by Tina Smith
“Why’d you leave without them? How’d you know to run?” he rasped angrily.
“Lily, the red haired girl,” she answered in a high, smooth tone. “I’m glad you’re alive. Who else has escaped?” she urged with a concerned crumple of her brows.
“Lily? Lily is dead, witch! And so is half our side. You set us up to fail!!” Reid’s hard gaze met her soft face. “Speak,” he ordered angrily, spit flying from his bared teeth. “Speak, before I kill you.” Every word was delivered thickly as the hatred in his eyes penetrated hers.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” She swallowed. Her blue eyes wavered, unsurely and the colour drained from her soft face.
“Did you know? Did you send us to be slaughtered! We trusted you! Lila trusted you. We watched them dig graves today. Do you know how many?” The anger in his voice broke with sadness as he stepped nearer.
Tisane shook her head stiffly, like a scared child, numb with fear.
He glared at her, seething with rage as his heart pounded in his chest.
“Jackson and Angele and Narine. Which one makes you sadder?” he taunted, damning her vehemently with his eyes. His mouth pulled and he struggled to compose it.
She summoned her strength. “Reid, I’m only going to tell you this once. Lila is alive isn’t she? And Cresida is alive, isn’t she? Half the pack is dead? I’m sorry Jackson and his partner are gone. I’m sorry my sister is dead.” Something about her tone told him despite these facts, she wasn’t going to beat herself up over it. “They were young, and I am sorry.” Her voice broke.
“You set them up!” he shouted coming closer.
“No, no one wins a war. I can help you get them out, I can try.” Her eyes begged him to believe. “It was the girl,” she pleaded.
“What? What girl? Angele? Who do you mean?” he yelled frustrated.
“The human one. The one who helped your kind,” she pleaded.
“Yeah, like you helped last night?” he said with hatred. He strode forward grabbing her by the collar of her jumper.
“There is a woman,” she tried to point. “See, there in the cards, she can help you.” She pointed to the table, desperately with her long gnarled fingers.
“We won’t be needing your assistance anymore,” he hissed violently through gritted teeth. As the adrenaline of anger coursed through him, his teeth began to elongate and he attempted to thrust his head to sink his long canines deep into her flesh, but as his teeth brushed her neck, Tisane convulsed lurching violently. Reid leapt forward over the table, sprouting hair and claws. Her frame trembled, grossly dislocated and expanded. Tisane exploded into a grotesque creature, a chair broke away beneath her hunched morphing body.
Sky bounded in through the backdoor as Reid was tossed like a rag doll across the room and hit the wall with a thud. He landed limply on the floor as plaster cascaded down over him. Sky witnessed the creature with fright, twice the size of a normal wolf, with a large nose and curled nostrils and when it saw him it screamed an unnatural, loud squeal. Then it touched its neck with a human-like claw and as its eyes focused on the blood, it began to shrink and contort.
Suddenly, it was human and the woman’s body collapsed to the floor, still holding her hand out awkwardly with the drop of blood on it. Sky moved back as it lay motionless and feminine. He looked over to see Reid still phased, collapsed against a wall, covered in broken bits broken of plaster. He moved and transformed, rolling about in agony as his bruised bones reset into human shape. Sky’s heart thudded in his chest nervously as he knelt by it, at a cautious distance.
The woman’s pale body lay slumped on the floorboards, long blonde hair covering her face.
Reid swallowed. “Is she dead?” he said wriggling up. He grimaced, tucking an arm around his ribs.
“What the hell was that?” Sky bellowed towards Reid, as though he would know what it was.
“Should we kill it?” Reid stepped nearer, but Sky stopped him with a raised hand, intrigued by the creature.
“It was twice the size of us,” he added, eyes alert, examining the woman now in pale, human skin.
“And she seemed so placid.”
“You said Lila was friends with her?” Her peered over her.
“Yeah, she was. Like I said, she brought us here.” Reid mumbled.
