by Hettie Ivers
Lupe snorted. “I heard that one, too.” Setting her coffee aside, she studied the ceiling for a spell. “Miles, sometimes you have to scrape together the faith and the guts first, then pray the means will follow. I remember the first time I killed a werelock.”
What? Was she serious? “Are you kidding?”
“I was nervous like you. I had no idea how to kill one. So I chopped his head and all of his limbs off, cut his heart out, and set him on fire. You know, to play it safe.”
My jaw was in my lap. “Lupe, for real? When? Who? How?”
She waved it off as if it were no big deal and reached for her mug of coffee. Almost a minute ticked by while she considered the contents of the mug in her hands.
“I grew up in a little farming community over seven hundred miles northeast of here. When I was sixteen, a man came to my village. He knocked on my parents’ door late one night. Said he was just passing through and his car had broken down. He asked my parents if he might stay a few nights while repairs could be made. They let him crash in our barn.
“I fancied myself in love with him at first sight.” Her lips curled in remembrance. “He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Imagine my thrill when he returned my infatuation? It was like something out of a telenovela. He spent the next two days courting me: quoting poetry and helping me with my chores. And on the third night, he seduced me on the barn floor.”
She gave me an apologetic eye-roll. “Cliché, I know. But I wasn’t as sophisticated then as I am now.”
“Lupe, you were only sixteen.” Jesus, she hadn’t even been legal by U.S. standards.
“He said he wanted to marry me and take me back to his home in Argentina. I told him he had to ask my papai’s permission.” She closed her eyes briefly, breathing in and out. “Papai said no.” She shook her head, emitting a small, embittered chuckle. “So Nahuel told my papai we’d already consummated, and that he wasn’t leaving without me.”
Wait a minute … Nahuel? Nahuel Salvatella?
Lupe rolled her mug idly back and forth between her small hands. “Papai pulled a shotgun on him and told him to leave. And Nahuel revealed himself for the creature he was, transforming in anger into his wolf form and killing my papai.”
I clasped my hands over my mouth.
“And my mãe, too, when she wouldn’t stop screaming,” Lupe finished calmly, before taking a sip of coffee.
“Oh, my … God,” I sputtered. “Oh, my God, Lupe … oh, my God …” Lupe was Jussara’s mother? Lupe was the sixteen-year-old mother that Alcaeus had accused Nahuel of taking everything from during his enraged confrontation with Gabriel in my dream?
“I was …”—her fingernails tapped contemplatively on the rim of her coffee cup—“upset.” Her countenance remained serene, but those limpid jade eyes of hers, while dry, spoke otherwise.
“I listened as he cried and begged me to forgive him. I think I was in shock, because I barely shed a tear myself as I stared at my parents’ remains. At the blood splattered everywhere. Running down the walls. Painting the furniture. Pooling on the floor.”
She bit her bottom lip. “I remember thinking that I’d never realized human bodies held so much blood inside of them before.”
“Oh, Lupe …” There were no words.
“He confessed he’d spied me from afar weeks prior when passing through town and had been silently observing and obsessing over me ever since. He explained about his kind. Told me that we were fated soul mates. Said he would need to ‘change me’ once we were back in Argentina with his family, so that we could be together forever.”
She pursed her lips and stared up at the ceiling. I marveled at how her beautiful, sad eyes could still be dry as the first tears escaped mine over her most horrific tale.
“He pleaded with me to forgive him, saying he couldn’t live without me, so I had to forgive him.” She nodded down at her coffee. “I told him I thought I might forgive him if he gave me a little time, and I agreed to leave with him in the morning for Argentina if he buried my parents’ bodies properly that night. He did.”
She smiled without warmth. “He was so grateful for my passive compliance. I remember how relieved and quietly happy he was that he was getting his way after all. Silently celebrating how he was going to get everything he wanted … while I’d lost all I ever had.”
