A Feral Darkness (19 page)

      
She found him looking at her, his assault on the bagel interrupted. As if he realized just how much she'd told him in those quick, light words, even if he didn't yet realize what, exactly, it was.

      
And then he finished his breakfast—big bites, big chewing...

      
Brenna grinned to herself and ran her finger up the outside drip on the black cherry butter jar, thinking
men
as she licked it clean. Though at least he'd asked, and listened. Russell wouldn't have given her even that.

      
For that she let him finish his coffee in peace. Druid needed to be fed, and Sun—

      
Not Sunny. Sadly, she put Sunny's bowl in the sink. The collar was missing and she discovered it, as clean as it was ever likely to be, sitting on top of the big crate. She thought about breaking the crate down and then couldn't bring herself to do it. Not with so much mystery still surrounding the Redbone's death. By a silent dog pack, by Druid's mysterious force in the night, or—and she laughed silently at herself, but she left it in her mental list—by whatever Masera seemed to have been expecting. She wasn't even tempted to call animal control and report the incident—how would she explain it?
A wild darkness fell over the house and when it lifted, the dog was gone.
No. Not likely.

      
Masera came out, sleeping bag once more tucked under his arm. "Ready?"

      
"Um," she said. "Gotta go groom myself. It'll only take a couple of minutes." Damp hair, swift fingers, a couple of thick hair bands and she was out of the bathroom again, tucking the end of the braid in her pocket and reaching for her vest, Sunny's collar, and Druid's leash. Masera waited out by the SUV, under a grey sky with roiling puffs of lighter grey beneath, all of which promised the drizzles mentioned in the forecast.

      
"Okay," she said, zipping up the vest and reaching for the pebble-palmed knit gloves she always kept in the pockets and gingerly working one over her sore hand. She slid Sunny's collar around her wrist like a giant bracelet, but it wouldn't stay and she ended up catching it in the crook of her sore fingers. "Might as well put us on the clock and see what you can do with this dog."

      
Something about that amused him, but he didn't say what as she leashed Druid. He just followed along as she went through the gate and into the pasture behind the barn—not, she saw, missing the significance of her target shooting set-up.

      
But he didn't mention it. He turned to the business at hand. "Bring me up to speed," he said. "Under what circumstances does he start up with the behavior?"

      
Brenna waved a gloved hand in a vague and expansive gesture. "Any time he feels like it!" At his sharp glance, and she added, "Seriously. You saw him acting up in the parking lot. Sometimes he does that, sometimes he doesn't. He hadn't done it in the house until last night, when he did it twice—the first time when he bit me, the second in the crate."

      
"Then where are we going now?"

      
"A place where I found his tracks and where I'm pretty sure something scared him silly before he actually showed up at my place. He freaked the one time we went there, and I'm guessing he'll do it again. It's as likely as anything else we can do to trigger him."

      
"He's calm enough now," Masera said, looking down at Druid between them.

      
And he was. Trotting along at a happy heel despite his sore paws, tail held at an assertive angle, ears up and sharply intent on the myriad little noises he could hear and they couldn't. "This is what he's like for the most part," Brenna said.
When he wasn't talking to himself.
"That, and what you saw of him yesterday evening."

      
"Sleeping with you," Masera said, and smiled, though he wasn't looking at her when he did it and she had the impression he was remembering Druid snugly under the afghan. "You're in for heartbreak if his owners show up."

      
"Oh, they're another mystery." Brenna stopped short suddenly, right before the crest of the hill down to the creek. "Look." And in quick succession, she gave Druid the hand signals for
down
and
sit
and
down
again, then put him on heel, got an automatic sit upon halting, took him through a figure eight, slowed her pace down to a crawl, sped up...

      
Druid took it like a happy game, and gave her a hopeful wag when Brenna stopped, looking at Masera; she raised her arms and dropped them to slap against her sides in a giant shrug. "He's trained."

      
"And nicely done," Masera commented. "He enjoys it."

      
"And apparently he's got his championship—"

      
"You said that last time, too.
Apparently
."

      
"That's because for all the care someone took with him, there's no record of him anywhere. His rabies tag won't match up, the phone number on his ID isn't in service, the Cardi Club has no record of him—"

      
"That can't be," Masera interrupted. "Not if he's been shown."

      
"No kidding," Brenna said, not caring for the interruption. "But he's been shown. Put yourself in handler mode and take in him a triangle, then ask him to stack. See what happens."

      
"I'll take your word for it. He's a mystery dog, all right. But they say some women like that."

      
She stared at him for an agog moment. "Was that a joke? Did you actually just make a
joke
with me?"

