by Tim O'Rourke
“Cure?” I said. “What, make them human again?”
Shaking his head at me, the doctor said, “They will never be truly human or Vampyrus – they are what they are – half-breeds. But that doesn’t mean they have to die young, to not live out their lives and realise their true potential – whatever that maybe.”
“You said, we, who’s we?” I asked him. “You and who else are trying to cure these children?”
“Lord Hunt, of course,” he said.
“And how are you planning on achieving this cure?”
Pulling the latex gloves from his hands and rolling them into a ball, he looked across the room at Luke, then back at me. “We discovered it by chance. It was after I removed the piece of bone from Kayla’s back. We had been wondering why it was that Kayla had grown past the age of sixteen with very few physical problems. It wasn’t until she reached that age that she started to show any physical changes at all. To the outside world, she looks just like any other sixteen-year-old human female.”
I thought of how Kayla had been called ‘stickleback’ by the other girls at her school and wondered if Ravenwood was just deluding himself. Apart from the children lying in the hospital beds, I’d never seen another sixteen-year-old with wings. But then again wasn’t that the point that Ravenwood was trying to make – no other half-breed had lived past the age of sixteen.
“We wondered whether the cure lie in Kayla’s DNA.” The doctor continued. “So after carefully abstracting the marrow from the piece of bone from Kayla’s back, Lord Hunt injected it into Alice over there,” and he pointed to a girl lying in a bed at the furthest end of the ward. Ravenwood made his way to the foot of her bed and I followed him, all the while, Luke remained silent.
“See her wings?” Ravenwood asked me, pointing at the girl on the bed. It was difficult to see exactly how old she was, as she was lying on her front, her face turned against the pillow. Out of her back hung two long black wings and just like Kayla’s, they were jet-black and covered in a fine, sparkly substance which looked very much like glitter.
“They look okay to me,” I told him.
Then taking hold of the tip of Alice’s wing, it crumbled into a black ash between his fingers. Rubbing the dust from his hands, I watched as the wing reformed where it had only moments ago broken away beneath Ravenwood’s touch. “Six months ago, every bone in her body reacted in the same way,” he explained. “You only had to brush up against her and her arm would break, her leg would snap, or her ribcage splinter. But after Lord Hunt injected the DNA taken from the bone in Kayla’s back into Alice, her bones began to harden – to solidify. They no longer break now when touched, but it’s her wings. As you can see, they are still brittle. If she were conscious, Alice would have been in unbearable pain as her wings had crumbled.”
“So why doesn’t it work?” I asked him.
Looking at me, his eyes almost seeming to shimmer behind his glasses, Ravenwood said, “Remember I said that only a few of these half-breeds had managed to live past the age of sixteen years?”
“Yes,’” I said, nodding.
“Well, Lord Hunt was of the belief that the extracts of DNA from those three survivors would hold the key to a cure,” the doctor said.
“Do you know who these three are?”
“Kayla is one, of course,” he said. “Another is an eighteen-year-old boy named Isidor Smith.”
“And where is he?” I asked.
“He has been very hard to find – but we have managed to locate him. We don’t know if this Isidor Smith knows what he is,” Ravenwood said.
“A half-breed, you mean?”
“Exactly,” he continued. “But we should know soon enough – Lady Hunt has gone to…how can I put this? Persuade him to come home with her.”
“Like she did to me?” I said, trying to hide the resentment that I felt about being tricked by Lady Hunt. “So who is the third of these surviving half-breed?”
Taking his glasses from the tip of his nose and cleaning the lenses on the hem of his scrubs, he looked at me and said, “For someone who has the ability to see, Kiera, you don’t see very much at all.”
“See what?” I asked, the muscle in my stomach beginning to tighten.
“Can’t you see the real reason that Lady Hunt got you to come and stay here?” he asked, pushing the glasses back onto his nose.
