Dead Wolf (3 page)

“He doesn’t want me dead,” Potter said, coughing up a wad of blood and spitting it into the snow. “He’s trying to frame me for the murder of some wolf kid and teacher.”

“Wolf kid and teacher?” I said, looking down at him as he tried to claw himself to his knees. “I leave you alone for five freaking minutes and you go and kill a school kid and his teacher.”

“They were wolves,” Potter cried out in pain, gripping his ribs with both hands. “Besides, one of them tried to seduce me...”

“Seduce you!” I shouted in disbelief.

“Don’t tell me you...”

“Nearly...” Potter cut in as he took short, shallow breaths.

“What does nearly mean?” I snapped at him. “You were meant to be coming out here to make up with Kiera for getting it on with Susan...”

“Sophie...” Potter wheezed.

“Whatever!” I snapped at him. “I’m glad you can remember all of their freaking names, because I can’t, there has been so many. What is Kiera gonna say?”

“I thought it was Kiera,” Potter breathed, holding out his hand for me to help him stand.

“Help me get up. I’m bleeding.”

“Quit your moaning. You’ve got a few cuts and grazes. You’ll live,” I told him, ignoring the hand which he held out towards me. “Besides, when did Kiera become a school teacher?”

“The wolf-bitch...” Potter started, falling back onto his knees. “She did that fucking wolf mind-trick on me. She made me believe that I was with Kiera.”

“Jesus, Potter! Don’t you ever learn? If one of these fucking wolves tried to sell you magic beans, you’d buy them!” I shouted at him. “In the future, will you do us all a big favour?”

“What’s that,” Potter winced, still holding his sides.

“If one of these wolves ever tries to sell you a talking parrot, check to see that there isn’t a tape recorder stuffed up its freaking arse!” I snapped, walking away, leaving him looking sorry for himself in the snow. It was then I noticed that Kayla and Sam were nowhere to be seen.

“Kayla!” I called out. “Sam!”

No answer, just the sound of the wind blowing across the field.

I crunched through the snow to where I had last seen Kayla and Sam fighting with the wolf. The ground was covered in blood, but whose? I wondered. I spun around, the snow swirling all about me in the air. I looked for tracks, but there were so many leading to and away from where the fight had taken place. I cupped my hands around my eyes and looked in all directions across the field. The snow continued to fall so thick and fast, that visibility was now only just a few feet in all directions.

“Kayla!”
I roared at the top of my voice.

“Sam!”

Only the howling wind answered me.

With my eyes almost shut tight against the snow, I peered again into the distance. I couldn’t see them anywhere. Even the statues I thought I had seen earlier had now gone.

Kiera

With tears rolling silently onto my cheeks, I lay my father gently onto the floor. I slowly closed his eyes with the flat of my hands. In my head, I kept trying to tell myself that the man on the floor wasn’t my father, not the one who had raised me as a child in the other world – the one which hadn’t been
pushed
. If I kept telling myself that, then the pain I now felt inside wouldn’t feel as sharp and cutting. Maybe I could reduce it to a dull throb. I turned away so I didn’t have to look upon his face. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to. Had my father really been the man who had treated Jack like a son for most of his childhood? Had he been the man who had deceived Jack and left him all alone to fend for himself and his brother, Nik?

More importantly, had my father really been the man who had mixed with a Lycanthrope and was I the result of that mixing? If it were true, then both Jack and I had been deceived by my father. I couldn’t hate him, though, not like Jack hated him.

But didn’t he have reason to? If what Jack had said was true, then my father had murdered Joshua Seth to keep my birth a secret.

Then, still kneeling beside my father’s corpse, I looked up at Jack and said, “Who else knows about me? Who else knows what I am and where I came from?”

“The people who are still living, you mean?” Jack smiled back at me.

“Yes,” I nodded.

“Just me and your friend, Murphy,” Jack said over the sound of the wind blowing hard outside in the dark.

“Do the Elders know?” I asked, wondering if that was the true reason I was being punished. After all, I was the result of a forbidden act, carried out by a Lycanthrope and Vampyrus.

