by Sarah Elliot
The wolf glared directly ahead of himself, poised as if he was ready for battle. “Because of them.”
Ekata twisted her head to the side, fighting off another wave of nausea and disorientation before she blinked in terror. Siren and Mephistopheles were standing on the edge of the marsh, looking just about ready to kill the pair of them. Jared just grinned. “They can’t take another step… the vampire defenses are just in front of them. They’ll be dead meat if they even put so much as a pinky toe into it.”
The almost childish glee in the boy’s voice vanished as the girl in his arms suddenly turned with a violent, gut-wrenching cough and blood splattered onto the roots of the snow-strewed tree.
Without pausing to think of what he was doing or the consequences of his actions, Jared grabbed the girl and hauled her into his large strong arms. He set off towards the Den, knowing that his mother would be the best person to deal with the poison coursing through the strange girl’s veins.
He didn’t fail to spot the silver swirls which began to glow on her skin; however, that just made him run all the more faster to reach the safety of home.
Chapter 2
Bandages
“Father, you have got to listen to me on this one!” Jared virtually cried, trying his best not to leap at the older wolf who was currently staring at the wall blankly after being told about the two who had been brought in. It wasn’t so much that he was ignoring Jared, Rosario knew his wayward son well enough to know that he did not sprout fairy stories and lies but it was just very hard to believe. “I mean, go to the river bank and you’ll see the flowers. They didn’t disappear in the slightest,” the younger continued, hoping that he wasn’t being considered a liar by the alpha.
Rosario turned his pale blue eyes on his son, blinking gently in an effort to focus without having to resort to his glasses that hung around his neck. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that it is a hard thing to believe… plus I never dreamt that she would end up here with me after all that happened.”
Jared couldn’t help but flick his ears in confusion at the statement but before he could ask, Rosario seemed to realise what he had said and quickly shook his head before standing up and beginning to head down the corridor towards the guest bedroom. “Don’t worry about it, just something from my past that I hoped would not come back to haunt me. You say she was being chased by two vampires?”
Sobering up a little, Jared nodded whilst regarding his father with an expert eye. Whilst on the surface the other looked surprisingly well kept for his age, the signs of wear and tear were beginning to show. There were patches of skin that were stained with liver spots too big to be completely natural and age-old winding scars that racked across his arms and chest though today these were covered over by a plain-looking shirt. There were wrinkles forming on the old face, more than he had ever dared to comment on but there was still a spark of life within the eyes though right at this moment in time, they looked more dulled than ever. A clear sign that something was bothering the old werewolf greatly which set alarm bells ringing in the younger man’s head. “Yeah, a male and female. Unfortunately, they aren’t your usual run-of-the-mill kind either, didn’t take a single step into the marshes and avoided the repellents like the plague. Didn’t even think of attempting to cross them in the slightest.”
“Elders possibly?” Rosario asked with some strained hope in his voice, which was quickly dashed when the cub shook his head in response.
“I don’t know but one was called Siren, that much I heard,” Jared said softly, looking up to his father.
Rosario paled immediately, turning his full attention onto the girl who was now lying on the bed in the guest room and took a harder look towards her. If this was indeed the child, he thought it was then by all that was holy and unholy they were going to be in a whole heap of new trouble. Though there was a part of him that was secretly overjoyed to see the girl back, even looking as though she had literally gone through hell granted but alive and as she should be.
“Never mind about those vampires.” Stefina’s voice cut into the conversation, leaning just on the doorframe to the room where the girl was currently being kept. “I want to know what she was doing out there all alone, half-starved to death and why in Nix’s name Fiero went out in this accursed weather.”
Casting his eyes over to his lovely little wife, Rosario couldn’t help but feel just a bit proud of her natural mothering instincts towards the pair of them. He was more than used to hearing her worry over Fiero, his nephew had proven to be a spirited little thing from the second he had recovered from the horrific slaying of his family and Stefina always had a soft spot for the unruly cub. But to hear her going on about the strange girl as if she were just a distant pack member was a relief. Not that he had doubted it for one second of course, Stefina took virtually any man, woman, child, vampire, werewolf or changer in without a complaint and would care for them like they were her own flesh and blood. Of course if anyone crossed her then hell hath no fury.
Gently he smiled at her and shook his head. “Until she wakes up I only have a few weak guesses. Can I take a look at her?”
“No.” Stefina’s voice was strict and straight to the point. “I’ve got several herbal remedies on the go and the last time I let you anywhere near them you ended up giggling on the floor like a new born cub for two days.”
Trying to hide his laughter, Jared bit his lip before sobering up as his mother’s glare fell on him in deep scrutiny. “Can we talk to Fiero then? I get the impression that he’s awake or at least on some form of consciousness that does not equate to sleep.”
