Dead End

by Tim O'Rourke

“We thought you two had gotten lost,” Murphy said, puffing away on his pipe.

  “And you look exhausted,” Potter grinned. “What have you been up to?”

  I gave him a sharp jab in the ribs with my elbow. Murphy glanced at Lilly, then back at Potter.

  “Hanging around here with my thumb stuck up my arse waiting for you,” Murphy barked at him across the table.

  “Are you sure it was your arse you had your thumb…” he started.

  I jabbed him in the ribs again, this time harder. Potter sniggered like a juvenile.

  “What’s so funny?” Murphy asked, glancing at Potter then at me.

  “It’s just that we have some good news.” I said. I hadn’t planned on saying anything at all about Potter’s proposal of marriage to me just in case it never happened. But something told me that it just might.

  “What’s that?” Isidor asked.

  “Potter has asked me to marry him,” I smiled happily.

  “I wouldn’t be laughing about that,” Murphy grunted.

  “And why shouldn’t Kiera laugh with happiness about that?” Potter shot back at him.

  “I guess she either laughs or cries,” Murphy muttered. “So, s’pose when this is over, I’d better start writing my speech. Now that will be funny.”

  “Speech?” Potter asked him.

  “The best man speech, of course,” Murphy said.

  “Sorry, Murphy, but I was hoping Isidor was going to step up to the plate and do that honour for me,” Potter said, looking across the table.

  I saw the sudden flash of hurt in Murphy’s eyes, and the look of shock in Isidor’s.

  “Really?” Isidor said, open-mouthed. I could see the half-chewed pheasant. Melody looked excited for him. “You want me to be your best man?”

  “Sure,” Potter shrugged.

  The widest smile I had ever seen spread across Isidor’s young, handsome face. “I’ll arrange the best stag night ever and the wedding will be…”

  “Let’s get one thing straight, Isidor,” Potter said, “You don’t arrange anything. You just show up.”

  “Okay,” Isidor said. “But I can do the best man speech, right? I’ve got so many things to say.”

  “Like what?” Potter crowed at him.

  “Well, there’s that picture of you naked in the morgue,” Isidor said as if deep in thought. “I could maybe get it blown up, printed on some balloons and stuff…that would be funny.”

  “Naked in a morgue?” I asked, glancing sideways at Potter. “When did this happen?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Potter protested, shooting Isidor a resentful look.

  “Take a look for yourself,” Kayla laughed, reaching into her pocket and taking out a photograph. She tossed it across the table at me.

  Potter made to grab for it, but was too slow. I snatched it up.

  I looked at him standing naked in a dimly lit room surrounded by dead bodies all stretched out on cold metal trolleys. Potter had a dumb look of surprise on his face, where Kayla had obviously surprised him when the flash went off on her camera. With a huge smile on my face, I said, “I’m not even going to ask what you were doing, but what I do want to know is, what’s that little thing I can see?”

  Melody broke into fits of giggles on the other side of the table. Lilly smiled, too. She seemed so much more relaxed. Meren sat at her side, laughing.

  “It’s a toe tag!” Potter snapped at me, trying to snatch the photograph.

  Holding it out of his reach, I looked at Kayla and said, “Do you want it back?”

  “No, thanks,” she grimaced. “You keep it.”

  Before Potter had the chance to stop me, I had placed the photo into my jacket pocket, next to the letter Jack had written to me.

  “Naked in a morgue, huh?” Murphy tutted. “Even I didn’t think you could fall to such sexual depravity. That is a new all-time low, even for you, Potter.”

  “Sexual depravity!” Potter snapped with disbelief. “How do you have the nerve to sit there and say that after what I saw you and…”

  “I was hoping you would do me the honour of giving me away on my wedding day,” I cut over Potter and looked at Murphy. Although he looked genuinely shocked by what I’d just asked him, I could see the flicker of delight in his eyes too.

  “It would be an honour,” Murphy smiled, puffing his chest out with pride.

  “And I’d like Kayla and Meren to be my bridesmaids,” I said.

