Wolf Sirens Night Fall: What Rises Must Fall (Wolf Sirens #3) (20 page)

Tisane glanced
at her through the kitchen window. Lila was making arrows by the
woodpile while Tisane floured the baking dish for a pie and balled
the pastry for the fridge. Venison & Mushroom pie was on the
menu. Lila had been oddly quiet and pouty since coming home a few
hours past sunrise, pale and clammy and half dressed in wet
clothes. If Lila’s face moved to set in some emotion, it was
because she chose to convey it.

She was
becoming a pariah and her behaviour told Tisane more about Lila’s
thoughts than she cared to say. Tisane was cooking in the kitchen
with her back to the door but she turned as Lila came in. She
didn’t speak. Eerily she trod into the hall and Tisane heard her
bedroom door close with a thud.

Something had
happened. Perhaps Sky was dead?

Tisane felt
tears prick at her eyes and what she could only identify as an
ashamed sensation that ate at her inside. She tried to block out
Lila’s emotions.

By the
afternoon, Lila came out and appeared to be ready to assemble
words. Tisane rolled out the cold pastry for dinner.

“Anything on
the missing She Wolf?” Lila asked, sipping a carton of juice
straight from the fridge.

Tisane worked
the dough. “No. She’s not listed yet.” She pressed the pastry with
her fingers. Lila pressed her teeth together. “How was your
meeting?”

“Fine, he’s
alive. They kept him away,” she admitted dolefully. “We are
approaching a fight. I’m going to get as many of them as I can.”
Lila paused. “Will you help us Tisane? We will wipe them out.” Her
sneering expression held the nasty truth for a moment.

“What if you
are killed?” Tisane uttered in opposition, her eyes filling with
moisture.

“I’ll die
trying. We play the game, right?” Lila’s brows gave a flicker of
attitude. She turned to leave the kitchen.

Tisane spoke.
“Lila.” Lila stopped midway to the door. “A word to the wise, you
have to trust that the huntress is all around you and inside you,
even though you can’t see it.” She barely kept her voice
steady.

Lila seemed to
almost nod as she considered Tisane’s advice. Tisane concentrated
on her pastry, placing it in the pie pan, but she jumped a little
as she heard the screen door slam.

Lonnie was a
hardly more than a boy when Aylish met him in the city. He was
struggling with his homosexuality. She found him one night, trying
to overdose in his apartment; his saliva had stained the blue
carpet under his pretty pock marked face as his mouth frothed. If
he hadn’t been so appealing, perhaps she would have left him,
perhaps not. Perhaps she could have called an ambulance that would
have and saved him, but she hated doctors.

He had
highlights in his cropped dyed hair and wore bracelets, one silver,
and one plaited leather. His skin was scared from acne over concave
cheeks and she had admired his feminine facial features. Whether he
was thrown out of home or he had left was a grey area and when his
latest boyfriend had left him, he’d felt utterly alone.

It was clichéd.
He knew it was, but adolescence had been too hard, ‘Coming out’ had
been too painful and once he had tasted that out-of-body euphoria
Heroin gave him, he wanted to stay there. He had cried like
everyone in emotional pain does and wished things weren’t the way
they were as his heart slowed. But nothing had changed and it
twisted him up inside.

He didn’t
remember the bite. He hardly recalled Aylish with her pretty
crinkly blonde hair - girls hadn’t interested him much, she was
just another pretty young blonde thing amongst the sea of many that
spawned into the city clubs, seemingly from nowhere at night – but
he was wrong. He came to admire her because she looked after him
with a ferocity he had hoped his lovers could have for him.

He knew, though
she needn't bother, that Aylish guarded him venomously. It wasn’t
always obvious, but she wouldn’t have hesitated to lose her ice
cool calm in a second, had he required it. But she wasn’t one to
smother. He became like her brother. He came and went as he pleased
and she was always there. On moonless nights they stayed in and
she’d touch his hair while they watched the latest rom coms and he
helped her pick what to wear. She always appreciated his eye.
Dahlia and Aylish were now his world and his family. Her love was
unconditional. He taught her what real love was. If he had been
straight, he would have loved her and so in his own way, he did.
She was someone he could rely on.