Feeling numb, I shook my head at him. “She brought me here so Luke and my friends could protect me from Taylor and Phillips.”
“And why do you think you would need their protection?” Ravenwood asked.
“Because…because…” I started, but my mind seemed frazzled – confused. Then I remembered what Taylor had said to me in St. Mary’s graveyard back in The Ragged Cove. Taylor had told me that I was unique! “No!” I whispered backing away from Doctor Ravenwood.
“Yes, Kiera,” he said coming towards me. “You are one of the three who can save these children. You are a half-breed.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“It’s not true!” I snapped, turning on my heels to look at Luke. I was hoping that he would tell me that it wasn’t and that there had been some mistake. But he just stared back at me, and again I could see that sadness in his eyes. Running across the ward, I gripped him by the shoulders and said, “Please Luke, tell me that it isn’t true!”
Casting his eyes down as if he were unable to look at me, he whispered, “I’m so sorry Kiera.”
Letting go of him, I turned, and facing the doctor, I said, “It’s not true. I refuse to believe it. My parents were human.”
“One of them was,” Ravenwood said and his voice had that tone again – the one that told bad news. “Your mother was one of us. She was a Vampyrus.”
“Liar!” I roared at him.
“It’s true,” Luke said from behind me. “Your mother was a vampire bat.”
“And how long have you known this?” I hissed, turning on him with tears in my eyes. “You didn’t think of telling me this before?”
“I didn’t know,” he said, coming towards me. “Honestly – I didn‘t know, Kiera.”
“So, how long have you known?” I asked, tears now spilling onto my cheeks.
“When I returned back to The Hollows,” he said. “The elders told me.”
“So where is she now?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” he said. “All I know is that Phillips took her like he took Lord Hunt.”
“But why?” I snivelled.
“Why do you think, Kiera?” Ravenwood said, coming to stand by my side. “Your mother, Lord Hunt, and Isidor Smith’s father are the only Vampyrus who have produced children with humans that have lived past adolescence. Whoever it is that Taylor and Phillips work for, he is the one who believes the parents hold the answer. But he is wrong – we tested Lord Hunt’s DNA on the half-breeds and it had no positive results whatsoever. He has realised his mistake now and is therefore in search of their offspring.”
“But why?” I said, wiping the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hands. “What possible use could we have? From what Luke has told me about this Vampyrus – he doesn’t sound like he would be interested in curing anyone – or any thing.”
“Cure is not what he seeks,” Luke said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “He is interested in your power.”
“Power?” I asked. “What power?”
“Kiera, you have the gift of seeing, Kayla the gift of hearing, and we’ve heard that Isidor has the power of smell,” Ravenwood said.
“I don’t understand,” I told him, every fibre of my being feeling alive and on fire.
“Kiera – you’ve been having nightmares right? But they’re more than nightmares – they’ve become visions. Tell me what you see,” he said, fixing his eyes on mine.
Pulling my arms tight around me, I said, “Vampyrus taking over London. Killing passengers on the underground, creating vampires that then feed on humans that, in turn, become vampires until…”
“Until w
hat?” Ravenwood asked me, his voice sounding stern.
“Until there are no humans left,” I breathed. “But I saw hundreds…thousands of Vampyrus sweeping over London. There were so many that their wings blocked out the sun.”
“What you see, Kiera, is the future…what might happen,” Ravenwood explained. “Those Vampyrus you see could very well be an army sent by the elders to protect the human race – to fight alongside them – but that we don’t know. The future is not yet set, we have a chance of changing it.”
“Kiera, we don’t have time to waste – the future of the human race and the Vampyrus balances on a knife’s edge,” Luke said. “A few days ago, a Vampyrus went crazy on an inbound flight into the UK. At forty-thousand feet, he tore through the plane, gorging himself on the crew and passengers – each one of them becoming a vampire. We can’t be sure, but we believe that this Vampyrus’ aim was to land a plane at Heathrow, full of bloodletting vampires which would then overrun the airport, sending vampires swarming through London. But the pilot fought back by ditching the plane into the sea, killing all on board before they reached London.”
