Dead Flesh

Kiera Hudson - Dead Flesh

(Series Two)

Book One

By

Tim O’Rourke

Copyright 2012 by Tim
O’Rourke

Smashwords Edition

This book is a
work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are
products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously
and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons,
living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely
coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
If you would like to share this book with another person, please
purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading
this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your
use only,
then please return
to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the hard work of this author.

Book cover designed by:

Carles Barrios

Copyright:
Carles Barrios 2012

Carlesbarrios.blogspot.com

Copyedited by:

Carolyn M. Pinard

www.thesupernaturalbookeditor.com

Dedicated to

Kimberly Costa

Thanks to:

Jennifer at
readitreviewit.wordpress.com

Michelle at
novelsontherun.blogspot.com

Shana at bookvacations.wordpress.com

Rachel at
rachybee-the-rest-is-still-unwritten.blogspot.com

Darkfallen& Greta at
Paranormalwastelands.blogspot.com

Angie at
www.bookstomorrow.blogspot.com

Aliraluna at Velvet Red
Thingworlds.blogspot.com

Mary at Pageaway.blogspot.com

Alison at
imabibliophobic.blogspot.com

Who all took the time to review my books –
Thank you!

More books by Tim O’Rourke

Vampire Shift (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book
1

Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book
2

Vampire Hunt (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book
3

Vampire Breed (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book
4

Wolf House (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book
4.5

Vampire Hollows (Kiera Hudson Series 1) Book
5

Black Hill Farm (Book 1)

Black Hill Farm: Andy’s Diary (Book
2)

Doorways (Book 1)

You can contact Tim O’Rourke at

www.Ravenwoodgreys.com

Or by email at
[email protected]

Prologue

She thought it would hurt, but in fact, dying was agony. It
felt as if her entire being had been stretched, pulled and twisted
out of shape and then sucked in on itself. There was blackness and
it rushed at her like a wall. Solid and unbreakable. She looked
into the darkness and it was as if she were standing at the very
edge of the universe and staring down into nothingness. The silence
was deafening and it made her want to scream.

There was a crashing sound. The noise cut through the
darkness. Her lungs emptied as the air was forced from them like a
balloon being strangled. Branches clawed at her like hands trying
to break her fall as she appeared in the night sky above the trees.
Dropping like a stone, she cut a jagged path through the leaves and
branches as she tumbled to the woodland floor below.

The young girl hit the ground, her head bouncing off the
leaf-covered floor with a gut-wrenching thud. She cried out,
throwing her hands to her face and rolling over onto her back.
Opening her eyes, she noticed something had gone wrong. Her hands
didn’t feel right against her face. The young girl counted the
fingers on her right hand. One, two, three….

Three!

Turning, she looked at her left hand – it was
worse.

Two! What’s happened to my fingers?

She staggered to her knees like a drunk and touched her face
with her three-fingered hand.

“NO!” she screamed, and this time it wasn’t inside her head;
her voice had forced its way out of her throat. Patting her face
with her hands, she knew that she was in trouble. The lower half of
her face had slipped. Her face, once beautiful and perfect was now
grotesque; nose and mouth were now imbedded into her left cheek.
Her face looked distorted, like a child’s painting that had been
hung upside down while wet and the colours and shapes had bled
across the paper.

Her blond fringe swung in front of her eyes like a curtain
and she knocked it away. Moonlight shone through the canopy of
trees above her head in milky shafts. Then she was startled by the
sound of a dog barking in the distance.

Or was that the sound of a bigger creature? A wolf
perhaps?

The noise came again, which was followed by another and
another. Cocking her head to one side, the young girl listened. The
barking came again and it was followed by the sound of snapping
jaws and woofing. She knew there was more than just one of these
creatures, there were several of them, and they were getting
closer.

Spinning round, the young girl peered into the darkness. In
the distance and weaving towards her amongst the trees, she could
see torchlight. The beams of light sliced through the night and
splashed against the tree trunks.

“This way!” A voice barked. “This way!”

The barking and howling grew louder and keener as the
creatures raced towards the area of the wood where the girl had
appeared. She looked back one last time, then ran deeper into the
woods.

The sound of woofing and snarling came from the throats of
the young girl’s pursuers. They had reached the area where she had
appeared, but she had gone.

“I want this entire area locked down!” one of them ordered.
Then wheeling around, he hissed at the others, “Don’t
just

stand there! Get after her!”

Without question, the others in the pack set off after the
young girl, ferocious-looking, whining, and slobbering.

She raced amongst the trees with the agility and speed of a
wild horse. Her long hair billowed out behind her like a mane, and
her brilliant green eyes glinted in the moonlight. In the distance
she could hear the sound of howling as they raced after her. Her
legs propelled her forward as she stumbled and staggered through
the woods. Her arms whispered by her side, working like
pistons.

