A Feral Darkness Part 16

"The pit bulls," Brenna said. "Fighting dogs."

"Yes," Eztebe said. "Not that I know things so well over here, but I see them on the TV."

"He said he wasn't going to fight the dogs." Brenna s.h.i.+fted the pack again, debated whether to shed it altogether.

"There, I was right. You do know things."

"No, I knew a thing. That was it. What on earth makes you think he talks to me?"

Eztebe shrugged again, a smaller response that revealed something of his despair over it all. "The truth is . . . I do not know that he does. If I were less worried, I would never bother you. But my brother is in trouble, I think, so I do everything I can think of. He has spent time with you. He points you out at the store. He mentions your name at home. So, I think of you."

"Is he in trouble so often?" Her shoulders won; Brenna slipped the pack to the ground and rested it against her leg.

Eztebe gave her a wry smile. "He is in trouble never. That is why it worries me so much to think that now, he is." He hesitated, and drummed his fingers on the top of the car. Finally he said, "And also, he tells me you have a place of power on your land." He glanced at her, a wary look, as though he thought Masera had betrayed a confidence to tell him and now he was betraying Masera to reveal that he knew.

And Brenna thought that Masera had, and that Eztebe was.

She took a deep breath, and forced the sudden tension from her body, right out her fingers and toes. It didn't work. With much effort, she unclenched her hands. Masera, she would yell at. She would let him take Eztebe to task, if he chose.

"I thought that might be part of it," Eztebe said, growing bold in her silence.

"I don't think so." Brenna couldn't help an involuntary glance at the pasture, the front part of which ran along the road, although the spring was not visible from here. "There is something going on. Frankly, Eztebe, there's a h.e.l.l of a lot going on, and I'm not sure I can put any of it together. But I can tell you that he keeps things from me, too. Whatever he's up to, it's something else besides what he's found in my pasture and how he's helped me with my dog."

"Funny-looking dog," he said, and grinned at her, a woefully transparenta"if earnesta"attempt to earn back her good will. "But in a strange way, very handsome."

"He's a wonderful dog," Brenna said, having grown used to Druid's short legs and long body and hardly even registering Eztebe's initial, poking-fun comment. It'd been good-natured enough, and a Corgi was an odd sight to those who'd never seen one before. Eztebe, she a.s.sumed, had seen Druid at the store. "But even the way he came to me is part of the strangeness." She shook her head. "Look, I'd tell you what I knew if I knew anything. But you know, Maseraa""

"Iban," said Eztebe, eyebrows raised. "If he calls you Brenna, in this country, surely you are right to call him Iban."

"Only if I want to," Brenna said, pointedly enough to evince a flinch from Eztebe. "What I was saying was, he doesn't owe me anything. He has less reason to tell me any of his secrets than he has to tell his own brother. And he hasn't."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "You might think less of yourself than you should. Or maybe you think more of me. Iban and I have not been close. We care, but our lives have been spent apart since he left Euskal Herria. It is a funny thing, too. He had more time with our mother when she allowed herself to work; he had the time to learn of what she knew. He has the more feel for it. But it is he who went away, and I who stayed."

"Your mother doesn't . . . work . . . anymore?"

Eztebe glanced away. He was going to say something he was afraid she'd find offensive, then; she'd already learned that of him. Just the opposite of Masera, who deliberately looked you right in the eye. Watching to see if you had the nerve to bite back at him, she realized, and recalling that the first time, she'd all but chased him out of the room. For some reason it made her want to smilea"but Eztebe wouldn't have understood, so she didn't. She listened to him instead. "My father wished not. She has her land, he says, but he is the one to work in the family. She only ever wanted to help people, but . . . it is not always a safe thing, to be sorgin, and she agreed to his wishes. I was half-grown, then."

Brenna could feel nothing but the sadness of that, although Eztebe seemed oblivious enough, in his strange mix of Old World upbringing and New World awareness. "Maybe that's why Masera left," she said. "So he wouldn't have to watch her not do what sounds so important to her."

