Survivor

by Sam Hall

  Rick wants me, and he can’t have me. Kade needs Aidan. They’ll be able to protect him way more effectively than I will.

  I looked up into those implacable green eyes, eyes who saw every thought, every feeling of each and every one of us, and nodded.

  I stepped forward, knowing what I had to do. Because love isn’t selfish. It’s that curious magic a bunch of sentient apes managed to conjure, where the needs of another became just as important as your own. I’d never experienced the level of pain radiating in my heart before, and I welcomed it, every aching moment.

  I’m sorry, Kade, I thought quietly.

  From death comes regrowth? I said. Then take me. Regrow him, his skin, his muscle, his blood. Make him whole again. Let him continue to be the man I know him to be, let that heart of his keep beating to love entirely those lucky enough to find a place within it. Let him live, please.

  This will come at a cost, the white wolf said.

  I know. I don’t have anything else to give. Just…make sure Kade will be safe.

  The cub is important. He will survive.

  Figuring that was as good an assurance as I was going to get, I closed my eyes and stepped forward, into her white light.

  They didn’t see it, with the hysterical action going on within the surgery, but I did. Just as I had asked, I watched Aidan’s body knit back together, slowly at first, the wrench I felt only slight. But the pace picked up, and my heart beat harder and harder as it did, the gaps between the beats expanding until it was the ponderous sound of a gong being struck, years going by between each pulse. My vision began to grey when I saw him blink rapidly, when people stopped panicking and started to see. It faded as the last of his skin was remade, and then I fell to the floor.

  38

  To say I was surprised to realise I was taking one breath, then another, was an understatement.

  Flick!

  My name was shouted a million times in chorus, the sound deafening, but even when I put my hands over my ears, it didn’t stop. Because it came from inside me, deep in this pool I hadn’t realised I possessed. And as if in noticing it, the sounds, that feeling of holding something infinite grew.

  Initially, it felt like sunlight on your skin. Just those gentle, shifting, dappled points of light as you lay under a tree on a warm day, each one caressing you like fingers, covering your whole body. Then it swelled, growing more insistent. I was raised up, pulled from whatever darkness I lay within, drawn up and up, until my eyes flicked open.

  “This is not the way!” one of the matriarchs hissed at us, her face screwed up into an expression of pure venom. “Look at his eyes! This interloper! Where is his mother? She has a case to answer to.”

  I struggled to make sense of it, this cold, clinical box of a room with all its harsh reflective surfaces. Everything in here hurt my eyes to look at, but I blinked rapidly, trying to stop the ache.

  Because everything did. My body was limp now, I realised, held by strong arms, other hands roaming my skin. They were the spots of light I recognised, my eyes threatening to close again.

  Flick…Flick…Flick…

  My name no longer a shout, it was a beat, tugging my heart along, forcing it to keep a regular pace. It came from those hands and the chest I was held against. They grounded me, kept me from floating away. Had always done so, I realised.

  I felt the drops of water on my skin, and it soaked each one up as its due, a curious energy filling me as it did so.

  “Let me…” A voice the sound of a heart being crushed slowly in a vise pleaded. The hands around me, the arms that held me were reluctant, covetous, but they opened and I was moved. Pulled close, draped over someone’s body like a doll.

  “My Flick…” he whispered, his words lighting upon my skin, working their way under it and into the core that beat within me. “No, love. This isn’t what I wanted. You can’t…” His voice broke on the pleas, unable to force anymore out. It didn’t matter, I felt them, dropping like depth charges inside me, the subsequent explosions radiating out through every cell. “Come back to me. Come back to us.”

  So much unwitting power in those words, that they knew not what magic they wrought. They were a call to action, as more arms surrounded me, interlinking with my bearers until I was contained in a cocoon of them, their combined weight sparking a heat.

  “Come back to us, Flick.”

  This voice was different, holding a steely core, one that would not be denied.

  “Flick, come back. Never leave us. Be our pack. Come back, love. You promised us ‘but.’ I need a chance at ‘but.’”

