Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series Two (Book 8)) (6 page)

I reached the edge of the wood and stopped again. Not because I’d had some sudden thought, but because I could see several police vehicles parked, shutting off the entrance to the road I needed to follow into town. There was no way I could step out onto the road without being seen by them. I could see marked police cars with the lights flashing blue and red. There was also a police van and it rocked from side to side as the
berserkers caged inside fought to be free. Crouching behind a nearby tree, I watched the Skin-walker cops as they talked into their radios, passing messages back and forth to the control room. I didn’t know whether to head back and risk coming across those Skin-walkers and their berserkers or wait, hidden in the undergrowth, until the cops packed up and went back to their station. I felt suddenly trapped and wasn’t sure what to do.

I watched one of the cops go to the boot of the police car and remove a roll of blue and white striped tape. He then
cordoned off the entrance to the woods and part of the road. They weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. A child had been snatched and cops didn’t let that sort of thing pass without some attention. I doubted if all this effort was for a human child, so I guessed the baby that had been taken was a Lycanthrope.

As I watched the Skin-walker
cops seal off the area, I saw another car arrive and stop on the other side of the blue police tape. I heard the driver’s door swing open, but from my hiding place, I couldn’t see who had gotten out. Crouching low, I inched my way nearer to the edge of the woods and the road. I peered through the bushes I had taken shelter behind and stifled a sudden gasp, clamping my hands over my mouth. A woman with long, pink hair was approaching the cops who protected the cordon. And even though she wore a warm-looking parka coat with the collar turned up against the wind, I could see pink coloured rose tattoos on the side of her neck.

With my hands covering my mouth, I watched Melody Rose stride toward the guards. Taking what looked like some kind
of I.D card from her coat pocket; she waved it before the cops and said, “Press.”

Without argument, one of the Skin-walker cops raised the tape and let Melody Rose slide beneath it and into the woods.

Chapter Nine

Kayla

“Where did you find this?” I asked, looking down at myself staring out of the newspaper clipping.

“It was pinned to the wall in Kiera’s apartment,” Potter said, over the sound of the rain bouncing off the car we sheltered in.

“Which Kiera?” I asked, glancing up at him.

“The one you just shot,” he said.

“Why did she have it pinned to her wall?” I asked, remembering how our Kiera had often sat for hours cutting out newspaper clippings and tacking them to the walls of her bedroom at Hallowed Manor. “The Kiera Hudson I shot didn’t know me in this world.”

“The walls of her apartment were covered in thousands of these newspaper clippings,” Potter explained. “I guess the two Kieras were more alike than just in appearance.”

“Why this particular story, though?” I asked, looking back down at the piece of newspaper I held in my hand.

“Every cutting was about people who had been murdered in a hideous or strange way. You and Isidor had your backs ripped open in this world by your father, Lord Hunt, as he believed he would find wings hidden inside of you. Most of the other stories were about alleged
sightings of winged creatures, or humans who claimed that they could remember having lived previous lives very much like the ones they were now living. Most of these people had been rounded up by the wolves and imprisoned or killed. I think the Kiera from this
where
and
when
perhaps remembered another life she had once lived.”

“Kiera’s life?
The Kiera we love?” I asked him.

“Perhaps,” Potter said, staring through the windscreen at the falling rain. “I think that’s why your father murdered you and Isidor in this world. He was remembering too. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered that both his children had wings. I guess it drove him mad, just like those other humans who have gone crazy as they’ve remembered what the world had once been like before it got
pushed
. I’ve heard people say that the two different worlds are trying to push themselves back together, like two pieces of tracing paper trying to match themselves up. Reline themselves. Everything in this world seems to be connected to the other somehow.”

“I think you’re right,” I whispered, studying the newspaper clipping carefully.

“Because of something Sam’s parents told you?” Potter asked me.

“Kinda,” I said, bringing the newspaper clipping up before my eyes.

“What else, then?” Potter said.

“Isidor told us he was once in love with a girl named Melody Rose, right?” I said, peering over the piece of newspaper at him.

“You should know that better than anyone,” Potter said. “Wasn’t it you who took the picture of them together? Wasn’t that one of the pictures Sam’s parents asked you to take, then place it in that grate?”

“Not me,” I told him. “Sam’s mother asked him to take that particular picture. There were two photographers. I had to take the picture of Kiera and her father and deliver your letters to Sophie.”

“So why mention Melody Rose?” Potter asked, his brow wrinkling.

“Look who wrote the article in the newspaper about Isidor and me being murdered on the side of that mountain,” I said, handing him back the clipping. “It looks like Melody Rose is alive and well in this world and is some kind of investigative reporter.”

Potter turned it over in his hands. “Two sides of the same coin,” he whispered.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Looking at me, Potter said, “On the other side of this clipping is the message, Lilly – Pen – left for Murphy. What are the chances of that happening?”

That was the third time I’d heard the name Lilly since meeting up with Potter again. “Who is Lilly or Pen?”

“Huh?” Potter said, kind of distracted. He looked up from the newspaper cutting and met my stare. “I was forgetting that there is so much you don’t know, Kayla.”

“Like what?” I asked him, desperate to know what had happened to my friends while I’d been away.

As we sat in the tiny car, hidden from the wind and rain, Potter told me all about Pen who Murphy had once been in love with. But this romance had taken place before the world had been
pushed
and their relationship had been forbidden by the Elders. Pen had had two daughters with Murphy, Meren and Nessa, which she had left for Murphy to raise alone. Potter explained that Pen had gone on the run and changed her name to Lilly Blu. She wanted the Elders to believe she was dead. Pen had promised Murphy that if she ever needed him, she would leave a message in the local newspaper under her new name. But she had never left one. Not until now, that is. Lilly had been
pushed
through to this world and was now helping an Elder named Noah, to make cracks in this world.”

