Hunter's Trail

I looked at Kirsten, whose frown matched Will’s. That explained why the witch queen of LA was here. “What do you mean, ‘technically’?” Jesse asked.

“The Luparii are witches the way Hitler was German,” Kirsten said stiffly. She held a hand up to Will to indicate that she’d take over, and he nodded. “They are a family, a very old French family. There are stories about them going back as far as the Middle Ages.”

I blinked in surprise. Unlike vampires or werewolves, witches pass their magic on hereditarily, not through infection. I knew that there were old witch families, but I’d only heard of, like, Mayflower-old, not medieval. “Back then, they were called the Gagnons,” Kirsten continued. She did the full French pronunciation of the name in a careless, natural way that I envied. “As you know, different witches are skilled differently.”

“Like how Runa finds things,” Jesse said quietly, and Kirsten nodded.

“Different families sometimes pass down the same . . . specialties.” She bit her lip. “Our history suggests that the Gagnons had a gift for . . . twisting things. Changing the purpose of things, usually to something dark and cruel.”

“Example?” I asked. I was feeling very attentive. If it meant I got to sit down and no one was trying to smack me, Kirsten could lecture all day, as far I was concerned.

She swiveled her hand idly in the air, her eyes searching the air above my head for an example. “Like . . . farmers who competed with the Gagnons would suddenly discover all of their crops were poisonous. I don’t mean that the crops were poisoned, I mean they became toxic. Or a young woman who rejected one of the Gagnon men would have miscarriage after miscarriage, and the babies would be born . . . disfigured.” Kirsten shuddered. “Anyway, the Gagnons caused a lot of deaths. Eventually even Charlemagne noticed. Do you . . .” She raised her eyebrows at me, and I rolled my eyes back.

“Yes, I know who Charlemagne is. My father taught history.”

Kirsten nodded and continued. “Well, in the ninth century Charlemagne figured there was no point in arresting the Gagnons. There was never any proof, and anyway every kind of law enforcement that went after them simply disappeared. So instead, he gave them a job.”

“Come again?” I asked, confused.

Kirsten sighed. “It was a tactic. If your two-year-old is about to throw a tantrum, you ask him to help you water the flowers or bake some cookies.”

“I’m guessing the Gagnons aren’t known for their amazing snickerdoodles,” Jesse guessed. I flashed him a grin.

“No,” Kirsten answered, her expression soured. “Charlemagne gave them the office of the Luparii, the official wolf hunters for the crown.”

Will’s lips curled back with rage. “He paid them a reward for each dead wolf.”

“The jaws,” I said softly, putting it together. “They used the jaws to prove the kill.”

“Yes,” Kirsten confirmed. “It was easier to drag around a bag of jaws”—she wrinkled her nose distastefully—“than the complete carcasses.”

“Did it work?” Jesse asked.

“Oh, yes,” Will said darkly, “it worked. The Luparii grew rich slaughtering wolves for the crown. They excelled at it.” He stood up and began to pace the length of the room restlessly again. The pacing took him in and out of my radius with each loop, which was harmlessly distracting, like when a fly keeps dive-bombing your head. I wasn’t about to ask him to stop, though.

“And this is regular wolves?” I asked hesitantly. “I mean, not werewolves?”

“Right.” Kirsten nodded. She glanced furtively at Will. “They used their magic occasionally, but . . . mmm . . . well, they mostly used ‘regular’ methods to hunt wolves: poisoned meat, packs of hunting dogs, that kind of thing. It was a point of pride for them that they could do it without magic. In all fairness,” she added, with an apologetic glance at Will, “wolves were a genuine threat to human settlements at the time, and the Gagnons felt that they were performing a public service. A lucrative one.”

Will turned to face us, and I saw the bones in his jaw flex with anger. “Wolves were hated then,” he snapped. “They were the rabid baby-eating monsters of fairy tales.”

“Many of which were based on werewolves,” Dashiell pointed out conversationally, an unfathomable expression on his face. Apparently the vampire was still feeling hostile.

Will snarled back, a human sound in his currently human throat, but Dashiell didn’t rise to the bait. I almost opened my mouth to intervene, but decided I’d rather they were mad at each other than at me.

“Anyway,” Kirsten said hurriedly, “this went on for centuries. The last name changed from Gagnon to something else, and changed again, but the family line continued killing wolves. In the eighteenth century, though, the crown could no longer afford to finance the office of the Luparii.”

“So they had to find something else to kill,” Will growled.

“They started hunting werewolves?” I guessed, and Will nodded grimly. “Just for fun, or what?”

“By then they were true believers,” Kirsten said softly. “They thought it was their family’s calling, the same way some families turn out many generations of teachers or policemen. They began to travel. And werewolves began to die.”

“People must have noticed,” Jesse protested. “I mean, the werewolves were people most of the time. People were disappearing.”