Black Dog Short Stories II

by Rachel Neumeier

  And if their great-grandmother had carried the blood of Nurullah in her veins, maybe...maybe the black wolves of that family would not be too offended if two black wolf girls came there to look for their distant kin.

  So later she stole a map from the library and showed Amira where Lebanon lay, far to the north, on the shores of the Al-Bahr Al’Abyad Almutawassit, the Mediterranean. She did not know how far. The map made it look a long way, but Keziah did not know how to reckon the true distance from the map or how to judge how long it would take a woman on foot or a black wolf running or a person in a car to go so far.

  Amira traced the outlines of the countries. “I like to see that the world is larger than our father’s house,” she said softly. “If we run away through the desert, could we go there, to Lebanon? See, that is one way to go to France. Look here, Jordan is in between. Jordan and then Lebanon and then farther. Are there black wolves there who guard the territories that lie between? But surely we could slip by them. We are very good now at being quiet and not being noticed.”

  Amira was very brave, Keziah realized. If Keziah has been as brave, she would have left their father’s house long ago. Except that for a long time she had been too little, and then for a long time, Amira had been too little.

  Now neither of them was too little. But now they had to wait, because they had not yet found their chance to kill their father and Uncle Ahmed.

  But maybe it would be better to forget vows and vengeance and just go.

  Except Keziah knew if she said this and persuaded Amira and they fled, even if they got away, she would forever see Aunt Sofia’s blood in the pool enclosure, and hear at the back of her mind her mother screaming as her father killed her.

  “It is a long way,” she temporized. “And everywhere black wolves are watching for intrusion because of the Quiet War. But someday...yes, I think we must someday make a chance and try to go there. We must be patient. There will be time.”

  “Someday,” Amira echoed, and sighed, but she nodded too. “There will be time,” she agreed. She traced the path north from Riyadh toward Jordan and Lebanon. “I will listen and ask about the way. I will find out how to go and I will remember.”

  Keziah knew her little sister would find out and remember. Amira did not seem so young these days. Her face had healed at last, though the mark from the silver knife was still vivid across her cheek and jaw. The scar would fade, Zara promised—but she would not promise that it would fade completely. It drew Amira’s mouth to the side a little; it hurt her when she smiled—but Amira rarely smiled. She had not yet turned eight, but she seemed older. Black wolf children grew up quickly, but pain and caution had made Amira older than even another black wolf child.

  “We will go,” Keziah promised her. “We will find out the best ways and the quiet ways, and when our father is dead, everyone will be confused and no one will look for us. Then we will run very far, to Jordan and Lebanon and farther, until we come to Paris. We will go farther if we must; to the other side of the world. We will find a place where men do not rule women and where we can be free.”

  And when they were free, Keziah thought, they would find those Pure women and learn how to pay attention to the side of their souls that was theirs alone, and how to choose to go to the right when the dark half of the soul wished them go to the left.

  This they would do. Because Keziah would never be a slave again; never in life. Not a slave to any man; not a slave to her own dark shadow. She would find those Pure women, and she would be free, and she would forever make her own choices. Amira would be free, and not afraid, and her face would heal better so that she could smile. They would both learn to be happy.

  But in the end, there was not enough time to learn more about the Pure or about the black wolves of Nurullah in Lebanon that were supposed to be so different from those of Saudi Arabia. Because very soon after that, when Keziah was sixteen and Amira very nearly nine, the world ended.

  It happened because Keziah’s father finally managed to persuade two of the Saud princes that all the black wolves who ruled Saudi Arabia had to cooperate against the khafash, and the princes persuaded their uncle the king, and he spoke earnestly to the king of Jordan and the President of Iraq and the mullahs of Iran and the masters of the cartels in the Emirates and Yemen, and they all agreed to put aside their differences for this one time and for this one purpose.

