Wolf Sirens Night Fall: What Rises Must Fall (Wolf Sirens #3) (21 page)

“In Shade he’d
be dead for that,” Dahlia spat at her. He recognised that her very
slight Indian accent was more pronounced when she was angry.

“That’s why we
don’t live there anymore,” Aylish had said so coolly it cut the
air.

“Don’t you dare
say that! We both know why you made us leave,” Dahlia answered
thickly.

There was an
audible silence and then Aylish had said quietly, “Dahlia, I’ll
pretend you didn’t just say that.” He made out the sound of her
unsteady breath. “Times have changed, even in Shade.”

“But not enough
time has passed so that we can move back?” There was a need written
on Dahlia’s face, in her iridescent blue eyes. A question.

“That will
always be the same.” Then Aylish added as Dahlia stepped away, “And
you’re right, it wouldn’t be safe for him there.”

“Just like it
wasn’t safe for Haris and -”

“Shut up,”
snapped Aylish, but there was a crack in her voice, her breath
becoming more shallow as she defended the lost. He thought he heard
her heart beating. He wondered what had happened in the past.

“Or Maxie, or
Hayden,” Dahlia taunted.

“Be quiet
Dahlia.” Aylish’s voice hissed with a broken harshness Lonnie had
never heard and he was to remember it long after.

Dahlia had
snuck about for days, maybe a week or two after that fight in the
hallway, outside their bedrooms. He had heard it all from the
lounge, but neither of the girls ever said anything about it; he
was smart enough not to press Aylish’s wounds.

Shade? Shade,
he knew that name. It had to be a town or a place; he grabbed his
phone and Googled it. Sure enough, there it was, Shade Valley, and
it was only three hours’ drive towards the coast, down the
mountains. He glanced at the sweaty body on the carpet and suddenly
hated that he now had to baby sit a kid.

Lonnie had
inadvertently trapped himself in the stuffy flat possibly for days.
After a time, he considered ridding himself of the liability with
another bite - it would be messy, but quick. Or was it better to
dump him? At his house or at a hospital?

Aylish would
kill him if he exposed their kind. Why hadn’t he thought of Shade
before? There was no telling if they’d be there, yet somehow he
knew they would, his instincts whispered. He hoped for their
return.

He stared at
the boy’s back rising and falling slowly, and wished he would just
expire. But even though he thought about it, he couldn’t leave him.
So he ended up waiting, telling himself maybe they would come back
anyway while he waited and then he was frightened to think of
Aylish’s reaction when they spied his mortifying mistake. Lonnie
knew he needed time to let the boy change and adapt. Only then
could he think about showing his experiment to Aylish. He needed at
least a few days before attempting to put him in the car, and it
would have to be on a moonless night.

He felt a wave
of emotion, a guilty feeling, ashamed that he had been so weak.
When the girls returned they would know he was irresponsible and he
would be embarrassed. But maybe Dahlia would agree to help the boy,
the way she had taken Lonnie under her wing at first. He rubbed his
face, struggling with the thoughts of what action to take, but he
decided to wait it out. He had no choice but to ride it out for a
week or two, get this newborn under some vague control when the
moon had passed. If he still hadn’t heard anything then he would go
to Shade and look for them with the newly turned boy. Until then,
he was left babysitting his own mistake, and maybe glad of it,
relieved to have the company, if he was never to see them
again.

That’s when he
heard a knock at the door. An officer stood looking pensive. Lonnie
swallowed. The police had come already. He was about to make a
panicked run for it when the man at the door knocked again and
called “I know Aylish and Dahlia.” After peeking at the man again
through spy hole he recognized his kind and opened the door. It
took another twenty minutes before he revealed the fevering Andy.
Though the Police constable simply plied him orally with a drug
from his pocket so easily that Lonnie wondered if it was also meant
for him, if he had have been less complaint. Lonnie packed a few
things and they carried Andy to the police car and headed for
Shade.

Hours later
Lonnie and Paws stood awkwardly, side by side, in the hallway
looking over the black and white photos on the walls of the
compound house. Paws was delighted that he had taken the initiative
and created another wolf. Lonnie sipped his cold beer, though he
hated the taste. The pictures showed a lot of smiling faces. There
was a life they had made here. Lonnie was amazed at the legacy and
the history that he was now seemingly part of.

