“Hey, Kayla,” he said.
I joined him inside. He was holding up a see-through plastic bag and I could see his clothes folded up inside. Potter was grinning from ear to ear. He began to unwind the sheet wrapped about his waist.
“Don’t look,” he scowled.
“As if,” I tutted, turning away.
Sophie’s desk was cluttered with beige coloured files and medical records of the dead lying in the room next door. There were ‘in’ and ‘out’ trays. Both were made of bright red plastic.
“Hurry up,” I said.
I smelt cigarette smoke and glanced over my shoulder. Potter now had his trousers and boots on, and a cigarette jutted from between his lips.
“I don’t think you should be smoking in here, do you?” I said. “It is part of a hospital, after all.”
“Well, it’s not as if the smoke is going to kill any of the fuckers in here,” he said, pulling on his coat. “They’re already dead, you included.”
Knowing there was little point in arguing with him, I headed for the door.
“Hang on,” Potter called after me.
“What for?” I said, turning to look at him. “We haven’t come back here to hang out in some morgue, we’ve got some mail to deliver, remember?”
“That’s what I’m thinking about,” Potter said thoughtfully.
“What?” I asked him.
“Give the letters to me,” he said, holding out his hand.
I pulled them from my pocket and handed them to him.
Potter looked down at the letters, then back at me. “Sophie told me that these letters were posted to her over a series of weeks and months,” he said.
“So?”
“We’ll I ain’t planning on staying in this where and when for the next few months so I can play at being Postman-freaking-Pat,” he said.
“Well at least let’s deliver them to her house,” I said, “That’s where I was told to take them.”
“What’s the point?” Potter groaned. “We can leave the letters here for Sophie to find.”
“Where?”
“Here,” Potter said, dropping the wad of letters into Sophie’s ‘in’ tray.
“But that’s not how she originally got the letters,” I reminded him.
“What difference can it make?” Potter said. “She’s still going to get the letters again, isn’t she?”
“I guess…” I started.
“It’s not like we’re really changing anything,” Potter said. “And besides, like I’ve already said, I’ve had enough of this bullshit. I’ve done more than I bargained for on this errand than I originally agreed to. I just want to get back to my own where and when and see Kiera. As far as she’s still concerned, I’m dead.”
I got the feeling that Potter was afraid to go anywhere near Sophie again. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”
“Sorry?” he said, glancing at me.
“You’re scared that if you see Sophie again, it might bring back some of those feelings. You would remember her as much as she is going to start remembering you,” I said. “Part of you still has feelings for her.”
Coming and standing right in front of me, Potter looked into my eyes and said, “There is only one person I’m in love with, and that person is Kiera Hudson.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, matching his stare.
“Why the fuck do you think I’m even here, Kayla?” he whispered with a shake of his head. “I’m doing all of this for Kiera. I let Sophie die so Kiera can live.”
Without saying anything else, Potter left the office and the love letters waiting for Sophie to find in her tray. I went back into the sterile-looking room to find Potter forcing the door open with his claws. He stepped out into the awaiting darkness and I followed. The sound of the door slamming shut behind us was drowned out by a sudden boom of thunder overhead. It was so loud that the ground seemed to shake beneath our feet. I looked up at the night sky as another explosion of thunder rumbled overhead.
“What are they?” I gasped.
“What are what?” Potter said.
“Those,” I said, pointing up at the night sky.
“They look like cracks,” he said over another menacing roar of thunder.
“Why are there cracks in the sky?” I breathed. “What caused them?”
“I think we did,” Potter said, his wings springing from his back. He closed one hand over mine. Together, we shot up into the sky and went in search of the nearest railway station.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Isidor
“We’re all dead,” I told Melody. “Me and my friends – all of us.”
“How?” she asked.
Rolling onto my back, but keeping my arms and wings about Melody, I looked up at the ceiling. Just like the sky outside, the ancient beams above my head were covered in cracks. The song Heroes continued to play on the radio, like it was stuck on some kinda loop. The wind howled outside and blasted snow against the bedroom window.
“We were betrayed by a friend,” I told her. “He was a Vampyrus, just like me and the others. But just like the wolves here, our friend wanted the Vampyrus to rule the Earth. His lust for power was so great, that he murdered each of us in turn.”
“What was his name?” Melody asked.
“He had many, but we knew him to be called Luke Bishop,” I said.
Hearing his name, Melody slipped free of my arms and tightened the sheet draped about her shoulders to keep warm. “I’ve heard that name before,” she said.
“Where?” I asked, sitting up.
“He is better known in this world as the Wolf Man,” she said, staring at me, eyes bright. “He’s a wolf.”
“Bishop is no wolf,” I breathed. “He is a Vampyrus, just like me and my friends.”
“But he leads the wolves,” Melody said.
“Have you ever seen him?” I asked, struggling to believe what she had told me.
“No,” Melody said, shaking her head of pink hair. “He is very much like you and the other Dead Angels.”
“How come?” I asked.
“He is something of a myth – like some kinda legend,” she explained. “He makes very few public appearances. He lets others do his dirty work.”
