by Tina Smith
We stood about awkwardly as Cres found the light switch and discovered, with a few flicks, that the power wasn’t on. Reid went out back to the meter; there were cobwebs hanging from the corners of the ceiling. Jackson was the first to sit down, inviting himself it seemed, while Cres and I stood facing the lounge area and an oil painting of Lily. There was an energy to this meeting, Cres had her arms crossed, and I glanced about. A wire mobile hung in the kitchen window, ornamented with a glass sea horse and beach wood. The mantle was decorated with white starfish and shells. I noticed a lot of the furniture would have been classed as antique but it had a lovely modern feel and I spied a few Better Homes magazines beside the couch.
“Well electricity’s on,” Reid announced but he didn’t sit. He stood on the edge of the sitting area as if readying for physical action, when we were here for a meeting.
I wanted to take down Paws, but if they wouldn’t help me I would have to try it alone with C.J, a very dangerous mission - two against a pack. I wasn’t about to risk upsetting my allies by saying anything unnecessary. C.J was hiding outside in the scrub, armed: my emergency backup should things go awry.
We all jumped when we heard a jingle of keys, but it was only Giny. She looked well, dressed in a neat skirt and top with her hair up and sunglasses on her head, although it was now dark outside. She looked casual at first and then apprehensive; I could see she was nervous at seeing the new wolf, Angele. It occurred to me she may have thought one day she and Jackson would make a good couple when she was turned, and I knew in that instant she still wanted it, just like I had. But here we were, almost still the same, still just two mortal humans desiring the one thing we couldn’t have. Despite my earlier criticisms, I knew Giny was just like me in that way.
“Hi, Lila.” She smiled. I felt a respect for her as I wished every human could have accepted the supernatural world as gracefully as she did. I was glad to see her.
“Hey, Gin.” I smiled back genuinely. I looked at Jack and Angele as Jackson mumbled a, “Hi.” I turned back to see it dawn on Giny that the girl next to him was perhaps none other than the long time missing person Angie Bekert, Tealy and Monica’s old best friend who had vanished the year before last. Only Giny could see past the seraphic smoke screen to the human she used to be. I decided to help her out as she looked a little awkward. Gin was good enough to come to this meeting, so I wasn’t going to wait for her to say it and maybe she was too shy to ask.
I introduced them. “Gin, this is Angele.”
“Oh. Hello,” she said politely.
“She was Angie, the missing girl from school.” I wasn’t sure if the word was, was right? But no one corrected me.
“Oh,” she said again, and I felt a painful awkwardness. I shifted on my feet. The sooner we got into this meeting, the better.
I’m not sure if she knew what to make of it. I guessed apart from her jealousy she may have been a little pissed. Angie - now Angele, was turned before Giny - after all her hard work with the pack, that was still a gift Gin had been denied.
“Hi,” said Angele. I knew Giny could have said a thousand emotionally charged things, but instead she just nodded quietly the way Sam would have expected her to, and I felt a little sorry for her. I wished she’d grow some balls. I recalled Lily had died for her jealousy and I pushed it away. I guess Giny had her purpose as she was. Giny was predictable. Even as Angele fawned over Jackson before her, it was hard to tell if it really did bother her. Perhaps I was wrong.
“Hi, Cres,” she said as though they had been friends, and although Cres had been standing there the whole time. Angele snuggled closer to Jackson on the velveteen couch and Gin pretended not to notice, though I saw a twinge.
The plan was to fight on the one night of a Crescent moon when hunters were at their strongest and wolves at their least volatile. We needed to sort out details and we needed to strike soon. “What’s the plan, L?” Reid spoke across the room. He leant on the door jamb.
We all looked at him, his muscular arms were crossed. I wondered how much he knew about the Cult pack.
It seemed it was up to me to lead them. This would not be without its difficulties. I was not a natural leader and we were a motley crew. I was asking Reid to kill his own kind - not to mention Angele who couldn’t be trusted; Cres was a half breed, Giny was just a weak human and Jackson was doing his best to be difficult. But I had no control over the circumstances.