He jerked his gaze back to her, startled. "Maybe that is so."

"And what about you?" she said, turning the tables on him. He'd thought to get information from her; let him provide the same for her. She looked over to her pasture. "What do you think about the place of power by my spring? What do you think of whatever I connected with? Is it G.o.d? Is it a G.o.d? Is it blasphemy?"

At first it looked like he wasn't going to answer, that he'd just shrug her off. Then he said, "It bothers you."

Brenna said dryly, "Only intensely."

"You know," he said, still sounding reluctanta"as though it were private. Or maybe that he didn't really expect her to truly understand, no matter what he saida" "different people think different things. There are churches thinking Yainko commands smaller powers with personalities. That they act out His will on Earth. Angels, they say."

"Angels . . ." Brenna said. Angels. She'd never gone for the whole angel craze herself, not the cutesie ones or the New Age ones or the sappy ones on TV. But angel was just a term; the various modern perceptions sprang from the culture dealing with them. Angels were messengers and conduits . . . and if they'd been present in a culture not yet exposed to a One G.o.d, then what would keep people from considering the messengers to be G.o.ds themselves? To name them and discover their likes and their affinities . . . to touch them, and give them an easy way to touch back.

Mars Nodens, in her pasture.

Part of her wanted to weep with relief.

Eztebe looked like his brother then, watching her with tight scrutiny, his eyes even taking on the hooded gaze Masera took on when something struck him as significanta"or when he was about to offer some subtle dare or challenge. Eztebe, she thought, was daring her to say something to belittle his comments, his people . . . his mother.

"Thank you," she said, her voice low and edged with the emotion he'd brought her. Given her, really, like a gift.

He looked away, once again nonconfrontationala"and from his smile, gratified. "You should meet my amaa"my mothera"maybe."

Brenna grinned. "She should see my pasture, maybe."

"Maybe." He slid back inside the car, so she had to bend to the open pa.s.senger window to hear him. "I hope you'll tell me if you learn anything. Maybe with the two of us, we can stop Iban from his trouble."

"I don't think he'll ever tell me anything he doesn't quite specifically choose to tell me," Brenna said. "But I'll let you know. It'll be worth it, don't you think, to see the look on his face if I call and ask to speak to you?"

"I'll look forward to it. I promise to describe it to you."

Brenna stepped away from the car and watched it pull away, waiting until it was out of sight before reaching for her backpack. Eztebe had eased her mind on some counts . . . and roiled it on others.

Then again, where Masera was involved, there was nothing new about that.

Life got quiet.

Almost too quiet, with such an absence of the strange events that had so bombarded her life that she began to doubt herselfa"what she'd experienced, the conclusions she'd been struggling toward. If it had all been real and true, would it suddenly have stopped?

On the other hand, with the grooming schedule she was holding down, having quiet in the rest of her life was undeniably a mercy. She arrived home from work each day exhausted in body, mind, and soul, and with nothing left over for inexplicable crises, though she rescheduled her dinner date with her mother, enjoyed her Aunt Ada's recent adventures in flirtation on a short bus tour of the Finger Lakes country, planted tomatoes in indoor flats, and put peas into the ground. Sunny's death receded to a poignant ache and Druid became her shadow. More importantly, he stopped having fits. He whined as he chewed his bones, he stood in the middle of the den and whined when there was nothing to whine about, but he didn't have fits.

At least, not when she didn't push him into it at the spring. Even then . . . he started to listen to her through his fear; the flinging and screaming and cursing shortened in duration each time. Then she'd put him downhill with the latest greasy basted shank bone she'd bought for just this purpose, and she'd sit by the spring and hope to touch something of that which she'd felt here before. It didn't happen, but the meditative time soothed her.

She never saw Parker. She didn't know if he'd taken her seriously or if he just came to the spring when he'd discovered she didn't. As Masera had pointed out, her work schedule was easy enough to divine, especially with Mickey in the loop.