  Before they’d had a chance to say anything at all, the kitchen door suddenly opened. We all glanced up to a stranger standing in the doorway. He had long, black hair and a goatee beard. His face was broad and handsome, with keen blue eyes and a stern-looking mouth. His shoulders were round and muscular and looked as if they might just burst through the long, dark, leathery coat he wore. With no shirt beneath his coat, I could see his chest was as muscular as his shoulders threatened to be. His body was covered in coarse hair as were the backs of his large hands. I could see five other men of the same build standing behind him in the shadow cast by the doorway.

  The stranger looked at each of us in turn, until his eyes locked with Lilly’s.

  “Bruce,” Lilly said, standing up. She went to the door. Looking back at us, she added, “Let me introduce you to Bruce Scott – Chief of the Wolf Council.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kiera

  We all stood. Not because we were paying him any kind of reverence, but because Bruce Scott’s arrival, along with the other five wolves, said the time had come for us to make our way down into the valley and to Snake Weed. Scott’s giant frame filled the doorway. Again he glanced around the kitchen, this time his keen eyes settled on me.

  “Are you Kiera Hudson?” he asked, his voice as deep as the thunder in the distance.

  “Yes,” I nodded, holding his stare.

  Glancing at my friends gathered around the table, he said, “And these are the rest of the Dead Angels?”

  He looked kind of disappointed, as if he were expecting some group of mighty warriors. Instead he found himself in the company of a motley-looking group of teenagers and twenty-somethings. “We are the Dead Angels,” I said with something close to pride. “I know that legend says we have come to destroy the wolves, but we haven’t.”

  “So why have you come?” Bruce asked.

  The eyes of the other five wolves standing outside glowed in the darkness. “We have come to stop Luke Bishop – the person you call the Wolf Man.”

  “Stop him from doing what, exactly?” Bruce asked, folding his thickset arms across his chest. His giant frame cast an even bigger shadow over the kitchen table.

  “We are going to try and stop him bringing his Vampyrus army above ground to destroy you and the rest of the wolves,” I explained.

  Bruce furrowed his broad forehead. “And what are these Vampyrus, you speak of. What do they look like?”

  “Like this,” Potter said, throwing clear his coat and releasing his wings.

  I couldn’t help but notice Bruce flinch backwards at the sudden sight of the winged and fanged creature now standing in the kitchen. Bruce quickly recovered his dominant stance in the doorway.

  “And do you all look like this?” he asked. The wolves outside now gathered closer into the doorway. I could see their bright eyes peering over his shoulders, keen to see what we looked like.

  One by one, we released our wings, claws, and fangs. He glanced around the room again. “And what about you?” he said to Melody Rose. “Where are your wings? Aren’t you a Dead Angel, too?”

  “No,” she said. “I’m a wolf, just like you.”

  “A wolf keeping the company of angels,” he said, glancing at Lilly then back at Melody. “Why so?”

  “Because they haven’t come to kill us like we have been told,” Melody said. “Each of them has had the opportunity to kill me if they really wanted to. But they haven’t. They have shown me friendship.” Melody looked sideways at Isidor. “In fact, one of them even saved my lif
e.” She faced Bruce again. “We have all been deceived by Luke Bishop.”

  “Deceived?” Bruce asked. “How so?”

  “Bishop isn’t a wolf. He killed the real wolf man many years ago,” Melody started to explain. “He got us to enslave the humans. And now that they are weakened, he will destroy and take the world for himself and the Vampyrus.”

  “The humans,” Bruce laughed, a deep rattle coming from the back of his throat. “They are nothing but a sub-species. We won’t be defeated so easily.”

  “But you don’t mind wearing human skins,” I said, staring at him. “It hasn’t stopped you from stealing their children and matching with them. Why cloak yourself with such inferiority if you are so sure of your own strength?”

  “This is nothing more than a disguise,” Bruce said, raking one claw up his forearm, splitting the skin to reveal the thick, black fur beneath.

  “Only those who have something to hide conceal their true identity,” Murphy put in. “What is it you have to hide? Is it fear?”

  Bruce turned to him. “I could ask the same question of you. I can see that you masquerade as humans too.”