“We are going to strike at night.” My words came out strongly. I took in each of their expressions in, satisfied that they appeared to be listening. “During the next Crescent moon – it gives us enough light to see the other wolves, enough strength, and our enemies won’t be at their strongest. It will have to be a surprise attack. We have to strategize our moves and have an escape plan,” I said. I wanted to destroy the Cult.
“Why should we help?” Jackson retorted.
I turned my face to his. “Because Paws is mad. The way he is going, you will all be exposed. This Cult of his is dangerous for your kind.”
“How?” he argued. I narrowed my eyes. Jackson was being deliberately argumentative.
I suppressed the urge to tell him to F - off. Truth was, I couldn’t afford to lose him, so I argued my case. “He’s gone public and people will start to notice when you don’t age. I estimate five - ten years tops and the charade will be over. He already draws too much attention. He is in the papers. He is a liability to you, a danger. He needs to go down.” I hadn’t said it, but I imagined the world’s attention could turn on us. The army might get involved. They wouldn’t be as kind as us. But I saved the thought because it seemed outlandish, even to me.
“Then why not just take him out?” Jackson replied.
“His followers are devout. The Cult has to be dismantled or others will take his place.”
“Like Narine,” Cres offered in a supportive manner.
I took a breath. “So if you have no objections, we need to discuss details.”
They all looked back at me carefully, soundlessly. Jackson’s lips were parted and he waited for me to continue, watching me from under his sandy fringe. I glanced at Cres who shrugged. “Fine. We attack on their turf, it’s secluded. If we are all in, then basically the plan is to strike, not only under cover of night but during the rain – a storm.”
“So how are you going to plan that?” Jackson’s face screwed.
“Trust me, I just can.” My tone was clipped.
“Trust?” Jackson scoffed.
I swallowed and tried to ignore him. But I was sure some strain showed on my face.
“Jack,” warned Reid sternly. Evidently Jackson’s attitude was wearing thin, even with Reid.
“Yes, trust.” I glared back at him with my head cocked to the side. “We have to be a team.” I waited. It seemed Jackson was out of smart remarks. “Cres can see into the future.”
“Can she see rain?” he spoke up again.
“Can you?” Cres spat.
I raised my voice. “I can.” This admission was met with silence and I didn’t correct them that it wasn’t me exactly, but Tis who would tell us when. But she was still my secret, as was C.J, and for now I needed to keep it that way. “Cres sees this working.”
“And you predict the weather?” Jackson cocked a brow.
I ignored him. “I’ll have weapons and those of us who are wolves can fight as either man or beast – I won’t shoot, obviously. Only at the Cult.” I assured.
Giny piped up. “Make me one of you and I can help.”
We all stopped and I met her expectant, pouting gaze. “Gin, I can’t allow that.”
Reid laughed. “Gin, the very purpose of this is to stop them turning humans.”
She dropped her eyes.
“Do we take prisoners?” Reid asked with a firm gaze towards me.
I swallowed, feeling the heat radiating from them. “No,” I said fast. They looked down, all of them, but not one of them openly disagreed. They were solemn towards the utilitarian
ism of war. Either way, lives would be lost. “We shoot to kill anyone who is with him,” I admitted. I watched Angele who looked stiff but unalarmed. Cres and I exchanged a momentary glance. If she was on their side we knew she would warn them.
30. The Boy
Cresida James’ little brother Bronson was a slight boy with big eyes that watched you quietly; he played well by himself making imaginary games with wooden guns and Lego. He liked books and insects and cars the way his sister had loved fairies. He turned a pile of sticks into a hut and ran about his parents’ house with a makeshift machine gun of wood and elastic bands.
He never had nightmares or wet the bed, never threw tantrums - that was until his mother and father disappeared. Bronson’s whole world changed.
