by Tim O'Rourke
“But why kill her?” I said, struggling to come to terms with what Potter had just told me. Lilly Blu and Murphy had once been in love.
“To send a message to the rest of the wolves that the same fate would befall them if they didn’t quit fucking about – if they kept killing innocent people – snatching babies and all the other shit they used to pull. If we can kill their Queen, then we can kill each and every one of the fuckers. But if what you say is true and the wolves have snatched your friend Nick-knack-noo or whatever his name is, then wolves are going back to their old ways. I can’t wait to tell Murphy.”
“No,” I said, jumping to my feet. “We mustn’t tell Murphy.”
“Why not?” Potter said, standing.
“Not until we’ve found, Nev,” I said.
“And what if we don’t?” Potter asked.
“We will,” I told him, turning and heading out of the camp in the direction that Nev had dropped the first piece of the broken paintbrush.
I heard Potter stomp out the fire, then jog to catch up with me. When walking at my side again, he said, “So you never told me why you called out Lilly Blu’s name in your sleep.”
“It was just a dream,” I said, marching ahead.
Chapter Eighteen
As we headed up the hillside that loomed before us, I couldn’t help but feel crushed by what Potter had told me. I found it hard to reconcile the fact deep inside of me that Lilly Blu was dead. I had known her – I had pushed her. Was her death at the hands of the man she had once loved been my fault? Had I unwittingly pushed Lilly Blu to her death? If I had, then I couldn’t bear the thought. My intention had been to save my friends, not to see them end up dead. But I felt something else too – not just regret that Lilly Blu was dead – that she wouldn’t be able to help me understand the layers. I know that such a thought was a selfish one, but it was like being told there was a cure for a disease that I had but it had just been snatched from me. Jack had been right, there was no other person, other than Noah, who understood the layers and the wheres and whens as much as Lilly did. And although I believed Noah understood as much as she did, he had never travelled – been pushed – through them like she had. Noah seemed to be confined to that grand railway station that shifted and moved. Where was that station now? Was it at the very core of the layers? If so, how did I get back to it? Jack had been right, if there was anyone that would have been able to show me, it would have been Lilly Blu, but she was dead in this layer. And I was surprised to learn that my friend Murphy had killed her. I couldn’t help but not remember the story he had once told me about when they had first met as children. How he had sneaked her down into The Hollows where they had watched the magical moving pictures made by the Vampyrus named Burton. He had loved Lilly so much that he had let innocent men die to protect her. Was the Murphy in this layer just some vague reflection of the man I had come to love so much as a surrogate father? Were all of my friends here just empty husks of the people I had once loved with all of my heart? To be forgotten by them all, I could just about bear, it was what I had agreed to do to destroy the Elders. But to have my friends become true monsters was a realisation that would break my heart. I loved my friends so much that I would do anything for any of them – and I had. But it had never been my intention for them to kill each other, to turn against the people they had once loved and to change those who were human amongst us into monsters. That had never been the deal. I was fast beginning to believe that something had gone terribly wrong – as if the layers had become knotted and interwoven somehow. But how would I ever untangle them, put things right if the person I hoped could have helped me – shown me the way – was now dead, her remains scattered over un-sacred ground? How could Murphy have done that to her?
“It looks like you were right,” Potter said, stooping down and picking up another piece of the broken paintbrush. He held it up in the morning sunlight.
I had been right about that. But Potter had been right about the wolves. By kidnapping Nev, they had returned to their old ways of killing the innocent. I knew that Potter was itching to tell Murphy this. Not because I believed he took delight in killing wolves – well perhaps part of him did – but I’d never known Potter or Murphy to kill an innocent one. Jack hated Murphy because he had thrown him into prison. But hadn’t Jack deserved that? Jack had killed hundreds of people throughout his life – most of them women and children. But I believed Jack was starting to change – take a different path in the where and when that he now existed in. He looked different – younger – not so ravaged with hate and anger. So if the notorious serial killer Jack Seth could change, couldn’t the other wolves too? But would Potter, Murphy, and the rest of The Creeping Men give them a chance? I doubted it. They would go in search of the wolves again and kill them. I was one of those Creeping Men in this world. It would be my duty to do the same. But how could I when I was half wolf? And if the others found out – would they want to kill me too? The Vampyrus and Lycanthrope had stopped fighting inside of me, so perhaps the same could happen between the Vampyrus and the Lycanthrope that shared this world.
“This way,” I muttered, leaning forward and following the footprints left behind by the werewolf that had taken Nev with him.
Potter had been right too in his own way. By the time we’d reached the brow of the hill, there were no more pieces of the paintbrush to follow. Nev had obviously dropped them all by the time he had reached this part of his journey.
“Get down,” Potter suddenly said, dropping on his front in the grass. Reaching up, he grabbed my hand, dragging me down next to him. “A wolf encampment,” he whispered in my ear.
Raising ourselves up onto our elbows, we peered over the brow of the hill and down into the valley that cut a fast gorge into the earth on the other side of it. On the opposite side of the valley where we lay hidden, I could see deep hollows like caves cut into the side of the rock. Fires burnt deep within them. Each cave-like structure glowed orange like a hundred or more torches burning bright along one side of the valley wall. And out of these caves sauntered the biggest wolves I had ever seen. Some of them walked on all fours, others tall on their back legs like giant men.
