Wolf Sirens Night Fall: What Rises Must Fall (Wolf Sirens #3) (7 page)

“I’m not
assuring you anything,” she breathed. “We are no longer a pack, we
are individuals.” She turned her face further away when she said
it.

“No.” Dahlia
thought aloud. “Aylish I - ” She tried to handle her delicately
“Please just try it.” She placed her warm hand gently over Aylish’s
on the railing “You’re my sister; I go with you…okay?” Her face
shifted in honesty. Showing she wouldn’t resist Aylish’s
orders.

“I’m not your
mother, Dahlia, so just leave it, okay?” She shrugged her off,
pouting defensively.

Dahlia wanted
to talk further, to ask her more, but in this mood of hers, Aylish
wouldn’t oblige. Dahlia knew Aylish wasn’t stubborn or strange, she
was hurt; cut so deeply by the actions taken so long ago. So
painful was the wound that time would never heal it.

Aylish had died
with them; she had withered away because of the sheer horror of
what had happened. She didn’t play by any rules anymore, not Paws’s
rules or the pack, or the human worlds. She reserved her love now;
she had even refused to let Dahlia in, despite them living so
tightly alone together for so many years - through three decades,
never changing. She was a ghost, a terrifyingly wounded immortal
spectre.

Dahlia knew
Lonnie, for some reason, was the only person Aylish cared to bother
with; he had patched a part of the void and she had let him in, in
a way she couldn’t or would not let Dahlia. She had not allowed
Dahlia in, in thirty-two years. She never let her do her hair or
her make-up. Aylish didn’t read fashion magazines or even borrow
her outfits. Dahlia knew the only way to make her dear friend stay
and be contented was to get Lonnie here, to let him see and feel
the pack the way Dahlia had again. Because he would want to stay,
then Aylish would surely stay too. He comforted her, like no one
else had been able to.

It was easy,
too easy, to break into the house; Angele, like an idiot, hadn’t
set the alarm before phasing. It was silly to think how open and
vulnerable their lair was to anyone stupid or daring enough to
enter - though it wouldn’t have made any difference if it had been
locked with them all off hunting. The lair was deserted and
vulnerable when left unguarded. It wouldn’t have been hard to break
in, not during a full moon. The side windows were open to let in a
south breeze, after the humid heat of the last three days, which
had been stifling. The house was still too warm and the rooms were
stuffy from humidity. The smell of her hit Sky like a slap in the
cheek when he came upon it - the huntress; it was palpable, and her
sweat lingered in the air. Sky silently wanted her to break in
again, to see her, and kiss her cool, moist lips. His heart gave a
shudder.

Shell entered
the stuffy room, her uneven eyes alive following the trail. She
came in, licked her lips, and screwed her nose up as though she had
been chasing the odour this way and that, all over the house. Her
blue eyes were unusually excited by the unleashed prey that had
been in her territory.

“Fresh meat,”
she said as she assessed his reaction. He knew better than to give
her one, and he covered his baleful expression under a facade of
casual concern. Though Shell understood him better than most in the
pack, she seemed to have been starved of warm blood and Sky worried
she may, one day, do something unintentional that she would regret
because of that fact. Paws had deliberately and cruelly denied her
fresh blood. Shell was well below anyone in rank; she had to
participate in the hunt and if she was lucky, he gave her a cold
piece of bone with some sinew on it. She had lost weight since
coming here and her dark brown hair had grown long. Shell was like
Sky, under strict instruction not to leave the compound unless
accompanied, usually by Narine’s lackey Angele or Genna, when she
wasn’t at the hospital.

“Least she
didn’t go through my stuff.” Shell watched his eyes and then
relaxed her penetrating glare when he pretended not to care. The
wild look in her eye subsided. She regained herself and he breathed
a sigh of relief when she left the room for downstairs.

Sky resisted
the urge to dive into the cool pillows on his bed to inhale her
more deeply. He could hear Angele excitedly talking to the others
in the main room and he decided to act fast. The scent was
strongest on his bed; he followed it to the pillow and panicking,
he almost ripped the pillowcase with ferocity, tugging it free and
shoving it in his clothes basket. Just as he finished, Angele with
her limp followed by Paws and Narine entered the room looking
furtively; they hardly had to breathe the air to taste her strongly
in the atmosphere of his room. Sky had to remind himself they
didn’t know who she was exactly, by the scent alone.