“And she said this was a safe house?”
“Yeah.”
“And she said this woman had harboured her?”
“Yes,” Reid rasped, annoyed.
“Why the fuck did you try and kill her then?” Sky glowered.
“She didn’t warn us about them knowing about the attack.” He scowled.
Sky baulked. “Maybe she didn’t know?”
“What now? I’m not touching it.” He eyed the naked woman over in disgust.
Sky moved closer and bent down and laid his hands on the creature’s face, turning her chin to the ceiling as a length of dirty blonde hair fell from her cheek.
He bent his face closer to look into hers and brushed the wavy hair aside over her pallid skin to look at her neck wound. He winced at the sight of the tiny tear in her skin and peered at it, trying to assess whether she healed as they did. She moved her head back slowly and Sky cleared his throat quietly to speak, hoping not to startle it. “Tisane, are you okay?” He looked at Reid and ordered sternly, “Get some water.” He looked into her eyes, “Tisane do you know what just happened?”
She furrowed her dewy brow.
“I’m going to pick you up and put you on the couch okay?” He looked about for a cloth to lie against the very minor graze on her throat. “Get a bit of the material, too.”
Sky ordered Reid, pointing towards the rags what remained of her clothes. Reid laid a piece on Sky’s palm and he pressed it into the bloody scratch left by Reid’s teeth on her neck, but it was only a nick.
Sky lifted her gently and Reid moved a pillow with his free hand as Sky placed her down delicately on the small couch.
Sky grabbed a throw from the recliner. “Tisane?” he asked again softly, placing it over her. He turned and took the glass from Reid’s hand. As he held the water to her lips, she reacted placidly as she looked at them with her pale blue eyes. The wound had already begun to close, he saw, as he peeked at it from under the cloth.
He put down the glass.
“What happened?” she asked in a whisper as she started to rise up.
Sky placed a firm but, gentle hand over her shoulders, his eyes wide. “Just lie here,” he urged. “Do you know what just happened?” She didn’t resist as he gently pressed her back down into the cushions. When he looked closely, the blood on her fingers had a metallic hue, only it wasn’t gold.
Tisane thought. “No.” She looked at them and frowned struggling to recall as she placed her hand on her neck. She looked at Reid, frightened.
Sky glanced at him also. “He won’t touch you again,” he said with an emphasis on the again part. “What are you?”
She looked at them as though she didn’t understand.
“We came here to ask what you knew,” Sky offered.
She shook her head and then glanced up at Reid.
Sky redirected her attention. “Lila’s been caught. Can you tell us what you know?”
She nodded and her thin lips moved quickly. “When I’m too close, I can’t get as good a reading. Lila knew I was worried, she was going in anyway.” She grimaced at the memory.
Reid spoke up. “What about Lily?”
She scowled at him, perhaps recalling the interrogation before he’d become violent.
“Fine then leave.” Her voice cracked.
“No, don’t pay attention to him – please, you helped Lila, I can’t thank you enough.” Sky’s eyes were wide and honest.
Reid walked out through the screen door on the front verandah. Sky ignored the screen slamming shut.
“You really don’t remember what just happened?” he asked tenderly.
“No.” She looked away, thinking.
“Reid tried to bite you,” Sky said, wide-eyed, crouching beside her. “He cut you.”
She went pale and touched her neck again and the fear was evident in her eyes. Sky laughed a little. “I wouldn’t worry, it seems something else far rougher than Reid has bitten you before.” His mouth parted.
She looked concerned. “Am I one now?” She winced, her frightened eyes shining with moisture.
“Tisane, have you had these blackouts before?”
“What? No, I must have fainted.”
“You don’t know what just happened?” His blue-green eyes were wide.
“He attacked me.” She gestured towards Reid who paced the verandah. She frowned and sat up. “I fainted?” her voice trailed.
“Yes, you did faint, but you were enormous! The biggest we’ve ever seen. Who, I mean…what are you?” Sky gave a short unsure laugh...
