Running my tongue gently over my front teeth, I could feel that my canines were longer and sharper than before. With the tip of the thumb on my right hand, I pushed gently against one of them, then, snapped it away as it pierced the flesh. Blood ran down the length of my thumb and trailed around my wrist. My first instinct was to mop it up with my tongue, but I didn’t want to go there, the craving for the red stuff was manageable at the moment. So instead, I wiped my hand against my jeans. Just like I had with my wings and claws, I thought about them not being there, and they withdrew back into my gums. To be honest, it felt like having a tooth pulled out, but in reverse.
Feeling and looking like the Kiera I had grown to know over the last twenty years, I thrust my hands into my coat pockets, bent my head against the snow, and headed across the featureless moors. How far away from the truck I was, I didn’t know. I had been flying, not for too long, but at a great speed, so I couldn’t be sure of the distance I had travelled in pursuit of Hunt and Munn.
The walk gave me time to think but not make a plan as such. How could I plan for anything anymore? I was meant to be heading to The Hollows with the others. In his letter, Ravenwood said that I should seek out someone by the name of Coanda who lived in The Hollows. How was he going to help me? And what of this choice I had to make? Did I really have to decide which race would survive? Would it be the humans or the Vampyrus? How could I ever make a decision like that? I was half human and half Vampyrus – how could I choose between them? Potter had said the whole thing was just a fairy tale, something of myth and legend. To him, Elias Munn was no more real than Father Christmas.
But what of Potter? In my heart, I could feel the nagging doubts that were growing there. When I thought of him, all I could see was him striding across the floor of the facility and driving his fist into Eloisa’s chest, tearing out her heart in one quick, sudden movement. Why had he done that? I know Potter could be cranky at times and he had a temper, but that was so out of character for him. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t Eloisa’s biggest fan but hey, did she really need to be murdered like that just so Potter could avenge Murphy’s death? It scared me to think Potter could be capable of doing something like that. I couldn’t help but remember what Ravenwood had written to me in his letter.
“..Elias Munn plunged his fist into her chest and tore her heart out…”
Those words kept going over and over in my mind since I’d seen Potter tear Eloisa’s heart from her chest. But there were also other parts of that letter that just wouldn’t go away. They kept flashing across my mind like giant, neon words.
“But be careful, Kiera, of who you befriend and love on your journey, for it is said that if Elias Munn can get the half-breed to love him, as a father, or a brother, or a lover, then just like his first love – he would have taken your heart as his own and he will be given the power to choose which race lives and which race dies.”
Reading those words again in my mind’s eye, my heart sank as I thought of Potter and I prayed that he wasn’t the invisible man, Elias Munn. How could he be? Had he really just snatched Hunt from beneath my nose and killed him? Potter had gone back to the zoo to rescue Luke; he was miles away from here. Pulling the collar of my coat tight about my neck, I moved on and I hoped more than anything that my growing suspicions for Potter were wrong, because I had fallen in love with him.
Chapter Three
In the distance I could see a coil of smoke bellowing up into the night sky. I headed towards it but kept as low as possible, darting between rocks and the odd outcrop of trees. Just like I had with my wings, claws, and fangs, I looked at an object in the distance, and at a blink of an eye, I was there. When that happened, everything around me almost seemed to speed up, blur out of focus – out of time. But there was something else. It made me feel as if I was being stretched in some way, dragged towards the object that I wanted to be near. I’d felt it before, back at the police station in the town of Wasp Water as I’d sped across the canteen towards Jack Seth.
I had seen the others, Potter, Luke, and Murphy flit from one place to another in what looked like a spray of shadows, and I wondered if that’s what I looked like now, fluttering from place to place in a blink of an eye. Now this was one Vampyrus trait that I didn’t mind having, I smiled to myself.
Appearing behind a cluster of jagged rocks, I peered over them. The smoke was coming from the truck, which lay on its side in the snow. From my hiding place I could see the tear in the roof where Hunt had been yanked through. There were two figures by the truck and I peered through the darkness at them. My heart leapt with joy at the sight of Kayla and Isidor. Standing, I left my hiding place and ran towards them. Upon seeing me, Kayla threw open her arms and hugged me.
“We thought they had taken you,” Kayla said.
“No,” I told her, shaking my head. “Elias Munn got away.”
“So he was in the truck then?” Isidor asked, pulling a stake from the dead Vampyrus who had been driving the truck. Seeing me looking at him, he shrugged and said, “I can’t afford to waste any. I haven’t got many stakes left.”
