Dead Push (Kiera Hudson Series Two#7)

by Tim O'Rourke

  I looked back at her and continued to smile, too. I had never spoken to the girl – she didn’t know that I existed, but that didn’t stop me feeling strangely proud of her, too. I was proud of her because she might as well of had Fuck-Off tattooed across her forehead in red ink. She was telling everyone in this room – everyone that she might ever come across – that she was Melody Rose and she was different. She was telling them all she wasn’t ashamed to be different and she no longer cared what they or anyone else thought of her.

  Good for you, Melody Rose, I smiled inside. Good for you!

  Then, looking out across the pool at her friend Isidor, she said, “For one day, Isidor, I just want to be me.”

  She then dropped over the edge of the diving board. With a lump growing in my throat, I watched her splash into the water below. The crowd lost sight of her and the stunned silence was deafening. Then she appeared from beneath the water with the biggest of smiles on her face. And for the first time I realised she truly did look beautiful. Something then happened that I wasn’t expecting. The other pupils gathered around the pool jumped from their seats and started to cheer. The noise was ear-splitting. Hearing their cheers, Melody started to punch the air with her fist. It was like she was starting a revolution, not only in the room, but inside the other kids gathered beside the pool. It was like an electric charge had been set off. I looked at all the smiling and beaming faces of the school children, and knew that Melody’s defiance meant something to them too. Not one of them would ever forget this. They would tell their husbands and wives, recount this story to their children, their grandchildren, each of them never forgetting the importance of being true to yourself. Not to ever let anyone change you.

  “Doesn’t that mean you, too, Jack?” a voice said, over the roar of the crowd.

  I looked sideways, to find the bride now sitting next to me.

  “It doesn’t apply to me,” I said.

  “You let your mother change you,” she said. “You didn’t have to turn out like her. Melody refuses to be like her mother. Melody’s life has been very much like yours…”

  “There’s one difference between Melody and me,” I said, getting up from my seat, not wanting to hear any more.

  “And what’s that?” the bride called after me.

  “Melody is stronger than me… she is better than me,” I said, walking away through the roaring crowds.

  I looked back only once, to see Melody being dragged from the pool by one of her teachers. I just hoped she was strong enough to deal with the hurt that she would inevitably receive for making a stand. And perhaps that’s why I never made a stand – because I was sick of all the hurt. It seemed easier to hurt than let yourself be hurt. Both Isidor and Melody had confronted their demons without becoming a monster like I had.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Potter

  I stood in the mouth of the alleyway and looked out at Kiera’s apartment. It was fully dark now. The rain had stopped at last. The air was still damp, but there were very little clouds in the sky, and the stars shone through, as did the moon. I still wasn’t certain of what I was going to do, but I had to do something. Lilly’s warning kept circling around and around in my mind. With the other Potter dead, who was left to warn Kiera of the trap I feared Sparky had set for her tonight?

  “But you’re not meant to be saving her, Potter,” a voice from beside me said.

  I looked down to see the young girl standing behind me in the alleyway. Her pale white face looked up at me from the dark like a small moon.

  “Hey, little girl,” I said.

  “Yes?” she smiled.

  “Scram!” I barked.

  Just like she had before, she waved her corpse-white hand at me, then melted away, back into the darkness she had crept from.

  I looked back at the apartment block across the street. The light in Kiera’s living room was turned off, sending her apartment into darkness. My heart started to race. The front door swung open and Kiera appeared from the other side of it. Her long, jet-black hair hung straight on either side of her pale face. Her lips were full red, and her eyes bright. She was dressed all in black, as was standard on these types of operations. There was no difference between this Kiera and the Kiera I had fallen in love with. Were they not both the same? I wondered as she approached her car. My heart started to quicken. Wasn’t this Kiera really my Kiera, separated only by a piece of tracing paper? Whether she was mine or not, I couldn’t let Kiera walk into a trap. I couldn’t let her die, however bad the consequences might be for me. Maybe Jack should have come? I wondered as Kiera opened the car door and climbed inside. Maybe he would have been able to keep his head better than me. I doubted it – but perhaps.