Suddenly, comfort and freedom were replaced with steadfast restriction, knives and forks, hard pats on the back, hard chairs and boring sermons. Like his sister, he figured the quieter he was the less his Auntie bothered him with her cold comfort. At first he slept a lot, going to bed at odd hours and wishing his mother would come for him. The unfamiliar coldness of his new home felt like it would slowly burn his heart from the inside out. In a breath his world had changed, swept from him like he had been placed like a toy in a different setting, an alternate universe which sucked the life from his body.
He withered as the constant hunger in him for his family starved him. Cres, he would have clung to like a baby to its mother’s back had she not frightened him and gone missing frequently. Every time he saw signs of her return he felt the pain ease a little as the only respite in his tiny world. Sometimes he would venture into her room and cuddle her things, calmed and comforted but at the same time terrified lest his Aunt catch him. He wept and suffered in silence and nibbled at food till he worried himself sick with a longing for home that drained him of his childhood.
He wouldn’t speak at school to anyone until the teacher was convinced he was autistic as he repeatedly traced lines in the carpet or fiddled with rubbers and pencils for hours at his desk instead of interacting or doing his work. It was a terrible passive resistance that frustrated them, but nothing mattered to him anymore. As much as a child can, he wished he was under the warm earth with them and not abandoned to this dreadful conformist world. He was of the nature that he suffered as much hurt in a day that others acquired in years or decades, from which he would not ever fully recover. For a time his Aunt walked on egg shells around him, so frightened was she that he would try to follow his parents or his sister in a different kind of way to the grave.
With time he improved and more intensive measures were abandoned as the state paid for regular child therapy sessions and sound advice was given on how to mend his broken heart. Again his life was filled with activities and play dates. A new world was built around him and Tabetha tried hard to follow the rules she was given by psychologists.
For Cres, Auntie was a warden, but for him a nanny of sorts, one who loved tenderly but with distance. Besides, he would not have accepted anything more, in case she abandoned him also. He felt they offered a fair-weather friendship, easily retracted. He would not ever trust her. He adapted slowly with a disdain for the barren and indifferent world to which his mother and father had abandoned him. The pain eased in the day but at night it dragged through him in waves of sickness even when the weeping stopped. He was frightened to die but wished it anyway and fell asleep imagining his mother’s hand holding his; waking in fits of terror or quietly covering the fact that he had wet the bed, going to pains to avoid telling his Aunt, so sensitive was he to her peevishness. He constructed himself a barrier, one that threatened to crack at the slightest tap and he suffered all the more for it.
So when a beautiful blue eyed blonde woman with hair like his mother, long like an angel, came to him one night, he didn’t resist her pull as she put a drop of something like vinegar on his tongue, took his hand and silently led him down the stairs and quietly out the front door.
31. Torn
Cres knew something was wrong. You could have heard a pin drop in the morning. The eerie silence descended around her like a looming fog.
Bronson’s cartoons were usually blaring from downstairs. She went into the hall and looked over the banister. The TV was off. Bronson wasn’t in the play area near the lounge room. She heard her Aunt snuffle and wheeze in her bed, deep asleep. She pushed open the door and his bed was empty. Her heart started to feel like it was sinking as blood pounded in her ears. She whirled in the soundless house. The silence was deafening.
She flew into her Aunt’s room and shook her awake. “Tabetha! Tabetha! Where is Bronson? Tabetha!” She panicked.
Her Aunt awoke, stunned. “Cresida? Here?” Her aunt cried and looked astounded towards her niece.
“Where?!”
“Cresida! In his room!” she shouted back.
“No! Where is he?”
Her Aunt Tabetha sat up in her bedclothes scrambling away from her niece.
Cresida’s heart began to palpitate. “Was he in his bed last night?” Her voice was growing hysterical.
“Yes…. Yes,” Tabetha replied, more certain.
“He’s not now?” she asked. “Well he must be somewhere,” she shouted annoyed. It was uncharacteristic of Bronson to wander.
“I’ll go look for him,” Cres muttered frustrated, already determinedly leaving the room.
