by Tim O'Rourke
“But I saw paw prints leading away from the shower block,” I insisted.
Shaking his head from side to side, and not taking his eyes off mine, he said, “Not my paw prints.”
“How can I be sure it wasn’t you?” I snapped.
Then looking me up and down as if he were undressing me with his eyes, he licked his lips again with his dead-looking tongue and chuckled, “Kiera, if it had been me that had had the pleasure of seeing you washing yourself in that shower, you’d be dead now – I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.”
“Okay that’s enough, you sick pup,” Potter snarled and pushed Seth away. “Why don’t you do everyone a favour and go and die somewhere?”
Straightening the bandana around his throat, Seth smiled and said to Eloisa, “C’mon my dear, let’s go and get some air, I need to cool down – perhaps a cold shower might sort me out.”
“Yeah, why don’t you go and do that,” Potter yelled.
With my heart racing in my chest and my breathing coming out in short, sharp breaths, I watched Seth and Eloisa leave the canteen.
When they had gone, Isidor and Kayla came rushing across the room towards me.
“Where did you spring from?” Isidor breathed.
“Yeah, what just happened?” Kayla chipped in. “It was like one minute I was sitting there listening to your iPod and the next minute the werewolf dude was flying across the room.”
“I don’t know what happened,” I whispered, looking down at my hands, which had now gone back to their normal shape and size.
“You threw Seth across the room like he was made of straw,” Isidor said.
Looking at the three of them, I said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
Then lighting a cigarette, Potter said, “You’re changing – that’s what’s happening.” Turning to Isidor and Kayla, Potter said, “Okay, the show’s over. Go and get your stuff, we’re moving out in five minutes.”
Without saying anything back, Kayla and Isidor looked at one another, then silently left.
“Help me, Potter,” I said looking at him.
“You don’t look like you need any help, tiger,” he said, and blew smoke from his nostrils.
“Please, just for once, can’t you stop the wisecracks?” I pleaded. “I’m scared.”
Pitching out his cigarette, Potter came close and cupped my face in his strong hands. “There isn’t anything to be scared of, Kiera. I’ve got your back.”
“Someone was watching me,” I told him.
“But it wasn’t Seth this time,” he said.
“Then who else could it have been?”
“Didn’t you say there was another Lycanthrope hiding out in this town?” Potter reminded me.
“Nik?” I said. “Why would he be here? Why would he be watching me?”
“Maybe he wasn’t watching you – perhaps he was guarding you?” Potter suggested.
“Guarding me?” I breathed. “Guarding me from whom?”
“Whoever it is amongst us that’s the traitor,” Potter half-smiled, but I could tell he was being serious for once.
“Isidor, you mean?” I asked.
“Now why would you go and say a thing like that?” Potter said, removing his hands from my face. Then leaning into me, he kissed me softly on the forehead. “Come on, tiger, we’ve got to get you below ground before sundown.”
“I’m not going down to The Hollows,” I told him. “Not yet, anyway.”
“You’ve got to,” he said, sounding alarmed. “You’ll be safe there.”
“Am I safe anywhere?” I asked him. And before he could answer, I said, “I’m going to look for Ravenwood.”
“But you don’t even know where to start looking,” Potter said, sounding frustrated with me.
“I know a good place to start,” I answered.
“Where?”
“Back at the facility,” I smiled.
“The facility?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “What makes you think that he would go back there?”
“Do you remember that disc I downloaded at the monastery?”
“The one we all nearly died for while it was downloading – yeah I remember it,” he said dryly.
“Well, when you snuck up on me last night, I’d been looking at some files on it,” I started to explain. “Anyway, that facility has been closed down due to some kind of biohazard. I’m guessing that the biohazard is the infection that Hunt and Ravenwood spread amongst the half-breeds they were developing. The infection probably spread amongst them, and the Vampyrus got scared enough to think that it would spread to them – that’s why they moved us to the zoo.”
“So why would Ravenwood go back if there is this potentially dangerous biohazard floating about?” Potter asked.
“Because he helped to create it and knows that it’s not dangerous to the Vampyrus, just to the half-breeds that are injected with the DNA code. See, it’s like this self-destruct button for the half-breeds. They grow so much – then wham – the infection kicks in and they die. We can’t die from it because our immune system will fight it off, but Hunt and Ravenwood were savvy enough to alter the DNA coding in the half-breeds so as not to be able to fight off the infection. So where is the one place that the Vampyrus won’t go back to?” I said.
“You’ve lost me,” Potter said with a frown.
Slapping my forehead with the flat of my hand, I cried, “The facility! Ravenwood knows that they won’t go back there for fear of becoming ill and dying – so he knows that’s the one place that he is safe.”
Staring at me, Potter said, “I’m coming with you.”
“What about Luke?” I said. “He needs to be rescued from that zoo.”
“Where is this facility?” Potter asked.
“I’m not sure, but from the diagrams on the disc, it looks as if it’s been built to look like some kind of airplane hangar,” I told him.
“The old Military of Defence place,” he said thoughtfully.
