Guardian Hound

by Cutter, Leah

  Harita always wrapped her arms across her chest, carrying her books. So did the other girls.

  Virmal wasn’t stupid. He knew what that meant.

  Someone was bullying his sister, and she had her books pulled out of her arms on a regular enough basis for her to be defensive all the time.

  His tiger soul growled at that. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  Hurt one, hurt us all.

  # # #

  “Sorry, I can’t go,” Virmal said as he shut his locker.

  Vijay, Sal, and Eric all complained. “Come on, you promised!”

  “Look, just play three-person footie,” Virmal suggested.

  “Lame,” Eric replied.

  “I’ll play next week,” Virmal promised, hurrying out of the dim school hallway and into the autumn cold. God, he hated England. He quickly buttoned his heavy, blue wool peacoat up to his neck, then pulled his gray hat down more snugly over his ears. He took the stairs from the school two at a time, then raced up the block, trying to catch up with Harita.

  Nasty wind pushed at him, blowing through the thick wool as well as the sweater Virmal wore underneath. Maybe he should switch to his winter down jacket; at least that resisted the wind. But the guys would make fun of him. Ornate metal fences enclosed the gardens to his left. Only a few brave, colorful leaves dangled from the trees. The smell of rain was in the air, but the wind always smelled like rain.

  Ahead of Virmal, Harita walked alone. She walked quickly, like a rabbit scurrying across a field. Even from a block away, the wind carried the scent of her fear. She turned the corner, and Virmal hurried.

  Three boys had surrounded Harita by the time Virmal caught sight of her again.

  “Going home so fast, little mouse,” the tall white boy in the dark green coat said.

  “Did you bring us the money?” a dark Indian boy asked, in a black coat that looked very much like Virmal’s.

  Harita bared her teeth at them. “Never,” she said.

  At least she was standing up to them. But there were three of them and only one of her. Plus, they were all bigger than she was.

  Why hadn’t she told anyone, though?

  “Leave me alone,” Harita said loudly.

  “Or you’ll scream?” the last one sneered. He was short and white. He shoved Harita’s shoulder. “You know what happened last time you did that.”

  The Indian boy pushed Harita next, hard enough that she almost stumbled and fell. Then he yanked on her backpack, trying to strip her of her books.

  Virmal couldn’t hold back. His tiger soul growled as he hurried forward. “Leave her alone,” he ordered as he pushed through the boys to stand beside his sister.

  “Oh, a big bad knight in shining armor,” the tall white boy mocked.

  “I can take care of this,” Harita hissed at Virmal.

  Virmal’s tiger soul pushed at him. Brave, she purred.

  Harita shoved Virmal back, behind her.

  No wonder she hadn’t told anyone. She thought she needed to deal with the boys all by herself, as a matter of honor.

  “An ambush is stronger than each warrior, alone,” Virmal quoted to Harita in Hindi, one of the recitations.

  “Each warrior makes her own way,” Harita quoted back.

  “Bored now,” the smaller white boy said. He reached beyond Harita and pushed at Virmal.

  “Together?” Virmal suggested, for the first time happy that both of them had taken some warrior training, learning to fight. Harita hadn’t taken as much, but he’d ask for her at every class, now.

  They took off their backpacks and turned their backs to each other. Virmal spread his legs wider, one a little in front of the other, his weight on his toes, rooting himself in the earth, his hands up in loose claws. Though Virmal couldn’t see her, he knew Harita did the same. Then Virmal let out a low growl. Harita echoed him: a human sound, but eerily accurate nonetheless.

  The three boys seemed uncertain, suddenly. Then the tall white boy in the green coat sneered. “She can’t really fight. I bet you can’t either. They’re bluffing.” His voice gained strength.

  “You’re bigger than we are,” Virmal told him calmly. “And there are three of you. But together, we’re stronger.”

  “What, you and your girlfriend?”

  “She’s my sister,” Virmal declared. A sudden pride filled him. “And we have greater heart than you do.”