Hurriedly she turned his bedroom upside down and called his name, before her Aunt was up in her dressing gown. Cres was down the stairs scanning the rooms. And then as she looked to the front door, she saw it wasn’t locked and her heart sank. She touched the knob and knew, as quickly as a shock of electricity, that they had been and they had taken their claim. Cres knew with a pang she had missed it. Because she hadn’t brought them Lila, because she hadn’t kept Lila away from them and she had been occupied with the meeting. Her fingers lingered a moment before she felt a wave of nausea and pain well up inside her.
“I’m not feeling too good,” she mumbled, trudging up the stairwell, brushing past her wide-eyed Aunt who seemed to be looking now, too, if less enthusiastically, for the boy. The second Cres was in her room she forced the door closed, knocking away the door weight; she grabbed her bed and dragged it to the door as her aunt rattled the knob trying to open it. Cres grabbed a bag from the wardrobe, stuffed in a few jumpers and her shoes and still in her nightdress she hopped out of the first storey window with ease and ran for the forest on two feet.
Adrenaline pulsed throbbing through her limbs. Bronson, Bronson! They would never have him, she thought in anger.
Reid was inside the cabin. Frantic, she threw herself over the fence and he spotted her on the lawn coming at the door and he met her, sliding the glass door open. But she didn’t stop her pace as she rammed into him, and she began to beat his chest with the weak anger that sadness brings. Neither of them spoke but he saw as she tossed her head with every thump on his chest that her eyes were closed and wet. He grabbed her arms rigidly as she struggled to punch him further. As she wriggled under his grip, he felt her weaken until she slumped into him sobbing and her tears touched his shirt. He remained silent, but he knew. His eyes glistened with empathy as his arms embraced her generously. He held her firmly until she melted into him.
He whispered with heaviness, “We’ll get him back,” as he heaved a breath under her sorrow and embraced her closer still until she couldn’t move. It was as though if he didn’t she would herself disappear, igniting into anger. He rocked her from side to side as he squeezed her until she rested her body against him and for all his brawn and immaturity he understood her loss. His heart knew her devastation and that for all her strength and independence she needed someone to hold her. She kissed him, hot and salty. They made love and he knew with a dread that he wouldn’t be allowed to hold her ever again like this, because as soon as his grip loosened she would want nothing but to find her brother and get him back, whatever the consequences and whatever the casualties. They had taken him to control her and
that is exactly what would not happen.
32. Slaughter
They had forced her hand. Cres shed a few fat tears, and then ordered Reid to get any weapons.
“We need a plan?” Reid suggested, his glistening eyes begging her to stop.
“Let’s just wing it,” said Cres, ignoring him. Her jaw flexed. Her face was hard and drawn. He knew she couldn’t be persuaded to wait; she had refused to discuss it. There wasn’t time and her mind was made up.
She had almost screeched at him when she gave the order to leave. “We go now.” Her voice was stone cold.
Reid pressed his lips together knowing there wasn’t any way to talk her out of it. She was going in with or without him, come hell or high water.
“Where is the compound?” she asked. Her eyes were icy. When the weapons were in, he watched her tuck a revolver in her cords and pull down her shirt and again he longed to stop her and knew at the same time it was futile. He wondered if she would survive this confrontation - but he was powerless to stop it and for the first time, but not the last in immortality, he felt weak. He helped her because he loved her, helplessly.
She got in the driver’s seat of the jeep.
He pressed his lips together and against his better judgment got in the passenger side.
“They won’t just hand him over,” Reid warned, though he knew it was a stupid thing to say. She was headed for a blood bath, even she knew it.
She didn’t say anything, but started up the engine.
“Cres, please?” He glanced at her and her expression remained unchanged as she ignored him. “Please, let’s just contact Lila?” He was aware they had no way of knowing where she was and if the wolves hadn’t found her, they hadn’t a hope of finding her. “Use your gift.” He swallowed. “We can’t just turn up and start shooting, they’ll kill us and they’ll still have Bronson and then they’ll turn him and there won’t be any you to help.” He thought a moment. “Let me go. I can see for myself and talk to them…”