Why a Wolf Cries - Julie Steimle (read a book .TXT) 📗

Chapter One

“Tell us a story, Aunt Audry.”

“A story?” Audry Bruchenhaus breathed a little hard as she hiked up the slope in the meadow, lagging with her niece and nephew behind the larger group of adults in her family. She brushed some of the loose strands of her bushy brown hair out of her blue-green eyes, gazing across the open forest scenery. The view was breathtaking, with its yellow wildflowers and flagged pine trees. All sorts of grasses covered the slope, and there were scatterings of tiny wildlife crawling and flying over them, through them and under them. But even that beauty can be wasted on children who were bored of walking and walking and walking toward a campground they themselves did not select.  

“Yeah,” her twelve-year-old nephew, Skyler, chimed in while hefting up his pack. “And make it a scary one.

“But not about bears!” declared her niece, Maris (who was nine), with her long wavy pigtails flying behind her, as she jogging up the path next to her aunt to get close. And for good reason. They were in the bear country of Yellowstone National Park, and sightings of bear tracks and scat had been seen during their entire hike by everyone. All of them had bear spray nearly in hand.

“Ok. Not about bears,” Audry promised. “Do you want one about lions? I’ve also got a good one about a hyena pack we encountered in Africa.”

“Not about animals!” Maris whined, tugging hard on Audry’s arm. “Not while were out here.”

“I’m here to protect you.” Audry patted her legally-registered, safety-approved, tranquilizer gun which she used when doing her wildlife rescue work. Audry was finishing up her PhD in wildlife conservancy, now aiming to find work with a conservancy group as soon as she was done. She had been all over studying methods for animal rescue and conservation—mostly Africa and North America, though she did have one month in India once, and another in Sichuan Province in China, curious about the panda conservancy. Thing was, her expertise was in the predators, like bears and wolves. And she had tons of poacher stories as well as stories of near misses with dangerous animals, of which her niece and nephew were usually connoisseurs—though apparently not today.

“Tell us that story about that witch you lived with,” Skyler said, grinning while panting to keep up with the group ahead, just ahead of Audry and Maris.

Audry nearly lost her footing on the slope. She halted as he caught herself with a more secure step. “Where did you hear about that?”

Skyler shrugged. “I overheard Dad talking about it with Grandpa.”

Coloring, not just from the heat but also due to the return of some pretty freaky memories, Audry shook her head and continued onward. “That… is a whole different kind of scary.”

“Please!” Skyler begged,

“Please!” Maris grabbed her wrist.

“What? Do you two want nightmares?” Audry audibly moaned, eyes moving up to the happily blue sky and fluffy, friendly clouds overhead.

Skyler and Maris exchanged glances and said together, “Bears are scarier.”

They would think like that. Bears were, after all, more real than witches.

Audry had never really believed in witches, even after she had met one and moved in with her. The entire idea of magic was ridiculous. And though at one point in her life she had read supernatural romances, as it was the trend and they did contain a bit of excitement she did not see in her regular day, she had long out grown them. The problem was, her witch roommate had convinced her of one thing—people who claimed to be witches were dangerous.

“Ok, so the story goes like this.” Audry shook her head, sure she was going to regret this. “I met Silvia Lewis, a self-proclaimed witch, at Green Club when I was at NYU. She was this creepy goth chick—”

“What’s goth?” Maris asked, squeezing Audry’s hand.

Nodding to her, Audry remembered that she had to keep this simple. They were kids. “Uh, people who like to dress up in an old spooky way. They wear lots of black and red. And their clothes make you think of Halloween.”

“Oh…”

“Anyway,” Audry thought in her head of ways to simplify the story, yet make it interesting enough for Skyler who did not like being talked down to. “Silvia was in our club, and I really didn’t spend much time with her at all back then, and I probably would never have gotten involved with her if it were not for my ex-boyfriend Harlin.”

“Oh, Harlin the sleaze,” Maris said, nodding heavily as one who was in all the know about him—which was ridiculous as Maris was only six when Audry had broken up with him. Audry stared at her. Shrugging, Maris ducked back. “That’s what Mom calls him.”

Shrugging also, Audry said, “Ooookay. Um. Anyway, Harlin was indeed a sleaze bag. And Harlin used to date her when he and I were… you know, on the outs.”

“What?” Skyler gaped at her with disbelief. “You mean, he went back and forth between you two?”

Audry shrugged, pinking at the cheeks. “What can I say? Back then I was a glutton for punishment.”

“Because he was a sleazy charmer,” Maris interjected with a nod—probably what her mother also said.

Blushing, Audry nodded. “Yes. But anyway… point is, when I finally broke up with him, Harlin started to stalk me.”

“What does that mean?” Maris asked, finally in a realm her mother did not talk about.

“That means he followed her everywhere,” Skyler snapped, huffing. “Now shut up, and let her tell the story!”

“Don’t be a meanie!” Maris ducked around Audry to get away from Skyler who stuck his tongue out at her.

“Hey.” Audry lifted up her hands, as Skyler chased after his little sister, swaying from the battle whipping around her waist. “If you two are going to fight, I’ll just end the story right now.”