  By then the khafash had made their anger felt the length and breadth of the world. The Quiet War was no longer so quiet. In Turkey, where for ages the long truce had held between khafash and black wolves, the truce now failed. Vampires and black wolves hunted one another not only through the empty lands, but through the streets of Ankara and Bursa. The human death toll mounted. Of course the humans, blind to all the darker shadows, could not understand what was happening. But they could not mistake that something was wrong. They made up their own stories to explain the blood and destruction, as they always did; black wolves ordered their own affairs using humans as their servants and slaves and pawns, as they always did. Ankara changed hands twice and then the black wolves eradicated their enemies, and for a brief time it seemed the war might ease away without involving Saudi Arabia.

  But beyond Turkey, in Romania and Bulgaria, black wolves were all but exterminated.

  Then the vampires and their servants struck out of Bulgaria into Turkey. They took Istanbul, destroying the black wolf family that had ruled there since the Eastern Roman Empire had fallen.

  Amira traced the outlines of these countries on a stolen map, pronouncing the names of faraway places carefully. “So far away,” Amira said, touching a fingertip to the dot that was Istanbul. “But not so far as Paris. Even Paris would not be far enough, I think.”

  Keziah agreed. “This is what will force all the black wolves to act at last—or so our father says. Probably he is right. Uncle Ahmed says the same, even when he thinks he is alone with his sons. But they think so much of the war now. I think this may be a good time to catch Uncle Ahmed while he is distracted.”

  “We shall watch all the time,” Amira said softly.

  They did watch, but they found no opportunity. And all the time the war became worse and their father and Uncle Ahmed quieter and more dangerous. Israel and Lebanon tightened their common defenses and refused alliance, preferring to depend on their own resources, but all the rest agreed they must act. So the king sent out his orders and all of Saudi Arabia listened.

  All through those days, Keziah moved noiselessly through the shadows of the villa, listening. And Amira, the same. The men were busy and important and did not pay attention to the women, which made everything easier in one way. But the men feared khafash spies and watched everywhere, which made everything harder in another way.

  It should be easy to blame Uncle Ahmed’s death on the vampires now. But it was harder to get anyone alone when the whole household roused at the least alarm.

  Still, perhaps it might be possible to lure a man out of the villa and let the actual khafash get him. Or make it seem as though they had.

  An idea hovered in the back of Keziah’s mind, but it would not come clear. Very well; better to be patient. She could be patient. She had learned that lesson well. She had time. Even though she was already fifteen, even though Amira would soon be nine and marriageable—if anyone’s human son would accept a scarred child as a bride—no one now spoke of marriages or such ordinary matters. All the men’s attention was on the vampires.

  Keziah wished the khafash would kill every male black wolf in Saudi Arabia, starting with her father and Uncle Ahmed and all her cousins. But she listened to the preparations for the war, and knew the vampires would indeed be forced into the sunlight and the sea. There was no other possible outcome, not when every black wolf joined together to fight. Ibn Abdel had his Pure woman, who had that mysterious magic in her hands; some of the princes had magical mirrors or other tools that would let them see through the darkest shadows; some of them had ordinary weapons—rocket launchers
and such things—Keziah did not know everything they had, but she was sure the khafash would all be killed, and then life would go back to normal.

  She was half right. For on a single bright midsummer day, when the sun was fierce and the wind smelled of fire and heat and bitter ash, all the black wolves rose up and all the vampires who had dared come into Saudi Arabia were killed. And likewise in the other countries of the Middle East, and likewise in Istanbul, where the black wolves took back their city from the darker monsters that had so briefly held it. All through the land, the khafash were pushed back and destroyed.

  Thus the world ended, and there was no more time.

  Human people never saw deeply into dark shadows. This was a truth as certain as any Keziah had ever known. Human people were meant to be slaves, for the blind could not rule what they could not see. She had never thought to ask—why should she have thought to ask?—why humankind were so blind.

