Wolf Sirens Night Fall: What Rises Must Fall (Wolf Sirens #3) (24 page)

“Hi, Lila.” She
smiled. I felt a respect for her as I wished every human could have
accepted the supernatural world as gracefully as she did. I was
glad to see her.

“Hey, Gin.” I
smiled back genuinely. I looked at Jack and Angele as Jackson
mumbled a, “Hi.” I turned back to see it dawn on Giny that the girl
next to him was perhaps none other than the long time missing
person Angie Bekert, Tealy and Monica’s old best friend who had
vanished the year before last. Only Giny could see past the
seraphic smoke screen to the human she used to be. I decided to
help her out as she looked a little awkward. Gin was good enough to
come to this meeting, so I wasn’t going to wait for her to say it
and maybe she was too shy to ask.

I introduced
them. “Gin, this is Angele.”

“Oh. Hello,”
she said politely.

“She was Angie,
the missing girl from school.” I wasn’t sure if the word was, was
right? But no one corrected me.

“Oh,” she said
again, and I felt a painful awkwardness. I shifted on my feet. The
sooner we got into this meeting, the better.

I’m not sure if
she knew what to make of it. I guessed apart from her jealousy she
may have been a little pissed. Angie - now Angele, was turned
before Giny - after all her hard work with the pack, that was still
a gift Gin had been denied.

“Hi,” said
Angele. I knew Giny could have said a thousand emotionally charged
things, but instead she just nodded quietly the way Sam would have
expected her to, and I felt a little sorry for her. I wished she’d
grow some balls. I recalled Lily had died for her jealousy and I
pushed it away. I guess Giny had her purpose as she was. Giny was
predictable. Even as Angele fawned over Jackson before her, it was
hard to tell if it really did bother her. Perhaps I was wrong.

“Hi, Cres,” she
said as though they had been friends, and although Cres had been
standing there the whole time. Angele snuggled closer to Jackson on
the velveteen couch and Gin pretended not to notice, though I saw a
twinge.

The plan was to
fight on the one night of a Crescent moon when hunters were at
their strongest and wolves at their least volatile. We needed to
sort out details and we needed to strike soon. “What’s the plan,
L?” Reid spoke across the room. He leant on the door jamb.

We all looked
at him, his muscular arms were crossed. I wondered how much he knew
about the Cult pack.

It seemed it
was up to me to lead them. This would not be without its
difficulties. I was not a natural leader and we were a motley crew.
I was asking Reid to kill his own kind - not to mention Angele who
couldn’t be trusted; Cres was a half breed, Giny was just a weak
human and Jackson was doing his best to be difficult. But I had no
control over the circumstances.

“We are going
to strike at night.” My words came out strongly. I took in each of
their expressions in, satisfied that they appeared to be listening.
“During the next Crescent moon – it gives us enough light to see
the other wolves, enough strength, and our enemies won’t be at
their strongest. It will have to be a surprise attack. We have to
strategize our moves and have an escape plan,” I said. I wanted to
destroy the Cult.

“Why should we
help?” Jackson retorted.

I turned my
face to his. “Because Paws is mad. The way he is going, you will
all be exposed. This Cult of his is dangerous for your kind.”

“How?” he
argued. I narrowed my eyes. Jackson was being deliberately
argumentative.

I suppressed
the urge to tell him to F - off. Truth was, I couldn’t afford to
lose him, so I argued my case. “He’s gone public and people will
start to notice when you don’t age. I estimate five - ten years
tops and the charade will be over. He already draws too much
attention. He is in the papers. He is a liability to you, a danger.
He needs to go down.” I hadn’t said it, but I imagined the world’s
attention could turn on us. The army might get involved. They
wouldn’t be as kind as us. But I saved the thought because it
seemed outlandish, even to me.

“Then why not
just take him out?” Jackson replied.

“His followers
are devout. The Cult has to be dismantled or others will take his
place.”

“Like Narine,”
Cres offered in a supportive manner.

I took a
breath. “So if you have no objections, we need to discuss
details.”

They all looked
back at me carefully, soundlessly. Jackson’s lips were parted and
he waited for me to continue, watching me from under his sandy
fringe. I glanced at Cres who shrugged. “Fine. We attack on their
turf, it’s secluded. If we are all in, then basically the plan is
to strike, not only under cover of night but during the rain – a
storm.”

