Pure Magic (Black Dog Book 3) (29 page)

The Black Wolf had stopped. She turned back to Ethan. She didn’t hit him, even yet, though Alejandro had half expected her to lose her temper at last. She even raised a hand to stop Valentin hitting him, as the other black dog plainly intended to do. She said, every accented word precise and level, “We can live with vampires. We did live with them, for thousands of years. You are a fool if you truly believe we will be able to coexist with human people, now that your uncle has ruined the
miasmy
that protected us all. Fortunately, young one, you are mistaken. They are not, quite, gone. In time there will again be enough to recreate the
miasmy
. And if we must make one or two small concessions here and there to ensure that this occurs, what is that?” She turned away again, this time decisively, adding to her uncle, over her shoulder, “Do nothing that will leave a mark, Valentin Nikitich. Remember the silver makes them fragile.”

“I will remember,” Valentin promised her.

After that it was bad enough. Valentin Kologrivov was an inventive man. Alejandro’s shadow tried very hard to rise, but the silver drove it back. Bound with silver chains, trapped in human form, there was nothing a black dog could do to protect himself from the malice of an enemy. Alejandro knew it would take only about three hours for Grayson to drive from the Dimilioc house to Boston, but he could not track even the passing minutes. It seemed a long time before Valentin grew bored. Probably it was not so long as it seemed.

Alejandro did not try to get up immediately, even when the Russian wolf tired of his sport and went away. He knew his limbs would not support him. He was shaking, which shamed him, but he could not stop. He tried to mutter, “
Pedazo de basura
,” but his voice, too, shook, and he could not get out even those heartfelt words. Whether he tried to move or tried to lie still, little shocks of pain radiated from every joint and every nerve cluster. Even the trembling hurt.

He tried to remember when he had first come to Dimilioc with his sister and brother, how afraid he had been. He had been afraid that the Master of Dimilioc would kill him, afraid Grayson Lanning might kill Miguel. But he had never been afraid that Grayson Lanning would entertain himself by tormenting his prisoners. His father had taught him that the Dimilioc wolves took pride in their own decent restraint, and he had told him explicitly that Grayson Lanning could be trusted.

Obviously no one had taught the Russian wolves such restraint. Alejandro had not thought before how it would be, a black dog house that despised the Pure. Now, here, he truly understood exactly what the Pure did for Dimilioc. Grayson Lanning would never act so. No black dog would, who valued the good regard of the Pure.

With some effort, he rolled onto his back and put an arm over his eyes to block out the light. He could hear Ethan’s ragged breaths. His own breathing probably sounded like that also. He was ashamed of that, too. He was almost glad of Ethan’s presence, though. He did not like Ethan, but being alone would be worse. And if someone else must be here, better it was someone he did not like.

He had never been more glad to have his sister and brother far away. Miguel must still be safe at Dimilioc, and Natividad—wherever Natividad was, she could not possibly be in as much danger as this, or faced with such terrible enemies.

Then terror shattered like ice through his heart, and he knew he was wrong. He jerked upright, forgetting the chain, which tore his wrists. He barely felt the cold burn of the silver. Natividad. She was afraid. She was so afraid. Something was wrong with Natividad.

Visibly trying to ignore her fear for herself and for Alejandro, Natividad painstakingly showed Justin how to draw protective crosses on the foundation of the house and then went farther from the house to draw a second mandala, three feet outside the first. Justin watched her, in between crosses. She didn’t have his quick way to do it, but on the other hand her mandala looked a lot more solidly set than his. She cut a huge circle deep into the earth with her silver knife and anchored it with four silver crucifixes, each as long as her hand, made of polished wood wrapped with silver wire. Plus, he could see how tightly focused her mandala was. She knew
exactly
what she wanted it to do. The difference was obvious when he compared her work with his own.

The ladies who owned the bed-and-breakfast had donated the crucifixes, left over from the later years of the war. Everyone had known by then what kinds of things to use against vampires. The price of silver had gone right through the roof. Justin didn’t like to think what that much silver wire must have cost.

“You might get them back,” Natividad had told the two women, who had been shocked and scared but commendably self-possessed. “But if they look all charred and the silver is blackened, it’s best to bury them in hallowed ground and start over.”

The women had nodded earnestly. Justin was almost certain that if they got them back, even if the crucifixes appeared completely pristine, they would bury them in the nearest churchyard. Probably six feet deep, like something that had died.

The ladies had fled without argument, by which Justin guessed they’d had at least one vampire come through Rattlesnake Springs before. He’d always known how lucky they were in Los Alamos, not to have any vampires come hunting. It occurred to him now, for the first time, to wonder whether his own mother might have had something to do with that kind of luck. He longed, with a sudden ferocity that all that doubled him over, for her to
be here
. To have her hold him like a child and tell him it was going to be fine and just
take care of all this
. He leaned against the wall for a moment, trying to steady his breathing. Grief and loss and homesickness rose up around him like a sandstorm, and for several minutes he was hardly conscious of anything else.

