11
At first Natividad was so glad to see the Dimilioc wolves returning to the house, so happy to see Alejandro safe among them, that she did not think too much about the buses or what they meant. Then Miguel shook his head and said, “So, that’s not good.”
Natividad looked at her twin in surprise. “Qué?” Then she thought again about the buses and said in a smaller voice, “Oh.”
“How many people do you guess they could cram onto those buses?”
Not very many, Natividad thought. She tried to count bus seats in her mind’s eye, tried to guess how many people might be able to stand in the aisle. How many people could you cram onto a bus in an emergency? Fifty? More? She was pretty sure the answer wasn’t everybody in Lewis.
Well, maybe the rest of the townspeople were OK, they just hadn’t come on those buses, they were still sheltering in the church or someplace else in town. Except if that was right, why the buses at all? Had Grayson decided to bring a lot of humans to Dimilioc for some reason of his own? But those buses looked really crowded… and the Dimilioc wolves escorting them looked malísimo. They looked to Natividad like they had been defeated. They looked like… well, like refugees. And… She counted twice, then again. “I think, only five Dimilioc wolves,” she said, tentatively. Including ‘Jandro, gracias a Dios.
“Seven, counting Thad, thank God,” said DeAnn. “See your daddy?” she added to her son, pointing, and little Conway leaned forward, a breath away from shifting to his black dog form and leaping down off the balcony to run out and meet his father. DeAnn took a firmer hold on his belt, warning the boy, “Don’t you dare!” Then the Pure woman glanced at Natividad and jabbed a finger to indicate the front of the little convoy. “Grayson’s young bastard of an executioner’s up on the roof of that last bus, see? And there’s a black wolf behind the first bus, did you see that one? That makes it seven altogether.”
Natividad hadn’t spotted Ezekiel until DeAnn pointed him out, maybe because she just hadn’t expected to see him riding up on the roof of a bus. She tried to think of any reason the Dimilioc executioner would be riding instead of running. The explanations that came to mind were all bad. She also tried to think of reasons why only seven out of ten Dimilioc wolves would be escorting those buses. Maybe Grayson had sent the others on some kind of errand. She couldn’t see Zachariah or Harrison. It made sense for Grayson to send one or both of his strongest wolves and closest allies on some important errand. But the cold running through her bones was fear. She just did not believe any so-innocent explanation for the absence of black wolves who should have been there.
She said with stiff reluctance, “I think they lost. I think Vonhausel won. I guess… I guess that means he broke through my mandala.” She paused, then added painfully, “It’s my fault. I made them a flawed mandala and it didn’t hold…”
Miguel shook his head, but he didn’t disagree because how could either of them know what had happened? He didn’t say anything. What was there to say?
DeAnn, leaning her hip on the balcony railing, swung the rifle Miguel had given her to a more comfortable position over her shoulder, gave her son a warning glare in case he took this for permission to slip off the balcony, and said, clinically, “Mandalas are good, strong protection. Stronger than plain circles, more resistant to demonic influence than helices. That’s what my mama taught me. Your mama teach you the same?”
Natividad nodded. She felt numb. She felt sick.
“And you anchored your mandala with a church in the middle and a cross at each cardinal point, yeah? That right?” DeAnn stared out over the buses as though she might be able to see all the way through the winter forest to Lewis. “Your mama ever tell you how a vampire could take down a protective mandala?”
“Sí,” said Natividad, but so softly she wasn’t sure the other woman would hear. She hadn’t thought of that possibility. She would almost rather… She would rather believe it was her flawed mandala that had been at fault. But she knew what DeAnn meant. She whispered, “Yes. Yes, she told me.”
DeAnn nodded without looking at Natividad. “I guess a sister died out there today.”
Natividad, her hands closed tightly on the balcony railing, did not answer. Below, the buses growled and slid as they changed gears and headed across the open ground toward the Dimilioc house.
“No hay señas de los enemigos perros negros,” Miguel said. But he did not seem very happy about this. He snapped the safety back on his rifle, frowning.