  With a second snarl, both Virmal and Harita attacked.

  Virmal exploded forward. He couldn’t use his claws or teeth—Grandmother Irita would skin him alive for that.

  However, he could still use the speed of a tiger warrior.

  He drove the heel of his palm directly into the lower chest of the Indian boy, making him gasp and stagger back.

  Down! cried his tiger soul.

  Virmal ducked.

  A wild swing of the tall white boy whizzed over Virmal’s head.

  Virmal grinned at the white boy, showing all his teeth. Then he slammed into the other boy, coming in low and extending up, driving his shoulder into the boy’s chest and his elbow into the boy’s stomach, pushing the him away.

  The tall white boy recovered quickly and tackled Virmal, driving them both to the ground. Then he reared up and smashed Virmal in the face.

  Virmal howled, wrapped his legs around the boy’s waist, and flipped them so he was on top. Blood pounded in his skull and dripped from his nose. He didn’t bite the boy’s shoulder, even though he wanted to. Instead, he brought his knee up into the boy’s groin, then, using both hands, slammed the boy’s head against the ground, once, twice.

  Stop, his tiger soul warned before he did it again.

  Virmal lifted himself up and away. The boy groaned but didn’t try to get up. Virmal quickly looked over to his sister.

  Harita’s opponent was also on the ground. She grinned at him, one eye already bruising, her hair pulled out of its neat braid, her knees as muddy as his.

  The Indian boy had run away, deserting his companions.

  Harita and Virmal silently picked up their backpacks and walked away. Virmal’s face hurt, and he knew he’d have a shiner that matched Harita’s. But his tiger soul was content. Honor and duty had both been served.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Virmal asked as they turned the next block.

  “I could have handled it,” Harita said hotly.

  Careful, now, his tiger soul warned.

  “I couldn’t have fought all three, not by myself,” Virmal told her. Of course, like his sister, he would have tried to at first.

  “Why did you help me?” Harita asked.

  The wind blew at Virmal. He was suddenly tired and cold. “You’re my sister.”

  “But you hate me.”

  Virmal thought about it for a moment. Harita always got the best of everything. Even though he was the tiger warrior, Mama and Papa always asked about her first when they called, always talked with her first. She got better grades than he did both at school and at home. Grandmother Irita liked her better.

  “You’re my sister,” Virmal finally said.

  His tiger soul gave a comforting growl, as close to a purr as she could.

  “But—”

  “No. You’re my sister. You’re clan. You’re family.”

  Nothing else mattered, not really.

  “Those boys might be back,” Virmal warned as they neared their flat. “With their friends.”

  “Grandmother Irita is going to ask about that,” Harita pointed out, gesturing toward his throbbing eye.

  “The ambush takes care of its own,” Virmal quoted.

  If more boys came, and Virmal and Harita couldn’t handle them, they could get help.

  Neither of them had to stand alone.

  Interlude III

  The Viper in Tulum

  Mexico, Present Day

  Zane woke to absolute blackness. He blinked his eyes, making sure they were open, but he couldn’t see anything in the dark.

  That didn�
��t scare him as much as the stifling silence did.

  Where was el océano and her comforting waves? Where were the little ones just on the other side of the crumbling plaster walls of his decrepit, one-room apartment, and their daily fight over who ate which cereal? Where was the ancient señora on the other side, and the whine of her equally ancient TV? The constant scent of burnt toast, peppers cooked in oil, and cheap perfume from the girls three doors down the hall were missing, too.

  Zane reached up to feel his eyes, his eyelashes fluttering against his fingertips. Then he plugged and unplugged his ears with his fingers, but it made no difference.

  The world still remained at a distance.

  Panic jolted through Zane. He couldn’t be dying. Not yet. He hadn’t finished his mission. He still hadn’t met….

  Ah.

  Zane took a deep breath and calmed himself. He sat up slowly on his narrow cot, his old bones protesting, then swung his legs over.

  His bare feet landed solidly on the cold concrete of his floor.

