Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series Two (Book 8)) (2 page)

“I knew there were others,” Kiera said. “But that’s not why I killed you.”

Okay, confession time, I thought, listening to
this
Kiera start to explain everything to Potter.

“Killed me…?” Potter stared at her. “Kiera, what are you talking about?”

She isn’t your Kiera!
I felt like leaping from behind the tree and screaming at him.

“I had to prove I wasn’t the other Kiera,” she smiled, her long, black hair growing slowly longer and thicker as it trailed down her back.

“Prove what to who?”  Potter looked agog. “Am I being punked here, or what? What are you talking about, Kiera?”

“The Wolf Man told me that if I still wanted to hunt with the wolves – to be one of them – I had to prove I wasn’t the Dead Angel the wolves feared was going to come and destroy them. The Wolf Man said I had the same name as her – that I was identical to her – that he was going to kill me. I begged for my life. But how could I prove that I wasn’t this other Kiera Hudson the Wolf Man spoke of? So he asked me to kill my lover – to kill you, Potter. He said the real Kiera Hudson would give up her own life to save yours.”

“So you killed me – you killed the other Potter,” Potter breathed as if all of a sudden he could see past his own hard-on.

“I ripped his fucking face off and ate his heart while the Wolf Man watched,” Kiera smiled. “Only then did he believe that I wasn’t the Kiera Hudson – the
Dead Angel
– he was waiting for.”

“But you’re half Vampyrus… you have wings like me, Kiera,” Potter said. He looked suddenly broken and crushed by what he was learning.  The sudden realisation that
this
Kiera was nothing like the Kiera he loved looked to have broken his heart. He slowly walked backwards from her.

“So those lumps are wings then?” Kiera asked, looking revolted by the idea. “That’s what the Wolf Man thought when he saw them. And even though I had killed my lover in front of him, the Wolf Man once again
started to believe that I was really this Dead Angel he so feared. And just when I thought he might kill me once and for all, you showed up in my apartment and I realised I had another chance to prove that I was truly a wolf and have no love for you.”

With Potter looking dumbstruck before her, Kiera sprang into the air. Her body changed into the form of a giant black wolf. Kiera’s body was now long and covered in a coat of silky black fur. Her once beautiful face was now hidden behind a vicious-looking snout. The black fur that now covered her body glistened like glass in the moonlight.

“No, Kiera!” Potter hollered, darting out of her way.

Kiera hit the ground and spun around again to face Potter.

I raised my gun from behind the tree.

“Don’t make me kill you, Kiera,” Potter said, his eyes glistening wetly.

“You won’t kill me,” Kiera snarled. “You can’t kill me because you love me. The Wolf Man was right. The love you and this other Kiera Hudson have for each other will be what kills you.”

I moved around the edge of the tree and took aim at the wolf. I pressed down on the trigger to fire,
then stopped. Kiera raced towards Potter, swiping her giant claws at him. They tore a jagged opening in his chest and he cried out.

I steadied my hand holding the gun.   

“Don’t listen to this Wolf Man,” Potter suddenly cried out. “He isn’t who or what you think he is.”

The wolf leapt at Potter again, she howled, consumed by rage. Potter rolled back his fist, crunching it straight into the wolf’s snout. Kiera flew backwards, howling and yelping in pain. She crashed into the side of the rusty red Mini. With her claws scrambling in the dirt, Kiera leapt onto all fours again.

“He told me to bring you up here tonight and kill you. If I did that, then I would be free,” she told Potter.

“He doesn’t have the faintest fucking idea what true freedom is!” Potter roared at her. “He isn’t a wolf. He’s a Vampyrus like me, and he wants to rule you. He wants to rule everyone. That isn’t freedom.”

Did Potter now know the identity of the Wolf Man? I wondered. Who was he? 

“Liar!”
Kiera roared, springing from the car at Potter. 

Potter dropped to the ground, raising his claws into the air. I watched him rake them down the length of her body. He could have killed her if he had wanted to – but yet something was still holding him back. It was the love he had for her. But this wasn’t his Kiera – when was he going to get a grip of that? It was like he was holding out hope that she would leave her wolf-killing ways behind her and become like the Kiera he loved.