“I don’t know what you mean,” she whispered to herself.
Sky looked bemused and for a moment, she clearly thought it was a joke.
“Who are you?” She asked the tall tanned man to confirm.
His expression calmed. “Sky,” he answered. “Tisane you are a monster,” he stated aghast.
“No, but how?” she asked looking at her soft human hands.
“You tell us. Did Lila know?” he asked eagerly.
Her thin lips pulled. “No.”
Reid was standing in the doorway again. “You are the biggest, most fucked up beast we have ever seen and you don’t know it?”
When Tisane was feeling better and the colour had returned to her face she got up, ate some fruit from the kitchen and sat at the table to do a reading. She turned the nine of swords.
Sky came in from outside and asked, “Have you never seen your blood with the metallic silver in it, like ours?”
“No, I’ve never noticed.” He was tall and lean unlike Reid, who was shorter and more muscular.
“Never?” He picked up the bits of broken chair, from the floor.
“No, my mother always said I had thick skin and when I was hurt she bandaged it and told me to look away because the sight of blood would make me feel ill.”
“Really?” he asked holding the broken wood in his long arms.
“Yes. She told me if I looked at it I would faint.” She put the elegant stubbed fingers of both hands over her face.
He lingered for a moment and then took the broken pieces of chair outside, tossing them near the woodpile.
Sky returned “What do you see in those?”
She noted he was quite tall as she glanced at him, but he had a gentle manner. She looked at the cards, her brow wrinkled.
“Everything and nothing - the answers I seek. They confirm the obvious, most of the time,” she trailed and shrugged avoiding his handsome face. What was obvious to Tisane was most definitely not obvious others.
“What did you ask it?” He sat at the table.
“Where Lila was,” she said in the same reflective tone.
“And?”
“Bluntly?” She turned her face and then looked straight into Sky’s almond shaped eyes. “She’s in a nightmare, she’s cold and it’s dark. She’s trapped on the edge of sleep, she’s held in the grasp of chaos, far from help and comfort; she’s tormented. See these points.” She pointed to the depiction on the card. “She impales herself on them.” Her glistening eyes were wide with the impending horror of it. The cards weren’t always literal, in fact most times not, but in this case they depicted the scene. She turned another from the deck. “The prince of wands. This is you, Sky.” She tapped it and turned another. “Oppression, this is you again under someone else’s control.” She flipped another. “Discipline is required to oppose others. Prepare to defend, you will choose a course of action - but you will endure.” Tisane knew he would get Lila out and she was determined to help him.
“Did you read for Lila?”
“Yes,” she admitted diffidently.
“And she believed you?” he asked quizzically.
“We had an understanding.” She looked down. “Here, the Chariot. Lila had this before they left last night.” She tapped it and her eyes looked towards his.
“Did these cards tell her to go?” he enquired intently.
“No, in fact they were ominous at best. There were so many awful cards, but it was expected. Nothing and no one could have stopped her or him.” She looked pointedly at Reid on the other side of the room, who avoided her gaze.
“Then why? What was the point?” Sky shook his head.
“What is the point of anything? The cards don’t tell you anything you don’t already know.” Again she glanced narrowly to Reid.
Sky looked down in contemplation. “We can get her out? Can’t we? With your help?”
“My help?” Tisane asked, confused.
“You could smash that place to pieces and tear Sam to bits.” He straightened up.
“I can’t control it, I didn’t know that I could do…that until just then.” It was raw and still just barely sinking in.
“But you must have known it, that you were like us. How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-six.”
Sky piped up, “Well there’s a sign right there, you don’t look over thirty, younger even.”
“But I look older than you,” she pointed out, avoiding his bare chest with her eyes.
“Yes, you’ve got me there. Tisane what are you? You look like us, just bigger, less hairy, uglier - more like a, like some mythical beast than a wolf.” He frowned.
“I just… I don’t know.” Her wide eyes began to water.