She paused for another drink of coffee. “He cleaned their blood off the floor. Off the walls.” Her lips twisted into a sneer. “Off of me. He washed and brushed my hair out.” Her green eyes burned with contempt. “And I just let him,” she hissed. “Let him kiss me and dress me for bed. He was so sure he had me where we wanted me that he happily imbibed some of my papai’s moonshine when I offered it to him as a nightcap.”
As her eyes met mine directly, she arched one well-shaped, haughty brow, “Stupid motherfucker.” Setting her mug down on the table, she steepled her fingers beneath her chin.
“My papai brewed a moonshine so powerful it could knock any one of these cocky werelocks on their tails,” she boasted, unbridled pride reflected in her features. “Nahuel never had a chance. I waited for him to pass out. And then I took his head off with a machete. I cut his heart out. Took all of his limbs off and set him on fire along with the house.”
She lowered her hands to the table, nodding solemnly. “Soul mate, my fucking ass.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Bethany’s fine.” Remy burst into the room, breaking our poignant bubble of intimacy. “She’s fine,” he announced with a broad grin.
“What?” I stood from the table. “What’s happened? How do you know that?”
“I was able to visit with her in her sleep just now, and she’s fine. The emotional mapping I did is still intact,” he added proudly.
“Huh? You’re saying the emotional blocks held? How did they compel her to go with them then?”
“They didn’t need to.” Remy shrugged. “They just … asked.”
“Are you kidding me? And she just went with them? To Argentina?”
Another shrug. “Apparently. According to her memories, Bethany thought it’d be wicked fun.”
“Raul always was a panty charmer,” Lupe inserted.
Ew! “Please, Lupe, just … not now.” I was sick to my stomach as it was. “She’s really okay, Remy?”
Remy nodded, but his smile slipped. “For now.” His eyes were sympathetic.
I got his meaning and didn’t press further. “Thank you. For checking on her.”
“Don’t mention it.” He looked thoughtful, like he wanted to say more.
“How’s the big guy?” Lupe asked.
Remy’s face twisted. “Not … great.”
Ever since I’d fully shifted, all of the werelocks remained blocked from accessing my mind, which was progressively turning Alcaeus into an asshole again as he was once more left to manage the darker emotions attached to and fueling Joaquin’s blood curse without my energy to help balance him.
“He’ll be back soon. He and Alex are meeting with Kaleb and the small army he brought from Salvador for tomorrow’s peace conference with the Salvatella pack.” Remy chuckled darkly at his own sarcasm, but his eyes on Lupe were pleading. “Do you think you could maybe …” He shook his head. “We’re fucked if Alex has to lead tomorrow’s negotiations.”
Lupe nodded, holding Remy’s solemn gaze as she arose from her chair and began clearing the table. “I’ll do what I can.”
The ongoing mystery of Lupe and Alcaeus’s relationship was a puzzle still begging to be solved. But my mind was already reeling too much from the revelation that Jussara was Lupe’s daughter—and that Lupe’s dismembered “mate” was a Salvatella—to process anything more tonight. Not to mention I was beyond emotionally drained and fraught with worry about the meeting with the Salvatella pack set to take place tomorrow evening.
“I got this,” I offered, snatching up my own dishes as Lupe made a grab for them. “I can clean up the kitchen.”
She made a sh
ooing motion, but smiled and didn’t do anything more to stop me as I began to help her clear the table. Remy sank into a chair and proceeded to make himself comfortable, distractedly thumbing through something on his iPhone with the obliviousness of a man who’d been waited on his whole life.
As Lupe and I made our way to the kitchen, I thanked her for the meal and for sharing her story with me. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met,” I told her truthfully as we stacked our dishes in the sink.
She rolled her eyes, dismissing my praise, but I could tell from the way she blushed that she appreciated the acknowledgement. “I am who I am. I know no other way.”
“I hope one day I can be brave like you.”
She wiped her wet hands on her apron and faced me. “You don’t need to be brave like me. You need to be brave like you.” She reached out and squeezed my elbow, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “Sometimes I see so much of your grandfather in you.”