And now that she'd come to recognize the darkness, it all but disappeared. Sometimes she thought she felt its brief touch . . . and sometimes she thought she'd been standing in a draft. Perhaps Emily felt her lack of urgency, for she apologetically mentioned that the girls were deeply buried in a 4-H project, and that unless Brenna was frantic for the information, it'd be a few more days before they could wield their Internet know-how on Brenna's request for information on Mars Nodens.

Brenna had to admit that she wasn't frantic for anything but more Pets! groomers.

Elizabeth visited the store a couple of times, and after a week and half started talking about returning to man the counter. Brenna narrowed the groomer applicants down and scheduled interviews, and the Pets! management, although typically failing to address the issue directly with her, kept their hands off the schedule book. She saw Masera at the store, and sometimes he stopped by the grooming room just in time to help her with an especially unruly creature. He didn't question her methods any longera"and that, she thought, spoke more to her about him than almost anything else he'd done. The fact of it dwelt inside her like something small and warm and waiting to hatch.

She kept his card in her wallet.

The thing that worried her most, that stuck in her mind as she carried the grooming workload and immersed herself in spring cleanup around the farm, finalizing another year of leasing out the ten back acres for corn, marking the barn leaks and sags and walking the fence line to fix what she could and make note of the rest, was the look that often settled on Sammi's face, whether she was in the store for supplies or to oversee an adoption day. She was no longer talking about the man's death, was no longer talking about rabies at all. Brenna had the distinct feeling that she'd been warned to silence by authorities who didn't want a panic, although the incident had been announced on the news, along with the fact that the dog had been put down and its brain testeda"positive, no surprise to anyone. It answered the question about where Janean had gotten the rabies, and with the dog dead, also officially ended the threat.

Except that Brenna knew what Sammi knew, which was that the dog had gone through quarantine, and still hadn't been sick at the time of its new owner's death. The Centers for Disease Control knew it, too, because they had copies of all of PePP's records. But no one said anything about that part of it anymore, not even Sammi. Especially not Sammi.

A silence that said more to Brenna than any amount of normal questioning.

The day before Elizabeth's return, in the morning lull immediately after Brenna opened and with Gary in the back doing mysterious manager-type things, Brenna found herself savoring the quiet half-hour before the first scheduled customer, lining the day's index cards up on the lower counter and trying to come up with the best strategy for getting through them all. DeNise could brush and prep this one out, she decided, putting a card to the side, and could be counted on to bathe several medium-sized mixed-breeds without help or intervention; those cards went to the side as well.

She was startled when the door to the parking lot was yanked opena"not a customer moseying in, but someone with great intent and no time to waste; Brenna could tell that even before she looked up. Still, she was entirely surprised to find Mickey there, looming over her from the other side of the counter. Not as though he had any particular intent to threaten her, but like it was simply his default mode although, in the first instant, Brenna couldn't be sure just why he was therea"for work related reasons or because of Parkera"and her confusion must have shown on her face.

Mickey didn't seem to care or even to notice. "I'm outta here," he said, rapping out the words. "You hang with Gil, I've seen you. Tell him this for mea"" and Brenna almost lost his next words, so unused to thinking of Masera as Gil that she couldn't understand who Mickey meant. "Tell him it's been moved to Thursdays, same time."

"Tell him what?" Brenna said, still unable to understand what the whole thing was about.

"Heard me, didn't you? Tell him that. You don't gotta understand." He glanced inside and must have seen something he didn't like, because he reached for the exterior door. "You're his friend, you tell him that. Otherwise, like I said, he could be sorry. And you tell him to keep his mouth shut if he's stupid enough to get in that position."

And out he went, not straight out to the parking lot but directly off to the side; an instant later something out of sight peeled rubbera"he'd either left the vehicle running or he'd jumped into the pa.s.senger side.

Before she'd even had time to process what had just happened, Gary came through the storeside door at what could only be called a run. "Was that Mickey Hefler?" he demanded.

Bemused, Brenna nodded; that was all for which she had time.

