Black Dog Short Stories II

by Rachel Neumeier

  “You think we should trust you?” demanded the blonde girl.

  “I know you should trust me. I realize you can’t be so confident.”

  Ayerson cleared his throat. Ezekiel eyed him sidelong, but the detective said, his gruff tone apologetic, “My report...I can pass over some details. But some things will come out.”

  “I don’t want people to know!” exclaimed the blonde girl.

  “It’s worse than that,” snapped the woman in blue. “He means everyone will know you were raped by a werewolf. Or some people will know,” she added sharply, as Ayerson made to interrupt. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t have your baby in a lab, whether you planned on an abortion or not, with people in white coats all ready to take it off and experiment on it –”

  “That’s sick! You’re sick!” said one of the other women, one who hadn’t spoken before. She looked like she would be pretty if she were happy. At the moment, she looked strained and ill, but not quite as frightened as she had been.

  “It’ll take some time to get through all the paperwork,” said Ayerson. “Days, I expect, for a case this complicated. And it might not leak. Or not too fast.”

  Ezekiel raised an eyebrow. The detective shrugged.

  “He means, if you want to go home and have an abortion, do it immediately, before anyone stops you,” said the woman in blue impatiently, when a couple of the other women looked confused.

  “Or if you choose otherwise, or if you want time to think of what to do, you will be safe at Dimilioc,” Ezekiel promised them. “You will be safe with me. Come with me and your babies will have a family—and so will you, if you choose. I speak for the Master of Dimilioc, and what I say is true.” He wished again for DeAnn. She could surely have persuaded these shocked and traumatized women to trust her. But all Ezekiel could do was speak the truth and hope they heard the sincerity in his voice. He was much better at terrifying people, he knew, than reassuring them—not the first time in his life he’d regretted that.

  “I’ll come,” the dark woman said flatly. “I’ll come with you. It’s illegal to have an abortion this close to term—and I don’t want one anyway.” She spread hands protectively over her stomach, and looked at Ayerson as though daring him to object. “It’s my choice! I can choose what to do and where to go!”

  “Well, ma’am,” Ayerson answered gravely, “you’re not a perpetrator here, you’re a victim, and you’re sure not under arrest, so I guess you can do anything you want.” He gave Ezekiel a sidelong glance, wary, undoubtedly wondering if he might be making a terrible mistake by offering this tacit approval.

  Ayerson seemed so straightforward. And then he stepped way, way outside official procedures. Ezekiel had not expected that. Ayerson meant to protect the women, of course. White coats and labs were surely in his mind’s eye, too. Helping Ezekiel was not the point. Nevertheless, Ezekiel acknowledged both the detective’s helpfulness and his wariness with a firm, reassuring nod, trying to indicate that yes, everything he’d told these woman was true. It might have helped that it actually was true. In his career, Ayerson had probably learned pretty well how to sort truth from lies. And the man had made his decision earlier, after all, on the stairway.

  Ezekiel hadn’t expected that moment of carelessness to yield useful dividends of trust. But if it had, he was more than willing to draw on that account.

  “I’ll come,” the woman in blue said again. And again, fiercely, “I’ll come, and you’d better be telling the truth!”

  Ezekiel said, to her, to all the women, “I have told you nothing but the truth. So come with me. Come with me, all of you, and I’ll take you home.”

  Bank Job

  The call came at a surprisingly convenient time, as Ethan and Thaddeus were just heading out of St. Louis. That was as far west as their circuit took them; more than far enough, in Ethan’s opinion. Just the Cleveland-Chicago-Indianapolis-Columbus loop had taken nearly a month, last time he’d drawn that assignment. Even a sharp team just could not do a thorough job in much less, and if anything out of the ordinary came up, well, you might as well write off your downtime, and never mind the unofficial rule that said you were due a couple weeks off between missions. Adding another loop for St. Louis, Nashville, and Louisville was too damn much.

