A Feral Darkness Part 7

"I get off work in late afternoon," she said. "Or my days offa"Fridays and Mondays, so I have tomorrowa""

Druid barked sharply.

"No," Brenna told Druid, barely considering it an interruption in the conversation as she returned to Masera, "though I can't imagine you'd have time on such short notice."

"Not tomorrow," Masera said, hesitating at the noise of Druid moving restlessly in the crate, the wire shifting, his toenails clackinga"noises any trainer would know.

And a look on Druid's face Brenna was beginning to recognize. "I hate to say it, but I thinka"" and she gasped in surprise as the cold dark hit her body again, and Druid erupted into a frenzy, flinging himself against the wire, snapping and tugging and tearing at it with his teeth and nails. Brenna couldn't find the breath to speak, not to Masera on the other end of the phone or to Druid or toa"

Sunny!

Outside, Sunny let off a quick volley of barks, sharp and utterly unlike her.

And then she screamed.

Over and over, she screamed.

Brenna finally found her own breath and threw herself free of the clenching hold on her soul and right out the kitchen door, into the dog room and yelling for her copper-red hound, her sweet-natured, joy-hunting Redbone, slamming up against a storm door that somehow wouldn't open. Senselessa"foolisha"she hurled herself against it, gaining a few inches and so startled by the bone-chilling cold that poured in through that gap that she staggered back when the door slammed closed, given life of its own by a strong wind.

But there was no wind.

And suddenly there was no sound, nothing but the final scream in her raw throat and her own ragged breathing. Silence from Druid.

Silence from Sunny.

The door swung outward with a familiar creak of hinge, unimpeded.

After the briefest of hesitations, Brenna stuck her head out. She reached for the porch light, then thought better and grabbed the flashlight sitting on the washing machine. The overhead bulb would light up only the porch while blinding her to what was beyond; useless for this purpose.

The flashlight beam quivered along with her hand, splashing shadows across the clumpy gra.s.s, steadying enough to find the tree at the other end of the run and from there the run cable itself. She took a step out onto the porch. "Sunny?"

There was no sign of her.

Nothing, until the light created unfamiliar shadows in the middle of the yard, and she stopped scanning the gra.s.s to settle on it, her heart beating wildly in her chest. A disc, gleaming dully. It didn't belong.

A few more stepsa"down the porch stairs, onto the stepping-stone sidewalka"and light and shadow resolved into something recognizable. Sunny's collar. A turquoise nylon collar, looking darker than it should. Another few steps from there and she could reach for it, slowly dropping to a crouch to first touch it, then pick it up. Her swollen hand was stiff and fumbly, the fingers not sure of what they felt.

"Sunny?" she said, a tentative call into the darkness as she stood. "Sunny?"

She couldn't not look. She couldn't stop herself from going to the barn, from walking the old rail fences of the barn paddocks, calling Sunny's name in a voice that refused to shout, her fingers clenched around the collar, feeling more and more dazed as the moments went by and she slowly realized how little sense it made. Any of it.

She was crazy. Overworked. Imagining things.

Clenching dark cold that stole the breath from her lungs, air pressure slamming the door back on a clear, still night. Sunny's cable to the run broken at the collar, the collar abandoned nearby. If she'd slipped it . . . If she'd slipped it, she'd have left it dangling on the cable. No way for a dog to slip a collar without some force being applied to the collar itself.

The flashlight lowered to point at the ground, seemingly of its own accord, and this time the call came out in a whisper. "Sunny . . ."

She probably should think about what to do next, about checking on Druid or cleaning her hand or calling animal control to leave a message about her dog, somehow on the loose. But she just stood there. And then those decisions were taken away from her as an unfamiliar vehicle made the sharp turn into her driveway at some speed and charged the hill up to the house, painting her in a bright halogen light and driving her shadow up the side of the barn. The man who got out of it was nothing but a harshly limned shadow in the night.

"Brenna? Brenna, are you all right? What's going on?"