“So how are you
going to plan that?” Jackson’s face screwed.

“Trust me, I
just can.” My tone was clipped.

“Trust?”
Jackson scoffed.

I swallowed and
tried to ignore him. But I was sure some strain showed on my
face.

“Jack,” warned
Reid sternly. Evidently Jackson’s attitude was wearing thin, even
with Reid.

“Yes, trust.” I
glared back at him with my head cocked to the side. “We have to be
a team.” I waited. It seemed Jackson was out of smart remarks.
“Cres can see into the future.”

“Can she see
rain?” he spoke up again.

“Can you?” Cres
spat.

I raised my
voice. “I can.” This admission was met with silence and I didn’t
correct them that it wasn’t me exactly, but Tis who would tell us
when. But she was still my secret, as was C.J, and for now I needed
to keep it that way. “Cres sees this working.”

“And you
predict the weather?” Jackson cocked a brow.

I ignored him.
“I’ll have weapons and those of us who are wolves can fight as
either man or beast – I won’t shoot, obviously. Only at the Cult.”
I assured.

Giny piped up.
“Make me one of you and I can help.”

We all stopped
and I met her expectant, pouting gaze. “Gin, I can’t allow
that.”

Reid laughed.
“Gin, the very purpose of this is to stop them turning humans.”

She dropped her
eyes.

“Do we take
prisoners?” Reid asked with a firm gaze towards me.

I swallowed,
feeling the heat radiating from them. “No,” I said fast. They
looked down, all of them, but not one of them openly disagreed.
They were solemn towards the utilitarianism of war. Either way,
lives would be lost. “We shoot to kill anyone who is with him,” I
admitted. I watched Angele who looked stiff but unalarmed. Cres and
I exchanged a momentary glance. If she was on their side we knew
she would warn them.

Cresida James’
little brother Bronson was a slight boy with big eyes that watched
you quietly; he played well by himself making imaginary games with
wooden guns and Lego. He liked books and insects and cars the way
his sister had loved fairies. He turned a pile of sticks into a hut
and ran about his parents’ house with a makeshift machine gun of
wood and elastic bands.

He never had
nightmares or wet the bed, never threw tantrums - that was until
his mother and father disappeared. Bronson’s whole world
changed.

Suddenly,
comfort and freedom were replaced with steadfast restriction,
knives and forks, hard pats on the back, hard chairs and boring
sermons. Like his sister, he figured the quieter he was the less
his Auntie bothered him with her cold comfort. At first he slept a
lot, going to bed at odd hours and wishing his mother would come
for him. The unfamiliar coldness of his new home felt like it would
slowly burn his heart from the inside out. In a breath his world
had changed, swept from him like he had been placed like a toy in a
different setting, an alternate universe which sucked the life from
his body.

He withered as
the constant hunger in him for his family starved him. Cres, he
would have clung to like a baby to its mother’s back had she not
frightened him and gone missing frequently. Every time he saw signs
of her return he felt the pain ease a little as the only respite in
his tiny world. Sometimes he would venture into her room and cuddle
her things, calmed and comforted but at the same time terrified
lest his Aunt catch him. He wept and suffered in silence and
nibbled at food till he worried himself sick with a longing for
home that drained him of his childhood.

He wouldn’t
speak at school to anyone until the teacher was convinced he was
autistic as he repeatedly traced lines in the carpet or fiddled
with rubbers and pencils for hours at his desk instead of
interacting or doing his work. It was a terrible passive resistance
that frustrated them, but nothing mattered to him anymore. As much
as a child can, he wished he was under the warm earth with them and
not abandoned to this dreadful conformist world. He was of the
nature that he suffered as much hurt in a day that others acquired
in years or decades, from which he would not ever fully recover.
For a time his Aunt walked on egg shells around him, so frightened
was she that he would try to follow his parents or his sister in a
different kind of way to the grave.

With time he
improved and more intensive measures were abandoned as the state
paid for regular child therapy sessions and sound advice was given
on how to mend his broken heart. Again his life was filled with
activities and play dates. A new world was built around him and
Tabetha tried hard to follow the rules she was given by
psychologists.

