Author: Dharyana
Overall Rating: 15
Spoilers and Disclaimers: General NW and 'Blood and Chocolate' werewolf concepts
Summary: A werewolf named Mikayla tries to avenge her sister's murder in the NW…
Thanks: Adrienne and Jory, thanks so much for commenting…
Note: I forgot to mention that this story takes place in 1992 and 1997. Also, I put parts 1 and 2 into together so they wouldn't be so short. I also totally revamped Part One and Part two because when I re-read it was both confusing and not very good. Well, this is the 'new' edition of "Echoes in the Night". Hope you enjoy it…
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Part 1- 1992, New Lenexa, Massachusetts
She was running in the darkness. Blindly stumbling down the forest path, 17 year old Rebecka pushed herself as hard as she could. Have to keep running, she thought desperately. Someone please help me…
But there was no one there for her; there was only the night and the endless sounds of her pursuer behind her. Ahead, there was a small cave she could hide in if only she could reach it. Legs pumping and thrashing, Rebecka willed herself forward by this thought. She could live if she could just get to that cave…
The sounds of pursuit were much closer now, so close to her. She couldn't keep this up much longer. Her chest tightened to the point where she could barely breathe and her body was becoming weary from the exertion of running. She stumbled over a fallen tree branch in the path and she hurtled downwards to the moist, cool earth below.
She was gone the minute her shoulder blade hit the ground, twisting her around and exposing her throat. Her pursuer was upon her now for she could feel the hotness of breath on her face. The face was hid from her, bathed in a pool of shadows. He (she was almost positive it was a he) whispered words she could not understand in her hysteria as she struggled in earnest to escape from his death grip. Please, she thought even as she felt the sharp pain of teeth rip into her.
She howled, her shrill, animal cries echoed into the silent, untouchable night. Rebecka could feel blood pooling around her on the rich earthen floor. Was that her blood? Was she dying? The world began to spin almost viciously around her and her vision was fading to blackness. Frantically, she tried to remember the prayers her father had taught her, but nothing came. God, don't let me die, please God…
Her green-silver eyes went dark and unseeing, and her limbs twitched into her human form. Then she was still.
He had waited for this moment since the first time he had seen here at the pack party in Red Creek. Her blonde hair had shone against the firelight and her emerald eyes sparkled in secrecy. It was then he knew that she had to die.
He had planned so long, every painstaking detail in the privacy in his room. He watched her every move and he had waited for just the right time. He knew she ran alone every full moon in the forest.
He looked tenderly down at her young, beautiful face. She was so perfect, even in death. The only thing that marred the scene was the bright red blood that fanned out from underneath her. He kissed her pale cheek.
"I love you, Rebecka. Always." He carefully closed her blind eyes and walked slowly away thinking of his beloved Rebecka.
Part Two
Five Years Later- 1997
"I thought you quit smoking." Mikayla walked through the door and glared at her mother.
"Not in this lifetime, Kayla." Regina Devereux smiled at her daughter and exhaled, smoke curling around the corner of her mouth. "'Sides what would be the point?" She laughed unsteadily and took a sip of a glass filled with amber liquid in her hand.
Mikayla rolled her eyes. She was ruining her life. Couldn't she see that?
"So where were you all afternoon?" Regina narrowed her blue eyes and looked at Mikayla sharply. "You're filthy."
"I wasn't anywhere, but thanks for your undying concern." Mikayla couldn't take much more of Regina, so she walked swiftly past her towards her room. She heard Regina's deep sigh, but kept walking.
Why couldn't Regina act like a mother anymore? She had been one once, a real mom, caring, fair, and the queen of the pack. But now…
Mikayla couldn't see any of that Regina left in this new, hard woman.
She opened the door to her bedroom to her second story room and felt the old sadness rise up in her again, strong and fresh. She saw Rebecka in the room.
She was everywhere; in the faded flower wallpaper, the off-white, lace curtains, the worn, pink comforter, and especially in the family portrait on the wall near the window.
Regina had objected to Mikayla moving into Rebecka's former room, and objected even more when Mikayla decided to keep all of Rebecka's things.
"You're dishonoring her memory," Regina's angry voice rose up in Mikayla's mind. "Can't you see? You're ruining the last thing we have of your sister. You are a disgrace to the pack." Regina had eventually gotten over it, but she had never gotten over Rebecka's death in the woods. Nobody in the Devereux family had.
After Becka had died, things changed. Daddy couldn't stand it and killed himself, and Regina never smiled anymore. Her brother Lovell, stayed out later and later, and finally never came home at all. It was anyone's guess where he was now. There was barely anything left of the Devereux name now.
The rest of the wolf pack regarded Mikayla and Regina with some amount of pity, but still involved them in the pack politics. Mikayla's father had been the leader of the pack, and Regina was its widowed queen. They would wait five years to choose a new leader out of respect for the dead, and daddy had only been dead three years.
There was talk though, of breaking the sacred traditions and choosing a new leader now. Not only were the Devereux's falling apart, but the rest of pack wasn't dealing well leaderless. The new millennium was approaching quickly and humans were beginning to overpopulate their small town of New Lenexa, which endangered them all.
