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

by Tina Smith

  He felt a wave of emotion, a guilty feeling, ashamed that he had been so weak. When the girls returned they would know he was irresponsible and he would be embarrassed. But maybe Dahlia would agree to help the boy, the way she had taken Lonnie under her wing at first. He rubbed his face, struggling with the thoughts of what action to take, but he decided to wait it out. He had no choice but to ride it out for a week or two, get this newborn under some vague control when the moon had passed. If he still hadn’t heard anything then he would go to Shade and look for them with the newly turned boy. Until then, he was left babysitting his own mistake, and maybe glad of it, relieved to have the company, if he was never to see them again.

  That’s when he heard a knock at the door. An officer stood looking pensive. Lonnie swallowed. The police had come already. He was about to make a panicked run for it when the man at the door knocked again and called “I know Aylish and Dahlia.” After peeking at the man again through spy hole he recognized his kind and opened the door. It took another twenty minutes before he revealed the fevering Andy. Though the Police constable simply plied him orally with a drug from his pocket so easily that Lonnie wondered if it was also meant for him, if he had have been less complaint. Lonnie packed a few things and they carried Andy to the police car and headed for Shade.

  26. Lonnie Meets Paws

  Hours later Lonnie and Paws stood awkwardly, side by side, in the hallway looking over the black and white photos on the walls of the compound house. Paws was delighted that he had taken the initiative and created another wolf. Lonnie sipped his cold beer, though he hated the taste. The pictures showed a lot of smiling faces. There was a life they had made here. Lonnie was amazed at the legacy and the history that he was now seemingly part of.

  “Many of us have died. Not due to hunters, though, as you might think.” It seemed the impressed Paws was Lonnie’s official welcoming party. “Maxie and her brother were too young,” he sighed and smiled a little as he tapped another photograph. “Martha and Celeste with Agnes and Greta – that’s me.” A longhaired man in the background of the sepia photograph was laughing. “This is Bert, Christian - the oldest two, and Patrick.”

  “How did they…” he swallowed, “end it?”

  Paws looked at the photo. “They didn’t.” He didn’t look at Lonnie and tapped the glass over the photograph of the men. “They found ways.” He seemed to recall. “Martha drowned, Celeste sat on the Princess Highway - the kids, they were different.” His face gave away a twinge. “Tyler’s escaped a few scrapes himself.”

  Lonnie caught his eye, both terrified and intrigued to know the truth and Paws was fishing for it.

  Paws looked at him with his dancing eyes. “They were too young,” he explained. “Their mother ate them. Precious little things, didn’t know what happened. It was quite a mess, very regrettable.” He shook his head. Lonnie had the distinct feeling not much shocked and saddened him. He wasn’t sure how to take this guy since arriving, so he went along with it. “Were they… turned?”

  “No. Who knows what would have happened had they lived or become infected – survived as it were. We don’t turn children, it’s a rule. They die from the venom. Hers were born satyrs. It’s against our laws.” He seemed incredulous but reminiscent. “It’s a sequelae, a secondary genetic condition caused by the venom...unsightly.”

  “When you say their mother—?”

  “Oh, Aylish,” he said with slight surprise, as though Lonnie should have known. He hid the stab of clarity of the realization, because he sensed Paws knew he had shocked him, and that Paws was pleased about it.

  “Oh…” Lonnie trailed. Aylish was a mother with no children.

  Paws slapped him on the back and had he been more present in that moment perhaps it would have stung, but all Lonnie could think of was Aylish, and he understood her now in a way he had not. Lonnie thought he knew her, even better than Dahlia, but know he realized he knew nothing. And then he was angry that she hadn’t told him. It changed everything. She wasn’t a saint or a mother, she was no better than the others and yet she acted so high and mighty. He had been a fool. Had she used him as some surrogate child? Had part of her pretended he was her son? It made him sick to the stomach. She was no better than the rest of them; she had only accepted him because inside she knew she was uglier, that her past was messier. She was dirtier than him, what she had done was so wrong, so disgusting it beggared belief.

