A Feral Darkness Part 1

A Feral Darkness.

Doranna Durgin.

With thanks to: John Forth-Finegan of Canine Specialties, Peter Braggins of the Greece Animal Control, Martyn Miller DVM, Gretchen Wood of the Greece Humane Society, the Anti-Animal Fighting Task Force of Monroe County, Tom Haverly at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Reverend Marie Sheldon, Donna & Tara Defendorf (who might well recognize the barn), Morgan Ryan, Anne Bishop, my family, Jennifer who put up with my fits of creative angst, and (deep breath) Judith!

Chapter 1.

THURISAZ.

A Gateway

Always

Forgotten G.o.ds fill the layers of heaven. Quiescent, subordinate, long ago superceded. Waiting. And every so often, reminded of their own existence.

Nineteen Years Before Now

She is nine years old, with tears streaming down her face and the intermittent hiccough of a sob jerking her chest. Dressed in the ragged cut-offs and worn T-shirt that have been the choice of a generation of children, she does not wait to hear the rest of her mother's words. She races out of the house, the screen door banging hollowly in her wake, and runs across the soft spring gra.s.s of the yard to duck between the first and second strands of the electric fence, feeling the swift zing of electricity run above and below her.

The old hound follows at his leisure, but follow he does, as stubborn in this as ever in following a traila"even though it takes him a moment to rise and his movement is stiff when he does. His tail waves in gentle arcs as he detours to slip between gate and post rather than duck the fence wire. The day is barely warm enough for the shorts that hang on the girl's lanky frame, but he is already panting.

She stops to wait for him. Of course. And one hand slips inside her back pocket to feel the stiff, folded square of paper only recently purloined from her father's magazine. On it is a photo of a sculpture, a simplistically elegant hounda"not a treeing hound like her lifelong companion, but a gaze hound, couchant, with a long neck and pointed nose, and a gaze hound's insignificant ears.

He catches up with her, pleased with himself, and lifts his head to look up at her with a hound smile through his panting. Unlike the statue, his ears are long and heavy and the softest things she ever has or ever will feel. But she doesn't care about the differences between her companion and the Lydney Hound. She's not particularly concerned about all the details in the accompanying article that are beyond her ability to digesta"cold anthropological facts that even her father doesn't read. She's seen him turning the pages with dirt-encrusted fingers, skipping from one bright glossy photo to another and getting glimpses of places that don't yet pull her own attention away from this small farm. That's all he wants, the glimpses, and when he's had enough he puts the magazine beside his lounge chair and ambles off to see if he can fix whatever mechanical thing has gone wrong now.

This is how she finds the Lydney Hound, anda"later, sneaking the magazine into her bedrooma"reads about the oddly named G.o.d called Mars Nodens who favors hounds, who likes dogs of all sorts. Who has an ancient shrine from olden days so olden she can't even begin to imagine the scope of it and again . . . doesn't care.

What she cares about is that his shrine was a healing shrine. That he favors dogs, that the shrine, even after all this time, is littered with representations of them. And that the right-side pasture has some of the other things she's been able to make sense of in that articlea"the wide, cold creek that runs deep in all but the driest months, a hill rising on one side of it to hold not only the area's biggest oak, but a tiny spring as well. The tiniest of springs, really, a damp spot that the ground downhill reabsorbs practically before the water has a chance to join the creek, but a spring nonetheless.

She wonders briefly if her own G.o.d, her a.s.signed G.o.d, will thunderously disapprove of her intent.

But then, He's had His chance, hasn't He? Hasn't she said her prayers to Him, over and over? And did it stop her mother from saying those words about her cherished old hound, only moments ago? Or her brother from making fun of the dog's aged movement?

She smears the drying tears from her cheeks and runs her hand down the dog's soft ear. Maybe Mars Nodens will listen. He is not likely to have heard a more heartfelt prayera"now or then.

Four Years Before Now

They come in the middle of the night, breaking fences in a final night of tearing up pastures with the k.n.o.bby tires on their growling ATVs. Drunk, getting drunker, they spin doughnuts in the wet spring turf, spitting out chunks of sod in their wake. Picking pastures without stock because they somehow have sense enough to know that damaging or losing stock will take them over the line from wild young men to criminals.

But they are mighty wild.

