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

by Tina Smith

  Narine had advised she change herself to avoid easy recognition. Due to the fact that she had become a missing person her hair had been died brown but now it was bleached blonde. It was all subtle and designed to make her more appealing, but she didn’t need any of these enticements. Wolves, especially the She Wolves, were improved greatly with venom as a survival mechanism and perhaps to invite prey with little resistance. Her friends Tealy and Monica wouldn’t have recognized her and had by now probably accepted she was gone. With no parents to care about finding her, she had simply disappeared as a statistic to Shade’s strange wheel of tragedy.

  Blair, a police officer at the police station, was now with the Cult. Narine and Paws didn’t want this news getting out. A spy like Blair in the plain sight of the community; working for their side squashing missing persons, losing evidence from murder cases, and under reporting crime. Narine's plans were not only to infiltrate and guide the hand of the law in her favour, but also to eventually pull the political strings of the whole town and silently control the prey, as well as the enemy and eventually the packs in other territories. It was a goal she had taken from Paws originally but she had indeed made it her own. She would push the plan where Paws hadn’t. Angele was a willing participant, a cog in the machine doing her bit for the greater good for the survival of her family.

  Angele felt as though she was a dolled up carcass, and of all the suits she could have worn, the gods had chosen for her a most appealing shell; the gift to transform in unearthly tremours into the creature she would rather be. She would have preferred to have been in that dream - as the wolf padding through the forest leaves and living in the organic odours of bark and leaves and dirt, living without thoughts of worry or human weakness - than to be Angie again, the teenage girl in pain.

  17. Scathed & Scorned

  From the dark, Shell looked through the window she had spied into many a night. Now though, it was different as she looked at the red headed woman examining the things in her living room. She had veered off from the hunting group to see him. She couldn’t help disobeying pack orders. Genna had been called to a shift at the hospital otherwise Shell would never have managed to get away from the pack. To see the life she held to, as it slipped further away.

  There, in the open plan house, he came in from the kitchen and handed the woman a glass of red, as though Shelly never existed. And then he sat with the red headed woman on her sofa. It was a date – Shell had denied this fact, but she now decided she had been kidding herself because it was painfully obvious. At first it was too hurtful to let herself believe. She wanted to stop it. She knew even the slightest hint of her would be enough to stop it. For him to see her for a second would stop it. Put an end to a world without her.

  But there they were happily involved in their own world. She was a ghost, invisible, gone from their existence, and it burnt like ash in her mouth as she felt a lump rise in her throat. Her emotions had reached boiling point. Suddenly, she felt a large hand on her shoulder – one of her kind. Violently she shrugged Sky off and tossed herself as she walked sideways towards the back laundry door of the house - her house. Her maneuver hadn’t lost him though; his body jostled with hers as she fought like a child throwing a tantrum, until his hands tightened on her, and she came to land with her back upon the brick wall.

  She dared to stop and look up at him with her hurt eyes, as two large fat tears toppled from them, one cascading down her cheek. Her hands limply fought him, helplessly, until he pressed her more forcefully against the rough brick exterior. He placed his body up against her so she could not flee from his firm grasp as she struggled. She couldn’t break into the life, into the house and announce herself back into Jason Bealy’s life.

  She struggled to believe that she was dead to him. Her chin turned up as she flailed more weakly until, almost unexpectedly, her soft lips found Sky’s and she felt him cease to move. The shock of her action stunned him in that moment. But before he knew it, he had unthinkingly pressed back, cautiously and then numbly, until his hands found her thick cotton T-shirt. His fists forced her away a little, pushing her firmly to the wall as he pulled his lips from hers. She didn’t move as his fingers clamped on her shirt about her shoulders and with his head down and to the side. He suddenly propelled himself from the moment, walking over to the lawn fast. With his back turned, he made an inaudible, “Arrhh!” of frustration, his hands locked behind his head.

