Wolf Sirens Fever: Many are Born, Few are Reborn (Wolf Sirens #2)

by Tina Smith

  The haze of mourning lifted, my mind went into overdrive. How much of what Cresida was thinking was accurate? How much was she still hiding from me? How much could she hide? She was, all at once, my ally, my coach and master, my enemy and my confidante. I stared out the window at the passing green scenery after school. Now I was a double agent, for myself. Cresida should have understood me, and the fight I felt within. She was being too quiet - even for her.

  The things we find out can be harder than not knowing. I glanced at her that afternoon on the way home in the rattling jeep, and I asked her.

  “…Tell me the truth.” I knew she hadn’t been completely honest with me.

  “Why?”

  “Otherwise all of it is a lie.” I swallowed. “Tell me.”

  She knew from the way I said it what I meant. What I needed her to divulge. “What more is there? I have told you the truth.” She was defensive. But she had to know this conversation was inevitable.

  “Tell me what you haven’t told me, then. I want all of it.”

  She puckered her lips. “All in good time,” she cautioned as we rolled into the drive. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to extract her hidden agenda in its entirety. I narrowed my eyes.

  I was going to tell her what I thought she wanted to hear and I knew she’d do the same. The thing I didn’t say was all that I thought about. What did she think about? Concealed deep in her subconscious, I would have to become very close with Cres to know everything.

  The secret that I guarded was that I had decided it wasn’t a lie, he and I. Even if it was smoke and mirrors or some instinctual ancient vendetta, drawing two mortal enemies together as lovers – I didn’t care. I’d decided everything else was a lie. I recalled the way he had shattered the double glazed glass to rip Sam away from me. I didn’t believe he had willingly put me in danger and if he had, he was determined to stop Sam before she hurt me. He would have had to have been convinced there was no other way. I had an idea who may have convinced him; I eyed her soft innocent face in my periphery.

  Cres turned to me. The huntress isn’t afraid, but there was fear in her cerulean eyes; her face grew stricken.

  “Are you sure you want to hear how he died, all the gory details?” she asked.

  I stared at her. My eyes almost betrayed me; perhaps they did, as I felt them glisten. She shrugged, casting her crescent-shaped blue eyes downwards.

  “Fine,” she huffed. “They tried to reset his bones which had healed as quickly as they had been broken. He was deformed and he must have had some internal damage, an artery or something. He lost so much blood before he healed and when they reset the bones every time, it just seemed to get worse…shall I continue?” Her soft stare met mine.

  “Yes,” I heard myself say steadily.

  “It was a blood clot; we think his blood over-coagulated, causing an embolism in his brain.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” she said.

  “Did you see him?”

  “Only the once, before he died.” She didn’t add anything as she placed her mangled fingers over her thin lips. She had chewed them so hard that I could see tell-tale red spots, indicating she had broken the skin. I imagined, while she waited for me to either get up or die in my bed from the torture of grief, that she had fastidiously nibbled them. I knew as she chewed one hand and then the other, the last would nearly be finished healing before she repeated it. I thought to ask her if they hurt, but then thought better of it. I knew she enjoyed the pain.

  “He was begging for us to shoot him. He didn’t care anymore, it haunts me.” She put her hand over her mouth as a tear rolled down her cheek from one of her blue almond-shaped eyes.

  “He was put out of his misery. It was worse than anything I’ve seen. Horror, there was nothing we could do.” Cresida was clearly distressed. My eyes, sore from crying, somehow deluged more large droplets down my cheeks. Her tears were those of a crocodile, the real Cres wouldn’t have cried, and I knew it. After her parents’ death and all the pain she had suffered, she was as hard as nails. Harder than me.

  I would find a way back to him, but for now I would have to be convincing and I would have to learn.