He wanted her so badly. For all he knew, for all he might ever know now, his mother had worked her magic by guesswork, maybe half-accidentally—but maybe,
maybe
she would have known just what to do.

She wasn’t here. No one was here who could take care of things for any of them, now. The savage ache of his grief was as bad as the fear of the approaching vampire. Which was ridiculous. Everyone lost someone; look at Natividad. That was even worse, to have your parents murdered by monsters, and
she
didn’t just stop and cry for her mother.

Justin clenched his teeth hard and looked hard at the nearest crucifix, at every detail of the grain of the dark wood. He counted the turns of silver wire around it—thirty-nine—and tried to guess at the mass of silver that had gone into making that crucifix, and gradually found his throat becoming less tight. Though his mother was still gone. And the vampire was still coming. When he finally looked up again, he found Keziah gazing at him, her expression unreadable. Justin looked away.

A little while after the ladies had left, church bells began ringing, first somewhere close by and then in other churches all through the town. Justin wished he thought that would help. He honestly didn’t think anything would help, but . . . wasn’t there a military fort in El Paso? Maybe there was also a unit there trained and equipped to deal with monsters. Would they come out to a little town like this? How fast? And how effective would they be, if they came? Justin could tell that both Natividad and Keziah thought the three of them were on their own. He was afraid they were probably right.

“Sanctuary,” said Keziah grimly, tilting her head to listen to the clamor of the bells. “The walls of a church would not be enough protection, except this vampire will not hunt amid the ordinary people. He will come here, seeking us.” She glared at Justin. “Seeking you. And that foolish, foolish girl.”

Justin drew another cross on the wood beneath a window, then a star on the window glass, then smaller crosses to each side of the window. Then he stepped back and looked at it all carefully, sideways, to make sure he had done it right. Only then did he nod to show Keziah he’d heard her. “You think we can hold him till dawn?”

Keziah shrugged one shoulder, which from her was an elegant, sexy gesture. Justin would have preferred a simple, non-sexy
Why, of course
. He turned back to the house and drew another cross. It wasn’t hard, exactly. In fact, it was easy. But he had done two sides of the house and was starting on the third, and he was starting to feel a tension headache behind his eyes and an odd kind of ache in his palms and down his arms, as though he had been lifting weights and getting a sunburn at the same time.

He said, “This isn’t Natividad’s fault.”

Keziah made a scornful sound.

Justin glanced at her over his shoulder. “I don’t remember either of us saying,
Oh, let’s be careful calling El Paso in case the vampire got there first and took over your cousin’s mind
. How was she supposed to know?”

“It is totally my fault,” Natividad said, behind him, before Keziah could answer. “I’m the one who thought it was so important to come down here and make Ezekiel come after me so I could help him kill the vampire. I never meant to get you involved, Justin. I’m so sorry.” She stepped past Justin and drew crosses on the wall, one with each hand, then stepped sideways to do it again. She looked exhausted. Her eyes appeared bruised, her skin ashen.

Justin, who had actually still been working on not being mad at her, felt his anger melt away in sympathy and worry. “Look, I can finish this—”

“Faster with two,” Natividad muttered, and drew two more crosses. She was actually more than twice as fast as Justin, because she not only drew two crosses faster than he could draw one, she never had to pause to check if they were lined up with the others or if the magic had come into them properly.

“Killing the vampire was very important,” Keziah said. Her expression had not exactly softened, but the line of her mouth had lost some of its bitterness. “You truly believe that your Ezekiel could kill this vampire, by himself, with only you to help?”

Natividad didn’t look around. “I thought Grayson might send you or Thaddeus or someone with him. And I hadn’t exactly intended to announce our presence and hold myself up as a target. I thought we would be, you know. Subtle. And Ezekiel would know what to do. Now . . . now I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know anything. Have you ever gotten through to Grayson yet?” Both she and Justin glanced over their shoulders at Keziah, but the black dog girl only shook her head.

“How is your brother?” Justin asked, but then it was Natividad’s turn to shake her head and he was sorry he’d asked.

They had been trying every fifteen minutes to call Grayson, or Ezekiel, or Miguel, or just the Dimilioc landline. The landline answering machine was on, but every actual person at Dimilioc seemed to have their phones turned off. This had worried Justin, until he saw the pinched look in Natividad’s eyes after the fourth or fifth try. Then it had
really
scared him. He didn’t know whether it would be better to know what kind of disaster had overtaken the rest of Dimilioc, or whether that would be worse.

Justin stepped around Natividad and set the last cross into the wall of the house, stepped back and checked to make sure it was in line and properly alight, took a deep breath and let it out, stretched, and rolled his shoulders. Then he finally looked at Natividad. “All right. That’s done. What’s next?”

