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

by Tina Smith

  When I reached the car, I used my knife to cut the vines off her wrists. I shoved the corpse in the back seat and threw a dusty blanket from the boot over it. It was nearing sunrise when I checked the coast was clear and drove out onto the tarmac towards the Cult compound. I parked by the road, engine running, and opened the back passenger door throwing off the blanket. I dragged the body out, hurriedly lumbering across the long grass, to the wall. The road was luckily deserted, but a car could come along at any minute and my heart beat with adrenaline.

  I heaved and I pushed the body in a panic, until she lay face down supported by the wall and then I easily tossed it over the other side. I heard a light thud; she had no doubt landed awkwardly. I didn’t look back as I sprinted back to the car…just in time as some traffic passed. I kept my head down and slid into my seat and my dirty hands gripped the steering wheel. I had returned the Jane Doe cadaver like a damaged parcel to the compound. I steered back onto the road and threw a U-turn back towards Tisane’s. Now they would know she had met me and that the huntress had caused her demise. Hopefully they weren’t beyond unsettling.

  I veered for the river on the way home. No amount of icy river water refreshed me this time. Thirstily I drank the muddy water. I washed my shirt, wringing it repeatedly in the stream. I tried to put the sight and feel of the lifeless body out of my head as I pressed my face under the rapids. As I ran my hands through my wet hair, I watched the bank, as I often did, but this time it was with more concern. I picked the dirt from under my nails. For the time being the river edge seemed to be receding as bits of debris floated past in the muddy water.

  Emerging from the cold river, wearing nothing but my tag, I trudged onto the sediment stained bank, the weight of gravity hitting my wobbling thighs. I pulled on my wet shirt and tugged on my dry underwear from a branch. I stopped to look at the heart carved in the oak. I leant on the bark as I awkwardly pulled on my socks and boots before picking my gun and knife up from another branch. I headed back to the car, carrying the rest of my clothes.

  Tisane glanced at her through the kitchen window. Lila was making arrows by the woodpile while Tisane floured the baking dish for a pie and balled the pastry for the fridge. Venison & Mushroom pie was on the menu. Lila had been oddly quiet and pouty since coming home a few hours past sunrise, pale and clammy and half dressed in wet clothes. If Lila’s face moved to set in some emotion, it was because she chose to convey it.

  She was becoming a pariah and her behaviour told Tisane more about Lila’s thoughts than she cared to say. Tisane was cooking in the kitchen with her back to the door but she turned as Lila came in. She didn’t speak. Eerily she trod into the hall and Tisane heard her bedroom door close with a thud.

  Something had happened. Perhaps Sky was dead?

  Tisane felt tears prick at her eyes and what she could only identify as an ashamed sensation that ate at her inside. She tried to block out Lila’s emotions.

  By the afternoon, Lila came out and appeared to be ready to assemble words. Tisane rolled out the cold pastry for dinner.

  “Anything on the missing She Wolf?” Lila asked, sipping a carton of juice straight from the fridge.

  Tisane worked the dough. “No. She’s not listed yet.” She pressed the pastry with her fingers. Lila pressed her teeth together. “How was your meeting?”

  “Fine, he’s alive. They kept him away,” she admitted dolefully. “We are approaching a fight. I’m going to get as many of them as I can.” Lila paused. “Will you help us Tisane? We will wipe them out.” Her sneering expression held the nasty truth for a moment.

  “What if you are killed?” Tisane uttered in opposition, her eyes filling with moisture.

  “I’ll die trying. We play the game, right?” Lila’s brows gave a flicker of attitude. She turned to leave the kitchen.

  Tisane spoke. “Lila.” Lila stopped midway to the door. “A word to the wise, you have to trust that the huntress is all around you and inside you, even though you can’t see it.” She barely kept her voice steady.

  Lila seemed to almost nod as she considered Tisane’s advice. Tisane concentrated on her pastry, placing it in the pie pan, but she jumped a little as she heard the screen door slam.

