Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series Two (Book 8)) (15 page)

“Where?” she asked.

“Anywhere.
I don’t care, as long as I’m with you,” I smiled.

Looking up into my eyes, Melody said, “I love your smile.”

“And you’ve shown me that smiling is only the second greatest thing I can do with my lips,” I said.

“And what’s the first?” she asked.

“This,” I whispered, leaning down and kissing her.

 
Chapter Twenty-Three

Kayla

Ripper Falls Station was smaller than the last. It had a single platform and no waiting room. The ticket office was shut, and there was no information board or timetable displayed. There was a speaker attached to the station wall. Why such a small station would need a speaker system, I had no idea. You could stand at one end of the platform, whispering, and anyone standing at the other end would hear what you had said. Intermittent static hissed through the speaker. 

Pulling the collar of his coat up against the rain, Potter looked at me and said, “So, do you have any idea what train we need to catch from here to get back?”

“Nope,” I shrugged.

“So old-mother-teen-wolf never told you what train you had to catch to get back?” he pressed.

“She just said that when the time was right to come back, then I would know the right train to catch,” I told him.

“Oh, Christ, she didn’t give you a crystal ball as well as that fucking camera, did she?” Potter groaned. “You know, the more you tell me about Sam and his parents, the more I’m starting to believe this is all some kind of fucking wind-up.”

“It’s not,” I insisted.

“Has it ever occurred to you they might not have wanted you to get back?” he said.

“What’s that s’posed to mean?” I asked, the rain plastering my long, red hair to the sides of my face.

“It means that this trip was taken on a one-way ticket,” he said. “It means there is no going back to the
where
and
when
we need to get back to.”

“Why would they want to do something like that?” I asked him.

“Mmm, I wonder,” Potter said sarcastically. “Perhaps this whole fucking thing was a trap.”

“Sam wouldn’t do that to me…” I
started.

“He’s a wolf, isn’t he? He’d probably eat his own grandmother if he was hungry,” Potter said over the constant hiss of static coming from the speaker. He glared up at it.

“That’s a terrible thing to say about Sam,” I said. “Besides, I don’t even think he has a grandmother. He’s never mentioned having a…”

“I don’t fucking believe this,” Potter cut in.

“Believe what?” I shot back.

“We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere, in the pouring rain, with no idea as to how we’re gonna get back, and all you want to talk about is your boyfriend’s fucking family tree,” he barked.

“You started it…” I said.

“No, I never, it was you…”

“Be quiet,” I said, raising my hand in the air. Potter looked at me as if I’d slapped him. “I can hear something.”

“I can’t hear…”

“Shhh,” I warned him, cocking my head toward the speaker. Deep within the sound of static, I could hear music. It was faint, but there it was all the same. “I can hear music.”

We both stared up at the speaker as the static faded and the music grew louder – clearer. It was a tune I recognised, but couldn’t quite place it. The music began to swell as it boomed out of the tiny speaker. The wall started to shake, brick dust falling away and covering the rain-drenched platform.

The words came through clearer, and as they did, a smile crawled across my face.

“What are you looking so pleased about?” Potter yelled over the heart pounding music.

“Sam didn’t set a trap for me,” I hollered back.

“How can you be so sure?” Potter
roared, the music so loud now that the platform had started to vibrate.

“The song!”
I grinned. “It’s called
Going Underground
by The Jam.”

“So?” Potter shouted over the music.

“The music is telling us that the next train will take us underground – back to that Underground Station.”

“How do you know?” Potter asked.

Turning around, I pointed at the tube train that now waited at the platform, and said, “Because of that.”

I walked toward the train, and as I did, the doors slid open. Together, we stepped into the empty carriage. The doors whooshed closed behind us, cutting dead the music coming from the platform. Slowly, the train eased out of the station. Potter went to the door and looked out at the cracks in the night sky. Then, as if being struck by a sudden thought, he looked at me and said, “The picture Sam was sent to take of me in that barn?”

“What about it?”

“That picture was used by Luke to convict me of the murder of that wolf boy – Dorsey,” Potter said.

“So?” I asked.

“Who was Sam told to give that photograph to?” Potter asked, stepping away from the door and coming towards me.

“To his father,” I breathed.

With his eyes turning black, Potter looked at me and said, “Kayla, we’ve got to get off this train. We
are
heading into a trap.”

Suddenly, the lights went out.

 
Chapter Twenty-Four

Isidor

With my rucksack over my back, wings and crossbow hidden beneath my long, black coat, Melody and I left her tiny secluded cottage. Hand in hand we set off through the snow. It swirled and danced all around us, settling in our hair and on our shoulders.  Melody had pulled her long, pink hair into two bunches and they swished about on either side of her head. Our feet crunched deep into the snow, which was now almost knee-deep. Night was drawing in, and those cracks shone brighter than ever. The sky looked like it had been covered with grey coloured slabs of crazy paving. The wind was bitterly cold, and Melody tightened the scarf she wore about her neck. The end of my nose tingled, and we hadn’t gone very far when the tip of it had started to turn numb. I rubbed the end of it with the back of my hand, and that’s when I first smelt blood. I thought perhaps I had cut my hand and it was bleeding without me knowing it. But my hands were unharmed.

“Can you smell blood?” I asked Melody, knowing that as a wolf she would have an extra sensitive sense of smell.

“Blood?” she said.

“It’s coming from up ahead,” I said.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Positive,” I said, speeding up a little. The smell of fresh blood made my stomach somersault with pangs I hadn’t felt for a while.