  Not that Grayson had asked for Ethan’s opinion. Nor was he going to. No, he’d take their report, glance through it, make some pithy comment about the grammar, and order Ethan to get ready for a turn on the eastern loop. Grayson might give Thaddeus a break because he was a family man with a kid, but he would expect Ethan to say Yes, sir and pivot right around, with a snap to his step and not even taking time to unpack.

  Of course, Grayson had no choice. The Master was trying to ensure that Dimilioc retained absolute dominance over all black dogs in the entire U.S, and that meant making it absolutely dead clear that Dimilioc black wolves were everywhere at once, all the time. Even if Grayson had to wear every remaining Dimilioc black dog to a shadow—hah!—of his former self to do it. But the Master was right. It would be worth it. Eventually. No matter how much of a pain in the neck it was now, taking turn and turn about on one assignment after another.

  Ethan didn’t know which he disliked more: the new Midwestern loop or the East Coast loop. The states got big as you got into the Midwest, which, unless you had the plane, meant a damn lot of driving to get from one city to another. That was tedious enough, but just to add excitement to the tedium, they’d also all found out, as Dimilioc reasserted its dominance over the whole continent, that the farther you got from the heart of Dimilioc, the more likely you were to run across some leftover nest of blood kin. Even now, nearly two years since the official end of the war, you had to worry that it might be more than blood kin hiding in the shadows, eating careless hitchhikers and stray dogs. It might be an actual vampire. Probably not, but it could be. They’d all sure learned that, last spring. Probably not, but it could be. And no one—no one, no matter how crazy or ambitious or tough—wanted to take on another vampire without Ezekiel at hand to take point.

  Ethan himself would be perfectly fine if he never in his life so much as glimpsed another vampire. He’d had way, way more than enough of vampires during the war. But if he did have to face one, he definitely wanted Ezekiel right there in the front lines. In fact, if he had to work with anyone on these damned sweeps, against vampires or blood kin or ambitious black curs...if he couldn’t team up with his father and cousins, he would rather have worked with Ezekiel. His cousins were gone in the war, along with so many others. His father...Ethan never let himself think about what had happened to his father.

  Dimilioc always outmatched the strays because they fought smart and they fought in teams. Now, since the war that had decimated Dimilioc, everyone was having to find ways to fit into new teams, and there just wasn’t any black dog Ethan felt right fighting beside. But he was used to Ezekiel. There was no shame in giving way to Dimilioc’s executioner. Everyone had to. Besides, Ezekiel was a Korte, a true Dimilioc black wolf, with bloodlines that wove their way back to the founding of the house.

  But it was God’s own truth that Ethan hated working with Thaddeus Williams. He’d done it before, and no doubt he’d do it again, but Ethan hated having to keep his eyes down and his tone careful, and he hated it a whole lot worse when he had to defer to a mongrel like Thaddeus. But Thaddeus was too damn strong to challenge, definitely the strongest of all the strays that had been allowed, or in some cases forced, to join Dimilioc.

  But Grayson assigned teams as he saw fit, and there was no arguing. Not even if you were Grayson’s nephew and ought to have had a real say.

  Six months. Just six months to go until Grayson would allow Ezekiel back. Who would have thought it possible to miss having that supercilious bastard around the place? But then, who would have expected to have to do so much heavy lifting and take out so much trash just because he wasn’t?

  In the meantime, it was just one damn assignment after another, with one damn uncomforta
ble partner after another, racking up miles and hours and kills to show the world that Dimilioc was still very much a going concern.

  Actually, on balance, the Midwest loop wasn’t so bad. More driving than in the east, true, but the East Coast had a whole lot of big towns close together, so running that loop actually took longer. Besides, while there were fewer stray black dogs closer to the heart of Dimilioc territory, any black dogs that did turn up in the east were generally ambitious bastards who’d managed to pull together something like a pack and thought they were such hot stuff they might as well move in against Dimilioc. They had no damn idea, of course. None of them were anything much, not compared to Malvern Vonhausel. Not even compared to Zinaida Kologrivova, the Black Wolf of Russia her own ambitious self, who’d been such a problem last spring.

