by Laura Taylor
“Don’t try to contact me again,” the girl said, then stood up. “I’ve given you information, now you keep your end of the bargain. And do whatever you like with whatever else you find there.”
Miller watched the girl walk away and finally gave in to the urge to look at the map she’d given him. It was of the Lakes District, various areas coloured in in clumsy green highlighter. And the full weight of this revelation hit him hard enough that it distracted him from even the idea of following her.
A second pack. Confirmation, in black and green, of something he had suspected for months. Dee wasn’t in the north-east of England, not a part of the pack that lurked in the forests and gullies. No, she was in the north-west – along with that mob of animals that had torn up their lab.
The map still left a lot of area to cover, but it narrowed down the pack’s location considerably, when mere moments ago the only solid direction they’d had was ‘north’.
Miller pulled out his phone and dialled Jacob’s number. The phone rang once, then the Noturatii leader answered. “You’re not going to believe this…” Miller said.
Genna slipped away from the café, feeling at once guilty, terrified and triumphant. The woman, Dee Carman, was a menace to their species. The Destroyer, sent to wipe them all out. The Grey Watch had spoken of almost nothing else since her visit to their camp, when she’d ripped the human right out of one of their shifters. Then there had been that disastrous visit to Il Trosa’s estate – a trip Genna herself had not been permitted to go on – which had achieved nothing and resulted in Sempre being in a foul mood for days.
And then they had discovered that, despite a rather frantic attempt to re-convert the wolf, the woman that Rintur had been could not be brought back.
Contacting the Noturatii had been a desperate move, but Genna held no regrets about that part of the plan. Ensuring her own getaway, when she would likely be tailed by Noturatii operatives, had been a far more nerve-wracking prospect, as had getting away from the Watch for a day without her absence being noticed. But the Noturatii?
Ironically, they were the shifter’s best hope for maintaining their species. They’d survived the war with the Noturatii for hundreds of years, and the day would come, sooner or later, when society would once again embrace the mystical elements, much as they had during the reign of the ancient Greeks and Romans, when shifters had lived openly, revered as gods, temples erected in their honour.
But that would never happen if this Destroyer got to them first.
Her map, scant on detail though it was, would lead the Noturatii straight to Il Trosa’s doorstep. And very soon, a big part of this war would be over. One way or another.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Taylor has been writing since she was a teenager, spending long hours lost in imaginary adventures as new worlds and characters spring to life. The House of Sirius is her first published work, a series of seven novels following the wolf shape shifters and their war with the Noturatii.
Laura lives on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia and has a passion for nature, animals, hiking, and of course, reading.
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