Wolf Song (Wolf Singer Prophecies Book 1)

by Elle Cross

  I was at her side immediately. Vin was there and it was amazing that she hadn't seen him. He saw her, though. He just stood still, looking down at her. The darkness that she couldn't quite see through.

  ~You want me to say something, Boss?~ It was a good thing that Soleil couldn’t see the way Vin smiled at her. It was a little too eager, and something that could have inspired old fairy tales about lost girls meeting strange wolves in the forest.

  I shook my head. And so he stood there, silent and still, a black night with only pops of silver where his eyes were, waiting patiently as Soleil scanned a perimeter she was not really seeing.

  She wouldn't want to see it if she could.

  I cleared my throat. "I was just having a spirited conversation with one of the pack. Nothing to concern yourself about, Soleil."

  She turned to me, then, her eyes bright and golden. "Spirited? Sounded pissed."

  I smiled then. Both at the fact that Vin took this moment to slide away from the window and because she thought one little growl was pissed. "No, not pissed."

  She glanced at the window before retreating back into the house.

  "Well, there doesn't seem to be much else we can do, am I right?" Somehow she had disappeared that knife and smaller gun. I smelled the tang of metal, of course, now that I knew that she had other weapons on her. I could link the one with the other.

  I would have to ask her how she did that, if that was a native gift of hers. Hiding things.

  ~Make invisible. It's an easy solution.~

  ~Of course. An easy solution using a rare gift.~

  ~You know what they would do if they ever got their hands on her.~

  I swallowed again so I wouldn't growl.

  "Look, I know you're not planning on killing me or even hurting me, but I don't think I'll be able to sleep well knowing that you're awake or that others are out there. So, could you just promise me that you guys are going to be okay? Then I'll be able to sleep soundly?"

  Her eyes were rimmed red. She was tired. I should have seen it. The rush of being outside and possibly needing to fight and then trying to figure out the cipher—all the adrenaline that she must have been running on had finally worked its way out of her body.

  Poor thing, I would carry her upstairs if I knew she would let me. Instead, I stayed out of her way. "I promise we will be okay, and that we will safeguard your house." We knew her dad’s rule. Do not open that front door while it was dark. Though there were a lot of protectors around, we were not going to mess with the juju that made up the spell. Maybe if it was disobeyed, other spells and wards would break.

  I wasn't going to be the one that broke that spell.

  ~No one will touch that door, Boss.~

  She nodded wearily. Her head seemed like it was getting too heavy for her neck and my arms itched to wrap around her and take her upstairs. To sleep. And nothing more.

  I ignored the snickers from the others. After all, I was the one inside of her house, not them.

  ~Aw, that's just mean.~

  ~Yeah, we're all here, all four of us, same as you. We all crossed the barrier.~

  That they had, and I needed to acknowledge that.

  ~True. You're inside the barrier.~

  All the same, I felt like I'd won something by being here with her, observing her body up close as she climbed up the stairs to rest.

  I planned on counting to one hundred and then following after her.

  Soleil

  I couldn't handle the idea of people pacing outside, even though I knew they had been there before. The difference was the fact that I hadn't known they were there, at least not in the real sense that I did now. Every now and again, there was a slight creak on the porch, a bit of pressure like the wind changed.

  I was suddenly tired.

  I'd washed up, ignoring the fact that there was some guy on the first level. It didn't do to be that self-conscious. He wasn't going to do anything.

  And I told myself that I didn’t want him to do anything.

  I still changed my clothes in the bathroom. I wasn't so carefree that I felt safe enough to wear an actual nightgown. I wore linen clothes that were still able to move with me in my sleep but durable enough if I needed to run from my house. A pair of boots rested beside my bed, socks tucked inside.

  I was under no illusion: if there was something strong enough to break the wards and make it into the house, I was surely done for. No amount of clothes or running would help. But there was always that chance and it was for that chance that I wanted to run.

  Once I was in my room with the door closed, I peered out of my window. I saw nothing out there, but just knowing Creed’s men were out there made me feel like I was on display somehow. At least I didn't have to be worried about a raven pecking at my window all night.

  I still drew the curtain down. I didn't like to do that because I preferred being up at the first sign of daylight, but it was the compromise I made to myself so I might sleep.

  Of course, I probably wouldn't sleep, considering that my dad likely wrote a message I could never decipher and now he was in some kind of coma because he had braved only god knew what to get something to me. So why the hell did he use some kind of crazy message? Something that would be impossible to decipher without finding his friend and his friend's book?

  It was like a chance in a million. Made no sense given all he taught me.

  I sat up in bed, opened to the first page the book fell to, and stared at the drawings. I traced them with my finger and felt a kinship with my parents even though I was suddenly alone without them.

  There was one herb that I thought looked really funny and whimsical, something that I'd never been able to find, which was only frustrating because my mother did such a great job identifying all the various kinds of flora. Yeah, she was an herb witch, but she was also a botanist, certified in all manner of plant information.