  She couldn’t be sure but she thought her ears heard him whisper, “Lila,” as he bent forward. In the blink of an eye and twist of his torso, he was a four-legged beast and he ran rapidly away from her and disappeared into the trees.

  Shell felt the loneliness again as the rough brick pressed into her back. She took a moment, blinking away the fat tears toppling from her sad eyes. Breathing through her mouth, as the cool air dried her tongue, she paused to reconstruct the last few strange moments which had tumbled into one another. She had never felt so much tumultuous pain, frustration, grief and anger in one wave. Whatever Sky had done, she now suddenly felt more in control of her emotions, spaced out - but she had come to her senses and it had felt better than a slap in the face. She swallowed and then, as she heard laughter from inside the house, she took off swiftly. Not after Sky, but back through the trees.

  She was numb now - hurt still, but not in as much horrible pain. She knew she would have to accept her husband was now probably having sex with another woman, in her home and on her bed, on her 300 thread count sheets gifted for their wedding. On her sheets. She loathed the thought as her wolf feet padded the earth, and it hurt so much to think of him enjoying her, feeling her the way his hands had once promised only to touch her...sipping her red wine. It still burnt, but somehow she would have to let it go. But it ached.

  What did they all expect her to do? Just handle it? Be over it, like that? Shell didn’t feel the way most of the others in the pack did. She had loved her life. She was good at her job, it had been picture perfect. How could she ever succumb to a disorderly life with wolves - when she had never known of or wanted it? They stopped her at every turn that she made to try to reconcile it. No scrap of her beautiful life was left, and now this incident was the final nail in the coffin. She imagined herself buried in her wedding dress, with a bottle of imported Italian Rose from the local wine club.

  Paws chose her for the reason that her life was so idyllic. He enjoyed the pain it caused her to have to now be like him – cruelly, it was funny to him. To take the pretty teacher away from her new husband and her new brick house, lined with fresh wedding portraits. She had asked him, “Why did you do this to me?”

  Dieter had chuckled with no ounce of empathy in his snake-like eyes for what he had done. He haunted her with his heartless taunting.

  She spotted a rabbit and took off after it on two legs, starved for the meat he denied her, and relishing its warm delicious taste, as warm blood ran from her mouth. Her primal side emerged and she phased.

  18. Crescent Sky

  Lila risked meeting Sky, a task undertaken in the darkest night to please herself, and not the Gods. She couldn’t help it, no matter the risk. A sea of cicadas sang deafeningly around her as she waited in the trees, hoping it wouldn’t turn into a blood bath; that he could get away without too much trouble and that the pack hadn’t figured out the code on the tag. Tisane had said the Black Cicadas came only every seventeen years, and their presence remained only for a few days. She credited Persephone with their occurrence and told Lila they would help to shield them. The cicada represents immortality and rebirth; she told her it was a good omen.

  Lila prayed he had found the code. She touched the acorn in her pocket and recalled Tisane’s spell as the insects sang deafeningly all around her. ‘Water be healing and salt be pure, keep me safe and protected sure, whilst I keep this sacred charm, guard me and mine from any harm, flame that burns and brings me light, keep me safe both day and night, Persephone make thy enemies flee, and it harm none so mote it be.’

>   She had made Lila pray to the Goddess Artemis while she stood in the middle of a pentagram with Lila and lit candles to the four elements. Tisane held her finger up to the sky and canted the spell in the circle.

  When she heard him below the rattling leaves, breathing heavily, Lila descended the tree anxiously.

  They met under the crested moonlight, as something unbearably powerful and tragic lay between them. He embraced her but it was stiff, different somehow, like her body no longer fit with his. She was tense and shaking a little. Her girlish embarrassment had faded and her hair was darker, short and smooth over the shape of her head.

  He touched her face and suddenly his grip pressed her cheek. “Who did this?” He could smell the cuts on her skin and see the pain in her belladonna eyes in the moonlight, and he hated that.