  Then the vampires died, many vampires, all through the Middle East; following into the dark all the others of their kind that had died all through the Quiet War. And black wolves everywhere found out that the khafash had all along been responsible for blinding humankind. Without the khafash, human people everywhere could see what had been hidden from them for thousands of years.

  And all through the Middle East, what they saw was that their rulers were monsters, and had always been monsters; that when they thought they bowed down to tyrants of their own kind, they had actually been enslaved by heavy-shadowed half-souled creatures. They had believed they had been the subjects of a human king and his sons, when all along they had been prey.

  This Keziah understood later. What she understood at first was that the city of Riyadh had risen against its masters. She did not guess why, not then. But she saw that with torch and gun and knife and unstoppable fury, the people had risen. All across the city, palaces burned.

  “We should go,” Amira whispered to Keziah. “Before the mobs come here too.”

  Keziah nodded.

  They had gone up onto the rooftops of the women’s quarters so they could see better, and because the lines of retreat were better from the rooftops. Their father’s villa had been safe at first, for it lay a little beyond the outskirts of Riyadh and the enraged humans had not ventured so far in the beginning. The servants were gone...Keziah did not know whether to hide or lead the mobs to this house. Malik and Saad and Atif had gone north with the older men, to fight and kill the vampires and their servants. But Uncle Ahmed’s son Saleh and a few of the other young men had been left in Riyadh to represent the interests of the household. They were somewhere below, in the villa. Keziah wondered whether they would be able to turn back the human rabble by themselves. She hoped they would not. She wanted the villa to burn.

  The sun was low now. Soon it would be dark. Humans feared the dark, but tonight they would conquer the night with the light of the fires they had set. From where the girls crouched, watching, it seemed that the entire center of the city was aflame.

  And not so far away were more bright spots of fire, approaching.

  “Men,” said Amira. “With torches. Listen. You can hear them. They are angry.”

  Keziah nodded. She heard this too, beyond the ordinary sounds of the night. It was the sound of many men who had forgotten fear. “They are too angry to be afraid.”

  “They are coming to burn the villa.”

  Keziah nodded again. “I wonder whether Saleh will be able to stop them?” The fury of the city beat against her face like fire, but she could not believe their cousin would be caught in the conflagration. No. Saleh and the other young men would crush the human people under their heels...

  “We can’t just wait here and do nothing! We have to go. Even without killing Uncle Ahmed and Father. All the cousins will be distracted by fire and blood. No one will think to look for us tonight.”

  Keziah nodded again. Amira was right. Everything her sister said was true. She knew it was true. “We will go north. Maybe Lebanon is different, if the black wolves there are different.”

  “Maybe we can stay in the desert. Just us, alone in the desert.” Amira’s tone was wistful. “I would like that. I think I would feel safe if we were just us, alone in the desert. Do you think there are any vampires out in the desert tonight? Or any black wolves?”

  Keziah shook her head. “Even if there are vampires, even if there are wolves, they won’t care about us. Not tonight.” She looked around once more; at the desert stretching out forever to the north and the city burning just behind them to the south. “Yes,” she said at last. “We should go. Just us, in the desert. We will go north and maybe we will go to Lebanon, maybe we will go to Paris. Maybe we will go farther. But for now...just us. But wait. Just a single moment. Let us make certain Saleh cannot defend this house.”

  And she set her palms flat on the rooftop and called the fire. The black wolf fire, that was made of rage and hatred: boys were taught to call and channel that fire. No one had taught Keziah. But she found the way of it now, in this night already filled with fire, and below her palms the fire blazed up.

  Keziah laughed, reveling in the violence of the flames. Then, with her sister beside her, she leaped down from the rooftop and ran into the desert. The gritty earth and the sands that stretched away to the north were lit by the last light of the sun and by the rising flames. From behind them came outraged masculine shouts; from a little farther away human ululations of triumph and the first gunshots. Keziah laughed again. She hoped the human men would shoot Saleh, that they would shoot all the cousins who dared linger. She and Amira were away and would not be caught by anyone.