Sky quieted his voice. “What are you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, growing more distressed and terrified as a tear overflowed her eye and a second threatened to follow.
“You must know? There must be a reason. Who were your parents?”
“My mother was a hunter.” Her voice was sticky with sorrow.
“And your father?”
“I never knew.” She shook her head.
“Maybe it was him?” Reid urged Sky.
“Is it possible?” Sky narrowed his eyes in scepticism and cast them over her. Wondering if it was one of the mountain pack. Most likely Bert, though he was now dead.
“It might explain the myth?” Reid urged wide-eyed.
“I just don’t know. I’ve never heard of anything like this,” Sky mused. “It’s never happened before. There’s only one place I can ask. The mountain pack are the oldest. If there’s something, they will know...otherwise maybe, you are what you are,” he said glumly. Though they might not be willing to tell. Sky met Reid’s face, raising his brow as they exchanged a look.
“Narine was your half-sister, right?” Reid interjected.
“True.” She let it settle over her. “Her mother wasn’t a hunter, mine was.”
“What was your father?” The question lingered as Reid and Sky looked at each other.
She rubbed her eyes. “Um...the name on my birth certificate is Robert Hills.” She recollected. “I found it when I packed up the house after mum’s death.” She rubbed her fingers into her brow. “I was told that he was dead.”
44. Finding the Mountain Pack
Reid and Sky briskly climbed the hills as the trees grew taller and closer together and the terrain became a carpet of ferns and cycads. With heavy breath, they quickly neared the thickening landscape of trees. In search of answers.
Reid questioned him away from the woman. “What do you think?”
Sky took a breath. “She’s got to have some connection, he told me to find Tisane.” Bert had raced out to Reid and warned him that it was an ambush. Because of that he had been killed, but in the affray Sky had escaped. With quick thinking Shell had covered him, feigning idiocy, for that she was almost fatally wounded. Maybe if she hadn’t been hurt she would have run with them.
“You don’t think that he would send you on a wild goose chase?”
“Well, he’s dead now. I
t’s not like we can ask,” Sky commented with irritation. Reid felt a twinge of guilt for shooting Bert, though his bullet hadn’t been the one to kill him. Sky wondered himself if this could become a trap but he marched on. “Look, I want to get her out just as badly. As soon as we are done here, if we find nothing, we head back, get some ammo and go for it.” The steady way he said it let Reid know his friend meant it. “Come on let’s phase.”
The terrain was covered with grass, bracken and rocks, but soon it was littered with green boulders and streams that fed into the Artemis River. Reid picked up a scent a few kilometres from the compound through the wet. Greta and the two remaining boys had retreated back into the dense landscape that was their home. Aylish had joined them and she stood naked by a fern. They stopped; her stare was expressionless. Patrick stepped in to meet them.
He looked tense. “What do you boys want? We asked to be left alone.” He said with authority but made a guttural noise, not unlike a disturbed animal. “I’ll be happy if I don’t have to phase for another fifty years,” he bellowed angrily, breathing deeply, the hair on his shiny chest heaving as his centre of balance threatened to tilt further forward in anger, back into the form he had known for so long.
“We just have a question for any of your pack who knows the answer. We have heard of a beast, it’s larger than us with less hair and more human-like claws.”
Patrick scowled with a piercing intensity that threatened more as his chest rose and fell heavily.
“Don’t bother us with your imagination,” Greta threatened, her ice-white skin looking almost deathly blue under the canopy.
“Please, you are the oldest. If we are going to know anything about it, you have to tell us.” Sky looked amongst them.
“Where would you find a creature like that?” Patrick turned his dirty sweat-kissed face up, his startling eyes suspicious.
“We can’t tell you where we heard it.”
Reid stepped closer. “Please,” he begged.
Greta suddenly became interested in answering the intruder’s question. “The only thing that can create a creature like that is a union between a huntress and a wolf. It is illegal.” Her round emerald eyes seemed to narrow.