“Many of us
have died. Not due to hunters, though, as you might think.” It
seemed the impressed Paws was Lonnie’s official welcoming party.
“Maxie and her brother were too young,” he sighed and smiled a
little as he tapped another photograph. “Martha and Celeste with
Agnes and Greta – that’s me.” A longhaired man in the background of
the sepia photograph was laughing. “This is Bert, Christian - the
oldest two, and Patrick.”

“How did they…”
he swallowed, “end it?”

Paws looked at
the photo. “They didn’t.” He didn’t look at Lonnie and tapped the
glass over the photograph of the men. “They found ways.” He seemed
to recall. “Martha drowned, Celeste sat on the Princess Highway -
the kids, they were different.” His face gave away a twinge.
“Tyler’s escaped a few scrapes himself.”

Lonnie caught
his eye, both terrified and intrigued to know the truth and Paws
was fishing for it.

Paws looked at
him with his dancing eyes. “They were too young,” he explained.
“Their mother ate them. Precious little things, didn’t know what
happened. It was quite a mess, very regrettable.” He shook his
head. Lonnie had the distinct feeling not much shocked and saddened
him. He wasn’t sure how to take this guy since arriving, so he went
along with it. “Were they… turned?”

“No. Who knows
what would have happened had they lived or become infected –
survived as it were. We don’t turn children, it’s a rule. They die
from the venom. Hers were born satyrs. It’s against our laws.” He
seemed incredulous but reminiscent. “It’s a sequelae, a secondary
genetic condition caused by the venom...unsightly.”

“When you say
their mother—?”

“Oh, Aylish,”
he said with slight surprise, as though Lonnie should have known.
He hid the stab of clarity of the realization, because he sensed
Paws knew he had shocked him, and that Paws was pleased about
it.

“Oh…” Lonnie
trailed. Aylish was a mother with no children.

Paws slapped
him on the back and had he been more present in that moment perhaps
it would have stung, but all Lonnie could think of was Aylish, and
he understood her now in a way he had not. Lonnie thought he knew
her, even better than Dahlia, but know he realized he knew nothing.
And then he was angry that she hadn’t told him. It changed
everything. She wasn’t a saint or a mother, she was no better than
the others and yet she acted so high and mighty. He had been a
fool. Had she used him as some surrogate child? Had part of her
pretended he was her son? It made him sick to the stomach. She was
no better than the rest of them; she had only accepted him because
inside she knew she was uglier, that her past was messier. She was
dirtier than him, what she had done was so wrong, so disgusting it
beggared belief.

“Shouldn’t she
be locked up for that?”

“Early signs of
madness. She went to an asylum, she had no will to escape…we had to
pry her out. Being under surveillance may have caused us many more
issues.”

“Why didn’t she
end it then, like the others?”

“Who knows?
Time heals all wounds I suppose. No, she vowed to take me out one
night herself, and she even tried it. In her twisted way she blames
me for letting the police take her,” he sighed.

“Why?” Lonnie
questioned, intrigued. “Is that why she lived away?”

“Yes. I’ll
admit I was partly to blame for that.” He cleared his throat. “But
I never meant for her to be gone so long. She should know I had
forgiven her a long, long time ago. We are family.”

“She doesn’t
feel that way.”

“Everyone needs
a family.”

He didn’t
understand Lonnie’s meaning.

“Is that why
she took Dahlia?”

“Dahlia hoped
there was a cure; she was innocent so she agreed to run away with
her, and they had their fun of course. No, it’s not true, we let
her go if I recall correctly. In fact I created Dahlia for the
purpose of soothing Aylish. She was volatile and she was
recognizable from the news broadcasts. She would have risked the
pack’s safety, though she was meant to come back much sooner.”

“That’s why
we’re here now?”

“You were a
surprise, a good one.” He thumped Lonnie’s back again. “We needed
more males,” he said happily. Lonnie knew he had given Paws the
wrong impression, it was desperation and naivety, not gumption that
had caused him to turn another human.

