A Feral Darkness (9 page)

      
"Don't tell me," Brenna said, and felt all of her hopes for an easy resolution to Druid's fate fade to nothingness. "They haven't heard of any such kennel, either."

      
"They suggested that it was a fanciful call name as opposed to the dog's actual kennel name."

      
"With
champion
at the front of it?"

      
Emily shrugged. "Don't ask me. I don't know anything about this sort of thing. Now, if you want to talk cross-stitch—"

      
Brenna waved her to silence and Emily smirked. Any time Brenna became too full of jargon in her talk of dogs, Emily—who cross-stitched like a fiend and regularly sold patterns to stitchwork magazines—interrupted with chatter of her own specialty. "Well, the point is that we aren't going to locate the owner through them. Or even through the Web, it seems."

      
"You really ought to get yourself a computer," Emily said. "You could keep business records on it—"

      
"
What
business records?" Brenna snorted.

      
"—
if
you had your own business, and you'd be surprised what kind of resource the web can be. You know the girls would be glad to show you how to use it, or you could go to the library—they run little classes on using the Internet all the time."

      
"Yeah, yeah," Brenna said, by way of saying,
you're right but we both know I'm not going to rush out and do anything about it
. "Let me get this dog squared away first."

      
"Looks like that could be a while." Emily sipped her own soda, and raised an eyebrow at Brenna.

      
"Don't remind me. I'm going to be in trouble with this one, Em."

      
Emily shook her head. "I don't know why you keep breaking your heart, taking these dogs in. If you're going to do it, hand them straight over to animal control, why don't you? Quit pouring yourself into them and fixing all their woes only to have to give them up."

      
"If I didn't fix their woes, half of them wouldn't be able to find new homes. And the other half would be dead through animal control if I didn't hang on to them as long as I do, waiting for their owners."

      
"So you always say. But we both know animal control does a pretty good job, if the owners care enough to check around. I think you just like the excuse."

      
Brenna, at a loss for any cogent argument, stuck out her tongue. Things hadn't changed much, it seemed; that had always been her answer to Russell, also. Russell, older and teasing her about her useless mutts, about how he did things that mattered—at the time, earning a letter on the school math team, already heading for his part-time job at the carpet store he had eventually bought out and expanded.

      
Not so many years between them, but a seemingly unbridgeable gap that had widened beyond repair the day he had found her with a new dog, a large, starving adolescent with a short, ruddy coat, handsome head, and what she'd immediately thought of as having a permanent bad hair day because of the roughened hair on its back. He'd been more thoughtful, then, hadn't ribbed her or made fun of the animal, ugly in its emaciation despite its solid build and the injuries it had sustained. Injuries from human hands, which made her decide against looking for its former owners. In fact, after she had the dog fed up and responding happily to humankind again, he had casually mentioned he knew of a good home. She'd talked with the man, concurred, and placed the dog.

      
A year later, she had seen news of the dog's big win in a regional dog show. A Rhodesian Ridgeback, it was, and apparently quite a handsome one. But Brenna knew it couldn't be the dog the man claimed it to be, with the parentage and breeding behind it that he spoke of so glowingly in the printed interview. And Russell had just laughed. "His own dog got hit by a car," he said. "Yours was a perfect ringer. And where do you think I got the money for the junior prom? If you'd been more careful about reading the local weekly, you'd have known he lost the dog and could have had the money for yourself."

      
Her mother knew, if only she had been willing to see. And if her father had realized, he'd have done something, she was sure—but she couldn't bring herself to see it hurt him. So that was when she'd started reading up on breeds, a subject which hadn't truly mattered to someone who rescued dogs in whatever size, shape, and color they came to her. And that was when she stopped truly trusting her brother, who never understood her ire. "I never did anything wrong," he had told her. "I just sold him the dog. Not my business what he did with it."

      
No wonder she spent more time here than with her brother's family in town, and knew Emily's girls better than Russell's two boys.

      
The girls came clattering down the stairs and into the kitchen, Druid at their heels and looking attentive and interested in all the little girl things he'd been exposed to. Fashion dolls and stuffed animals...his fascinated expression led Brenna to decide on the spot that he hadn't been in a family with children, at least not girl children.

      
Nine year-old Jill, perpetually chubby, freckled, and heading toward braces, held a brush in one hand and a comb in the other; Marilee—equally freckled but beginning to trade her baby fat for height—carried a surfeit of hair goodies—combs and elastics and a few things that Brenna couldn't even identify.