They pick a spot up against a creek too deep to cross, heeding a darkened house in the distance. A young woman lives there, they know, but has been gone this summer, working several jobs as if the extra income will somehow be enough to keep her father alive. She is an odd girl with amazingly long hair, the one who has an uncanny way with dogs and an unsettling way of looking through a man as though he's not even there and it wouldn't matter if he were. But she is not home, and her pastures belong to them.

They settle in for a time to swallow the beer they've brought, shaking the cans, popping the tops to soak themselves and the hillside beneath the spreading oak. They don't notice that they trample the grave markings of the old hound who lived longer than anyone had ever thought possible. They don't notice the sudden stillness of the night around them, or that even as they drink, they often glance over their shoulders, looking for that which they feel but cannot see.

Not a benign feeling, for in this place of power they have not thought to call upon things benign. Instead they call upon aggression, building the strength and ego of the one who will shortly present himself for army basic training. They call upon braggadocio, chest-thumping stories of prowess, and dark promises of manly revenge for those who have recently wronged them. They spill beer from can and bladder, and when they find the struggling remains of a rabbit they roared over in their ATV frenzy, they spill blood.

And then they go home, leaving the debris of the night behind them and never suspecting what they have awakened.

At least, not right away.

Now It begins.

Chapter 2.

KANO.

An Opening

"Don't even think about it."

The tiny Poodle looked back at Brenna with defiant eyes; it gave another jerk of the paw she had trapped between gentle fingers and added a calculated curl of its lip, revealing age-darkened but still needle-sharp teeth.

What was left of them, anyway.

"Quit," Brenna murmured, deftly clipping between the lilliputian toes. On second thought she briefly rested the flat of the blade against her own cheek. No more than warm. Nothing to complain about. A quick adjustment to the flat nylon grooming noose restricted the Poodle's head movement, and Brenna went back to work. "You're supposed to be one of my good customers," she muttered, shifting the animal so she could handle its hind paws.

Not today. None of them were good today. The tub room behind her reekeda"she couldn't name a single dog who hadn't messed in its crate todaya"and still bore the effects of the escapee Collie who had torn around the room like someone's little brother, tipping over shampoo, spreading wet towels, and knocking over the tall, standing dryers. The tub walls were covered with shed dog haira"literally blown from the backs of several double-coated dogs whose owners hadn't taken a brush to them for at least a season.

And the noise. Every dog had something to say today. Loudly.

She had put the earplugs in early. And swallowed a couple of aspirins only a few moments ago, washed down by more caffeine than she normally dared. It made her hands shake, and that wasn't something she could afford in a business full of sharp blades and shifting clients. No wonder she had lost her childhood touch with dogs these days.

Flowers the Poodle, thinking herself sly, jerked her paw from Brenna's grasp and made a break for it, darting for freedoma"only long enough to hit the edge of the table and the end of the noose at the same time. With an exasperated noise, Brenna scooped her out of midair and plunked her back in place. "Act your considerable age. You're not making my day any easier," she growled, and there was something to that growl that finally got through to the tiny dog.

Or else she was simply humbled by her brief midair experience. Brenna sighed. "Count yourself lucky it wasn't a bungee cord," Brenna said and went back to work, once more thankful that the Pets! grooming room was tucked away from customer eyes and not behind gla.s.s as some of the other major pet store chains insisted. Between the clamping adjustment on the noose and the dog's inconsequential weight, she could have hung there for quite some time without dire result, but best if no one saw. Not something a customer would understand.

Or a manager, for that matter.

Especially not the manager who now stood in the doorway, arms crossed. She found him when she circled the table to get a better angle on Flowers' back leg, simultaneously changing to a longer blade without stopping the clippers, a practiced motion of skillful fingers. But when she saw Roger . . . then she turned off the clippers. She knew that look, and it never boded well.

Roger was boss, and he knew it. And being boss meant telling people to do the impossible and smiling benignly when they had no choice but to agree. He wasn't a big man, but he had a meaty look to him; he filled out his shirts with a bulk that at one point had been muscle and now wasn't so sure anymorea"just as his dull brown hair still held the style that had suited it when it was thick. Now Brenna thought a quick pa.s.s or two with her clippersa"a nice #4 bladea"would be a mercy.

"Busy in here today," he said. "That's the way I like to see it."