The path we followed opened out a little as we headed further down the mountain. To our left there was an open plain. I turned my head in that direction, the smell of fresh blood growing ever stronger on the wind. The area was covered in a thick carpet of snow, and out of this jutted a series of giant black rocks. From a distance, they looked like gravestones that had crumbled away in places. Then over the howl of the wind, I heard the unmistakeable cry of a baby. Melody heard it too, and she glanced sideways at me.

“The baby who got snatched from its crib,” she said.

She raced away toward the rocks in the direction of the crying baby. “Melody!” I called out, suddenly sensing danger. But she was gone, moving with a swiftness over the snow that surprised even me. I ran after her, reaching inside my coat and drawing my crossbow. Ahead of me, Melody reached the rocks that protruded out of the thick snow. She cried out, throwing her hands to her face. I sprang through the air, closing the gap between us in an instant. I landed beside her, sending up a shower of powdery snow. I peered around the edge of the rock and had to use all of my strength to not cry out too.

Lying in a puddle of pink snow was the remains of a small child. The wolf looked up at us, its snout and bushy whiskers bright red and wet-looking. Sticking out of the snow nearby was what looked like a bright yellow blanket.

“A wolf,” Melody said, staggering backwards.

I glanced at her, knowing that there had been a time when she had thought perhaps the creature killing the children in the woods had wings like me.

Looking back at me, and as if being able to read my mind, Melody said, “I didn’t want to believe it could be a wolf, although I guess deep in my heart I knew it was.”

Before I’d the chance to say anything, the wolf that had killed the child leapt into the air, crushing its giant paws into Melody’s chest.  Before Melody had even slammed into the snow, I had drawn a bolt from my rucksack, loaded my crossbow, taken aim at the wolf, and shot it in the head. The creature released a gut-wrenching howl as it dropped out of the air and into the snow. It lay on its side,
tongue lolling from its massive jaws. It panted rapidly, its bright orange eyes rolling in their wet-looking sockets. I fired another bolt into its skull and it fell still. Before my eyes, its fur began to fall away to reveal the human man beneath. In a perverse kind of way, he looked as if he had been shot in the head while out walking naked in the snow. I turned away and ran toward Melody.

“Are you okay?” I said, pulling her up.

“Just winded,” she gasped, brushing snow from the seat of her jeans.

“We’d better get outta here before more of those Skin-walkers show up,” I said, taking her by the hand and setting off through the snow again.

“I think we’re too late,” she said, pointing behind us.

I glanced back over my shoulder to see a ferocious pack of berserkers and their handlers racing after us through the snow. The berserkers barked and snapped their cavernous jaws with rage. Lengths of drool swung from their jaws like bungee ropes. Several of the Skin-walkers took aim with their guns and opened fire. Bullets screamed over our heads and thundered into the snow at our feet.

“Run!” I roared at Melody as the Skin-walkers unleashed their berserkers upon us.

     
Chapter Twenty-Five

Kayla

My eyes gradually grew accustomed to the darkness. It was like I could see shadows at first swooping backwards and forwards before my eyes. But there were sounds, too. Shouting. A light appeared in the darkness. Light at the end of a tunnel. Tunnel? Yes, I was in a tunnel and walking toward the light. I felt someone grip me by the arm and I squealed in surprise. A hand clamped tight over my mouth, my eyes darting left and right in fear.

“Shhh!” someone breathed in my ear.
Potter? Yes, it was Potter! I could smell cigarette smoke on his breath. “There is someone ahead.”

“Where are we?” I whispered, slowly easing his hand from over my mouth.

“In a tunnel,” he said, his breath warm against my ear. “A tube train tunnel. Be careful of the tracks. They’re electrified.”

I pressed myself flat against the tunnel wall, so as not to stray too close to the tracks. I might be dead, but I wasn’t planning on being sautéed, too.

The voice echoed back down the tunnel again, bouncing off the walls. The words and voices were undecipherable. One voice was deep and booming – angry. I looked in the opposite direction of the light only to see a wall of utter darkness. It looked thick and impenetrable.

“Which way?”
I whispered.

“Toward the light,” Potter said, taking hold of my hand in the darkness. “It’s gotta be that tube station you told me about.”

We inched our way along the edge of the tunnel wall. I felt something scamper over my feet and I gasped out loud. Potter covered my mouth with his hand again.

“Just rats,” he whispered. “Don’t get so excited.”

I pushed his hand away. The light was nearer now and I could see the tracks ahead, shining like two silver strips as they led out of the tunnel. Potter had been right; the light was coming from a station in the distance. As we drew closer to it, the voices became louder and clearer. With the mouth of the tunnel just feet away now, we pressed our backs against the wall and listened.

“I asked for a picture of the girl and the boy, and you bring me back this!?” I heard an angry male voice roar.

“Pathetic!” a female hissed. Was that Sam’s mother? I couldn’t be sure. She had sounded so sweet before. “I told you we couldn’t rely on him.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” I heard another say, and I did recognise that voice. It was Sam who had spoken. He sounded hurt and confused.

There was a sickening cracking sound, like flesh being
whacked
with something hard. A fist? I heard Sam cry out and I flinched. Potter gripped my hand tighter in his. I glanced at him. His face was just a white mask floating in the sea of darkness that surrounded us. His eyes were as black as the shadows.

“What happened!” the male voice screeched, and whoever the voice belonged to, it sounded as if he bordered on insanity.
“Tell me what happened!” 

“I went through the crack like I was told to, but it wasn’t Isidor or Melody who I saw…” Sam’s words were cut short as that whacking sound once again echoed down the tunnel.