      
"Time for the ritual torture," Emily said. "It's what you deserve for coming over here and flaunting that hair in front of two little girls with short hair imposed upon them by their wicked mother."

      
"It's on my
head
, is all," Brenna said, but smiled. Emily's girls had no monopoly on their attentiveness; little girls too young to have been fully socialized often reached out to touch her hair in the store, usually with soft exclamations of delight.

      
"Hide it under a hat the next time," Emily responded, unruffled. "Go get her, my little hair stylists."

      
Already they were behind her, releasing her hair from its braid and finger combing it, as gentle as always.

      
"I just learned a new way to braid," Marilee said with enthusiasm. "It'll look so cool with hair this long. It's called a fishtail braid."

      
"Now
that
sounds attractive," Brenna said, but she slid down in the chair so she could relax, the groomer being groomed. If only half her own canine clients could learn to enjoy the tug and massage of the process.

      
Of course, she wasn't sure she'd enjoy it nearly as much if she, too, had mats. But without them she enjoyed it well enough to drift away in thought, Druid dozing by her feet. At least, until the voices started up.

      
They came to her in a murmur, as though she were stuck in a verbal collage. Male and female, none of them familiar, expressing themselves in incomplete sentences as though they came from a low-volume television with someone hopping through channels. Druid twitched against her feet, dreaming, but her awareness of it didn't distract her from the voices.
Authorities have labeled it
shedding rabies
, said a male voice, and
another man found dead in the city
said a woman.
Vaccine
and
too late
and then an official-sounding voice that said
take your dog out and back again, please
. A few jumbled commands—things like
stay, Druid, it's only for a little while
and
Druid, no!
And oddly, in a voice that seemed familiar,
...local groomer Brenna Lynn Fallon succumbed today
—

      
Brenna jerked alert, barely aware of the girls' exclamations that they hadn't
thought
they'd pulled her hair.
What the hell was—

      
And Druid jerked awake, looking dazed and disoriented. And then he looked at Brenna, and he screamed—a human sound no dog should ever voice. He flung himself backward, and even as Brenna would have grabbed for him, a dizzying vertigo clutched her; in the instant it took for solid ground to return, he was gone, and all three of the Brecken women, youngest to oldest, were staring wide-eyed at his wake.

      
"Oh-
kaay
," Emily said, turning both her gaze and her expertly raised eyebrow on Brenna.

      
"What the hell—" Brenna said, out loud this time, and then realized she was in the presence of young ears. "You guys didn't hear that." She grabbed an elastic from the table and brought her hair around. The fishtail braid was indeed cool, but apparently tedious in execution, for it was only a third of the way down her back. She overrode the girl's protests and fastened it where they had stopped.

      
"Do me a favor," she told them, talking over them, and her words hushed them fast enough. "Help me find him. He's probably hiding behind or under something. Don't try to get close to him. He's too afraid right now, and it wouldn't be kind to him."

      
Young women on a mission, they rushed from the kitchen.

      
Emily caught Brenna's eye and shook her head. "You told me he was strange, but...Brenna, just what is it you think you can do with that dog?"

      
Brenna had no doubt that if Druid had been on a leash, they would all have been treated to another incident of flailing and foaming and shrieking, and she sighed, meeting Emily's gaze long enough for an honest shrug. "I don't know. But you saw him...when he's normal, he's a charismatic and well-behaved dog. If I can only figure out what's causing the behavior—"

      
"
The behavior
," Emily said, and laughed without humor. "The
behavior
! Brenna, the dog is hallucinating! He's the doggy equivalent of a homeless man who's not sane and won't take his drugs!"

      
Brenna could only stare off in the direction of Druid's flight, bemused.
Local groomer Brenna Lynn Fallon succumbed today...

      
Just how crazy did that make
her
?

~~~

Crazy enough to go back to work. On Saturday, no less, a day Brenna was used to working but one that always lasted several hours longer than she was actually scheduled, even double-teaming with Elizabeth and with someone pulled off the floor to wash the dogs.

      
Not someone who actually knew what they were doing, of course. One of the guys from the back of the store, whom Roger must have figured was large enough to handle the big ones. And who obviously loved dogs.

      
If only he'd ever washed one before.

      
Brenna, swooping in to get her next clip job and crossing mental fingers that the dog was actually dry, found Deryl towel-drying a Collie-mutt and spotted the tell-tale slick of fur at a glance.