      
"A little one," he said, excessively somber of face. "Mark it on your calendar. The Kalends of April today—appropriate enough."

      
"The Kalends—"

      
"April Fool's day," he said, not waiting for her to finish.

      
Then why not say so? She snorted and led him down the hill, along the spring-deep and loudly burbling creek, past the footbridge and to spot below the spring. There, she handed him Druid's lead. "Hang on a minute, okay? There's something I need to do, first. I'll be right back down."

      
He didn't understand; that was clear enough from his expression—a little impatient, but not particularly curious. Well, he'd just have to deal with it. Brenna walked the steep incline to the spring some fifty feet above him. By the time she reached it, the expected drizzle had started, but it stayed light and she ignored it.

      
She knelt by the old hound's gravesite and carefully placed Sunny's collar among the rocks, wedging it into place. After a while the collar would wear and fade and maybe blow free, but by then maybe she wouldn't need it there anymore.
God
, she thought,
if you're watching out for my dogs, please welcome Sunny. You always had a special fondness for children.
And Sunny had never been anything more than a puppy at heart. She looked at the shrine a moment, trying to sort out, again, how her beliefs fit into one another, and how she could feel comfortable speaking to the God she'd been raised to respect and worship in one moment, and to another culture's ancient god in the next.

      
As a child it had been easy. The God she knew hadn't responded to her prayers, so she'd tried someone else. It had been her secret, a deep and long-lasting one, and in her heart she'd always believed she'd been heard, that Mars Nodens had touched her life. In her practical life—even as recently as this morning—she avoided the issue, thought lightly of coincidence, and rarely turned her inner self to any sort of prayer. Too caught up in life. Probably a big mistake, she thought wryly. Look where it had gotten her—overworked groomer struggling with herself, not knowing how to fix her life, and now caught smack in the middle of...

      
Something.

      
"I don't know," she said finally, looking up at the big bare oak; too early in the season for leaves or even buds. "Maybe you just use Mars Nodens as another of your faces, and maybe it's easier to hear about dogs and healing with those ears. Or maybe I'm just fooling myself, and I'm a blaspheming idiot."
Whatever. But I think Druid and I could use some help. I think we're in trouble
.

      
The problem was, she didn't know just what
kind
of trouble. "Even a clue," she told the oak, and everything it and the spring represented at this moment. "Even a clue would help."

      
And though it would have been nice for the oak branches to rustle reassuringly in the breezeless air, or the spring, which was never really more than an ooze of water, to burble for an enthusiastic moment, Brenna wasn't really expecting either of those things. Nor, as she got to her feet, was she expecting to be hit by a light dizziness, quickly come and gone—and which in previous days had somehow presaged reaction from Druid, their unlikely connection.

      
But Druid did nothing. He sat at the bottom of the hill and looked up at her, ears big and forward, head cocked.

      
Brenna went back down the hill.

      
"Are you pagan?" Masera asked, and his eyes had narrowed, taking on that hooded look.

      
Brenna managed to keep her surprise from running away with her mouth. "Presbyterian," she said. "Why on earth do you ask?"

      
"
Why on earth
is an appropriate way to put it," he said dryly, though his challenging expression eased. "I asked because—" and he almost said something, but stopped on it, and completed the thought as, "because between the oak and the spring and the shrine, it looks as pagan as they come."

      
"It does?" She considered it. "It's as Lydney as they come," she said. "Or as I could get to it. And it pretty much came this way, except that I buried a childhood dog up there, and it's important to me. Why, are
you
pagan?"

      
He smiled, a mere crook at one corner of his mouth, and shook his head. "Lapsed Catholic."

      
"Well, that pretty much settles that, then," Brenna said. "Do you want to take him up there? Or do you want me to do it?"

      
"You go ahead," Masera said, and handed her the lead; he seemed to be paying no more attention to the drizzle than she was. "I want to see what happens, and what you do about it."

      
"Oh, great," Brenna muttered. "A test."

      
He laughed out loud at that, short but with true amusement, and when he responded, he was still grinning. "I just need to see where we're starting."

      
"Well, prepare yourself, then," Brenna said. "Though keep in mind I said he wasn't consistent."

      
She needn't have worried. Perfectly happy at the bottom of the hill, Druid had no intention of getting any closer to the spring. He hung behind her for a few steps, whined for a few more steps, and then flung himself backward with enough force that without the leash, he'd have gone tumbling backward down the hill. For once Brenna was ready for him. Acutely aware of Masera's scrutiny, she let the dog struggle for a few moments, then stepped on the leash, walking on it until she had it pinned to the ground close to his collar. "No," she told him sternly. "Druid,
no
."