  Zane pushed himself up, and after a shaky step, the world slammed back into him.

  His tiny room still looked the same, with stained plaster walls painted a somber peach color—supposedly to brighten the place up but they looked dingy, instead. The corner held a sink with dishes piled high and too many empty cerveza and tequila bottles. A dresser stood in the other corner, with his few shabby and never completely clean shirts and jeans.

  When Zane turned around, he saw that a shadow still lingered on his bed, like a lone cloud, unraveling and disappearing even as he watched.

  “Tsk, tsk.” Zane shook his head.

  Las Sombras were playing their tricks again.

  The shadows knew Zane watched. They knew he waited. But after all this time, even with the tricks they played on his mind, they still didn’t know for what.

  Zane wasn’t sure himself, some days. It had been so long since he’d been given this task. And the shadows confused him, as did the cerveza, the tequila, and time.

  He took a deep breath and let his senses expand. The TV on one side played a light jingle, a happy couple in love with their washing machine. On the other, the little ones argued over who got the last of the orange juice. The señora had burnt her toast again, and over that, from outside, drifted the smoke from an untuned motorbike. Two blocks away came the scent of wet concrete, new hotels for tourists. Under it all, la mer whispered her dreams to him.

  Zane pulled in his senses and shambled over to his sink to splash water on his face. A tiny mirror hung over it, but Zane didn’t like how it reminded him of his grizzled skin, the patches of gray whiskers, the dark, day-laborer’s tan his hands and arms held; or how his hair grew only along the edges of his overly large skull, and was now more silver than black.

  He’d never been handsome, not even as a young man. But he’d had a vitality—the opposite of the old-man exhaustion that hung on him now like a shroud.

  He looked up, watching his eyes change from washed-out brown to burning yellow. His pupils elongated, turning into a slit that stole all the color from the world but let him observe even the tiniest movements. He almost didn’t recognize himself; it had been so long since he’d transformed.

  In a blink, his human eyes returned. However, his viper soul remained close, just under the surface of his skin.

  Soon. The word hissed gently through his blood, as soothing as the morning prayers of his people that he’d forgone long ago.

  Zane nodded. Yes. Soon. It was why the shadows had been so merciless in their tricks that week.

  Soon it would happen.

  His debt would be paid. And maybe his honor restored.

  # # #

  Zane perched himself high on a wall of the Tulum ruins, next to El Castillo overlooking the ocean. The water was calm and so blue that morning, as pretty as the postcards made it look. Below where he sat, gulls hopped from one rock to the next, certain to find some tidbit missed by the others. Off in the distance, tourist cruise boats sailed, free of care.

  The sun soaked into Zane’s skin, stupefying his viper soul. Or maybe that was also his disguise—the nearly empty bottle of cheap tequila in the brown paper bag beside him. He hadn’t meant to drink so much, particularly this early in the morning. The park guards wouldn’t approve if they saw him—a drunken day laborer might scare the tourists. From looking at him, they’d never know that he was actually an American and not some down-on-his-luck, back-country Mayan.

  But Zane had been here in Tulum so long, gone so native, he forgot himself sometimes.

  His friends, the shadows, helped hide him today—at least for now, before they decided to trick him again.

  Maybe they weren’t really his friends.

  Ah, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered today except looking out over the beautiful coast with its perfect white sand and blue-blue waters, and waiting.

  Tourists scrambled up the steep pyramid steps behind Zane, but they mostly didn’t see him. They remarked about the castle and the gorgeous location, their voices as raucous as the gulls. They snapped pictures like mad when an iguana strolled by.

  It warmed Zane’s cold heart that the creature recognized him as a threat and kept a safe distance from him, as if he would bother with such poor, unrelated cousins.

  The sour smell of the liquor washed over Zane as he finished the bottle. He knew that to play the part of the drunken local, he should just toss the bottle over the side of the wall, but he couldn’t make himself do it, couldn’t bring himself to dirty the clean white sands beneath him.

