by Tim O'Rourke
The Kiera Hudson Prequels (Book Two)
The Kiera Hudson Prequels (Book Two)
Midpoint
The Kiera Hudson Prequels
By
Tim O’Rourke
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2014 by Tim O’Rourke
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Story Editor
Lynda O’Rourke
Book cover designed by:
Carles Barrios
Copyedited by:
Carolyn Pinard
www.cjpinard.com
For you…
Thanks to:
Shana at bookvacations.wordpress.com
bookwormbetties.blogspot.com
Caroline Barker at Areadersreviewblog.wordpress.com
claricesbooknook.blogspot.co.uk
Melly at the Vampire Forum
Who all took the time to review my books – Thank you!
You can contact Tim O’Rourke at
www.kierahudson.com
Or by email at [email protected]
More books by Tim O’Rourke
Kiera Hudson Series One
Vampire Shift (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 1
Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 2
Vampire Hunt (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 3
Vampire Breed (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 4
Wolf House (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 4.5
Vampire Hollows (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book 5
Kiera Hudson Series Two
Dead Flesh (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 1
Dead Night (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 1.5
Dead Angels (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 2
Dead Statues (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 3
Dead Seth (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 4
Dead Wolf (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 5
Dead Water (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 6
Dead Push (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 7
Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 8
Dead End (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 9 Coming Soon!
Kiera Hudson Series Three
Lethal Infected (Kiera Hudson Series Three) Book 1 Coming 2014!
The Jack Seth Novellas
Hollow Pit (Book One)
Seeking Cara (Book Two) Coming 2014!
Black Hill Farm (Books 1 & 2)
Black Hill Farm (Book 1)
Black Hill Farm: Andy’s Diary (Book 2)
A Return to Black Hill Farm (Book 3) Coming 2014!
Sydney Hart Novels
Witch (A Sydney Hart Novel) Book 1
Yellow (A Sydney Hart Novel) Book 2
Raven (A Sydney Hart Novel) Book 3 Coming 2014!
The Doorways Trilogy
Doorways (Doorways Trilogy Book 1)
The League of Doorways (Doorways Trilogy Book 2)
The Queen of Doorways (Doorways Trilogy Book 3) Coming 2014!
Moon Trilogy
Moonlight (Moon Trilogy) Book 1
Moonbeam (Moon Trilogy) Book 2
Moonshine (Moon Trilogy) Book 3 Coming 2014!
Samantha Carter – Vampire Seeker Series
Vampire Seeker (Samantha Carter Series) Book 1
Vampire Flappers (Samantha Carter Novella) Publishes 2nd July 2014
The Vampire Watchmen (Samantha Carter) Book 2 Publishes 4th September 2014!
Unscathed
Written by Tim O’Rourke & C.J. Pinard
Flashes
Flashes (Part One: Charley) Publishes 4th April 2014
Flashes (Part Two: Tom) Publishes 1st May 2014
Flashes (Part Three: Kerry) Publishes 5th June 2014
Flashes Paperback (with exclusive Kiera Hudson Prequel Mystery) Publishes 5th June 2014
You can contact Tim O’Rourke at
www.kierahudson.com or by email at [email protected]
Authors Note
The Mystery of Melinda Took
The Mystery of Derren Splitfoot
The Mystery of Kiera Hudson & Tom Henson
Author’s Note
Welcome to the second Kiera Hudson prequel book. Here are three more mysteries. The first deals with betrayal, the second revenge and the third the greatest mystery of all - love.
I wanted to explore Kiera's background a little more in these three stories. The first book (The Kiera Hudson Prequels Book One) examined how Kiera began to develop her skills - to see what others miss. These stories, although all mysteries Kiera has to solve, I have taken the opportunity to look at her personal and inner most feelings. All of the characters we meet in later Kiera Hudson books all have a past and by that I mean previous lost loves. Luke lost in love, as did Potter and Murphy. But what about Kiera? Did she have a first love - someone she had deep feelings for and an emotional attachment to - before she reached the Ragged Cove?
Just as Kiera had to learn how to use her special gift of seeing wouldn't she also have to learn a few lessons in love too? I believe love is what makes and defines us. So I thought I would take the opportunity in these three stories to explore a side of Kiera's past that previously we knew nothing about. Just as Kiera is learning about herself we are learning more about her too. As a writer that's what makes writing about Kiera so much fun.
Of all my characters Kiera Hudson is the one who seems to have taken on a life of her own. Just as I hope she leaps from off the page as you read her adventures, she too jumps off the page for me as I write them. And I think too that Kiera's story has become more than just an adventure - it has become a life.
