by Tim O'Rourke
“What was all the shouting about?” Luke wheezed as if choking on the fog.
Potter held the torch over Coanda’s head. “Now we are three,” he said.
“Four,” Seth corrected him.
“I’d forgotten all about you,” Potter said dryly.
“Who killed him?” Luke asked.
“I wonder?” I said, peering at Potter. With our number depleting by the hour, the list of suspects was growing smaller and smaller. I didn’t have to see anything to know that the killer – this Elias Munn – was either Luke or Potter. But to even think that made my heart ache. How could either one of them be Elias Munn? It couldn’t be possible – I would’ve seen it. But there was one other, and I glared at Jack Seth through the smog. I had believed him to be dead after Potter had pushed him over the cliffedge. But he had survived and had followed us. Maybe that’s who Kayla had heard following us. But would Kayla have fallen for Seth? He was an ugly, disgusting child killer. Then, seeing his eyes spinning through the fog, I understood how he got Kayla to fall in love with him.
“I love you,” she had said to whoever had been hiding behind the weeping willow. Seth had entranced her with his stare. Isidor had said how he couldn’t understand how Kayla had grown close to this person. She hadn’t fallen in love with him at all. Seth had tricked her like his son had tricked his victims – those women he had butchered. With my heart racing in my chest, I understood why Kayla had undressed just before being murdered. Seth had seduced her with his stare. He had made her want him, just like he had made me desire him when I had looked into his eyes in the caves beneath the Fountain of Souls. Even though I could see him torturing me, hurting me, I had still seen myself undress for him, lay down for him and let him take me.
“And what does that message mean?” Luke suddenly asked, but I hardly heard it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the murdering Lycanthrope.
“Maybe you should ask him?” I said, pointing at Jack Seth.
“Me?” Seth sneered, with a bemused smile on his face.
“Or perhaps I should call you Elias Munn?” I whispered in shock.
“What are you going on about,” he barked. “I know these tunnels are believed to be filled with a fog that can drive you insane, but I had no idea the effects would take hold so fast.”
Ignoring Seth, Potter looked at me and said, “What are you talking about, Kiera?”
“Jack Seth is the killer -”
“We’ve known that for years,” Luke cut in.
“No!” I snapped. “He’s responsible for killing Kayla, Isidor, Coanda, Murphy and all the others that have lost their lives…”
“I didn’t kill Murphy,” Seth spat. “That was Phillips, you saw him…”
“No, but you led us to him,” I cut over him. “It was you who told Murphy that we should pay a visit to that monastery where we all nearly lost our lives. How have I been so dumb? How have I not seen it?”
“I don’t have to stand here and listen to…” Seth started, but before he’d had the chance to finish, Luke and Potter had taken hold of him. “This is an outrage,” he struggled.
“That’s the real reason you wanted to get to the Dust Palace because you haven’t been able to get me to fall in love with you,” I said. “So many times you’ve looked into my eyes and shown me the perverted pleasures you have to offer. You hoped that I would fall for you. But each time I’ve resisted, so now your last chance is to get inside the Dust Palace and kill the Elders.”
Then, fixing me with his stare, he looked into my eyes and said, “You stupid girl, you didn’t resist me. It was I who resisted you. You couldn’t have stopped me from taking you if I’d really wanted you. Nothing could have stopped that. But you were my test, Kiera Hudson. To be able to resist you, to not take you, rip you apart, eat you every time I laid eyes on you, told me that I could be redeemed, that I could fight my desire to kill and butcher.”
“I don’t believe you could resist killing anyone,” I hissed. “Potter was right, you are murdering scum and you deserve to die for what you’ve done.”
“Then kill me,” he suddenly growled, and struggled free of Luke’s and Potter’s hold. “If you really believe that I’m Elias Munn, kill me now.” Ripping his bandanna from his throat, he threw it at me and bared his neck. “Go on, suck the life out of me, you bloodsucking vampire bat, because that’s what you are!”
With images of Kayla and Isidor racing across my mind, I lunged at Seth and sunk my fangs into his ropey-looking neck. His hot blood washed over my tongue and down my throat, where it burnt like acid. Then, as Seth writhed against me as if gaining some morbid pleasure from me feeding off him, I heard those children’s voices again. But this time they were closer, as if whispering in my ear.
“No, Kiera,” their voices sung softly all around me. “Bring the Lycanthrope to us and you will see all.” Then, those children, if that’s really what they were, giggled and were gone again.
Opening my eyes, I took my mouth from Seth’s neck.
“What did you hear?” he asked me as I stepped away, wiping his blood from my lips with his red bandanna and placing it in my pocket. Continuing to stare at me, he said, “You heard them, didn’t you? You heard the children.”
“What children?” I gasped, feeling out of breath.
“You heard the voices of the gods,” he said.
“The gods?” I asked, feeling light-headed.
“I heard them once before,” he said. “The day they cursed me and my race. And that’s my reason for wanting to seek an audience with them; I want to beg them to lift the curse they placed on us all those years ago.”