  But every single fool who thought he was hot enough to challenge Dimilioc had to be dealt with, and there hardly seemed any end to them. You cleared out one black-souled would-be pack leader who thought he was Hell’s own special pet because he could hold five or ten strays together for two days, but hardly before you’d put him down, here came another. Damned mongrel strays, most of them ignorant as pigs; no decency, no discipline, nearly all of them sure Dimilioc law didn’t apply to them.

  That was what Ethan thought this was, at first, when he took the call: one or two black dogs determined to challenge Dimilioc, making a lot of noise to be sure of drawing attention. That kind of thing drew attention, all right. You’d think they’d learn better.

  But that wasn’t what Grayson said was going on, this time.

  “Wait,” Ethan said, after listening for just a moment. “There’s a problem with strays, and Herrod called you?”

  “A policy I believe we may wish to encourage.” Grayson’s deep voice was dead level, not encouraging argument. “Fortunately, there you are, days behind schedule, but now ideally placed to answer Colonel Herrod’s request. I may have led the colonel to believe that Dimilioc has a permanent presence in that general vicinity. I would prefer you did not contradict this impression.”

  “Yes, all right,” said Ethan. “But –”

  “The problem is evidently contained within the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. I gather there is more than one such establishment in the vicinity, which might lead to some confusion. However, I understand this specific building stands virtually within the shadow of the Arch. I don’t imagine it will be at all difficult to locate, under the circumstances.”

  “Wait,” said Ethan again. “Seriously? Sir,” he added belatedly. “I mean, don’t you think this could be a trap?”

  “If it is, don’t walk into it,” Grayson ordered him, and hung up.

  Right. Ethan shoved the phone into his pocket and looked at Thaddeus.

  Thaddeus was driving. Any black dog preferred to drive rather than ride along as a passenger, and Thaddeus got to drive on this assignment because he was way, way out of Ethan’s league. They’d got that straight between them real fast.

  Ethan had never actually tried to fight Thaddeus. Infuriating as it was, he’d had no choice but to turn his head and step out of the newcomer’s way. He’d known, the moment he’d laid eyes on Thaddeus Williams, exactly how any fight would come out. The other black dog might be a mongrel, but he was much bigger and heavier than Ethan even in human form, never mind black dog form. He was also more than ten years older, but his shadow was so strong, it was plain that even if they’d been the same age, Thaddeus would already have been a whole damn lot stronger than Ethan. Dimilioc control and training counted for a lot, but it didn’t count for everything, and there was just no way Ethan was ever going to match Thaddeus.

  He said sharply, “You hear that? Some damn problem with black dogs and hostages, special forces got involved, and that damned colonel Grayson’s such buddies with decided to call us.”

  “I heard,” Thaddeus rumbled. “Black dogs, and they took hostages. They didn’t just kill all of ’em? Penned up a bunch of people and waited to see how long it would take special forces to get there, is that how it was?” His deep, deep voice held just a hint of the gravelly black dog growl. He didn’t believe it either. He might be a mongrel, he might have grown up a stray, but he wasn’t actually a fool.

  “Doesn’t seem likely, does it?” Ethan agreed. “If you take this next exit, I guess we can go find out.” He was careful not to make that an order—he still had to be careful. It wasn’t automatic, even yet. He, a Lanning—Grayson Lanning’s nephew—and he had to take orders from a cur stray who couldn’t even name his own grandfather.

  Oh brave new world, that has such people in’t! Yeah, though Ethan wouldn’t exactly call any part of mankind beauteous. And he doubted Thaddeus had ever read Shakespeare. He wouldn’t have laid odds the older black dog could read. Strays and street curs...no point in arguing with Grayson about the stray thing, though.

