Black Dog Short Stories II

by Rachel Neumeier

  “I told her I wouldn’t be surprised at anything anymore, and she said ‘That’s just what we all thought five years ago, didn’t we? And look at us now.’ But she didn’t tell me exactly what she’d discovered. She was going to join me for breakfast today—there’s this nice little bakery with quite acceptable croissants. She was supposed to come to my house at eight.” Mrs. Farris looked around the table. “You know your grandmother is always so punctual, Justin.”

  He nodded, though he didn’t remember one way or the other.

  “She didn’t show up. But someone else did. A young man, no one I would care to know. Grungy.” Mrs. Farris pronounced this verdict with a slight sniff. “His hair needed a good washing. He had a bag over his shoulder. I thought he was probably selling something, and I thought he’d do much better at it if he took some decent pains with his appearance, but you can’t tell young people anything these days. I said, ‘Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.’ And he looked at me with this funny expression, reached into his bag, took out a handful of dust, and blew it at me. I could not believe it,” Mrs. Farris added. “As though we don’t get plenty of dust without that sort of thing! I sweep my front steps every day, even this time of year. Then he said, ‘Anna Farris, come with me,’ and beckoned, like this.” Mrs. Farris crooked a peremptory finger.

  “Of course I said, ‘Young man, I can’t imagine why you’d think I would go anywhere with you, but I think it would be best if you’d leave immediately.’ And he laughed, not a nice laugh at all. He said, ‘You’re a white witch. I thought so. Your power isn’t much, but it’ll do.’ Then he turned out to have a knife.”

  The whole story was peculiar, but Justin definitely hadn’t seen that particular twist coming. He leaned forward. Everyone did, even Father Stepan, who had undoubtedly heard it before.

  “So I said, ‘Young man, whatever you’ve been taking, I hope it doesn’t make you believe you’re invincible.’ And I showed him my gun and told him again to leave. He didn’t expect that, evidently, because he did go away.” She added to Father Stepan, who was looking pained, “I would merely have shoot him in the foot, of course, since he was human. Or he seemed to be human. But the bullets were silver, of course, just in case he turned out to be something else.”

  “Good for you,” whispered Amira, who was listening wide-eyed. “But you should have shot him. You should never leave an enemy alive behind you.”

  Mrs. Farris gave her a gracious little nod. “Quite right in a tactical sense, child, but murder is a terrible sin.”

  “It would have been self-defense,” Justin pointed out.

  “Killing a child of God is a very serious matter, even if one has no better choice,” Father Stepan said gravely.

  “Yes, yes,” agreed Mrs. Farris. “Still, these days you never know when you might discover your enemy is actually a monster, and then it’s just practical to make sure you have an extra little ace in your hand. Either way, the young man did scoot off. But then, while I was sweeping off my steps, I thought of Natalia, who was very late by that time, and what she’d said. Here’s this young man babbling about witches. And aren’t witches like vampires and werewolves, but different? Mightn’t witches look like normal people so you can’t tell who they are? And you know, Justin, your grandmother is a very capable woman, but she never would carry a gun, not this year, she said the vampires and ghouls were all gone and why should she weigh herself down with silver bullets?”

  “Now, wait,” Nicholas objected. “There’s no such thing as witches. Witches are like elves and fairies and things, they’re not real.” He looked at Keziah for support.

  Keziah inclined her head. “Nor have I heard of true witches. Girls in my family were taught little of the world, but I recall nothing of witches.”

  “I assure you, young woman, I am not inventing this conversation –”

  Justin cleared his throat. “Miguel mentioned witches. Not black dogs and not vampires, he said. I don’t remember the details.” He wished Miguel were here now. That kid was like a walking reference library.

  “Either way, Anna very sensibly called me,” Father Stepan said. “We came directly here. The door was standing open, but Natalie was not here.” He tapped the papers stacked in front of him. “Your grandmother is a great one for writing letters, Justin. We hoped she might have written one to Anna, or to me, or to someone.” He turned up a broad hand. “A long shot. But we couldn’t think what else to do.”

