Wolf Sirens Night Fall: What Rises Must Fall (Wolf Sirens #3) (32 page)

“They’ll come
looking for her… her parents,” I uttered through swollen lips, the
acrid taste of blood in my mouth.

Sam looked
towards me as though she heard the noise I had made, but she
averted her eyes as though she wished to neither hear, nor see me.
The male picked up C.J’s flopping body as Sam latched the cage,
again avoiding my eyes. I suddenly remembered Cres slumped under my
legs and before she hit the light, plunging us back into pitch
darkness, I saw the blood on her face around her mouth, and her
lavender eyelids move.

It went dark.
“Cres?” Nothing. “Cres?”

“I’m sorry,”
she moaned softly.

“Are you hurt?”
I whispered dully.

“I’m sorry,”
was all she whispered again, in the dark. A tear rolled down my
cheek. I reached for her face and moved to cup her head in my lap.
As I reached and held Cres, I wished helplessly that she wasn’t
dead.

I licked the
end of my shirtsleeve and wiped around her mouth to remove the
dried blood from her skin. The gashes in my back stung with the
movement.

“You tried to
save her,” I whispered as a few tears escaped my swollen eyes in
the darkness. I realized I could still feel where C. J had lain
over me as life left her body, and my legs were wet with her blood.
I lay unmoving, with Cresida’s chest lightly rising and falling
under my hand and I wondered what had become of the others. I
shuddered as an ache swelled and tore through my body. There was no
reason to keep the others alive, unlike Cresida and me. C.J must
have put up a fight to have been fatally injured. I wondered if we
were the only ones left.

Guilt is a
terrible thing. I should have been the one to go into Narine’s
room, but all I had cared about was Sky. Tears flooded from my
eyes. I should have been dead! I desperately wanted to trade places
with her. It was my fault, because I had told Tisane I wanted to
live.

I wept slowly
in my nightmare, trying not to heave in sobs as I held Cres, but
she lifted her arm and stroked me feebly. I touched her long hair
that had grown thin and wispy past her shoulders. I remembered
cutting the flaxen ends in the field on my birthday, in the light
rain and I recalled Reid watching. But now I was in a cold hard
cage, in a nightmare. A dreadful feeling ripped through me. Our
current reality was too much to take. So again I thought of the
afternoon in the field on my birthday, escaping to the lingering
memory. I thought for the first time it must have been for Cres
that he watched, because he loved her. Maybe she had left him
behind when she came here, to spare him, so that he could find me
and we could break the pack and rescue her brother. For all the
faith they had in me, in my pathetic leadership, I was a complete
failure.

I remembered
Jackson’s gasping breath warning me, before I was surrounded.
Angele must have got word out somehow. Why had I trusted her? They
knew we were coming. Better than that, they must have known exactly
when. We had been betrayed. Someone had told them when and who.

I prayed
desperately that some of our side had escaped. I thought of Tisane
in the car. I hoped with a stab she had fled and that she didn’t
know what I was running into, though she had warned me of the card,
the one with the burning building flooded with flames and people
falling from it. We had walked into a trap.

Sam pushed the
shovel into the soft ground - one benefit of the continual rain.
“Here!” she threw a shovel at Patrick. He picked it up slowly and
began to help, digging at the mud as misty rain fell.

Sky had fled,
Bert had warned him. That meant Sky would be back for Lila. Sam was
going to put Blair on the case. He’d proved himself by taking out
the little huntress, when she had fatally stabbed Dahlia through
the heart.

Giny had phoned
Sam while she was on the way back from Queenbeyan, where no one
could have overheard the call. And all Sam had to do was promise
she’d change her in return for the information about the attack -
who, where and when.

She let
everyone in on it except Narine and Sky. The decision had been made
easier when Narine criticized her in the bedroom. When she had
stared admiringly at her own reflection with a certain
churlishness, that reminded Samantha of someone else she hadn’t
been fond of in a past life. She wasn’t about to be talked down to
like that from an ex bar maid.

Shell was
inside wounded but recovering. Genna had reset her arm and the
bullet had been removed. Hopefully she wouldn’t be such a live wire
now that she had suffered for it. Protecting Sky as he ran and then
tussling with Aylish, who had wisely run. Hypnotism may make Shell
a better pack member though. All it took was one look in her eyes
after she was shot to convince her which side she was on.