“How far away is it?” I asked him.
“A few miles away, just north of here,” he said. “Seth and I scoped it out a while back while we were searching for you. But the place looks derelict.”
“That’s where Ravenwood is hiding out,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“Well I guess we’d better get going then,” he said heading towards the door. “But you better be right about this, sweet-cheeks. We don’t have time to waste and Luke has even less.”
Catching up with him, I took hold of his hand and said, “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For coming with me. Seth gives me the creeps.” Then briefly kissing him on the cheek, I made my way out of the canteen.
Chapter Thirty
We gathered on the front steps of the police station. If the town had been full of people like it would have been only weeks before, we would have made a very odd sight to them on this cold December morning.
The six of us stood beneath the bruised and battered looking sky, great dark clouds almost seeming to hang above us. The air was so cold, that within moments it had turned my nose and ears numb. I pulled the collar of my coat up about my neck and blew into my hands to keep them warm. Isidor and Kayla stood on either side of me, both were dressed in thick jackets and dark combat trousers and boots. Kayla’s hair blew about her shoulders and Isidor’s eyebrow piercing twinkled back at me. Over his back, he had the rucksack I had taken from the store and a mass of sharpened stakes protruded from the top of it. I guessed he must have been busy collecting branches from nearby trees and sharpening them over the last couple of days.
Jack Seth and Eloisa stood on the bottom step, both of them dressed as before, as if the cold didn’t bother them. Seth looked at me and winked, and I looked away. Eloisa’s stare was as cold as the air that blew about us. Potter, dressed in a long, dark coat and jeans, explained to the team that the plan had altered slightly and that we were going to make a short detour via the old Military of Defence site. T
hen he and Eloisa will go in search of Luke, and the rest of us are to go below ground into The Hollows. Potter didn’t explain to Seth and Eloisa why we were taking the detour and they didn’t ask.
Following Potter, we made our way down the steps at the front of the police station and walked single-file up the street and out of town. The remains of the vampires that had been fed upon last night lay strewn across the street, and there was so little left of them, that if I hadn’t of seen them being attacked, I wouldn’t have known where the scattered pieces of bone and flesh had come from.
As we reached the end of the street, I looked back and was startled to see Nik slinking down the front steps of the police station and out onto the street.
I instantly called out to him but my words were lost in the wind that roared all around us.
“Did you say something?” Isidor shouted at me.
“No, it was nothing,” I replied. I looked back once more only to see that Nik had gone.
As we made our way out of town, it started to snow, and ahead I could see the never-ending stream of abandoned cars snaking away into the distance. I wished that the snow came down faster so it would cover the windows of those cars we had to pass. I didn’t want to see those disfigured and bloated faces anymore.
We passed a small children’s park and the swings listed back and forth in the wind, the chains crying out on rusty hinges. Apart from the swings and the crows that squawked from nearby fields, the world was silent – too silent. We eventually left the deserted town behind us and Potter led us over many fields, which were fast turning white. Banks of hills lay ahead and it was difficult to make out their peaks as the snow that now covered them blended in with the colour of the sky.
In silence, we walked through fast-running streams and stomped through the thickening snow. Every so often, we would pass deserted farmhouses and barns, and from the outside, each one of them looked so snug and cosy. I had to do everything in my control to stop myself from suggesting to the others that perhaps we should take a break and warm ourselves inside. But I knew what might lay behind the walls, the victims of the Vampyrus and Lycanthrope and worse still, sleeping vampires who were waiting for the night to come alive again. It wasn’t just the thought of those vampires that kept me moving, it was the gathering clouds above us. They were so dark now, almost black, and the storm raging behind them was only hours away.
So we pushed on in silence, each of us lost to our own thoughts and plans. On several occasions, I glanced sideways at Isidor and wondered what he was thinking about. Did he have a plan? If so, what kind of plan was it?
With the snow falling harder and the wind turning colder, I thrust my hands into my coat pockets, bent forward and pressed on. All of us were now covered in a layer of snow. Just as I was beginning to wonder how much further I could go on without finding somewhere warm to defrost, Isidor stopped dead in his tracks and raised one hand in the air.
“Hang on!” he shouted over the roar of the wind.
“What’s up?” Potter asked as he turned and came back down the hill towards Isidor.
“I can smell something,” Isidor said, sniffing at the air, like a dog.
“Good for you,” Potter snapped. “Come on, we haven’t got time for -”
“No, wait a minute!” Isidor insisted. “I can smell burning, like some kind of fire.”
“What, like some kind of campfire?” I asked him, wondering if I’d been wrong about Ravenwood hiding out at the facility and when in fact he was camping out in the woods that rose above us on the brow of a hill.
“Perhaps,” Isidor mumbled, shaking his head and sniffing at the air again. Then he was off, taking the lead.
“Wait up!” Potter shouted after him, but Isidor carried on like a bloodhound that had fixed on its prey’s scent.