“There are at least fifty of the fuckers or more,” Potter groaned, rolling over on to his back and staring up at the dark clouds that stretched across the sky. “We’ve got to go back for the others if we stand any chance of saving your friend, Norman.”
“That’s Nev,” I hissed, crouching next to him.
“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?” He turned his head to grin at me.
“This isn’t a time to be joking around,” I said.
“I can’t help it, I always get kind of excited at the thought of beating the shit out of some wolves,” he said back, still grinning.
“We can’t go back for them.”
“We’ve got to,” he said, his smile now fading. “There are too many. We need to call on the rest of The Creeping Men.”
“What, all six of us?” I said. “Seven if you count Mrs. Payne. And besides, Murphy is still injured from…”
“There are more than just the six of us,” Potter said.
“How many exactly?” I asked.
“Hundreds,” Potter whispered, rolling onto his front again and peering back down into the valley. “If we head back now…”
“We don’t have time,” I said.
“We can fly – it won’t take us more than a few…”
“No,” I insisted. “I’m not going to start a war.”
“The war started with the wolves way before you showed up pouting your hot-lips and fluttering your long eyelashes?”
“Don’t you dare patronise me, Potter,” I snapped at him.
“I’m not,” he hit back. “I’m just trying to tell you that marching down into that valley isn’t going to save your friend – it will get him killed – it will get all three of us killed – and I’m not putting my life on the line for some kid who gets his kicks by finger-painting and
riding around on a push bike like Old-Mother-Fucking-Hubbard.”
“What about putting your life on the line for me?” I whispered, leaning in and kissing him gently on the mouth.
Chapter Nineteen
Potter kissed me back with an urgency I hadn’t felt in him before. His tongue darted into my mouth and I screwed my eyes tight. Not because I wasn’t enjoying the kiss we were now sharing – I feared that I would come to enjoy it too much and be unable to stop. But I had to – for now at least. Easing myself away, Potter looked into my eyes. I looked hard back into his for any sign of my Potter looking back at me. Was he in there somewhere, fighting to reach out? By kissing the Potter I now held in my arms, would it bring my Potter forward – bring him out of the layer that he was now in, bring us back together? And if it was my Potter that I was already holding onto, would kissing him make him remember me all the more? Was it a chance – a risk – worth taking?
I closed one hand around one of Potter’s and stood up. “Come with me,” I whispered, leading him back down the hill in the direction that we had come. We had passed a small crop of trees not far from the crest of the hill. I headed toward it.
“Where are we going?” Potter asked. “I thought you wanted to save…”
“I do,” I said, knowing that time was fast running out. “But there is something I need to tell you first.”
“Couldn’t you tell me back there?” Potter said, nodding back over his shoulder.
“No,” I said, heading back down the hillside toward the trees.
Reaching them, I pulled him into the shade. I walked deep amongst the trees until we were concealed from the world beyond. Once we were hidden from view, I pushed Potter hard in the chest, his back slammed into the nearest tree trunk.
“What are you doing?” Potter asked.
“This,” I said, lunging at him. I crushed my mouth over his, jabbing and prodding at his tongue with my own. Without any further encouragement from me, I felt Potter lose one hand in my hair as the other slid up beneath the hoodie I was wearing as he sought out my breasts. Potter thrust his hips forward into mine. I ground myself against him. With my eyes screwed tight again, I fought the overwhelming desire to fully let go. To be with him like this, my Potter or not, was pushing temptation too far. It would have taken very little for me to fully let go and let us take each other – to make love like we had once done.
“Could you ever love a wolf?” I whispered in his ear.
“No,” he whispered back, pushing me back down onto the ground.
With his eyes locked onto mine, he lowered himself down on top of me. He kissed my neck and I saw a snapshot image of him biting Sophie. Tears stung in my eyes. But through them I saw what I needed, what would help achieve what I’d intended to do when leading Potter amongst the trees.
I reached for the rock that lay just feet away amongst the dead leaves. I closed my fist around it.
“I love you,” he whispered in my ear.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered back, before bringing the rock crashing down against his skull.
He made a gawfing sound in the back of his throat before collapsing on top of me. I pushed him off, where he rolled unconscious on his back beneath the tree. At once my heart ached with guilt. But I’d had no other choice. Whatever I’d said to Potter – however much I had tried to get him to listen to reason, he would have gone back for the other Creeping Men. I didn’t have time if I was to save Nev, and I hadn’t been pushed so I could ignite an ancient war between the Vampyrus and Lycanthrope. I didn’t want to go to war with either of them. How could I possibly choose a side? It would be like tearing myself in half.