Mikayla sat on the bed and wrapped her arms around herself. The problems of the pack had become so numerous since Becka had died; it seemed as if Becka had been the last fragile strand that had held them together. And when she had died…
When she heard the shrill ring of the phone, Mikayla pushed aside her thoughts and reached over to the phone beside her bed.
"Hello?"
"You don't sound that happy to hear from me." The voice on the line was light and almost musical sounding, like wind chimes.
"How's it going, Audrey?"
"Well, you know, pretty good. I'm not even gonna bother asking how you feel. You sound terrible." Audrey Sarrasin was 17, one of Mikayla's best friends, and Mikayla's age-mate in the pack. When they were younger, they had been inseparable, but lately Mikayla had taken to avoiding the talkative and sometimes annoying Audrey.
"Look, Audrey…" Mikayla searched for an excuse to get off the phone.
"You'll never believe what happened to me today, Kayla. It was so funny…" Audrey cut Mikayla off in mid sentence and proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes telling Mikayla about a human boy who had had the nerve to try to ask her out.
"It was unbelievable, Kayla! I mean to think he would ever have a chance to have a one of US as a mate, it's hilarious!" She broke out into hysterical laughter, but Mikayla didn't join in. It was that attitude that would lead the rest of the pack to their destruction. Mikayla had heard her father say so many times.
"Look, Audrey, I have to go…" She trailed off miserably and couldn't think of anything else to say.
"You're no fun anymore, Kayla. What happened to you?" Audrey's voice didn't sound hurt, just angry.
Mikayla instantly regretted saying anything and pushed flyaway strands of her blonde hair back into place.
"I'm just kind of depressed, Audrey. Look, I'll talk to you tomorrow." She began to pull the phone away when Audrey's frantic voice resounded in her ear.
"Wait! Some of us are going up to Red Creek tomorrow night, to…hang. You haven't come out with us for a while. Please come." Her voice didn't sound angry anymore, just sad and lonely. Mikayla and Audrey were the only two girls around the same age in the pack and it could get very lonely.
"Rudi says he misses you." Mikayla rolled her eyes. Rudi Villiers was the last thing she needed right now. He was 17, like her, fairly good-looking, and extraordinarily arrogant. He had been after Mikayla to 'get to know each other a little better' for the past two years. Mikayla, with not such great regret, always declined his invitation.
"I'll be there," She told Audrey with some reluctance. She knew Audrey needed the company, and she would try her best to avoid the always-pathetic Rudi.
"GREAT!" Audrey practically screamed it and began gushing about how wonderful it was that Mikayla was finally coming with them.
With some difficulty, Mikayla finally got Audrey off the phone with the promise of eating lunch with her and the rest of the age-mates at school tomorrow (she really did prefer to eat alone). She wrapped Rebecka's comforter around her and stared out the window. Night was fast approaching and the sky was a mass of purple-orange like colors swirling together. She felt suddenly peaceful, like a calm before a storm.
She briefly wondered whether or not Regina had bothered to prepare dinner, and decided she probably hadn't. She was probably out at 'The Tavern', a favorite gathering place for the older werewolves, flirting with anything male and breathing (humans not included).
Something made her suddenly glance to the family portrait to the right of the window. Rebecka smiled confidently out at her, dressed in a white and forest green flowered dress. The green flowers were the color of Rebecka's eyes and made her eyes look even more emerald in color then normal. Her long hair was loose and fell around her shoulders in wheat colored waves. Her hands rested demurely on Mikayla's shoulders and an opal ring in the shape of a foxglove flower caught the light and shone out of the picture.
Mikayla glanced down at the opal foxglove ring on her own finger and could feel jagged tears pushing out of her eyes. Just after Rebecka's death, Mikayla had fantasized about finding Rebecka's killer and bringing them to justice. She had been eleven then and full of young rage and sadness. She couldn't understand why it had to be Rebecka killed and not her. She didn't understand anything at all.
And months after her murder, when the killer still had not been found, Mikayla found those childish delusions fade slowly away with her innocence. When her family began to crack under pressure, she found resentment mixed in with her love for her sister.
When her father committed suicide, Mikayla began to hate Becka.
Tears were running freely down Mikayla's face, and she wrapped the comforter around her tighter, clutching at it as if it were Rebecka herself.
The sky was entirely black now and the stars twinkled merrily in the sky. Big, bulky shaped clouds outlined the sky quietly in the background and the almost full moon hung suspended in the midst of it all.
She could hear a beat up old Chevy truck winding its way down the long, narrow dirt road that would eventually lead to her house.
Regina, she thought, with some distaste. She'd better go take a shower and clean the last traces of the forest from her before Regina got home. On the off chance Regina would be sober (and alone for that matter), she wouldn't be pleased at all that Mikayla had been running through the forbidden woods that afternoon. She removed the comforter and gave Rebecka one last look before she left the room.
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I hope this is an improvement…