A Feral Darkness Read online

  But she never approached the thought too seriously. Years of her brother Russell's dismissive comments, of her parents' unintentional discouragement—though now only her mother was left to fill that role. "Let someone else worry about the bills," they'd say, her father with loving protectiveness when he was alive and her mother—now and then—with the assumption that Brenna couldn't handle the load. "Russell will tell you."

  And Russell would. "Can't see you doing the accounting for your own business," he would say, and of course he knew, what with his partnership in the small carpet and flooring store in Brockport. "You haven't got a single class under your belt outside of high school."

  True enough. But not how she'd wanted it, either.

  She clipped the Sheltie's nails and pulled the muzzle off; just the thinning and a little trimming to go, and he'd be fine with that.

  Feral dogs. A pack of them. What was that all about?

  She worked in a suburb north of Monroe City, but lived fifteen minutes northwest of that, between Lake Ontario and the city. Definitely rural—but generally tame. A handful of coyotes, not as many stray cats as there used to be, lots of small farms no longer supporting anything but a handful of cows or horses, plenty of farmland owned in modest lots but leased to larger operations.

  Her own place had taken that role over the years, and even now the old north pasture was in corn for Bob Haskly—the lease paid her winter's heating bills in the old farmhouse. But the right-side pasture, hilly and divided by the creek, had only ever been pasture and still was. Maybe next summer she would get another horse; right now the field was fallow, recovering from some hard grazing from Emily's last batch of cattle.

  Plenty going on in her part of Parma Hill, but never had feral dogs played any part. Nothing more than your basic random stray, half of whom seemed to find their way to Brenna for feeding and grooming before Brenna passed them along to the local animal advocate group for placement.

  "Brenna, you in there?"

  Think of Emily, and Emily arrives.

  "Be out in a moment," Brenna said, taking one more pass through the Sheltie's thick ruff with the thinning shears and then shaping the result. She stepped back to give him a critical eye, found a tuft she'd missed, and tucked him under her arm to step into the tub room and turn off the last dryer. The Cocker behind it gave her a bright and manic eye. "Best you change your attitude," she told it, and went out to the counter area to stash the Sheltie in one of the two open-wire crates stacked for finished dogs.

  "What's up, Emily?" she asked, reaching for the charge slip and doing a quick calculation of the extra time she'd spent on the mats.

  "In town for project supplies," Emily said. "As usual. Those girls go through crafts like they were born to sell little old lady cut-outs for people's front yards. You know, the kind bending over with all their pantaloons showing."

  Brenna stopped writing to look up. Emily, with her honey-blonde hair drawn back in a hasty pony-tail, not a trace of makeup on her slightly too-wide, slightly too-large blue eyes, looked back at her quite seriously, but there was a trace of humor hiding at the corner of her mouth. "Solemnly swear," Brenna said, "that you will never allow that to happen."

  "Sheep, then," Emily said. "Lawn sheep."

  Brenna gave a firm shake of her head. "Lawn skunks at the most." She finished the charge slip and stuck it in the proper cubby slot behind the counter, noted the date and the Sheltie's new wart on his customer card, and dropped it in with the others to be re-filed. "No project supplies in Pets!, unless they're going to build you a cow out of rawhide bones."

  "They wanted to see the big lizards," Emily said, and smiled as she glanced through the glass of the counter area to the store proper. The grooming room had its own entrance, right next to the main store entrance; the counter area served as a functional antechamber behind glass. The girls, of course, were out of sight around the corner, where the reptile area boasted several huge snakes and the biggest Monitor lizards Brenna had ever seen. At nine and eleven years old, they were fearless and outgoing children, and no one had ever told them that girls don't like that sort of thing. "Say, Bren, have you heard about the dog pack? I'm trying to figure out a way to put the goats up, but you know they're little escape artists—say, who's that?"

  Brenna had started back for the Cocker; she looked over her shoulder to see Emily focused on the store entryway, just beyond which stood Roger and a customer, talking.