“No!” They both whined, lurching to stops like kids playing freeze-tag.

“Ok, then.” Audry then continued up the hill while they still made faces at each other but, thank heaven, stopped fighting. “Now where was I?”

“You were being stalked by the creepy slime ball,” Skyler summed up.

“Yes.” Audry nodded, getting back into it. “So, Silvia decided to help me keep away from Harlin, as she felt the same way about him. Now, Cousin Vincent was visiting at the time, and he and I went to the police station to get a personal protection order on the guy. You know, legal stuff to stop him, so I could call the police on him if he got too close to me. But anyway, the point is, when I was preparing for this party in New York that Vincent needed a date for—and because he could not get a date a last minute he brought me….” Audry halted, thinking. “Ok, ok, um, I lost track… uh, Oh yes. Vincent needed a date for this thing, and I ended up being it. And I had to dress up all fancy like because it was one of those high class rich-folk parties your Great Grandparent Bruchenhaus go to for networking among other rich folk. So, Vincent found a fancy hair salon where I could get it done up all Cinderella-ball-like, and wouldn’t you know it, Silvia worked as a hairdresser—secretly.”

“I thought you said she was a witch,” Skyler said. “This isn’t scary at all.”

Audry huffed. “I’m getting to it. Back then, I just thought she was a creepy, but sexy Goth girl.”

“Ooooh!” Maris wagged a finger up at her aunt. “Dad says we shouldn’t say ‘sexy’ when talking about people. We should say ‘handsome’ or ‘beautiful’.”

“He says ‘sexy’ gives the wrong idea,” Skyler put as an explanatory aside, nodding.

Audry shrugged. “Ok… But uh, she didn’t dress ‘beautifully’ if you understand my meaning.”

Skyler smirked, nodding.

“She kind of wanted to give the wrong idea.” Audry chuckled, thinking about it. Of course, Silvia dressed less sexy the more they had spent time together. Fact was, Silvia had lightened up a great deal since they had become roommates, no longer Goth. Audry wondered how she was, now that she was married. It had been a while. Audry had gotten the postcard from Las Vegas where Silvia and her beloved Randon Spade had eloped. None of their friends or family would have supported the wedding so they had snuck off together. Audry hardly knew Randon at all except that he was a friend of a friend. He had seemed decent, though. He was a veterinarian.

“Are you going to finish the story?” Maris tugged on her arm.

Coming out of her reverie, Audry chuckled. “Sorry. Um. Let me see, uh, anyway. Silvia confided in me around then that she was a witch—but not just any witch. She was a witch who wanted to leave her coven.”

“What’s a coven?” Maris asked.

“A group of witches,” Skyler said, giving her the stink eye.

“It’s a bit more than that,” Audry explained.

They both gazed up at her.

“Silvia said the coven in her town was actually a powerful organization that controlled her hometown, a bit like the mafia. It went under the guise of the Ladies Aide Society and the Junior League.”

Their eyes widened on her. They knew about such women’s organizations as their Great-Grandmother Bruchenhaus was part of one. Such organizations were filled mostly with wealthy women who were busybodies who sometimes did good, but often just bullied people to conform to their social mold. That was what their mother said about it, anyway.

“If the coven wanted something, a selected witch had to go do that thing or get that thing.” Audry shook her head. “Silvia said her mother was ordered to marry her father by orders of the coven because he had an important job in a powerful globally-influential company. She even suspected that her father’s first, previous, wife was killed during childbirth so her mom could take her place.”

“No way!” they both said.

“Yeah.” Audry nodded. “I met her half-brother who is older than her not even by a year—the son of the first wife. And he said his mother died in childbirth, and his father remarried right away so someone could take care of him. But that is so weird. I mean, wouldn’t it have made more sense to just get a nanny? But anyway… his stepmother, who had three kids with his dad, starting with Silvia, was unable to control him in the way the coven had wanted. So in the end, she divorced him with some excuse, taking her three kids with her, whom she also trained in witchcraft.

“The thing is, Silvia said that no witch is allowed to leave the coven, ever.” Audry nodded to them as she finally got to the point of the matter.

They silently walked up the hill, taking in this information. Their eyes rested on a pair of deer antlers at the side of the path. No skull. Just the antlers. Skyler picked it up, letting Maris feel it also as they continued on.

“But she was trying to leave, right?” Skyler murmured, stroking the white bone. “You said so.”

Audry nodded. “Yeah. Now here is where it gets weird. You see, Silvia and I share another mutual acquaintance—someone whom I bumped into on occasion, including at that time—which was completely unintended. I’m sure you’ve heard from your Great-Grandma Bruchenhaus and possibly Cousin Vincent, that I happen to know H. Richard Deacon the Third.”

Skyler and Maris nodded, exchanging smothered glances. It was mostly likely their Great-Grandma Bruchenhaus had said something to her son (their grandfather) about how Audry ought to marry the guy—never mind that he was ‘new money’. It had been one of the briefest conversations she had had with her grandmother, way back when she had been temporarily engaged to another ex-boyfriend. Her grandmother did not care that Audry had a distaste for rich men, new or old money. Audry did not want to have anything to do with Society life.

“It turns