A Feral Darkness (6 page)

      
She tried to make them out, turning them to catch the light, but the engraving would take a good scrubbing before it became legible. The dog cocked his head at her, a quizzical expression, and it was then that she realized how she'd squinted her face up in her attempts to read the unreadable. He was alert, then, and plenty responsive. She could stick pencils up her nose and waggle her fingers in her ears without getting anything but a bland stare from Sunny.

      
Not that she ever
had
. Ever.

      
In any case, she'd take him into work tomorrow—stealing a few moments with the tub and dryers was a job benefit for any groomer—scrub him up, clean up the tags, and see what she had to work with. Along with a few phone calls to animal control and the local volunteer adoption group, it would probably be enough to have this fellow home by tomorrow night.

      
She left the wet collar around his wet neck and pulled out one of the smaller wire crates; a touch too small for him, but for one night he could deal with it. The sharp noise of the shuffled crates put him on edge; his huge ears went from alert to wary as he moved to the far wall, his body hunched and poised for escape—even if there was nowhere to escape
to
, not this time. Still, no point in making it hard for him; she took the crate into the kitchen and assembled it there, flipping the sides into place with practiced ease and snicking the fasteners into place. She had planned to keep him in the kitchen, anyway—he was too wet to stay out in the cold dog room.

      
Unlike Sunny, who had been outside quite long enough to take care of her needs. Sunny whined and moaned and threw herself at the door if Brenna tried to keep her inside on a cold night; the most she could enforce was the compromise of the dog room.

      
Brenna tossed a few towels into the bottom of the new crate and went out to reel Sunny in and crate her with an outlandish bone. She'd been intending to use a slip-lead on the Cardi, but when he got a glimpse of the crate, he pushed his way through the partially open door and installed himself in his new quarters.

      
Brenna put a hand on her hip and made a face at him. "So you're crate-trained. Show-off." She freed her hair from her sweatshirt and debated whether or not to feed him—he'd need it, but she didn't want to dump food down him when he'd been stressed—and ended up giving him a scant handful of kibble. "Make yourself at home," she told him, deciding she wasn't going to be spooked away from her tub. "I've been waiting for my own bath all day, and I'm about to have it."

      
He met her gaze for a few moments, and then deliberately turned to the kibble, nuzzling it first and finally settling in to eat with a cat-like finickiness.

      
"I guess I know when
I'm
dismissed," she said, but couldn't help but linger to watch him, so at home in her own kitchen, the very picture of a content dog. It was almost enough to make her forget the strange circumstances of his arrival.

      
But not quite.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHAPTER 4
PERTH
An Initiation
Early afternoon found her in the Pets! parking lot—a shared lot in a strip mall that no longer held the sparkle of fresh construction but hadn't quite descended into rattiness. Bills paid, laundry done, and she'd even found some old boards in the barn to lay over the mud hole between the house and the car shed. The Cardigan had jumped readily into her pickup to sit on the towel she'd laid over the seat, happy enough to be in the car, happy enough to keep her company. Happy enough to hop out again, onto the warm asphalt of a spring day that had actually chosen to be sunny.

      
Which left Brenna entirely unprepared when he took one look at the Pets! storefront and screamed like a panicked child.

      
He tried to bolt, couldn't, and flopped at the end of the leash like an enraged fish out of water, issuing bloodcurdling screams, foaming at the mouth—and
whew
, there he went—blowing his anal glands on top of it all. Of course, he could hardly pitch a protest of these proportions and
not
release his anal glands.

      
In a way, Brenna supposed she was lucky.
They
were lucky. He was in an empty parking space, and not in the path of careless parking lot traffic. And unlike the average dog owner, she'd seen this kind of thing before. She'd had dogs squirt out the tub, screaming in outrage; she'd had cats ping-pong across the wall like something out of
The Exorcist
. She'd dealt with pets in all stages of temper tantrum and protest. So now she held the end of the leash and rolled her eyes and tried to figure out what had set him off while she waited for it to end.

      
Not that he hadn't been through enough. The night hadn't been easy on either of them. She had emerged from the tub to find him sleepy and satisfied, and he'd even, after some hesitation, accepted the longe line rigging for his outs before bed. But—dry now, if still muddy—he hadn't been so happy about returning to the crate. Once inside, he had given her a look, a
this isn't the way it's supposed to be look
, and she'd almost let him out.

      
Almost. But a second look at his dry but no less grimy state brought her up short, and she murmured an apology and took herself to bed—not quite as soon as Emily's children despite her intentions, and exhausted to the bone. Maybe she'd even sleep in, despite her body's natural greet-the-dawn inclinations; she'd certainly sleep hard.

