by Tim O'Rourke
Kiera Hudson - Dead Angels
(Series Two)
Book Two
By
Tim O’Rourke
Copyright 2012 by Tim O’Rourke
Kindle Edition
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 return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Story Editor (Hacker)
Lynda O’Rourke
Book cover designed by:
Carles Barrios
Copyright: Carles Barrios 2012
Carlesbarrios.blogspot.com
Copyedited by:
Carolyn M. Pinard
www.thesupernaturalbookeditor.com
For Jane Evans
You know why...
Thanks to:
Jennifer at readitreviewit.wordpress.com
Michelle at novelsontherun.blogspot.com
Shana at bookvacations.wordpress.com
Rachel at rachybee-the-rest-is-still-unwritten.blogspot.com
Darkfallen & Greta at Paranormalwastelands.blogspot.com
Angie at www.bookstomorrow.blogspot.com
Aliraluna at Velvet Red Thingworlds.blogspot.com
Mary at Pageaway.blogspot.com
Alison at imabibliophobic.blogspot.com
Who all took the time to review my books – Thank you!
More books by Tim O’Rourke
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
Dead Flesh (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 1
Dead Night (Kiera Hudson Series 2) Book 1.5
Black Hill Farm (Book 1)
Black Hill Farm: Andy’s Diary (Book 2)
Doorways (Book 1)
You can contact Tim O’Rourke at
www.Ravenwoodgreys.com
Or by email at [email protected]
Chapter One
Kiera
“What did he do to me?” I shouted at Potter.
“He killed you!” Potter said back, coming towards me from the other side of the table.
The windows in the consulting room rattled in their frames, as a steady wind blew hard outside.
“I know he killed me!” I snapped as he gripped my upper arms. I wasn’t mad at Potter, I was mad at the thought of not knowing what Jack Seth had done to me before he had killed me. So many times I had looked into the killer’s eyes and seen myself with him. I had watched as he had hurt me, paralysed me through fear or lust, so I couldn’t fight him off.
“He’s full of shit,” Potter tried to calm me.
“Whatever he did to me, Seth said that I loved every moment of it,” I reminded him, and the nightmarish images of Seth and me together that raced across my mind made me feel sick and violated.
Potter looked at Isidor and Kayla, who still sat around the table watching us, and hooked his thumb toward the door.
Knowing what he meant, Kayla pushed her chair back, stood up, and said, “I’m gonna go check on Sam.” Then, fixing Isidor with a hard stare, she added, “Isidor, let’s go and see if Sam is feeling any better.”
“Okay, sure,” Isidor said, and both of them left the room.
Once on our own, Potter looked into my eyes and said, “Don’t let Seth put you in a mind-fuck. That’s what he wants.”
“But he said that he seduced that pathologist into telling him my name,” I reminded him over the wind that was now beginning to pick up outside. Hearing this, Potter appeared to flinch in my arms. “Are you okay?” I asked.
Potter loosened his hold on me and stepped back towards the table. “I’m fine,” he said, taking a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it.
“What’s wrong?” I quizzed, suspecting that he was hiding something from me.
“Honest, I’m okay,” he said, breaking my stare and going to the window where he peered up into the night sky. “It looks like a storm is coming.”
“When have you ever given a crap about the weather?” I asked him, sensing that something wasn’t right. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“There’s nothing to tell, sweet-cheeks,” he said with his back to me and a cloud of blue smoke forming around his head.
Striding across the room, I went to join him at the window. “Don’t shut me out, Potter. What do you know?”
“Nothing,” he sighed, glancing at me, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“You’re lying,” I whispered, starting to feel nervous, yet I didn’t know why. “Talk to me, Potter.”
“I can’t,” he whispered back, staring out of the window.
It was so dark outside that I could see his reflection looking back at me, and I could see that his eyes looked darker than usual.
“You can’t, or you won’t?” I pushed, placing my hand gently on his muscular forearm.
“You’re just gonna have to trust me,” he said to the window.
“You’re scaring me,” I whispered, and I did feel scared. I was scared of what Seth might have done to me before tearing me to pieces. Did Potter know something about that? But how would he? We’d been together since coming back from the dead. No, Potter had left that day, the day he had gone to get my police badge and that picture of me and my dad.
“You have nothing to be scared of,” he said, finally turning to face me. The look of sadness on his face frightened me more than anything. The last time I had seen such sorrow in his eyes was when he’d cradled Murphy’s dead body in his arms beneath the Fountain of Souls.
“Is it Murphy?” I asked him, my voice barely a whisper as I looked into his eyes.
“Murphy?” he frowned, his eyes growing wide.
“I know you miss him,” I said. “I know it’s him you are thinking of when you sit and chain smoke in front of the fireplace. He was like a father to you – he was like a father to all of us. I wish he was here, too. I wish my father...”
