Ch. 81: Refocusing

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE:
Kyle~
Ally, her mom and I sat around the fireplace, going through everything one last time. It seems that Ally and I experienced our vision or whatever it was the same way. It was like we had been walking through everything together, hand in hand, but hadn’t been able to see each other.
After consulting Ally’s grandmother, Ally was able to explain that we experienced something known as a Living Dream. The complicated thing about Living Dreams is while they show you things that relate to you and the questions you have, the timing of everything they show you - it wasn’t clear if you were experiencing the past, the present or, the future. Ally’s grandma couldn’t tell us which one we had experienced, and besides snow on the ground in our first hang out at Marina and Maxine’s family cabin, we had no clues for the time of year.
“We do know Maxine looked the exact same. So it had to be either the present, the recent past, or the near future,” Ally decided.
“Actually, that might not be true either. She’s a black magic user. She and her cult could be using spells to appear younger, or to stop aging, or who knows what else,” I pointed out.
Ally’s mom nodded with a pained face. Back to square one. Or square zero really.
“Ugh,” Ally groaned, flopping dramatically on the couch. “You’re right.”
“I wonder if we can figure out if that attack happened on that werewolf pack already,” I thought aloud, talking to myself really.
“So do they really exist?” Ally asked me.
“Yeah, I haven’t met one but my grandma used to be friendly with a pack back in Washington where she grew up. She babysat a bit for them and helped the pups with their nightmares and such. Some demon back then would give packs of wolves nightmares. His goal was to keep them from sleeping so they’d literally go crazy…” I prattled off.
The story brought pain straight to my heart. I could almost hear my grandma telling me about how they teamed up to defeat him. It was too quiet and I looked over to them. Ally was looking at me with sympathy and her mom looked really worried.
I blinked and saw darkness. I was cold. Shivering. A female voice laughed at me. Tiny feet prattled by.
I blinked again and refocused. Now they were both staring at me. Ally opened her mouth to say something but I wasn’t ready to talk about anything like that. Not yet.
I had to talk before she said anything. “I should call my grandma’s friend Olivia. She should be able to point us in the direction of some werewolf pack. We can make some calls and see if anyone has been attacked like that.”
I stood up and walked towards my phone, charging on the dining table.
I kept my eyes away from their sympathetic gazes as I scrolled my contacts for Olivia. This was going to be hard. But she needed to know my grandma was gone. And she really could help us start to unravel some of these mysteries.
I hit ‘call.’

Nick~
Elise. Goddess, no.
The Beta filled Jake in on the details he was able to get from their Delta. Dark Mountains is a huge pack, with all kinds of extra packhouse roles. And plenty of warriors. But they lost about a third of their warriors today.
Jake and I made eye contact and he nodded at me. He knew what I was thinking. Goddess, when we start being able to mindlink, he may not even need it.
I stepped aside, eyeing Evan and gesturing to Jake and his dad so he could join in on the information download. I pulled my phone out and called Elise.
It rang and rang, until finally I got her voicemail. I didn’t know what to say, so I hung up.
Walking back over, Jake walks ahead with our Beta and Evan hangs back to fill me in.
“Goddess, I can’t believe this. Those warriors are some of the most well trained in the state. That’s just insane…” he said aloud as we followed Jake inside.
My phone rings and I see Elise’s name.
“Elise,” I say.
“You’ve heard,” she says.
“I’m so sorry. We don’t have all the details. But it sounds awful,” is all I can think to say back.
“I checked in with the witches here. One was able to tell me for sure. It’s because I’m here,” she says in a hollow voice. “They murdered my father, and my mother went too. I’m the youngest.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Those bastards. They’ll get what’s coming to them, I swear it,” she seethed on the line.
“Elise - you should go home. You’ve done so much already. We would-” I started to say but she cut me off.
“Absolutely not.”
“We understand. You’ve sacrificed too much. It’s okay,” I insisted.
“No,” she said with determination. “I won’t let these worms force me to do anything. They are scared, murderous freaks who need to be stopped. I must be close, that’s why they attacked. They want me to stop. My parents would want me to keep going. For all of our kind. We need to nail these guys. No one else should lose their loved ones to these… things. I’m not going anywhere until I know exactly where they are. Then I’m going to remove the heads off every last one of them.”
Her tone made me shiver. I knew everything she was saying was true. She wasn’t exaggerating.

Ally~
We gave Kyle privacy to make his call. He didn’t mention Olivia before, so I imagined that he needed to tell her about her friend’s passing. That wasn’t going to be easy.
My mom motioned me to follow her into her room. I pushed away my sleeping bag with my foot and looked at her.
“You need to tell him about Rachel,” she said out of nowhere.
“Wait-” I paused, “You aren’t even discussing his kidnapping, or the murder of his last living family member, but now we’re supposed to toss on the pressure of helping Rachel?” I asked her incredulously.
This totally came out of nowhere.
“Al, I don’t think he’s ready to talk about himself yet. But it could help him. Giving him something to focus on, someone to help. He couldn’t help his grandma, but he can help his friend. And lord knows, we could use his experience, his abilities,” she went on.
“I haven’t forgotten her,” I said defensively.
“I didn’t say that. I know that. Rachel is okay, for now, but someone messed with her mind. Erased all memories of Jake. There’s something there. For all we know, it could be connected!” she whisper-yelled. “My money is on that Vance guy, or that possessive a** boyfriend of hers…”
My amulet glowed for one second. Grandma agreed.
I huffed out a breath, “Fine. But we’re doing this gently.”
I walked back out to the hall and heard Kyle ending his call.
“I got a phone number for the Black Mountain pack, I’ll call them in the morning. Meanwhile, Olivia is going to contact her cousin. He works for the high fae investigators. She’s going to see if he knows anything about their recent bust. They raided a black magic coven’s safehouse recently. Maybe in a place with cabins? Who knows?” he wondered aloud.
“That’s something,” my mom said before walking off and gesturing at me to go talk to him.
“Kyle?” I asked him and he turned to me.
“We could use your help with something else too. I haven’t mentioned it because I didn’t want to add anymore to your plate” I began. “Rachel needs our help.”