So it was no
less than heart breaking to find the apartment empty. He walked
from room to room shell shocked. In disbelief, he noticed a few of
Aylish’s things gone first, then Dahlia’s. Drawers where only half
empty, the suitcase gone from the top of the wardrobe, her
favourite shoes, the clothes from the laundry, everything except
his things. The stuffy apartment started to make him nauseous: the
food still in the refrigerator, his toothbrush and the D.V.D’s
waiting to be returned to the store. But the girls, his pack
sisters - vanished – without a word – or a note to say where they
had gone. The apartment would have been eerily quiet had the sound
of the neighbour’s television not been buzzing through the
wall.

They didn’t
call when they should have. He knew them better; at least, he
thought he did. They were a team, but here he was, abandoned.

Blair had been
leaving in the morning when he spotted it. The white corpse,
slumped, face down in the grass by the wall, her head grotesquely
twisted. Stark against the deep green grass. Blair approached the
deathly pale dirt-crusted corpse. There were what appeared to be
two bullet wounds in her buttock. When he carefully rolled her his
heart skipped a beat and he swallowed dry; there was a hideous
wound slashed in her naked chest. He had to keep from turning away.
His marble face crumpled into a frown.

Wiry red hair
covered half of her face. A knife had carved a pattern above the
sinister wound over her heart. More disturbing still to Blair, was
that it looked to be deliberately inflicted, post mortem. He stood
back. Perhaps the huntress wasn’t as harmless as he had thought.
The unsettling sight had shaken him and strangely the scavenger in
him hungered for it as he smacked his lips. He called Paws, Narine
and Genna. Worse yet, they didn’t know who the woman was,
either.

Tisane and I
had agreed to cast a dark spell under the moon. It was time.

“Goddess of
Mir, Queen of Night, confound mine enemies; prick Paws with
compunction, baffle him with blood!” Tisane unscrewed the defrosted
jar and poured the collected stag blood on the fire.

“Queen of
Night, fair Persephone, confound mine enemies; open Paws’ eyes so
that he may do my bidding.” She had me spit into the fire on cue. I
wiped my chin. “Artemis, brave huntress, confound mine enemies; let
the arrow find its mark.” We blew upon the fire. “Aphrodite, ruler
of hearts, confound mine enemies; let justice rain down from
heaven.” I poured a jar of rain water and blood over the flames,
smoke drifted up as the fire sizzled out. “Take the head from mine
enemies, let his power rot in the earth, goodness grow from its
death, as we place a tree. So mote it be,” Tisane canted. We placed
the rotten stag head in the hole, covered it with dirt, and planted
the sprouted oak seedling over it, under a full silver moon.

This was a
totally binding spell, dark magic. Tisane told me the effects would
come back at me nine fold.

In the morning
we met in town. Tarah was bustling with weekend traffic. I
immediately knew what he was. As I looked at him through the
binoculars I thought I had remembered their luminescent skin, but
in reality, in the light of day, it was like the glow of a young
child, a radiance only the born again can emit. Tisane called it an
aura and judging by C.J’s open mouth gaze I wasn’t the only one who
saw it. I wasn’t sure if humans saw what we did though.

She
unnecessarily pointed him out, and when I caught a glimpse under
his police cap, the light that reflected from his lively eyes was
unmistakable, even from our distance. Constable Blair Whitlock.
Blair’s familiar glowing crystal gaze made me gasp for the memory
of which it provoked.

I was decked
out in holiday wear, being that it was summer no one batted an
eyelid at strangers in Tarah, and just in case I kept my sunglasses
firmly on and my forearm covered. I peered through the binoculars;
the Cult had been tactical in their choice. His creation was a
clear strategic attack on the town, a planned risk well worth the
taking. Because the creation of more of their kind could draw more
hunters like me.

His face alone
could have stopped traffic with its soft boyish charm and manly
features; mixed with the immortal elixir, he shone. With his
constable badge and deep navy blue uniform, his influence over the
community was insurance for the Cult.