  Justin stared at the heaps of letters, mostly hand-written. This was all worse than anything he’d expected. Even when Grandmama Leushin told him she was too busy and not to visit, he’d thought...he didn’t know what he’d thought. But not this. “She didn’t keep a journal, did she?”

  “Not so far as we know,” the priest said regretfully.

  “Useless,” Keziah pronounced. “All these letters are worthless. Justin, you will find your grandmother yourself. This will be far more efficient than examining many letters.”

  “It would be, but I don’t know how!” Justin protested. “Mandalas I can do; if you want a pentagram, I’m your guy; spirals I can manage. But finding people? I don’t know how.”

  “The Pure can totally do finding magic,” Nicholas objected. “They used to do it all the time when I was a kid, before the war. A Pure woman would go out with a team of black dogs, help them clean the strays out of a city –”

  “You see? We are certain this is something the Pure can do,” Keziah told Justin. “Therefore, you will do this.”

  Justin ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Natividad can make this thing using a mirror, she calls it a trouvez, it’s a tool for finding things. People. You know, whatever you’re looking for. But there’s no geometry in those. I always concentrated on circles and things. Natividad’s the one who made a trouvez when we needed one. Which we hardly ever did, since Grayson doesn’t let the Pure go out on circuits anymore.” Which he’d always been glad of, actually; weeks-long missions to kill violent, ignorant, dangerous black dogs might be necessary, but that didn’t mean he wanted to have anything to do with that kind of thing himself. Now he regretted that he lacked that experience. Well, he sort of regretted it.

  “She never showed you how?” Nicholas asked, skeptical.

  Justin glared at him, exasperated. “Sure she did. Once, months ago! Even if I could make one, I don’t know how to get it to find a particular person. The one I made let me find Natividad, and I don’t think it’d be terribly useful to know where she is right this minute!”

  Amira slipped up beside Justin and leaned against him, a rare gesture from any black dog, but she was so much better with the Pure than with ordinary people or other black dogs. She said softly, “This is your grandmother. She is important to you. You have come all this way to find her. You will find her, and we will eat the hearts and lungs of her enemies.”

  “Oh, the lungs too, huh?” Justin couldn’t help but smile down at the top of the girl’s head. For a black dog, Amira was just really sweet. In a bloodthirsty-killer kind of way.

  “Charming,” murmured Mrs. Farris.

  “What do you suppose that grungy young man of yours is doing to my grandmother right now?” Justin asked her. “I think I’d be willing to let Amira eat someone’s heart and lungs, if it were the right someone. All right, fine, I need a mirror. A small one, if possible.” He cupped his hand to show how small he meant.

  “No one is eating anyone,” Father Stepan stated. “However...I believe a mirror might be possible. Anna?” He gestured politely toward Mrs. Farris’s handbag, perched on the counter next to her gun.

  “I might have a mirror,” the lady murmured. “Let me just look –”

  “I shall look.” Keziah picked up the handbag before Mrs. Farris could reach for it.

  Justin caught Keziah’s wrist. “Silver,” he reminded her. “Or who knows what might be in there? Let me.” He was pleased he remembered to wait for her to nod before upending the handbag on the table.

/>   No second little gun, no silver knife or letter opener—a lot of people carried pocketknives with silver blades these days, for exactly the same reason that silver jewelry was now a hundred times more popular than gold. Justin had a pocketknife himself, tucked in a back pocket, a nifty little number Grayson had given him. He’d blooded it for both Keziah and Amira, just in case. Blooding silver was one thing Natividad had made sure he knew how to do, even though there was no geometry to it, either. There wasn’t anything like that in Mrs. Farris’s handbag. But an extra cross, much bigger than the one the lady wore, was tucked in its own little pocket. A silver cross, on a silver chain, heavy enough to swing at anything demonic and make sure they’d feel it.

  Justin gave Mrs. Farris a look.

  “Oh, yes, I had forgotten about that,” Mrs. Farris said blandly, not in the least abashed. “You never know what might come in handy these days, do you?”