  No, not just a customer. Something more. Roger was nodding with exaggeration and high frequency, and he had a veneer of pleasant enthusiasm applied to his face. The man he spoke to took a more casual stance, his hands stuck into the pockets of his worn jeans with the thumbs hanging out. He carried himself in a sort of lounging slouch, and offered the occasional lift of a shoulder, the short nod of his head. And he looked... casually disheveled.

  None of the pieces fit. Not a dog food rep—they came in with spit and shine polish, just shy of car salesman-slick. Not a customer—Roger was a tad too obsequious. Definitely not a an employee.

  "Niiice," Emily said, watching them talk.

  "Do you use that mouth around the girls?"

  Emily tossed her ponytail. "If I'm comfortable expressing myself around them, then maybe when they're gorgeous teenagers with every single boy in school whining for them to do the dirty in the back of a pickup, they'll feel comfortable expressing themselves around me."

  "Dream on," Brenna muttered, still watching the byplay between her manager and the man he so clearly wanted to impress with his affability. A man who apparently didn't have the wits to discern the sales job behind Roger's smile. Brenna gave a mental snort. With her luck the man had an entire van of fully coated English Sheepdogs and Roger was even now promising them an appointment for today. "Anyway, he's—"

  Scruffy. That's how he struck her, which was why she couldn't figure out Roger's fawning interest. But then she realized that his clothes were neat enough despite being far from new, the worn jeans and a flannel shirt with cuffs rolled back to mid-forearm. And he was clean-shaven, and his hair—every bit as dark as hers—barely licked the collar of his shirt. And yet...scruffy.

  "—made you speechless, apparently," Emily teased.

  Brenna went back and collected the Cocker, letting the stocky bitch stand on the table while she hunted up a #5 blade. "It's Roger I'm thinking about. He's up to something. Look at his expression and tell me he's not." The black Cocker, a badly bred individual with developing skin problems, eyed the floor and gave a wag of her stumpy tail; Brenna put an absent hand on her back and finally found the blade, accomplishing the switch one-handed and popping the new blade home with an expert flick against her thigh.

  "You're no fun," Emily said, coming to stand in the doorway.

  "Blame Roger for that, too. Did you see how he ran up the schedule today?"

  "You need your own place," Emily said, completely unaware of Brenna's thoughts on the subject and not the least deserving of the sudden angry frustration that rose up in Brenna.

  She turned her back to hide her glower, and concentrated intently on cutting the dog's nails—not entirely without nececssity, since the Cocker had thrown herself back on her haunches and was jerking on the entrapped foot with manic intensity, a low moan in her throat that long experience told Brenna would soon be the sort of scream to draw spectators from two parking lots over. She startled the dog by swapping her end for end while maintaining her hold on the paw and quickly targeted the nails while the Cocker struggled with the notion that she could neither yank the leg forward or up from that position. "Roger'll yell at you if he sees you behind the counter."

  "No he won't," Emily said, somewhat smug. "I'm a customer. He'll do anything for a customer."

  "I've taught you well, I see," Brenna said, finishing the nails and exchanging tools, firing up the clippers.

  "Well enough so this is one place I'll never work," Emily said over the buzz of Brenna at work, smoothly drawing the clippers over the Cocker's dumpy b
ack.

  "As if you'd ever let a job take you away from the family." Not Emily, married right out of her two-year college program and a mother a year later, in love with her good-natured garage mechanic and totally devoted to her girls. Happy, that was Emily. Happy and given to occasional fits of childish rowdiness—the best kind of rowdy, the water hose fights in mid-summer, sledding and snowmen in the winter. Brenna envied her kids, and enjoyed being her neighbor.

  But sometimes—on days like this—Emily just didn't get it. Didn't get that while Brenna was obliging her with light conversation, she was twisted up with the pressure of achieving the impossible in a day with constantly shifting rules. She'd never be done before dark at this rate, never mind at shift's end. And one day she'd just walk right out on Roger, because she'd told him no and he'd ignored her and for once she'd meant no.

  Hang on. You've got tomorrow off.

  "Listen, Em, can you do me a favor? Can you grab Sunny up and stick her in the dog room?"