Wouldn’t they hate me – despise me? Didn’t I go against all of their natural laws, just like the half-breeds? But weren’t the relationship between Vampyrus and humans forbidden, too? Hadn’t those relationships been outlawed by the Elders because none of the children lived past the age of sixteen? Didn’t that make Murphy a hypocrite?

He had refused to help and support Father Paul, my father, because of his relationship with Kathy Seth, but he had mixed with a human and had two daughters. They had both been half-breeds, murdered at Hallowed Manor by Sparky and Luke.

Jack sat quietly and watched me from the shadows. “Do the Elders know about me?” I asked again.

“I don’t know,” he said with a casual shrug.

“Did they know that Murphy had mixed with a human and had two half-breed daughters?”

I said, standing up and wiping the tears from my cheeks.

“You catch on fast, sister,” Jack grinned.

“What do you mean?” I asked, moving across the room towards him.

“You already see the double standards set by your friends,” he said. “Murphy wouldn’t help our mother because her relationship was forbidden by the Elders. Or perhaps it was more because he just didn’t approve.”

“What do you mean, Murphy didn’t approve?” I asked, standing before Jack, and looking down at him.

“Maybe if Murphy’s brother, your father, had been mixing it up with a human, then he would have helped,” Jack said, looking up at me. “But our mother wasn’t human, she was a wolf and we all know how much Murphy and your other friends hate the wolves. They treat us like some inferior species to them. It’s like we are not fit to be their equal. It’s only now that I know the true reason why I hated that holding house. We were kept there like animals, waiting for the Vampyrus to find us homes. They weren’t finding us homes; they were spreading our numbers, diluting us. In such small numbers, we were no threat to them.

We were weak. Only together are the Lycanthrope strong. Who put the Vampyrus in charge? Who gave your friend, Murphy the right to police us? What makes the Vampyrus more superior to me or you?”

“But you’re a murderous race,” I said back, wondering if Jack were not speaking some truth or just screwing with my mind again.

“The Vampyrus have done their fair share of bloodletting throughout history,” Jack sneered.

“It wasn’t the Lycanthrope who was running around feeding off humans and turning them into vampires. It wasn’t a Lycanthrope who was trying to kill off all of humankind so he could have the Earth as his own – it was Elias Munn – a Vampyrus. They are in no position to dictate to us how we live our lives.”

“There is no
us
,” I insisted. “I’m not like you.”

“It makes no difference what you believe,” Jack said with a casual shrug. “I haven’t lied to you, Kiera. There is a part of you that is very much like me. Whether you like it or not, you are half Lycanthrope.”

“Even if what you say is true, I will never be like you,” I hissed. “I refuse to be. You say I have a choice, Jack. Well, I make my choice. I choose the Vampyrus side of me – not the wolf.”

“We’ll see,” Jack smiled straight back at me. “We’ll see.”

“See what?” I snapped at him, fighting the urge to wipe that knowing grin from his face.

“When Potter arrives, which he will,”

Jack said. “We’ll see who you choose.”

Murphy

“Where have they gone?” Potter groaned in pain, staggering to his feet.

“If I knew that, do you think I would be standing in the middle a fucking snow blizzard calling out their names?” I barked at him. I wasn’t mad at Potter, not really, I was mad at myself.

Although I was pissed at him for going and getting himself in the shit again with the wolves. He attracted the wolves like flies around shit.

I looked at Potter as he lurched through the falling snow towards me. “How did you get here?” he wheezed, his hands pressed against his ribs and blood running from the cuts on his face.

“The police van,” I said, checking the horizon again for any signs of Kayla and Sam.

“Perhaps they’ve gone back to it to take shelter,” he suggested.

“I doubt it,” I said. “They would have stayed here.”

“It’s a shame Kiera isn’t here,” Potter said, looking down at the crisscross pattern of foot and paw prints in the snow.

“How’s that?” I asked him.

“She’d only have to take one look at these tracks and she’d be crawling around on her hands and knees, telling us how many there were, how tall, their weight, what they had for freaking breakfast, and the last time they blew their nose,”

he half-smiled as he thought of her.

“Well you want to thank your lucky stars she ain’t here,” I grumbled.

“Why?” Potter said, looking back at me.

“Because she’d kick your freaking arse, that’s why, numb nuts!” I barked at him. “It’s not like she wasn’t pissed at you already, and now you’ve gone and humped a school teacher. Christ knows what she sees in you.”

