Vampire Breed (Kiera Hudson Series Book Four)

by Tim O'Rourke

  Fixing Potter with a stare, Isidor said, “I can smell blood.”

  Hearing this, Potter brushed Isidor aside, stepped up to the front door and without any hesitation smashed his fist into one of the wooden panels. His hand cut through the door as if he were tearing through a sheet of soggy paper. He eased his arm through up to his elbow, twisted it slightly, and then the sound of the lock being released could be heard from the other side. Potter withdrew his arm, and gently pushed open the door with his fingertips.

  Without apprehension, he marched inside the house. I started after him and as he was about to step into the hallway, I grabbed hold of his arm.

  “Be careful,” I said and looked into his dark eyes.

  He looked down at my hand, and then looked back at me. “So you keep telling me,” he smiled and shrugged my hand free. The others followed us inside and closed the door behind them.

  We stood in the gloom of the hallway and the only sound breaking the silence was our breathing. To Kayla, that sound must have been deafening. I glanced about. There was a staircase to our right and I peered up into the darkness. Potter followed my gaze and looked up. He stared back at me and his eyes were as black as the landing above us.

  “Wait down here,” he told us.

  Without giving anyone a chance to object, he began to stride up the stairs two at a time.

  Isidor wandered away from me and pushed open a door which led into a lounge. Looking down, I saw a trail of blood leading from beneath the door, and I feared what might be waiting for us on the other side. But before I had a chance to say anything, Isidor went inside. He disappeared from view and I waited. No sound came from the room, so I carefully peered around the edge of the door and looked inside.

  Isidor was looking at a body that lay lace face-down on the floor. Beneath the body was a worn-looking rug, with frayed and turned-up corners. A set of bay windows shed a slither of milky light into the room. It was furnished with comfortable chairs and a sofa. There were chocolate brown bookshelves stuffed with leather bound tomes and a large coffee table that had sheets of paper scattered across it. A fireplace was carved into the wall, and behind the grate were lumps of coal that glowed hot and red, sending a spiral of smoke tumbling up the chimney.

  Isidor turned to face me as Kayla and the two Lycanthrope entered the room. Seeing the body on the floor, Kayla gasped, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  She nodded, not taking her eyes off the body sprawled before us.

  “This couldn’t be the work of a Lycanthrope,” Seth said smugly, “His injuries don’t look that bad.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Potter asked as he strolled into the room and lit a cigarette. “I’d say that was pretty bad.”

  “Maybe he collapsed?” Isidor said, eyeing the body.

  Toeing the body with the tip of his boot, Potter rolled the figure over and said, “Yeah perhaps you’re right, Watson. Maybe Ravenwood hit the corner of the coffee table as he went down, and ripped half of his face off and throat out!”

  “He was killed by a Vampyrus,” I whispered, dropping to my knees to examine the floor. I brushed the tips of my fingers over the rug that Ravenwood was stretched across, and ran them around the edges of his body. His face was torn open from the top left corner to the bottom of his ear and I could see his teeth grinning back at me. An opening ran from beneath his chin to his navel. The open cavity didn’t smell as much as I feared, as his intestines had been taken or more than likely, eaten. Glancing up Isidor, I could see that he had covered his mouth and nose with his hands.

  “Well?” Potter asked.

  “He wasn’t attacked here, not in this room anyway,” I started, as I ran the palms of my hands down over Ravenwood’s open eyes and closed them. “He crawled in here from another room in the house, the kitchen probably, but his killer thought that he had left Ravenwood for dead in the kitchen. Ravenwood crawled in here after the Vampyrus had left. His attacker was right-handed, about six-foot-one in height, but no more than six-two. The killer didn’t come here to find the code, he came here to give me a warning – he wanted me to know that, again, he was one step ahead of us. He knew we would come here for Ravenwood. And I can see where Ravenwood hid the last part of his code.”

  “How do you know all that stuff?” Kayla asked.