"What'd he want?"

That, she didn't answer right away, because Masera's business was none of Gary's business, no matter how little sense any of it made. "He asked me to deliver a message, that's all. What's the big deal?"

"What's the message?"

"Well," Brenna said, carefully neutral in tone, "it wasn't for you." Then, when she saw his response building, she shrugged. "It didn't involve the store," she said, in case that's what he wanted to hear, and then repeated, "What's the big deal?"

"There's been food product missing over the last couple of months," Gary said, and in that moment went from being ready to pull a manager-bully moment on her to venting to her. "We had a couple of stockboys in mind for it. Mickey was at the top of the list."

"I get the feeling someone tipped him," Brenna said, finding herself irritated to be holding a message from Mickey-in-trouble to Masera whose brother suspected he was in trouble. "I don't think he's coming back."

Gary stared at the empty parking lot for a moment and made a frustrated growling noise in his throat. "Fine," he said. "I'll bet whoever tipped him is still here." He went back into manager mode and gave Brenna a pointed look. "Don't tell anyone else about this."

Well, no. Except for Masera, who'd get his message when she saw him, along with a pointed question or two. But Brenna didn't remind Gary of that detail, just nodded. "Okay," she said, and went back to her schedule work.

Even with the odd Mickey incident, in the end the weeks added up to a seasonal normalcy, and Brenna allowed herself to be distracted by the normal routines of life, to fall into complacence. The day Elizabeth came back to work, dragging and grouching about the preventative antibiotics she'd been on, Brenna wasn't even thinking about the darkness or Druid's fits or even the way Masera had of catching her eye from the sales floor for just a moment of contact and the briefest of smiles, though she hadn't seen him for days. She was just working.

"The d.a.m.ned Cat went home, I heard," she said, coming out to take a breather and a.s.sess the schedule for the rest of the day. Elizabeth had come in hours after Brenna and DeNise, once they were immersed in work and could use her helpa"handling the phone when things got crazy, intercepting the customer interaction, coming back to distract and beguile the wiggly dogs so Brenna could work quickly. In general, making Brenna's life a whole lot easier.

"I guess so," Elizabeth said. "No surprise. The d.a.m.ned d.a.m.ned Cat ought to have been put down, if you ask me."

"You've got my vote there," Brenna said, which was all she could say without explaining about the darkness she was so sure had been involved. "Who's coming in next?"

Elizabeth smiled a wicked little smile, but her eyes looked tired. "Jeremy c.o.c.ker. In for a summer cut-down."

Brenna made a face. Nasty little biter, Jeremy was. Although . . . she'd noticed of late, that some of the less irredeemable dogsa"the ones who simply hadn't ever been told they weren't the boss of the worlda"weren't as much of a problem for her as usual. As though she were somehow regaining a little of the feel she'd had as a child, the ability to touch them deeper than words or human dominance role-playing ever could.

Maybe Jeremy wouldn't be so bad today.

Though Elizabeth didn't look so good. Brenna said, "You okay? Maybe a full day the first time back was too much."

Rubbing her throat, Elizabeth scoffed. "A full day of what? Answering the phone? Copying over the customer cards that got too nasty?" She splayed her fingers. None of them were splinted anymore, but several were Vetrapped, and very few of them seemed to bend properly; they all bore scabs surrounded by angry red and s.h.i.+ny flesh. "I suppose I should feel lucky I'm doing this much so soon. It's those d.a.m.ned pills."

"d.a.m.ned Cat's d.a.m.ned Pills," Brenna muttered nonsensically.

Elizabeth burst into laughter; she shook her head when Brenna glanced at her, surprised. "You've been living alone too long, Bren," she said, reaching for her sports water bottle and rubbing her throat as she swallowed. Again.

Something in the oft-repeated gesture rooted Brenna to the spot, giving her chills from the base of her skull all the way to her heels.