“Christian,
come with me.” She collected the rifle which leant against the wall
outside the office. It was still splattered with Paws’s dried
blood, it had been under the desk when Cres shot him.

Sam was moved
to see the little blonde with a ponytail slumped dead in Lila’s
arms. It meant another huntress would be spawned, she thought with
annoyance. Christian carried the body out and Sam placed her hand
over her mouth as they left, because the raw stench of the little
underground room was overpowering. She rested the gun down; it was
the early hours of an overcast dawn. Sam covered her body with a
tartan blanket from the downstairs couch. As she did she noticed
the girl’s eyes were open, revealing the crescent moons in her
brass coloured iris and she looked away as she placed it over her
face.

“Take her out,”
she said, her eyes turned to the floor.

Christian
carried the small body carefully. Sam rubbed her forehead with the
back of her wrist. Maybe the girl was too like her sister, and
maybe she reminded her of Lily, pale as she was.

She took a
moment and followed him out to where the others had been digging
the shallow graves; Bert was being rolled into a knee-deep hole
next to where they had laid Angele and Jackson into their graves.
Greta started cutting away at the earth. Greta was sniffling and
she looked stern and pale. The hole she dug was for Agnes, a
companion of many, many years.

“Make the hole
shorter.” Sam ordered Tyler. She couldn’t bear to watch them
sniffle any longer than was necessary. “They can fit in, in a fetal
position.”

He didn’t raise
his head to look at her, but kept feebly digging at the soil. There
was no mistaking, in the relative silence, that they had all heard
her. Their shovels chipped at the soil with increased pace.

Lonnie, Andy
and the boy were inside the house with Shelly and Bianca. Dahlia
lay out front dead.

Narine and
Aylish were missing, as were Sky and Reid. Giny had gone home to
say her goodbyes and she would return to become one of them.

“Daylight’s
coming; we need to get them in the ground,” Sam advised, taking up
a spare shovel and hacking at the mud next to Jackson’s resting
place. “Someone get Dahlia’s body.”

No one moved.
Instead they seemed to pause.

Sam turned her
head towards Patrick, frustration twisting her features. “Patrick,
Tyler get the body!”

Patrick dropped
the shovel and walked back to the house, head down, followed by
Tyler. The sun began to rise. Sam looked at it and began to dig
with vigour. They were in the line of trees but they couldn’t risk
being spotted doing anything suspicious. A make shift graveyard
full of the freshly dead wasn’t something they could talk their way
out of.

“Dig faster,”
she ordered as the sun began to peek through the trees.

Patrick came
out of the house. She was pleased to see he had had enough sense to
drape Dahlia’s corpse in a sheet. “You took your time,” she spat as
he carefully laid Dahlia on the damp soil, letting her head down
against the soil near the hole, her black hair falling over the
dirt.

Sam cut into
the earth. “Where’s Tyler?” she asked, annoyed.

“He’s getting a
drink,” Patrick mumbled.

Sam’s eyes
flared angrily but she kept her voice even. “Run in and get him,
quick, and get Lonnie. We need these in the ground before the sun’s
up.” Tyler took laziness to a whole new level.

Patrick looked
at her expressionlessly, except for his moist eyes.

“Run!” she
yelled aggressively as she continued digging. Lonnie wasn’t a
willing participant. Unfortunately, he found himself digging
Dahlia’s grave. Beside her sheet-draped body, a tear escaped his
eye. He knew Aylish was alive, out there somewhere, and he knew she
had been right all along to leave this place and never return.

“God!” Sam
cried when she saw him weeping. “Just dig,” she urged frustrated.
He was soft. Tyler dug silently beside him. He glanced around at
the others. There were six dead in total: Agnes, Bert, Caroline,
Jackson, Angele and Dahlia. If Narine had survived, she had run
wounded. Sam hoped she wasn’t watching on from the surrounding
trees, planning her revenge. There was a lot of blood in the
downstairs room. Hopefully she had died in the bush, but they
didn’t have time to look.

