But she couldn’t help but remember how desperate and furious Papá had sounded when he’d ordered Alejandro: “Get clear of this, don’t fight, lead those bastards off of us, as many as you can get to follow you. Come back if you can, find your brother and sister, take them north. Dimilioc’s the only chance you’ll have, understand me? You’ll have to throw the dice. Grayson Lanning has got to be better than old Thos, he could hardly be worse, and Toland is a name he’ll recognize.”
Alejandro said only, “He told me Dimilioc would remember his name. He said you might take us in.”
“Is that what your father told you?” Grayson was silent for a moment. He did not seem to expect a response, but at length went on, quietly, his deep voice dropping into a still lower register, “It’s been, what? Twenty years, since your father quarreled with Vonhausel and then, like a lunatic, with Thos Korte. At least twenty years. I find it interesting that your father, though exiled from Dimilioc, nevertheless found himself a Pure woman. That he even married her. I find it incredible that he lived long enough to have children your age and yet never once brought himself to our attention.”
Alejandro apparently could think of no response to make to this. Natividad certainly couldn’t. Not even Miguel seemed to have anything to say.
“And now you are here. Possibly with Malvern Vonhausel snapping at your heels. Well. And you think Dimilioc should lay claim to your father’s old quarrel?”
Here it was, this moment, which held either life or death, which held their futures and all their lives. Natividad wished she could answer. Or Miguel, who could always find words that were smooth and polite and persuasive. But the Dimilioc Master would expect Alejandro to answer before his younger human brother or Pure sister.
So it was Alejandro who took a breath, met Grayson’s eyes, and answered, “Dimilioc hunts down descontrolados black dogs and sends them into the fell dark; Dimilioc clears moon-bound shifters out of the sunlit world and protects the Pure. Twenty years ago, Vonhausel did not dare challenge Dimilioc. Now the war is done, if there still exists any civilized House of black wolves he will not dare challenge, it is this one. So, I brought my sister here. Will you not take her in?”
The Dimilioc Master did not answer. He regarded Alejandro with narrow-eyed intensity.
Alejandro lowered his gaze, but from the angle of his head, Natividad knew he continued to watch Grayson covertly. He said suddenly, “Was the cost of the war with the vampires so high?” Alejandro looked from man to man on the porch: Grayson and Harrison and Ethan Lanning; Zachariah and Ezekiel Korte. “Is this all your strength?”
Grayson said nothing.
“You are weak,” Alejandro said harshly. “Dimilioc is weak. All the callejeros were hiding before, they were quiet, but now why should they hide their shadows? Never mind Vonhausel: if even ordinary stray black dogs look north now, who is here to stop them?”
“I expect we’d manage somehow,” murmured Ezekiel, cool and mocking and totally unimpressed.
“Oh, yes, will you? Should black dogs fear the Dimilioc verdugo?” Alejandro asked him. “The Dimilioc executioner, who can find you anywhere and will step silently out of the night to tear out your heart – every black dog fears the verdugo! But even the executioner himself cannot fight ten black dogs at once… or twenty… or fifty.”
“You might be surprised,” said Ezekiel, smiling a little.
Alejandro shook his head. “It’s fear that defended Dimilioc. It was fear of you that kept the callejeros quiet in the world. But now Gehorsam is gone from Germany, and nearly all the Lumondiere wolves dead in France, so we hear, and who knows about the Dacha? Or the cartels in Syria and Saudi Arabia; not that they are a loss, but they were strong and now they are gone. If not even Dimilioc remains strong enough to make all the norteamericano black dogs afraid, then the callejeros will hunt the Pure, and never mind what Malvern Vonhausel will do! Any black dog with strength enough to force another to follow him will come to pull you down. If you have only five wolves to meet them, they will do it–”
Grayson gave Alejandro a burning look, and Alejandro stopped. The Dimilioc Master said, his tone harsh, “I assure you, pup, black dogs everywhere are still wise to fear Dimilioc.”
Alejandro lowered his eyes, but Miguel, less impressed by black dog aggression, said, “If Dimilioc can’t hold against stray black dogs, that would be… Look, you have to hold. If Dimilioc was gone, even the weakest of the black dogs would hunt as they please. There would be another war, this one between black dogs and humans, and no one would win that one either, but black dogs would lose it.”