“He wasn’t in the truck,” I told them.
“But you said he got away,” Kayla said, looking confused.
I looked at her, then at Isidor. Should I tell them that their father was in the back of that truck, used as a decoy, only to be murdered by the real Elias Munn? What good would it do? Hadn’t Kayla and Isidor come to believe that their father was already dead? It would do no good to tell them he had been alive after all but only now had he been murdered. Potter had managed to turn them both around. He hadn’t done it in a way I would have chosen, but it had worked. They had both stopped focusing on their grief and were now focused on the journey that lay ahead of us. Perhaps Potter had been right; they could do all their grieving after this was over. If they were to survive what lay ahead, they needed to be strong both physically and mentally. By telling them now that I had just buried their father, a few miles from here beneath a pile of broken branches and leaves, would only set them back. But if I were being truly honest with myself, I just didn’t have the heart to tell Kayla. I just couldn’t do it to her.
So rightly or wrongly, I guessed I might never know, I pulled them both close and said, “It was just a Vampyrus they used as a decoy so the real Elias Munn could escape.”
“Where is this Vampyrus now?” Isidor asked, raising his crossbow.
“He’s dead,” I told them and that wasn’t a lie, but what I said next was. “I killed him.”
“Good,” Kayla said, looking at me. “The more Vampyrus and vampire we kill, the better.
“I don’t know if that’s the answer,” I said. I looked at Kayla and could see the anger and hurt in her eyes and knew then that I had made the right decision in not telling her about her father. So changing the subject, I asked, “What happened to my mum and Phillips? You went after them, right?”
“Just like Munn, they got away,” Isidor explained. Then looking up at the sky with its snow-filled clouds he added, “This storm doesn’t help. I lost Phillips in some low-flying cloud.”
“Your mum had too much of a head start on me,” Kayla said. “I lost sight of her.”
“Maybe it was for the best,” I told them.
“How come?” Kayla asked me.
“What would you have done even if you had caught up with her and Philips?” I asked.
“Ripped her throat out,” Kayla said matter-of-factly.
“That’s my mum you’re talking about,” I half-smiled. I couldn’t be angry with Kayla for what she just said. But somewhere deep inside, I still clung to the hope that I could save my mum.
“She isn’t your mum anymore, Kiera,” Isidor cut in. “She’s like the rest of them now. Lost to the red stuff.”
“But we’ve managed to overcome it,” I said. “Perhaps she could too.”
Kayla looked at me and her eyes seemed full of sorrow as she said, “Kiera, don’t bank on it.”
“Why?” I asked.
Kayla nodded in the direction of the drivers cab.
I turned towards the truck and could see one of the Vampyrus hanging half in and half out of the shattered windscreen. I couldn’t tell what sex or even how old it had been as its face was missing. White lumps of skull and cheekbone glistened wetly through what was left of the flesh.
Turning away, I faced Kayla and asked, “Did you do that?”
Nodding, Kayla said, “It wasn’t intentional at first. Once I’d lost sight of your mum, I raced back after the truck to help you. I smashed through the windscreen and pulled the two Vampyrus out. They fought with me, but I was quickly joined by Isidor. The Vampyrus bit and clawed at me, so I bit back. At first, I just ripped off its nose and ears, but the blood tasted good and I just lost it, you know, went kind of crazy. Before I knew what was happening, Isidor was yanking me off the Vampyrus. It was then that I realised I had eaten his face clean off.”
“Kayla, you can’t carry on like this!” I barked at her, but as soon as the words were out, I regretted the tone I had used.
Kayla flinched backwards and her eyes glowed momentarily. “I’m sorry,” she hissed. “But we can’t all be like you, Kiera and have total control.”
“I didn’t mean to shout at you,” I told her, knocking snow from my hair. “It’s just that you were right about my mum; she is lost to the red stuff and lost to me. I just don’t want that to happen to you, Kayla.”
“Why not?” She snapped, still hurting from how I had spoken to her. I squeezed her shoulder and said, “Because you’re like a sister, Kayla.” Then looking at Isidor I added, “I love both of you as if you were my family. You are my family now.”
Kayla and Isidor looked at me through the falling snow, but before either of them had a chance to say anything, someone from behind us spoke, saying, “What about me? Can you find it in your heart to love me, Kiera Hudson?”