Wolf Sirens Night Fall: What Rises Must Fall (Wolf Sirens #3) (8 page)

The deer in our
forest weren’t native; they had originally escaped from nearby
farms where they had been bred for meat. Their numbers had
multiplied. I guess no one cared because I’m sure they would rather
the wolves eat feral deer than to have a thirst for human
flesh.

I removed its
fresh internal organs, placing them a bucket, pulling out the warm
intestines and slippery viscera. I cut out the lungs, kidneys and
heart, my arms smeared with blood to the elbows. Tisane left
hurriedly and came back soon after from the kitchen with a wide
lipped jar. She lifted the bucket and poured off some of the
crimson blood. I didn’t ask why.

She screwed on
the lid and carried it inside. I continued to slice and drag the
blade through the meat; Cres would have been proud that the knife
was being used so well. We cut away the legs and divided the torso,
slicing through with jagged stabs to part the muscle tissue, and
sever the bones at the joint, my arms and fingers stained with
clotted blood. For the bigger pieces I used the axe. The animal’s
severed head was needed for a spell. Tisane removed some of the
velvet from the budding antlers as the stag wasn’t yet full
grown.

Flies found
their way to the carcass and we hurried to dispose of it. Tisane
used a meat cleaver to divide smaller portions over a log by the
house. Something I never thought her capable of. There seemed to be
more strength inside her than she would recognize as she noticeably
held down her wrenching. After we had cleaned the blood stains from
the old boards on the verandah and buried the head we hung the skin
and scrubbed the blood from under our nails. When we had dried our
hands we sat exhausted and satisfied that we had food enough for a
while.

The meat was
stored in the freezer and a leg was in the oven, roasting. The
pleasant smell wafted away, or maybe just covered, the earthy rust
smell of blood and dead flesh, along with the uneasy sensation of
the butcher’s task that we had undertaken only hours before. Tisane
lie on the couch, looking a little green.

We were to let
the head rot under the earth, according to Tisane’s Grimoire and
resume it in a few days, do the shady incantation under a full moon
and the next night, bury it under a seedling. It was a dark spell.
I intended to sever the head of a bigger beast. She requested a
seedling and I found an acorn near the river from a row of tall oak
trees. I watched her in the house, after the kill, as she filled a
glass of water and placed the seed in it. “Good new beginnings
grow,” she said as it sank under the lucid water. The glass was
placed on the kitchen windowsill where it would be warmed by the
overcast sun. We were silent, as we often were in each other’s
company. Perhaps we were listening for the fight to start. And when
it did, I had to go at it with everything inside me.

We waited for
the return of a full moon. I listened to the woods, the birds, and
the flow of the river, the insects scurrying on the ground and even
the trees themselves. I remained in their shade under the rippling
shadow of leaves. Sometimes in the night you could hear a call, a
remote taunting wail rise and fall in the distance. In the mean
time I trained.

Tisane named
the weeds and spoke about the ‘Docturine of Signatures’, an ancient
way for her to identify which parts of nature to use for healing. I
was told we were not rulers of the earth or even caretakers of it,
but simply part of it. The Gods were entrusted to maintain the
balance of our valley, but not even they are perfect. Where there
is great power there comes great responsibility and more often than
not the abuse of it. I studied Paws’s picture in the aging
newspaper, his smug sneer. I left the house every day and practiced
scaling the tall trees and surveyed the land from the strong
branches. Turning my eyes up through the dancing leaves, I gazed
into the sky to see thick clouds sliding in, hiding Olympus as they
crowded to encompass the glowing sun.

The soil was
wet and thick with worms as it rained almost every day. Tisane’s
ceiling began to leak under the drumming rain and the constant tap
of dripping water soothed us to sleep. Zeus’s tears soaked the land
until the Artemis remained swollen from sadness and the dark clouds
clapped to show his displeasure.

I would leave
at night - the way Tormey had done before me - to trek the woodland
trails under the crescent moon, learning the slopes and valleys and
boulders and the curve of the river path, sharing the bush with the
nocturnal creatures: to hear the rapids against the backdrop choir
of crickets, bats and singing frogs that sang for only me to
hear.

