Glinting Silver

Chapter 8

Broken. That's how I felt. What a choice this was. But I felt my feet turn reflexively towards where Alistair was pointing. This was normal, a wolf would do anything to help her mate. Even kill her pack.

We started walking away from Hunters' Volcano Camp, following a thin trail of blood. I was limping slightly from banging my foot against a rock, occasionally twitching. We were all human for a change.

I bent down and touched the trail of blood. An image popped into my head, three human boys wandering down this path, one with half an arrowhead sticking out of his arm, just above his elbow. I shuddered and we kept walking.

Alistair stopped suddenly and held up three fingers to wait. Kim held up both her hands and I swear they crackled with electricity. I took a few steps away from her, my heart aching. Splitting up the pack had been a terrible idea.

Alistair quickly went to wolf and walked forward. He stood on the edge of a cliff overlooking tiny stone houses. He threw his head back and howled. Bliss, Belle, Kim and I had learned that a howling rogue meant danger and stood back to back, hands raised in fists.

A young girl stepped out from behind a lump of rock. She was tying her hair back in a plait. Alistair whispered something about her being thirteen and liking to fight. I kept my hand over my dagger. Her eyes were cold and hard and a deep ocean colour.

"Intruders." she spat. For the first time I noticed a bow and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. Before I knew what was happening, I had my knife at her throat.

Alistair yelled something in another language and I stepped back. The girl glared at him, tossing platinum hair over her shoulder. The big russet wolf puffed out his chest and raised his chin.

I am Alistair. He said regally. It was all I could do not to laugh as he continued. Son of Dex and Mercy. I need to speak with Dex.

The girl looked surprised at seeing Alistair and ordered him to go human. He did and the girl started walking down a safe path through the thorns and rocks. Alistair edged towards me.

"Don't go wolf. They will kill you on the spot if they find out your colour." he hissed. I passed on the message to the others and we walked stiffly after the girl, who was now walking between stone huts.

"Ali, welcome home." a woman with two grey puppies at her side called. Alistair ducked her head, embarrassed. The girl huffed and flounced and burst into the fanciest stone hut without even knocking.

A big black and grey wolf was asleep on the rug. Alistair crept over to him and slammed his fist on the big wolf's muzzle. The beast leaped to his paws and snarled, but his face softened when he recognised Alistair. He started going human.

"Ali!" he murmured in awe, hugging the Alistair. Like any son, Alistair went stiff and became as huggable as a telephone pole. Dex stepped back and pushed his son out at arms length. His face was closed and serious.

"I know there has to be a reason for you to be here. You have not come back for sixteen years. Why now?"

"My friends mate is in trouble. We need to analyse something." Alistair said, looking at me. I took Kim's satchel off her and carefully took out the arrow. Dex's eyes widened and he snatched it off me.

"Mercy." he snarled. "Only that piece of crap would use an arrow like this."

He quickly ran to the other side of the room and dripped the poison in a bottle of a buoyant liquid. It diluted and spread into a thin purple liquid. He put on some glasses and took a spoon of the liquid before putting it on filter paper.

The water and liquid ran through, and darker, denser blobs stayed. These were greeny-purple. Dex took a blob with tweezers and popped it into a Venus fly trap.

"Yes, a very bad type of poison." he mumbled, almost to himself. "The water already in the mixture was delaying it, slowing the process. Without the water, the victim would be dead."

"And with the water?" I asked, shaking. "What would happen with the water?"

"Mixed with the water, the victim would feel like he was hit with a normal arrow for about two days. Then they would feel a bit dizzy and uncoordinated. After a week has passed, they will be vomiting and fitting and generally in a lot of pain. By ten days, they would have died a slow and painful death." he answered without a beat.

Kim stepped forward and held up a tiny bag with Domino's fur in it. Dex quickly adjusted his glasses and peered at it.

"This blood was spilled five days ago." he told us quietly. Five days. It only left us two days before Domino was in pain. And if he was hurting, so would I. Only two days.

When I looked up again, the Venus fly trap had turned to a shrivelled black stump, as if it had never lived before.