  “Shouldn’t she be locked up for that?”

  “Early signs of madness. She went to an asylum, she had no will to escape…we had to pry her out. Being under surveillance may have caused us many more issues.”

  “Why didn’t she end it then, like the others?”

  “Who knows? Time heals all wounds I suppose. No, she vowed to take me out one night herself, and she even tried it. In her twisted way she blames me for letting the police take her,” he sighed.

  “Why?” Lonnie questioned, intrigued. “Is that why she lived away?”

  “Yes. I’ll admit I was partly to blame for that.” He cleared his throat. “But I never meant for her to be gone so long. She should know I had forgiven her a long, long time ago. We are family.”

  “She doesn’t feel that way.”

  “Everyone needs a family.”

  He didn’t understand Lonnie’s meaning.

  “Is that why she took Dahlia?”

  “Dahlia hoped there was a cure; she was innocent so she agreed to run away with her, and they had their fun of course. No, it’s not true, we let her go if I recall correctly. In fact I created Dahlia for the purpose of soothing Aylish. She was volatile and she was recognizable from the news broadcasts. She would have risked the pack’s safety, though she was meant to come back much sooner.”

  “That’s why we’re here now?”

  “You were a surprise, a good one.” He thumped Lonnie’s back again. “We needed more males,” he said happily. Lonnie knew he had given Paws the wrong impression, it was desperation and naivety, not gumption that had caused him to turn another human.

  Lonnie raised his brows. “Males?”

  “Yes, we are outnumbered my boy, by the women.”

  Lonnie looked over the sepia pictures. “So we are not outnumbered now, girls to boys?”

  “Actually we still should be,” he pointed to the woman in the picture with a man. It was coloured and blurred. “Greta and Agnes are with the boys.” He pointed at the picture. “There may still be one for you?” He smiled at Lonnie, who hid a wince because he sounded like Lonnie’s father then. There were others captured, standing by old cars.

  “So these people are alive?” Lonnie gestured to the old photos.

  “Yes,” he said confidently, and then admitted, “Well, I can’t be sure.”

  This reminded him of a question. “Who was the father of Aylish’s children?” Lonnie half expected him to be pictured here.

  “Oh some shmuck who is long gone, that life is long gone,” he said with reminiscence unsuited to the morbidity of the topic. But the way he brushed it aside made Lonnie suspicious, the lack of detail. And he wondered why he lied. He knew Aylish wouldn’t have felt that this man was so unimportant. Lonnie thought maybe he was the father.

  “Was it easy, watching everyone die?” Lonnie uttered straight at him.

  “We have a saying here - the more the merrier - when they leave, it better be for good.”

  Lonnie frowned, not sure if he understood his answer, there was a sinister edge to everything Paws said. He meant to intimidate him.

  “And how old are they?” Lonnie looked at the photograph of the old ones.

  “Oh most of them are from the early 1930’s and 60’s.”

  “But I thought we were immortal? I thought we were sterile?”

  “We are.”

  “Then how did she have children...” Lonnie knew then that maybe she had bitten them.

  Paws smiled a broad smile, “Satyrs are what we call children by the hunter.”

  He thr
ew an arm around Lonnie. “A male wolf can impregnate a human woman and hunters and wolves seem to be able to procreate, but the off spring are...unnatural.” He looked more serious as he continued, “It is of coarse illegal.”

  There was a reason he was pack leader, he had an ego the size of Brown Mountain. He fucked with everyone, and no one fucked with him. He was volatile, and everyone here obeyed him. If they did something wrong, this guy would snap. This charismatic guy held it all in. Lonnie guessed where it came out; like his dad he had a coward’s ego. His anger came out at home, behind closed doors.

  Aylish was the only one who wasn’t scared of him. What seethed below the surface? Lonnie knew with an unsettling certainty they were all inmates.

