Jedrek is whistling when I catch up to him. He stands almost bored amid the many tall crosses and arches placed like flowers in a garden. The dead are lurking on the far corners like spectators to something they don’t want to witness but can’t look away. The air is alive with their tension and it stirs my magic like a sleeping beast stretching and ready to defend itself.
“Where are they?” I whisper, knowing I may as well have shouted my question.
Jedrek lifts one eyebrow, still whistling the many pitches of his song, he tilts his head to his right with a smile.
I shouldn’t have looked. I should have just stood, faking the same level of composure which comes so easily for Jedrek, but I don’t. I let human nature pull my eyes to the direction he motioned. Staring into the many sets of glowing eyes watching me, my stomach drops.
They pace, running in and out of the shadows the markers create. Using their sleek bodies, they create images from every dark dream ever had. Their eyes are watching, waiting for some signal to do what they were made to do – kill.
“How many fucking werewolves are in this town?” I hear myself ask, considering the large number we have already encountered.
“As many as I need there to be,” Deon’s voice taunts from where she has been watching.
There is no torn jeans or discarded shirt for tonight’s meeting. She is as she was when I first met her. Wearing a skirt suit so black the darkest of nights would envy it. Her blonde hair and pale skin appear to shine with their contrast. Deon Ripple, in all of her power-hungry glory, didn’t come to fight. She came to conquer.
“I thought your brother put you in time out?” Jedrek is kneeling to read the words on the headstone closest to him.
If he is bothered by the sheer numbers around us, he doesn’t show it, but I suppose when you have lived through the war of heaven and hell it takes a bit to frighten you. For me, this is a bit. It’s all the bits and I have no idea how to remain calm.
The stalking shadows are growing closer, encouraged by the scent of my fear and the voice of their alpha. As if plotting and planning, little barks and yips are exchanged among them, pulling them closer and tighter around us with the scent of my fear exciting them.
“My brother thinks too highly of himself,” Deon tells us with a sense of pride. The way she smirks leaves much unsaid, hidden between her words with a meaning of a thousand different possibilities. “You didn’t really think I’d just walk away after that last little stunt of yours, did you Jedrek?”
Jedrek shrugs, as if he hadn’t really put any thought to it, or to her. “Walk, no. Crawl, maybe. Thinking all fours with your tail tucked tight.”
Deon’s reply isn’t human. It’s guttural, raw and deep, from somewhere humans can’t pull sounds, but it doesn’t need words. It’s rage, pure and simple.
“Do you really think it’s wise to push buttons right now?” I ask him, watching the many lurking shadows form into shapes and then into the many shades of their pack as they gather around us, no longer keeping to the outskirts.
“You should listen to the witch, Jedrek. Especially since only one of you is immortal.” Deon is also now inching forward, her smile secure in her victory.
“I’m guessing I’m not the immortal one?” I ask him, taking steps to try to keep everything moving around us in my sight.
“Guess we are about to find out,” Jedrek says between laughs.
Laughs which send shivers down my spine and dread climbing through my skin. Laughs which call the very darkness they had used to hide in closer to us as if it’s a living thing. I watch as the edges of this human garden blur before disappearing behind a wall of a moving void. The wolves swallowed by it howl, putting voice to their pain before that voice melts into the abyss creeping forward. Soon their howls and screams flow over one another, blending their many voices together in their shared torment and deaths.
Deon screams a different pitch. Her suffering isn’t physical. Hers is mental and she voices it just as loudly before she lunges, erupting in the air into her wolf shape. She’s larger than her family with fur a deep red not found in nature and brown eyes glowing an amber shade of hate.
“Oh damn,” comes from my throat before I can stop my inner fear from forming words.
“The fur doesn’t match the drapes,” Jedrek says, titling his head back and forth while staring at the fur-covered death in front of us. “Figured you’d be lighter.”