  When the light failed, they would run through the dark. They would follow the stars and the wind, and they would never stop.

  Her father might yet live, somewhere. Keziah was sure he would live. That was a vow failed. But this—this was a vow she would keep: that she and her sister would never stop until they found a place where they could live as themselves, free, their mother’s daughters and no man’s slaves.

  Unlikely Allies

  The detective heading up the kidnapping team was a man named Ayerson. Ezekiel knew that before he stepped through the man’s door. John Ayerson. An experienced man. Eight years a homicide detective, with a solid record before that in other units. Methodical, thorough, the sort of man who patiently made his way through tangled cases and who more often than not closed them successfully. Twice wounded in the course of duty, twice commended—not the same events. Reprimanded once, for insubordination. This was all more or less public record.

  Slightly more difficult to discover were private details. Ezekiel had tracked down a handful of those, too. Ayerson’s wife was a nurse. Her name was Hannah. They had been married for nineteen years. They had twin daughters, both currently attending Colorado State. Ayerson’s friends were his colleagues, and his wife’s. Every summer, Ayerson went fly fishing with a buddy; every fall he hunted elk or moose with his wife and another couple. All of that was also relatively easy to ascertain, even for Ezekiel, who was no kind of detective. Certainly not in Ayerson’s league. That was why he’d come here: because why waste time and effort on a project a professional had undoubtedly already filed a report on?

  It had been surprisingly easy to make an appointment with Ayerson. Kidnapping. That horrified the police. It was almost worse when they didn’t find bodies, when it was just disappearances straight up. Multiple kidnappings, worse still; that terrified the entire community. Of course the polite police receptionist had wanted to set up Ezekiel with a junior detective, the sort who was assigned to take hotline tips from the public during high-profile cases. But it was a high-profile case. He had not had to insist very hard to get this appointment with John Ayerson.

  The detective’s office was toward the back of the building, maybe a little smaller than some, but with a window that looked out over the parking lot and admitted gritty light despite the overcast day. Ezekiel’s guide—a uniformed officer—rapped on the door, swun
g it briskly open, and announced, “Mr. Grayson,” which was the name on Ezekiel’s driver’s license. The officer stepped aside, tilting his head in laconic invitation for Ezekiel to enter.

  Ayerson was a heavy-set man, graying but obviously still strong, built big and broad. He might have been anything from a truck driver to a football coach, but he did not immediately look much like a senior police detective. His jacket, and also his holstered gun, were hanging over the back of a second chair a short distance away. Typing quickly with thick fingers, the detective grunted acknowledgement and muttered, “Be right with you—take a seat,” but did not immediately glance up. The uniformed officer gave Ezekiel a wry look and went away. Ezekiel stepped into the office, nudged the door shut with his foot, leaned a shoulder against a heavy bookshelf, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited, half amused and half impatient.

  Detective Ayerson paused, glared fixedly at his computer screen for a moment, typed two more words, hit ‘save,’ and finally shoved his chair back from his desk and looked up. Immediately, though not a muscle moved in his face, something changed. Ezekiel admired the lack of hesitation, the way the man acted even before he could have been certain. Ayerson leaned forward, one hand flat on the desk, weight shifting as he reached for his weapon.

  Ezekiel was much faster. He stepped forward, his own hand coming down firmly on top of Ayerson’s, pinning it to the desk. By that time Ezekiel’s hand was no longer perfectly human. Even in that scant instant, his hand had broadened and thickened, his fingers becoming shorter and blunter. Jet-black claws lightly pricked the skin on the back of Ayerson’s wrist. The detective tried to pull away, but found himself held by a strength he could not match. He drew breath for a shout. Ezekiel said quickly, making sure his tone stayed level, “Don’t call out.”

  Resolution hardened Ayerson’s eyes and set his jaw: He was going to shout anyway, and damn any threat Ezekiel made.