Kiera Hudson & The Adoring Artist (Kiera Hudson Series Three Book 3)

by Tim O'Rourke

  “What now?” Meren asked, fluttering all about us.

  “We head for the station – and fast,” Murphy said. “I’ve got the feeling that we need to be on one of those trains before the last of the cracks close permanently, or we might not ever get home.”

  “I think you might be right,” I said, watching the cracks close faster now.

  “Of course I’m right, I’m the sergeant,” Murphy said, speeding away toward the railway station.

  We raced after him, drawing level as we reached the road. Dropping out of the sky, we raced up the strip of tarmac. Bounding up the stone steps, I pushed open the door and we dashed inside.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Potter

  From the top of the escalators that led down onto the station concourse, I could see Kiera talking to Noah. He still wore the shabby old railwayman uniform. His craggy black face was still lined with age, and that fuzz of white hair still crowned his head. Noah looked up on seeing my friends and I race into the station. He said something to Kiera, but I couldn’t hear what. I was too far away. Kiera looked my way as I stood in front of a poster of an ancient black steam train that was fixed to the wall behind us. Kiera looked safe – she looked beautiful. With Murphy, Meren, and Isidor at my side, we charged down the escalators toward Kiera and Noah. Reaching the concourse, I saw Lilly, Melody, Sam, and Kayla race from the stairs that led up from the platforms below.

  Kiera turned to look at Noah and spoke with him again. He said something back, and Kiera gave one quick nod of her head back at him. As I closed the gap between us, she turned in our direction. Reaching Kiera, I scooped her up into my arms and spun her around and around. She smiled into my face.

  “The cracks are closing,” I said, holding her tight to me. “We can get the fuck out of here and get hitched.”

  “I know,” Kiera beamed.

  Unable to resist her, I kissed Kiera hard on the lips. She kissed me back and my heart leapt with joy. I was back with the woman I loved more than anyone or anything. I finally held in my arms the woman I would marry and spend the rest of my life with. Over Kiera’s shoulder, I watched my friends backslap and embrace each other in the middle of the station. Taking Kiera’s hand in mine, we joined them. All of us together again, we laughed and cheered.

  “You have to go,” Noah suddenly said. I detected urgency in his voice. I saw Kiera smile back at him, then taking my hand in hers again, she dragged me toward the escalators which would lead us down onto the platform and the train we needed to get home.

  “C’mon,” Kiera said to me. “We have to go now, or we’ll get trapped here.”

  Hand in hand, we ran toward the escalators and our friends followed. We clambered down the stairs taking two at a time. We raced onto the platform at the bottom. It was dark, the only light coming from a tall, thin, black gas lamp. A huge black steam train waited, almost identical to the one shown on the poster stuck to the concourse wall. With Kiera’s hand still locked with my mine, I looked back to see that all of us were gathered on the platform – that no one had been left behind. I saw Noah watching us all from the foot of the escalators. His eyes shone bright from his ancient face.

  “Hurry,” Kiera suddenly said, ushering us toward the awaiting train. “Please hurry.”

  Kiera stood by the open carriage door as each of our friends climbed on board. I watched Lilly, Meren, Sam, and Melody go first. As they went, I couldn’t help but notice how Kiera gently touched each and every one of them. She let her hand brush over Kayla’s as she reached up and gripped the handrail. Kayla looked back at her.

  “I’m so proud of you for what you did,” I heard Kiera tell Kayla. “I just want you to know that.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when we get home,” Kayla smiled, before clambering on board.

  “Hey, Isidor,” Kiera said as he passed her at the door.

  “Huh?” Isidor muttered, looking back at Kiera. He still wore that goofy look on his face. I guessed he always would.

  “You did good,” Kiera smiled at him. And she was right. Isidor had done more than good. He’d done his very best and had proved me wrong about him. “You always do good, don’t ever let anyone tell you different,” Kiera told him.

  Isidor looked over Kiera’s shoulder at me, then back at Kiera. He whispered something that I didn’t hear. Smiling, Isidor climbed on board the train. I lit a cigarette.