  It wrapped itself around me, this insistent voice, grabbing me in a grip of iron and tugging me out of the darkness I floated within.

  Which brought him.

  He was just a pair of red lights in the gloom, that soon resolved themselves as eyes. Eyes that burned with an unearthly light, the largest black wolf I’d ever seen.

  I am death, entropy, decay.

  I couldn’t reply. I was only a consciousness, able to observe, but no more.

  I am endings where she is beginnings. I am power, violence, aggression. I am force. I am anger.

  That disturbed my unnatural calm, the word dropping into the pool I held within me, sending ripples out.

  I am raging against the dying of the light. I am the death of light. I am chaos, the breaking down of rules and barriers, and the stifling construction of them.

  And I’m sick of your fucking litany, I replied finally. Live, love, pray? Seriously, you sound like a fucking five-dollar wall hanging from Kmart.

  The beast’s head jerked up at that, then his jaws fell open, his red, red mouth panting.

  Let me go, I said, all my prior life’s wishy-washiness blasted away in the furnace of whatever the fuck this was. They are pulling me home, to be with them, to raise my child. To put that cunt, Rick, into the motherfucking ground. You want a sacrifice like she did? I will cut his fucking throat, then spread his blood in your honour.

  By the flare of those red eyes, that idea pleased him greatly.

  You will do that anyway. It is written in every cell.

  I was treated to a rapid flicker of scenarios. Me holding a gun out as Rick stormed our house, blood staining his skin, then bursting from his forehead as I shot him. Slamming a knife my searching fingers found in the chaos of the dining room floor into his neck as he thrust himself into me, showering me with blood. My pack emerging like shadows from the darkness around the house, padding after him as he approached Kade’s window, hand on the screens, our claws extended.

  Will you surrender to him? Will you let him have his way?

  Never.

  Then I accept your sacrifice, but I want more.

  Of course you fucking do. You’re a man, aren’t you?

  No, not yet. The balance was broken when those two became our avatars. It must be restored. If you ask this of me, to release you back to the world, this burden will become your community’s. They will restore the order.

  Being around the Great Black Wolf helped me claw back a kind of savage selfishness. I nodded, the first time my body had been able to move. At that, the big paw I hadn’t realised was standing on my chest was taken off, the sensation of being reeled up dizzying.

  You will remember. You will make your sacrifice.

  “This is absolutely the way,” a man said, forcing his way through the mass of people in the room and taking a place next to a pregnant woman. The look of love that passed between them as he took her hand was so pure and intense, it felt intrusive to watch it. “We defeated Lonen in the form he was in, but we had no idea where he went. The Black Wolf swallowed him and…?”

  “I saw them, the way they were manifested by Branwen and Lonen in Wolflantis,” the pregnant woman said.

  “Oemis, love.”

  “Whatever. Just as we manifest our Tirians on the full moon, I think they did the same at special events. The Great Black Wolf is free now, but who manifests him?”

  �
��That we even speak of such a beast is an abomination!” one woman spat.

  I coughed, unable to do anything else, a splutter of fluid erupting everywhere.

  “What the actual fuck!”

  “Flick! By the goddess…”

  “Let me through!” A cool hand was placed on my forehead, a bright light shone in my eyes.

  “Ouch,” I said, blinking against it.

  The debate continued to rage around me, but that dark certainty inside kept me quiet. Now wasn’t the time. Instead, I lay where Aidan had, my pack surrounding me.

  “Flick…” Peter contained so much in the few words he said, the tone tearing at me. I resisted it for a moment, that hard black seed inside me ready to protect me, armour me against the world if I’d just let it. Rather, I reached up with a clumsy hand, taking his hand, and his squeezed mine painfully in response.

  But I had to like the pain. Why else would I scan each of their faces, see the devastation I’d wrought spelled out plainly there?

