut her up. That might have been bad, but that man was also too late. Natividad cried in Spanish, all on one breath, “¡Esta plata es mía pero también es tuyo!”
Ezekiel jerked his wrists apart, the silver practically exploding as he surged into his black dog form. All three men within reach, including the guy who’d grabbed Miguel, were dead a heartbeat later. Blood sprayed across Miguel’s face, hot and coppery, and he stumbled backward, caught himself, whirled, and grabbed Colonel Herrod’s arm in a hard two-handed grip before the colonel had a chance to do more than take a step back and reach for a weapon.
“Stop!” Miguel ordered, not shouting, but packing his voice with all the urgency he could manage. “Stand still!”
By some miracle—Miguel was not in any doubt about whether he could physically stop him—Herrod actually listened. He even rapped out a short phrase that made his own men fall back.
By that time, on the other side of the room, Senator Connelly’s body was collapsing in a horrifying welter of blood, and then the senator’s head, flung like a missile, smashed through the one-way glass, which was probably supposed to be shatterproof but turned out not to be that shatterproof, and a lot of people were screaming. Somebody’s guts were spread out over a surprisingly large area and somebody else’s throat had been torn out. Both the Igors were dead, almost everyone was dead. Not quite; in the room behind the glass someone scrambled up from behind a chair and fired at Ezekiel, deafening repeated gunfire, too fast to hear the individual shots.
Ezekiel flicked into human form to evade this attack, leaping across the shattered glass and rolling, then burst back into his black dog form, snatched the shooter up and tore him nearly in half, crushed the gun, and whirled in a tight circle, snapping powerful jaws in threat or warning. The sharp sound of black fangs meeting was more terrifying than a gunshot, but all the bad guys seemed to be dead. The smell of blood and butchery was thick, worse than a hog butchering.
It had all been so fast. Miguel seemed to have missed most of that action, somehow. He held on to Herrod’s arm, trying to impress on him the great need to be still through sheer physical urgency. The colonel seemed to have understood this, because he was standing still, though how long his restraint would last was anybody’s guess. The colonel was looking, eyes wide and lips tight, at Miguel. If he’d drawn a gun, it might have been impossible to stop Ezekiel from killing him, but he hadn’t.
Then Ezekiel leaped back through the broken window and pivoted toward Lieutenant Santibañez, who had his weapon out—God, this could be bad—Miguel shouted, “Ezekiel, no! Not him!”
Ezekiel was all looming black monster and blazing yellow eyes, and Santibañez jerked his weapon in line and took one step forward, bracing himself.
“Don’t!” cried Natividad, and Herrod rapped out at the same moment, “Don’t shoot!” and Santibañez actually didn’t, and Ezekiel didn’t kill him, each of which probably involved another miracle direct from God.
Miguel let go of the colonel’s arm and stepped forward, spreading his hands, careful not to meet the monster’s eyes. “Ezekiel,” he said urgently. “Listen, we don’t want to make the wrong enemies, you hear me? The senator was one thing, he was vicious, he was an enemy, he thought he could torture you and bully Natividad and now he’s dead and that’s fine, but we have to have a hostage, you understand? I know you could fight your way out through a thousand enemies, but what if Natividad catches a stray bullet, right? We don’t want to fight our way out! Are you listening to me?”
Natividad said in Spanish, her voice shaky but clear, “He is listening. He hears what you say.” She had made her way to the table, which was not only on its side but crushed to splinters at one end. She was picking through the bits of shattered wood, awkward with the handcuffs she still wore, but patiently collecting her things. Plus some fragments of the silver that had bound Ezekiel. Miguel, reminded of their mother’s flute, nodded as she tucked it away in a pocket. It was splattered with blood, which she didn’t take time to wipe off. Miguel wasn’t sure what the blood and death in this room might do to it, but he was fiercely glad to have it back just for its own sake.