It was an
indestructible unseen life force that forged the huntress out of me
and somehow put more of her inside me. In the deepest hours of
night I dared to sneak out of the shadowed cover and towards the
ocean where I listened to the waves lapping the rocks. Under a
pitch-black universe littered with tiny stars, the ocean churned,
laced with power. I looked across the darkness to make out Lily’s
abandoned, unlit home in the distance, the roaring waves crashing
on the shore close to the fence surrounding it. I wondered if it
was Lily that had brought me here from the forest because Tisane
said she existed with us now, on another plane, though I doubted it
was to help us. I retreated back into the ever present bushland.
Whether I wanted to or not, my duty would soon have to be done.

Narine had
personally been back through the room and examined his belongings
as Sky hyperventilated on the verandah. The only odd thing was the
dog tag in the blankets, under the upturned mattress. She tapped
them and turned the silver about between her forefinger and thumb,
contemplating. He was sentimental, she supposed. She had never seen
him wear it and was about to throw the necklace aside when she
thought better of it. They were grasping at straws, but it didn’t
take a genius to figure out who it was that most likely had invaded
their privacy. She squeezed the metal in her warm palm.

“Paws, we’ve
found our missing little huntress. Samantha will be pleased.”

“Not as much as
Cresida.” Relieved was more the right word for Cresida’s reaction,
but Narine didn’t correct him. Narine was inwardly disappointed
that this meant the boy could not be hers, because she had
privately begun to warm to the thought of making him a gift of
sorts for herself. Like a pet.

“No, the boy
will be safe only if we catch her.” Narine knew Cresida would not
be relieved, not yet anyway. Narine smacked her lips. She knew
Cresida wanted to be the first to find her. “We have the
advantage.”

Narine wasted
no time at the meeting; in her presence the banter ceased, and she
threw the tag at Sky who caught it.

“Was there
anything missing from your room?”

“What’s this?”
he asked, relying on the innocence of his voice. His heart told him
to be weary and it almost began to thump wildly as he resisted the
urge to swallow. He could feel Genna watching.

“I thought you
could tell us?”

He hardly had
to eye it to know what it was. He licked the inside of his lips,
which were dry. “My tags,” he admitted. They all looked at Sky and
he knew he couldn’t play it casual much longer. If Narine wasn’t
fooled, neither would they be; it was a certainty.

“I’ve noticed
you don’t wear them anymore?” she probed. The audience watched on,
intently focused.

He sat up.
“I’ve had these since the war in Nam, you can ask anyone – Sam,” he
offered, turning them in his hands and staring back at Narine’s
expressionless glare, waiting, “that part of my life is over.”

Tyler cleared
his throat, either accidentally or on cue, because he didn’t
believe him. Tyler was a short guy with wavy almond hair, he spent
most of his immortal life playing video games when he wasn’t in his
room wanking or running madly in the forest. It wasn’t so much that
he was immature as that he had fried his brain on a mixture of weed
and methamphetamine Ice.

It was then Sky
noticed the feather; Narine ran it under her nose and pressed her
lips together. She and Paws exchanged glances.

Paws breathed.
“There is also the feather.” He took it and passed it to Dahlia.
She and Aylish inhaled it and wrinkled their noses and it was
passed from pack member to pack member. Blair handed it to Sky with
an apologetic look. Sky held the feather by the cuticle and
swallowed. It reeked of Lila. He looked it over out of true
curiosity, like the others; by this he was truly perplexed. Pure
white in colour, but it stank of hunter.

“It’s an
ordinary feather,” said Shell, handing it back to Narine with a
jewellery laden hand. Narine refused to take it, and instead had
Shell place it on a plate which her rings clanked against as she
dropped it on the ceramic dish. It was a silly thing to wear
jewellery; if she phased it would be lost.

“Not just an
ordinary feather, it has been left on purpose.” Narine scanned
their faces with an icy glare.

“Smells like
she has deliberately placed it here,” added Paws, looking into each
member’s blank face as he spoke. “And she has been in Sky’s room,”
he said solemnly, with a lively sparkle in his eye.