“I didn’t hump her,” Potter groaned, spitting a clot of blood into the snow. “And she wasn’t a school teacher...”

Not interested in his excuses, I cut him dead and said, “You say Jack Seth is behind all of this? How can you be so sure?”

“As one of those Skin-walkers was kicking me in the bollocks, I heard him mention that Jack Seth wanted me alive,” Potter explained.

“Then we’re in a whole heap of shit,” I said.

“What’s new?” Potter said, snapping his broken and swollen fingers back into place.

“Do you have to do that?” I glared at him.

“It sounds fucking disgusting.”

Potter looked at me and opened and closed his fists, the sound of his finger joints popping and cracking sending gooseflesh up my back. “I can see you’re starting to feel better.”

“I ain’t gonna feel right for another couple of hours or so,” he said, arming away the blood that dripped from what looked like a broken nose.

“I think they’ve broken every single one of my ribs.”

“We don’t have a couple of hours to spare,” I told him. “If what you say is true, then I’m guessing that Seth got to Kiera’s father’s house before her and...” I paused, fearing what might have happened to Kiera – what she might have learnt – if Jack and her father...

“And what?” Potter snapped, fishing around in his trouser pockets and pulling out a crushed packet of cigarettes. He took one from the packet, which was bent over like a limp dick.

He straightened it out, popped it between his lips, and then lit it. He drew deeply on the cigarette, then coughed, the sound of his broken ribs rattling like a bag of bones beneath his chest.

“You want to think about quitting,” I told him.

“And what?” Potter asked again, the flat of his free hand pressed against his ribs.

“And we don’t know where Kayla and Sam have disappeared to,” I said, pushing the thoughts of what might or might not have happened with Kiera and Seth from my mind. For now, at least. “We can’t leave without them, but we don’t have time to go searching for them, either; not if we’re to go and save Kiera.”

“Let’s start back at the van,” Potter winced, setting off across the field, a trail of thin, blue smoke ebbing away from the cigarette which dangled from the corner of his bloody mouth. I followed, taking one last look back into the snow, hoping that I might see Kayla and Sam somewhere.

There was no sign of any track marks back at the van. In fact, the snow was coming down so hard and fast, it had covered any sign of the footprints we would have made earlier when leaving the van to save Potter. I snatched my pipe from the front seat and lit it.

“Well?” Potter asked me.

“Well, what?” I snapped at him, not knowing if we should go to Kiera or search for Kayla and Sam.

“Don’t you see I was right?” Potter said, yanking open the back doors of the police van and reaching inside.

“Right about what?” I grunted, taking one of the long, black trench coats Potter had taken from the van. I put it on, covering my wings, and pulling the collar up about my throat.

“Teen-wolf,” Potter said, flicking the butt of his cigarette away with his thumb and forefinger. “Sam has taken Kayla. He waited for you to turn your back, and then he snatched her.

They’re probably halfway to the Fountain of Souls by now.”

“He didn’t take her,” I snapped at him, deep inside hoping that Potter was wrong.

“When are you going to stop putting your trust in these wolves, Sarge,” Potter wheezed, his chest rattling again. “They do nothing but lie and deceive. Believe me, I should know, I’ve...”

“Screwed enough,” I cut in.

“Only Eloisa,” Potter came back at me angrily. “And doesn’t that go to prove my point?

She deceived me so she could go off and kill those children at the Wolf House. Then this so-called school teacher got me believing she was Kiera to delay me from reaching her. The wolves are nothing more than a bunch of murdering scum.

Isn’t it enough to know that Jack Seth betrayed you in the caves? You had your heart ripped out because of him.”

“But...” I started.

“What is it with you and the wolves anyhow?” Potter cut over me, the snow now settling on the shoulders of the black coat he had put on. “It’s almost as if you have a soft spot for ‘em. It seems to me that it doesn’t matter how many times they trick, deceive, and murder, you’re still prepared to give them another chance.”

“Bollocks!” I growled at him.

“You forget that not only did you die because of Seth, but Sparky murdered both your daughters – and yet you still give them the benefit of the doubt,” Potter said, limping towards me.