I smiled, not really sure how I felt about being compared to my newfound grandfather. “Are you trying to tell me I look like an old Argentinian manservant with hilariously huge ears?”
“Gah! Bite your tongue!” she scolded with a laugh, abandoning my elbow to swat me on the bicep. “Those animals are rubbing off on you.” The pride in her eyes belied her reprimanding words.
“Hector was quiet and unassuming. To many he appeared weak.” She leaned in, tapping two fingers to my temple. “But he was a thinking man’s hero. I know the kind of anger he carried for what happened to his family. You think as a young man—like Raul—that Hector never considered taking advantage of the power of the blood curse he knew was always there at his disposal should he choose a different path?”
I worried my lip, considering her words.
“Hector wielded a power all his own, and it had nothing to do with any magical curse or Alpha werelock blood.” Her brow creased. “Fate can turn on us in an instant, Miles. Rob us of everything we hold dear and change the course of our lives forever. But a true hero finds a place inside that is stronger than anger and pain. Bigger than ego, fear, and thirst for revenge.” The little smile she gave me was resigned. “I’ve never had that place in me. But I know you do. It’s who you are.”
Her glassy jade eyes were earnest as her delicate, cool hands reached up to cup my face. “Don’t let anyone take that from you. No matter what happens tomorrow.”
I bobbed my head and forced a smile, despite the chill that danced down my spine. She pulled my face closer to hers and planted a kiss on my forehead. When she pulled back she told me, “Give my boys hell. Always.” She squeezed my cheeks between her palms. “Especially Alex.”
“Will do.” I giggled, even as I fought the lump forming in my throat. “What about you?” I probed hesitantly as she released me. “Aren’t you worried about tomorrow? About Jussara?”
She shook her head. “I knew this day would come. Jussara is a big girl. I know my daughter well enough to know she’ll do the right thing.”
“’Course,” I agreed, although I had no reason to guess one way or another what Jussara was inclined to do.
She headed back into the little dining room, and I followed. She collected the last serving platter from the table. Remy was where we’d left him, engrossed in texting.
The kitchen was located at the rear of Alcaeus’s home, but my new senses picked up the sounds and scents of Alex, Alcaeus, and Kai as they approached the front porch, and my heart pumped with excitement. There was suddenly nothing I wanted more than to feel Alex’s arms around me. But that thought was interrupted when Lupe abruptly smashed the elegant ceramic serving platter in her hands over the back of Remy’s unsuspecting head.
“Jesus, woman!” he erupted in shock, dropping his phone to clutch the back of his skull. My own hands flew to my mouth.
“You’d better take care of my baby, do you hear me?”
Remy jolted, frowning at her words. “You mean Jussara? Me? What in fuck? Tell it to Al and Kai. I had no part in parenting your little mongrel, and I don’t intend to start now.”
Lupe grumbled something under her breath and made the sign of the cross over her chest. “When Jussara was ten, she told me she was going to marry Remedio Bertrand.” Her eyes were on me as she spoke, but her words were clearly meant for Remy.
My brows shot to my hairline. Remedio? Was that a joke? Or Remy’s full first name?
Remy opened and closed his mouth a couple times, then shouted out a dry laugh. “That is a bold-faced lie, Lupe. I didn’t even meet Jussara until she was twelve. And she hated me from our first encounter.”
“You did meet her at ten,” Lupe insisted, whacking his head with a metal serving spatula so hard that it bent.
“Fuck! Give me that.” Jumping from his seat, Remy wrenched the damaged utensil from her hand and flung it across the room.
“You came from France to visit that year!” she shouted in his baffled face. “You just didn’t remember her when you saw her again two years later at age twelve.”
An angry muscle twitched in Remy’s jaw. “You’re making this up. I met her at twelve and she hated me.”
She lifted her chin. “Ask Alcaeus. Ask Kai. It was the first and last time Jussara ever wore a dress—to impress you.” Lupe managed to look both smug and simultaneously disgusted as she relayed this. “They remember. They were only too relieved to see her burn that dress and vow to hate you forever.”