  Actually, Thaddeus wasn’t so hard to take. Or he wouldn’t have been, if he’d been just a little less powerful. Mustn’t forget Thaddeus had had the guts or good sense or sheer good luck to marry a Pure woman. Couldn’t say that about many strays. Maybe DeAnn had even gotten Thaddeus read Shakespeare; crazier things had certainly happened.

  Ethan stared out the window, deliberately not looking at Thaddeus, as the other man took the exit and headed back toward the city. Off in the distance, Ethan could already see the thin silver thread of the Gateway Arch.

  The Federal Reserve Bank was a massive building, all limestone or granite or whatever, white stone of some kind. It looked a whole lot like it was all just one huge vault plunked down in the middle of downtown—it had windows, sure, but they were barred. It wasn’t actually an ugly building, though. It looked strong. Not damn easy to break into. Or out of, right now, because just at the moment it was surrounded by all the cops in the entire universe. Roadblocks, too, which Thaddeus ignored. That drew attention, but the special forces were right over there, in black body armor marked with no symbols except the American Eagle badge.

  Those guys didn’t need more than that. Everyone knew who they were. Formed during the latter part of the war, after so many vampires had been killed that their mind-clouding miasma had faded and ordinary people had figured out that all their nightmares were real, the special forces were specifically meant to deal with the monsters. Ethan could feel the silver in their weapons all the way across the street.

  Most of the special forces units had been folded back into the regular military since the war had ended. But Colonel Herrod’s unit was clearly up to snuff. Which was fine. Because right at the tail end of the war, with Dimilioc’s victory looking more and more Pyrrhic every day, Grayson had quite deliberately formed an alliance with Herrod. He’d fed the colonel the information the special forces needed to get at the vampires that were out of Dimilioc’s reach. That alliance was tense, everybody knew human and black dog priorities might not turn out to align very well, but it was still in force. Not to mention that after that mess last year, Dimilioc owed Colonel Herrod. Worse, Ethan owed him, specifically and personally.

  This situation might be Herrod calling in that marker because he was just that desperate. Or it might be the colonel testing the alliance, seeing what he could get from Grayson.

  Or it might be a trap.

  If it was a trap, Grayson’s order notwithstanding, they had already walked into it.

  Herrod himself was right there, though. He’d appeared almost before the nearest cop could order Thaddeus to Turn your car around right now, sir, can’t you see we have the street blocked off? But no problem, there was Colonel Herrod, waving the cop away with curt impatience and then waiting with equal impatience, arms crossed, for the Dimilioc black wolves to get out of their car. That was a good sign. He wasn’t wearing body armor. He was wearing a suit, a sharp brown number that certainly hadn’t come off the rack, with a cream-colored shirt that perfectly complemented both the suit and his walnut-dark skin. Despite its elegance, the suit didn’t make Herrod look like any kind of harmless
bureaucrat. Nothing could have made the colonel look harmless. But the suit was probably also a good sign.

  Herrod was not a big man, but he was the sort of man who seemed intimidatingly acute, even on a first glance. His eyes were set deep and wide in his dark-skinned face; his hair was iron gray and cropped military short. He was probably no more than five ten, maybe less, and he didn’t bulk, either. He commanded attention anyway. It wasn’t just the warm tones of that expensive suit. It was the attitude. He was like Grayson that way: you could tell at a glance that Colonel Herrod was always going to be the man in control under any circumstances. Yeah, when those two had met in person last spring, it must have been like the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. Ethan was sorry he hadn’t been in good enough shape at the time to enjoy it.

  The colonel wasn’t wearing a weapon, not that Ethan could see, but he had a cell phone clipped to his belt. He didn’t look overly concerned by the police lieutenant talking to him urgently from one side, nor by the man, not a cop, trying to edge in from the other side. He looked impatient, mostly.

  “You talk to him,” Thaddeus growled under his breath as they got out of the car.