"Keeps things interesting." Brenna grabbed the ever-handy broom for a few quick, futile swipes at the growing tumbles of dog hair around her feet. The small room held three height-adjustable grooming tables, but the third table no longer adjusted without several people grunting and hauling and twisting it, so they kept it at the lowest height and used it for the largest dogs. Other than that, it usually held a fishbowl full of tiny handmade bows, with the bows-in-progress beside it. There was a short set of corner shelves and two rolling carts crammed with grooming equipment; the tub room held the shop vac and a plain grooming table where they towel-dried the dogs before popping them into crates to sit before powerful crate and stand dryers. Three tables but not quite enough s.p.a.ce for three active groomers; they never had more than two on shift at once, with only three on the payroll and Brenna as senior.

"Just signed up another one for you," Roger said, and his voice held that tone, the one he used when he knew he'd done something to ruin her day but had done it anyway because it would make a happy customer. Or so he thought, with the giant a.s.sumption that things would turn out his way.

They weren't likely to. Not this time. "I can't fit in any more dogs today. I can't do any more dogs than this in one day ever, unless you get me experienced help."

"I gave you Katy," he protested, throwing his arms out wide.

"For two hours in the morning, and she hates it. She's bad at it, and she doesn't know what she's doing."

"What do you have to know to bathe a dog?"

"The question," Brenna said, managing to keep her voice light only because she'd had so much practice, "is what do you have to know to bathe a dog correctly? Or even, say, to get a dog in the tub?"

She shouldn't have said that last; she knew it as soon as the words were out of her mouth. His face closed down at the reminder of the time Katy had needed his help and neither of them could get the seventy pounds of quivering German Shepherd into the waist-high tuba"not by trying to convince her to walk up the ramp meant for large dogs, nor by tugging or shoving or lifting. Until Brenna walked in from lunch, expecting to find the animal bathed and drying, and with no more thought than I don't have time for this, slung the dog up into the tub.

Only in retrospect had she seen the look on Roger's face, now imbedded in her mind's eye. Embarra.s.sment. Resentment. It had at least, she'd hoped, taught him that he couldn't simply throw just any of the interchangeable floor a.s.sociates back to work grooming for a day.

She had hoped.

"It's just a bath," Roger said. "No clipping. Medium-sized dog, I checked."

Brenna felt something clutch hard in her stomach. She waved toward the tub room. "There's a whole room full of dogs waiting for me, and every one of them is a problem today. I swear, there's something in the air today. I can't do it, Roger. I can't even do what I've already got."

"We don't turn away walk-ins, you know that."

Steadily, her voice as flat as it could be when she had to raise it over the dryers and the barking, she said, "Then get me help."

Agreeably, as if he'd never consider asking the unreasonable of her, he said, "I'll grab someone off the floor when the dog comes in," and left the room with the air of a man who has just solved a major problem with much aplomb.

Brenna closed her eyes, momentarily overwhelmed by the impossible.

Then she picked up her clippers and went to work.

Twenty minutes later she presented Flowers to Ginger Delgaria, a pleasant woman who had come to Brenna since Flowers' first puppy cut. Flowers, by this time tucked into the nook of Brenna's elbow with a sulky expression pasted on her face, merely stared at Mrs. Delgaria without bestirring herself to move; Brenna had to hand her over. The woman gave a rueful shake of her head. "I see her mood hasn't improved."

"They're all like that today," Brenna said, absently rubbing her forehead between her eyebrows as she filled out the charge slip for the cashier, already calculating how long it would take to have the Sheltie done; she'd finished dematting before the bath, but the dog had way too much hair for its owners to handle, at least not without a judicious amount of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and thinning. Like a woman with just the right makeup . . . no one could see where the work had been done, but people could definitely appreciate the difference.

The Sheltie would take too long, that was the answer. And there was the c.o.c.ker in for a cut-down; she hadn't done the dog before and wasn't encouraged by her behavior in the tub. And Roger's new appointment still hadn't showna"

"a"feral dog pack," Mrs. Delgaria was saying.

Brenna looked up at her, unable to reconcile the words with the neatly professional woman before her. No, don't ask. Give her the charge slip and go get the Sheltie.

She asked. "What did you say?"