Stefina sighed, glaring at her son in a playful manner. “You’re starting to sound too much like that old uncle of yours, Jared Fernell. Yes, you can see him for a little while because I need to brew up a burdock tea to sort the fool out. You see that you give him a firm telling-off though, Rosario, and get him to tell you what he was doing running off in the middle of the night and worrying his aunty half to death.” To emphasize the point, Stefina poked her long-established mate in the chest with a metal spoon which always stuck out of one of her many apron pockets.
Grinning, the alpha wolf nodded and watched as the bustling mother headed down towards the kitchen and cellars. “A right chip off the old block is your mother, couldn’t find another like her in a hundred years of searching.”
“Thank the nymphs for that,” Jared said cheekily, heading towards Fiero’s room. “I don’t think the world could take it.” Of course, he was joking because there was no way he would ever be nasty about his mother other than in jest. Stefina was a godsend amongst werewolf mothers and he considered himself extremely lucky to have her as his own good old mum. “Wish Fiero wouldn’t act so much like her at times though, it gets really freaky when he does.”
Whilst only a few years younger than Jared, Fiero had always appeared to be mature beyond his years and was at that stage in life where the choices began to seriously matter. Should he stay with the pack and become a hunter or would it be wiser for him to head out into the world to find his own place amongst the ever-changing circumstances that were governed by it all. Rosario had no illusions that the cub would stay with them, ever since he could virtually walk the little scamp had been frequently found way outside of the boundaries or straying into other packs’ territory with little more than a ‘how do you do’ to the resident wolves. The old wolf had lost track of the amount of times he had received either an exhausted messenger or more recently a very annoyed-sounding phone call, one of the few modern accessories to the human world that the wolves agreed to bring into their dens, telling him to come and collect Fiero.
The only problem was that most of the time the boy would have some explanation for why he had gone outside of the boundaries so punishment was hard but of late he had stopped going on his random outings. If anything, Rosario got the distinct impression that the boy was waiting for something to happen or for someone to arrive. He had taken plenty of sen
try watches and had scored the parameter of the land far more times than was really necessary but the old wolf had presumed that it was just simply the boy growing up and thought nothing more of it.
Now the appearance of a girl whom he had once been a guardian to thought lost to the wilds and the fact that his nephew had gone out into the woods in the middle of the night when he had no reason to do so, Rosario couldn’t help but begin to have some very strange thoughts. The type that he normally didn’t like to have either as they involved a man whom he trusted to the ends of the earth but hadn’t talked to in fifteen years. Someone was bound to be informing Alcarde of what was going on but Rosario did not know if that was a good idea or not.
Upon reaching the room, which Fiero inhabited, both father and son hesitated at the doorway and listened. A soft voice, clearly Fiero’s but spoken in low tones, was coming from inside the room but the words were difficult to decipher and Rosario tilted his head a little to the side in order to increase his hearing range.
Grabbing a notepad and pen, which had been left on one of the many tables outside of the room, Rosario quickly scribbled down what was being said, hoping that he did not miss a single word out. Though very quickly he found himself recognising the verse and felt a shiver go through his spine.
“Et a flumine per astra ,
Invicem , et inveniet
Spes mea es amica mea,
Per omnia saecula saeculorum ,
Tempestivus a prima a sole
Ad cor fovendum
Signa fate
Converte nos in unum
Pacem et concordiam,
Ut nostra fiat aut ortus
Sed ex parte stabo
Per omnia saecula saeculorum
Tu es domina
Qui immutare non possunt
Sustinui te reverti
Ita , quod mundus sit
Ut sit”
“Father,” hissed Jared, not wanting to disturb the older wolf but feeling slightly annoyed at the lack of response from the other. “What is he doing?”
“Talking in an old Latin script,” Rosario said without thinking, for the second time that day. “Appears to be reciting the poem of Aquilegia.”
Jared stared up at his father, knowing that he should not pry into such things as he had been forbidden to ask about anything to do with the Hunters from that day that Fiero had been brought into their care, but too intrigued to let his questions go unanswered. “What’s that got to do with anything that’s going on?” A tactful question that covered many different angles without giving anything obvious away, or so the younger wolf thought.
Rosario paused, listening to the verse quietly before saying, “It is supposed to be a message written by the Silver Knight to the Silver Maiden so that when they are eventually rejoined in mortality they will be able to know one another.” Slowly realization dawned on the alpha wolf and deliberately he pushed open the door to the boy’s room in order to avoid any more questions. He was definitely getting far too involved in this whole scenario and he didn’t want to think where it would all lead to.
Fiero looked up as the two males entered the room and quickly looked down and away as if he were hiding something. There was a smell of guilt about him but it was overpowered by curiosity and a desire to be somewhere else. A slight restless air was about his shoulders, the big toe on his right foot tapping constantly to some unheard rhythm and the haunch of his shoulders displaying all too well that right now he didn’t want to be here in the slightest. Jared had only seen his younger cousin like this once and it was when he had first arrived at the den, looking somewhere between terrified of being alive and being in this strange place but there was something completely different about this situation, but it was impossible to put a paw on the specifics.