“Kiera, listen to me,” he almost pleaded with her.

The wolf’s tongue was lolling from the corner of its jaws as she panted. Blood gushed from Kiera’s side.

“The Wolf Man is called Luke Bishop or Elias Munn… he has many names and faces… but one thing for sure is that he will kill you.”

I dropped the gun from my fist and staggered backwards. To hear Potter say that the Wolf Man was Luke Bishop was like a punch to the face.

“Why?” Kiera snarled as if being able to read my mind.

“Because the other Kiera Hudson… the Kiera I love… she won’t ever give up the fight. She won’t ever be beaten. And somewhere deep inside of you, you are the same. Bishop will see that in you, and he will destroy you, Kiera,” Potter told her. 

Then she rose up on her haunches, tail wagging from side to side.

“Please, Kiera, you don’t have to do this… you’re breaking my heart,” Potter whispered.

Deep inside, I felt as if my heart was broken, too. Not with hurt, but with rage. It was like a cold claw had reached inside my chest and squeezed the blood from it.

“You don’t have to be like the other wolves, Kiera,” I heard Potter say. “You might not be the Kiera Hudson I fell in love with, but you are the same. I know it.”

With blind rage now flowing inside of me, I reached down and fumbled for the gun. 

Kiera lowered her claws and looked at Potter as my fingers brushed over cold metal. I snapped up the gun. 

The wolf standing tall before Potter opened its jaws to say…

Clack! Clack! Clack!

The gun jerked in my fist, Kiera lurched forward into Potter’s arms. For just the briefest of moments, I thought I saw Luke Bishop spilling dead into Potter’s arms.

The wolf howled in pain as its fur fell away in clumps and the woman – Kiera – underneath reappeared. I lowered the gun and glanced down at it. Smoke lingered around the end of the barrel. 

I looked up through the trees to find Potter cradling Kiera in his arms. My skin turned cold with gooseflesh, and again it was like I’d had a sudden flash of déjà vu. A thin black line of blood trickled from a hole in her pale forehead and down onto her cheek. I closed my eyes to shut the image out. Now that she was dead and lying lifeless in Potter’s arms – the picture seemed more than just déjà vu, like a premonition of some kind.

“Kiera,” Potter shouted, jarring me from my stupor.

I opened my eyes. With the smoking gun in my hand, and the camera swinging from around my neck, I stepped out from the hiding place amongst the trees.

Potter glanced up at me, my face still hidden by the hood.

“You shot her!” he screamed.
“You killed her!”

Slowly, I pulled back the hood.

“No!” he gasped, at seeing my face. “Why did you have to kill Kiera?”

“To save your life, Potter,” I said.

Chapter Two

Isidor

I watched Potter leave the waiting room and race up the platform to join Kiera, Kayla, and Sam. The train pulled into the station, steam belching from its giant black funnel. Smoke poured over the edges of the platform like fog. I could hear the approaching berserkers as they were now only moments away from reaching me and the station. The steam from the train swirled around the open waiting room doorway. Out of it stepped a towering figure.

“Jack Seth?” I breathed, raising my crossbow. 

“Give me the picture,” Jack growled like the wolf he was. 

“No,” I said
, holding it tightly in my free hand. “It’s mine.” What did he want with the picture of Melody Rose and me?

Jack
leapt across the waiting room, snatching the photograph from my hand. With my mouth wide open, I watched him tear it into strips with his ferocious-looking claws.

“That was a picture of Mel…” I mumbled, unable to believe that the picture I had treasured for so long was now lying in tatters at my feet. 

“I know what it was, numb-nuts,” Jack snarled inches from my face. “And it isn’t what you think it is. It’s a trap!”

A trap?
I wondered. What was he talking about and where had he so suddenly come from? “What has this got to do with you?” I snapped, my crossbow aimed at his bony chest. “You’re my enemy.”