God knew, there was enough blood and death in this room to interfere with Pure magic. The whole room seemed filled with bodies, and parts of bodies. Miguel was fine with that in principle, but it was pretty brutal to be surrounded by...all this. He’d lost track of practically everything in there somewhere, but he hoped very, very hard that none of the Special Forces people were scattered in little pieces around this room. “Ezekiel?” he said again, letting himself sound shaky now, like someone vulnerable, someone who needed to be protected. It probably wouldn’t help—he wasn’t Natividad—but it couldn’t hurt. And it was not at all difficult.
Ezekiel reared up, huge amid the carnage, and...dwindled, and poured away into shadow, and became himself again. He was so thin in his human form, all his bones seemed to press against his pale skin. Those vicious burns encircled both wrists, reaching halfway down the back of his right hand—his shadow couldn’t carry away silver burns as it could other kinds of injuries. It might have been pain that gave Ezekiel a stark, otherworldly appearance, but he had the look of someone who has been purified by fire, who has found unstoppable reserves of will and resolve. His eyes were entirely inhuman, pale yellow, blazing like living fire.
“Stand down,” Colonel Herrod ordered quietly. “Stand down.”
He wasn’t speaking to Ezekiel, Miguel understood after a second. He was speaking to his own men. There were three of them in sight, two in the room and one in the doorway, all with weapons in their hands, but none shooting. No one was shooting. That was...that was more than enough to go on with, Miguel hoped.
Ezekiel stared at Miguel for a long, burning moment. Then he transferred that scorching stare to Colonel Herrod.
Miguel kicked Herrod discreetly on the ankle and hissed at him, and after a second the colonel actually lowered his gaze. Curling his lip, Ezekiel turned to examine Natividad.
She had picked up her handbag and was carefully tucking all her things back into it. Then, practical as though she hadn’t had to pick her way through blood and body parts to retrieve it, she collected the plate of wrapped sandwiches and dumped the whole plate into her handbag before slinging it over her shoulder. Then she started to go to Ezekiel. One of the Special Forces people caught her eye with a cautious raised hand and mutely held out a key. Then, with a wary glance at Ezekiel and being careful not to touch Natividad’s hands more than necessary, he unlocked her handcuffs when she held her wrists out to him. Natividad sighed, dropping the silver cuffs into her handbag and rubbing her wrists.
Then she finally went to Ezekiel and put her arms around him, letting her breath out in a muc
h longer, deeper sigh. Ezekiel tucked her against his side and bowed his face over her hair, and he sighed, too, though in his case that might be more of a threatening hiss than an expression of relief.
Natividad rubbed her hand up and down Ezekiel’s back, but she looked expectantly at Miguel. Because he was supposed to know what to do next, of course.
He did know what to do next, actually. In broad terms.
“We have to get out of here,” he told them. “With an important enough hostage nobody will try to crowd us too close or shoot us off the road or anything. I figured the senator would do, but,” he added hastily as Ezekiel lifted his head and turned that inhuman stare back his way, “it’s definitely better this way. Much, much better. A car, if we have to, but you know, there’s probably a helicopter on the roof.” He looked hopefully at Ezekiel.
Ezekiel continued to stare at him. He said at last, “I can’t fly a helicopter.” His voice, like the rest of him, had a pared-down quality to it. Like a whetted knife, except a lot more dangerous. But he was speaking clear English, which at least proved he truly was in control of himself.
Miguel took a breath. “Then, a car—” he began.
“I can fly a helicopter,” Colonel Herrod stated quietly.
Everyone stared at him, his own people no less than Miguel and Natividad.
“Goddam, no way, sir,” Santibañez protested. “I mean, look, I can fly the damn helicopter—”
“Of course you could. But there’s no need.” Herrod gave Lieutenant Santibañez a cool look.
The lieutenant shook his head, but, as Herrod raised his eyebrows, he swallowed any additional objections.
Miguel wasn’t sure what he thought of this idea. It seemed totally brave and probably stupid and possibly insane, except Herrod wasn’t stupid or insane, so what the hell? He opened his mouth. Then, despite his hopes for Herrod, he found too many suspicions and doubts and fears crowding to the forefront of his mind to give voice to any and just shook his head.
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