  “She’s making it up,” Seth sneered.

  Without looking at Seth, I said, “Ravenwood didn’t die here because there is very little blood on the rug and no blood splatter marks on the walls or ceiling.”

  “The good-old blood splatter book,” Potter said, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “I’m pleased to say I missed that spellbinding class at training school.”

  “The size and severity of his injuries show that there would have been blood, and lots of it, but there is hardly any here. The blood leading from the door and up the hallway is undisturbed. If he had been killed in here, the killer would have surely left some footprint or trace as he exited the house.”

  “They could have flown out?” Isidor suggested.

  “Wingspan,” I said back, shaking my head. “The room is too small and the hallway too narrow. No, he was definitely killed in the kitchen. Ravenwood was struck on the left side of his face, and the tears in the flesh show that he was attacked from the front – therefore his killer was right-handed.”

  “Let me guess,” Potter cut in, “you know the killer’s height by the spread between each of the footprints?”

  “You’re learning, but there are no footprints, remember? Now pay attention,” I said. “When people write a message on a wall, they write it at eye level, so this leaves a good indication as to the height of whoever left the message.”

  “What message?” Kayla asked.

  “That message!” I said pointing to the wall, cast in shadow by the open door. At once, they all turned around and looked at the message that had been scrawled in blood across the wall.

  In a breathless voice, Kayla read it aloud. “Kiera, I got to the Doc first – now bring me the code!”

  “What does that mean?” Isidor asked, as we watched the bloody letters drip down the walls.

  “It means what it says,” I whispered. “He’s telling me that he knows my every move and that he knows I’ll take the code to him.”

  “But you won’t, will you?” Kayla asked, looking at me, her eyes wide.

  “Not intentionally,” I said thoughtfully.

  “But if this Vampyrus killed Ravenwood in the kitchen, why leave the message in here?” Eloisa asked me.

  “By leaving it here, behind the door, he is telling me that he knows how my mind works. The killer knew that I would search the house, leave no stone unturned. That’s my nature. So he hid the message behind the door. It’s also his way of informing me that he got away – disappeared without revealing himself. It’s his way of making contact with me, but not directly. He’s trying to taunt me.”

  “Okay, enough of the psychology,” Seth sneered, “You said you could see where Ravenwood had hidden the code. I can’t see it.”

  “That’s because you look – but don’t see,” I said. “If Ravenwood was able to crawl out of the kitchen, why didn’t he go to the front door to get away and find some help? That would be the natural thing to do, right? But he didn’t, he came in here and sprawled himself face-down on this rug. Remember how his arms were spread out, almost as if it was his dying wish to protect something – to conceal it with his body?” Then, kneeling down again, I pointed to the turned-up end of the rug. “See this? It’s been rolled back, and often, as the corner has failed to roll flat again. And if you look really closely, you can see that the colour of the floor beneath the rug is exactly the same shade as the rest of the floor. If the rug had been here for many years, wouldn’t the colour of the floor beneath the rug be lighter?”

  Taking hold of the corner of the rug, I said, “Ravenwood put it here recently to hide something.” Then, pulling
it back, I revealed a hatch that had been cut into the floor.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I peered over Potter’s shoulder and could see a set of wooden stairs leading down into darkness.

  “I wonder what’s down there?” I whispered.

  “Why are you whispering?” Potter whispered back.

  “Dunno,” I shrugged, and followed him down into the pitch black.

  There was a wall to my right and I could see a banister attached to it. I gripped hold of the banister and moved down. The stairs cried out beneath us as the others followed down behind. At the bottom, I nearly collided with Potter’s shoulder as he suddenly came to a halt in front of me. For a moment there was silence, stillness, nothing. Then I heard a click as Potter pulled on the light switch that hung from the ceiling just above him. My new surroundings appeared before me in the dim glow of the naked light bulb.