  Emily stopped watching Roger and her self-assigned eye-candy to give Brenna an uncertain look. "I thought you didn't want her in the house because she'll mess."

  "Just make sure the door's closed to the main house. Shut her in the dog room. She probably will mess, but it's linoleum. And I won't be that late." Not if she could stick to her schedule. Six-thirty in the morning to three-thirty in the afternoon, up early and out early, just the way she liked it if you didn't count the Sunday morning shift. Elizabeth joined her mid-morning and worked until eight at night, and with Kelly doubling up on weekends and filling in on their off days, they kept the store covered.

  "Dumbest dog I ever met," Emily said of Sunny, a mutter nonetheless meant to be heard.

  "That's the consensus," Brenna agreed. "She's an idiot. How do you think she ended up with me?"

  "No one else would take her," Emily said. Not even guessing, just flat knowing.

  "I'd still rather not have her torn up by that pack. Can you do it?"

  "I can try." Emily made a face. "If she's even learned her name well enough to come to it."

  "Get the birdseed bucket and rattle it. She loves birdseed."

  Emily, bless her heart, managed to hold her tongue on that one. "I'll do my best," she said. "I'm hoping the business about the dog pack is just a rumor gotten out of hand."

  "But you're still putting up the goats." Brenna lifted the Cocker's back leg and bent to clear out the hair on her stomach, carefully skimming the sensitive skin. Her own hair fell free of its confinement down the back of her grooming smock and the doubled braid thumped against the table. Dark and thick and wavy and almost impossibly long, just as it had grown in after that summer when she was nine years old and had made her silly offering to try to keep her hound alive.

  Or maybe not so silly, considering the years she'd had with him, years that had made her parents puzzle—just as they had puzzled over her hair, hair she had been trying so desperately—and mostly unsuccessfully—to grow, and which she'd then chopped off with a pocket knife and no explanation whatsoever.

  Mars Nodens had liked offerings, her father's article had said. She had given him the only one she'd had. And had not cut her hair again since then—not counting the occasional light fringe of her bangs—though it was neither a rational nor a practical decision.

  "Well," Emily said, talking about the goats, "I'll put them up. I don't know that they'll stay that way." She checked her watch. "Enough lizard-time for one day. They've got homework to do, anyway."

  "Yeah, better make a run for it. If that straggly Wheaten Terrier coming this way is my mystery customer, things are going to get real ugly around here, real fast."

  Emily needed no more encouragement than that. Brenna crated the partially groomed Cocker and returned to the grooming counter, steeling herself for battle. Wheaten hair was notoriously soft and prone to matting; randomly-scheduling Wheaten owners were notorious for not noticing the mats until they all but covered the dog's body, and then squalling at the suggestion of a cut-down. And Wheatens...

  Wheatens were notorious for their own reasons.

  I don't have time for this today. And as she thought it, as she tucked back a tendril of loose hair and prepared her customer service face for an appointment she suddenly had absolutely no intention of keeping, she was startled to catch a brief glimpse of the man Emily had drooled over, and to discover that he was looking at her. Staring.

  Dismissive, she would have said, reacting instantly to that expression with an inward bristling. As if she needed to be judged and dismissed by someone who would stand still for Roger's Happy Manager act. And as if she didn't get quite enough of the same from her own brother. She had only an instant, with the Wheaten close enough to give the corner of her counter a preparatory sniff and the owner oblivious enough that Brenna had to pre-empt the dog's rising leg and welcome the owner at the same time—but that was time enough to return his look with her own cool expression.

  And then she went back to work.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  CHAPTER 3

  ANZUS

  The Messenger

  She made it home somewhere between sunset and darkfall, her headlights splashing a long path up the steep, narrow driveway to the farmhouse at the crest of the hill—the same hill that wound away to the south, and upon which sat the oak and gravesite she'd managed to keep up even after all these years. Not including that one spring when she'd been so distracted with her father's illness, and someone—someones—had invaded the fallow pasture and wreaked havoc at the oak.