Lonnie raised
his brows. “Males?”

“Yes, we are
outnumbered my boy, by the women.”

Lonnie looked
over the sepia pictures. “So we are not outnumbered now, girls to
boys?”

“Actually we
still should be,” he pointed to the woman in the picture with a
man. It was coloured and blurred. “Greta and Agnes are with the
boys.” He pointed at the picture. “There may still be one for you?”
He smiled at Lonnie, who hid a wince because he sounded like
Lonnie’s father then. There were others captured, standing by old
cars.

“So these
people are alive?” Lonnie gestured to the old photos.

“Yes,” he said
confidently, and then admitted, “Well, I can’t be sure.”

This reminded
him of a question. “Who was the father of Aylish’s children?”
Lonnie half expected him to be pictured here.

“Oh some shmuck
who is long gone, that life is long gone,” he said with
reminiscence unsuited to the morbidity of the topic. But the way he
brushed it aside made Lonnie suspicious, the lack of detail. And he
wondered why he lied. He knew Aylish wouldn’t have felt that this
man was so unimportant. Lonnie thought maybe he was the father.

“Was it easy,
watching everyone die?” Lonnie uttered straight at him.

“We have a
saying here - the more the merrier - when they leave, it better be
for good.”

Lonnie frowned,
not sure if he understood his answer, there was a sinister edge to
everything Paws said. He meant to intimidate him.

“And how old
are they?” Lonnie looked at the photograph of the old ones.

“Oh most of
them are from the early 1930’s and 60’s.”

“But I thought
we were immortal? I thought we were sterile?”

“We are.”

“Then how did
she have children...” Lonnie knew then that maybe she had bitten
them.

Paws smiled a
broad smile, “Satyrs are what we call children by the hunter.”

He threw an arm
around Lonnie. “A male wolf can impregnate a human woman and
hunters and wolves seem to be able to procreate, but the off spring
are...unnatural.” He looked more serious as he continued, “It is of
coarse illegal.”

There was a
reason he was pack leader, he had an ego the size of Brown
Mountain. He fucked with everyone, and no one fucked with him. He
was volatile, and everyone here obeyed him. If they did something
wrong, this guy would snap. This charismatic guy held it all in.
Lonnie guessed where it came out; like his dad he had a coward’s
ego. His anger came out at home, behind closed doors.

Aylish was the
only one who wasn’t scared of him. What seethed below the surface?
Lonnie knew with an unsettling certainty they were all inmates.

“Nothing is
definite my boy, we are immortal not indestructible.” He chuckled,
once again patting Lonnie on the shoulder. He didn’t believe for a
second Aylish had killed her children.

Sam knew they
were there, but they had become like the shade in the trees and as
silent as the leaves, they were ghosts. The atmosphere changed. She
listened intently, her ears pricked, ready to track the slightest
rustle. Her eyes flickering back and forth in search of the
strangers. She wouldn’t have admitted it, but she was frightened.
They were venom relatives of sorts, and the thought intrigued her.
When she heard their breath as they approached, she wondered if she
had heard it before, but thought it was her own panting as she
climbed higher into the mountains of the national park.

She was in
their territory and they could be hostile. Bianca was back-up in
case they attacked. Although Sam had been fearless of the
expedition, she now realized in the cool of the undergrowth as her
suspense escalated, they may well be far less human and so far wolf
and carnivorous. This pack had been and remained wolf for many
years. They could attack.

Her ears
pricked; she waited for more definable sounds from the surrounds.
The howls on the wind last night had led them here, tracking the
long lost wolves from the original pack. Paws hadn’t come himself
because of bad blood and disagreements, and now she thought he was
a coward to send her and her less capable Omega, Bianca. He and
Narine needed them now, these old ones. She knew their faces from
the photos, but not their scents and not their wolf bodies. To
them, she was a stranger. She thought for a moment that Sky’s
talent may have come in handy here, and then she was startled to
hear the sound of a stick breaking behind her but she saw it was
just Bianca.

Sam felt relief
and shook her skin until her deformed figure became human once
more, as though she was a seed released from a pod on the forest
floor. Her perspective changed and in her human form everything was
quieter than it had seemed.