  “No one, it was an accident.” The cut had healed but it had left a pink scar indented into the side of her eye. He was the only thing that could hurt her.

  “How?” his voice urged her soothingly.

  She reached up to touch his hand with her own, cold fingers. For the moment she allowed herself to want him. He made everything bearable and made her life sacrifice unbearable all at once.

  “Uh, I’ll tell you some time.” She tried to laugh as her eyes filled with moisture. A half-smile touched her lips and her heart beat like drum.

  His hand touched the tag on her chest, the piece of him she had held to all this time. She let herself inhale his warm scent.

  He slid his broad thumb across her face and pulled her close in a warm embrace, as the disbelief of the moment consumed her and the tag pressed against his firm chest.

  Neither of them spoke even when they pulled apart and looked into each other’s faces. She tried to place his face with her memory, which had grown distant. Now it was as though looking at a stranger whose body encased the one she loved - the being that she had fought so fiercely for. She pulled him close again. Now here he was, as hurt and scarred as she, though most of the pain was on the inside hardening them both. Lila didn’t want to be as tense as she was, she tried not to be on guard but every muscle was hard. She couldn’t flop into him as she once had and a little part of her was angry, distrustful of him in a way she had not been in the beginning.

  Had words been spoken, they would have broken any love they felt between them, like an axe to a string. She felt the heat between them; it was still there but it was coated in fear, a veneer of suspicion. Those bad feelings threaded over them to suffocate the compassion she willed herself to have for him, her wolf, and her man. The soul she loved shrouded her now, but he had hurt her, abandoned her.

  Sky knew the ball was in his court and he felt the strength and weakness in her body as she both resisted and clung to him like water.

  “I am sorry Lila,” he managed. She was conflicted, and he knew if he were cruel to himself he would tell her the hurt was real, that they weren’t meant to be and that even he knew it. And he tried, but it pained him. When she looked down, he lifted her chin. “It's selfish, but I have to have you.” His eyes began to glisten and he didn’t care if he made sense.

  He didn’t want any of it to matter. He needed her and he knew it was so selfish because it put everyone and everything and mostly her in jeopardy; to love her and show it was to damn her. He gripped her arms; he kissed her and tasted her lips for the first time in so long. He stopped to look into her eyes.

  “Please…” she croaked in a whisper. She wanted to believe him, to trust every word but terrifyingly knew that it would never be enough to satisfy her. She could never feel the same innocence towards him when she looked at the ugliness - the facts. She had been turned inside out over it, changed by it.

  Sky felt her body weaken as she let down her guard in defeat, and they embraced again. This time their bodies rested together, his crested about her small frame, enveloping her. There was a sense of desperation as she yielded to him and he inhaled her scent. His arms knocked the arrow bundles on her back; he ignored them and grappled for the feel of her skin beneath the rigid weapons.

  His breathing was unsteady, as it so often was around her.

  He winced as he pulled her to him, tighter, thinking of how he was so self-centered and bad.

  She could have killed him and then herself. He wanted to tell her how tortured he was. She wanted to hear it, all or none of the excuses as she spared them for the moment. She steadied herself for his excuses, for the weak excuses, for why he had discarded her without care.

  “I’m so crazy,” he whispered, desperately wanting to tell her to stay away and at the same time doing everything he could to keep her there, to pull her in the opposite direction. He had to tell her the truth.

  She felt such anger and sadness, love and hate in one moment she almost felt like jelly and she visibly trembled from the stress of it, the ecstasy and the pain.

  “I had to, I had no choice. This isn’t right.” He resisted the tears which welled as he held her tight, running his arms over her body. When she didn’t speak, he decided she must either not want to hear - but it had to be said - or perhaps she was waiting for it. The reason he had abandoned her.

  He pulled away then, but held Lila at arm’s length and got down on his knees in the damp before her. “Please understand I didn’t want to Lila, but they would have killed you. Or me quite possibly, if I had escaped - defended you.”