Whatever remark he was going to make next, is stopped by the wolf nearest to me. I had turned my head to stare in confusion at Jedrek and that little motion triggered an avalanche. I felt the wolf move before I knew it was charging towards me. The prey aspect we still hold, clutched deep and only surfacing in the moments we know death is near, whispered the warning, pulling my attention back to the spot I neglected to keep watch.
The grey beast maneuvers around the cement shapes as if it were made of water, flowing and undeterred by anything in its path. The grey eyes never leave me, focused and heading towards me with a speed I can’t counter. I brace, waiting to be toppled by pure strength and sharp teeth.
Lifting my arms to absorb some of the impact, I watch in panic and fear as the ground underneath the wolf opens and decayed arms grasp it tightly. The wolf spins, ready to destroy whatever has locked onto its legs. Almost securing its escape, another set of arms erupt, spilling dirt and darker things into the air. This set digs into the fur of the wolf’s neck, pulling it to the ground. The arms begin an almost tug of war, each unwilling to release their part of the prize. Bones and joints begin to pop like dry twigs causing the wolf to howl as it’s pulled deeper into the dirt and stretched impossibly further apart. I close my eyes when the sounds become wet, sloppy, and telling of more than I need to witness of what is happening. I’m grateful when the howling stops but I know I will never remove the sound of the final tug pulling it in two from my memory. The final moment when the hands and arms win their pound of flesh echoes around us in a way, I didn’t think possible. Where the wolf once stood is now nothing but a bloody pool of dirt and shredded meat. The copper scent hangs heavy around us, turning my stomach with the truth it tells with the tall markers near it coated, raining, and dripping blood.
“Wanna do that a few more times?” Jedrek whispers, not attempting to hide his amusement from those watching us.
I want to tell him I have no idea how I did it the first time, much less wanting to witness that over and over again, but my mouth is dry and words aren’t forming.
Deon doesn’t react the same as I do to seeing one of her own destroyed in such a brutal manner. Her rage has hit its peak, and she rushes towards Jedrek with the same fluid run, full speed and eager to destroy.
I open my mouth to scream at him as he points at something behind me. I never got the chance to glance at the beast who didn’t make the same mistake as the last. This one waited, timed the attack when I was focused on another. I didn’t have time to summon on instinct any survival tricks. There was nothing but weight and hot breath forcing me to the cold ground, heavy on my back and bone crushing to my ribs.
As I fall, I watch Deon overtake Jedrek. She too wastes no time with his distraction, latching her large muzzle over and over again on his body. The last sight I have of them before a large cement cross blocks my view is of her mouth tearing into his throat and the red meat of his muscles exposed and bleeding.
The wolf on my back isn’t as eager as his Alpha. His weight is slowly pushing the air from my body, suffocating me with just his presence securing me to the ground. I can feel his hot breath as he sniffs my hair and nudges it away from the back of my neck. I’m drowning in my panic, unable to even scream with my body fighting, clinging to every small breath I am able to take. I dig my hands into the dirt and I do what I know how to do. I remember where I am. I summon the dead.
In my panic, overtaken by fear, I pull every slumbering body to life around us. I force them from the deep ground, and not having the focus
to fully reanimate them, they crawl forth in whatever form they can still hold together. They are corpses, rotting and shambling, with torn clothes and missing pieces, towards the rest of the wolves without any care for their own bodies.
The slaughter is a soundtrack of howls, screams and sounds I never wanted to hear. Sounds of pain and death pierce, not only the night, but my mind, pulling me deeper into my panic. There is no air in my lungs. My head feels as if it wants to explode from the pressure built inside of me. Fighting to find that last breath, my body begins to shake, almost convulse, with the desire to survive.
“Kill her!” I hear Deon shout. “Kill her, now!”
The hot breath wraps around my neck. He licks me, enjoying every last moment of this victory. He shouldn’t have. He should have done what he was told. He should have ended me when he had the chance because Bella used the phone. The crazy old woman brought a gun.