  Murphy was next in line.

  “I just wanted to say thanks,” Kiera smiled at the old fart.

  “What for? I heard Murphy ask her.

  “To agreeing to stand in as my father at the wedding,” Kiera said. “I only asked because I couldn’t have wished for a better father… not ever.”

  To hear Kiera say this made my heart leap. She was already planning the day from which the rest of our lives together would start. And I couldn’t wait either.

  “Well, we can sort it all out when we get back,” I heard Murphy say back to her. Then leaning in close, Murphy whispered into Kiera’s ear, then pressed something into her hand. Without looking back, Murphy climbed up into the carriage.

  There was only me left standing on the platform. Kiera looked at me and I back at her. Smiling she took the cigarette that dangled from the corner of my mouth and tossed it away onto the tracks.

  “What did you do that for?” I grinned.

  “So I can do this,” she smiled, reaching up on tiptoe and kissing me softly on the lips. “I love you, Potter, and I always will.”

  “I love you, too, sweet-cheeks,” I said before climbing on board. I just wanted to get home – I just wanted to start the rest of my life with her. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  I heard the carriage door slam shut behind me. I looked back expecting to see Kiera standing behind me. But she wasn’t. Kiera was still standing on the platform and staring back at me through the glass panel fixed into the door.

  “Goodbye, Potter,” Kiera whispered.

  Was this some kind of fucking joke?

  “What the fuck is going on here?” I said, reaching for the door. I shook the handle, but the door wouldn’t open. My heart began to race in my chest and pound in my ears. “Kiera, stop fucking about. Open this door and get onto this train right now!” I shouted through the glass at her. What the fuck was she playing at?

  “I can’t,” Kiera said, tears spilling onto her cheeks.

  “Kiera!” I roared, feeling as if my heart was being ripped from my chest. I suddenly understood what she was doing and I’d never felt such pain before. “Open this fucking door right now!”

  “The reason I can’t come back is because I love you,” she said, her face now wet with tears as they streamed the length of her wonderful face.

  Murphy, Isidor, and Kayla ran into the vestibule and stood next to me at the door.

  “Kiera!” Murphy roared, as he started to bang his fists against the windows.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, looking back at us from the platform.

  “Kiera!” Kayla cried out. She began clawing and scratching at the window in the hope that she might be able to tear it down and reach her friend. As if unable to look at Kayla, Kiera looked away.

  “We’ve got to get off,” Isidor shouted. “We’ve got to stop the train. We can’t leave Kiera behind.”

  Kiera looked at me again and our eyes met. I beat against the window with my fists – desperate to smash it so I could reach her. But the glass wouldn’t break however hard I drove my fists into it.

  “You said you would marry me,” I shouted. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t angry with Kiera. I just felt lost and bewildered. That one piece of glass – that’s all it was – separated us and I just couldn’t break it down. It stopped me from reaching the woman I loved with all of my heart. I felt tears burn like acid in the corners of my eyes. I didn’t even try to hold them back. I couldn’t even if I had wanted to. There were too many.

  I simply stood and looked at Kiera – my beautiful Kiera �
�� through the window as those tears fell silently onto my cheeks. The horn blew and the train lurched forward. I knew what was coming next, and despite all of my strength – all of my supernatural powers – there was nothing I could do to stop what was going to happen next. Raising one hand, I simply placed it flat against the window. Kiera reached out, placing her hand over mine.

  “I love you.” Kiera smiled back through her tears at me.

  “I love you more,” I said.

  The train rolled forward. I saw a cloud of steam hiss from beneath the wheels as they started to turn beneath the carriage that imprisoned me, which I was powerless to break free from.

  I looked at Kiera one last time.

  “See you later, alligator,” I whispered.

