Wolf Sirens Night Fall: What Rises Must Fall (Wolf Sirens #3) (6 page)

Anything that
happened could never retrieve in her the same pain; it would be a
pale comparison no matter what was to happen here this time. She
couldn’t sit back and take it. She hoped in her heart that the
reason he fetched her and Dahlia was innocent, but she knew
everyone in this place had lost any gentle innocence long, long
ago. She was here for a strategic reason that she could not put her
finger on.

And worse yet,
they knew her history well, and hurtfully they still dragged her
back to poke her wounds. They had once taken from her that which
made life worth living. She was there to grow their power, that’s
it, she thought slowly dragging her feet up the stairs to the first
floor as a nervous dread drained her face of colour.

Sam had wanted
numbers, insurance for a fight, because they knew better than to
think there wasn’t any fight left in her. They had trapped her; she
was not here of her consent or free will. Sam had the ability to
drag her kind from wherever she found them, back to the place they
had escaped. Aylish knew that Sam was one of the gifted wolves, and
she had only ever known of one other. Aylish had spent the worst
part of her life here. She looked around the room that hadn’t
changed in two decades, except to deteriorate. It was as though
time had not moved.

A good marker
in time was death. Dahlia had watched her family decay from a
distance and buried them all here until she was all that remained
of them. Aylish envied the fact that they had died slowly. Dahlia
had had time to grieve them well before they passed. She had not so
long ago bemoaned the life she lost, of dreams she could never
reach. She seemed happy to fill the void with pretty clothes and
petty dramas.

They all at
some point had to grieve the lives they had lost. Like a past life
remembered all too clearly. For Aylish, the memories of Shade
festered like sores. She had Dahlia pretend they were reincarnated,
and so they left to outrun the decay they felt inside and tried to
forget it and in a way, forgive themselves for outliving their
loved ones. Like the others time and companionship had healed
Dahlia. Something neither could have done on their own. And now the
pack had them back, as though they were pulled by an invisible
string, bit by bit, so that they didn’t realize it until they were
there. Packs were usually self-feeding mechanisms. The major
players set the rules that the members enforced, to show loyalty in
some vain hope that recognition was love.

“You’ve been
gone a quarter of a century,” Paws said. “Please come in. Welcome
back to the jungle,” he announced behind them as they faced many of
their kind, reclining casually, evenly spread about the room. She
recognized old faces and infuriatingly some new ones, still full of
fresh innocence about them, no doubt blindly listening to his
propaganda.

They would live
and die by his rules, their charismatic leader. She wanted to
vehemently scream
why!
at him, but knew it wasn’t smart to
make her protest known. She had at least learnt in her many years
to pick her battles; she had feared this for the longest time and
now it had come. Paws had seen a surge in numbers and she knew this
wasn’t all of them; there were more like her, surely, out there.
Wolves that had, for one reason or another, escaped. She focused on
her sister and knew, unfortunately, Dahlia was happier here now in
this second than she had been in many years in the city with Lonnie
and her, pretending to be a normal twenty-something, denying the
bigger part of her being.

Paws was a
decent leader, and he ran the pack like a gang. If anyone messed
with his kin he had it taken care of, preferring to punish one of
his own. The only thing that ever rattled him in many years was
Aylish. Perhaps it was what had softened him over the years,
allowing Narine to rise to power, as his mate.

The pack was
his family, Aylish chose her children over the wolf, but no one
leaves the wolf pack. The gang was reinvented most recently as the
Born Again Beings. Paws knew there would be headlines, but he had
grown egotistic over the years. There was part of him that loved
the attention, after so long hiding from it, but he wasn’t only
deluded, he was calculating. Despite his immortality he was tired.
Narine had the drive he now lacked. Perhaps it was a lucky twist of
fate, that he had turned her.

There was now a
deadline, an expiry date on the pack; he had taken a risk and he
knew it better than anyone. They would never age and never change,
the rapidly aging humans would notice in time that they were
immortal but he planned to either kill or turn them all before that
time came. This afforded them ten maybe fifteen years max to take
the whole valley. It was now or never. Narine knew it was now.