  She had an urge to end it, to kill him and then swiftly herself, but it swelled and subsided as quickly as a wave. She couldn’t bear to do it without touching him first, and hearing him say the words that could make it possible for her to trust him again. But every damn word he spoke only drove the stake of hurt deeper into her flesh until it burnt. Perversely she urged him to push it further, to unleash all the pain, as much of it as he could in one strike. She ran her fingers through his nut brown hair wanting all of him, more now than ever.

  She looked at him and kept the same expression so he continued. “If you want me dead, do it, I swear. Do it, I’d rather it be you than them…” His eyes glistened as her hand moved to touch his jaw and cheek. Her finger trailed over his mouth and his lips, which begged for her touch, and ran like warm electricity over them. He pulled her close by the waist and she yielded to him, bent softly with the pull, accepting it. He pushed his soft lips into her bare stomach, which was exposed by the movement; her hands rubbed and ran through his golden brown hair as desperately as he tugged at her. He turned his head to the side and rested his bristled cheek upon her belly, as her hand smoothed his hair against his neck.

  “How are we going to do this Lila?” A thin tear ran down his cheek.

  “Bite me,” came her hard words, barely a whisper. The simple sounds flew in the face of her existence, as her body resisted the way her lips moved to say them.

  “No,” he hissed helplessly.

  “I’ll be compromised then,” she pleaded.

  “No.”

  There was a silence.

  She used a different tactic. “I’ll die before you, you know.”

  “I know.” And he knew it every day. “I’ll die when you do.”

  “Why? You’re healthy.” She sniffed; Lila knew he could live a thousand years.

  “No,” he said surely.

  “Yes you are, you’re-”

  “No I’m not. Sam knew where to hurt me. She bit me on the vertebra.” In the silence she knew it was bad, he wasn’t just saying it. It all made sense. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  “Where you were injured? In the war, before?”

  “Yeah.”

  He heard her swallow. “Sky…how bad is it? Can’t you heal if it’s done right?”

  “No, it’s been tried. I’m as good as I’ll ever be now.”

  His face was pale. She realized now that it was the paleness of pain; the night made his pallor grey.

  “Are you alright?” she whispered.

  “No,” he blinked.

  He knew she didn’t know what to say so he added, �
�Some days are better than others…with therapy and my healing ability it might get better - but not fixed, I’m not indestructible Lila.”

  Lila heard her breath quicken. She was angry at Sam in way she had never been before. She had done this maliciously. She had tried not to kill him. She had deliberately maimed him. Sam had wanted him to live in pain – forever.

  “Have there been other cases of this?”

  “Like me? No, not exactly, but there are other injuries. There was a girl here in the Cult that Narine damaged. She never healed right, but it was her leg and I think it looks worse than it is.” Lila knew without saying it that while Sky looked okay, his injury was deep; worse than it looked. The wolves where powerful and strong, they had the ability to heal fast, but they still felt pain and they were not past vulnerability. If it hurt badly enough, mangled in just the right way, then their own miraculous healing speed could cripple them. “I can’t run as well as I used to.” Old age was a friend they didn’t have, but they were not immortal or unable to feel pain.

  She didn’t want to believe that it wasn’t possible to fix him. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t true, but she felt helpless.

  Her voice was quiet and hurt as it broke the sound of the night. “Why did you do it, Sky?”

  “Leave you?” he breathed.

  “Yes.” She waited for his answer.

  “They dragged me away. For the first three months they kept me contained, the rest of the time they threatened your life and eventually I was convinced it wasn’t right.” He looked away then, unsure if it would be enough for her to hear his excuses. He still wasn’t convinced it was right either, to be here. In a way he betrayed his kind by wanting to be with her. They could not understand. He betrayed his family in the worst way by meeting with her. “They don’t agree.” He smiled in a way one does when in pain.