Free Black Dog by Rachel Neumeier

yours. Did you think otherwise?”
    Alejandro stared at him. He felt young and stupid, and violently resented being made to feel that way. His shadow snarled in the back of his mind. He set himself to hold his human form and mind against it.
    But Grayson said, “I am not holding you now. Let your shadow rise. Let it up, boy, and let us have a look at your black dog. Ezekiel – loose your shadow as well, if you please. I would not like to have to replace the furniture in this room.”
    Ezekiel tilted an amused eyebrow at the Master of Dimilioc and melted into his shadow, so swiftly and cleanly that Alejandro could not keep from staring.
    Ezekiel’s black dog form was shaggy, huge, with massive bones and powerful shoulders. Its skull was broad, its muzzle blunt, its wide-set yellow eyes gleaming with fire as well as with vicious intelligence. Alejandro would have said that there was nothing of Ezekiel Korte in that malevolent stare, and yet he would never have mistaken this black dog for any other man’s shadow.
    Alejandro had seen his father’s shadow form. He had worn his own like a mask that had seemed at times more real than his own body. He had wrapped himself in his shadow to run or hunt or to fight stray black dogs and the moon-bound curs they had made. But Ezekiel’s black dog was more frightening than any other he had ever seen. It was not larger than his father’s shadow body. But it seemed somehow more solid, more auténtico . More real. When Ezekiel dropped his jaw in a terrible black-dog laugh, the contained heat of his fiery eyes seemed to burn out across the entire room, until Alejandro was amazed the rug and the chairs did not catch fire.
    â€œNow,” said Grayson Lanning said to him, “let your own shadow rise.”
    Alejandro had almost forgotten the Dimilioc Master. His gaze jerked that way, startled, when the Master spoke. He felt the blood rise into his face, and told himself the heat there was anger and not shame. His shadow was ready to be angry. It rose, hot and fast, and the shame fell away. The uncertainty burned like dry grass in a fire as his body molded itself to his shadow. He stretched and yawned, enjoying the deadly, confident strength of the black dog. He stared around the room looking for someone to kill… Grayson Lanning met his eyes with a complete absence of fear that made him pause despite his confidence.
    But he thought he could kill Ethan Lanning, perhaps. He was eager to try. He stared at the youngest of the Dimilioc wolves, looking for any sign of fear, of uncertainty. When Ethan met his gaze without showing either, he whined, disappointed – then snarled, a long singing snarl, trying to make the other flinch. He eased forward a pace, flexing a broad foot, thinking about the brutal rake of claws, the spilling blood, the scents of burning and ash and death.
    Ezekiel stood up and looked at him, only that, and he stopped, recognizing that the other was stronger. Where Alejandro in his human form might have been angry or frightened or ashamed, his black dog only acknowledged the other’s strength, accepted it, found no urgent reason to challenge it, and turned away from the fight.
    He found himself looking again at Grayson Lanning. Grayson looked fearlessly into his fiery eyes and said, “Now put down your shadow, Alejandro, do you hear? Come back up.”
    For a long, long moment these words did not make any sense. Alejandro heard the Dimilioc Master, but Grayson might as well have snarled like an animal rather than spoken in any human language. Then the Master patiently repeated, “Come back up,” and suddenly the sounds reordered themselves into understandable speech – into a command.
    The black-dog shadow did not want to yield to any command . It recognized Grayson’s strength, but not his authority. Besides, it did not want to subside back into shadow, to give way to the human form – not so soon after