“I don’t know,” was the first words out of the cub’s mouth before anyone got a chance to ask a question. “Something woke me last night and I was compelled to go out into the woods. It made no sense to me and I was the one who headed out there.”
Jared blinked up at his father. “Has he got concussion?”
“From a fall like the one he had, more so than likely,” Rosario said with a gentle sigh, staring at the sway of bandages that were wrapped around the young man’s head, so reminiscent of his late mother that the old wolf had to take a moment to remind himself that he was not dealing with her. “What awoke you last night, Fiero?”
There was a pause before the boy shook his head. “I can’t remember… it’s like a hazy dream. I just remember the snow, ice and grabbing hold of someone, a girl I think and I turned to get something to try and warm her up ’cause she was as cold as the ice and then something hit me or I fell I don’t know and then… then spring had come. Such a glorious spring, with real warmth and…” Trailing off Fiero opted not to talk about the next part of the dream. He knew it was wrong to not give full explanations to two of the men he could probably trust in the entire world but he didn’t want to share her with them.
Lightly a sigh escaped his lips, recalling so vividly the image which had dominated his dreams for the past three months but never in such high-quality detail. He had presumed, at first that the girl in the silver-white dress with the black hair and strange eyes was one of those dream angels that visited for one purpose only but nothing like that had ever occurred in those dreams. Most of the time she had just been sitting by a riverbank, looking lost and forlorn but he could not bring himself to be any nearer to her as there were others present.
However, over the last week, he had noticed that the girl in the dreams had been closer to his hiding spot, dipping her feet into the crystal clear water or tending to the blossoming flowers and once sitting so close that when he reached out to touch her his fingers brushed gently over the fine, almost hidden white ears that were like silk under his touch. And then last night he had received a silent summon to head out into the woods and was convinced that she had been there.
She had kissed him, he remembered that much but for some insane reason he had not been able to focus on her properly. It was then he remembered the bang to the head as he had tumbled down and sighed. “I know it makes no sense but that’s what happened. Honestly.”
“I believe you, Fiero,” Rosario said, kneeling down next to the cub. “Jared reported the same information to me and your aunt when he came back last night carrying the girl from the stream.”
Sudden anger welled up in the young wolf and he glared at his brown-haired cousin, sending out an uncharacteristic growl which caused the white-haired elder to move instinctively backwards and away. The very idea that someone, especially another wolf, had clapped eyes on the angel from his dream just drove him to anger and a dreadful desire to protect. It only lasted an instant though before confusion strove across his face and he glanced at his uncle, hoping for some explanation as to what was going on.
However, Rosario had none, or at least one he wasn’t prepared to give out right now. Instead he stared intently at the boy, before tilting his head backwards so that the natural light of the late sunrise glistened off the watery orbs. They shone a delicate silver, not striking as of yet from the normal grey-blue that they usually were but most distinctly the colour which should have brought pain to the werewolf. However, Fiero showed no outward signs of pain in the slightest.
That meant there was only one conclusion Rosario could draw, one that he was almost hoping wouldn’t come entirely true. Gently he sighed. “I need to talk to Disreli about this.”
“Why?” Fiero asked, panicking just a little bit at the mention of the elder wolf and his senior uncle. “What’s wrong with me?”
Rosario gently shook his head. “Nothing that can’t be easily remedied. I just want to confirm a few things before jumping to conclusions is all. You rest up, Fiero – you’re going to need your strength over the next few days.”
Chapter 3
Whispers
Brushing back the unkempt mess of hair from the boy’s sweat-covered forehead, Disreli frown
ed before tutting loudly. Normally the smallest of small touches would be enough to wake the lightly sleeping Fiero, as he had never really gotten over that horrible night some seventeen years ago when fire had claimed his birth family, but it seemed right now that the cub was most definitely out for the count. “I will not try to see those eyes of his but I fear that you are correct in your assumptions, little Rosario. Though I guessed something was up on the day he arrived at our doorstep, half-dead and so lonely in a world filled with love.” The ancient werewolf settled back a little on the bed in order to twist his so faint blue eyes onto his youngest brother with a faint smile. “Yet sometimes that is how the greatest amongst us start.”
Rosario blinked. “If you suspected something you should have said, I would have taken him to the Hunters for protection and guidance.” It was customary to be respectful towards one’s elders but the pair had always had a strange relationship. They loved one another dearly, despite the huge age difference, were always the first to defend the other’s actions or to offer assistance at a time of need. There was only one thing that they had disagreed on in their entire lives and it revolved around the day that Rosario joined the Hunters. Disreli had not been against the youngest son of his father joining, he just didn’t want the then young, rebellious cub to be in a position of danger and Rosario being the then determined terror that he was back then, had insisted upon taking the most dangerous missions instead of remaining in the library and being an extremely useful researcher, just to prove the point that he was the best in all areas.