Wolf Song (Wolf Singer Prophecies Book 1)

lying down a moment before I opened the door. I didn't pay him any mind as I rushed past him and sought out the book on my parent's little bookshelf.
Of all the books that my parents kept from Before, it had almost seemed odd that a book of plants would be in there next to various scriptures and novels. Then again, it was my mother's book, one she was proud of because it had been hers and a product of her life's work to that point. Of course she’d kept a copy.
I pulled it out and brought it to the table. My mom's book. My dad's scriptures. And their notebook between.
My dad didn't use a random book to talk to me. He had used my mother's book as a cipher, I was sure of it.
I flipped to the back, to the appendix where there were lots of inserts about the types of plants that had cropped up since the Rave. How many new species seemed to appear?
One of the species was something that my mother helped to discover and name. Why hadn’t I thought about it before? I turned to the page that the drawing was on, and there it was. I put it next to the drawing of hers in the notebook, and they were virtually identical.
"Found you," I breathed.
New species are found at an alarming rate, and while this would usually be cause for a celebration, I fear in this case that it is due to an outside interference we have no knowledge of.
The note that my mother wrote in the margins of her book jumped up at me. I imagined that was something she really wanted to say in the middle of the scientific stuff that she'd written, but just couldn't find the context or reason for it.
It was more a note to herself than anything. And now, it was like she was speaking to me directly.
"The cipher needs to start at the right word."
The voice startled me out of my reverie. I’d completely forgotten that I wasn't alone. I was so used to my solitude.
Creed had been looking at my sketches and hash marks. How in the heck had he gotten so close without me realizing?
I blinked the daze from my eyes and told myself that I wasn’t distracted by his sculpted face. "What do you mean?"
He pointed out the first bit. "The first line would be the coordinates of the page, so to speak. For example, the first paragraph and the third word or sentence in."
"Well, that's random." The plant was the code. I knew it. I wasn’t sure exactly how yet, but I would figure it out.
This was the spore. The one that started it all before. Since my mother named this plant, I started with its genus and species, then used my name as the key. I listed the alphabet in full, then paired each letter with its coded one. Next, I grabbed the message with its jumble of nonsense words and began transcribing each letter.
My hand shook as I realized that real words were forming. I kept going until I ran out of letters. I took in the deciphered message.
New Project at lab: The Reckoning.
Be advised, find cover before the New Moon.
Hellfire will rain down the mountain.
The new moon was weeks away yet, so that was a sort of relief. Not much, in light of the words “Reckoning” and “Hellfire” in the same sentence.
I traced my fingers over the series of numbers that were decoded. They didn’t have a cipher to them, so I still needed to know where those numbers went.
But at least this was something, a reason for my dad’s erratic behavior.
If there was supposed to be a Reckoning, then the town needed to know about it.
Creed was oddly silently. Though I didn't know the man well, so far he seemed pretty open to telling me all he knew or expanding upon a random thing I said. "So, did you have any thoughts about that?"
Creed
It was unsettling to be the subject of Soleil’s close scrutiny. Trying to force the truth against the geas on my neck didn’t work. How in the world was I supposed to tell her about the monsters?
How the umbrella corporation only known as AEGIS took it upon themselves to direct the evolution of humanity. How they had allowed “scientific breakthroughs” that should never have happened.
How they took shifters and those carrying the gene for shifting, in order to create the perfect Judas species to assassinate and then takeover the lives of key people in government in order to further their own agenda.
AEGIS had created the Judas species to purify and remake the world in their own image. They made the Judas species so well, that they had betrayed their own creators, slipping their leashes and taking up their own interpretation of the agenda.
How AEGIS had no choice than to kill their own creations, first through subtler, gene-targeting weapons like the spore that created the Rave, to full-on warfare with the Hellfire squad.
How can I tell her that the world that she knew was not what it seemed?
~Maybe you don’t tell her…maybe you show her?~
I looked to the window just beyond Soleil’s shoulder and saw the raven perched on the sill.
~Yeah, and how am I supposed to do that, Hugh? She doesn’t want me to touch her and she wouldn’t be able to access my thoughts, anyway. None of ours.~
We might have escaped the labs, but we were still leashed. I massaged the back of my neck as if the brand burned me.
Hugh clacked his beak together in annoyance. ~You have such little imagination. Take her to see Bishop. His memories are all she needs.~
Osiris’ voice rumbled in Hugh’s wake. ~Agreed. There is something shifting in the air, and I do not see how being kept in the dark will help Soleil now.~
~Give her a story. Maybe if you convince yourself it’s a story, the geas would allow you to say more than