  23. Lonnie is Alone

  Lonnie was a hardly more than a boy when Aylish met him in the city. He was struggling with his homosexuality. She found him one night, trying to overdose in his apartment; his saliva had stained the blue carpet under his pretty pock marked face as his mouth frothed. If he hadn’t been so appealing, perhaps she would have left him, perhaps not. Perhaps she could have called an ambulance that would have and saved him, but she hated doctors.

  He had highlights in his cropped dyed hair and wore bracelets, one silver, and one plaited leather. His skin was scared from acne over concave cheeks and she had admired his feminine facial features. Whether he was thrown out of home or he had left was a grey area and when his latest boyfriend had left him, he’d felt utterly alone.

  It was clichéd. He knew it was, but adolescence had been too hard, ‘Coming out’ had been too painful and once he had tasted that out-of-body euphoria Heroin gave him, he wanted to stay there. He had cried like everyone in emotional pain does and wished things weren’t the way they were as his heart slowed. But nothing had changed and it twisted him up inside.

  He didn’t remember the bite. He hardly recalled Aylish with her pretty crinkly blonde hair - girls hadn’t interested him much, she was just another pretty young blonde thing amongst the sea of many that spawned into the city clubs, seemingly from nowhere at night – but he was wrong. He came to admire her because she looked after him with a ferocity he had hoped his lovers could have for him.

  He knew, though she needn't bother, that Aylish guarded him venomously. It wasn’t always obvious, but she wouldn’t have hesitated to lose her ice cool calm in a second, had he required it. But she wasn’t one to smother. He became like her brother. He came and went as he pleased and she was always there. On moonless nights they stayed in and she’d touch his hair while they watched the latest rom coms and he helped her pick what to wear. She always appreciated his eye. Dahlia and Aylish were now his world and his family. Her love was unconditional. He taught her what real love was. If he had been straight, he would have loved her and so in his own way, he did. She was someone he could rely on.

  So it was no less than heart breaking to find the apartment empty. He walked from room to room shell shocked. In disbelief, he noticed a few of Aylish’s things gone first, then Dahlia’s. Drawers where only half empty, the suitcase gone from the top of the wardrobe, her favourite shoes, the clothes from the laundry, everything except his things. The stuffy apartment started to make him nauseous: the food still in the refrigerator, his toothbrush and the D.V.D’s waiting to be returned to the store. But the girls, his pack sisters - vanished – without a word – or a note to say where they had gone. The apartment would have been eerily quiet had the sound of the neighbour’s television not been buzzing through the wall.

  They didn’t call when they should have. He knew them better; at least, he thought he did. They were a team, but here he was, abandoned.

  24. Ahead of the Pack

  Blair had been leaving in the morning when he spotted it. The white corpse, slumped, face down in the grass by the wall, her head grotesquely twisted. Stark against the deep green grass. Blair approached the deathly pale dirt-crusted corpse. There were what appeared to be two bullet wounds in her buttock. When he carefully rolled her his heart skipped a beat and he swallowed dry; there was a hideous wound slashed in her naked chest. He had to keep from turning away. His marble face crumpled into a frown.

  Wiry red hair covered half of her face. A knife had carved a pattern above the sinister wound over her heart. More disturbing still to Blair, was that it looked to be deliberately inflicted, post mortem. He stood back. Perhaps the huntress wasn’t as harmless as he had thought. The unsettling sight had shaken him and strangely the scavenger in him hungered for it a
s he smacked his lips. He called Paws, Narine and Genna. Worse yet, they didn’t know who the woman was, either.

  Tisane and I had agreed to cast a dark spell under the moon. It was time.

  “Goddess of Mir, Queen of Night, confound mine enemies; prick Paws with compunction, baffle him with blood!” Tisane unscrewed the defrosted jar and poured the collected stag blood on the fire.

  “Queen of Night, fair Persephone, confound mine enemies; open Paws’ eyes so that he may do my bidding.” She had me spit into the fire on cue. I wiped my chin. “Artemis, brave huntress, confound mine enemies; let the arrow find its mark.” We blew upon the fire. “Aphrodite, ruler of hearts, confound mine enemies; let justice rain down from heaven.” I poured a jar of rain water and blood over the flames, smoke drifted up as the fire sizzled out. “Take the head from mine enemies, let his power rot in the earth, goodness grow from its death, as we place a tree. So mote it be,” Tisane canted. We placed the rotten stag head in the hole, covered it with dirt, and planted the sprouted oak seedling over it, under a full silver moon.