  “In a while, croc…” Kiera started, but before she’d even finished, the lights in the carriage had flickered out…

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Potter

  …the lights flickered back on. But my new surroundings were not lit by any electric light, but by that of a pale winter sun. My first thought was to protect Kiera – to get her out of the castle. The escape had gone very wrong and the soldiers were searching for us. I wanted to tell Harry that he had been wrong – really fucking wrong. I wanted to ask Sammy if she had a spare cigarette…

  “Where’s Kiera?” I heard someone ask.

  As if coming awake, I spun around. It was Kayla who had spoken. Her fiery red hair was billowing in the wind.

  “Did she trick us or something?” Isidor asked. He was standing next to Kayla who had tears streaming from her eyes. All of my friends stood before me. Murphy, Lilly, Kayla, Isidor, Sam, Meren, and Melody Rose. All of them wore the same numb-looking expression.

  “I think Kiera did it to save us,” Lilly said, taking hold of Murphy by the hand so as to comfort him.

  “Kiera,” I whispered, shaking my head from side to side. And I suddenly remembered. Kiera had been left standing alone on the platform. I had the vaguest memory of seeing her staring back through the carriage window at me, her ashen face lined with tears. “Where are we?” I asked more to myself than any of my friends.

  “Snake Weed, I think,” I heard Lilly say.

  “Then we’ve come back,” I said, looking up at her. “Kiera will be here. We’ve only just left Snake Weed. We fought Luke there. We won the battle alongside the wolf Bruce Scott and…”

  “No,” Lilly said shaking her head. “This is a different where and when to the one we left.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked, not wanting to believe her – hoping that she was wrong.

  “There wasn’t a statue in Snake Weed in the layer we’ve just been pushed from,” Lilly said, pointing over my shoulder.

  I turned around to see a statue of a naked woman with wings standing in the centre of the square at the heart of Snake Weed. “Kiera,” I breathed, running toward it. At the foot of the statue, I looked up in her face. It was Kiera – I knew it was. “Why did you do it? Why did you push us away from you?”

  “Kiera did it to save us,” Lilly said, coming to stand beside me at the foot of the statue. Water jetted up in small fountains at the foot of the statue. There was some kind of inscription, but most of it had faded away. There were only several letters left that were readable and they made no sense that I could see.

  “Save us?” I asked. “My heart aches so much I feel like I’m fucking dying.”

  The rest of my friends gathered around the statue. Kayla continued to weep and Sam held her close to him. Murphy was crying silently too.

  “I think we were meant to forget about her…” Lilly started.

  “Forget?” I said. Jabbing my finger up at the statue, I said, “How can I forget when I’ve got a constant reminder of Kiera? I can never forget her.”

  “Something has gone wrong,” Lilly said.

  “No fucking kidding,” I spat. I stared at Lilly. “You seem to know a lot about this so-called plan.”

  “I didn’t know what Kiera was up to,” Lilly shot back, her almost white curls falling heavy about her shoulders, the collar of the white fur coat she wore turned up against the wind.

  “Bollocks,” I scoffed back at her. “You and Noah were as thick as thieves. I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole thing wasn’t your bright idea.”

  “Think what you like, but arguing isn’t going to bring Kiera back to us,” Lilly said.

  “My mother is right,” Meren said, letting go of Murphy’s hand and coming forward. “You can’t blame her for this.”

  “We know how you feel,” Murphy said, sniffing back his tears.

  “You don’t have the slightest fucking idea how I feel,” I said.

  “We loved Kiera, too,” Isidor said.

  “You might have done,” I said, looking at him. “But you all have the people you love standing right by your sides. Who do I have standing next to me?”

  “You have us – your friends,” Melody Rose said, holding hands with Isidor.

  “It’s not enough,” I said. “I’m nothing without Kiera. None of us are. Don’t you get that? She was what held us – our family – together.”

  “She was the brains,” Isidor said.

  “Yeah, she was certainly yours, Isidor,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Lilly, you said that something had gone wrong,” Murphy said. “What do you mean?”