  “Right,” said Justin. But he had also found a compact with a small round mirror set in the lid, so there didn’t seem much point in arguing about silver chains and who might have intended to do what with this one. He dropped the cross and chain on the table, handed the bag back to Mrs. Farris, and tilted the mirror to catch the light. At least there was plenty of natural light from the kitchen windows.

  Making a trouvez had to do with light. Capturing and holding light, getting it to show you what you were looking for...light and intention and will, like so much Pure magic...Justin tilted the mirror back and forth. “A light in the dark,” he muttered. That was what Natividad had said. A guiding light when you had lost your way, something like that. But he didn’t think Natividad had ever explained how to make that kind of trouvez. He said out loud, “Finding what you seek...moonlight for the Pure, I remember that. Mrs. Farris, are you Pure? Is my grandmother?”

  “Young man, no one who gets to be our age remains entirely pure.”

  “So you aren’t familiar with the term the way we use it.” Justin tipped the mirror again, watching the light flash. “Moonlight for the Pure,” he repeated. “Twilight for the half-Pure, maybe. I wonder, could this kind of witch person stifle Pure magic, kind of like the vampire miasma stifling ordinary sight?”

  “There’s a nice thought,” muttered Nicholas. “Let’s not have anything at all like vampire magic, huh? But it doesn’t follow, Justin. Pure magic was always completely resistant to vampire magic, that was the whole point –”

  Keziah flicked a glance the boy’s way. “Hush!”

  Justin barely heard either of them. He was thinking about Grandmama Leushin, about the straight-backed certainty with which she’d strode through life. He had no idea whether she were Pure, he didn’t know whether the dim silvery magic that curved around Anna Farris was a kind of muffled Pure magic, but his grandmother had loved life and living. He remembered other Christmases in his childhood, this same kitchen filled with warmth, Christmas carols on the radio and the scent of gingerbread...real gingerbread, dense and moist, topped with lemon sauce and a swoop of whipped cream. Mistletoe hanging in the doorway, where Grandmama Leushin had always hung it before Grandpapa Leushin passed away, and still did for his memory. Gingerbread and mistletoe, and oranges stuck all over with cloves, and the same carved wooden decorations on the tree every single year...if he went through the house to the parlor, he was sure the tree would be there with those same wooden decorations...she would have hung each one with its own bit of different-colored yarn...Justin swallowed and closed his eyes, unable to believe she wasn’t here. Where had that grungy punk with the knife taken Grandmama Leushin? Where was she?

  “There!” whispered Amira, leaning against his side.

  Justin opened his eyes. He’d done something, because the mirror in his hand had become opaque, filled with heavy light. Not moonlight. This was an opalescent shimmer like the sky before the sunrise. Pearl gray, dove gray, dawn gray; like moonlight shining through fog or mist.

  He turned the mirror in his hand, watching at it dimmed and brightened. Streaks of shimmering light slid across the glass from left to right.

  “West,” murmured Keziah, peering over his shoulder. “West of this house. What lies west?” She glanced from Father Stepan to Anna Farris.

  “We’re already near the west edge of town,” Mrs. Farris observed, frowning in thought.

  “The military base,” said Father Stepan.

  Justin looked at him. His head felt stuffed with shimmering fog. He scrubbed his hands hard across his face.

  “It’s an abandoned military base,” Father Stepan explained. “There’s still a fence around the underground bunkers or whatever they are, to keep out the young and the adventurous. The army did tests of some sort out there; mines or new kinds of artillery or something, I don’t know, but I suppose it’s probably still dangerous to poke around, even though they locked it up and left it behind a long time ago –”

  “It’s Area 51!” said Nicolas, with more than a little satisfaction. “Underground bunkers, yes! Where they hid the alien ship –”

  “Yeah, pretty sure we aren’t going to find aliens out there today,” Justin interrupted him. “But underground bunkers and a fence must be handy if you get up to...whatever a witch gets up to when he kidnaps old ladies.” Putting it like that made the whole thing seem even more urgent. He got to his feet, staggering a little, and stole another glance at the mirror, wary in case the light had faded away. But the mirror still glimmered. Streaks still ran through it. When he tilted it to the west, the light didn’t exactly brighten, but it intensified.