Rabies. Wildly known as hydrophobia because its victims couldn't swallow. And the timing, though on the short end, was still right. From five days to as long as a year, with a couple of months average before the symptoms showed up. And then flulike symptoms for a week. More or less. And then the cla.s.sic symptoms. The swallowing. The thickened saliva. Even as Brenna watched, Elizabeth took another sip, swished her mouth, and laboriously swallowed.

Ridiculous. The cat had had its shots, had gone through quarantine and returned home.

So had the dog Janean rescued.

She opened her mouth to say something and nothing came out. What could she possibly say? A suggestion that Elizabeth get checked for a disease she'd been inoculated against, a disease that meant certain death once it became symptomatic?

And yet Brenna had no doubt. And even as she couldn't bring herself to say anything, she couldn't stand the thought of one more moment of not saying anything, of watching Elizabeth struggle to swallow.

"Take Jeremy in if they get here, will you?" she said suddenly, her voice sounding a false note in her ears. "If I don't take this chance to run to the restroom, I might explode before I get another."

"Go," Elizabeth said, waving an imperious hand as she made some final notes on the card for the young Springer Spaniel Brenna had in the back.

Brenna fled to the bathroom at the rear of the store, beyond the looming shelves piled high with dog food. Slamming the stall closed behind her, she leaned against the door, covering her face with her hands, pressing her fingers against the instant sting of tears in her eyes. Stop it, she told herself. Stop it, stop it, stop it. You can't be so sure. You're being ridiculous.

She grabbed a wad of tissue, blew her nose, and made use of the facility. Stalling for time. By the time she reached the mirror at the sink, her nose was only mildly outrageous in its redness, and her cheeks residually s.h.i.+ny. Splas.h.i.+ng cold water on her face helped; she blotted it dry with a rough paper towel and decided she could pa.s.s for overtired, which she was.

But when she left the bathroom, she found she couldn't bring herself to return to the grooming room. She found herself pacing back and forth in the short hallway that held the bathroom alcove, not even mindful of the fact that Roger's office was at the other end of it and that of all things, she didn't want to have to explain herself to him.

Masera's voice came to her ear, a cadenced rise and fall as he spoke to one of his clients, his words not audible but the effect somehow making his accent more obvious to her. Without even thinking, she followed it, bursting around the corner of a tall shelf and surprising them all when she nearly plowed through Masera, customer, and doga"a chronically happy Golden Retriever who flung himself at her with protestations of love.

"That's what I'm talking about," the customer said, as the dog planted one big foot in Brenna's gut and the other jammed her breast. Modest though it was, that body part still knew insult when it landed.

"My fault," Brenna said, trying not to squeak. "I wasn't watchinga""

But Masera had intercepted the leash and stepped on it, calmly asking the dog to go to a down position, removing his foot and repeating until the dog, all but bursting from its skin with the desire to express its exuberance to the world, stayed down. "That's what I'm talking about," he said. "Every time he gets out of hand. And you might want to think about making sure his food doesn't include corn. It's like feeding sugar to a child before bedtime."

The middle-aged man gave him a dubious look, running a hand over his bald pate as though to smooth hair that was no longer therea"or maybe to check just in case something had grown back. "Corn? It matters?"

"It matters," Masera a.s.sured him, and stepped back just enough to make it clear he was moving on. "See you in cla.s.s."

"Half an hour," the man said, perhaps confirming that he indeed knew when the cla.s.s started. As soon as he stepped out, the Golden sprang to his feet and bounded away, taking the man with him.

"He'll figure it out," Masera said, watching him goa"and then added thoughtfully, "Or else his chiropractor's going to make out." But despite his light words, when he turned to her, he had his serious face on. "What's wrong?"

She knew why she'd come to him, but those weren't the words she heard leaving her mouth. "Mickey stopped by early yesterday morning," she said. "He had a message for you."

"He did?" Masera evidently found the idea as startling as she had, the way his brows drew together.

"So he said. He wanted me to tell you that it was changed to Thursdays, same time. And not to go to the first time, or you'd be sorry, but if you were sorry, you'd better keep your mouth shut."