"What's going on?" she repeated slowly, realizing that Gil Masera was here, that the phone was somewhere shattered on the kitchen floor. "I don't even know how you found my house, never mind what's going ona"" And she gestured half-heartedly with the collar, bringing it up into the headlights he'd left on.

Blood.

Blood soaked the collar, and dripped from her fingers; it smeared across her hand.

She stared stupidly at it. This isn't happening. But her mouth seemed to know better, for it said, "Oh my G.o.d," though the words came out faintly.

"Is that blood yours?" he said, his words as edged as usual. No, not as usual. Edged, but different somehow.

But not to be ignored, as her hand started shaking again. With one hand grasping at the fencepost, she sank to the ground, to her knees in the dry gra.s.s. "No, Ia""

If not hers, whose? Sunny's?

In a few long strides he reached her, tucked an arm around her waist and drew her back up. "Inside," he said. "You can sit down inside."

Inside, where the blood would be bright and unmistakable. "Oh G.o.d," she said again.

But that would leavea" "No! I've got to find her. She's here somewhere. She's hurta""

"Brenna," he said sharply, getting her attention. "You've got another dog inside who needs you. Let me look for Sunny." When she just stared stupidly at him, he said patiently, "I've got my headlights and I'll take your flashlight. Druid needs you."

Druid.

He took her up the porch and in through the dog room, past Druid on his side in the crate, and flipped a kitchen chair around. She sat, only then truly seeing Druid and the flecks of blood around the crate. Blood from his lips, his teeth, his pawsa"injuries self-inflicted in his frenzy. He lifted his head to look at her, his eyes as glazed as hers felt.

She wanted to dive into the crate with him and cuddle him up. But that was what she wanted, and not what he needed; she'd wait until he had some intelligence gleaming from those eyes again. Wordlessly, Masera returned to the backyard; she heard him bellowing Sunny's name, his voice growing more distant as he expanded his search. Waiting, strangely dazed, she sat beside Druid, her hand pulsing with pain and her mind still too befuddled to hold a coherent thoughta"still unable to understand what had kept the storm door closed against her considerable efforts, or what could possibly have separated Sunny from both the run cable and her collar.

She glanced down at the collar, the turquoise that had been so pretty against Sunny's burnished red coata"and wished she hadn't.

It wasn't turquoise any more.

Suddenly she couldn't stand it anymore; she couldn't just sit here and wait for Masera to return; she hadn't heard his voice in many moments, though she could swear she'd heard him rummage briefly in the barn. There was another flashlight in the cupboard over the stove, and she got up to reach for ita"

Masera returned.

A glance outside showed the headlights turned off; he'd darkened the flashlight as well. But he was alone.

"I'm not giving up that easily," she said, and took the flashlight from his unresisting grip. "She's out there somewherea""

"I didn't give up," he said.

She took a step back from him, suddenly noticing the starkly pale nature of his normally Mediterranean complexion, the hollow look of his eyes. And then took another step back, and another, until she was back in the kitchen chair. "No," she said. And then, immediately standing once more, determined all over again, "Take me to her."

He didn't try to soften his words. "I already buried her."

Stunned all over again, Brenna said, "You what? What do you mean, you buried her? Without letting me say good-bye? Without asking me where I wanted her buried?" She didn't know whether to scream in grief or smite Masera on the spot.

"I'm sorry," he said, and it was the undertone of comprehension in his voice and on his face that stopped her from doing either. He understood what he'd done . . . and he'd done it anyway. She looked up at him, puzzled, utterly unable to figure it out, and still only a breath away from bolting out to find where he'd left her dog. He said, "I know it probably wasn't right. I don't . . . I don't know what got her. But there was no way in h.e.l.l I was going to let you see it."

"Ia"" she said, and stopped, shaking her head. She would have wanted to see her dog. To say good-bye. "It wouldn't have mattereda""

"It was my weakness, then," he said. "You think of her the way you last saw her, nota"" He stopped, closed his eyesa"looking away from her as though she might somehow pluck the reflection of what he'd seen out of his eyes, and he couldn't chance even that. And as she struggled to deal with that, he looked back at her and said, "Please."