“Stop,” Potter said, raising his hand, and turning away. “I can’t talk about this anymore.”
“Why not?” I asked, pulling him back so I could look into his eyes.
Potter stared down at me, and with a grim and troubled look on his face, he said, “Kiera, I can’t talk about this right now.” Then, leaning in close, he planted the softest of kisses on my mouth.
“You know you can tell me anything,” I whispered, brushing my cheek against his.
“Not everything,” he whispered back.
Before I had the chance to ask what he meant by that, I heard Kayla scream.
Chapter Two
Isidor
I followed my sister from the study, and closed the door behind me. Potter wanted to be alone with Kiera and that was cool with me. They had stuff they needed to talk about, and I’d probably say the wrong thing if I stayed. Potter would have gotten all cranky with me again, and I didn’t have to do too much for that to happen.
I knew that Potter thought I was thick – a joke. Maybe I did get things wrong at times but I wasn’t li
ke him. I hadn’t lived above ground as long as he had. He knew more about life above ground than me – that was a given. But I knew stuff too – I had seen things – and I wasn’t just talking about episodes of “Scooby-Doo.”
While Potter had been away, I’d tried to bring myself up to speed by checking the Internet for some of the stuff that Potter had talked about. I did it to keep up with him, like any younger brother who looks up to the elder one. But there seemed to be so much to learn about this strange world. And it was strange. It was strange way before it got pushed.
There was that word again. Pushed.
Push. I had seen that word before. But I had never suspected its significance until Kiera had written it down on that advert which Kayla and I had posted in the shop window. I had wanted to say something – I wanted to say that I had seen that word before – but would anyone have listened to me? Would I have been taken seriously? Not by Potter, that was for sure. He would have just ribbed me and told me I was talking shit again.
But I had kept quiet before and it had cost me my life – it had cost my sister’s life. Back then, as we had crossed The Hollows, I felt that I was unable to say anything. I was scared that the others would have dismissed me – or worse, laughed at me. And could I have blamed them? Even when I was sure that Luke was really Elias Munn, I felt unable to tell my friends what I feared. I hadn’t even been able to tell Kayla. I didn’t think twice about killing a werewolf if I had to, I didn’t hesitate drawing my crossbow in defence, but I was so often scared of saying what I felt for fear of...fear of what, exactly?
In my heart, I knew what I was scared of – I was scared of getting hurt. I’d been there before and didn’t want to go back. For such a tall guy, with jet black hair and even darker tattoos up my arm and neck, the goatee beard and eyebrow piercing, I was too soft, I guess. I looked confident –but I wasn’t. The tattoos and stuff were there because they had to be – not because I had wanted them. Before the black flames, which covered my arm and licked up beneath my chin, I had been different. To wear them was like wearing a mask – but who was I wearing that mask for, and why? I had an idea, but would anyone listen to me?
I followed Kayla into the great hall to find the large double front doors ajar. Some of the leaves that Potter had raked into a pile on the drive now blew through the gap and circled around the hall. Guessing that Jack Seth, the boy with the burns, and Emily Clarke had left the door open on their way out, I closed it against the wind that chilled the hallway. It had been a real shame to discover that Ms. Clarke had been mixed up with Seth, as she had seemed real nice. The Oompa-Loompa (I’d have to Toogle that) with the burns, as Potter had called him, looked kinda freaky, a perfect match for Seth, I thought. But Seth had tricked us all, and now the world – this new pushed one, was gonna change.
The Treaty that the wolves and humans had lived by was now in tatters, and even though it wasn’t our fault, we would be blamed for it; Seth would make sure of that. He had set us all up good and proper. How long would it take for the wolves to figure out what we had done at Ravenwood School? I didn’t know, but I could guess it wouldn’t take long before they came in search of us. Where would we run to this time? There were no more Hollows – we were trapped here?
Kiera would figure it out – she always figured everything out. But maybe I could help this time around. Perhaps I should tell her about that word push and where I had seen it before. But knowing that Potter would probably only take the piss if I told Kiera my story, I thought I would keep it to myself just a little while longer.
“Are you coming or what, Isidor?” Kayla asked, wrenching me from my thoughts.
I turned away from the front door and looked at her standing at the foot of the wide staircase. Her red hair looked as if it were on fire as it glimmered in the soft light coming from the chandelier above us.
“Coming where?” I asked her, crossing the hall.
“To check on Sam,” she said, her eyes sparkling with that twinkle which had been there ever since she had returned from Ravenwood. I knew that Sam had put that sparkle in her eyes – she liked him. I was glad for her, but kinda sad, too. It was nice to see her happy for once. Since returning from The Hollows, I’d known that Kayla hadn’t been happy. She’d seemed haunted somehow. I’d seen it in her eyes and heard it in her sobs, which had echoed through the manor at night. Now I saw something different in her eyes – it was an eagerness for life again and a desire for Sam to get well. That’s what made me sad for her. Since returning from Ravenwood School, Sam had been ill. Night after night and day after day, Kayla had sat beside his bed, wiping the fever from his brow, and cooling his burning body with a damp sponge and towels.
