Friday Flash Fiction - More with Les
Posted by sascha
Aren’t you glad I didn’t kill him off? What? YOu haven’t read LOST yet? Shame on you! Anyway, here is more of “Haunted” from Les’s story for the final book in the Opeth Pack books
10 Years Earlier:
There was a dream. He’d woken to a horrible nightmare that had him dying only in a manner unfit for a wolf.
Taken out back and shot like a common animal.
Les shuddered and sat up, his eyes slamming open to see darkness before him.
He needed to keep quite.
There was nobody here.
His senses alerted him to the silence in his tiny house. Kiba was still asleep in the room next to his. All was well. It was just a nightmare.
That’s it. Just a dream.
Resigning himself to a heavy sigh, Les ran a hand through his shoulder length hair and adjusted the covers. It was unusually cold in Hungary this time of year, but he had enough blankets. If he really wanted to, he could drop his human illusion and sleep as a wolf.
But that required energy he didn’t have.
Besides, he needed his sleep. Tomorrow he was giving a speech to the pack on behalf of Kiba in regards to this prophecy bullshit…
The next day, clouds hung in the sky, blocking any rays of sunlight from his view. Les stood in the center of the town with most of the Opeth pack gathered around him.
He dressed in blue jeans and a long sleeved shirt, his hair down over the sides of his face. His eyes focused intently on the crowd, many of whom were in their early twenties or thirties. The elders stood at the back of the crowd, keeping an eye on Les.
Nervously, he swallowed the fear coursing through him. Something was in the air, he scented it. Gunpowder?
No, it wasn’t manmade.
Too bad he couldn’t care. The crowd in front of him stirred restlessly even though they’d been there for only half an hour. Most of them had families to care for, or jobs in Budapest two hours away that brought income into the pack to help them survive.
But times have been tough. The drought, rampant wolf hunts and illness ran through Hungary, killing off many wolf packs and forcing changes within the Opeth pack policies that included forcing of a caste system in favor of abolishing talk of the Prophecy.
Les couldn’t handle anymore. He wasn’t rich, he wasn’t destined to become Alpha. Kiba, his half brother was. But Les was damned if he’d let his pack or his family starve because of some joke played on them by the deities.
He stepped up to the podium, aware that some in the crowd had wandered off. “Listen to me,” he started, raising his arms to his sides, “We have been fucked over by those who are supposed to watch us. They have forsaken us and condemned this pack to die!”
“Who has forsaken us?” Someone shouted from the crowd.
“Those who would watch over us. Our Lord and Lady no longer care for us. This talk of Phrophecy, of heaven makes us look like fools amongst the other animals. We fight, we trudge through tough times and yet we still starve. Who wants to live here in this world like that?”
Voices clamored in unison that what Les said was true.
“Who wants to live in a world where gods who birthed us turn their backs on us?”
More voices rang out as fists rose and pumped into the air for some sort of change.
“But what do we do?” Someone stepped up to the front of the crowd. “We can’t revolt against deities that refuse our prayers, we can’t revolt against the humans. They outnumber us.”
“No,” Les shook his head and leaned into the podium, raising his voice a notch higher. “We can’t revolt against humankind, not with the way they fight wars over the last century. But we can turn our backs on the deities. We can use our magick and force our way into paradise. Right now, my mate is looking for the lost key to
Paradise so that we may brute force our way in. Do you want in?”
He waited a beat.
A few eyebrows rose. “What of this paradise? Does it actually exist?”
Les glared over the crowd at the Elders. “If you’d believe our Elders, than yes it does. While I side with them on many things, my mate has reassured me that our ancient texts are unreadable by anyone but our pack witch—who has left us.”
“She died!” Someone in the crowd shouted.
Les eyed them with contempt. They needed a hard sell. He’d have to give it to them.
It’d break his heart to tell them the story of his mate having been murdered by one of the Elders in search of any information leading to them finding the Prophecy.
But if it was a hard sell they needed, Les would deliver.