  My throat made a shallow wheezing sound as I sucked in a mouthful of air in shock at what had just been revealed to me. Along each wall of the basement stood metal shelves from floor to ceiling. On each of these shelves sat guns, in neat rows, gleaming in the light of the bulb.

  “Whoa!” I whispered, as I approached the racks of guns.

  As I drew near to them, they didn’t look like the guns I had seen in the old black and white westerns that my dad had forced me to watch as a kid. These guns were bigger, powerful, and more deadly – like the guns those vampire-cops had shot at us.

  “What is this place?” Kayla asked, eyeing the guns.

  “Some kind of armoury, I guess. This is part of a military base after all,” I said.

  “But this just looks like a regular house,” Kayla frowned. “Why so many guns?”

  “Maybe whoever lived here, thought that one day they might need them,” Isidor said.

  “Against what?” Kayla pushed.

  “Us, probably,” Potter half-smiled.

  Isidor came forward and stuck out his hand to touch one.

  “Don’t touch,” Potter snapped.

  Isidor immediately withdrew his hand and stuck it in his trouser pocket.

  “They’re not toys,” Potter said looking at the racks of guns.

  “Lighten up, Potter,” Seth said picking up one of the weapons. “These things are heavy.”

  “They could also be lethal in the wrong hands,” Potter said, swiping the gun from Seth and placing it back on the shelf.

  “Look, Potter, if you’re heading back to the zoo with Eloisa to rescue the boy, Luke, you’re gonna need something to protect yourselves with,” Seth spat.

  “I’m a Vampyrus and she’s a werewolf for Christ’s sake – what more do we need to protect ourselves with? Besides, we didn’t come here to arm ourselves – we came for the code.”

  “Does anyone even know what this code looks like?” Kayla asked.

  “No is the simple answer…” I started.

  “If no one knows what this code looks like, then this whole detour is just one big waste of time,” Eloisa said. “I mean, we don’t even know where to -” but before she’d had a chance to finish, the basement was filled with the sound of pounding.

  I turned around to see Potter consumed by a cloud of dust as he forced one of his arms into the brick wall.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, crossing the basement.

  “There’s a chamber beyond this wall,” he said.

  “How do you know that?”

  Looking over his shoulder at me, he said, “You’re not the only one around here that can figure things out. See those old bags of half-used cement and that pile of bricks?”

  I glanced into the corner of the basement and smiled.

  “This wall has been built recently,” he said with some pride. “See, I’m one step ahead of you, sweet-cheeks!”

  The dust began to settle and I could see that Potter’s arm was bleeding. At the sight of his blood, my stomach lurched, and I felt my throat turn dust-dry. I swallowed hard and looked away. It was then that I noticed Isidor sniffing the air as he absorbed the fragrance of the red stuff that seeped from the cuts along Potter’s forearm. He caught me looking at him and covered his nose with his hand. But it was Kayla who concerned me the most. Like me and Isidor, she had seen Potter’s blood, and she now stood mesmerised as she watched it drip onto the floor. I watched as she parted her lips and wetted them with the tip of her tongue, and I doubted she even knew that she was doing it.

  Potter’s arm disappeared through the wall up to his shoulder and at last the blood was hidden. Almost at once, Kayla’s eyes flickered and she glanced around the room as if waking from a dream.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Sure,” she smiled back.

  But I knew she wasn’t okay, just like Isidor wasn’t okay. I knew how the sudden sight of Potter’s blood had made me feel inside. The silky redness of it and the way it had glided down over his wrist, dripping in thick streams onto the dusty floor had made my stomach somersault as if I hadn’t eaten for a week. The cravings were nowhere near as bad as before, but it was a reminder that I still craved the red stuff.