  This was a totally binding spell, dark magic. Tisane told me the effects would come back at me nine fold.

  In the morning we met in town. Tarah was bustling with weekend traffic. I immediately knew what he was. As I looked at him through the binoculars I thought I had remembered their luminescent skin, but in reality, in the light of day, it was like the glow of a young child, a radiance only the born again can emit. Tisane called it an aura and judging by C.J’s open mouth gaze I wasn’t the only one who saw it. I wasn’t sure if humans saw what we did though.

  She unnecessarily pointed him out, and when I caught a glimpse under his police cap, the light that reflected from his lively eyes was unmistakable, even from our distance. Constable Blair Whitlock. Blair’s familiar glowing crystal gaze made me gasp for the memory of which it provoked.

  I was decked out in holiday wear, being that it was summer no one batted an eyelid at strangers in Tarah, and just in case I kept my sunglasses firmly on and my forearm covered. I peered through the binoculars; the Cult had been tactical in their choice. His creation was a clear strategic attack on the town, a planned risk well worth the taking. Because the creation of more of their kind could draw more hunters like me.

  His face alone could have stopped traffic with its soft boyish charm and manly features; mixed with the immortal elixir, he shone. With his constable badge and deep navy blue uniform, his influence over the community was insurance for the Cult.

  We carefully followed his car to a house, and from our vantage point, I could see it was a quaint place, kept too neat, with trimmed lawns. Once I was sure that it was his, we disappeared. After scouting, C.J and I left for the forest to collect something we needed.

  That night the car was my aim. It was a Chrysler Charger, sun burnt orange, with mint condition original interior, tinted windows – he was proud of it. And tonight, it was parked in the driveway.

  I gently pushed two files about and twisted the internal parts of the lock. After about three attempts, I was about to give up when the button released and we popped open the driver’s side car door. You could discover how to do anything online. If it hadn’t worked we were planning to leave our gift on the windshield.

  I pulled out the rotten deer head, brushing away flies from its grey fur and sat it slumped in the immaculate front seat. Caroline’s kill now defaced Blair’s pride and joy. I snatched the lemon scented tree off the rear vision mirror. I opened the glove box and saw he kept a spare pair of sunglasses, Rayban style things, and I put them on the severed head, they balanced and the effect was mildly humourous.

  I carefully closed the door and C.J snuffled a laugh. Using the same file I marked a cross over the bonnet and drew a heart over it, a crescent and four lines – identical to the symbol etched in the woman’s body that I had dumped at the compound.

  25. Lonnie Makes a Friend

  Andy wasn’t his first choice. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had, in fact, been on his way home from a 'Dungeons of Tyranny' party with his laptop when Lonnie had appeared; first on one side of the street, then on the other.

  Lonnie thought he might kill him. He hadn’t consciously tried to prevent the boy’s death and it had been harder getting him home than he had anticipated after the bite was inflicted. Somewhere along the walk home his victim had roused and Lonnie had smacked him in the head until he flailed and collapsed again. After nervously looking about, Lonnie then slung the limp young man over his shoulder and carried his defeated prey home like an urban carcass, along the footpath in the early hours of the morning.

  He had chosen him because Andy was thin and weak. A games and computer nerd, Lonnie wasn’t built enough to handle a large guy. Anderson was the boy’s name. He had light blonde caramel hair that matched his face and eyebrows, so Lonnie thought he seemed all one colour.

  He waited for the boy to wake; he had been doing a lot of that lately, waiting. He had heard and seen nothing of his sisters; it was as though they had just vanished. Lonnie’s mind came up with endless scenarios about why they had gone and finally, he had decided he couldn’t stand the quiet any longer.