The gun shot silences the war zone as the one who was holding me captive falls limp and heavy to the ground beside me. Air rushes into my body. My lungs, having been so empty for so long, almost fight against it causing me to gasp and cough painfully. Dirt fills my mouth and throat. I choke on it, gasping and coughing to crawl where I last saw Jedrek.
He has Deon by the throat. She’s shifted back to her human form, nude and doing her best to fight against his strength. There is dried blood where his shirt has been torn. He is covered in the red streaks from their battle, still moist and clinging to his rapidly healing skin.
GiGi kneels by my side. I can hear her comforting tones, but they seem far away, down some long tunnel and I can hardly make out what she is trying to tell me. She’s stroking my red hair, pulling it away from my face. The dead flowers at the base of the marker beside me, long forgotten in their ceramic vase, turn from brown and wilted to green and the vibrant shades for which they were once picked. All around me grass pushes through the tumbled dirt. It springs between my fingers, wrapping their green blades around my hands. This is GiGi, earth and healing, flowing her magic through this death covered ground. The grass sooths my panic, filling me with calm and peace. The taste of her magic, cloves and oranges, fills me with comfort, reaching through my thickest panic to exhale and softly cry. She is home. She is safety. She is here, with a gun, and threats flowing from her verbally gifted mouth.
“Don’t you move, wolf,” GiGi tells Deon, pointing the old revolver towards her head. “Wouldn’t lose a second of sleep over putting this silver into that thick skull of yours.”
The same grass which comforted me, now wraps its long shoots around Deon’s body. The harder she struggles, the tighter it pulls against her.
“It’s over, Deon,” Jedrek says, releasing her with a pushing motion to the ground.
“Is it?” she asks, and my heart does that little sinking feeling.
I want to ask what more can she do? But I don’t. I don’t have to. The screams from the tomb we left provide all the clues we need. She knew she was losing. With my dead army destroying her kin, she reached for the last trophy left in the case. She’s determined to claim the victim of her contract, one way or another.
I stumble to my feet, tripping and almost falling back down as I run towards the voices screaming for a little boy’s future. Someone in that room has Ben. Their begging propels my weakened body forward. I stumble, fighting to stay upright, fighting to make it to them in time. My dead army shambles forward, fed by my fear as commands.
There’s so little space left between me and the tomb. I can almost reach out and touch the stone entrance. My army is near, pulling, crawling, or running, whatever their bodies allow them to, to reach this new threat, but we don’t have to. As the screams change from begging to wailing, I know I’m too late. Limping into the stone room, I watch as the wolf drops the disemboweled body of the little boy to the ground. She is drenched in Ben’s blood. It drips from her snarling jaws. She wears it like a shade of her coat, thick and matted.
Lost in shock, the army stands motionless, waiting on me to feed it with a goal. “Kill her,” I whisper to them and they pour into the room silent and eager to carry out my command.
There’s too many for the wolf to fight. The few she manages to destroy only reanimate what parts are capable, causing a never-ending loop of assault. I don’t feel remorse this time. I don’t look away as they flay her alive, pulling fur and flesh from skin and bones. Her whimpers and howls don’t reach that part of me which holds guilt for all that I have done. When she switches back to her human shape, reaching her hand out to me for mercy, I don’t even blink as they pull her head from her throat, leaving large arches of blood along the walls and the names engraved upon it.
Having made their target nothing more than raw meat and oozing fluids, they go back to motionless statues, awaiting my next mood swing. With exposed bones and withered faces, shrunken deep with decay, they stare at the walls like silent art critics admiring the shapes that the flowing blood is making upon the walls. They stare, maybe reading the names of those they were resting with before my need awoke them. Either way, whatever they are doing, they are just as much covered in death’s display as the walls and the ground underneath them.
Ben’s body is twisted at an angle suggesting it was more than just his flesh she ruined. She broke his spine with her strong jaws, tearing into his stomach in the process. When she discarded him, his soft, youthful flesh became torn, spilling forth everything it contained around him. Miranda, lost in her grief, is attempting to put the organs back, stuffing his body with make-believe hopes it will bring him back. She keeps whispering to him, telling him it’s all going to be okay, even as his blood cools on her arms.