      
Or maybe not. Maybe it was the dog's fussing that woke her; maybe it was something else. But this time, when she went to the kitchen to check him, she couldn't harden herself to the plea in his eyes. She let him out and grabbed one of the towels; he seemed glad to follow her to the den, and just as glad to settle on the towel she spread before the couch—although he didn't truly relax until she plopped herself down in the worn cushions and drawn the afghan over herself. Eventually, she let one hand fall to rest on his shoulders, and they dozed that way.

      
But not for long.

      
She didn't know what brought her to alert, just that the dog had sensed it, too. He was a tight bundle of muscles anchored to her touch, and she felt his fear creep right up her arm and curl around her heart. It thumped in her ears; the rest of the house was utter silence, and yet there was a pressure in her head as if a giant black fist squeezed the house and everything in it. And the moments pounded on and she thought surely the fear would ease, her heart would slow, but it never did.

      
It stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and only then did she start shaking. Only then did the Cardigan let a whine slip out. She reacted automatically, and for both of them. She forgot about his grubby state and she lifted the afghan in silent invitation. He jumped up without hesitation and snuggled in next to her, water-bottle warm and smelling just like the swampy mud he'd run through. She turned to her side, giving him more room, and then lay awake feeling the rise and fall of his ribs against hers and the puff of his breath on her forearm. Somebody's pet, all right.

      
Why did he seem to think he was hers?

      
And why, she now wondered grimly in the Pets! parking lot, couldn't he just remember how he had trusted her the night before? And just how damn long could he keep this up, anyway?

      
A woman with a Shih-Tsu waddling along beside hesitated for a horrified look at the Cardigan's antics; Brenna gave her a forbearing smile and a little shrug. A few moments after that, the dog eased off into wary cease-fire, panting, attractive little bubbles of spit on his lips.

      
"Are we done?" Brenna asked him, as sardonically as she could muster. And with much relief, because someone else was approaching from behind, and she didn't think she could pull off another forbearing smile. "Look, dog, I'm already giving up my day off for you—"

      
"Trouble?"

      
She didn't recognize the voice, but a glance showed her trouble, all right. The dog must have thought so, too, for as the glazed look left his eyes and he focused on the new arrival, he went into instant action, shrieking and flopping, thirty-five pounds of idiot at the end of the leash. Brenna felt an odd moment of disorientation, a
wrongness
, and for a moment her world teetered with him. And then she caught herself. She looked at the man—Roger's friend from the day before, with a cell phone in one hand, a gym bag in the other, a pager visible on his belt through the gaping front zipper of his leather jacket, and a reasonably solicitous look on his face.

      
"Why, no," she said, with an edge of sarcasm so fine he might or might not perceive it. Trouble? As if it weren't obvious, and as if he'd taken for granted she couldn't handle
trouble
on her own.

      
He shifted the gym bag in his grip, easing back on one leg to narrow his eyes at her—eyes easily as blue as hers, hair easily as dark, glinting with nearly hidden chestnut in the spring sun. And as recognition came into those eyes, the solicitous expression faded. "You're one of the groomers."

      
"And you're the man who was talking to Roger yesterday." She didn't mention the look he'd given her; he knew he'd done it. And though she was tempted, it would take her just a little too close to
bitchy
than she liked.

      
And who wouldn't be, with a manic dog jerking her arm around—though he was once again settling—spooky things ruining her sleep, a day off slipping away, and Mr. Scruffy adding his presence on top of it all? It was his hair, she decided—a nice style but ready for a trim—or maybe that he evidently hadn't shaved today.

      
And he grinned at her words, but it wasn't in apology, it was...it was...

      
She didn't know
what
it was. Acknowledgment of some sort?

      
"Good luck with the dog," he said, clearly abdicating the unspoken offer of help. He nodded at the dog. "Interesting kind of storm for Winnal's day, I suppose." And without explaining either comment, he turned on his heel and left, heading for a pale blue SUV with some sort of logo on its side.

      
She didn't have a chance to note just which logo it was, because the instant he moved, the Cardigan blew his wits again, catching her up in another moment of inexplicable
wrongness
before she recovered. Poofing her bangs out of her eyes with an exaggerated sigh, she decided she wasn't going to gain anything by waiting for the dog to work through whatever kept triggering him and headed for the store, thankful enough that he was a Cardigan instead of a seventy-pound Lab as he flailed along behind her.

      
"Oooh, that's special." Elizabeth, the second shift groomer who caught Brenna's early shift on Brenna's off days, leaned over the counter to admire Brenna's acquisition. "What do you call that breed, the Freaking Mudball?" She looked closer, and reconsidered. "Freaking Mudball with Ears."

      
But now that they were inside, the dog settled again, clearly exhausted. His tongue hung long from his mouth, and his sturdy front legs spread wide.

      
"Doomed Mudball," Brenna pronounced; Elizabeth knew a Cardigan when she saw one. "Is the tub free?"

      
"Only if you clean it when you're through with
that
," Elizabeth said without hesitation. "I'm done with my baths for the day."