  What was to stop him creating another for company? He knew if Aylish were here, she would have stopped him. He almost dared to believe that the act of attempting it would somehow bring her back. But here he was with the fevering teenager on his lounge room floor, bored still, but anxious also. If his infected victim died, what would he do with the body? Was it even possible to create another like them? He had never cared to ask Aylish or even Dahlia how it was done, they would have read into his intentions something more than just him wanting to know.

  He remembered something Dahlia had said one evening in the flat to Aylish. There was always more tension between the girls than between him and them and Lonnie knew it was because of a shared history. It had always seemed to him they had run from somewhere and Aylish was happier about it than Dahlia. Dahlia had been thrilled like a child allowed a pet when he had awoken in the flat. He awoke to the beautiful Bollywood woman looking into his face. She was the first to take him by the hand and show him things, through his new wolf eyes. She recalled the feeling well herself of being new born, but it was Aylish that he ultimately gravitated to when Dahlia’s shallow interest faded.

  Aylish was quieter, a trait often taken as standoffishness, but it was just reserve. When Lonnie had time to know her, he loved her. Though Aylish appeared not to be thinking, she thought a lot. Aylish was mysterious and had a temperament made from heartache. Maybe he saw it because she was much like him, wounded.

  Aylish was an amazing sight, with her naturally blonde crimped hair worn long. Her body was pale and fine. Even her nose was like a sculpted doll’s nose with a point at the tip, her ice blue eyes were like slits that matched her fine cheek bones. Everything about her was cold, except her heart. She hadn’t wanted anything from him, she hadn’t cared he was gay. In fact, she accepted him and defended him on more than one occasion, even to Dahlia, much to her frustration. He now recalled the day a long while ago that he had heard Dahlia strike at Aylish over him.

  “In Shade he’d be dead for that,” Dahlia spat at her. He recognised that her very slight Indian accent was more pronounced when she was angry.

  “That’s why we don’t live there anymore,” Aylish had said so coolly it cut the air.

  “Don’t you dare say that! We both know why you made us leave,” Dahlia answered thickly.

  There was an audible silence and then Aylish had said quietly, “Dahlia, I’ll pretend you didn’t just say that.” He made out the sound of her unsteady breath. “Times have changed, even in Shade.”

  “But not enough time has passed so that we can move back?” There was a need written on Dahlia’s face, in her iridescent blue eyes. A question.

  “That will always be the same.” Then Aylish added as Dahlia stepped away, “And you’re right, it wouldn’t be safe for him there.”

&n
bsp; “Just like it wasn’t safe for Haris and -”

  “Shut up,” snapped Aylish, but there was a crack in her voice, her breath becoming more shallow as she defended the lost. He thought he heard her heart beating. He wondered what had happened in the past.

  “Or Maxie, or Hayden,” Dahlia taunted.

  “Be quiet Dahlia.” Aylish’s voice hissed with a broken harshness Lonnie had never heard and he was to remember it long after.

  Dahlia had snuck about for days, maybe a week or two after that fight in the hallway, outside their bedrooms. He had heard it all from the lounge, but neither of the girls ever said anything about it; he was smart enough not to press Aylish’s wounds.

  Shade? Shade, he knew that name. It had to be a town or a place; he grabbed his phone and Googled it. Sure enough, there it was, Shade Valley, and it was only three hours’ drive towards the coast, down the mountains. He glanced at the sweaty body on the carpet and suddenly hated that he now had to baby sit a kid.

  Lonnie had inadvertently trapped himself in the stuffy flat possibly for days. After a time, he considered ridding himself of the liability with another bite - it would be messy, but quick. Or was it better to dump him? At his house or at a hospital?

  Aylish would kill him if he exposed their kind. Why hadn’t he thought of Shade before? There was no telling if they’d be there, yet somehow he knew they would, his instincts whispered. He hoped for their return.

  He stared at the boy’s back rising and falling slowly, and wished he would just expire. But even though he thought about it, he couldn’t leave him. So he ended up waiting, telling himself maybe they would come back anyway while he waited and then he was frightened to think of Aylish’s reaction when they spied his mortifying mistake. Lonnie knew he needed time to let the boy change and adapt. Only then could he think about showing his experiment to Aylish. He needed at least a few days before attempting to put him in the car, and it would have to be on a moonless night.