  “You’re…” Noah couldn’t get the words out, his eyes, his throat, clogged with tears. But Sen, he remained stock still, staring at me with red eyes, his stillness an excellent copy of the Great Black Wolf’s. His grip on my arm hurt as he hurt, his gaze going on and on, as if that was all that held me here.

  “Flick… This isn’t what I wanted,” Aidan said, shouldering forward. “I…I did it for you.”

  “And I did it for you,” I forced out, ending with a spluttering of coughing.

  “Mum? Mum!”

  My head whipped around as fast as it would go on my leaden body and looked beyond to see a small figure smashing through the swinging doors, arrowing through the chaos and masses of people towards me.

  “Kade,” I said, and forced my arm around him when his body collided with mine.

  39

  The next few days were a series of sacrifices.

  The first was to Kade. He’d been shaken by what he’d felt down our connection, and demanded to be brought down to the clinic. He hadn’t gotten the details. Renee explained that our natural parental instinct to protect our children stopped inappropriate information coming down the bond. Danger and pain had leaked past this barrier though, and for a while, Kade regressed somewhat.

  “No,” he said, clinging like a spider monkey to my side. I’d been set up in the lounge room against the doctor’s orders, propped up on a bank of pillows and swathed in blankets.

  “C’mon, mate, just a quick shower,” Aidan asked, reaching out a hand.

  “No!” he’d cried, burying his head deeper into my chest.

  “It’s OK. I’ll do it,” I said, moving slowly, gingerly. Whatever I had done had given my natural reserves of strength a knock.

  “No, Flick,” the guys said as one, all rising to their feet, but Kade just clung harder.

  “Yes, Flick,” I replied, and hobbled to the bathroom with my son.

  One of them had brought me a chair, and hands went to my shoulder as I watched Kade wash through the blurry glass. And he watched me, his face no more than a smudge of grey, white, and black from behind the textured glass, but I could see those dark points staring as he showered.

  Then back into my arms, while we ate, while we sat in front of the TV, and when he fell asleep in them.

  “I’ll take him,” Aidan volunteered, the others watching us with haunted eyes. What they needed tugged at me, prompting me, pushing me to meet it, but I was so tired. I wanted to, to separate everything that was in me and parcel it out by need, until they were full. But I was empty, so empty, and whatever core of vitality I possessed was being used up entirely by Kade.

  “Not yet,” Noah said with a shake of his head when the others turned. “She can’t.”

  “She can’t do this!” Aidan snapped. “She…” I watched him swallow twice, like that would dislodge the lump there. But I knew from experience it wouldn’t. That’s not how it worked, or the countless cups of tea and water would have done the same for me. I looked at him with sympathetic eyes, because that’s all I could give. “She nearly fucking died.”

  “That’s why he’s like this,” Peter said. “He knows on some level.”

  He got to his feet, bent over the two of us, and lifted us into his arms, Kade only stirring slightly, before carrying us into the bedroom. His muscles didn’t even quiver when he put us down onto the bed and then crawled up beside me to lie at my back. My body sagged, using his to support it as I had the couch. The others followed, Aidan curling around Kade, but Noah and Sen just waited.

  “We should—” Sen started to say.

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Aidan shot back. “Get on the bed and get as comfortable as you can. You’re in for the long haul. You know you are. Neither of you would be able to walk out of here after that, unless she tells you to.”

  I felt the moment they all settled, the little points of contact between us all. It fuelled me somehow, as if all the energy I’d expended was slowly leaching back. I let out a long breath, sinking into the bed, and then into sleep.

  That night, I dreamed as a predator would. I was a shadow, padding through the night, my gleaming red eyes shining in the dark and scaring the prey from their hiding points, only for my jaws to snap down on them. When I woke sometime in the night, my mouth was filled with the taste of blood. My tongue inspected the interior, looking for bites or cuts, but found none, so I wriggled my way free and went to the kitchen for a drink of water.

  I wasn’t surprised when he followed me.

  Sen stood in the entranceway, his eyes shining red in the darkness, an answer to my own I was sure.

