Wolf Sirens: Forbidden: Discover The Legend (26 page)

I had never been a very willing or malleable student.
I was headstrong and impatient by nature, though
well behaved. I wasn’t a good listener, I lacked the
softness most children had, I resisted. My strength
of will now focused on learning and listening instead
of resistance. In the weeks that followed I gathered
a routine momentum: school, home, practice, dinner,
late night practice, talk, climb back in the window,
shower - if I could, or at least wash all the grass and
pebbles and dirt from my war wounds - eat more
and if I was tired enough hit bed, otherwise anything
I could do to keep my mind off things; emails to old
friends who wouldn’t know me anymore and once
to Dad and my brother Tim. Otherwise I’d surf the
net for weapons and information on topics such as
forgery and survival.

Ben’s guns went missing around the same time.
I don’t think the police took him seriously; it would
have helped his case if he didn’t reek of whisky and
that only one was licensed. Cres taught me to track
the heart-shaped prints of deer and importantly one
night she smiled as she pulled a bow and arrow out of
Reid’s jeep, her vehicle of choice at night. She said it
was important to know how to use a bow.

She helped me pull the string. “The number one
thing is confidence,” she whispered to me, as I let out
the shot and the bodkin arrowhead struck the tree at
which I had aimed it. I caught her smile, I was a natural, and I didn’t need her guidance. The arrow flew
as straight as though Artemis herself had commanded its path. My hands found the position over the
instruments as though my subconscious remembered
the movement from a time long ago. I could shoot
twenty apples through the heart in twenty-eight seconds, from eight metres. Not even Cres could touch
my score.

We spent the weekends practicing. I awaited his
return out in the meadows on the edge of the bush
rehearsing self-defence moves. I lay back in the grass
under the sun after the last successive tryst in which
Cres got the better of me once again. She stood above
me still holding her weapon of choice: a large stick;
she wanted me to learn to use what was on hand. I
flinched as she suddenly dropped down beside me
amongst the damp wild wheat and thick kikuri grass.
I rolled to face her.
“What really happened the night you saved me

from Sam?”
“I saw it coming. I warned him. I knew you’d do
it when he wasn’t there.” She looked at me, studied
my face for an expression. Something was wrong, she
was being careful again.
“What is it?”
She smiled wide enough to show her gums. I realized it was a nervous smile.“We set you up.” Before
I could reply she added, “It was inevitable.”
I didn’t say anything as a cold flush trickled within me.
Cres went to speak but I cut her off.
“He set me up?”I began to doubt our relationship.
“No, it was me, I told him to not meet you after
school every Tuesday and on the one that you came
to her the way I had, I would know. I went and found
him and we were almost too late.”
–
Yes,
I recalled frowning.“He
let you
,” I uttered
perplexed.
“Lila, it was the only way…”
I got up and walked away into the bracken. I
couldn’t believe it. I had recovered from the betrayal
of none of them telling me what they all knew I was.
I forgave Cres because she had tried to warn me.
But this was different. Sky and his ex had conspired
behind my back and I felt jealousy as well as betrayal
– again. I thought he really loved me, how could he
then put me in so much danger? Was he willing to
risk my life?
Cres left me to think about it, I guess. I knew
why she hadn’t told me before. Maybe I was a fool to
believe he was as crazy about me as I was about him.
And I knew nothing would compare in my life to the
way I felt about him.

Christmas came and went as though the wolves knew
and respected the season. After school broke-up we
didn’t even hear their cries. All in all it was a dull
Christmas. I would have rather been at school than
trapped in the house with my mother watching bad
re-runs under the air conditioner with neighbourly
visits from her friends; whilst I was dreaming of the
pack and the pool at the cabin, which had been too
cold in the months I’d spent there. My mind wouldn’t
stop. Sometimes I stayed up too late, but I always
went to bed earlier the next night. Non-training
nights were an unofficial break too, during the fullest moon, sometimes when it waxed. The wolf was
strongest during the full moon. Our best chance was
to attack under a crescent moon, when their strength
was more diluted and rest when they did, as the moon
waxed and they slept - though we did not hunt them,
and they remained quiet.

Cres was a hard taskmaster. Some nights she
stayed and I would talk to her into the night about
life, the way any ordinary girls would have until my
eyelids grew too heavy and I would sleep. We read
magazines; I was surprised she seemed to love the
trash written in them more than me, the only difference being that in-between we had discussions about
weapons and attack techniques. Sometimes the topic
turned to family and I realized she grieved for her
parents deeply still and now it dawned on me that I
kept her from her brother. I would have told her to
leave me, to see him, but I knew as well as she did
that I would be gone when she got back, even under
Reid’s watch. I would scour the news - anything but
have time to think of him, and I noticed the pages
missing from the paper. Cres was quietly censoring
my world. No one could watch me as closely and
cleverly as she could. She feared I’d turn up dead or
worse not turn up at all, MIA (missing in action),
then she’d have wasted all that effort training me to
take her place. I was after all only human, vulnerable,
tough, but weaker than the werewolf she was. I was
a more inherently talented hunter than she was, but
I was no wolf. During one of our talks I asked her
to change me –
no
was her only reply, simple, cold
and stern with a hardness which would not melt her
resolve, though I wondered secretly if I could manipulate her. But if my will was strong, Cresida’s was
unshakeable. I believed Sky, when he had said she
was a strong woman. I knew with a pang that she
had been made hard, that she was not innately born
with the disposition of a soldier; because I had seen
glimpses of the teenager she was before necessity restrained her and survival became her main goal.