  “We were born with this flesh,” Potter said. “We didn’t have to steal it off some kid’s back.”

  “Enough of this,” I said. “This isn’t the time to go pointing the finger of blame. How are we ever going to stop Luke if we can’t work together?”

  “Kiera’s right,” Isidor suddenly spoke up. “If we have any chance of stopping Luke from bringing the Vampyrus up from below ground, we have to move now.”

  “Why the urgency?” Bruce asked. “I need proof before I go marching into Snake Weed. The Treaty states…”

  “You might as well wipe your arse on the Treaty for what it’s worth,” Potter spoke over him. “Stop standing here chatting shit and grow some balls, for Christ’s sake. Bishop is planning on fucking with you. So unless you want to roll over and be his bitch, I’d wolf-out or whatever it is you do and come down into Snake Weed and see Bishop for what he really is.”

  “This could be some kind of trap,” Bruce said dismissively. “How do I know you won’t kill us?”

  Murphy leapt across the room, placing one of his claws against Bruce’s throat. “If I were gonna kill you; I would’ve happily done it already.”

  The other wolves spilled into the kitchen. Each of them male with long lengths of hair swinging from the lower halves of their faces. Their hair was thick and braided. Kayla sprang onto the table, claws raised before her. “Hey, back off!” she snarled at them.

  The wolves eyed Kayla and the rest of us with suspicion and fear. Their eyes blazed. The wolves looked at Meren’s and Melody’s raised claws and down the barrel of Isidor’s crossbow that was now just inches from their faces.

  “Go on, I dare you,” Isidor smiled at the wolves, his finger hovering over the trigger.

  “Enough already,” Lilly said, forcing herself between Murphy and Bruce. Despite what Potter claimed to have seen Murphy and Lilly up to in the woods, her white-blonde hair was immaculate, as was her bright red lipstick and fur coat. She looked completely unruffled, like she had just stepped off a catwalk. Lilly eased Murphy and Bruce apart. Then turning to look at the Bruce, she said, “We don’t have time for this. What Isidor says is true. We have to act now. The Vampyrus have gathered an army ready to bring from below ground.”

  “Then they could already be here,” Bruce said, glancing around the kitchen at me and my friends.

  “They haven’t come above ground yet,” Isidor spoke up. Luke has no idea that we know what he is planning. The Vampyrus are going to make their attack tomorrow night. So we might have a chance of stopping Luke.”

  “But only with your help, Bruce, and the rest of the wolves,” I said, stepping forward.

  Turning to look at me, Bruce said, “We will come into Snake Weed with you, but I’m not prepared to risk the life of my fellow wolves until I know that Luke Bishop really is my enemy.”

  Taking another step closer to him, I said, “Your problem is that you’ve been fed a lie for so long that you now accept it to be the truth.”

  “And what might that be?” he asked.

  “That I have come to kill you,” I said. “But the truth is, I’ve come to save you.”

  Brushing past him and the other wolves, I left the farmhouse.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Kiera

  In a line, stretching out on either side of me, we made our way through the darkness and down into the valley. Snake Weed lay at the floor of the basin, shrouded in darkness. Potter walked beside me to my right and Kayla to my left. Isidor walked beside her with Melody. Murphy flanked Potter with Meren and Lilly. Bruce and the rest of the wolves followed close behind. We Vampyrus had our wings, claws, and fangs out. We had been called the Dead Angels by Luke and we didn’t want to disappoint him. Melody and Pen stayed in their human forms.

  A thick silence hung heavy about us. Not one of us spoke. To do so would break the focus that each of us had. As we headed further down into the valley, I looked up. The cracks in the sky were now so vast that I feared it might just shatter at any moment. Thunderclaps broke in the distance and the whole world trembled. We reached the road that led into Snake Weed and made our way toward town. The wind blew hard now into the valley, and our wings flapped like sails in a storm.