“Sounds like Bishop,” I said.
“But why would he be masquerading as a wolf if he’s really a Vampyrus?” she asked.
“Because he wants power, and the wolves have it in this world,” I said, trying to figure it out for myself. I wished Kiera was here because she would have it figured out in no time at all. She could see stuff more clearly than I ever could.
“But why doesn’t he just forge an alliance with the Vampyrus in this world and rule the wolves?” Melody seemed to be struggling to figure out Luke’s motives as much as I was.
“The only Vampyruses in this world are Luke Bishop, me, and my friends, and we would all rather die than form an alliance with him. He knows that, and that’s why he killed us all before,” I said.
“You told me once that your race came from below ground,” she said. “Why doesn’t he just go back below ground and…”
“He can’t,” I cut in. “The Elders sealed all the entrances to The Hollows. They don’t exist anymore. As far as the Vampyrus know, there is no world other than The Hollows. They have forgotten about the world above their heads and us.”
“I must tell the wolves that this Wolf Man is an imposter, that he really is a Vampyrus,” Melody said.
“Bishop is too smart for that,” I said. “He’ll snuff you out like a light as soon as you utter so much as the first word. No, I must go back and find my friends. I must tell Kiera what I know.”
I pulled the sheet back and stood up.
“I want to come with you,” Melody said, climbing from the bed.
“I wasn’t planning on going without you,” I said, pulling on my jeans that Melody had earlier pulled from me and thrown to the floor. I watched her put on some clean warm clothes. When she was dressed, sh
e looked across the room at me. She looked kind of haunted.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, going to her.
“I was just thinking,” she said, taking my hands in hers.
“About what?” I asked, gently squeezing her fingers with mine.
“So what happens if we find your friends, tell them about Bishop, and they somehow defeat him – put the world right again,” she said. “There won’t be a happily ever after for us. We will die, just like before.”
“We won’t die, Melody. We’ll get pushed,” I said. “But this time, we’ll get pushed together.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Anywhere. I don’t care, as long as I’m with you,” I smiled.
Looking up into my eyes, Melody said, “I love your smile.”
“And you’ve shown me that smiling is only the second greatest thing I can do with my lips,” I said.
“And what’s the first?” she asked.
“This,” I whispered, leaning down and kissing her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kayla
Ripper Falls Station was smaller than the last. It had a single platform and no waiting room. The ticket office was shut, and there was no information board or timetable displayed. There was a speaker attached to the station wall. Why such a small station would need a speaker system, I had no idea. You could stand at one end of the platform, whispering, and anyone standing at the other end would hear what you had said. Intermittent static hissed through the speaker.
Pulling the collar of his coat up against the rain, Potter looked at me and said, “So, do you have any idea what train we need to catch from here to get back?”
“Nope,” I shrugged.
“So old-mother-teen-wolf never told you what train you had to catch to get back?” he pressed.
“She just said that when the time was right to come back, then I would know the right train to catch,” I told him.
“Oh, Christ, she didn’t give you a crystal ball as well as that fucking camera, did she?” Potter groaned. “You know, the more you tell me about Sam and his parents, the more I’m starting to believe this is all some kind of fucking wind-up.”
“It’s not,” I insisted.
“Has it ever occurred to you they might not have wanted you to get back?” he said.
“What’s that s’posed to mean?” I asked, the rain plastering my long, red hair to the sides of my face.
“It means that this trip was taken on a one-way ticket,” he said. “It means there is no going back to the where and when we need to get back to.”
“Why would they want to do something like that?” I asked him.
“Mmm, I wonder,” Potter said sarcastically. “Perhaps this whole fucking thing was a trap.”
“Sam wouldn’t do that to me…” I started.
“He’s a wolf, isn’t he? He’d probably eat his own grandmother if he was hungry,” Potter said over the constant hiss of static coming from the speaker. He glared up at it.
“That’s a terrible thing to say about Sam,” I said. “Besides, I don’t even think he has a grandmother. He’s never mentioned having a…”
“I don’t fucking believe this,” Potter cut in.
“Believe what?” I shot back.
“We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, in the pouring rain, with no idea as to how we’re gonna get back, and all you want to talk about is your boyfriend’s fucking family tree,” he barked.
“You started it…” I said.
“No, I never, it was you…”
“Be quiet,” I said, raising my hand in the air. Potter looked at me as if I’d slapped him. “I can hear something.”
“I can’t hear…”
“Shhh,” I warned him, cocking my head toward the speaker. Deep within the sound of static, I could hear music. It was faint, but there it was all the same. “I can hear music.”
We both stared up at the speaker as the static faded and the music grew louder – clearer. It was a tune I recognised, but couldn’t quite place it. The music began to swell as it boomed out of the tiny speaker. The wall started to shake, brick dust falling away and covering the rain-drenched platform.
The words came through clearer, and as they did, a smile crawled across my face.
“What are you looking so pleased about?” Potter yelled over the heart pounding music.
“Sam didn’t set a trap for me,” I hollered back.
“How can you be so sure?” Potter roared, the music so loud now that the platform had started to vibrate.