  I heard the sound of the car engine rumble into life. Kiera switched on the headlights, then pulled away in the car just as I pounced across the street.

  “Potter!” Kiera screamed, slamming on the brakes.

  I pressed the palms of my hands flat against the car bonnet.

  “Have you lost your mind?” she said, winding down the window and looking at me in shock. “I could’ve killed you.”

  “I changed my mind about tonight,” I said, coming around the side of the car and opening the passenger door. “I’m coming with you.” I sat down, drawing my knees up until they almost touched my chin.

  “Why the change of heart?” she said, looking sideways at me in the dark, the engine ticking over.

  “That’s the problem,” I said, looking back at her. “My heart has never changed from the way I feel about you, and it never will.”

  As soon as the words had passed over my lips, I wished I could’ve taken them back. I’d just wanted to be kind, but I had instead said the cruellest thing. If Kiera did survive tonight then she would think I was back in her life. But the Potter in this world was dead and I had to go back to mine.

  Kiera looked at me and I prepared myself for another punch in the face. With tears standing in the corner of her eyes, she leant forward and kissed me softly on the cheek.

  “What was that for?” I asked her.

  “For being the most infuriating man I have ever met,” she whispered, turning front and setting off down the road.

  “Is that a good thing?” I asked.

  “Not for me, I guess,” she half-smiled to herself.

  I wasn’t sure if she was paying me a compliment or not, so I didn’t say anything and lit another cigarette. If Kiera survived tonight, then before I left, I would tell her the truth. Kiera deserved that. I would tell her everything. I would show her my wings and tell her to go run and hide and to never look back. If that fucked things up in some way, then I would have to live with it. What was Lilly going to do – send me to my room? And besides, what would she do if she was in my situation and she had the chance of saving her daughters – saving Murphy?

  “But she isn’t your Kiera Hudson,” a voice whispered.

  I looked over my shoulder, half expecting to see that little girl waving at me from the backseat. But she wasn’t there. It had been my own voice warning me this time around.

  “Is everything okay?” Kiera asked. “You look kinda stressed.”

  “It’s nothing,” I lied, looking front again. “It’s been a while since I’ve been on a stakeout.”

  “It will be fun,” she smiled at me. “Just like the old days. We met on an undercover job, remember?”

  “How could I ever forget?” I smiled back.

  “Can you remember what you called me?” she asked.

  How the fuck should I know? I wanted to get off this topic, and fast. “Mmm… I can’t really remember.”

  “You were a real jerk,” she said.

  “That doesn’t sound like me,” I smiled at her.

  “You called me Miss Marple, and can you remember why?” she glanced at me.

  “Because… because…” I said, acting as if the memory was just out of reach.

  “Because the dead body of that kid was hidden in the boot of t
he father’s car just like I said it would be, and you said it would be hidden in the attic,” she said, filling in the blanks for me.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “How could I ever forget that?”

  “You know what my sense of smell can be like,” she said. “That’s another reason I knew that you were spying on me from that alleyway.”

  I thought Kiera saw things – not smelt things. So there were subtle differences between the two Kieras. “You could smell the cigarette smoke?”

  “Sweat! That’s what I could smell, Potter,” she laughed. “You hadn’t showered in days. You stank!”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, looking out of the window and into the dark. Not wanting to discuss my personal hygiene – or lack of it – I said, “Do you think Sparky will be surprised to see me again?”

  “I guess, you’ve been away for more than a year,” she said. “He won’t be as surprised as I was when I found you sitting in my apartment.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” I muttered, flicking the cigarette end through the gap in the window. “So where are we meeting up with Sparky?”

  “Just on the outskirts of town,” she said, driving the car through the night.