  She even helped to write a book about plants, she loved them so much. She could have been teaching at the fanciest universities, but she didn't want to move away from the place she called home, so she used her gifts to teach at the local college.

  Good thing, too, since that was how she met my dad.

  Then, as if some kind of light bulb finally burst inside of my head, I realized something. My dad would never give me an impossible riddle. At least not for anything important. Sure, he'd do it just to see me try to wrestle through the problem, but he'd be here to see me struggle and laugh with me when he pulled the joke.

  But he wouldn't do anything like that for real.

  That meant...my mother's book.

  I whipped out of bed and bounded out of the room. I nearly tripped over Creed, who sprang up off the floor as if he had been lying down a moment before I opened the door. I didn't pay him any mind as I rushed past him and sought out the book on my parent's little bookshelf.

  Of all the books that my parents kept from Before, it had almost seemed odd that a book of plants would be in there next to various scriptures and novels. Then again, it was my mother's book, one she was proud of because it had been hers and a product of her life's work to that point. Of course she’d kept a copy.

  I pulled it out and brought it to the table. My mom's book. My dad's scriptures. And their notebook between.

  My dad didn't use a random book to talk to me. He had used my mother's book as a cipher, I was sure of it.

  I flipped to the back, to the appendix where there were lots of inserts about the types of plants that had cropped up since the Rave. How many new species seemed to appear?

  One of the species was something that my mother helped to discover and name. Why hadn’t I thought about it before? I turned to the page that the drawing was on, and there it was. I put it next to the drawing of hers in the notebook, and they were virtually identical.

  "Found you," I breathed.

  New species are found at an alarming rate, and while this would usually be cause for a celebration, I fear in this case that it is due to an outside in
terference we have no knowledge of.

  The note that my mother wrote in the margins of her book jumped up at me. I imagined that was something she really wanted to say in the middle of the scientific stuff that she'd written, but just couldn't find the context or reason for it.

  It was more a note to herself than anything. And now, it was like she was speaking to me directly.

  "The cipher needs to start at the right word."

  The voice startled me out of my reverie. I’d completely forgotten that I wasn't alone. I was so used to my solitude.

  Creed had been looking at my sketches and hash marks. How in the heck had he gotten so close without me realizing?

  I blinked the daze from my eyes and told myself that I wasn’t distracted by his sculpted face. "What do you mean?"

  He pointed out the first bit. "The first line would be the coordinates of the page, so to speak. For example, the first paragraph and the third word or sentence in."

  "Well, that's random." The plant was the code. I knew it. I wasn’t sure exactly how yet, but I would figure it out.

  This was the spore. The one that started it all before. Since my mother named this plant, I started with its genus and species, then used my name as the key. I listed the alphabet in full, then paired each letter with its coded one. Next, I grabbed the message with its jumble of nonsense words and began transcribing each letter.

  My hand shook as I realized that real words were forming. I kept going until I ran out of letters. I took in the deciphered message.

  New Project at lab: The Reckoning.

  Be advised, find cover before the New Moon.

  Hellfire will rain down the mountain.

  The new moon was weeks away yet, so that was a sort of relief. Not much, in light of the words “Reckoning” and “Hellfire” in the same sentence.

  I traced my fingers over the series of numbers that were decoded. They didn’t have a cipher to them, so I still needed to know where those numbers went.

  But at least this was something, a reason for my dad’s erratic behavior.

  If there was supposed to be a Reckoning, then the town needed to know about it.

  Creed was oddly silently. Though I didn't know the man well, so far he seemed pretty open to telling me all he knew or expanding upon a random thing I said. "So, did you have any thoughts about that?"

  Creed

  It was unsettling to be the subject of Soleil’s close scrutiny. Trying to force the truth against the geas on my neck didn’t work. How in the world was I supposed to tell her about the monsters?

  How the umbrella corporation only known as AEGIS took it upon themselves to direct the evolution of humanity. How they had allowed “scientific breakthroughs” that should never have happened.

  How they took shifters and those carrying the gene for shifting, in order to create the perfect Judas species to assassinate and then takeover the lives of key people in government in order to further their own agenda.

  AEGIS had created the Judas species to purify and remake the world in their own image. They made the Judas species so well, that they had betrayed their own creators, slipping their leashes and taking up their own interpretation of the agenda.

  How AEGIS had no choice than to kill their own creations, first through subtler, gene-targeting weapons like the spore that created the Rave, to full-on warfare with the Hellfire squad.

  How can I tell her that the world that she knew was not what it seemed?

  ~Maybe you don’t tell her…maybe you show her?~

  I looked to the window just beyond Soleil’s shoulder and saw the raven perched on the sill.

  ~Yeah, and how am I supposed to do that, Hugh? She doesn’t want me to touch her and she wouldn’t be able to access my thoughts, anyway. None of ours.~

  We might have escaped the labs, but we were still leashed. I massaged the back of my neck as if the brand burned me.

