“So a nova wolf is a wolf that’s just been away from a pack for too long?” I ventured.
“No. Wolves never willingly leave a pack, like I said, unless it’s to find and join another. A nova werewolf is one who’s made and then abandoned.” Will’s voice darkened. “It happens very rarely, especially now that the success rate for changing a new wolf has dropped so low.” Jesse and I didn’t interrupt. Nobody knew why transformative magic, which creates werewolves and vampires, seemed to be dying, but it had been happening for a long time now. “Most alphas, like me, can feel the magic shift if one of our pack members creates a new cub,” Will went on. “We confront them, get them to find the cub and bring it into the pack.”
“Did you feel magic shift?”
“No, but . . . ,” Will trailed off, and I turned in my seat so I could squint back at him. His face was troubled. “My connection to pack magic is off,” he said finally.
I nodded. If the LA pack was losing faith in Will, one by one, his connection to magic would be fluctuating too. “You think someone in your pack made the nova,” I stated.
“Yes. I believe that someone in my pack took advantage of the pack’s instability in the last month to change in between moons. But he or she attacked a human and abandoned him.” Will shook his head a little. “It’s happening faster than I would have thought—usually a wolf has to be alone for a while before he becomes nova—but everything else makes sense.”
Jesse sighed, like the wolves were trying to frustrate him on purpose. “If the problem is that the new wolf is alone for too long, can’t he or she just join a pack again?” Jesse asked.
I could see Will shaking his head in my peripheral vision. “Nova wolves are almost always male, and no, it doesn’t work like that. That’s where the name comes in. In the wild, every wolf pack has a male and female alpha who breed. They’re usually called the breeding pair, and for whatever reason they’re the only ones in the pack who have offspring. That’s the norm. But a Casanova wolf is this weird anomaly in nature where a random male wolf sneaks from pack to pack, having sex with the other females.”
“Why?” I asked, and then felt myself blush. “I mean, apart from having a bunch of sex.”
“Nova wolves are slaves to biology,” he said matter-of-factly. “Which includes the natural, evolutionary drive to procreate, and to lead. A nova wolf wants to become a breeding male.”
“That’s all?” Jesse asked. His eyes were on the road, but a furrow had appeared between his eyebrows. “This is a werewolf that wants to have babies?”
“Werewolves can’t procreate the old-fashioned way.” Will grimaced again, this time with his teeth showing. “Nova wolves want to create more werewolves. Emphasis on create. A nova wolf doesn’t want to join a pack or take over a pack. All it can think about, all it can do, is try to make its own pack.”
I finally understood. “So you think the person who killed those two women is an indestructible, supernaturally fast and strong apex predator that’s specifically targeting humans,” I summarized.
Will sighed, and I turned all the way around in my seat to squint at him. He looked tired, and older than I’d ever seen before. “Yes,” he said simply.
Jesse and I looked at each other. “If this was Scooby-Doo, one of us would say ‘gulp,’” I pointed out.
Jesse made a face at me. “Gulp.”
Chapter 13
We hit the canyon road and began winding down toward the freeway. Jesse and Will were both silent, but there was a weight to it, like you could just hear everyone in the van thinking.
Will had said that werewolves behave more or less like ordinary wolves with magical enhancements. I’d never really thought of it in those terms before, but it made sense. I’d taken a lot of biology classes in high school, back when I was hoping to become a veterinarian, and I knew a little bit about wolf behavior. Wolves generally don’t attack people, not unless they’re truly cornered or starving to death. Basically, unless there are no other options. And I knew that werewolves have no particular interest in attacking humans, either. Eli had once mentioned that the one time the LA pack had encountered humans during the full moon, Will had directed his wolves away from the trespassing campers without an incident. That was part of why the Old World was able to stay hidden: werewolves in wolf form just weren’t the bloodthirsty, slavering meat fiends bent on eating people that you see in the movies. In their wolf form, they rarely attacked humans, and therefore rarely killed or changed anyone.
So a big, indestructible wolf that specifically hunted humans was a nightmare. And because so few people change when they’ve been bitten nowadays, it wasn’t much better than a serial killer. “Why women?” I wondered aloud, breaking the silence that had fallen over the van. “Does he think males will challenge his dominance?”
“No again,” Will answered tensely. “Remember, he wants to procreate. He wants to be the male half of the dominant couple, even if they can’t reproduce sexually.”
“So he’s trying to make a mate.” I finished, catching on. “Holy crap, it’s Frankenstein.”
“You mean Frankenstein’s creature,” Jesse corrected me primly. “‘Frankenstein’ was the name of the doctor who created it.”
“No, I mean Frankenstein, the work of literature,” I retorted. “The title. We’re in Frankenstein, meaning the title.”
“Kids!” Will barked. “Can we get back to the point?”
“Sorry,” Jesse muttered.
“What happens if he gets what he wants?” I asked. “If he builds a pack?”
“Wolf packs are territorial,” Will reported. “When he’s got his own, he’ll come after mine. Not to recruit.”
“To kill,” Jesse stated grimly.
There was another long silence in the van. We’d gotten off the freeway, and Jesse rolled down his window, letting the chilly city air surge into the van. It smelled like Dumpsters and Chinese food and car exhaust.