Without doubt Kiera Hudson is the most popular character with the people who follow my books. I know others have their own personal favourites but on the whole Kiera wins the popularity contest hands down. Why is this? I often wonder. Why is it when I think I can't take her character any further another story - another mystery for her to solve - creeps into my mind? Perhaps it's because just like you, I'm keen to know what the future has in store for her. When and where will her adventure finally end? But I guess just like our own lives the excitement is in the not knowing - we take each chapter of our lives one page at a time just like Kiera does. Perhaps that is the connection we have with her?
Take care and keep turning those pages!
Tim x
The Mystery of Melinda Took
Kiera
I knew the man had murdered his wife, Melinda Took. But I just couldn’t prove it and that drove me half-crazy.
Tom had followed me in his gleaming new car as I drove my beat up old Mini along the coastal roads toward the village of Ripper Falls. How he afforded such a car on his police probationer wages, I didn’t know. He’d told me that his father was a partner in his own law firm, so perhaps Tom’s parents were helping out while he studied to be a police officer. I had no family to help support me through police training college. My father’s grave lay way behind in the grounds of the Sacred Heart Church. I couldn’t shake off the nagging feeling I had that perhaps Tom and I should have called the local police and told them what we had discovered about Father Rochford and what he was planning to do there. But our sergea
nt, Phillips, had warned Tom and me to keep apart over the Halloween vacation. In his eyes, we were trouble when together. Sergeant Phillips had threatened to kick us out of police training college if so much as a text message passed between us during our autumn break. Tom had broken that rule within a few hours of the sergeant’s threat being made when he had sent me the first text. My phone had been switched off, but when I turned it on, I found several missed texts from Tom. Even though I knew Phillips could end both of our careers before they’d even started, I was glad Tom had texted me. If he hadn’t, Tom would never have discovered I was being held captive by the creepy priest, Father Rochford. Tom had saved me – or had he? Hadn’t I seen another figure in the darkness of those secret passageways hidden between the walls of the priest’s house? Wasn’t it that figure that had saved me? But I couldn’t be sure. The priest had been suffocating me and I had been losing consciousness fast, so perhaps the figure I thought I had seen with the limp had just been a figment of my fading imagination. Perhaps it had been Tom who had scared the priest away after all. Whatever the reason Father Rochford had fled, I believed Tom was right when he said the priest wouldn’t ever come back. Father Rochford knew I was a police officer and would certainly fear that my colleagues and I would now be hunting him down. He would go into hiding. Perhaps when I had passed out of training school and didn’t have Sergeant Phillips watching my every move, I could go in search of Father Rochford myself and bring him to justice. I couldn’t risk my position in the police force until I had found my missing mother. So I had agreed with Tom to let Father Rochford run for now.
We still had five days of our break from college left. I had already decided to leave Havensfield and my poky flat for a short break. My intention had been to visit my father’s grave and put some distance between me and my friend Tom. But once again we had been drawn back together by another mystery. Knowing that we were miles from home and the prying eyes of Sergeant Phillips, Tom had decided to let me lead him to a small inn in the village of Ripper Falls, where we would stay for a few days.
I couldn’t face being shut away in my rented rooms surrounded by piles of dog-eared newspapers and the hundreds of news clippings stuck to the walls. But it was more than that. I didn’t like the feeling of loneliness I now felt. To be alone had never bothered me before. I enjoyed sitting in my favourite chair and staring out of the window, listening to my iPod. Since meeting Tom, whenever he wasn’t around, I felt a sense of overwhelming loneliness. I guessed that he felt the same. I could see that by the number of texts he had sent to me since Sergeant Phillips had done his best to drive a wedge between us. I suspected Tom enjoyed my company as much as I enjoyed his. We had become friends and I’d never had too many of them. I don’t know why. I’d never been bullied at school or anything like that. It was just I felt there was something different about me or perhaps it was the other way around. The other people I knew were different to me. My father had often told me I had a gift, and I always believed he was talking about my ability to see things, the commonplace, that others seemed to miss. But perhaps he had been talking about something else altogether and I had misunderstood him. My father was dead now and my mother was missing, so perhaps I would never find out if my suspicions were right, and there was something about me that set me apart from the rest. Who would know and who would tell me? I had no brothers, sisters, uncles or aunts. Not even grandparents. And that’s why being alone had never bothered me, I had become used to it – until I had become friends with Tom. Now those feelings of loneliness squeezed my heart with cold fingers until I couldn’t bear being alone anymore.
So when Tom suggested he follow me to the Railroad Inn on the outskirts of Ripper Falls, I had been unable to tell him to go back to Havensfield. I wanted my friend to be with me.