“Bring him back,” Bella says from her corner of the room. “You can bring him back.”
Shaking my head, I tell her, “You know I can’t.”
Her eyes look to the many dead standing in their puddles of death before looking back to me. She’s calling my bluff without having to say it.
“Haven’t you learned?” Jedrek says from behind me. “The dead are dead.”
Hearing him, Miranda lets out a wail. It’s pulled from the depths of every mother’s fear being forced upon her. The body of her dead daughter still lays where it fell once the old magic was pulled from it. Now, the body of her son lays before her too, but she can’t see what I see.
I watch as Becky takes Ben’s hand. Ben, once lost in confusion over his death, smiles at his sister, knowing this is really her and not the monster which tormented him. The pair turn to leave this abandoned tomb which has become theirs. Running past me with the laughter only childhood could hold, the two play tag around the many bloody markers and decimated bodies. Neither carry the cause of their deaths upon their tiny bodies. They are at peace, free from their deaths. They are together again, as they will now be forever.
When their shapes become nothing more than floating sparks in the air, I let my tears finally escape. I cry for the two lost souls who are floating to the beyond. I cry for everything I couldn’t stop, for everything that didn’t need to happen. I cry for a family who has lost so much because of such a little lie told to a grieving teen. A little nudge of hope in her darkest hours exploited and used against her. I cry because in the classic-colored Cadillac, Cass has arrived.
Cass walks amid the battlefield with shock and disgust. His eyes scan the dead humans in their various causes of death and broken bodies of the very dead humans littering the grounds. The car’s headlights illuminate the whole scene, letting all of us see it gruesomely displayed.
What I hadn’t expected to see is the coven. Like the parade of a funeral, they are leaning on their many black sedans with blank faces and empty eyes. Even the annoying blonde is here, and when I can’t help my reaction to seeing her, she smiles a playful smirk knowing fully what I think of her.
“Well shit,” Cass says when finally making his way fully towards where we stand. He runs his fingers through his oily hair, before resting his hands on h
is wide hips shoved into a baby blue suit. “We gotta get this cleaned up,” he whispers to Jedrek.
I can’t help but drop my jaw in shock.
“Now don’t be looking at me like that, Ms. Harper. The cops will be here soon, and we are going to have a hard enough time making this look believable.”
“Not that it will matter,” Winnik says from where she stands, one high heel pressed to Deon’s throat. “The sheriff will believe whatever we tell him.”
My head is on a pivot, turning from GiGi, to Cass, to Winnik in her high waisted dress slacks and white buttoned shirt. “This family just lost their child and there are dead people everywhere. How can you two be so crass?”
Winnik chuckles, heartless and cold. “You really are new.”
“Look,” Cass says, pleading softly since the dead around us have begun to stir again with my outburst, “just put ‘em all back and let the witches handle the rest. This isn’t our first supernatural rodeo. Your kind gets a little out of hand every month or so.”
Jedrek is leaning on the stone archway passively watching me. “Welcome to the shit show,” he tells me without any mirth or joy.
Choking on my tears, I will the dead back to their graves. With less speed than before, they walk back to each rectangle plot of earth they call their own. Mindlessly, they collect the lost pieces of themselves they pass, hoarding their missing limbs as the ground swallows their returning forms. The dead wolves, in their human shapes, are pulled under by the tall grasses, carried deep into the earth by green arms of comfort. Like swaddling a newborn, one-by-one the grass and flowers from GiGi’s magic pulls them to rest, to be cradled in the earth, by Earth herself.
It’s not just my army who returns to their final homes. Becky’s body crawls to standing before heading back to where she belongs. The sight of it brings moans from Miranda. With her sanity already stretched thin, she crawls after her daughter. She calls her name, tormented by the facts she has buried in grief’s denial.
The Little Lies (The Great Hexpectations Series Book 1) Page 22