"You haven't heard? I'm surprised. It's been in the news since last night." Mrs. Delgaria shifted Flowers into a more protective hold that Brenna didn't think was coincidental. "And you live out toward the lake, don't you? That's where they're supposed to be. If you've got animals out there, you'd better make sure they're put up safely."

Sunny. Numbly, Brenna held out the slip. "I don't listen to the radio much," she said. "Thank you for mentioning it." Sunny the hound. Poor dumb Redbone reject would stand there with her tongue hanging out, happily watching the canine visitors approach and never know the mistake until they bowled her over and chewed her into little pieces. She glanced at the clock. Two hours till her shift ended and not even then, if this new dog was other than what Roger said it would be.

Get the Sheltie started. She grabbed the stand dryer and wheeled it over to the table, which she swiftly adjusted to height. Then the tools, ready to hand; she snapped a #7 blade onto the clippers, pulled out her good thinning shears from the locking toolbox where she kept her personal gear, and hunted out the wide-toothed comb and a couple of different brushes. In moments the dog was on the table, losing the last of his matted hair and voicing his displeasure in high-pitched complaints from behind a nylon muzzle. He wasn't nearly as tough as he thought he was, but she was in no mood for the toothy pinches he commonly dealt out.

Definitely one of those days. The if-I-had-my-own-shop days. She wouldn't book this many dogs at once, not without the right kind of help. And no one allowed to book dogs against my say-so, she thought grimly, back-brushing the generous tufts of hair between the dog's toes and scissoring them to neat round paws.

But she never approached the thought too seriously. Years of her brother Russell's dismissive comments, of her parents' unintentional discouragementa"though now only her mother was left to fill that role. "Let someone else worry about the bills," they'd say, her father with loving protectiveness when he was alive and her mothera"now and thena"with the a.s.sumption that she couldn't handle the load. "Russell will tell you." And Russell would. "Can't see you doing the accounting for your own business," he would tell her, and of course he knew, what with his partnership in the small carpet and flooring store in Brockport. "You haven't got a single cla.s.s under your belt outside of high school."

True enough. But not how she'd wanted it, either.

She clipped the Sheltie's nails and pulled the muzzle off; just the thinning and a little tr.i.m.m.i.n.g to go, and he'd be fine with that.

Feral dogs. A pack of them. What was that all about? She worked in a suburb north of Monroe City, but lived fifteen minutes northwest of that, between Lake Ontario and the city. Definitely rurala"but generally tame. A handful of coyotes, not as many stray cats as there used to be, lots of small farms no longer supporting anything but a handful of cows or horses, plenty of farmland owned in modest lots but leased to larger operations. Her own place had taken that role over the years, and even now the old north pasture was in corn for Bob Hasklya"the lease paid her winter's heating bills in the old farmhouse. But the right-side pasture, hilly and divided by the creek, had only ever been pasture and still was. Maybe next summer she would get another horse; right now the field was fallow, recovering from some hard grazing from Emily's last batch of cattle.

Plenty going on in her part of Parma Hill, but never had feral dogs been any part of it. Nothing more than your basic random stray, half of whom seemed to find their way to Brenna for feeding and grooming before Brenna pa.s.sed them along to the local animal advocate group for placement.

"Brenna, you in there?"

Think of Emily, and Emily arrives.

"Be out in a moment," Brenna said, taking one more pa.s.s through the Sheltie's thick ruff with the thinning shears and then shaping the result. She stepped back to give him a critical eye, found a tuft she'd missed, and tucked him under her arm to step into the tub room and turn off the last dryer. The c.o.c.ker behind it gave her a bright and manic eye. "Best you change your att.i.tude," she told it, and went out to the counter area to stash the Sheltie in one of the two open-wire crates stacked for finished dogs.

"What's up, Emily?" she asked, reaching for the charge slip and doing a quick calculation of the extra time she'd spent on the mats.

"In town for project supplies," Emily said. "As usual. Those girls go through crafts like they were born to sell little-old-lady cutouts for people's front yards. You know, the kind bending over with all their pantaloons showing."

Brenna stopped writing to look up. Emily, with her honey-blond hair drawn back in a hasty ponytail, not a trace of makeup on her slightly too-wide, slightly too-large blue eyes, looked back at her quite seriously, but there was a trace of humor hiding at the corner of her mouth. "Solemnly swear," Brenna said, "that you will never allow that to happen."