  There was no sign of Sunny as Brenna parked in the pole shed that served as a garage. She thought briefly about the feral dogs, and the unnatural silence of the night made her wish that she had climbed out of the car with her hands wrapped around a baseball bat instead of the super sub sandwich that would keep her fed for three nights. And then Sunny cut loose from inside the house, a beautiful Redbone bawl that ought to be sounding out in the woods for squirrel and coon—if only the young hound had had the faintest drive to hunt.

  With her relief came the realization of how tired she was. Thank goodness there was no livestock waiting—although the knowledge that her unpredictable work life kept her from putting a horse or even a goat or two in the old pasture created its own resentment.

  At least she had today's small victory on the scoreboard, a patch of ground she'd won and kept for her own—the Wheaten had gone home with an new appointment for dematting and a bath, the owner's ire assuaged partly by sincere apologies but mostly by the coupon for a steep discount.

  Roger had not been pleased. But Roger had been coming off his happy nodding conversation with the dismissive stranger, and occasionally, even Roger seemed to sense when he had pushed Brenna too far.

  With deliberate effort, she put that part of her day behind her, and redirected her thoughts to more pleasant things. The sub sandwich and a nice cold soda, and then a long soak in the claw-footed tub that hunkered in the corner of the recently remodeled bathroom. She hadn't had any choice about that new work, not when a long-undetected leak sent the toilet through the floor and into the basement, but she was glad for the results—fresh, desert rose tile, the old tub resurfaced, plenty of shelves, and faucets it was actually possible to turn off.

  Despite the upkeep she was glad her brother Russell hadn't wanted the farm, though he had maintained his perceived first claim as son and oldest child even as he'd airily given it up. She needed it more than he, he'd said—he could make his own way.

  She'd never been sure why he had thought she couldn't.

  Sub. Soda. Soak. She mounted the steps to the half-enclosed front porch—vertical slats below the handrail, open above—making the habitual observation that the third one sank a little too easily beneath her weight and ought to be replaced. With the sub, her coat, the cargo bag that served as a purse and carryall, and her mail jammed under one arm, she reached for the porch door.

  Something whined.

  Feral dogs. Roaming pack at
the boiling point.

  Something whined on the porch.

  Brenna froze, her hand on the door latch. Yank it open, bolt inside—but any sudden movement could trigger an angry dog—or worse, a frightened dog, unwittingly trapped in the corner of her porch. Open the door slowly and slip inside—but any retreat could trigger excited prey instincts. Turn and face it—but that could be seen as a challenge.

  For pity's sake, just stand here indefinitely, until this sub is so stale you can beat the creature to death with it.

  It wasn't a pack of whines, it was a single whine. It wasn't an eager whine, it was a distressed whimper. Intermittent, with no sound of movement, no tick of claw against the hard painted wood.

  Brenna turned around.

  At first she saw nothing, until, blinking in the darkness, she became convinced that there was nothing to see. That it hadn't been on the porch, but under it, and now had fled. And then it whimpered and stirred, and she saw the faint sheen of an eye reflecting the dim night light from the other side of the door.

  As eyes went, they weren't terribly far from the ground.

  "Hey," she said to it, a low-key and non-committal response, just to lob the ball back into its court again. But there was no more sound forthcoming, and she opened the door behind her, snaked her arm around to feel the wall until she hit the light switch, and squinted in anticipation of the bare overhead bulb.

  The dog had had no such warning; when the light blazed, it started, jumping into a jerky flight—but losing courage and freezing up instead. Brenna had all the time in the world to look it over—and she still wasn't sure what she'd found.

  Ears, that was for sure. Big ears, upright like a German Shepherd's, and just as large as a Shepherd's even though the dog's head wouldn't reach her knee, not even if it had been standing alertly instead of cowering, its short legs spraddled out and its toenails digging into the porch as though at any moment it might go flying off the face of the earth from centrifugal force. She could almost hear its terror, its indecision, a fast babble of runrunrun and which way should I go, whichwaywhichway and don't move, don't move, can't be seen if I don't move.