  Potter turned his head to one side and I met his black gaze. He wasn’t looking at me; he seemed to be concentrating on something that had grabbed his attention on the other side of the wall. I could hear the sound of his claws tearing and scratching and it sounded like long fingernails being dragged across ice. Then without warning, Potter jumped back from the wall, bringing most of it down before him. Bricks clattered to the ground all around us, sending up billows of dust. I covered my nose and mouth as some of it got into the back of my throat and stung my eyes. As the dust and debris settled, I saw Potter’s uncovered arm again. He saw me looking at the streaks of red that ran from his wrist to his elbow, and covered them with the sleeve of his coat. He then kicked the rubble away that lay at his feet and peered into the hole that he had made in the wall.

  “There’s something in here,” he said, shoulder barging the remainder of the bricks away and disappearing into the space that he had discovered.

  I looked at Kayla and she raised her eyebrows and shrugged. Within moments, Potter stepped back into the basement holding three glass tubes of thick, pink-red liquid.

  “You three look as if you could do with some of this,” he said, handing out the tubes of Lot 13.

  Kayla snatched it from his hands, and removing the stopper with her teeth, she spat it away, tilted her head back and poured the Lot 13 into her mouth. It dribbled like glue from her lips, and she wiped it away with her fingers, which she then licked clean.

  I wasn’t sure if taking Lot 13 was the answer to our cravings. By taking it, weren’t we in some small way feeding the habit? Wouldn’t it be better to just get the stuff completely out of our system – to be rid of it forever? I looked across at Isidor and he was slowly removing the stopper. Like me, I could tell that he felt unsure about drinking it.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Potter said looking at me. “But Kiera, those cravings won’t ever go away. You’re going to have to live with them for the rest of your life – we all are.”

  “But what about when Lot 13 runs out?” I asked, looking down at the tube of pink slime. “What happens then?”

  “You go beneath ground, to The Hollows, until the feelings subside,” he said. “But seeing as we’re not in The Hollows – down the hatch it goes!” Then, flicking the stopper away with his thumb, he raised the test tube to his mouth and poured its contents down his throat. He shook his head as if just swallowing a large glass of whiskey and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “What you waiting for?”

  Isidor looked at me and shrugged, then raising the test tube to his mouth he started to drink. I watched his Adams apple bob up and down in his throat as he swallowed Lot 13.

  Handing the glass tube back to Potter, I shook my head and said, “No, I’m not going to be a slave to anyone or anything. I’ll find another way of dealing with my cravings.”

  “Kiera, you don’t un
derstand -” Potter started.

  “I said no! What’s the matter with you – are you deaf?” Pushing him out of my way, I climbed through the hole in the wall and stepped into the chamber beyond it.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  There was a room hidden behind the wall. It looked like a poky laboratory of some kind and reminded me of the science labs at college. The room was lit from above by a series of florescent lights that flickered on and off like lightning. One moment the laboratory was brightly lit, the next it was thrown into darkness. Either way, I could clearly see what lay hidden behind the wall.

  There were two metal work benches running horizontally down the middle of the room. Each was covered in an array of test tubes, Bunsen burners, microscopes, glass beakers, and a whole assortment of other equipment. Along the walls, were shelves crammed full of books, microwaves, plastic boxes, and rows of tubes containing Lot 13.

  The others followed me into the secret laboratory and Seth made a whistling sound as he looked around the room.

  “Someone has been keeping themselves busy,” he said.

  “What is all this stuff anyway?” Eloisa asked, but no one answered her.

  I watched Potter cross the laboratory, and start taking down handfuls of the test tubes that contained Lot 13. “Give me your rucksack,” he said to Isidor without looking at him.

  Isidor handed it over, and Potter filled the bag with as many of the tubes as he could. Handing it back to Isidor, it made a clinking sound as the bottles jiggled about inside. Kayla went to the work benches and started to thumb through notebooks and sheets of paper that had been scattered across them. Holding up a sheet of paper that was covered in undecipherable scribbling, Kayla said, “Hey, Kiera, could this be what you’re looking for? Could it be the code?”

  “How would she know?” Seth sneered. “She’s already admitted that she hasn’t a clue what this code looks like.”