“Noah?” I frowned. “Why would she be helping one of the Elders?”

“This Elder isn’t like the others,” Potter said. “He’s built this railway station – a fortress – that the other Elders are unaware of. He is sending humans back to the old world on trains that leave from beneath the station.”

“Through cracks,” I told him. “That’s how Sam’s mother explained it to us.”

“Maybe,” Potter said thoughtfully. “She sent me and Jack to intercept the photographer – you and Sam.”

“Why?” I asked. “We have been doing a good thing.”

“Lilly and Noah weren’t so sure what the photographer’s motives were,” Potter said. “They didn’t know whether you were trying to cause us all as much pain as possible for the Elders to feed off of, or whether you were trying to make cracks in this world to help the old one bleed through.”

“I was trying to help,” I assured him.
“Just like Sam and his parents are trying to help.

“Maybe you should take me to meet them,” Potter said. “What are they like? Can they be trusted?”

“I’ve only met Sam’s mother,” I told him. “Her name is Sue.”

“What does she look like?” Potter eyed me.

“Long black hair, pale skin, full red lips… you’d love her, Potter,” I half-smiled at him.

“And the father?”
     

         “I haven’t met him yet.”

“Why not?” Potter asked, not taking his eyes from mine.

“He was away on one of those secret trips I told you about,” I explained. “But I will meet up with him, Sam, and his mother when I go forward again through the cracks.”

“I think we should go now,” Potter said, leaning against the car door as if getting out already.  

“We can’t. Not yet,” I said, placing one hand on his arm.

“Why not?” Potter scowled.

“The photograph and the letters,” I reminded him. “The photograph needs to be left in Kiera’s apartment for you to find or you will never give it to Kiera and the letters have to be posted to Sophie…”

“I’ve already told you that I want nothing to do with them,” he said, glancing at the pile of envelopes stacked on the dashboard. His eyes had grown darker as if he suddenly felt very sad.

“But they have to be delivered to her or she won’t remember you…” I started.

“Good,” Potter cut in. “Then perhaps she won’t die.”

“She’ll die anyway in this
pushed
world,” I told him. “You can’t change that. “Sophie was the person who stole the vial of Kiera’s blood. The wolves will hunt her down and kill her anyway and take that vial. Once they have that, they will work out that the dead angel they are searching for has come. They will be warned. The Wolf Man – Luke Bishop will be warned that Kiera has come back.”

“You know the identity of the Wolf Man?” Potter asked.

“I heard you and that other Kiera talking about him,” I said, a well of anger bubbling in the pit of my stomach at the thought of the man who had once murdered me.

“I think he already knows Kiera has come back,” Potter said.

“He can’t know for sure or she would be dead already,” I told him.

“He captured me and Jack Seth,” Potter explained. “He was going to behead us, but Jack’s brother switched with me, and Lilly rescued us. So as far as Bishop believes,
me and Jack are both dead. He wanted Kiera to crawl into the town of Wasp Water and beg to be his Queen. Only then would he spare her friends’ lives.”

“Sounds like Luke
was using you both to flush Kiera out,” I said thoughtfully. “He knew that Kiera would come to your rescue. Then he would’ve killed her.”

“He said that he had you, Kayla,” Potter explained.

“As you can see, he hasn’t,” I shrugged. “See, Luke was just bluffing you.”

“But if he knew I was back in this
pushed
world, then wouldn’t that mean Kiera had returned too?” Potter asked.

“Not necessarily,” I said, looking at him. “Some of us have come back into this world at different times. Jack Seth has been back two hundred years or more. Murphy came back before us, too. As far as Luke knows, Kiera hasn’t come back into this
pushed
world yet. But if he gets his hands on that blood taken from her corpse in the morgue at some point in the future, he will know she’s back for sure.

“But Murphy told me he’d already destroyed that blood sample,” Potter said.

“Only because he came across Sophie and that only happened because we give her a little push,” I said. 

Chapter Ten

Isidor

My first instinct was to call out her name. My second was to spring from my hiding place and go running toward her. But I fought the urge, and stayed hidden from view. I couldn’t risk showing out, not with those Skin-walkers looking for some kind of winged creature they believed had been killing children in their town. So from my hiding place, I watched Melody walk away between the trees and into the distance. I didn’t let her go too far for fear of losing sight of her, now that I’d found her again. I had a kinda nervous but excited feeling in my stomach. I had waited for so long to see her again. I had dreamt about this moment, imagined how it would be. We would see each other again for the first time and be overjoyed. We would laugh, and locked together in each other’s arms,
we would share our first true kiss. If I had a heart that still beat, I knew it would now be thumping in my chest. I saw glimpses of Melody’s bright pink hair in the distance as she headed deeper into the woods. Then, when I feared that I might lose sight of her altogether, I crept from my hiding place and followed her.

Creeping from behind one tree and then another, I kept a safe distance. I didn’t want to get too close to her and reveal myself too soon. I still couldn’t be sure if Melody would recognise me in this world or
whether I would be a stranger to her. If I were a stranger to her and she glanced back to find me following her, she might let out a cry or call for help, believing that I was the killer the local cops and she searched for. I couldn’t risk scaring Melody, as there still might be some of those Skin-walker cops with their berserkers searching the woods. I didn’t want to draw their attention to me. I would wait until we were deep in the woods or a safe distance from where anyone might see or overhear us before I revealed myself to Melody.