  “I won’t tell you where they are Lila, distraction is what will kill you,” she whispered with hot mint breath in my ear, placing an arm around me and handing me my bag strap with the other. I didn’t know when exactly she knew he was dead, or when she had been allowed to see him. I imagined that while I popped Christmas crackers over Christmas dinner with Soph, he lay shivering in a cold sweat on his deathbed - in a worse state than he had been after the fight, the last time I had seen him in the basement. The thoughts haunted me that night, a dreadful pain scratched at my insides and I wished it would kill me, too, in the darkness of my room. I came to the realization that I had to flirt with what she wanted me to be. I had to believe I suffered withdrawal, not grief. I suffered betrayal. I grieved friends and every person I loved, not Sky.

  4. Escape or Die Trying

  My unbreakable heart had been pulled out by the roots.

  The next day Cresida drove me to school, in Reid’s bumpy cobalt blue jeep, again. Unfortunately the days came and went as though the world didn’t note his absence and every day I was stronger, despite the loss. As we pulled out of the driveway heading toward school, curiously, I saw a 'For Sale' sign had been erected on Ben’s front lawn. He hadn’t appeared in days. I dared not ask what had happened to the reclusive old man. It was the end of summer and the days were mostly green, warm and still. The air smelt of roses and jasmine. I began to despise the country.

  On this day in the high school parking lot Cres waved to some other students. Under my puffy eyelids, I looked up slowly to recognize some familiar figures approaching at a casual pace. The broad figure dressed in black with ripped jeans made me focus. Reid was obviously back at school and a flood of confused feelings vibrated through me. He had dropped out previously, so he was now placed in Jackson’s year. He was still thinner than he had been and his raven hair was longer, shaggy. I watched as he tucked a tuft behind his ear. As the three figures joined us, I tensed. This was going to be more difficult than I had expected. The intensity of bringing us together created an invisible storm. I wanted to shoot him down and this time I wouldn’t miss. My face was pressed into annoyance in a rare show of emotion. Whether he was or wasn’t lying about Sky, his days were numbered. I glanced at him and yet more anger mounted and smouldered within me at his every relaxed breath.

  Giny carefully mentioned the school counsellor’s request to speak to me. My heart sank as I wondered how long I could avoid it. I knew to the outside world we were a group who had tragically lost two close friends in nearly as many months: Lily, then Sky. Everyone knew Cresida's story, and her closeness to me was viewed as the two of us sharing a common link - of loss. On the inside however it was a very different story.

  I began to uncover in my purgatory a new layer to my suffering. I became everything they knew I would. I said things and did things that would make Cresida wonder, even if she didn’t say it. She was puzzled and bemused by me, when I would do things she hadn’t taught me – yet. She knew it wasn’t a placebo effect. I was the next hunter, and any kind of hope she had reserved for me of not suffering her fate, out of compassion, disintegrated, because it was pointless. Her time was coming to an end. It was now inevitable.

  As for myself, I was slow to see it at first, but I felt the walls rise up around me, invisible ones, which grew more impenetrable by the day. Not even in the early hours when I awoke aching for him did tears come.

  I knew a good teacher didn’t withhold information. Cres had withheld things, so there was plenty that I didn’t know. I sensed I had only scratched the surface of the underworld in Shade valley.

  At Grief Counselling Cres held my cold hand, whilst the school counsellor said she was glad Cresida and I had each other to grieve with.

  “I know you are close friends and
will look after each other,” the woman said quietly as she nodded at Cres – as though she was suddenly a saint. I scowled.

  Cres nodded back with a compassionate glimmer in her eyes.

  “Yes, we tell each other everything, Miss.” She added with a cold blue stare. For me her words were like dead weights falling to the ground.

  I thought about the missing old man, Ben. Sophie hadn’t mentioned him either.

  “- And with Ben Flinds passing...” I put my hand over my mouth and pinched my eyes closed to create the effect of holding back tears.

  “It’s been a lot to handle.” Cres rubbed my arm “-With her neighbour being taken to a nursing home.” She sighed and I avoided her warning glance. “Because he had a stroke,” she explained softly. Cres wouldn’t lie to Bradshaw. So that’s why his seat on the porch had been empty, otherwise the old man would have been there to shoot at her and Reid while they waited outside my house. The old man had always made a sport of guarding the woods around his house from the wolves. On two occasions we had stolen his guns. I suddenly wondered what had happened to Choc, his brown Lab.