  “A hunt!” whispered Amira. “A hunt, with blood and death at the end! We will protect your grandmother or avenge her!”

  “We are not murdering anyone,” Father Stepan said firmly. “Not even a murderer, witch or not, even if we find one –”

  “We have the trouvez,” Keziah said drily. “You need not involve yourself, priest.”

  “We know where the military base is, and the way to get around the part where the road’s washed out. You won’t get a car through by the route Google maps suggests, I promise you that.”

  Anna Farris put in, “And I am the one who has a gun with silver bullets, young lady. A gun which I don’t believe any of you can even pick up.”

  “What was that about not killing anybody?” Nicholas asked. “And we could too pick it up. It’d sting, that’s all.” He picked it up, demonstratively, but his mouth tightened after a moment, which lessened the effect.

  Mrs. Farris sniffed. “And can you hit what you aim at, young man? You may be quite confident that I can. And if I shoot someone,” she added with some severity, this time to Father Stepan, “you may also be quite confident it will be a monster, or else dire necessity.”

  Justin ignored all this argument because none of that mattered. He looked at Keziah and found her eyes meeting his. He knew the black dogs didn’t need a car; they could go straight across country. She knew he couldn’t. They both knew Keziah wouldn’t leave him unguarded—and they both knew Justin would never forgive her if she refused to rescue his grandmother in order to keep him safe. None of that needed to be put into words.

  “Besides,” Justin said, “we have to find out what this is about so we can tell Grayson and the rest. Witch or something else, we have to find out, especially if this guy is interfering somehow with Pure magic.”

  “If any harm comes to you, Grayson will be...beyond angry. I will also be very angry.”

  Justin nodded. “But you don’t really think we’re going to find something that you and Amira and Nicholas can’t handle? Anyway, I’ll promise not to take unnecessary chances—I do promise—but we don’t know what this guy is or what he can do. You might need me. You know that. Think about last time and how that would have worked out if it hadn’t been for me and Natividad!”

  “None of that would have happened at all if not for you and Natividad,” Keziah muttered.

  “Yeah, and then that master vampire would still be out there, and how would that be better? I’m not
fragile, I’m not helpless, and I’m definitely not staying behind, Keziah! We’ll all go. Keziah, listen, you know it makes sense.” He met her eyes, willing her to agree. “They can help, and besides that we can’t leave them behind, they know where we’re going. We can all go together—Father Stepan, is that your car outside, the big black one? We could all fit in that, plus my grandmother when we find her –”

  “Very well!” Keziah snapped. “Justin, you will keep the gun. You will protect yourself, do you hear? You are most definitely fragile, all you human people, and you Pure most of all.” But she also swept an encompassing gesture around the kitchen, turned on her heel, and stalked out the door.

  Five minutes later they were heading west, in Father Stepan’s car. With Keziah driving. That had probably surprised the priest, but he had lost that argument without a word being spoken, as Keziah had simply taken the key out of his hand before he’d even unlocked the driver’s side door.

  So Keziah drove, Father Stepan riding shotgun beside her, and the rest of them in the back. Justin sat behind Keziah; no one had to tell him she wouldn’t want anybody behind her but him or her sister. Amira crowded against him, with Mrs. Farris beside her and Nicholas in the far back behind the seat. There was indeed a lot of room back there, even if the car wasn’t actually a hearse.

  “How far, priest?” Keziah asked.

  “At this speed, not long, young lady, unless you cause an accident with your reckless –”

  “She won’t,” muttered Justin, and finished the teleraña he was making. He rolled down the window of the car and threw it out. Then he patted Amira’s shoulder apologetically, she handed him some more hairs from her head, and he began to make another one. Tangled webs, Natividad called them. Tangled webs to tangle sight, telerañas to distract the eye and prevent your enemies from spotting you even when you were in full sight. You left them along your back trail to confuse pursuit, or draped them over your car so you could drive straight up to a bad guy who’d kidnapped your grandmother and he’d never know till you were right up in his face. If you did it right, and it worked the way it was supposed to, and this guy’s witchcraft, whatever that turned out to be, didn’t make the whole effort worthless.