And then as if being haunted by ghosts, I heard the sound of those children’s voices again, whispering and playfully giggling amongst the fog. I turned my back on Seth and peered into the yellow vapour that swirled all around me. The voices came again, but this time they were fainter as if moving away from me. I followed the sound through the tunnel.
“Hey, Kiera!” Potter called out from behind me. “What are we doing with the wolf man?”
“Bring him with you,” I said. “But don’t let him leave your side.”
“Easier said than done in all this fog,” I heard Luke say.
But I didn’t stop, I just followed those voices.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Through the tunnels I went, not knowing where I was going or what direction I was heading. It didn’t seem to matter to me. For some reason I trusted those innocent-sounding voices. I could hear Potter, Luke, and Seth behind me as they followed the sounds of my footsteps echoing back down through the tunnels. Could they hear the voices? I doubted it or they would have asked me about them. No, these children, whoever they were, were only talking to me – guiding me.
I don’t know for how long I followed the voices through the labyrinth of tunnels, but eventually the fog started to thin out and eventually evaporate. There was a dim, orange light at the end of the tunnel, and I sped up.
“Where are you taking us?” Potter called out.
Ignoring him, I raced forward towards the light. Stumbling out of the tunnel, I gasped in a mouthful of air, glad to be free of the suffocating smog. Blinking in the light that now bathed me, I looked ahead. The others stumbled into the light and coughed and sputtered as they gasped in lungfuls of fresh air.
We stood in a narrow valley which ran between two vast cliffs that towered above us on either side. But unlike the red rock that seemed to make up so much of The Hollows, the cliffs were a dull grey as if they had had their colour sucked from them. The sky above us was a black void. There were no twinkling stalagmites here. The orange glow that illuminated the valley came from the ground, which was covered in a similar type of moss I had seen back at the resistance camp. Just like the ground there, this was spongy, like a luxuriant carpet. At the opposite end of the valley, I could see what appeared to be four giant pillars sculpted into the rocks. Set between these pillars was a rusty-looking door that stretched up for as far
as the eye could see.
I looked at the others and said,” The Dust Palace?”
“I guess,” Luke shrugged.
“What are we waiting for?” Seth barked, keen to get going and have his curse lifted, if that was his true reason for wanting to get inside there.
“Watch him,” I said to Luke and Potter, as I set off across the valley.
The others followed at a distance, Seth sandwiched between Luke and Potter. A cool breeze fused with sand meandered about us, and our wings rippled. The sound of the children laughing had faded. It was as if they had led me this far, but had now disappeared, leaving me alone to find my own way into the Dust Palace.
Before the giant door stood several stone steps. Placing my foot on the first, I looked back at the others as they joined me.
“Are you sure about this?” Potter asked, taking me to one side so that we were out of earshot of the others.
“I’m not sure of anything anymore,” I whispered looking up into his dead, black eyes.
“Does that include me?” he asked.
Not knowing what lay ahead on the other side of the door and fearing this could be our last moments together, I said, “I do love you.” Then, I headed up the steps.
As I climbed them, I could see that the building set into the rocks wasn’t made of stone at all, but of smouldering ash. It glimmered red as if on fire, and wispy trails of smoke seeped from the cracks that covered it. I could hear a hissing sound as if the palace was on fire, or at least smouldering. Heat radiated from the building, but oddly I felt cold. I reached the giant door that towered high above me and could see it was coloured brown with scorch marks, as if at some time in the distant past it had been set on fire. The door was open, just enough for me to step through.
The others joined me on the top step and there was an eerie silence between us. Not one of us said anything, and we all shared a nervous glance. Even Potter seemed to have lost that cocky look of his, the arrogance melting away before the Dust Palace. None us had to speak, there were no words that could explain the seriousness of what was about to happen – the gravity of the decision I was going to make on the other side of the door we now stood before.
Every step I had taken since arriving at The Ragged Cove had been leading me here, to the Dust Palace, the home of the Elders, where I would decide the fate of two races. Both good, both bad, both capable of true greatness, if only they had someone to show them the light.
I looked at Luke and his face was ashen, gaunt, and tired. Potter took a cigarette from his pocket, stuck it in the corner of his mouth, then spat it out as if thinking better of it. Seth stared at the crack in the door, his eyes burning bright.
There was only the four of us left; only the four of us had made it this far. Two Vampyrus, a Lycanthrope, and one half-breed. An unlikely quartet, one of which was a traitor. Who was it and how many of us would leave the Dust Palace alive?
Not knowing the answer to my own questions, I slipped between the gap in the door and entered the Dust Palace.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
A long, stone corridor lay before us. The walls were lined with a thousand or more candles. As the last of us stepped into the Palace, the door slammed shut behind us and a thousand flames flickered, casting shadows up the ashen walls. There was only silence and it was louder than any sound I had ever heard. The four of us stood side by side and looked straight ahead. My heart was racing so fast inside my chest that I thought it might just explode at any moment. Without saying a word, I took a deep breath and stepped forward.
The floor was made of burning coals and they hissed and spat with every step I took. But my shoes didn’t smoulder or perish; in fact, like the rest of me, my feet felt cold, as if I had just plunged them into a tub full of icy water.