  “We are holding each other together.” Cres sniffed, doing a bit of acting of her own. At least I knew Cres wasn’t directly responsible for the old man’s disappearance. So I only had Sky’s blood on my hands and maybe a little of Lily’s.

  “It helps,” Miss Bradshaw soothed, offering Cres a tissue from the box. Bradshaw had been brought in since Lily had been found dead last year in the school hall. The official cause was suicide. I resisted the urge to walk out. Rather than words of comfort and hope, the teacher’s every word felt to me like more nails in Sky’s coffin. I knew Cresida was at my side playing the comforting companion, so that I wouldn’t mess up, say something suspicious or make myself look crazy. She was lamenting with me, so that I wouldn’t be taken from her side, where they couldn’t watch me - her, Reid and Jackson. I knew they were monitoring me. I scowled. Cres rubbed my shoulder more vigorously. Miss Bradshaw assumed I was depressed and explained the process of grief, emphasizing the step of denial.

  I wouldn’t resolve to move on. I wasn’t anguished in mourning, I was abandoned – and, yes, maybe I was a little depressed about that. He wasn’t just someone that I’d lost.

  When we were alone, I knew Reid was out there, listening and creeping around. I could feel his distant presence. As the huntress my senses were becoming sharper.

  Cres wondered aloud if it was my gift to predict, but that, too, I knew to doubt before I knew why. I had believed things, but only because I knew them. Somewhere inside me they resonated. It was partly instinct, the way it had been with her. She was just flattering me or, I suspected, distracting me with fancy when she enquired if I predicted. I knew I wasn’t Cresida, like they all thought I was.

  She could see things before they occurred: visions, guesses of the most likely short-term outcome of situations - sometimes more, sometimes less - a lot less. What I experienced were feelings, intuition, maybe just instinct.

  I didn’t say it for a while, but I soaked up feelings like a sponge. If I sat too close to Tealy Sutton in class after she’d broken up with her boyfriend Danny, who left for University in the city, I would feel the uncontrollable urge to weep. Sometimes I would gather my books and leave - tell Cres it was about Sky, rather than admit I felt ‘vibes’.

  She would quite caringly ask me after the first two or three times it happened: “Do you miss him?” and I would reply in an emotionless tone, “I will always, that’s all it is.” After a time the feelings stopped, it was like it had been before I lost him. But not before I knew him.

  Without realizing it, I did fill a void for Cres and so in my own way I soothed the open wounds she carried. She didn’t care to risk losing me as well and in her grew a small bud of anger towards me. I was living her life. I was made to replace her – and worse, or so she thought, I was living with my mother and being indifferent towards her affections, while her family had been destroyed.

  I don’t think Cresida liked my mother, but she needed her companionship as much as she needed mine. Without each other’s company I think we all would have suffered more. Me, because I would have become a lone wandering hunter, intent on finding my lover’s dead remains and killing the other pack, no doubt to my own peril, and my mother because I would have left without a word. In the end no one would have been able to stop me from this, and in fact I think Cresida would have joined me soon enough and supplied the ammo, hoping herself never to return. I was a means to her death, creeping closer, but I had no sympathy for any fear she may have suffered. I was a double agent.

  Life at Cresida’s was hostile. She frequently joined our table to escape her religious Aunt Tabetha. Cres was buoyed by the fact that my mother was an atheist. She often spent the night on my bedroom floor with my mother’s blessing, reading heathenish magazines, which were banned in Tabetha’s home. Soph was good at ignoring – anything, even the church, even Tabetha Horrel; it was a skill she had acquired raising me, I was sure.

  5. Reborn

  “Happy Birthday!”

  My mother’s voice woke me and I peered up as some sort of pancake on a plate, and then her smiling face, came into focus. Shit.

  Hopefully this surreal scene would be it; I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate anything. Then I noticed Cres was there as well, and I rubbed my eyes, rapidly awakening to the nightmare.