  “Out of town?” I frowned. “What’s there to rob in the middle of nowhere? If a place was going to be hit, then wouldn’t it be a bank, or…”

  “It’s Bleak Point Railway Station,” she said.

  “A railway station?” I asked. Now why wasn’t I surprised about that? It kinda made sense in a perverted kind of way.

  “I know, you would never have guessed it,” she said. “That’s why this team of robbers have been so freaking hard to catch. They’re not committing their crimes in town, but out of town in the remotest of places. Churches, farmhouses, and now a remote railway station.”

  “What are they gonna find to steal at a railway station? A bunch of goddamn tickets?” I said.

  “The ATM,” she said. “It will be full of cash.”

  “Will it?” I said, not convinced. “If I were gonna go to all the trouble of ripping out an ATM, I would do it at a gas station.”

  “You would,” she laughed softly.

  “Think about it for a minute,” I said. “Hit a gas station in town and you could be on a motorway and miles away from the scene of the crime in minutes. Hit a place in the middle of fucking nowhere, and you could spend the next six hours or so driving around with your thumb up your arse because you’ve got lost – especially in the dark. It’s pitch black out here.”

  “I guess that’s what they like about it,” she said, peering into the darkness ahead of us. Then, slowly she steered her car down a narrow overgrown dirt track. Wild undergrowth scratched the sides of her car. Ahead, I saw the red reflectors of a car shining back in Kiera’s headlights. “There’s John,” she whispered, bringing the car to a stop.

  The driver’s door swung open ahead of us down the track. Both me and Kiera got out and walked towards the tall figure that loomed ahead of us in the darkness. I approached the man who was investigating my murder. I glanced at Kiera, then ahead again.

  Sparky stepped out of the darkness. His face was nothing more than a red rash of spots. His glasses sat lopsided across the bridge of his nose, one arm held together with a sticking plaster. His black greasy hair was smeared to one side across his brow.

  “This is a surprise,” he said, offering me his hand to shake.

  I lit a cigarette, and peering through the smoke at him, I smiled and said, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Sparky.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jack

  I’d gone back to the grate and waited for either Isi-bore, Melody, or perhaps even the photographer to show up. I no longer really cared which. I’d had enough of this world and wanted to go back. But what did I have to go back to? My brother had gone – sacrificed himself for our sister – a sister who would never want anything to do with me. And could I blame her? No – not at all. I had held her captive and forced her to watch me torture her father to death, for fuck’s sake. How did anyone ever begin to forgive something like that? All they would ever want is revenge. But Kiera had had her chance for revenge. She could’ve given me over to Murphy and Potter. Kiera hadn’t, though. Kiera had let me go. I had wanted her to make her choice and as I sat in the wood and stared at the grate, I knew in my twisted little heart what that choice had really been about. I had wanted her to choose me. I had been so desperate for Kiera – my sister – to choose me over her own father, her lover Potter, and her friends. No one had ever chosen me. Even the man I had loved as a father had chosen Kiera over me. Fuck, that hurt and I wanted her to hurt, too. If she felt the hurt I had, then perhaps she would become a monster too – just like I had. But she hadn’t become a monster, even after everything I had put her through. Why hadn’t she given in to the curse like I had? She was half wolf too. What was so different about Kiera and me?

  “She chose differently to you, Jack,” the voice said.

  Without even looking up, I knew the bride was close again. I didn’t want to see her standing there all in white, that veil flapping about her face.

  “Go away,” I whispered, my head hung low.

  “Poor little Jack,” the bride said with a sneer. “Poor little boy who got left behind by his mummy. Poor little Isi-bore who can’t read and write and was given up by his mummy. Poor little Melody Doze who was whipped by her momma and will be killed by her. Poor little Kiera Hudson who was deceived by her mother and betrayed by you and her friends. You’re all the same, but with one difference, Jack.”

  “Shut the fuck up!” I seethed, prodding at my temples with my fingertips again.