The four of us moved forward, not one of us daring to say a word. We came to the end of the corridor and found ourselves in a vast chamber that didn’t look to dissimilar to the inside of an ancient cathedral. Ash-covered pillars stretched up into the ceiling which looked as if it had been constructed from hundreds of seething, wooden beams. It was as if the whole palace was slowly smouldering like the embers of a dying campfire. Just like the many cathedrals I had visited, this had an altar that was on a raised platform. It was supported on four raised legs, as if the altar itself was set inside some kind of smaller temple. Before it stood four robed figures and their faces were covered with hoods.
“Welcome to our home at last, Kiera Hudson,” one of them said, and although they were the size of adults, the voice was that of a little girl, no older than six years.
With goose flesh running up my spine at the sound of the Elder’s voice, I knew that it was the same as the voices I‘d heard in the tunnels. I looked at the four of them and because their faces were shrouded, I couldn’t tell which one of them had spoken.
“You have done well to have come so far,” one of them said, but it was a different voice this time, the voice of a small boy. “You have seen much, but you have been blind too.”
“Blind?” I whispered.
“Oh, Kiera,” another of them said from beneath their hood in a child’s voice. “Can’t you see what you have done?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You’ve led our enemy – Elias Munn – into our home,” one of them said.
I glanced along the line at Potter, Luke, and Seth, then, turning to face the Elders I said. “I’ve seen who this Elias Munn is,” I told them. “You are right, he is amongst us and his name is…”
“Shhh,” one of the Elders said, then giggled in a childish way. “Let’s see if you have seen right, Kiera Hudson.”
There was a pause of silence before one of the Elders said in a small voice, “Will Elias Munn please step forward.”
I shot a glance down the line and none of them moved. I looked at all of their faces as they stared straight ahead at the Elders. None of them seemed to show any emotion, their faces passive, lifeless.
With my blood beginning to boil, I stood in front of Seth and hissed, “Go on, reveal yourself. I know it’s you.”
Jack Seth just stared back at me, his eyes gleaming yellow and crazy as ever.
“Tell them that it is you,” I demanded, and tugged at his arm. If he wasn’t going to step forward, then I would drag him before the Elders myself.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw someone move. With my heart aching in my chest, I watched Potter take a step forward.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“No!” I gasped, turning to face Potter. “Tell me it isn’t true.”
Potter just looked at me with his dead, black eyes. His face was devoid of all emotion.
Taking hold of him, I shook him and screamed, “It’s not you Potter! Tell me so! Talk to me!”
Then, without taking his eyes off mine, he opened his mouth as a thin, black line of blood ran over his lips, down his chin, and splattered onto his naked chest.
“What’s going on?” I gasped in confusion. And it was as I looked at the blood running down his body that I saw the fingers sticking out of the hole in the centre of his chest. Clutched between those fingers, was something red and black, and it pulsed in and out.
Not understanding what I was seeing, I watched the hand disappear again.
“Potter?” I groaned as he slumped forward into my arms to reveal my mother standing behind him. She stood clutching Potter’s heart in her fist.
“Oh, my god, what have you done?” I mumbled, still unable to comprehend what was happening.
“He was in the way,” she smiled down at me as I lowered Potter to the ground.
“In the way of what?” I breathed, my mind still trying to make sense of what was happening.
“The person who really loves you,” she said, dropping Potter’s heart to the floor. “A good mother knows who is right for her daughter and it wasn’t Potter. Elias Munn is who you are destined to love.”
“What are you talking about?” I screamed a
t her, my mind now realising that she had killed Potter so I would be free to love Elias Munn.
“Elias loves you, Kiera, but you’ve just been too blind to see that,” she said.
I looked down at Potter’s face as he stared blankly back at me from my lap. “But it’s Potter that I love,” I screeched. “What have you done? Oh my god, what have you done to him?” Not needing any answer from her, I pulled Potter up and cradled him against my chest. “No! No! No! Wake up, goddamn it!” I cried, tears falling from my eyes onto his upturned face. But Potter just flopped lifelessly back in my arms. “You can’t die!” I screamed at him. “We were going on our first date when this was all over. You promised me! You were going to tell me what your favourite food was!” I shook him again, hoping I could make him come alive, but in my heart I knew he was gone. He had left me and I just wanted to curl up and die.
“He could never have made you happy,” my mother said, as she looked down at me, her face pale, older-looking, and the ends of her raven black hair turning grey.
I looked at her and the sight of her disgusted me. With tears rolling down my cheeks, I sobbed, “Potter did make me happy. So happy you could never know.”
“Nonsense,” my mother snapped at me and I just wanted to rip her fucking throat out. “Your destiny lies with Elias.”
“Who is he?” I roared at her.
“I’m Elias Munn,” a voice said, and I turned to see Luke looking down at me. “I love you, Kiera, I always have.”
I laid Potter’s body on the ground, then springing to my feet, I lunged at Luke. “You!” I screamed. “It was you the whole time!”
“I love you, Kiera,” he said again, grabbing hold of me. “We are meant to be together.”
“Get off me!” I screamed at him. “Get your fucking hands off me!”