  “You know what I have to do,” I said.

  He nodded. “He’s sick, broken. He’s chasing down wildlife right now, catching them in traps and—”

  “I know what he does with them.”

  “He’s refining his skills, pushing himself further down the spiral. The police are investigating what happened to those backpackers, but—”

  “You see all of it.”

  He nodded. “I think he’s a warning. To you, obviously, but this is Lonan’s or whatever he is, his statement to us.”

  “The balance has to be restored. That was the price he told me, the Black Wolf.”

  “That’s gonna be a hard ask. The matriarchs are pretty rigid about it.”

  “Then he’ll keep sending Ricks and their ilk until they do. So, you’ll help me?”

  “Always, you know that. But what you want to do, it won't be that easy. To…” I saw myself padding across the peach carpet in my old house, the stone ashtray in my hand. “To kill a man, to execute him.”

  “What else do we do? I’ve seen what he wants to do. To Kade…”

  “I know, love.” His voice was a warm caress his hand echoed when it rubbed up and down my arm. “I don’t disagree, I’m just saying it's harder than you think.”

  I moved in closer and put my head on his chest, wanting that animal comfort for just a moment as all the consequences of my choices crashed in on me. He stroked my hair as the tears came, those horrible, silent, hacking ones, and kept on holding me until I was done.

  40

  “You’re different since…”

  We lay under a tree on a blanket, that same dappled light playing over us as Kade ran around squealing with the other kids. It’d been a few days. He hadn’t gone back to school yet, but he was more and more willing to detach himself from me as long as I was within sight.

  “Noah…” Peter rumbled.

  “No, it’s OK,” I said, sitting up and resting back against him as that massive arm of his locked around me. “He’s right, I am different.”

  “Not bad different, just…” I watched the blond man struggle to find the words. “Contained. That’s how I’d describe it.”

  I smiled, but it wasn’t an especially happy thing, my eyes straying to Sen.

  “And there’s a thing, with you two.” He studied us for a moment, a small frown forming. “Sorry, I shouldn’t really say anythi
ng. I’m not pack.”

  “Yes, you are,” I replied, the words just falling out as I watched Kade scream, escaping the clutches of the girl that chased him. I looked down again as the silence drew on. “How can we have gone through what we’ve gone through without becoming a pack? I felt you on my skin when I came back, your power flowing into me, strengthening me. Are we not connected?” I felt the venom flush my mouth, and my teeth ached with the need to pull them close and bite deep into their flesh. “But I’m not rushing into biting you. I need time to catch up, find you and feel you, both of you. Putting that mark on Peter and Aidan, it’s so fucking personal and I can’t just do it to finalise things neatly. I don’t know when it’ll happen, but know I will when it does. But I’m guessing you’d like some certainty, and I can give you that. Consider yourselves part of us. Ophelia sanctioned you being in the house while we recover, but I’ll fight any of them if they try to take you away.”

  I watched the play of emotions on both Sen’s and Noah’s faces. There was something still a little dead about me. I was slow to react, to respond, part of me just observing before reacting. But then it would come, somehow more intensely for the lag.

  There was something naked about Sen’s face as he heard the words. His usual façade was ripped down rather ruthlessly, leaving something much more fragile in its wake—a softness that made his eyes widen as I crawled over and kissed him, that had his hands going to my hair, wanting to hold me still, even as I pulled away. I grabbed his hand, feeling the pulse down the bond that shouldn’t be there but was, before turning to Noah.

  He was always much more plain about how he felt, his skin as white as milk when I moved before him. He couldn’t move, his eyes standing out plainly on his face, his head tilting as he seemed to search me blindly for answers to the questions that swirled inside. He shook, even flinched away when I went to touch him, as if it would hurt. Or was it the distance between us that caused him pain? Then he surged forward, collecting me up and pushing me to the ground, his body following with it to the sounds of my other mate’s complaints. Food, drinks, phones were all crushed beneath us as he kissed me with his whole soul.