They knew the
huntresses wouldn’t go easily and he predicted a war. Narine and he
started with the hunters, the main opposition to their plan; the
reason they had not infected the whole of the town. At the same
time the highest members of society needed to fall into their pack,
so that they would be able to pull all the strings. Genna was taken
and initiated first, then Blair, with plans for politicians,
business owners, farmers and influential community members such as
teachers and council members to be taken in.

Shell had been
a high school teacher, and they started to recondition her to
realize he was family and to fight for them, but it was taking
longer than expected for her to reject her human life. She didn’t
easily adapt or conform to the gang mentality. The harder they
tried the more she resisted, placid as she was. Maybe this caused
Paws to retrieve Aylish; something about Shell reminded him of her.
It was unacceptable to refuse pack orders and disrespect him; it
was blood in blood out. Fortunately, it seemed Aylish had broken
her own rules and created another wolf for them, he was surprised
and pleased, another easy member to the Cult, and it seemed the
apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

Samantha was
invaluable when it came to retrieving them. Narine gave her more
rope than any of the others. For Sam to join them was a great
victory for their side. Paws and Narine had hoped for a merger for
some time. Sam had such power that they had initially been wary of
her, knowing her talent. Sam was a good bitch to have on side and
she handled the pack for him now and kept an eye on things like
that, so they could concentrate on the bigger picture; as they
worked towards a time when they would rule over the Valley, where
the wolves outnumbered the uninfected.

There were a
few bumps that needed ironing out, so Narine and Paws turned their
attention to within the gang, his children.

Samantha would
gather old members from across the valley and persuaded them to
return for their family, her talent came in handy for this. But the
old ones were somewhat difficult to track. Because they had either
ended it, which was difficult for others of their kind to
acknowledge, or they lived permanently as wolves. He wanted them to
grow strong. He trained the pack day and night until they
understood what it was to be affiliated with the Cult - power,
protection and brotherhood.

The old ways
were lost and the ruthlessness of the early days was forgotten in
time. It was as though they now had found a way to be surrogate
siblings, mothers and fathers to fill the void of no longer having
human procreation. Paws was the grandfather, Narine had evolved to
equal him in status. The real performing of punishment fell to them
as pack elders and leaders. They always decided who got the cage
and when they were let out.

Dents and marks
in the paint on the walls were evidence of a rough household.
Cement was the only reason the house held together. The furnishings
were still the same but more worn, complete with mottled brown shag
carpet and a collection of green, brown and orange mismatched
furnishings. It had been out dated even in her time; it even smelt
the same, if not mustier.

Leveling him
with her eyes, “Be straight with me, Paws,” Aylish said sounding
more in control than she felt.

“Girls, please
have a drink.” He leant on the bar with a victorious smile and
motioned for Sky to get the beers, hiding the annoyance she brought
him by persisting with resistance to his hospitality. Sky handed
him a bottle from the fridge and he strode back over to the lounge
area. A stocky blonde with black streaks in her hair and tattoos on
her arms leant on the bar and her eyes followed him, Genna.

“Why now?”
Aylish insisted with a low growl.

He sat down on
the dark brown plaid couch, which sank too low, and opened his
beer. “Aylish this is your home,” he reminded her with an
uncharacteristic lilt.

“No, it was.”
She looked about with her hard blue eyes.

“Please just
try it; you really hold a grudge like no other Aylish.” He looked
at Blair. “Twenty plus years,” he quipped and his tired smile faded
to reveal the set of annoyance, which lay behind it.

“Not long
enough,” she replied promptly. This, however, seemed to genuinely
amuse him. “Why now? Why let us get away for twenty five years and
drag us back now?” she persisted.

He smirked at
her piteous face. “She’s clever,” he said aloud to himself.

“I want to
leave.” She looked at Dahlia in her periphery and she meant with or
without her. Dahlia shied away from her sister’s glance, seeming to
shrink back in the corner of the room.