The endorphins swamped my system. I became
a hard-wired machine, a soldier in the same way
it had crept up and swallowed Cres. It encroached
on me like a fire, slow and warm before I knew it. I
was inflamed with the feelings of a hunter, a burning desire to track and chase and take down the wild
wolf. It burnt stronger in me than other emotions
I’d once felt like love and lust, engulfing them in its
wake. Now hunting eclipsed these human desires. I
could see clearer, suddenly smell more, I was stronger without trying and whereas once my mind used
to race, now it focused unrelentingly on one driven
impulse at a time. My only heart’s desire instead of to
run was to fight. I was in the zone. The blood, which
pumped through me, was like an elixir of pure energy and power feeding my cells. I gave myself to the
huntress. I was doomed from the beginning whether
I was chosen by someone, or some force, born into
it, or created. I can’t be sure but their presence in me
planted a seed, which upon exposure to them grew
like the sun had shone upon it. The closer I got,
the less I wanted to harm them, the more I became
something that would.

One night Cres called me. We met out in a meadow.
While training,I came across the scent of sandalwood,
musk, wet dog and cinnamon, I froze in the paddock.
Werewolf! Not just any wolf -
Reid!

Reid stood in the clearing in human form, barechested, breathing slowly and heavily. My recent
training automatically compelled me to place a hand
over the cold metal of the gun on my right hip, arm
tense, ready to draw, though the girl inside me wanted
to run to him and embrace him and ask where he was?

Out of the silence came two words. “He’s dead.”
I looked into his sad eyes. They glowed amber green,
like crystals and for a moment I thought it wasn’t
him; his eyes had always been caramel. Now they
were rimmed with tears and hardened with anger. He
had a seriousness about him that didn’t suit his usual
demeanour. He was drawn, thinner, not the Reid I
had known.

My voice dropped. “No, you’re lying.”
“He is,” he murmured, swallowing dry.
To my horror he turned to leave. All my protective pretences forgotten, I ran to him pulling like a
beggar at his weight.

He collapsed onto the ground where he stood;
his knees became damp from the grass. Head down
sobbing, he shrugged my grip from his arm.

“His injuries were too bad…”
I couldn’t speak. He had to be lying.
He swallowed again. Looking at me he managed the sentence he had come to deliver. “He was
in a bad way. The other pack couldn’t help him.” A
tear ran down his cheek. “Before he died, he said he
loved you. I was with him for a while.”He sniffed. He
placed something in my hand; it was a tag.

I looked at it, breathless: the silver army tag. I realized it was his, I knew the indentations, recognized
the numbers. It stung, I glared at him. He never went
anywhere without it.

“Something for you to keep.” He spoke to the
ground.
Sky wouldn’t have given it for any other reason.

My eyes welled with tears of pain, which swelled and
broke down my face. Still the voice cried in me that
he wasn’t dead, but how could I deny it?

“When?” I barked sternly.
“A week ago.” He had been gone three months.
I had not felt it. I wished it was wrong but I knew
from his face it was true. The blood drained from my
face. I’d known from Cresida’s voice on the phone
this evening, so quiet and broken. The silence broke
the truth to me.
He pushed me away, then. “I’ve got to get home.
My olds have had me on lock-down for weeks, for
running away.”
He stood up and sauntered away slowly.
“No! You killed him!” I screamed, “Werewolves
can heal! Where is he? Where is he? I want to see
him! I hate you, Reid! You’re a liar; you’ve lied and
cheated before.”
Snot dripped from my nose. I felt Cresida’s
presence in the distance then, but it didn’t stop me.
Going after him I placed a gun muzzle against his
head. “Take me to him,” I spat forcefully.
He wisely didn’t move.“I never meant to hurt
you, Lila,” he whispered not looking at me.
“This isn’t about that!” My spit hit him in the
face. “I will go and find him,” I raged.
Reid turned his head bravely to look at me.
“You’ll only find ashes.” His eyes were wide and honest, sorrowful.
I pushed him forward; he fell to the ground,
palms up, the whites of his eyes evident in the dark.
“So help me, Reid, I will kill you…If I find out
you are lying.” I cocked the gun, it was all too easy
to squeeze the trigger. The click was easily defined
against the melody of crickets on the breeze and our
three hearts beating. Cresida touched my arm softly,
then. I looked back at her in that instant. Reid phased
and took off running into the trees.
I lifted my gun far too late and fired it into the
line of trees and went to fire again, but Cresida
grabbed my arm and pushed it down and I hadn’t the
will to fight her.
I thought about the last moments I had seen him,
his face ashen in pain; how I should have never let
them take him, how I should have insisted on going; how I should have gone over to him; kissed him
goodbye in the basement and ignored the hurricane
that was the aftermath of the fight. Despite Cresida
and Reid fussing over him, and how they felt about
it, he should have died in my arms. I was the reason
he was dead.
“Cres,” was all I remember saying.

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