  The bride continued, despite my protests. “Every one of you had a choice to make. You could let your past with all its pain defeat you or make you. Kiera and the others got back up every time they were knocked down. But you chose not to get back up, Jack. That’s the difference between Kiera and you. Kiera is a fighter and you’re a killer. There is a big difference, Jack.”

  Snarling, I lept from the base of the tree. I grabbed hold of the bride’s throat with my claws. I ripped back the veil, wanting to look upon her face, but there was nothing there. My claws were clutching at air. I dropped to my knees and howled. Why was I being haunted like this? But I now understood I had been haunted by nothing more than my own guilt and shame.

  With my claws covering my emaciated face, I howled in rage. The pain and anger I felt only ate the more of me up, just like it always had and always would. The curse’s grip on me was undeniable. It had taken hold of me like a cancer and it was terminal. There was no cure and there was definitely no hope for me. If I had no hope for myself then who would? I staggered to my feet and looked back at the grate. I just wanted to finish what I had come to do and leave this place. I was about to go, when I heard the sound of sobbing. More ghosts, I feared.

  “I’m sorry, Momma,” the voice pleaded.

  I spun around and spied through the trees to see Melody being dragged through the woods by her mother.

  “Please, Momma!” Melody cried out, trying to pull herself free of her mother’s grip.

  “Shut your evil mouth!” her mother barked. “I don’t want to hear the devil talking to me.”

  “No, Momma,” Melody begged. She stumbled forward and over into the leaf-covered ground. Her bonnet came free, and I staggered backwards. Melody’s head had been shaved. Gone was her pink hair. Melody was dragged, kicking and screaming, into a small clearing.

  Springing into the air, I became the monster which lurked inside of me and raced towards them. From a nearby tree, I watched her momma snatch up the fallen bonnet. Melody lay at her momma’s feet sobbing.

  “Please let me go, Momma,” she begged, lacing her fingers together as if in prayer.

  “Don’t speak to me,” her mother hissed, pulling the black cords free of the bonnet she held in her hands. “It is my daughter’s lips that move, but the devil’s voice I can hear.”

  “P
lease…” Melody started. But her last word was strangled into nothing as her mother wrapped the cord from the bonnet around her daughter’s throat.

  Melody threw her hands into the air and clawed at her neck. It felt odd watching Melody and her mother struggle together – it was like watching two nuns having a fight. Melody kicked her legs out as her mother forced her flat onto the ground. I stuck my long snout around the edge of the tree, my eyes blazing almost red. I wanted to lunge from my hiding place and stop this. I wanted to save Melody.

  Don’t change anything… I heard Lilly Blu whisper in my ear.

  So it was the mother who killed Melody Rose and I had to just sit back and watch that happen. Was this some kind of punishment for all the lives I had taken… was this in some way to illustrate to me the futility of killing?

  With my heart racing in my chest, and fighting the unbearable urge to stop Melody from being strangled to death, I slipped back behind the tree before I was seen. I lay on my front, giant paws over my ears, as I tried to block out the sound of Melody gasping and fighting for air. I could hear her hands slapping against her mother, and her feet thrashing against the leaves as she fought for her life. After what seemed like an eternity, the sounds of Melody’s fight began to lessen until they finally stopped. Peering around the edge of the tree, I watched Melody’s mother climb off her daughter’s lifeless body. She looked down at Melody, and lacing her fingers together she silently prayed.

  The urge to bound into the clearing and rip the woman to pieces was almost too much to bear. I wanted to kill this woman more than I’d ever wanted to kill anyone. But I knew I couldn’t. However much agony Melody’s mother had caused, I was unable to do anything about it – just like I had been unable to prevent it. I heard the sound of rustling and looked back around the tree. The mother was heading out of the clearing, leaving Melody’s body on the ground amongst the fallen leaves and twigs. Once her mother had gone, I crept into the clearing. Rearing up on my back legs, I changed back into my human form.