Please don't ask me.

Coward that she was, she didn't. She sat with tears running down her face and her entire body clenched so tightly that it ached, the collar cutting into the fingers of her throbbing hand. Beside her, Druid stirred in the crate, looking up at her to whine, barely audible.

"We'll look at him in a moment," Masera said, his hand on her shoulder; only then did she realize that, unthinking, she'd been about to rise, to go to the crate. "Let's see about you, first." He pried the collar from her grasp, and she gave a hiss of pain as her fingers finally came to life, another noise of protest as he took Sunny's collar away and put it in her sink. He brought back her dishcloth, pulled out another chair for himself, and put her hand over his knee so he could wipe off the blood and inspect ita"with some relief, she thought in hazy realization, to have something else besides Sunny on which to concentrate.

She let him tend to her, using the time to come back to herself, to sharpen up her thoughts. She found the phonea"on the floor by the crate, and in several pieces, all righta"and saw that Druid was indeed recovering, no longer flat on his side but lying upright. What had scared him so much? What had taken her Sunny-hound so horribly, so violently?

Masera made a satisfied noise and returned her hand to her. "No doubt you've had a recent teta.n.u.s," he said, "so I won't bother to ask. What I want to knowa"h.e.l.l, what happened here tonight?"

She probably shouldn't have laughed, but she did. Short and bitter and then a little thick, as she looked down at her hand and thought about the answera"the many answersa"to that question. Gingerly, she flexed her hand, and finally met his gaze. Seeing the scruffy version again, definite stubble lining his jaw, his hair forgetting where he'd had it parted earlier in the day. Dark blue eyes reflecting her kitchen light back at her. Concerned and frankly puzzled eyes, still hiding what he'd seen.

She looked down at her hand and frowned. "How'd you find my house?"

He sat back in the chair. "I don't live far from here. I've heard about the groomer who lives in the old farm up on the hill."

She gave him a skeptical look.

He shrugged. "Okay, I'm looking for a place of my own and I was curious about the property. I asked around."

"It's not for sale."

And he just looked at her, because he hadn't asked and neither the words nor the tone she'd used to say them were fair. And she should have been contrite, she supposed, but she was too miserable for that; she just looked away and answered his question from moments before. "I don't really know what happened. I mean, I can tell you what I saw, buta""

"It's a good place to start," he told her, leaning back in the kitchen chair. He quickly perceived that he had chosen the wobbly one and shifted to a position that didn't depend so much on the integrity of the chair seat connection to the back.

She looked at the phone, still on the floor. "I was talking to you, and Druid started up." She hesitated then, uncertain whether to mention the strange feeling she always got when the Cardigan lost it, equally uncertain whether that feeling came from the Cardigan or whether something else existed that they perceived as individuals. No, she decided. If she couldn't even figure it out, she wasn't going to muddle up this already confusing evening with trying to explain it, especially when it hardly seemed relevant. "I don't know how much you hearda"I mean, I don't know when Ia""

"Threw the phone?" he said for her, a dark kind of amus.e.m.e.nt showing on his face.

"Threw the phone," she affirmed. "But Sunny started barking. And then she screamed, and it was the most awfula""

The amus.e.m.e.nt disappeared, leaving only darkness. "I heard it."

"She just kept screaming, and I couldn't get out there, the door . . ." She hesitated again, then said firmly, "The door wouldn't open. And then . . . she just stopped. All I could find was the collar, snapped off the end of the run cable."

"The cable snapped?" he asked, surprised, as if he hadn't had the chance to put that together yet.

"It's new, too," she said ruefully, and then realized that it didn't matter, that she wouldn't need a cable for Sunny anymore, and she felt a rush of grief and bolted to the bathroom.