We carefully
followed his car to a house, and from our vantage point, I could
see it was a quaint place, kept too neat, with trimmed lawns. Once
I was sure that it was his, we disappeared. After scouting, C.J and
I left for the forest to collect something we needed.

That night the
car was my aim. It was a Chrysler Charger, sun burnt orange, with
mint condition original interior, tinted windows – he was proud of
it. And tonight, it was parked in the driveway.

I gently pushed
two files about and twisted the internal parts of the lock. After
about three attempts, I was about to give up when the button
released and we popped open the driver’s side car door. You could
discover how to do anything online. If it hadn’t worked we were
planning to leave our gift on the windshield.

I pulled out
the rotten deer head, brushing away flies from its grey fur and sat
it slumped in the immaculate front seat. Caroline’s kill now
defaced Blair’s pride and joy. I snatched the lemon scented tree
off the rear vision mirror. I opened the glove box and saw he kept
a spare pair of sunglasses, Rayban style things, and I put them on
the severed head, they balanced and the effect was mildly
humourous.

I carefully
closed the door and C.J snuffled a laugh. Using the same file I
marked a cross over the bonnet and drew a heart over it, a crescent
and four lines – identical to the symbol etched in the woman’s body
that I had dumped at the compound.

Andy wasn’t his
first choice. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He
had, in fact, been on his way home from a 'Dungeons of Tyranny'
party with his laptop when Lonnie had appeared; first on one side
of the street, then on the other.

Lonnie thought
he might kill him. He hadn’t consciously tried to prevent the boy’s
death and it had been harder getting him home than he had
anticipated after the bite was inflicted. Somewhere along the walk
home his victim had roused and Lonnie had smacked him in the head
until he flailed and collapsed again. After nervously looking
about, Lonnie then slung the limp young man over his shoulder and
carried his defeated prey home like an urban carcass, along the
footpath in the early hours of the morning.

He had chosen
him because Andy was thin and weak. A games and computer nerd,
Lonnie wasn’t built enough to handle a large guy. Anderson was the
boy’s name. He had light blonde caramel hair that matched his face
and eyebrows, so Lonnie thought he seemed all one colour.

He waited for
the boy to wake; he had been doing a lot of that lately, waiting.
He had heard and seen nothing of his sisters; it was as though they
had just vanished. Lonnie’s mind came up with endless scenarios
about why they had gone and finally, he had decided he couldn’t
stand the quiet any longer.

What was to
stop him creating another for company? He knew if Aylish were here,
she would have stopped him. He almost dared to believe that the act
of attempting it would somehow bring her back. But here he was with
the fevering teenager on his lounge room floor, bored still, but
anxious also. If his infected victim died, what would he do with
the body? Was it even possible to create another like them? He had
never cared to ask Aylish or even Dahlia how it was done, they
would have read into his intentions something more than just him
wanting to know.

He remembered
something Dahlia had said one evening in the flat to Aylish. There
was always more tension between the girls than between him and them
and Lonnie knew it was because of a shared history. It had always
seemed to him they had run from somewhere and Aylish was happier
about it than Dahlia. Dahlia had been thrilled like a child allowed
a pet when he had awoken in the flat. He awoke to the beautiful
Bollywood woman looking into his face. She was the first to take
him by the hand and show him things, through his new wolf eyes. She
recalled the feeling well herself of being new born, but it was
Aylish that he ultimately gravitated to when Dahlia’s shallow
interest faded.

Aylish was
quieter, a trait often taken as standoffishness, but it was just
reserve. When Lonnie had time to know her, he loved her. Though
Aylish appeared not to be thinking, she thought a lot. Aylish was
mysterious and had a temperament made from heartache. Maybe he saw
it because she was much like him, wounded.

Aylish was an
amazing sight, with her naturally blonde crimped hair worn long.
Her body was pale and fine. Even her nose was like a sculpted
doll’s nose with a point at the tip, her ice blue eyes were like
slits that matched her fine cheek bones. Everything about her was
cold, except her heart. She hadn’t wanted anything from him, she
hadn’t cared he was gay. In fact, she accepted him and defended him
on more than one occasion, even to Dahlia, much to her frustration.
He now recalled the day a long while ago that he had heard Dahlia
strike at Aylish over him.