Cry of the Wolf (22 page)

“It’ll be the end of me in three months anyway. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get into my car. I have a plane to catch.”

After a moment of hesitation, the Alpha stepped out of his way.

“Thank you.” Amil strode towards his vehicle, thinking about how he’d ‘broken down’ on purpose here just three weeks ago. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

With a wary glance at the wolf, he opened his door, got in and started the engine.

The curtain in Sarah’s front window twitched and maybe it was his saving grace that Ryan noticed it too … it might just be the reason he was still alive. But Sarah
was
his saving grace – he knew that now.

“By the way,” he rolled down the window, “The Trident know about your storm-wielder. They don’t know who she is, but they’ll look for her now.”

The large male nodded once and Amil was sure that was the most civility he’d ever get from a werewolf, not that he could really blame them. His species had spent the last few centuries brutalising them.

Sticking his car into reverse, he backed up, then changed gear and pulled out into the road, taking one final look at the home that housed the woman who had come to mean so much to him.

After nearly five years waiting to die, he’d finally found something worth living for.

Chapter Fourteen

Lydia had ridden home on the back of Lawrence’s motorcycle in silence. All in all, the evening had been anti-climatic considering all his fuss about Russell Maddox.

The actor had done his show, hung around to sign autographs, then packed up and left without a word.

Clearly, the greatest threat to them was the Trident that had made off with Taylor’s wife, and Taylor was still nowhere to be seen.

They had left the theatre near two in the morning. Lawrence had decided that whatever great secret he was going to tell her could wait a while since everything had gone tits up, and she had gone straight to her room to shower.

Now, it was dawn and she hadn’t slept a wink, all of her energy spent worrying about Taylor and going over the information about her family that Lawrence had relayed to her.

Looking up at the pink-grey sky, she could still feel a storm in the air that had never quite manifested. It had spotted with rain; it had thundered a couple of times, but no storm. Could storm-wielders get electrical headaches? Because she was pretty sure she could feel one coming on.

If she had been a good storm-wielder, she’d have brought that threatening storm down to ground, but she had no idea how she’d done it before.

Looking to pass the time, she made her way to her desk where Lawrence’s books were scattered from where she’d abandoned them almost twenty-four hours ago. Now, where had she left off?

Right. Mythology.

It didn’t take her long to find the passage she’d read earlier, and it was an absorbing read: a god and a goddess ruled by anger had split themselves apart, creating, for all intents and purposes, duality. But they quickly discovered they could not live without each other. Loneliness and loss consumed them, and it came to be that the only way they could rejoin since their separation was when the lightning (the god) penetrated the earth (the goddess).

Interesting…

In these moments, Yemet’s determination renewed, as did her anger, and she vowed to find a way to rejoin with Himet.

One night, under the full moon, which reflected Himet’s love for her when the sun could not, Yemet led her most prized and loyal animal – the wolf – to the top of the highest mountain. She let her grief, her sorrow, her loneliness and her anger pour out of her until she manifested a storm. Himet responded, joining in her dance, and at the exact moment he sent down his lightning, she placed the wolf in its path and infused herself with it.

Himet cried out in terror, but he could not pull back the lightning. It hit Yemet while she was in the physical form of the wolf – whilst she was mortal.

“
Why?!” he asked her, his sorrow consuming him.

“
I could not see, but now I do,” she replied with her dying breath, “to have all of you, I must yield all of me. Take my life, Himet. I trust you with it. I give it freely.”

“Is that it? What happened next?”

Annoyed, she turned the pages and found no more of that particular mythology. “It can’t end there!”

But all that stuff about the lightning was interesting. So, did that mean that the wolf was borne of the goddess? And is the wolf destined to die over and over again in a bid to become one with her mate once more? She wondered if that’s what the female’s transformation was: a sort of death through bonding to join with her mate.

I should ask Lawrence about this.

Yeah, she could just hear the response.
“It’s a fairy tale, Lydia. It’s not real.”

“Pffft! Yes, and neither are we I suppose.”

The book slipped from her hand and fell to the floor, face down.

Damn. I hope it’s not an antique or something.
She bent down to pick it up and noticed what had skipped her by before. On the binding of the page where the story ended, there was an almost unnoticeable roughness where the next page joined the current one, and the next page was a little loose.

Odd. I think there’s a page missing…

A flock of birds took off from a nearby tree, clearly disturbed by something.

Lydia wandered over to her window and pushed it upwards so it opened. The roar of an engine came from about half a mile south.

“My truck!”

She dropped the book and sprinted out of her room and down the stairs, legging it out the front door towards the rumble. She may not have had her baby long, but she knew that sound.

She raced into the woods, glad to have put on her jeans and not her pyjamas after her shower. Her bare feet would smart though.

Who’s driving the truck? Taylor? Brendan? But this was private property – how would Brendan drive in with the gates locked?

The rising sun disappeared from view as she ran deeper into the woods, but the engine had died and she was losing her sense of direction.