“What do you think is wrong with him?” I had asked her one night, as she had sat beside Sam’s bed, one of her hands folded over his.
“I think it has something to do with what happened back at the chapel,” she hushed, fearful that she might wake the boy.
“The matching?” I whispered back, looking at the sallow colour of Sam’s flesh. It had a sickly yellow tinge to it, and was coated in a thin sheen of sweat.
“I guess,” she said, looking up at me. “You saw how his face seemed to get sucked into that wolf’s. It was trying to match with him. Take his soul.”
“But it didn’t happen – we stopped it,” I tried to convince myself more than her.
“Maybe we only half stopped it?” she mumbled, as if scared to say the words out loud for fear of it being the truth.
“What’s that s’posed to mean?” I asked, kneeling down beside the bed and handing her a wet towel.
Kayla took it from me, and as she dabbed it against his chest, I could see what looked like waves of steam seeping from his skin. “What if the wolf has infected him somehow? I mean, look at his face.”
In the pale light from the bedside lamp, I peered at Sam. His face looked swollen, as if he had been badly beaten. His eyes were swollen shut, the skin around them purple and bruised-looking. His nostrils were red and sore, and snot ran from them in thick streams. With each laboured breath he took, Sam’s throat and chest made a hideous rattling noise, like he had swallowed a child’s toy. Sam’s lips were blistered and puckered. As I looked upon his grotesque face, I realised how much Kayla musta cared for Sam. Most girls would have been too repulsed to even look at him, let alone sit in the semi-darkness throughout the night and mop the fever from his brow.
“We should get him to a hospital,” I told her.
“Potter says no,” she said, her eyes fearful.
“Why not?” I asked, frowning.
“He reckons it will draw unwanted attention,” she started to explain in such a tone that I knew she wasn’t convinced by what Potter had suggested. “The police might start asking questions as to how he came by his injuries, who we are...”
“Couldn’t we just drive him to the hospital and leave him...?” I started.
“No way,” Kayla snapped. “I promised Sam I wouldn’t leave him. “Besides, he knows what I am – what we all are. Potter’s worried that in his delirious state he might talk about what he saw – what he witnessed us do back at the school.”
“We can’t just sit back and watch him die,” I told her, the steam curling up from his body.
“He won’t die,” Kayla insisted. “I’m going to take care of him.”
But I hadn’t been so sure, and as I now followed Kayla through the dim narrow passageways towards Sam’s room, I was fearful of what we might find.
Chapter Three
Isidor
Kayla pushed Sam’s bedroom door open. The room was dimly lit, and being so high up in the manor, the wind blew around the eaves, sounding like a child crying as they woke from a nightmare. The bedroom window was open, and the curtains billowed out like two sails in the cold night air. Then, way off in the distance, I heard the rumble of thunder.
Sam lay on his bed in the far corner of the room, and even though it was bitterly cold, tendrils of steam coiled up from
his body and leaked from his mouth and nostrils. He writhed about on the sheets, which were damp and clung to his body.
“Sam,” Kayla gasped as she crossed the room towards him, the heels of her boots echoing back from the bare wooden floorboards.
The boy made a growling sound in the pit of his throat, as thick lengths of ropey snot sprayed from between his lips and spattered the wall in black strips.
Kayla took him by the shoulders as if to restrain him, but his skin was so hot that she snapped her hands away.
“What’s happening to him?” she cried.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw something move in the shadows that darkened the other side of the room.
“Who’s there?” I called out, believing that I had seen someone hiding from us.
Sam cried out again, and this time he sounded like he was being strangled. I spun around to look at him, and as I did, I heard the sound of running from behind me. Glancing back over my shoulder, I caught just the briefest glimpse of what looked like someone sneaking out of the room and disappearing onto the landing.
“Who’s there?” I called out again, bolting towards the bedroom door. Believing that it might be Jack Seth, suddenly fearing that perhaps he hadn’t left the manor after all, I wished that I’d had my crossbow with me. With my claws springing from my fists, I peered left, then right, along the landing. There, just at the foot of the stairs, I saw the figure again. Almost covered completely by shadow, its skin looked grey – chalky like – and cracked.
A statue? I wondered.
“Hey!” I called after it.
The figure stopped, then peering back at me over its fractured-looking shoulder, it looked at me with its featureless face. Then, placing one broken finger over the area where its mouth should have been, it said, “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
Then, moving with the speed of a Vampyrus, it rushed away down the stairs. I raced down the landing after it, but before I’d even reached the top of the stairs, Kayla began to scream from behind me. Not knowing whether I should continue after the statue or head back to the bedroom, I hesitated.