For Cres,
Auntie was a warden, but for him a nanny of sorts, one who loved
tenderly but with distance. Besides, he would not have accepted
anything more, in case she abandoned him also. He felt they offered
a fair-weather friendship, easily retracted. He would not ever
trust her. He adapted slowly with a disdain for the barren and
indifferent world to which his mother and father had abandoned him.
The pain eased in the day but at night it dragged through him in
waves of sickness even when the weeping stopped. He was frightened
to die but wished it anyway and fell asleep imagining his mother’s
hand holding his; waking in fits of terror or quietly covering the
fact that he had wet the bed, going to pains to avoid telling his
Aunt, so sensitive was he to her peevishness. He constructed
himself a barrier, one that threatened to crack at the slightest
tap and he suffered all the more for it.

So when a
beautiful blue eyed blonde woman with hair like his mother, long
like an angel, came to him one night, he didn’t resist her pull as
she put a drop of something like vinegar on his tongue, took his
hand and silently led him down the stairs and quietly out the front
door.

Cres knew
something was wrong. You could have heard a pin drop in the
morning. The eerie silence descended around her like a looming
fog.

Bronson’s
cartoons were usually blaring from downstairs. She went into the
hall and looked over the banister. The TV was off. Bronson wasn’t
in the play area near the lounge room. She heard her Aunt snuffle
and wheeze in her bed, deep asleep. She pushed open the door and
his bed was empty. Her heart started to feel like it was sinking as
blood pounded in her ears. She whirled in the soundless house. The
silence was deafening.

She flew into
her Aunt’s room and shook her awake. “Tabetha! Tabetha! Where is
Bronson? Tabetha!” She panicked.

Her Aunt awoke,
stunned. “Cresida? Here?” Her aunt cried and looked astounded
towards her niece.

“Where?!”

“Cresida! In
his room!” she shouted back.

“No! Where is
he?”

Her Aunt
Tabetha sat up in her bedclothes scrambling away from her
niece.

Cresida’s heart
began to palpitate. “Was he in his bed last night?” Her voice was
growing hysterical.

“Yes…. Yes,”
Tabetha replied, more certain.

“He’s not now?”
she asked. “Well he must be somewhere,” she shouted annoyed. It was
uncharacteristic of Bronson to wander.

“I’ll go look
for him,” Cres muttered frustrated, already determinedly leaving
the room.

Hurriedly she
turned his bedroom upside down and called his name, before her Aunt
was up in her dressing gown. Cres was down the stairs scanning the
rooms. And then as she looked to the front door, she saw it wasn’t
locked and her heart sank. She touched the knob and knew, as
quickly as a shock of electricity, that they had been and they had
taken their claim. Cres knew with a pang she had missed it. Because
she hadn’t brought them Lila, because she hadn’t kept Lila away
from them and she had been occupied with the meeting. Her fingers
lingered a moment before she felt a wave of nausea and pain well up
inside her.

“I’m not
feeling too good,” she mumbled, trudging up the stairwell, brushing
past her wide-eyed Aunt who seemed to be looking now, too, if less
enthusiastically, for the boy. The second Cres was in her room she
forced the door closed, knocking away the door weight; she grabbed
her bed and dragged it to the door as her aunt rattled the knob
trying to open it. Cres grabbed a bag from the wardrobe, stuffed in
a few jumpers and her shoes and still in her nightdress she hopped
out of the first storey window with ease and ran for the forest on
two feet.

Adrenaline
pulsed throbbing through her limbs. Bronson, Bronson! They would
never have him, she thought in anger.

Reid was inside
the cabin. Frantic, she threw herself over the fence and he spotted
her on the lawn coming at the door and he met her, sliding the
glass door open. But she didn’t stop her pace as she rammed into
him, and she began to beat his chest with the weak anger that
sadness brings. Neither of them spoke but he saw as she tossed her
head with every thump on his chest that her eyes were closed and
wet. He grabbed her arms rigidly as she struggled to punch him
further. As she wriggled under his grip, he felt her weaken until
she slumped into him sobbing and her tears touched his shirt. He
remained silent, but he knew. His eyes glistened with empathy as
his arms embraced her generously. He held her firmly until she
melted into him.