For years, Dashiell pressed her mind to keep her from asking too many question about his strange habits, but eventually he loved her so much, he didn’t want to lie anymore.
“So I told her what I was,” Dashiell broke in. He was human in my presence, and I wondered if he would still have that look of guilt and grief if he weren’t. “As soon as I did, the local cardinal vampire made sure I turned her.”
Beatrice took his hand. “It’s what I wanted too, love.” She looked back at me with tears pooled in her eyes. “We planned to leave town, as is the custom when one is turned. You leave everything behind. Esteban was sixteen, though, and he didn’t want me to go. He followed Dashiell one night, to talk to him, and he . . . realized what we were.” Her voice broke. I winced. The poor kid had probably seen his big sister drinking someone’s blood. And by finding out about the Old World, he’d have to join or be killed.
Dashiell picked up the story so Beatrice wouldn’t have to. “Because of the boy’s age, we decided he should join the werewolf pack, rather than the vampires. Even back then, sixteen was too young to . . .” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. Becoming a werewolf would keep him alive, and let him and Beatrice have many long years together . . .” His voice trailed off for a moment. “We contacted a local alpha. The change was successful—”
“And the Luparii came to Barcelona three months later,” Beatrice finished. She took a deep breath. “They killed the whole pack, including Esteban. They took their jaws.”
“You didn’t . . . try to get revenge?” Will asked, as tactfully as possible.
Dashiell’s expression darkened. “The cardinal vampire of the city forbade it. He had no love for werewolves, and the Luparii were not interested in vampires. He wanted to keep it that way.” Then Dashiell looked away, and I realized that he was ashamed. “I wasn’t as strong back then,” he said formally.
“We left, and never went back to Spain,” Beatrice said in a clearer voice. She smiled sadly at her husband, who squeezed her hand. I hadn’t really registered it before, but both of them were dressed in simple, comfortable clothes: T-shirts, yoga pants, gym trunks. Beatrice’s long dark hair was mussed, and Dashiell was squinting a little, like he might need glasses as a human. I had never seen either one of them in anything less than business casual. It was so strange to see them like this. Like . . . people.
“Why don’t more people know about them?” Jesse wondered. “If they’ve killed every werewolf in Europe, why hasn’t the entire Old World . . . I don’t know, gone to war against them?”
Kirsten bit her lip. “For us, the Luparii are a disgrace—and yet none of us want to cross them. Think of it like . . . having an uncle who’s a convicted murderer. You’d be ashamed, but you’d also want to stay far away from him.”
“And the wolves,” Will growled, “are afraid of them.”
I didn’t bother asking Dashiell why the vampires hadn’t stopped the Luparii. “So . . . what? We think the Luparii finally got around to expanding into America?” Jesse said doubtfully. “And they decided to start in LA exactly when there’s a nova running around killing people?”
“No,” Will said morosely. “They’ve never hunted in America, so far as I know . . .” He looked at Dashiell, who nodded his head in agreement. “. . . and I doubt they would send someone for an ordinary werewolf.”
“But a nova wolf,” I continued, catching on. “That might be rare enough to be worth the trip.”
Kirsten nodded slightly. “Europe is enormous, and there’s a lot of territory to cover,” she said softly. “And I doubt that the Luparii have had much of a hunt for years. Werewolves are that frightened of them.” Her eyes dropped with shame.
“So they’re all sitting around sharpening their wolf-killing silver, or whatever,” Jesse said skeptically, “and they just randomly hear about a nova wolf running around LA?”
“No.” Will had stopped pacing and was leaning against the glass patio door, resting his head on the glass. When we looked at him he straightened up, looking more tense than ever. “Someone called them.”
That left me speechless, and Jesse looked like he was in the same boat. Dashiell’s face was grim: he’d obviously come to the same conclusion. But Beatrice jerked her head toward Will in shock. “Who would do that?” she cried. “Who would bring them here?”
“Someone who put the missing women together,” I surmised. “They came to the same conclusion you did—that it was a nova—and told the Luparii.”
“Or,” Will said tersely, “whoever changed the nova to begin with summoned the Luparii to come clean up his or her mess.”
Every eye in the room turned to Will, and I was suddenly certain that he was right. “We need more information,” Jesse said pragmatically. “How many of the Luparii would they send here?”
Will shrugged. “We don’t know.”
“They send one first,” Beatrice said softly. We all turned to look at her. “That’s how it was in Barcelona. First a scout. One wolf dies, a few days before the full moon. It puts the rest of the pack in a frenzy, makes them careless. Then suddenly there are a dozen Luparii in the city, to kill the others.”
“But how do they do it?” Jesse asked, his voice strained. “How do the Luparii kill them?”
Beatrice shook her head, and Dashiell shot Jesse a glare. “We don’t know,” he said flatly. “They picked them off one or two at a time, over several days. The wounds themselves looked like maiming, but each corpse was missing the jaw.”
“So we have to find the scout,” Kirsten surmised. “If we stop him, maybe that will be the end of it.”
“I don’t think so,” Will contended. “If we kill the scout, they’re just going to send more. Lots more.”