Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series Two (Book 8)) (7 page)

I continued to follow Melody, catching fleeting glimpses of her pink hair as she weaved her way amongst the trees. At first I wonder
ed if she might be heading for the lake, but she skirted around the edges of it, heading toward the mountains with their snow-flecked peaks in the distance. For how long I followed Melody I didn’t know, but it must have been for two hours or more. And with each step, my nervousness about revealing myself to her grew in the pit of my stomach. So many self-doubts washed around my mind. Not only did I fear that she might not remember me, but what if it was different here? What if our relationship wasn’t the same as it was before the world got
pushed
out of place? I didn’t know if I could deal with that kind of hurt. I had built this moment up so much in my mind since I had discovered that picture of us… the
picture!

That picture of me and Melody showed us looking happy and locked in each other’s arms. The photograph could’ve only been taken in this world, as she never lived past the age of fourteen in her previous life. The
thought of our happy faces staring out of that photograph eased my nerves a little. Didn’t that picture suggest we would be happy in this world together? Where else could it have been taken? While I had been lost in my own thoughts, I had followed Melody out of the woods and started the climb up into the mountains that surrounded the lake. It had begun to snow. Giant flakes, like feathers, seesawed lazily down and covered the narrow path I followed up the mountainside. I looked up into the sky that was now the colour of bruised flesh. The cracks were still there, spreading out like a vast net. It looked as if the snow was drifting out of them. I looked back at the path I was following and could just make out Melody way off in the distance. She was hunched forward, hands thrust into her coat pockets. I quickened my pace, now sensing that I was far away enough from those cops to risk showing out to Melody. I glanced back just once at the black lake stretched out below like a mirror. It looked like a slab of slate. Beyond the lake and the woods, I could see the darkening sky flashing blue and red as the cops continued to search for the body of the baby that had been snatched from its crib.

The path twisted its way around the mountainside, and several times I lost sight of Melody altogether. With my rucksack hung over my shoulder, I sped up until I had her in sight again. Then, when Melody was no more than a hundred yards or so ahead of me, she suddenly seemed to disappear. I stopped short and rubbed snow out of my eyes. It was coming down fast now, and it swirled all around me like I was trapped in a giant snow globe. I moved forward to the spot where I had last seen
Melody. Her boots had left tracks in the snow and I could see that they had veered off to the right and into a small crop of trees. Glancing back once, I looked down at the lake, but it had almost disappeared behind the wall of snow that now fell. I faced front, and with wispy clouds of breath escaping my mouth, I headed into the crop of trees. I hadn’t gone very far, when I saw what looked like a small clearing. Between the trees I could see a cottage. It was something right out of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales Melody had once read to me as we had sat by the lake below. The cottage was made of a rustic coloured stone, with a thatched roof. There was a chimney, but no smoke tumbled from it. The front of the small dwelling was coated down one side in snow-covered ivy. The whole scene looked like something you might see on a card at Candle Mass. I inched forward, then stopped. I could see Melody standing at the front of the cottage, her back to me. The door was made of a dark red wood with two glass panels fixed into it.

I crept from beneath the crop of trees. Melody stood just feet away now, her back still facing me. My stomach twisted into painful knots. I took a deep breath as I readied myself to call out to her – say her name. But before I’d mustered the courage to say anything, Melody spoke.

“If you’re going to follow someone, make sure they can’t see your reflection,” she said, staring into one of the glass panels fixed into the front door.

I looked over her shoulder and could see myself reflected there, standing ankle deep in the snow.

“Melody…” I stuttered.

She turned to face me, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I once more looked into her beautiful blue eyes.

“Melody Rose,” I breathed out loud.

She looked at me. “I always knew you would come back someday,” Melody said as if she too had been expecting this moment.

“You remember me?” I smiled with delight.

“Sure, I remember you. How could I forget?” she said, staring at me. “Your name is Isidor and you were the kid who got murdered on this mountainside.”         

Chapter El
even

Kayla

Potter sat and looked at the letters sealed in their dog-eared envelopes. I looked at them too, and guessed they were perhaps love letters he had once sent the girl he had been so deeply in love with. I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps he still felt something for her deep down. However hard and difficult Potter liked to be at times; I knew he could be sensitive, too. However deep he tried to bury his feelings, I knew they were there.

“How did Sam’s parents come by these letters?” Potter asked
, his eyes still fixed on them.  

“Dunno,” I shrugged. “Through the cracks, I guess.”

“Why haven’t you delivered them before now?” he asked.

“Have you seen the writing on the front?” I groaned, taking one from the pile. “Not only do you write like a freaking five-year-old, Potter, the writing is so faded, it’s practically unreadable. I was hoping you might be able to lead me to where she lived in this world. After all, you’ve been there already, right?”

“Right,” Potter said, starting up the engine.

“We don’t drive there,” I said with a frown. “We need to go back further into the cracks.”

“We ain’t going to Sophie’s just yet,” Potter said. “We’re going to Kiera’s apartment to put that picture in place.”

“But I thought you said that picture ends up causing her nothing but pain,” I said, as he bumped the tiny car over the uneven track.