Remy appeared genuinely unsettled for a moment. But then he rubbed the heels of his palms to his eye sockets and shrugged it off. “Whatever, Lupe. I don’t give a fuck one way or another. And whether any of it’s true or not, I can’t for the life of me imagine what you hope to gain by bringing this up now, when we have a world of more important, pressing issues to deal with tonight.”
“You will never have my blessing. Understand?” She stood on tiptoe and sneered in his face. “I want you to remember that. Never.”
Remy raised a disdainful brow and both of his hands in surrender. “Got it.” He tried to laugh it off like she was bat-shit crazy, but the smirk he gave her was stone cold. “Like I said, Jussara has never been my responsibility.”
Lupe humphed. “She will be.” There was a fire behind her eyes, daring him to contradict her bizarre promise. “And you will take good care of her, asshole,” she decreed, swinging the metal chair he’d been seated upon just moments ago off the floor and up into his groin so fast that he didn’t have a chance to block it. “Without my blessing.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Alcaeus demanded, entering the dining room with Alex and Kai. Lupe barreled straight past all three of them, muttering angrily in Portuguese.
“Lupe?” Alcaeus called after her. His gaze settled on Remy, doubled over in pain, clutching his privates. “What’d you do?”
“Fucking Christ, you think I know?” Remy defended against the blossoming promise of murder in Alcaeus’s eyes. “I just came in here to give Milena the update on Bethany. That bitch of yours is demented.”
“Watch it,” Alcaeus warned, rushing Remy.
Alex positioned himself between his brothers. “Not now!”
“She attacked me for no reason,” Remy complained. “Said some crazy-ass shit about Jussara burning her only dress when she was twelve. Like that was my fault.”
“It was your fault,” Kai interjected flatly. “She spent two years building you up in her imagination, and then you showed up. As yourself.”
“Well, fuck you very much, Kai, for failing to tell me this thirty-seven years ago when I might’ve given a shit about hurting a little girl’s feelings before she grew up into a conniving, backstabbing cunt.”
“You’re welcome,” Kai deadpanned, just as Alcaeus roared and lunged for Remy’s throat.
CHAPTER TWENTY
An hour and several werelock Springer incidents later, I found myself sitting on the front porch of Alcaeus’s home with Kai, waiting for Alex to finish the private conversation he was having inside with Remy and Ka
leb.
Kaleb had interrupted the family feud when he’d shown up to stoically announce more shitty news: Every supernatural seer, clairvoyant, and necromancer with any meaningful talent and proven ability to commune with the dead and foretell future events had mysteriously—and rather abruptly—fallen dead within the past twenty-four hours. Throughout the globe and across all werelock covens. Every single one.
I hadn’t fully grasped how superstitious the supernatural set truly were until I witnessed their reaction to this news. Even Alex seemed thrown for a curve. It was Lupe who ultimately calmed Alcaeus down, taking his hand and convincing him to accompany her upstairs to re-watch her favorite episode of Avenida Brasil.
I questioned Kai as to what it all meant. He wasn’t very forthcoming, simply saying there was no way to be sure yet, considering the limited information we had.
“But what do you think it could mean?” I pressed him. “Why would someone target seers, necromancers, and all psychic persons like that? All at once?”
“I really can’t say, Milena.”
“Can’t say because you can’t tell me? Or can’t say because you don’t know?”
He shifted position in his high-backed teak porch chair, uncrossing and recrossing his long legs.
“C’mon, I know you guys have a theory at least; otherwise everyone wouldn’t be this freaked out.”
He sighed. “Unfortunately, we have no leads or theories at this point as to who or what caused the widespread death of all of our most important, trusted seers.”
Silence. His gaze transferred to the darkening forest surrounding us. “But the fear is that this is a sign, part of the prophecy foretelling. An indication that the decade of no light is upon us.”
“How so?”
“Someone—or something—has taken away our second sight. Thrusting us into figurative darkness.”
Oh.
Fuck. When he put it that way … “That does sound bad.”