Six dead in
total, proof that guns were dangerous weapons. It looked as though
the Cult era was over. Greta was clear that she and the two
remaining mountain pack boys would return to the mountain, after
burying the dead. But Sam took solace in the fact that she still
now had a pack, in which she was once again was unrivalled leader.
Bianca was her trusted Omega, Lonnie and Andy would be putty in her
hands soon enough. Shell had nowhere to go, Blair and the newbie,
Greg Sutton, would remain in the town and Tyler was easily swayed
by her gift. Genna would be an asset.

Somehow, she
had outlived all the madness and overthrown two leaders and she
had, in part, to thank the little meek Giny for that. She was a
wise investment. It’s the quiet ones you had to watch. Sky, Reid
and Aylish were out there and that was perhaps a problem. She
looked around in the early light of sunrise, through the leaves of
dense bush, wondering if they were watching. It made her uneasy as
she lifted the moist soil with the spade. She looked about and
stopped to feel the gun on her hip. It was an unusual choice to
have a weapon, but she hadn’t forgotten the last fight with Sky and
she knew now he would be angrier. Now that Lila and Cres were
hers.

“Morning hell’s
angels.” A snap on the bars and flicker of unnaturally bright light
burnt my eyes as they adjusted. Cres moved her head. I felt a crick
in my neck and a dull ache where Cres had lain for many hours. I
realized I had no sensation in my butt, as I had lain for at least
a day straight, on the cold, hard, blood stained cement floor in
complete darkness.

“Who the fuck
are you, Charley?” I rebutted, blinded by the light. I must have
looked a pitiful sight.

He chuckled.
“Sam offers you her condolences.” A tall attractive man, with a
glint in his eye and a short haircut, peered through the bars with
a smirk on his lips. Whitlock. He was handsome up close. His skin
was pale white and it offset his clear eyes. I looked towards a
piece of carrot that he dangled in his hand, which he now poked
through the bars at us. I sneered back at him. He seemed to be
taunting us, like animals in a cage.

“Police Chief
Blair Whitlock,” he introduced himself. I glared at him unconvinced
I should speak and questioning his motive. We were vulnerable but
no matter what I wasn’t frightened of anything, least of all him. I
remembered well what I had done to his precious car and I knew he
was still pissed about it. I remained still as I met his sparkling
eyes. I wished in defiance that I had done more damage to it
now.

“Not hungry?”
Like a flash he whipped the carrot stick into his mouth and took a
loud bite. He chewed it obnoxiously, remaining crouched at our eye
level, intently watching us through the bars, with malice.
“Normally I prefer
Deer
... the head is the best part.”

“What do you
want?” I spat unable to conceal the seething hatred in my voice. I
noticed as my eyes adjusted that he had on a holster and an ammo
pouch on his belt. I saw he was in a navy blue police uniform,
minus the cap.

“Is Narine
going to keep us here like animals?” I asked with disdain.

“There’s a new
bitch in charge now.” He smiled crookedly.

“Who?” I
pretended not to be as interested as I was. He watched me
swallow.

“Legend has it
you are hunters?”

I stared back
at him, unflinching.

“Will you kill
me?” he asked straightening, up looking down on us. “Artemis?” He
smirked.

“Are you going
to let us die in here?” My voice took on an uncharacteristic, rough
tone as I sneered back at him, full of anguish.

“Sam says we
must turn you, or keep you here.” His voice was husky.

“Sam?”

“That’s right,
Sam’s back in charge,” he admitted plainly.

I wanted to ask
how. I wanted to ask him why he followed her and then I remembered
with clarity that she was persuasive. Even if there was any good in
him, she would have stopped at nothing to make him bend to her
will.

“She has
hypnotized you, fool,” I said harshly, not knowing how much of him
really was taken by her. Though I suspected our hit on the compound
had made her uneasy enough to pull out all the stops when we came
for Cres.

“Yes, and soon
she will do the same to you,” he said with a flick of his smooth
chin. He laughed at me then. “We’re gonna turn you into one of us,”
his voice trailed. He walked to the door and paused before walking
through it. Throwing me an apple from his pocket, I caught it dead
with the one hand that wasn’t wrapped around Cres. “Feed the half
breed. We don’t want her dying on us.” His voice purred over the
vicious intent of his meaning.