“The song!” I grinned. “It’s called Going Underground by The Jam.”
“So?” Potter shouted over the music.
“The music is telling us that the next train will take us underground – back to that Underground Station.”
“How do you know?” Potter asked.
Turning around, I pointed at the tube train that now waited at the platform, and said, “Because of that.”
I walked toward the train, and as I did, the doors slid open. Together, we stepped into the empty carriage. The doors whooshed closed behind us, cutting dead the music coming from the platform. Slowly, the train eased out of the station. Potter went to the door and looked out at the cracks in the night sky. Then, as if being struck by a sudden thought, he looked at me and said, “The picture Sam was sent to take of me in that barn?”
“What about it?”
“That picture was used by Luke to convict me of the murder of that wolf boy – Dorsey,” Potter said.
“So?” I asked.
“Who was Sam told to give that photograph to?” Potter asked, stepping away from the door and coming towards me.
“To his father,” I breathed.
With his eyes turning black, Potter looked at me and said, “Kayla, we’ve got to get off this train. We are heading into a trap.”
Suddenly, the lights went out.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Isidor
With my rucksack over my back, wings and crossbow hidden beneath my long, black coat, Melody and I left her tiny secluded cottage. Hand in hand we set off through the snow. It swirled and danced all around us, settling in our hair and on our shoulders. Melody had pulled her long, pink hair into two bunches and they swished about on either side of her head. Our feet crunched deep into the snow, which was now almost knee-deep. Night was drawing in, and those cracks shone brighter than ever. The sky looked like it had been covered with grey coloured slabs of crazy paving. The wind was bitterly cold, and Melody tightened the scarf she wore about her neck. The end of my nose tingled, and we hadn’t gone very far when the tip of it had started to turn numb. I rubbed the end of it with the back of my hand, and that’s when I first smelt blood. I thought perhaps I had cut my hand and it was bleeding without me knowing it. But my hands were unharmed.
“Can you smell blood?” I asked Melody, knowing that as a wolf she would have an extra sensitive sense of smell.
“Blood?” she said.
“It’s coming from up ahead,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Positive,” I said, speeding up a little. The smell of fresh blood made my stomach somersault with pangs I hadn’t felt for a while.
The path we followed opened out a little as we headed further down the mountain. To our left there was an open plain. I turned my head in that direction, the smell of fresh blood growing ever stronger on the wind. The area was covered in a thick carpet of snow, and out of this jutted a series of giant black rocks. From a distance, they looked like gravestones that had crumbled away in places. Then over the howl of the wind, I heard the unmistakeable cry of a baby. Melody heard it too, and she glanced sideways at me.
“The baby who got snatched from its crib,” she said.
She raced away toward the rocks in the direction of the crying baby. “Melody!” I called out, suddenly sensing danger. But she was gone, moving with a swiftness over the snow that surprised even me. I ran after her, reaching inside my co
at and drawing my crossbow. Ahead of me, Melody reached the rocks that protruded out of the thick snow. She cried out, throwing her hands to her face. I sprang through the air, closing the gap between us in an instant. I landed beside her, sending up a shower of powdery snow. I peered around the edge of the rock and had to use all of my strength to not cry out too.
Lying in a puddle of pink snow was the remains of a small child. The wolf looked up at us, its snout and bushy whiskers bright red and wet-looking. Sticking out of the snow nearby was what looked like a bright yellow blanket.
“A wolf,” Melody said, staggering backwards.
I glanced at her, knowing that there had been a time when she had thought perhaps the creature killing the children in the woods had wings like me.
Looking back at me, and as if being able to read my mind, Melody said, “I didn’t want to believe it could be a wolf, although I guess deep in my heart I knew it was.”
Before I’d the chance to say anything, the wolf that had killed the child leapt into the air, crushing its giant paws into Melody’s chest. Before Melody had even slammed into the snow, I had drawn a bolt from my rucksack, loaded my crossbow, taken aim at the wolf, and shot it in the head. The creature released a gut-wrenching howl as it dropped out of the air and into the snow. It lay on its side, tongue lolling from its massive jaws. It panted rapidly, its bright orange eyes rolling in their wet-looking sockets. I fired another bolt into its skull and it fell still. Before my eyes, its fur began to fall away to reveal the human man beneath. In a perverse kind of way, he looked as if he had been shot in the head while out walking naked in the snow. I turned away and ran toward Melody.
“Are you okay?” I said, pulling her up.
“Just winded,” she gasped, brushing snow from the seat of her jeans.
“We’d better get outta here before more of those Skin-walkers show up,” I said, taking her by the hand and setting off through the snow again.
“I think we’re too late,” she said, pointing behind us.
I glanced back over my shoulder to see a ferocious pack of berserkers and their handlers racing after us through the snow. The berserkers barked and snapped their cavernous jaws with rage. Lengths of drool swung from their jaws like bungee ropes. Several of the Skin-walkers took aim with their guns and opened fire. Bullets screamed over our heads and thundered into the snow at our feet.
Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series Two (Book 8)) Page 11