Paws asked the
obvious. “Do you know who it might have been?” He gave a sideways
glance at Sky. Her essence was everywhere. Their eyes danced,
chasing it.

“No.” He lied –
they all knew who it was, it couldn’t be anyone else. He tried not
to swallow.

Narine marched
further into the room with Paws and they set about turning up the
mattress and bedding. As they did, Angele watched from the doorway.
Sky stared on mutely as Angele did, as they walked about poking at
things. Like wardens.

“Did she take
anything?” Paws asked, orange eyes turned on him, after he lifted
the laundry basket to reveal more carpet.

“I’m not sure,”
Sky mumbled, looking down so they wouldn’t see the telling flicker
of fear in his eyes. Tyler walked past the doorway but didn’t look
in.

“Check,” he
advised as Narine left the room, nudging past Angele. Paws brushed
past her also.

Angele lingered
and spoke to Sky. “Narine's calling a meeting,” she said. She
glanced at him and went out after Paws with a swish of her brown
shoulder length hair, which had been dyed and trimmed to conceal
her identity. Sky stood alone for a moment.

Shell peeked in
the doorway on her way past. “Better tidy up,” she advised, seeming
more herself.

He heard Angele
laugh from down the hall. She had known nothing of this world
before being taken from high school. She was, surprisingly, one of
Paws’s earlier choices at creating a mate. When she wasn’t a good
fit and he’d used her enough, he selected another woman. Angele had
then been knocked down in rank by Narine's arrival. After he had
them fight over him to determine the stronger bitch, by some
miracle she had lived, but was heavily injured and remained with a
limp, even as a wolf. No one cared enough to try to have her leg
reset and after the scars disappeared, she was too traumatized to
ask.

Sky grabbed his
own hair in both fists and struggled to contain the many
conflicting emotions he could not give into. Regaining his
composure, he went through the hallway to Sam’s end room and out
onto the balcony that wrapped around the top of the house. He
stared hard at the Jacaranda tree, willing himself to jump and take
off, and he should have jumped the rail and run. But they would
have caught him and he hated to admit it to himself but he feared
the cage.

He breathed in
the air. Shell made a noise as she stepped out through the far
screen door, which led from the main living room; she pulled up a
chair on the opposite end of the long verandah. He tried to ignore
her, and struggling to do so, went over and pulled up a seat
opposite her which squeaked on the wooden boards.

“Intense huh?”
she said low, towards the view in front of them, she was smoking a
cigarette. He breathed out; Shell was trapped here herself, though
she had been more compliant than him. He sensed they shared a
similar unrest at being in this pack that the likes of Angele and
wolves like Blair did not suffer. They had never belonged so well
anywhere else in life and had never had another pack. Perhaps they
knew no better.

But Shell and
he longed for something that had been better and had been taken
from them. He put his bare feet up on the other chair. He wasn’t
sure what it was for her, just that she had been happy before Paws
took her, kidnapped her into this world, and she knew better than
to simply be happy with that decision being made for her. They both
heard the continuing kerfuffle in the house. It was dawn and the
first light of the sun began to peek over the horizon of trees.

“Narine’s going
through your room,” Shells soft voice informed, not looking towards
him as she breathed a feathery plume of smoke and flicked the ash
on the boards. They weren’t allowed lighters, Tyler had probably
lit it for her. Sky glanced at her and back towards the expansive
dawn view over the railing as light hit the green lawn, which
stretched into shrubbery and sweeping bushland.

Neither of them
felt the urge to make idle gossip and anyway, anything they chatted
about would not have been what was on their minds and to speak what
they really felt would have been idiotic. Anything overheard now
could be twisted against them and they knew better. Genna was
always listening. She offered him a drag and he accepted it. Shelly
Bealy had been his Geography teacher in Shade High. So they had
found some common ground and shared a few jokes every now and
then.