Privacy, she just needed a little privacy, and what was going on and what had happened to her dog and why to such a sweet dog, never hurt anyone and what was he doing here anyway? Brenna leaned against the bathroom door and pulled the cuffs of her long-sleeved T-shirt over her hands and then put her hands over her eyes and face, blotting the tears as quickly as they came, until they finally stopped coming.

She took a deep breath, hiccoughed, and waited in a moment of stillness to see if there'd be more.

Apparently not.

At which point she glanced in the mirror on the back of the door and blinked at the sight. Jeans torn across her thigh, her T-shirt ripped over her stomach, a long, clawed welt across her neck and climbing to her eara"Druid had done a lot more than bite her. And now her eyes were red and swollen, and her skin so flushed she wondered if it would ever fade away.

She splashed some cool water on her face just for the soothing feel of it and then decided that as long as she was here, she'd take advantage of the facilities. Whereupon she discovered more bright blood and had a quick moment of panic until her brain started functioning again and dryly informed her that it was time for that to happen, had she forgotten? So she took care of that, too, and came out of the bathroom no less bedraggled in appearance but beginning to get a grip on her spirit.

Masera was on the floor with Druida"so strange to see the man there in her kitchena"checking the dog's mouth while Druid rolled his eyes unhappily but submitted to the inspection. Masera looked up at her and released the Cardi; he immediately trotted to Brenna, unsteady and limping, and looking up at her with the most abject, the most worried face, his whole posture full of submission and uncertainty.

She knelt to let him climb up on the sloped platform of her thighs and bury his head under her arm.

"He looks fine," Masera said. "Some split nails, some cuts on his lips and gums . . . but no broken teeth."

She kissed the back of his heada"all she could reacha"in relief. And then she looked at Masera and said, "Just because I'm upset doesn't mean I can't take care of myself."

He seemed to be given to studying such statements, for he didn't react immediately, didn't strike back as she might have expected, or walk out with wounded pride. "Well, no," he agreed finally. "But wouldn't it be easier with help?"

"You didn't have to come. I'm not sure why you did."

"I was worried," he said flatly. "You wouldn't have called me unless you felt you had no choice."

"No," she said, and that one came out more as a whisper.

"And I heard those screams, Brenna. Whatever you may think of me, my heart's not that cold."

I never said it was. But she kissed Druid's head again and didn't say it out loud, because they'd had more than enough between them, unspoken and spoken, for him to know that she hadn't forgiven him for the way he'd judged her before they'd even met. Not that he deserved to be forgiven for such rude arrogancea"

You care too much, he'd said to her.

Maybe he cared, too.

But when she looked up after that insight, he'd gotten to his feet and was looking thoughtfully out the kitchen door, through its gla.s.s pane to the dog room and beyond. "It was confusing from my end, but . . . I never did hear anything other than you, the Cardigan, and your . . . other dog."

"Sunny," Brenna said quietly. "She was a Redbone Hound. Not a single brain cell in her body, buta"" But a good dog.

He nodded as if he'd heard the last. "Did you hear anything?"

"Besides Sunny?" And in between her own screaming?

He nodded again, looking away from the door to return his scrutiny to her. Druid sank into a couchant position beside her, keeping himself within petting distance. "Besides Sunny," he said. "Other dogs?"

She considered it for a moment, but still remembered her own astonishment at the soundless wind. And if she'd noticed that the wind wasn't making any noise, surely she'd have noticed if other dogs were. So she shook her head, climbing stiffly to her feet to stand awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, her arms looking for something to do and finally crossing themselves over her partially exposed midriff.

He frowned, and she was about to repeat the negation out loud, cross at being doubted, when she realized he wasn't doubting at all . . . just confused by what she'd said.

Of course confused. Given her words, how not confused? But there was more to that frowna"more than just a man confronted with a puzzle. More like a man confronted with other than what he thought he'd hear.

"You were expecting something," she said suddenly. "Something in particulara"something else. That's why you came over here so quickly. What do you know that I don't?"