“I saw that on the news,” I told him, “the day that Lady Hunt came to visit. So do the government…the authorities know what is going on?”
“The plane has yet to be recovered,” Luke said, “So no – they are not aware. But we fear it may only be a matter of time before our existence is known to the wider world. We have people in place – Vampyrus that have worked their way over the years into positions of power within governments around the world, but they will only be able to bury so much of the truth. And if your nightmares are visions of what is yet to come, then it won’t be long before those corrupted Vampyrus like Taylor and Phillips start attacking major cities across the globe.”
“But I still don’t understand how I will be of use to this Vampyrus?” I asked, still feeling numbed and confused by everything that I was hearing. “How will I be able to help him?”
Folding his white hair-covered arms across his chest, Ravenwood looked at me and said, “Imagine having an ally that could see into the future – predict what your enemy was going to do next. Someone who can see through darkness – see what others fail to see.”
I thought back to how I’d seen into the darkness in the crypt beneath St. Mary’s church in The Ragged Cove. But that had only happened once. “But its not a precise thing that I can do,” I told Ravenwood. “It’s very hit-and-miss.”
“Your gift is still developing,” he told me. “But you must realise that your abilities are getting stronger each day. You have more and more of theses visions – you see more. It will only be a matter of time before you have complete control over your gift.”
“But my eye, it bleeds – I pass out,” I told him.
“That’s just a symptom of your developing powers,” Ravenwood said. “That will soon pass as you become accustomed to your power.”
“But what about Kayla and this other one…Isidor Smith? What do they bring to the party?” I asked him.
“Just like you, Kiera, can you imagine what an asset Kayla would be to our enemy? You could send her forward to spy. From behind closed doors, outside buildings, from miles away she would be able to hear them plotting. To listen in as they planned their next strike – their next move. From great distances she would be able to know from which direction the enemy approaches, their numbers, and the fear in their hearts. Isidor, with his sense of smell, would be able to track the enemy – never lose their scent – hunt them down until they could run no more. Imagine, Kiera, having an army with such gifts – they would be invincible.”
“An army?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “There are only the three of us.”
“You don’t really think that once our enemy understood what it was that was so special about your DNA, what made you so unique, that he wouldn’t use that on the other half-breeds who had been born?” Ravenwood asked me. “Even if they were born sick and feeble like the ones you see in this room, he would be able to heal them like we plan to do and who knows what powers they might have.”
“But why do the half-breeds have the potential to be so much greater than a Vampyrus?” I asked the doctor.
“We don’t know, is the honest answer,” he said scratching his white wiry hair. “It must be something to do with when the two sets of DNA come together. We know that other species of bat have undeveloped eyesight and there are many myths that bats are, in fact, blind. This is untrue – some bats can even see ultraviolet light. So perhaps when human DNA and Vampyrus DNA is thrown into the mix together, it creates an enhanced ability of sight. We know that some bats hear in sonar, and others have an incredible sense of smell – perhaps these abilities are greatly magnified when the two species mix.”
“Like some potent cocktail?” I said.
“Perhaps,” he said, flashing a thin smile at me.
Then looking at both Luke and Ravenwood, I said, “But even if this were all true and I was some freaky half-breed, Phillips, Taylor, and whoever it is they work for seem to be forgetting that there is no way on Earth that I will betray my own race and fight alongside them.”
Then staring at me, Ravenwood said, “You seem to be forgetting two things, Kiera.”
“And what are they?” I asked, cocking my head at him.
“You don’t actually have a race that you belong to. Secondly, they have the best bargaining tool that your enemy could ever want.”
“Which is?”
“They have your mother,” he replied with a grim smile. “And the fathers of Kayla and Isidor. I think they’ll be able to make the three of you do anything that they want you to do.”