Angele grabbed
Sky’s fingers and inhaled, to both smell the piece of jewellery,
and to inadvertently inhale the scent of his skin to see if he had
touched the invader or made contact with her somehow.

She licked her
lips and looked at Narine. The air was palpable, though the
gathering appeared relaxed, leaning on the back of the old
mismatched couches, crouched on the stairs and leaning on walls,
but the energy was tense, like the calm before a storm. The hairs
rose on Blair’s neck, and his eyes darted about. Would he have to
defend his friend? Or see him torn to pieces by the pack for
disloyalty?

Blair cleared
his throat; he was going to try his best to talk down the coming
accusations without risking himself in the process. “He has been
with us all night.” He broke the silence and faced his palms up.
“And every day. Narine you would have seen…something. One of us
would have, what about the clairvoyant? Was it her?”

“No.” Narine’s
eyebrows raised, her voice was definite. “I know her scent; this
was the huntress – Lila.” It couldn’t be another. “We’ll get
something to match the scent from the Mongrel hunter,” she
retorted, referring to Cres.

“What do we
do?” Angele glanced about with a worried look; she was the youngest
of the bunch, new, young and naïve. She looked into Blair’s
concerned amber eyes that avoided hers and then she looked towards
the others and knew if Narine gave the order, Sky would be dead in
a few seconds. Genna and Tyler would relish the chance.

Blair looked up
and chimed in with a suggestion. “We could lock the doors, turn on
the alarm?” He glanced at Shell hopefully.

Shelly looked
as though she could have cried as her eyes glistened; she knew it
was she who had left the door unlocked, and Angele was too young to
take the blame. It was Shell’s job to look after her. She was
older, she had been a woman when she was bitten, another of Paw's
selections - the beautiful teacher had caught his eye one weekend
in the paper and Shelly Bealy the high school teacher, became a
lovely wolf.

She had
symmetrical features, except for her eyes, that when tainted with
venom, became her most striking feature as they glowed an
iridescent blue. The public High school had kept it hushed that she
had suddenly left them for the Cult with no notice, with no prior
warning signs according to her young newlywed husband. It was kept
from the students so rumours wouldn’t run rife.

They all looked
at Narine who came across as cool as ice.

Her eyes
smiled. “No, we wait, no locks or alarms; she will be around.” She
grinned a straight line.

Paws
interrupted standing forward. “We are going to trap her.” The words
lingered on his broad mouth.

Sky tried not
to show any emotion as his insides shook. The plan for now was
simple – wait. The meeting broke up moments later and Narine spoke
to Angele privately; she was to keep an extra close watch on Sky
until she left. Narine exploited Angele’s obvious crush on him.

Sky walked out
onto the wooden second story balcony again and felt the breeze on
his warm skin; he knew he was as good as dead. He had the urge
again to jump the rail and phase on the run and if he made it to
the fence to keep on running. A moment passed as he contemplated
it. A presence moved to join him; too small to be Blair, he noted
Angele's human scent - of flowers and vanilla, which she doused
herself in.

He didn’t look
at her; she touched his arm softly and with her sweet voice tried
to soothe him like a child with a pet. Tyler walked behind them and
Sky looked in his direction as he passed. Tyler liked to have
competitions with the others to see who could jump the furthest.
Sky had won. Tyler was a little pissed about that. The only thing
worse about Tyler, other than his bad sportsmanship, was his
breath. He liked to eat unsavory things when he phased.

“Sky, we all
care about you, we are a family here. Please just talk to me, just
for today, tell me how you feel?” her ringing voice urged.

She was prying.
The sun had risen.

He had zoned
her out. “Huh?” He huffed, feeling the metal tag between his rough
fingers and he glared at it as she spoke in his ear. He felt
irritated by her being so close. She was so breathy.

“Please Sky?”
she cooed. Her voice was high and smooth; she smiled and let out a
little nervous laugh. “Tell me what she has that we don’t?”

Her questions
were inane, and Sky wished she would stop. She had no idea. He
ignored her nasal voice like he would a mosquito. But unwilling to
cause ripples at this heightened time, he tolerated her close
proximity, tensing uncomfortably at her every irritating
gesture.