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“Interesting…… very, very interesting.” Is all she mutters softly and wanders back to sit down with a thoughtful glance at me, then Meadow, and then Carmen. It’s as though she’s sorting through the thoughts, filing them into an orderly timeline and working out our relation to one another.
“So, you saw the fog, you know what to do?” Meadow zeros in and tries to pull her attention, but Leyanne continues to stare at me in an unnervingly intense way. Her face poised, still, a slight frown over one brow and a hint of a little dimple at one side of her pretty mouth, showing a slight strain to her expression.
“Hmmmm……” that’s all she says, and I blanche at her sudden lack of verbal’s when I have just given her god knows how much backstory. Unlike when wolves link and we can filter and control what we share, I had no insight into what she took, saw, dug into and she might have seen my whole existence for I know.
“What does hmm mean?” Carmen snaps losing patience, her usual irritable persona showing face, not that I blame her, and Leyanne smirks.
“It means, hmmm…. I thought that phrase was universally understood. It’s not like I’m not speaking English… although some from that country would disagree.” She chuckles at some vague self-joke and again fixes that penetrating gaze back at me.
“Hmmm you know how to help, or hmmm, you don’t?” I chirp in, tenser by the second and honestly getting so sick of this. She’s so good at vague, dragging things out and evasive answering and it’s annoying as hell.
“Hmmm as in, well now that makes sense, and hmmm as in ….. I know what I have to do. Does that clear up your inability to understand the worldwide use of Hmmm?”
“Oh my god, you’re infuriating, you know that!” Carmen snaps, riled and instantly tense all over, getting up to pace around behind me and shake off the obvious hostility that is making her stiff and frustrated. It’s this atmosphere, this holding on with bated breath and walking on eggshells as we try to suss this witch out. It’s detrimental to patience and Carmen has low amounts of that in the first place. Leyanne just sits back comfortably and prods at her kettle with a stick to see if it’s even beginning to steam. Unperturbed by the outburst.
“I have something to do and you three should rest. We have to travel back to your home tomorrow and see what needs to be done. Help yourself to tea, there’s blankets back there in that chest, along with the leaves, creamer…sugar, whatever you need. Try and not make a mess, I hate sloppy campers.” She rises gracefully, dismissing us so easily, acting like this is fucking normal, and I gawp at her my heart hitching in utter disbelief.
“You’re leaving?” I snap at her, my voice cracking in my throat with the raspiness I spat the words out, and somehow jumped to my feet without even realizing it. We literally haven’t gotten anything from her other than agreement to come with us and she’s dumping us out here in the middle of the night while the moon is full, and we have no means to shelter.
“Hmmm, things to do, people to see. I didn’t just come here for you three, as I previously stated. I was on my own little mission and it happens to be as important, and maybe beneficial to your little predicament.” She starts moving towards the exit and Meadow is the one to lose her temper in true feisty fashion. Letting rip with a roar, bouncing up in front of me with ambering eyes and a snarl to her tone.
“So we’re to stay out here, unprotected, while you swan off and do god knows what? Like sitting fucking ducks, just patiently trusting you! You, who has given us nothing at all to even trust!” that wolfish aggression comes through in waves of oozing anger and her eyes glow even brighter as her temper explodes.
“You’re not very gracious, or grateful, for people seeking my help and towing themselves across the country. What do you think will happen to you here that won’t in your truck, protected by MY magic? Do you really think a secondhand spell carried out by a half witch is more effective than any I have in place here?” She smirks and gestures around us with an airy-fairy wave of her hands. “Safe as houses, and a little warmer than a steel box. I’ll be back before sunup, with a guest or two. So be awake, ready to go, and have more hospitable attitudes, because he isn’t the type to take any kind of rudeness and dismiss it as graciously as I’ve done. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood, with a solution to an issue I’ve been agonizing over, and you happen to be important to someone up there.” She points upwards at the appearing stars in the velvet blanket of sky, gaining a squint from me, a confused frown from Carmen and more intrusive verbals from Meadow.
“Meaning?” she interjects harshly, eyes still not simmering down to normal, and I’m getting the vibe that none of us are really warming to this witch at all. She’s a strange one with an aura of something that makes you not really trust her, but you can’t quite put your finger on it, even if her words are telling you that it’s not true.
“I was led here for one task and it just happens to coincide with you three showing up…. hardly coincidence. Now why I came here makes sense. Looks like the planets are finally aligning and your fates are sorting their mess out.” She smirks again, and I eyeroll at her use of word soup to tell us nothing at all once more. She’s evasive for sure, talks in riddles, and literally offers no insight while seeming like she is. Carmen inhales heavily to hold her own temper, slumping back down to sit and gives up, and I sigh realizing this is futile. I too fall back, let myself land heavily on a log beside her and stare helplessly at this strange woman.
“You’ll tell us when you think we need to know, right?” I point out, knowing this is looking to be a lot like how she operates. She plays things close to her chest and maybe it’s her that doesn’t trust us.
“Right. And I hate to spoil surprises. Oh…. talking of which… This one I’m afraid needs some words of caution.” Leyanne eyes me steadily, locking on like I’m the target and her face falls serious and stern. She nods down at the vial on the long chain I brought with me from Sierra that we didn’t need at all. As soon as she eyeballs it, it begins to glow with low, white, faded intensity, and she smiles a little wider as though it contains an answer, she needed to be sure of. “Don’t go turning anytime soon. I know you have, and you’ve been lucky up until now, so don’t anymore…. That little witch gift in you isn’t supposed to be lost.” She winks, smiles in a somewhat staggeringly pretty kind of way and turns to walk away, but this time I really do need her to be less vague with that.
“What are you talking about… the vial? What?” I lift it and take it from my neck, thinking she wants it back, that it somehow gets damaged by my turning, but I never wore it when I turned. Leyanne only chuckles at my obvious confusion, the questions etched across my face, and turns away from me to straighten her petticoats, pulling her cloak back over her shoulders to conceal her slight frame.
“No wee darlin, I’m talking of those two little seeds of hope you have growing in your belly. Part witch, part wolf, part vampire….. don’t turn and they won’t die. Something that took Sierra a hell of a long time to figure out. In the end, all those lost, came after a turning… so I would say that’s proof of what not to do.” She moves off with a steady step and the blood literally drains from my face, turning my body icy cold as it infiltrates my fuzzy mind like a dripping tap. I blink down at my stomach and it smacks me right in the chest with the force of a freight train
“Seeds in my? … Are you saying I’m? How can you ..? I can’t be… we never….. We were careful. We made sure that there wouldn’t be accidents. How could you know?” It’s a blurt of words, a spew of soggy rambling as my eyes mist up and I find swallowing a whole ordeal. It stop her progression as she pulls up her hood.
“Because I can; perks of being a creepy bitch, and careful or not, the fates decided these two bairns had to come to fruition. Like I said, Luna …. Don’t turn or the wolf in you will treat them as a virus and cure your body. Their getting big enough now to be seen as such. Such a simple remedy that most wolves never figured out until it was too late.” It’s a commanding but gentle tone, full of the confidence of someone in the know and I sit like a statue, gazing at my own belly and have no idea how to even react. I can’t think, or feel, as a numbness crawls over my limbs and skin, enveloping me in mild shock.