With my heart sinking in my chest and wanting to throw-up, I said, “And you seem to be forgetting, I don’t actually believe any of this shit.” Then pointing to the children lying asleep in their beds, I added, “I’m nothing like them, or Kayla. I mean look at me, I don’t have wings!”
Taking me by the hand, Luke whispered, “Let us show you.”
Following behind Doctor Ravenwood, Luke led me into the shadows in the far corner of the room. Hidden in the darkness was a doorway. Pushing it open, Ravenwood ushered us into a small room at the far end of the ward. The room consisted of a desk that was littered with pieces of paper which were covered with equations and handwritten notes. There were files and medical instruments that I had never seen the likes of before. In the corner, there was an examination couch, and attached to the walls were several x-ray negatives of limbs and I guessed they were pictures of the insides of the kids sleeping in the ward.
Taking a clunky-looking camera from the desk, Ravenwood looked at me and said, “Kiera, take off your top and go lay face-down on the couch over there.”
“I’m sorry?” I said, pulling my top tightly about me.
Seeing that I looked uncomfortable at his sudden request, he said, “It’s okay, Kiera, I’m a doctor. I just want to examine your back.”
“Why?” I said, looking across the room at Luke as he might also have the answer.
“I want to prove to you one way or another that you are a half-breed,” Ravenwood said.
“How?”
“With this,” he said, holding the huge camera. It looked like something that they would have used in the early nineteen-hundreds. The front of it appeared to have a long protruding lens which stuck out like an accordion, and it had handles on either side. As I looked closer at it, I could see that it wasn’t made of plastic or metal, but wood.
“What’s that?” I asked him.
“A camera of sorts,” he smiled. “You have nothing to fear, Kiera. I’m sure your friend Luke will be watching out for you.”
Looking towards Luke again, he nodded and said, “It’ll be okay, I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you. I promise.”
Believing in him, I went to the couch and began to unbutton my shirt. Glancing up at Luke, I asked, “Do you mind?”
Smiling to himself, he turned his back. Once my shirt was off
, I climbed onto the couch and laid on my front. Ravenwood came towards me, with the camera-type contraption in his hands.
“This might feel a bit cold,” he warned, placing the end of the machine between my shoulder blades. He then very gently moved it down the length of my back to the base of my spine, then up again around both sides of my ribcage. The end of the device did feel ice-cold and I felt the skin on my back tighten with goosebumps.
“Put your shirt back on. I’m all done,” he said.
Climbing off the couch, I threw my shirt back on. “You can turn around now,” I told Luke. He looked at me and he still had that boyish grin tugging at his lips. “You’re so juvenile,” I tutted.
Ravenwood placed the camera-thing on his desk and flipped a switch on the side of it. The machine made a purring noise as a cone of brilliant white light shone from the lens. The light shone against the wall and I looked at it. It was like watching an old black and white movie. At first, the moving picture seemed blurred and out of focus. Ravenwood adjusted a few dials on the side of the device and the image on the wall sharpened. And as it did, I could see that it was some sort of x-ray of my spine and ribcage. The camera, or whatever it was, had recorded my insides and was now playing the images back onto the wall. But as I studied the images, I could see that my spine and ribcage looked different – different from pictures that I had seen in human anatomy books. I had way too many bones and there was shading over my lungs.
“That can’t be me,” I gasped.
Ignoring me, Ravenwood went to the wall and taking a pen from the pocket of his scrubs, he pointed at the images being played out. “This is amazing,” he said, and I could sense the excitement in his voice. “I’ve never seen such a developed set of wings that have yet to break through the skin.” Then, jabbing at the wall with the tip of his pen, he said, “Look Luke, can you see the humerus? And look! There’s the radius and ulna. The bones are perfectly formed.”
“I don’t believe it,” I trembled, those tears standing in my eyes again. “I would know if I had all those extra bones in me. They would be heavy. I would know that they were there.”