  We reached town and the first thing that struck me was the putrid stench emanating from it. The smell was wafting on from the sea of human corpses stretching away from us. There had been a massacre here. No one had been spared. Dead men, women, and children covered the streets like a carpet of broken bones and rotting flesh. Maggots writhed over the dead, looking like a sprinkling of shifting snow. Rats scurried over the dead faces, driving their snouts into the sunken eye sockets and racing away with spongy mouthfuls of brain. The insects and the rats appeared to be the only living things in Snake Weed. But in my heart I knew that not to be true. I knew Luke Bishop was here somewhere and he had caused this carnage. Never before had I seen such slaughter and wanton waste of life. And why? What had any of these people ever done to him? Was this still his sick and twisted attempt at seeking revenge at the human girl who had once rejected him?

  We tried to step around and over the dead, but there were too many of them. My skin broke out in gooseflesh and I gagged every time I heard the crunch of bone beneath my boots. The deeper I went into Snake Weed, the angrier I became with Bruce Scott and the other wolves who followed behind us. They had been a part of this madness. They might not have personally slaughtered these people but they had stood by and let it happen. To do nothing, to say nothing, to turn a blind eye was just as bad as taking part. The wolves’ silence had drowned out the screams of every human who had died in Snake Weed. Why then should I help to save them? Why not let Luke and his Vampyrus army now slaughter the wolves, just like he had slaughtered the humans? It would be revenge for the humans, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t that be justice if the wolves perished, too? I glanced to my right and looked at Melody and Lilly. Neither of them were like these other wolves. I suspected there were others like them who were repulsed just as much as I was at the way humans had been enslaved, butchered, and matched. But while there were wolves like Lilly and Melody – even if there was just one – the wolves had a chance of being better than this. There was a chance of reconciliation between wolves and those humans that remained. I had to hope that there was a chance of a truce – peace. If I didn’t believe that could happen then I may as well lie down in the street and die like the humans at my feet had. I may as well let the maggots and the rats take me. But I could never give up. I must never give in. It wasn’t in my nature to do so – not now – not ever.

  We entered the town square, and the carpet of corpses thinned out here. I looked around and recognised it at once. It was the town square I had seen in my nightmare. It was surrounded by Tudor-style houses and shops. Each of them had thatched roofs and was supported by ancient wooden beams. Over the tops of th
e roofs and in the distance, I could see the peaks of the hills and the mountains that surrounded Snake Weed. The town square was cobbled with grey stone, but unlike my nightmare, there was no statue of me at its centre. There was a stone wishing well. Perhaps I had been right in my beliefs that my destiny was not yet set and I could once again change things. I could change the choice the Elders had set for me to make.

  “Welcome,” a voice said.

  The sound of it was so sudden in the gloom that it made me jump. I looked across the square and could see the bench I had sat on in my nightmare. But it wasn’t me who sat on it now. Luke had his arms stretched out across the back of it, his legs crossed at the knee. He looked very relaxed and unconcerned by our arrival in Snake Weed. He wore that charming smile that he’d always had. His shoulder-length black hair was swept back off his brow and his green eyes sparkled in the darkness. He wore a white shirt open at the neck and dark grey trousers. He looked as if he were going out for dinner than going to war. Perhaps they were both the same thing to him.

  “Hey, Bruce.” Luke grinned as if genuinely pleased to see the wolf. “What are you doing with the Dead Angels?”

  Bruce stepped forward and spoke, his voice booming across the square. “Is there any truth in what these Dead Angels have said about you?”

  “It all depends on what they have said,” Luke smiled, getting up from the bench. He sauntered across the square, hands in his trouser pockets. He stopped beside the well.

  “They say you’re not a wolf,” Bruce said. “Kiera Hudson says that you are really like her – a winged creature from below ground who has come to destroy us.”

  Luke looked at me, his smile growing broader. “Hello again, Kiera.”

  I said nothing.

  “Well?” Bruce said.

  “Huh?” Luke said, looking back at him. “I’m sorry. I was just looking at Kiera and remembering some intimate moments we once shared.”

  Potter stepped forward as if to strike. I placed my hand over his to stop him from doing so.

  “Are you truly a wolf?” Bruce asked, sounding as if his patience with Luke was fast running out.