Tom
Kiera’s battered and rusty Mini trundled ahead of me. Clouds of black smoke farted from its creaking exhaust. What was the point in me trying to save energy and the ozone by switching off the standby button on my PS3 at night when Kiera’s car was still on the road? The exhaust from her car was probably punching holes in the ozone with every mile she drove down the bleak country roads toward Ripper Falls.
She had already decided to stay in a place called the Railroad Inn, way before I’d shown up at the Sacred Heart Church and rescued her from that Satanist. Kiera hadn’t been so sure that it was me who had saved her from becoming a human sacrifice or worse. Kiera had hinted at the possibility that someone else had been present in those secret passageways running between the walls of the priest’s house. But I hadn’t seen anyone. I had been the only one there. If there had have been someone else I would have seen him. Besides, who else knew we were there? No one. And that’s the way we had to keep it. Neither me nor Kiera could risk letting Sergeant Phillips know that we had disobeyed his orders to stay apart over the Halloween break from police training college. Why should we stay apart? We were just friends after all. Nothing more. And what if there was more? What if Kiera and I did become more than friends? What did it have to do with Phillips? We were both adults. If Kiera and I were old enough to be cops, then we were old enough to choose… choose what? Who we were going to date. Who was I kidding? Kiera didn’t like me like that. But did I really like her like that? Was I mixing up the obvious feelings I had of friendship for her with something more? It was exciting to be with Kiera. She was like no other girl I had ever met. There I go again – kidding myself. What other girls? I’d spent my life so far at an exclusive boarding school for boys. I didn’t know any other girls other than Kiera. She was my first and only girlfriend. And I emphasise the friend part of that word.
How was I meant to understand the feelings deep inside of me if I’d never had such feelings before? Perhaps sharing some time with Kiera at the inn in Ripper Falls might make me see things more clearly. After all, if Kiera could see clues a mile away, why couldn’t I see what was staring me straight in the face?
Kiera
It was just before dusk when I pulled up outside the inn. There was a small car park at the front for just a few cars. I doubted if the inn would ever need more. It was off the beaten track and the surrounding landscape was barren and featureless. As I climbed from my car and glanced over the fields which led down to the cliffs and the ocean, I doubted the view looked any less dreary on a bright summer’s day. Giant slabs of granite rock protruded from the uneven fields giving the landscape a prehistoric feel.
“Wow,” Tom breathed, getting from his car. “What a picturesque place you’ve found us.”
“You can always go back to Havensfield,” I said, hoping that he wouldn’t.
“What, and leave you out here all alone?” he said, puffing out his chest in an act of mock bravado. “This place looks like something out of The Hound of The Baskervilles.”
“Then let’s get inside, Watson, before the hounds show up,” I said, dragging my case from the boot and heading toward the inn.
“So if I’m Watson, who does that make you? Sherlock-freaking-Holmes? I’m not your sidekick,” Tom said, following me. Then looking up at the inn, with its crooked walls, narrow dark windows, and twisted chimney stack, Tom whistled through his teeth, and added, “I’ve seen this place before, too.”
“Where?” I said, stopping and glancing at the inn.
“In that movie an American Werewolf in London,” he said.
I sighed. “It’s nothing like that. I think it looks rather charming.”
“Yeah, and you’d probably say the same thing about Dracula’s castle,” he smiled sideways at me.
“C’mon, Miss Marple,” I sighed, elbowing him in the ribs. “Let’s book in and get something to eat. I’m starving.”
The inn was just as I remembered it to be when I’d stayed a year ago, on the night before my father’s funeral. It hadn’t changed. The same faded paintings hung from the stone walls. The ceiling was a criss-cross maze of ancient oak beams. There was a fireplace set into the far wall, and flames licked over a smou
ldering pile of logs. The heat from it warmed my cold hands and face. A few scattered tables were before the fire. An old man sat at one, and another was occupied by a young couple. They were leaning across the table and holding hands.
Tom brushed past me and went to the bar. The last time I’d stayed at the Railroad Inn I had been greeted by a middle-aged woman. A man now stood behind the curved shaped bar, a dishcloth thrown over his shoulder. He was tall, at least six-foot-four, and heavily built. His forearms and hands were huge.
“We would like two single rooms please,” Tom asked the man.
He took the dishcloth from over his shoulder, wiped his hands on them, and took a leather-bound ledger from beneath the counter. The man thumbed through it. “You’re in luck,” the man grunted back at Tom.
I doubted very much he needed to check the register to see if he had any spare rooms. I could remember from my last visit that there were only six bedrooms at the inn.
“Great,” Tom said. “We’ll take them.”
“For how long?” the man asked, eyeing me, then Tom.