Paws failed to
hide his pleasure as he smiled widely. “Ha, see, Dahlia wants to
stay so it can’t be all bad.”

“I want to stay
a while,” Dahlia whined in a soft voice.

Aylish ignored
her sister. “Don’t tell her what to do,” she said, her piercing
eyes burning with hatred for him.

“Defensive,
Aylish,” he scolded her with an artificial light heartedness.

She narrowed
her hard stare, “With reason.”

“Oh well, I
didn’t say you had to forgive me, or yourself.”

Her face
remained hard. “When can we leave?” She spoke towards him and
swallowed. She knew, despite the pretence of freedom, they were
trapped.

Narine, who had
remained silent, interjected. “Aylish, please stay with us a while?
Dahlia seems to want to.” She nodded and smiled submissively,
hopefully.

Aylish narrowed
her eyes at Narine, not underestimating her for a second. And
little did she know, with Shell in the lockup, they couldn’t force
Aylish to stay, and she didn’t seem the type to obey the rules of
punishment.

Aylish looked
at Paws. “Do you remember what happened?” Her eyes glistened as she
stared angrily at him.

“Of course Ay,”
he sang.

“You remember
it differently,” her tone was clipped, as she struggled to hide the
breaking, furious emotion in her voice. As her chest rose and fell
more rapidly.

Narine’s smooth
tone broke the intensity. Infuriatingly acting as the voice of
reason. “If you don’t like it after, say two or three days, you are
free to leave,” she offered coercively.

After a moment,
Aylish spoke. “So I have no choice,” she said flatly as anger
boiled inside her.

There was an
audible silence as Blair snapped open a beer and handed it to her.
She took it, then stood up and poured it on the floor. They all
watched as the frothing liquid sloshed all over the shag carpet; as
it fizzed and sank, Genna gave an awkward giggle. Aylish turned,
tossing the bottle on the floor, inches from Paws and without so
much as a backward glance, went through the open screen door to the
balcony.

“Do you want
another?” Paws laughed in a humorous tone behind her, but only
Tyler snickered. Paws seethed quietly, disgruntled at knowing his
reaction was witnessed by all in the lounge.

Out in the air,
Aylish couldn’t believe it still. Here she was, back in the family
as though she had forgiven them, though she never could. She tried
to breathe. She heard them talking in the room.

“Aylish has
always had an independent streak,” Paws said aloud, glancing at
Narine.

And in fact, it
made her all the more attractive as a leader. She did what she
wanted when she wanted and followed no orders, she would have made
a sublime Alpha – probably why she was head of her own small pack,
which she ran with ease. However, she was the gentlest of creatures
away from him and his influence. She had shown fierce independence
and stubbornness. But she had something they lacked:
compassion.

Dahlia enjoyed
their company for a few moments before following her pack sister,
once the room had recovered from Aylish’s tantrum.

“Aylish,”
Dahlia said softly, stepping out onto the balcony. She rolled the
sliding door closed, behind her, taking care to remove her nineteen
fifties inspired skirt out of the way.

“You know, I
can’t ever forgive it,” Aylish uttered into the night air, which
smelt of shrubbery; something lemon scented lingered from below in
the warm air.

“I know,”
Dahlia replied, her startling aqua eyes reflecting the truth.

She breathed
the summer air. “This place makes me someone I can’t stand.” She
ignored the brilliant starlit sky. The Jackaranda’s were
taller.

“We don’t have
to fight it anymore.” Dahlia said it full of hope, like it was a
revelation that Aylish just hadn’t realized.

“You can do
what you want, but once things cool here I’m out,” Aylish replied
sharply. Looking away from her pack sister she glanced at the
rusted Kombi van abandoned in the yard.

“So you’ll stay
for a bit?” said Dahlia, still optimistic. Aylish could hear the
excitement of anticipation in her voice, but it only made her so
much more anxious to leave. She was filled with a nervousness she
covered with anger.