No. It was straight ahead, I’m sure it was.

Continuing on, she darted over foliage and through overgrown branches.

Not long now.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

Aunt Gladys’ perfume was in the air again, tickling her nasal passages with its god-awfulness. She’d totally forgotten to mention it to the others earlier, but she wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it. She wasn’t sure she was really smelling it now, because it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, another more sinister fragrance taking its place.

Oh, god.

What the hell was that smell?

It made her blood run cold.

Blood.

Blood.

And the faint aroma of motorcycle oil.

And bacon grease.

Blood.

Her heart thudded as she forced her feet to move. The flaked red paint of her truck came into sight. A few more steps forward and she could see there was no one behind the wheel. She shivered – the truck hadn’t driven itself. A dark, bulky object sat in the passenger seat. Her rucksack.

“Hello?”

Silence. Total silence. The kind where you couldn’t hear birds or crickets, or anything at all.

But she could hear the blood roaring through her veins.

Blood.

That smell…

Something snapped inside her and she found herself jogging towards her vehicle in a near panicked state.

A warning bark sounded off somewhere behind her to her right. That was Taylor, but he was still some way off. Somewhere within, she registered her relief that he was okay. It was almost enough to have her turning away from what was in front of her … almost.

“Lydia!”

That was Lawrence.

She should respond, but she was in motion now, focused on a task she hadn’t realised she’d set herself – she was moving and she couldn’t stop.

She reached the door of her truck and there was Brendan’s scent as strong as if he were standing right there.

And blood.

“Brendan?”

Her gaze landed on the back of the pick-up truck. A tarpaulin lay across it. That hadn’t been there before.

“Lydia!”

And another bark from Taylor, but she wasn’t really paying attention, her eyes resting on the shape that lay under the green canvas.

No.

No no no…

A roll of thunder from the storm that never came, cracked across the skies and this time she felt it as if it cracked across her heart.

The same thing happened that had happened in the warehouse: she left her body. She watched herself walk over to the back of the truck; reach out with her hand and grasp the cover…

Above it all, she saw Taylor as a wolf sprint towards her from the right.

Lawrence, in his human form, ran at full speed from the left. “No! Lydia, stop!”

They know. They can smell the blood too.

Beneath her, she watched with a strange detachment as she yanked the canvas back.

The scream that ripped through the air seemed to come from far away, until she all at once realised it was coming from her. She realised it the minute she landed back in her body, bringing the whole damn sky with her.

~*~

He tried not to think about it too much – the fact that he couldn’t shift.

Well, he
could
, but he never did. He was never any use in that form.

Since Lydia had turned up, he’d been forced to think about it more because it now cut him up in ways too new for something that happened twenty years ago. And right this second, he cursed his fate. Cursed it venomously. He could run fast – he
trained
to run this fast – but he would still have been faster as a wolf.

Nevertheless, he hadn’t been able to do nothing when he’d heard Lydia run out of his house as if her heels were on fire, and it was one of those instances where there’d been no time to get the motorbike.

And
this
was why he failed as a mate.

The scent of fresh blood hit him some minutes ago, and he knew Lydia must have smelled it too, but even he never expected exactly what happened next.

The sky around them crackled with electricity, became static … thunder clapped on top of them.

“No! Lydia, stop!”

And then Lydia – in true Lydia style, ignoring every fucking thing he ever said – pulled the cover off the back of the truck.

Her scream deafened him and he could see why.

Brendan lay lifeless at the back of the pick-up, eyes open and glazed in the way only death can accomplish. Blood covered him from head to toe and his legs … oh, shit. His legs.

Lawrence swayed on the spot as a wave of dizziness took him over.

His fucking legs!

Taylor stopped by his feet, panting furiously, licking his hand, and suddenly he was grateful for his presence. He patted the wolf and gripped the fur on the back of his neck, both to steady himself and for comfort.

“His legs…”

Taylor whined his acknowledgement.

And then everything in the sky seemed to fall out of it.

“Shit! She’s wielding!” And without any control at all.

Lightning hit the ground first coming straight from her palms. It blackened the grass and a whole bunch of undergrowth.

“Lydia!”

She swirled around to face him.

Bad move.

The lightning swirled with her and Lawrence ducked, landing on top of Taylor. It missed them by inches and hit a tree behind them.

“Run!” He tugged at the wolf and they both sped away from the fir tree that was tumbling towards them, its descent almost as loud as the thunderous storm that enveloped their mate.

“Lydia, stop!”

Could she hear him? She seemed completely out of it. Her eyes were rolled back, only the whites showing. This was grief and anger and rage all rolled into one – he could feel it coming off her in waves. Tidal waves.

“God damn it,
focus
!”

One of her hands twitched and lightning hit the front left wheel of the Toyota.

He didn’t know what to do so he did the only thing that came to mind.
Why
it came to mind was something he didn’t have time to ponder on. He stood his full length and made his way to her, leaving Taylor barking furiously at him.