  Instead he stood, slowly stretching, swaying in the constant ocean wind. Maybe today wasn’t the day. He could go back home and nap through the heat of the day, come back out looking that evening.

  A squawking laugh echoed behind him.

  Black rage clouded the bright day. Zane turned around.

  A dark-skinned young man with light-colored, spiky hair raced up the steps. A young woman, pale-skinned with brown hair done up in a ponytail, ran beside him. Obviously tourists, wearing immodest T-shirts, shorts, and sandals.

  Though the boy looked fully human, Zane saw what he was, and he couldn’t contain his hiss.

  One of the raven clan? Here?

  Those damn birds had ruined everything, betrayed his clan and all the others.

  What they’d done had been worse than his own misdeeds, when he’d been arrogant and young.

  Shadows suddenly gathered at Zane’s side, their cool wisps sliding across his skin.

  Zane had never seen faces in the shadows—he didn’t think they had any. They’d never spoken to him directly. They remained like clouds, even after all these years, unknowable.

  For the first time, they thrummed with excitement, something Zane understood.

  This boy. He meant something to them.

  It was finally time.

  Zane took one drunken step forward as the couple veered off—warned by some instinct to explore the other tower first.

  Before Zane took two more steps, a tour group walked around the corner of El Castillo, pooling around their guide at the bottom of the steps.

  Zane shot a scathing look in the direction of the young couple, then he let himself shift, subtly, his nose flattening against his face, his cheekbones spreading out as his viper soul rose closer to the surface.

  Yes, there was their scent: musty old feathers, the bright glass of armor, the sweet odor of youth and sex.

  He had their scent signature now. He could follow them blindly through a crowd at an open market, over the smells of live chickens, fresh tomatoes, and heaps of chilies.

  Zane slowly walked back down the stairs of El Castillo, the tourists sliding around him like river water around a rock.

  It was good that Zane could track the raven warrior and his mate, but honestly, it didn’t matter that much.

  Damn tourist was a bird. He’d always seek the highest ground, no matter where they went.

  And the next time they met, it
wouldn’t be in so public a place.

  # # #

  The day continued bright and sunny, with sea winds to keep it from getting too hot. Zane still felt as if a storm were brewing, could almost see it in the heat haze on the horizon, over the miles of ocean blue. Far below the high stone shelf where he sat, the white sand sparkled. An old iguana the length of his leg warily baked on the warm rocks a few feet away. The wind carried the foreign scents of the tourists on the beach, their perfumed oils and plastic toys.

  It also brought the scent of his prey, playing in the water.

  His viper soul counseled patience, as always. He listened to it better now than he had as a young man, impetuous and full of his own grand schemes.

  Soon, he’d be able to right his wrongs.

  A few feet down the trail, just beyond the last sharp turn in the trail up the hill, Zane had dragged a large tumbleweed, deliberately blocking the path so no one would accidentally stumble on him and chase him away from his ambush. The path above was blocked as well. He was confident his trap would work.

  The warm sun made Zane sleepy, but he kept his watch through slitted eyes. Fear also kept him awake. If after all these years, these décadas, he failed to….

  But he was right. The scent of feathers was suddenly closer.

  Zane slipped off his rock and removed the artificial barrier below him, his hands stinging as the thorns pricked him. The raven boy would be too drawn to the highest point to resist, his laughing mate by his side.

  Zane had no mate. None would take him after what he did. He would die alone and friendless.

  Hopefully, though, he would die satisfied.

  The mate led the way up the trail—foolish or selfish on the part of the boy, Zane couldn’t decide. They paused just below the last hairpin turn, looking back the way they’d come, admiring the view.

  “It is beautiful from up here, Peter,” she murmured.

  “Yeah, Sally, the best view is always from up high,” he replied.

  Still, Zane held his breath until they came around that last turn, then he stepped out from where he’d hidden behind a boulder, blocking their way down, their easy escape. They stopped at the far side, on a short incline, where the trail was also blocked, with a rock wall on one side and a long, long tumble down the hill to the other.