There was another way I could save my friend Nev without going to war. There was another way I could go down into that valley undetected. The wolves wouldn’t look twice at me if I looked like one of them. But Potter would have looked more than twice. His dead black eyes would have nearly popped from their sockets if he had seen what truly I was. I feared that he would hate me, just like he hated the other wolves. And I couldn’t bear the thought of Potter hating me – not this Potter or any other. Murphy would hate me too. Why wouldn’t he? He had hated Lilly Blu in this world so much that he had killed her and then discarded her remains to rot forevermore. She had been his lover once – the mother of his children. What hope did I have, then, of him showing me any leniency? I couldn’t risk that he might not.
I knew that the only way I was going to rescue Nev from the wolves was if I looked like one of them – became one of them. But I was also conscious of the fact that I’d only ever let the Vampyrus side of me come forward. I had never let the wolf consume me before. The thought of turning – becoming a wolf – terrified me deep down. Once I had fully accepted it as part of me – let it mold my flesh and bone into the shape of a wolf, would I not only change form but personality too? Would I become as cunning and sly as most of the wolves I had ever known? Would I become like my brother Jack – a cold-hearted killer? Cruel and heartless like my true mother, Kathy Seth? Both of them were a part of me, weren’t they? Just like I was a part of my Vampyrus father Frank Hudson.
But there was no one to ask. As far as I knew, as far as the Elders and Noah knew, I was the first and only living half and half. Did that make me some kind of an abomination? Some kind of creature that should have never been conceived, let alone given life? Was that why I had been born dead? Had nature feared me? Had nature viewed me as so unnatural that it had taken my life even before I’d taken my first true breath once free of my mother’s womb? Murphy had told me that he had taken my tiny lifeless corpse, wrapped it in his shirt, filled the pockets with stones, and had let me sink to the bottom of the dead waters that flowed from the Fountain of Souls. But it had been those red waters that had given me life somehow and I had lived. Hearing my cries, Murphy had returned and spirited me away to be raised in secret by my true father and adoptive mother Jessica Hudson. Both had been Vampyrus and I had known nothing of what I truly was until my brother Jack had told me.
I had struggled to accept that I was a Vampyrus. It had been terrifying for me to learn from Doctor Ravenwood that I had wings, fangs, and claws which lay hidden beneath what I had always believed to be human flesh. It had taken me a long time to accept that fact. But I didn’t have time now to dwell on how accepting that other side of me might make me feel – might change me in some way. I had no idea what it would be like to become the wolf.
Stepping away from where Potter lay unconscious at my feet, I pulled off my hoodie, jeans, boots, and underwear. Naked, I walked away. And even though Potter was out cold, I didn’t want him to be near me when I changed for the first time into the wolf. It was a private thing, something only to be shared by the wolf and me. So, alone in the shade of the trees, I raised one hand before me. Closing my eyes, I looked into the darkness. I searched for the wolf there. In the dark I saw at first what looked like two hazel coloured slits of light coming toward me. As they grew closer still out of the darkness, the full face of the wolf was revealed. And although I felt scared – more scared than I had ever felt, I couldn’t help but admire the creature’s beauty. Was that really me I was staring at? Was it really me staring back? It sat at the very edge of the darkness in my mind on her hindquarters.
“Hello?” I whispered, just like I had on the floor of my room the other night.
Throwing its head back, the wolf howled, then came charging toward me. Snapping open my eyes, I began to rake at my flesh with the razor-sharp claws that had replaced my hands. My flesh fell away in bloody strips to reveal the silky black hair that covered the creature beneath.
Chapter Twenty
I dropped to the ground. It was like my legs had been kicked away from beneath me. I cried out. The pain was excruciating. I clawed at the earth. Sending up a shower of leaves and broken twigs. Throwing back my head I howled and howled, just like the wolf had done inside of me. But the wolf was no longer inside, it was making its way out of me – changing me – turning me int
o it. What had I done? I looked over at where I’d struck Potter with the rock. He lay sprawled on his back, eyes closed.
“Pot… Potter!” I howled. My body felt like it was burning up – just like it had the other night in my room. But there was no moonlight now to cool it. I looked down at the jagged opening I’d made down the centre of me. I could see black and blue fur bristle through the bloody opening. Fear gripped me as much as the pain I’d felt. Had it been this painful turning into the Vampyrus? Had I felt just as petrified as I did now?
Flesh fell away from my legs in thin strips as they stretched and contorted out of shape. It felt like my bones were being yanked on by invisible hands. My toenails grew long and pointed as my feet doubled in size. Why hadn’t Jack told me this is what it would be like? What hadn’t he told me how painful being a wolf would be? My heart pounded in my ears, and the world seemed to stretch in and out of shape all around me. I wanted to stop the change but I didn’t know how to, even if I could. The wolf had hold of me, had control of my claws as I ripped and tore at my own flesh – throwing it clear in bloody shreds. If I had fooled myself that the pain couldn’t have got any worse, then I’d been wrong. A pain so blinding gripped my skull. It felt as if it were being pushed open from the inside.
“Potter!” I cried out, my voice sounding shrill and broken. Why wouldn’t he wake up and save me? What had I done?
Throwing my claws to my head, I rolled over, now on all fours. With my head feeling as if it were being repeatedly kicked and punched, I looked back over my shoulder and down the length of my back. My spine twisted like a snake under what little flesh I had left there.