  “Nothing is definite my boy, we are immortal not indestructible.” He chuckled, once again patting Lonnie on the shoulder. He didn’t believe for a second Aylish had killed her children.

  27. Waking the Mountain Pack

  Sam knew they were there, but they had become like the shade in the trees and as silent as the leaves, they were ghosts. The atmosphere changed. She listened intently, her ears pricked, ready to track the slightest rustle. Her eyes flickering back and forth in search of the strangers. She wouldn’t have admitted it, but she was frightened. They were venom relatives of sorts, and the thought intrigued her. When she heard their breath as they approached, she wondered if she had heard it before, but thought it was her own panting as she climbed higher into the mountains of the national park.

  She was in their territory and they could be hostile. Bianca was back-up in case they attacked. Although Sam had been fearless of the expedition, she now realized in the cool of the undergrowth as her suspense escalated, they may well be far less human and so far wolf and carnivorous. This pack had been and remained wolf for many years. They could attack.

  Her ears pricked; she waited for more definable sounds from the surrounds. The howls on the wind last night had led them here, tracking the long lost wolves from the original pack. Paws hadn’t come himself because of bad blood and disagreements, and now she thought he was a coward to send her and her less capable Omega, Bianca. He and Narine needed them now, these old ones. She knew their faces from the photos, but not their scents and not their wolf bodies. To them, she was a stranger. She thought for a moment that Sky’s talent may have come in handy here, and then she was startled to hear the sound of a stick breaking behind her but she saw it was just Bianca.

  Sam felt relief and shook her skin until her deformed figure became human once more, as though she was a seed released from a pod on the forest floor. Her perspective changed and in her human form everything was quieter than it had seemed.

  Bianca looked at her cautiously with canine eyes, mesmerizingly blue, before following suit.

  “What did you hear?” Bianca shook out her curly golden brown ringlets.

  “Shhh.” Sam waited for a moment. “They are watching us,” she uttered, frozen, speckled eyes wide.

  “Let's just say what we want and leave,” Bianca urged tugging a ringlet of hair from a twig.

  “No, not unless face to face.”

  Sam thought that this was quite possibly Bianca’s most helpful suggestion yet as her heart begin to thud. She nodded carefully, as though she had thought it herself, and wondered why they didn’t just have a cell phone so she didn’t have to risk her neck to get a message to them.

  “We are your kind.” She swallowed. “We come from Paws,” she said in a sweet, anxious tone to the surrounding forest. Bianca looked at her and Sam continued in the quiet. “Please show yourselves, we only want to talk – about a war, between human kind and ours. You will want to hear what we say...”

  Then they heard movement through the leaves and a low growl. Both girls tensed. Sam began to shudder as her body wished to transform under the fear.

  Three thin, hairy, naked men walked into the clearing. Sam noticed their long nails and the piercings on the longhaired male. Bianca looked down and flushed a little, but Sam was determined not to let them know they intimidated her.

  “Well it’s about time you old ones showed yourselves.”

  The pierced one, Patrick, spoke, his clear green eyes contrasted his light brown skin. Sam knew him from the photographs on the hall. His hair was long and matted and a single dreadlock was hanging down his chest. He cleared his throat as though unused to speaking, choked, and cleared his voice again as the words wouldn’t sound clearly. “What do you want?” The raspy, masculine voice scratched out. The other two stood each side of him, silent but all the while watching her with tiny pupils in knife-like eyes.

  “It’s time.” She looked back at him, steadily.

  He coughed and spat as he glanced at the man to his right with dark eyes and hair. Then he laughed.

  “Time?” he rasped. “Time for what?” The other two who had remained silent laughed under their breath, like hyenas at the clean blonde staring at them.

  “To come back.” Sam ignored their snickering laughter but her glance fell.

  “Back to your world?” His voice deepened.

  “Who says?” snickered the other blonde man to his left.

  “Dieter,” Sam replied, sharply watching for their reaction to the name.

