When the room reasserted itself, I felt everyone’s eyes on me, but I kept mine on the dog. Those brown eyes held so much—an endless desire to serve and protect, and a fragile pride in his ability to do so, one that had taken a battering. He shifted restlessly, looking down and whining before meeting my eyes again. This was a dog at war with himself, his need for that occasional pat and praise burning so brightly inside him but… With an animal’s instincts, he saw the threat now to his existence and shied away from possible enemies, feeling a deep need to avoid that boot, that white hot burst of pain as it exploded in his head.
“They’ll make you do things you don’t like, force animals to do things they shouldn't,” Nan had said, reordering her work bench, putting bunches of carefully dried herbs into baskets with a little more oomph than needed. “You’ll have to do it. There’s not many of us, while there’s so many of them, and nothing pricks their pride like being told no. Especially for the sake of a ‘dumb’ animal.”
She collected crystals and tarot cards, her stock in trade when the hippies decided Harvest Grove was the place to be back when I was a kid.
“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” She snorted. “And who has dominion more than us? But we have the wit to understand, to know what a bloody privilege it is, to know how dependent we are on them. To know we must live beside them, not as overlords.”
She looked down to her ageing beagle, Princess, who thumped her tail in response to the attention.
“Isn’t that right, my love?” she said, patting the dog’s silky head. “But they don’t see it that way, and there’s not enough of us to make a difference. So we keep them happy, as it’s their teeth that’ll be on our necks, not the animals. You’ll be faced with a situation, many times I’m afraid, where you must use your powers for the humans and against the animals.”
The memory faded away, and instead, I found Diablo’s warm gaze staring back at me. Animals are not furry people, their minds an alien, hard-wired maze of instinct, but I could almost imagine him asking me for advice. What should I do, Shan? Do I protect the men? Or do I do what I need to survive?
Which will result in you being destroyed anyway, I thought.
I looked up at Hollingsworth, who watched my every move with the laziness of a cat.
Look after the men, I thought, shoring up his sense of purpose, inflating his innate bravery and self-sacrifice. Protect them. I showed a fearless, untouchable Diablo, forcing the men who’d attacked him back. Love the men. I choked on that one, the suggestion coming out more as a whimper than a command.
But he took the bit between his teeth as dogs do, his head swivelling around as he scanned the four men, and then I felt it. I sighed, not caring how that came across with our new client. It still broke me every time. Not every owner was like Carla, desperate to do the best by her pet. Plenty basically wanted me to brainwash their beasts, make a dog bored out of his mind OK with sitting in his tiny yard all day, or working to get a cat to accept his owner had decided to cut his claws off.
“Keep them happy.”
Nan’s words—part wisdom, part rod for my back—rang through me as I sat up.
But what about them? What about me?
“See how you go, but I think you’ll find he’s less reactive,” I said.
Hollingsworth nodded slowly, then turned to Stuart.
“Look, Wilson, enough of the pussyfooting. This place has another couple of months of liquidity, and then you’ll either be borrowing hand over fist or going under. Here’s my offer.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and slid it across the table. “You, Ms Bruce here, and all of your employees will be earning double what they’re currently paid. I’ll be paying you a lump sum on top of that, which will free you up to either sell this place or find another vet to look after your father’s legacy. I’m