  She looked back at Murphy. “I think Kiera’s plan was to push us away. She’d figured out that it was her pain that fed the Elders – that kept their withered souls alive. I guess she just couldn’t bear to see us suffering anymore. Seeing us tormented by the Elders was her greatest heartache. So to end it, she pushed us.”

  “We’ll unless you haven’t noticed, I’m still in fucking pain,” I said. “I’m hurting right now.”

  “Like I said, I think Kiera’s plan was for us to forget all about her, to forget that she ever existed,” Lilly explained. “You can’t miss what you’ve never had.”

  “So why do we still remember?” Kayla asked, her eyes wet and bloodshot with tears.

  “Because there are still the faintest of cracks – they’ve yet to fully close. I can see them,” Sam said. “They are barely there…”

  “But they will close and perhaps then we will forget,” Lilly said.

  Looking past the statue and at Sam, I remembered how he had once explained how some wolves could see cracks – gaps – that led like doorways into other layers. He had seen one as he had once lay dying on that underground platform after Luke had almost kicked him to death. He had guided me and Kayla toward one of those cracks. We had used the crack he had seen in his peripheral vision to escape and get back to the layer we had come from.

  “Can you see these cracks now?” I asked, heading round the base of the statue toward him. “Show them to me.” I gripped him by the arm. “Show me.”

  “No, it’s too dangerous,” Lilly shouted. “They are closing. That’s what we fought for, isn’t it? That’s what we all nearly died trying to do – to seal the cracks once and for all.”

  Ignoring Lilly, I looked at Sam and said, “Show me!”

  Taking his arm from around Kayla’s shoulders, Sam positioned himself behind me. He placed one of his hands on either side of my face. He then gently tilted my head forward, so I was peering down into the water that sloshed about at the foot of the statue.

  “I can’t see anything,” I said, “What am I meant to be looking at?”

  “Just look,” he said, tilting my head slowly from left to right again.

  The water rippled before me, and at first all I could see was my own reflection staring up at me. But then it began to change, take a different shape – form a different face. Kiera’s face.

  “I can see her,” I whispered.

  Sam let his hands fall away. He took a step backwards.

  “Potter,” Kiera whispered back at me from beneath the rippling water.

  “Kiera,” I whispered back, my heart coming to a juddering halt
in my chest. Was it really Kiera? If so where was she now? Could I get to her? Was she safe? Was she in danger?

  “Where did we first kiss?” she suddenly asked me.

  My face broke into a smile as I remembered deceiving Kiera into believing that I was Luke so I could kiss her. Back then I had doubted she would ever have wanted to kiss me if she knew who was really hidden beneath those ridiculous bandages Murphy had got me to wear as a disguise. “How could I ever forget,” I whispered down at her beautiful face peering out of the water at me. “In the gatehouse at Hallowed Manor.”

  And then she was gone. Had the crack closed like Lilly said it would? “I saw her!” I gasped, looking back at Sam, then at Lilly. “I saw Kiera. She spoke to me.”

  Lilly looked at me and said nothing.

  “You’ve got to help me,” I said, going to her. “You’ve got to help me get Kiera back.”

  “I can’t,” Lilly whispered, the corners of her thick red lips turned down into a look of sorrow.

  “You can!” I insisted. “Kiera is out there somewhere and you’re going to help me get to her…”

  “We don’t have time, and even if we did – it’s too dangerous,” she said.

  “I’d rather die trying than to not try at all,” I told her.

  Lilly looked at me as my friends slowly gathered around, the sound of the fountain filling the deserted town square of Snake Weed.

  “It might change you,” Lilly said.

  “What, like into some kind of an arsehole?” I asked.

  “You’re already an arsehole,” I heard Murphy grumble behind me.

  “So what does it matter then?” I said, without looking back at him.

  “Even if you are successful in crossing the layers in search of Kiera, you might never be able to get back,” Lilly said. “All of us standing here with you right now might be lost forevermore to you.”

  “All of you are my friends,” I said, turning to look at each of them. “But you all have each other. And although I really don’t want to lose you all, there is someone I can’t bear to lose more. I hope you understand.”