She broke into a clearing, and ahead in the distance she
could see turrets spiralling up towards the moon like giant ogres.
The building sat on a hill and was surrounded by trees and a stone
wall.

With sweat streaming into her eyes, the young girl raced
across the field towards it, leaving her would-be captors deep in
the woods. Reaching the wall, she looked up at it towering above
her. The wall was at least twenty foot tall and she wondered if it
had been built to keep something out or to keep something locked
in. With her three-fingered hands, she gripped hold of the wall and
began to climb. And as she went, the young girl stifled the urge to
scream out in agony as her hands bled. Once at the top, she held on
with hands that looked like bloody claws.

What she had believed to be turrets, she could now see were
search towers. There were four, and each was manned by a hooded
figure. Their faces were hidden by the robes draped over their
heads and shoulders. The search towers cast beams of light across
the grounds like giant lighthouses.

The sound of barking and woofing echoed in the distance.
Glancing over her shoulder, she could see her pursuers run free of
the woods and start across the field towards her. Turning her back
on them, the young girl leapt from the wall and into the grounds of
the strange-looking building.

Pressing her back against the wall, she inched her way around
the circumference of the building. She watched the hooded figures
high up in their towers as they covered the grounds with their
searchlights. Small plumes of breath leaked from her cheek and
disappeared into the darkness like small clouds. The building
itself was in total darkness, not one light burnt from inside.
Apart from the odd rustle high in the trees above her, the building
and its grounds were silent.

What could this place be?

She reached a set of black iron gates in the wall, which were
padlocked. They stretched up into the night sky like bony black
fingers. To the right of the gates stood a wooden sign, and
engraved upon it were the words:

Welcome to Ravenwood
School

Before she had the chance to even ask herself what sort of
school would be surrounded by twenty foot high walls and
searchlights, an alarm had started to sound. Covering her ears with
her deformed hands, the girl winced at the sound of the alarm that
wailed across the grounds like a World War Two siren. The hooded
figures swung the searchlights, picking out a figure that was
running away from the far side of the school. It headed towards the
trees which lent against the wall like drunks propping up a
bar.

Screwing up her eyes to get a better look at the figure, she
could see it was a man. His face was panic-stricken and his eyes
bulged from their sockets in fear. But he looked overweight, and
with several chins wobbling like whale blubber, he was no match for
the four hooded figures that raced across the grounds behind
him.

The figures howled, leaping through the air and snatching
hold of the escapee. The noise which came from the figures was
nothing like she had ever heard before. It sounded as if they were
choking on their own tongues.

“Pleeeaaassee,” the male screeched, his voice sounding as if
his throat had been cut. “I just want my son!” Then he fell
silent.

The young girl couldn’t see how they had silenced him, but
she watched as they carried him like a stretcher, making their way
back into the school. The searchlights followed them, then swung
away, leaving the building in darkness.

Standing amongst the shadows, with the sounds of those dogs
now yakking and slobbering on the other side of the wall, she
crouched onto all fours and crawled away into the undergrowth,
then…

Kiera

...I sat up in
bed. I rubbed my eyes, covering the backs of my hands in the blood
that dripped from them. The last broken fragments of my nightmare
jabbed into my brain like broken pieces of glass. I’d dreamt the
same dream for over a week now. It always started and ended in the
same place. I didn’t know the girl’s name or what she had been
running from. We were connected, though. The fingers, the shift of
her facial features knocked out of place – but that wasn’t all that
had been knocked off balance. But the more I thought about her
after waking, the foggier the dream became, and faded away like an
early morning mist.

I swung my legs
over the side of the bed. The room was in semi-darkness, the first
rays of morning light creeping around the edges of the heavy
curtains. Wrapping my blanket about me like a shroud, I crossed my
room to the adjoining bathroom. After leaving the mortuary, Potter
had raced us through the night. We only had one place to go, and
that was back to Hallowed Manor. The manor had belonged to Doctor
Hunt, it had been where Kayla had grown up, it was her home and she
had wanted to return.

Hallowed Manor
was ideal. It was remote, laying miles from the nearest town on the
Welsh Moors. Surrounded by a moat, walls, and a gate house, it was
somewhere we could hide in safety – be apart from the rest of the
world, the rest of the living. At first, being together had been
wonderful. To have my friends back had seemed like the Elders had
blessed me, but now I wasn’t so sure. Now I wondered if their
blessing wasn’t in fact a curse, like they said it would be. We
were all dead. Yes, we still inhabited the Earth, but not really.
Not like the living. We were freaks and not just because we were
dead. The Elders had called Potter, Isidor, and Kayla angels – but
what sort of angels were they? Potter was a chain-smoking Vampyrus
with attitude, and the rest of us were half-breeds – half and
half’s as the Elders had called us – half Human and half Vampyrus.
Not only didn’t we belong amongst the living, we were a completely
different species. And I was cracking up – not mentally, although I
had questioned my sanity since waking up in that mortuary six weeks
ago. I was physically cracking up.