Angele’s
flowery scent alerted him to her presence before her ringing voice,
that there was a meeting in five. He handed the smoke back to
Shell. They sat wasting time until the pack convened on the
mismatched couches in the living area in the upstairs. He wanted so
badly to escape it, but as though trapped, he had to attend and
hope against hope they wouldn’t pin him down and tear his body
apart for treason. There was no way out other than to see it
through and hope to arrive on the other side of the meeting in one
piece and though she was all he wanted to think of, he couldn’t
think of her.

The valley went
on whether I believed in it or not. I dreamt of the angel statue as
I slept, armed with a bow, above Tormey’s grave. She opened her
electric eyes to glance at me lovingly. As I neared her she put her
hand to my face. Her cold marble skin began to crack in lines that
grew like lightning strikes and I reached for her. As she gave me a
startled look, I desperately grappled with nothing as she fell to
pieces before me. I felt as though I had shattered the angel.

Sometimes,
after waking from the dreams, I would go to the river. On the bank
there was a big leafy oak. I left my clothes on its branches and
waded into the Artemis. There was an aged carving on the trunk, a
cross with the initials T&R inside a heart, with four lines
coming out behind it and a half crescent around it.

I wondered if
it was his absence that caused the rain. There was no part of me
that didn’t wish I was with him. Thinking he didn’t feel for me
what I felt for him drained my existence of any light. I still
wanted to see him, to lose myself in his sapphire eyes, to inhale
the heat from his hot skin. I wanted the sensation his hands
holding me and at the same time I didn’t want to feel it, because
it meant the death of the huntress. Did he leave me willingly, did
he have a choice? What really bothered me was why he didn’t fight
to get back to me, as hard as I fought to get back to him. But I
couldn’t let him go, not until I knew why.

I eyed the
cross slashed into the bark, through the rain drops as I sank under
the water. Below the slow rapids, I listened to the water rush past
my ears. I was drowning in my own emotions. Rising in the water I
imagined many lovers had enjoyed the hidden spot before on a
summer’s day. Perhaps the names in the heart had been jilted.

Tisane was
right, I had to believe her religion and I did, whether I admitted
it or not. I felt it. I felt it every god damn day inside myself
and in the forest – the wolves were hard evidence of the Gods. If
her spells were real, then I wanted to participate in one to help
me obliterate the Cult and free Sky from them and I thought about
that intently.

On the way home
from the river, I stayed off the beaten path, navigating the trees.
I had taken to hunting rabbits and other game with a bow, due to
the fact that gunfire was a more conspicuous style of weapon. I
didn’t want to attract the attention of the wolves. I was alerted
to an animal present in the saplings. I silenced my movements. My
eyes wandered through the branches until my pupils found the sight
of a deer, a stag in the shadows. Beautiful, as it shifted to graze
the bright new shoots of grass sprouted by the rain.

I stilled my
breath. My arm moved to remove the bow from my back as my other
fingers, carefully and steadily, felt for the quills of my arrows
with a warrior’s patience. I readied the instrument as a moment
stood still and not even the leaves wavered in the breeze. I
swallowed as I stealthily took aim; my body tense, as I drew back
my bow, breathing quietly through the movement and determined to
strike the creature that unknowingly lay in wait ahead. Its slight
ears keenly listening for any rustle. I released the bow and it
swiftly struck the deer.

Quickly I gave
chase; as I neared him he stumbled in the grass. I knelt beside
him. The arrow had hit near his back leg and he flailed as I closed
in. I pulled my knife, one hand stroking his neck as he struggled.
Then I cut him deeply, pushing the knife into his neck to drain the
blood.

I carried the
young Sambar stag home, its grey blood-soaked fur over my shoulder
staining the collar of my shirt, its wide reflective eyes open to
stare blankly at the world. Damp with sweat, I emerged from the
forest into the light and placed its lifeless body carefully across
the wooden verandah, lying its weight down across the boards.

We knelt at its
side on the floor and she sprinkled salted water over its body to
bless it and set its spirit free. Tisane, once recovered from the
shock, bravely helped me skin it. It seemed a shame to waste the
meat. She looked a little pale and acted jumpy as I carved its warm
flesh. I sliced deeply down its belly; I held my breath, digging
the sharp blade in with force.