  “Breakfast in bed, bright eyes,” Cresida sang uncharacteristically. I rubbed my forehead and pulled myself up. In my mind we were still in the dirt and grass clearing of last night practicing blocking. Mum came at me with a kiss and Cres leant in following suit with an awkward hug.

  “I remember, it was just yesterday you were just so little,” my mother cooed proudly, behind her.

  All this before I had even woken up properly. I wriggled up under the covers. No it was really happening.

  “What is this?” I croaked. I reached, bleary-eyed, next to my bed for the glass of water which now sat under a precariously balanced breakfast tray, supported partly by magazines.

  “You didn’t think we’d forget, silly,” Mum said, sitting on the bed patting my knees softly, and offering me an empathetic look.

  “I said no presents,” I rebuffed hoarsely.

  “You should know I wasn’t going to listen to that, and what was your father supposed to do?” Sophie cried.

  Mum grasped a rectangular gift from the floor against the bed and handed it to me.

  I noticed something ashen about Cres’s normally luminescent complexion and I realized in the gentle yellow morning sun what it was. She wore makeup, or powder, over her face. She caught my inquisitive glance, and held it for a split second, solemnly.

  “Open your presents.” Mum urged, completely ignoring the question in my eyes.

  Cres gave a fake smile. I tore the wrapping paper off. Dad (or mum) had picked out a new doona cover on his behalf. I saw it had a blue ivy pattern on it.

  “This one’s from me.” Mum handed me an envelope. Inside was an unusually thick card and it was no surprise when two hundred and fifty dollars cash, comprised of various notes, slipped out.

  “For whatever you want,” mum smiled. “We could even go on a girl’s shopping trip together, to the nearest city, Queenbeyan soon,” she urged hopefully and we both looked at Cres. The line of her mouth was hard and I bit my bottom lip and returned to smiling and looking at the money, to cover the sickening feeling inside. My mother was disappointed that I didn’t rush to spend it and I made excuses as to why I couldn’t go out that day, or that weekend with her. Cres knew as well as I did that I would run given half a chance.

  “Here's mine.” Cres handed me a perfectly wrapped gift box with a gold ribbon. The card on the top read: ‘From Cres, Tabetha and Bronson’, and I knew Cres probably had to do some grovelling to get her aunt to give her the cash to buy it. I tore off the pretty mauve paper and opened a white box.

  “Oh, a bracelet.” I tried to sound enthused as I
imagined a normal best friend would sound when receiving a present, though I’m sure my voice trailed. I held up the silver chain ornamented with trinkets in the morning sunlight. She knew me better. I realized part of me had actually hoped that this charade was real, but this was a token gift; it was something an ordinary teenage girl might receive from her regular best friend.

  Mum filled the silent gap quickly with enthusiasm as she asked Cresida about it and whether she or her aunt had picked it out, enquiring if the bracelet and charms were sterling silver. I felt for the dog tag with my opposite hand on my chest, relieved to hold the only thing I had been left. It was still there.

  While mum and Cres fawned over the bracelet, I pretended to be interested in the cold pancake on my bedside table. Maybe the bracelet had a homing device imbedded in one of the charms? The bracelet only reminded me of a ball and chain. Cres would make sure I never went out of town with the money. Because it wasn’t safe – for me or the wolves. We didn’t exactly talk about it but Cres knew it and I knew it. Plus Sam was out there, and she would be angry for a long time. I had inadvertently destroyed her pack when I stole her love interest, Sky. Cres couldn’t afford to lose me because I was her replacement; if I was bitten I would be like her.

  Outside the front door, I asked Cres about her new look as we walked to the jeep.

  “What’s with the makeup?” But as the words escaped my mouth, in the clear light I saw under the dusty cover a blue-ish hue and knew in that instant she was bruised.

  “Did Reid do that?” I accused, my defensive tone surprising even me. I wondered if my mother had noticed the coverage herself this morning.

  “No.” She sighed, opening the car door.

  “Well, what caused it?” I asked softening, knowing it must have been quite a blow to last into the next day. Perhaps it had even bled, and either the hit was severe or she was weakening. I wondered momentarily if Sam had come back.