  Hugh clacked his beak together in annoyance. ~You have such little imagination. Take her to see Bishop. His memories are all she needs.~

  Osiris’ voice rumbled in Hugh’s wake. ~Agreed. There is something shifting in the air, and I do not see how being kept in the dark will help Soleil now.~

  ~Give her a story. Maybe if you convince yourself it’s a story, the geas would allow you to say more than it would otherwise.~

  It was worth a shot.

  Soleil

  Creed nodded, his golden eyes shone. "I have thoughts."

  Interesting. He had thoughts yet wasn’t saying anything about them. "So, did you want to share those thoughts with me?"

  "I want to, but I cannot."

  "Cannot or will not."

  He swallowed. "Cannot."

  I searched his face, scanning down his entire body. He stood rigid like he was in the middle of some harsh grip that he fought against. "Dude, it's all right. Like, breathe or something."

  He panted, as if he had been forced to carry a great weight while running a marathon. In one steadying breath, he calmed. "I apologize, ramina, but there are things I cannot talk about."

  Well, now I knew he was telling me the truth because he had been doing so well calling me by my name. I let it go since he looked upset.

  "Are you going to be all right?"

  "Not really. Not if what this says is true," he said motioning to the message.

  "You mean the “reckoning”? Yeah, didn’t sound warm and fuzzy. So, do you know what it may mean? And why would my dad know anything about a lab?" Dad was as far removed from lab work as I could imagine. Sure my mother was into botany and herbology and they kind of grew into the other. And I knew that she did a lot of research despite how she lived on her off hours.

  But my dad was a preacher through and through. His dad was a preacher, his dad's dad. They were all a line of preachers all the way up as far back as I could recall. They all carried their scriptures and they all knew how to wield the word like a weapon.

  Or in my dad's case, as a shield. It was like he specialized in wards though he could probably work his way to blasting others like he'd tell about his own dad doing. One of my grandfathers was able to even wield his word like a sword. That must have been in the high time for word mages and the like.

  Nowadays, we'd be lucky to have a healer. Which was why my dad being a preacher had been so valuable to the town, let alone my mother for being an herb witch.

  I think that was the worst part about the After. Not many people were baptized into their faith anymore and people stopped believing in things like gifts. Only the ones that had their gifts from Before had been able to develop their talents in the After.

  "I think there was more to your father than you know."

  I rolled my eyes. "Well that's obvious. I mean we're allowed our secrets. I mean I get it, he was young once. He must have done a lot of things that he may not have been proud of. Usually preachers preach for a reason. They’d meandered off the path just to come back to tell people to stay on it, or whatever."

  "That is all true. But I didn't mean in the youthful indiscretion or the random secrets we keep to ourselves. I mean like a big secret."

  That piqued my interest. "Okay, I'll play. What's so important that you seem to know my dad more than me?"

  The shine on his eyes gleamed brighter. "The thing is, he isn't an ordinary preacher. He's a remarkable preacher, and enough that he was able to guide some research into a facility."

  He moved as if he would step closer to me, and then it was as if he was caught in that grip again. He tried a different approach.

  "Can I try something else?" He asked.

  I was curious, of course. And again, there was something about him that I trusted. It helped that he didn't kill me—or try to—when he was able to. But the fact that he knew about the wards and that he was able to walk through them freely...he was either really able to hear like he claimed--because the wards only filtered in those who would be able to love and protect me--or because he was really strong. He wouldn't harm me in the first
scenario and in the second scenario, he could have but didn't, and didn't seem to be making any threatening moves any time soon.

  He gestured to the sitting area. "Tea?"

  I tried to roll with it. "Sure."

  He had me sit down, and made up a pot of tea. When we were all settled, with me seated in my dad's chair and he was balanced at the edge of the couch across the room, he started to weave a story.

  It even started like old fables went.

  "In the beginning..."

  Creed

  In the beginning, there was no such thing as monsters.

  At least not the kind that we know now. There were, however, scientific breakthroughs, most of which should never have happened.

  But, for the sake of the future of humanity, an umbrella group known simply as AEGIS allowed for the funding of multiple branches of research that combined spells and science. Instead of furthering humanity, they damned it.

  At first they created the Reapers in secret, super soldiers with one goal: to collect as many shifters as they could find. Then, with a new science, they created the pinnacle of their weapons program: the Judas species. They were as strong and fast as any shifter, and able to mimic any target that AEGIS wanted to imprint into their DNA.

  They branded each Judas with a kill switch and sent them into the world to assassinate their targets—key positions in governments and society—takeover their lives, and direct the path toward a world where AEGIS would run the world ungoverned, and continue to shape the world.

  Some laws and policies started shifting toward a mining operation in a lonely stretch of desert out west. Somehow, AEGIS, in their greed, awakened something in one of their deep drilling sites. Something that they couldn’t control.

  It was like they had opened a Pandora’s Box of death and destruction and unleashed it into the world.

  Crops were destroyed. Water started to become contaminated. Blood sickness and disease. Infertility.

  And that would have been Earth’s final legacy.