With our feet crunching through the snow, we followed Isidor up the hill, Kayla panting beside me and the Lycanthrope following us from behind. With my cheeks flushed red with the cold and plumes of wispy breath seeping from my mouth and nose, I looked down into a large, open valley. In its centre was the hangar that I had seen in the diagrams. A tarmac road led away from the hangar, but it was too narrow to be a runway like I had originally suspected. But all the same, it was there to support large vehicles that had once come and gone from the hangar.
The whole facility was surrounded by fencing that stretched up into the sky and all of it was covered in razor wire. At each corner of the fencing stood search towers, but these looked to be unmanned and disused just like the rest of the facility. Inside the perimeter, set some way to the side of the hangar, was a cluster of tiny houses and I guessed that these were purpose-built homes for the staff who had once worked here. The place was pretty remote and I couldn’t imagine the commute to work each day to be easy one for some of them.
“There!” Isidor said, pointing down at the cluster of houses below. “See the smoke coming from that chimney?”
“Someone’s at home,” I said.
“Let’s go and pay the good doctor a house call,” Potter said starting off down the hill.
The road led directly to the gates of a large, sprawling military site which was flat and now covered in snow. Glancing back, I could see our footprints winding their way down the hill to where we now stood in front of the two large gates that towered above us. Attached to them was a warning in bright red letters which read:
MILITARY OF DEFENCE PROPERTY
TRESSPASSERS WILL BE MET
WITH DEADLY FORCE!
Or fangs and a set of giant claws, I said to myself. Despite the warning, Potter pushed against the gates, which swung open. Like the rest of the world, the site was eerily quiet, and the gates wailed on unoiled hinges. We made our way across the open area that stretched out in front of the hangar. I glanced over at it, and from ground level, the hangar looked huge. I could see that its vast doors were slightly open revealing a black slit of darkness, and it almost seemed to look at me like an eye. I couldn’t remember being in there, tested and operated on, and despite the freezing cold, I shivered at the thought of what we might find inside. Turning away, I followed Potter and the others towards the house with the smoke that tumbled from its chimney.
A white picket fence circled the little house, which was smothered on all sides with brambles and moss which covered it like green, bony hands. A twisted, gnarled-looking tree stood in the front garden, and it towered over the house like a giant, misshapen spine. It cast a shadow over the house and created a feeling of great sadness. I glanced up at the tree and thought that I saw something moving through its knotted branches – but whatever it had been was now gone in a flurry of powdery snow.
Something spoke inside of me - that inner voice of mine that had guided me during my torment in the zoo, was talking to me.
There’s something wrong, Kiera!
“Are you okay?” I heard someone ask me.
I turned to find Isidor standing next to me.
Nodding, I said, “Yeah, I’m fine.”
Seth and Eloisa joined us at the gate.
“Seen any more werewolves?” Seth asked, and his voice was so expressionless that I didn’t know whether he was being serious or having a joke at my expense.
“Not yet,” I said back, “But you can be sure that you’ll be the first to know when I do.”
Hearing this, Potter smiled to himself. Then, swinging the gate open, he made his way up the path towards the house.
“Be careful!” I called out as the rest of us made our way after him.
Chapter Thirty-One
Potter pushed against the front door, but it was locked tight.
Brushing him aside, I said, “Not so fast.”
“What’s wrong now?” Potter groaned.
“Kayla, can you hear anything?” I said, turning to look at her.
Kayla came forward through the falling snow, and swiping her hair behind her ear, she turned her head towards the front door.
“Nothing,” she whispered.<
br />
“Now perhaps we can get this over and done with?” Potter moaned, reaching for the doorknob again. Then, looking at Isidor and me, he said, “Or perhaps Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson want to have a snoop around?”
Ignoring him, I said, “Someone has been here and it wasn’t long ago. They flew here – so that makes whoever it was a Vampyrus. They were male and known to Doctor Ravenwood. He knew them well, so well that he trusted them.”
“How do you know all that?” Eloisa asked, staring at me with her brilliant eyes.
“There are no tracks leading to and from the house, apart from ours, that is,” I told her. “But there was a set of footprints in the snow just in front of the door. So whoever it was, flew here and landed just outside the door.” Pointing down to the footprints, I added, “They are too big to have been made by a female, and they haven’t yet been covered by fresh, falling snow so they were only here a short time ago. They’ve gone now, or Kayla would have heard them. Even if they weren’t moving, she would’ve heard the blood running through their veins.”
“But how can you be so sure that this Doctor Ravenwood was friends with this Vampyrus – that he trusted him?” Seth asked with a sneer.
“The door is still intact,” I said. “Whoever came here, came here for a reason and they wouldn’t have gone away if Ravenwood hadn’t have let them in. They would have, more than likely, broken the door down. It’s quite easy for me to surmise, then, that Ravenwood knew this person. Ravenwood is on the run – in hiding – he wouldn’t have just opened the door to anyone. No, it was a friend, someone he trusted.”
Slowly clapping his hands together, Potter said, “I like your style, Sherlock,” then glancing at Isidor, he added, “And what about you, Watson?”