“Next?” said Natividad, blankly. Then she scrubbed her hands over her face and looked at her watch, a pink kitten watch that made her look about thirteen years old. “It’s almost one,” she said. She looked around. The night was quiet. Peaceful. Crickets chirped somewhere, a comfortable, familiar sound. Farther away, church bells were still tolling out their brazen warning. Even more dimly, he could hear someone shouting. The bells and the faint shouting were the only signs so far that things were wrong, that everything was wrong.

That and the ache in Justin’s palms, in the joints of his fingers, in his arms and shoulders. And the faint not-quite-real glimmer of the crosses on the house and the mandalas in the yard, one mandala inside the other. Something about Natividad’s looked strange, now that he studied the finished work. Its circular boundary line looked sort of . . . braided, as though Natividad had somehow twisted light and darkness into a cord and laid it over and into the earth. Justin knew he was a total beginner at magic, but it looked weird and disturbing. But
intense
, though. He could see that, too.

The mandala’s line cut sharply through the earth and the air, so clear and strong he thought surely ordinary people must be able to see it, too. The silver crosses that anchored it sparked and glittered. He thought he could hear the mandala buzz, very faintly, like the vibration of a guitar string after someone had lifted his hand from the instrument. The sound held a natural smoothness, a give and return, like a very fine sine wave. He wanted to ask Natividad what she had done to give her mandala such a strange quality, about what she meant that to do. He supposed this was probably not a good time.

Natividad took a deep breath. “I could make a
maraña
. A tangled web,” she explained to Justin. “You use them to confuse your enemies, to make it so they can’t find you. I could stretch
maraña
s across all the roads that lead to this house. Only—a master vampire, I can’t confuse him
enough
. Or we could have run.” She raked her hands through her hair, looking around vaguely.

“If we could hide, we would be hidden,” Keziah said sharply. “It is too late to hide. You know this. No. We will go into this protected house. We will decide what is the best room to fortify, and you will fortify it. You will blood that knife for me, that silver knife Ezekiel gave you, yes?”

Justin stared at her in admiration.
Keziah
didn’t seem afraid, or indecisive. She burned with angry determination. He could almost believe she was actually looking forward to facing this monster. Just looking at her made him feel more confident.

“Blood my knife?” Natividad said slowly.

“I know it is your lover’s gift to you—” Keziah began.

“No. I mean, yes—I mean no!” Natividad stopped and took a breath. Then she said, with dignity. “Ezekiel is not my lover, but what I mean is, I think that’s a really, really good idea, Keziah. I mean . . . a silver knife with vampire ichor on it, vampire magic clinging to it . . .” she made a small, uninterpretable motion with one hand, like she was winding string around a stick or something. “I think maybe . . .”

Keziah gazed at her. She had forgotten to look superior and elegant and scornful. Her beautiful black-amber eyes were wide with aggressive satisfaction. “Clever little Pure girl,” she said. “You have thought of something you can do.”

“Maybe,” said Natividad. Her eyes were wide, too; wide and stunned. “Maybe. I don’t know. But I’ll blood my knife for you, Keziah, and then . . . then you can blood it for me.”

“Good,” Keziah said fiercely. “Good.”

They choose the upstairs suite Natividad and Justin had first been given. Justin had expected a cellar or basement, but both Natividad and Keziah shook their heads. “Stone and earth are strong, but closed in, and vampires like the dark,” Natividad explained. “Think of crypts, you know? We want air and light. Starlight and moonlight are good, but dawn is what we’re really waiting for. And this room has an east window.”

“So vampires really burst into flames in the sun?” Justin asked.

“Yes,” Natividad said. “So if we can hold out till dawn—”

Keziah gave a scornful sniff and interrupted her. “Do not give the boy foolish hope. Sunlight will not kill the blood kin. It will only drive them away to wait for dark. And the master vampire may risk any lesser vampires it has made, but for itself, it will be careful of the sun.”

“Well, yes, but ordinary people ought to be able to help, once the sun rises,” Natividad began.

“Help monsters against other monsters? Go,” said Keziah. “You are tired. You are not thinking clearly. Go and rest.” But then she said more kindly, “Do not think of things that frighten you. You will be safe to rest. I will watch.”

“But—” said Natividad.

“You will be far more use if you are not so tired. We have another hour, maybe. Maybe longer. Your
marañas
are still laced through the streets. That is why the blood kin have not yet found us. They are not as clever as I. They will not find us until their master comes.”

She sounded confident. Justin hoped she was right. He knew she was right about Natividad lying down for as long as she could. He didn’t need anyone to tell him that she was their most important weapon against their enemies.

“My knife—”

“You do not wish to scent the air with your blood. Not yet.”

Natividad blinked. “Oh. That’s true
. Sí,
that’s true. Better to wait.
Sí.
When the vampire is here, there will be time enough.”