  A more sullen expression fell over them and then they crowded in closer to each other exchanging expressions of apprehension. He rubbed his chin and looked back at her and for the first time he appeared to eye Bianca.

  “And who are you?” he stated, looking ever slightly more relaxed.

  Sam asserted her position in front of Bianca by shifting a little. “Come to Dieter with us and everything will be answered,” she protested with a slithering voice, and she moved closer to them and the two males either side of him jumped like skittish pups.

  “You’re a talented one.” Patrick eyed her as though she was a curious morsel. “Is he too scared to find us alone? So he sends a bitch.” The man's face was expressionless and his stark cold eyes fixed and stared through her.

  “Two bitches,” added the shorter pale man with a sneer, gliding his eyes over Bianca with a brazen sleazy expression.

  The leader ignored his friend. “We will need clothes.” He gestured as a smile crossed his lips. The leering male beside him had an obvious erection. Sam kept her eyes from his waist.

  She caught sight of his back-up right then, as two sets of glowing eyes became visible through the tree ferns behind the dirty, naked men. Sam resisted the urge to flinch or to run.

  She could smell that they were female. “We can worry about that later; the property is on the edge of the bush land, you won’t have to shift until we reach the door.”

  “Who says we will shift at all?”

  “That’s your choice.” She blinked, relieved they seemed to be getting somewhere.

  “Tell him to come himself.” He attempted to turn.

  “No,” Sam ordered. The men paused.

  He stopped and narrowed his dark slit eyes. “Little girls, how old are you, ten years, five? You have no clue what he wants.”

  “He plans a war,” she said steadily.

  “Ha, that little prick expects us to be his troops?” He shook his head, grimaced and raised his hand which he ran along his stubble beard.

  Sam heard his words but her eyes looked past him into the bush. “Why don’t they transform? Are they scared?”

  “No. Greta, Agnes.” He gestured with his neck for them to come forward.

  Two great snarling beasts entered the area. The one with dark green eyes was unusually large; Sam knew she was the Alpha. The one who spoke to them was Patrick, her mate. The men either side of him where Christian and Bert. Christian still stood leering, with his penis erect.

  Sam tried again. “Dieter says he has done what you wished. He has plans to overrun the town and timing is important.” She glanced at Bianca. “We have been searching for you for some time, he will be disappointed…” She swallowed. “Come back with us. You will want to come to the house. You
will want to speak to him,” she uttered casting her blue, brown-flecked stare back over them.

  They looked at Sam as she turned, took a few strides, and shook as she stepped into her wolf self. Bianca hurriedly followed suit, fleeing back down the mountain towards the direction of the house.

  The mountain pack looked at each other. Sam could hear they didn’t immediately follow and she was glad to leave them well behind her as she ran. Paws could manage them himself from now on.

  “He has been down there too long – probably running amuck,” Greta spat in a deep croaky voice.

  “What’s it been, twenty plus years? No, thirty?” Bert asked. None were sure.

  “These newbies need a lesson.” Christian, the blonde, narrowed his eyes and balled a rigid fist.

  Agnes’s earthy voice broke their conversation. “He is a part of us, and so are those girls.”

  Greta formed into human skin. She coughed and spoke in a gravelly voice. “It looks like curiosity is going to get the cat. He must need us for something important or he wouldn’t have dared to wake us.” She glowered and cleared her throat.

  “He won’t listen to us. He’s been down there creating havoc for all we know and now he wants us to rescue him,” muttered Bert with disdain.

  “Let him deal with his own mess,” cautioned Patrick to his mate.

  “Maybe one of us can check it out?” asked Christian who was more edgy and curious by nature. Decades ago he’d been the charmer of the group. The many years had lagged for him and age now made him seem more intimidating and dangerous where once charm had existed.

  “We all will, it will be just like old times,” Agnes said flatly with narrowed eyes, as she looked towards the direction Sam fled.