With one
blinding swipe of his claw, Jack knocked the crossbow from my hand. Before I’d had the chance to snatch it up again, Jack was reaching inside my open coat with his claw. He dragged one crooked fingernail down my chest. It felt as if my flesh was being opened by a knife that was glowing white with heat. I wailed in pain as a gash opened.

“Don’t be such a fuckin
g cry-baby the whole time,” Jack snarled, his top lip rolling back to show his jagged teeth. With his eyes locked on mine, he dipped one long finger into the opening he had made in me. I watched in numb horror as he drew his finger out and sucked my blood from it. I wanted to tell him that if he was planning on killing me, then he would be dead too as the berserkers that now swarmed onto the platform would kill the both of us. But before I’d had the chance to say anything, Jack Seth lurched forward, gripping his stomach with his claws. He looked like he was being shaken to his very core by a series of violent convulsions. 

“What’s happening?” I gasped as he started to change shape and size before me. But Jack wasn’t changing into a wolf like I had seen him do so many times before, he was becoming
me
.

“I’m saving your fucking life, that’s what’s happening,” he panted. He shook violently as his emaciated face started to contort until it looked like mine. “Jeezus, Isidor, your head really is full of dumb fucking ideas.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked. Why did he want to look like me – become me? 

“Because I want you to go and find your friend, Melody Rose,” he said
, looking back at me, and it was like I was staring into a mirror. “She’ll be waiting for you, trust me.”

Jack – or was that me – glanced over his shoulder. I could see the
berserkers were now climbing up and over the platform. The train was puffing and chugging its way back out of the station. I hoped that my friends had managed to make their escape.

Turning to look at me, Jack said, “Hide! Get under the bench and don’t come out until it’s safe to do so.” Even his voice sounded like my own.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, feeling completely creeped out. I dropped to the floor, the cigarette that Potter had given me, slipped from behind my ear and rolled away.

“I’m going to let them kill me,” Jack said, heading back across the waiting room and closing the door. He seemed to linger by the door, looking at his new reflection in the glass window. Why did Jack want to help me? A wolf only ever helped themselves.

From the floor, I heard the clack of the berserkers’ claws outside as they crept along the platform. I could smell them as they too sniffed the air, searching out their prey. Jack Seth turned his back on the door and I rolled under the nearest bench and out of sight.

“Why are you doing this for me?” I whispered up at Jack from my hiding place. 

“Because you will go on to do great things, Isidor,” he whispered back. “Whereas, I will only go on to kill.”

What great things would I ever achieve? What was he talking about? Had he gone mad? No
, Jack had lost his mind a lifetime ago.

Peering out of the darkness from beneath the bench, I watched Jack approach the small wooden ticket booth. He spied the old-fashioned radio on the counter– the one that looked just like the radio Melody would bring to the lake.

“Let’s have some music,” I heard Jack say, and it was crazy-weird to watch him switch it on. It was like watching myself from across the other side of the waiting room. I could hear the sound of static. Jack picked it up and shook it until the distant sound of music could be heard.  Slowly, the door to the waiting room swung open as the first of the berserkers crept inside. I gripped my crossbow to my chest. The berserkers’ pointed teeth shone like needles, and they raised their giant claws as they approached Jack from behind. I wanted to call out and warn him, but he knew they were there. It seemed that Jack had a plan of his own – whatever that plan might be. 

The music from the radio began to swell, drowning out the so
und of the approaching berserkers. It was then as the music grew louder and became clearer I recognised it. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Melody Rose. The song
Heroes
by David Bowie – the same song Melody and I spent so many hours listening to together as we sat on the shore of Lake Lure.  The music grew louder and louder until the walls of the waiting room began to tremor in their foundations. The bench I hid under began to shake and rattle above me. The boom of the music seemed to penetrate my motionless heart, giving it a new beat. Rolling onto my side and drawing my knees up to my chest, I watched Jack turn to face the set of levers protruding from the wall next to the ticket booth. Written above these levers were the words
PUSH
and
PULL
.