“And it does,” Potter said, swinging the car out onto a wider country road and heading back towards the town of Havensfield. “That picture does lead Kiera to her father in this world, but it also leads her to the truth about him. And however painful that truth is, Kiera has a right to know. I’ve lied before to protect Kiera, but I won’t do it again. She deserves better than that.”

Bouncing about in my seat as Potter navigated the uneven roads, I glanced at him. “You said that Jack Seth was Kiera’s brother.”

“That’s right,” Potter grunted, rubbing condensation from the windscreen with the back of his hand. The rain still continued to fall outside and the wind blew off the fields that stretched away on either side of the road into the dark.

“That makes Kiera a half and half, just like Meren and Nessa,” I said.

“So?” Potter said, teasing another cigarette from the packet while trying to steer the car at the same time. He got one free, stuck it in the corner of his mouth, and lit it.

“Why wasn’t Kiera sick then like Meren and Nessa?” I asked him.

“Because soon after her birth, she was placed into the Dead Waters at the Fountain of Souls,” Potter said, filling the car with smoke again.

I eased the window open another inch, rain blowing into my face. I turned away and looked at Potter.
“How come?”

As Potter steered the car around the twists and bends in the narrow country roads, he explained how Kiera’s father had had a secret relationship with a wolf named Kathy Seth, who had been Jack’s mother.

“So Jessica Hudson wasn’t Kiera’s birthmother?” I asked, trying to make sense of everything I was now hearing.

“Adoptive mother,” Potter said, filling in the gaps. “Kiera was stillborn, so Murphy tried to hide her body by sinking it in the Dead Waters at the Fountain of Souls. But somehow the waters gave her life. So fearing that the Elders might discover the mixing that had taken place between a Vampyrus and wolf, Murphy took the baby to be looked after by a young rookie cop, named Jessica Hudson.”

“Why did Murphy risk so much to protect Kiera?” I asked.

“He wasn’t trying to protect Kiera, not back then at least,” Potter said, shooting me a sideways glance.

“Who then?”

“His brother, Kiera’s father,” Potter said, raising one eyebrow.

“So Kiera’s father is Murphy’s brother,” I gasped.

“You got it,” Potter said, sucking on the end of the cigarette. “That old fart is Kiera’s uncle.”

I sat back in my seat, head spinning. Then, just when I thought I had got my head around everything I had been told by Potter, he looked at me with a smirk. “Guess what?”

“What?” I sighed, wondering how much more there was to take in.

“We also found out where Murphy got that shitty pair of slippers he mooches around in,” Potter said.

“Where?”
I asked, wondering if the slippers held some real significance.

“Some old tart called Chloe gave them to him for a Christmas present,” he laughed.

“Who’s Chloe?” I said, scratching my head. “I thought you said he was in love with this werewolf called Pen.”

“Chloe was this other girl he was sorting out at the same time,” Potter grinned back at me like some adolescent.
“Had some kinda weird love triangle going on. And he has the fucking nerve to have a pop at me about my love life.”

I looked in disbelief at Potter.

“What?” he said, smirking again.

“You male Vampyrus keep banging on about how much you hate wolves, but you just can’t stop banging the females,” I said.

“It’s not us who like them, it’s the other way round,” Potter moaned. “They fuck with our heads then fuck with something else.”

“Ahhh, you poor things,” I mocked. “So you’re finally admitting to something us women have always suspected?”

“And what’s that?” Potter glanced at me.

“That men’s brains really are in their pants,” I shot back.

“Yeah, keep joking, sweetheart,” Potter said. “Believe it or not, I’m a victim.”

“A victim of what?”
I nearly choked.

“Those women took advantage of me,” he complained.

“So did Sophie take advantage of you, too?” I said, glancing down at the letters.

“Don’t talk about stuff you don’t understand, Kayla,” Potter said, sounding pissed off at me.

Chapter Twelve

Isidor

I stared at Melody as she stood in the snow. Her hair and shoulders white with it. She looked back at me, her soft lips pink, the same colour as the roses I could see tattooed across her neck.

“Murdered?” I breathed.

“You and your kid sister, Kayla Hunt,” Melody said, staring back at me. “Your father killed you not too far from here. Opened you both up to see if you had wings hidden inside.”

It was then I remembered Kayla telling me how Sam had once shown her a newspaper clipping describing how we had both been murdered by our father in this world. I looked at Melody and realised that it was the Isidor from this
pushed
world that she remembered, not from the world and the life we had once shared.

“But…” I started,
then stopped, not knowing what to say.

“But,” Melody continued for me. “What are you doing back from the dead? Are you some kind of ghost?”

I stood looking at her, mouth open wide, my mind feeling scrambled as I searched for something to say.

Unafraid, Melody came toward me through the driving snow. She stopped. Then, raising one finger and looking me right in the eyes, she prodded me in the chest. “You seem solid enough.”

“I’m not a ghost,” I whispered, looking into her sparkling eyes. “I’m very much alive.”

Then, opening her hand, she slipped it between the flaps of my coat. I felt her warm hand press flat against my chest. “If you’re alive, then why doesn’t your heart beat?”

Slowly, I curled my fingers around her wrist and gently pulled her hand free of my coat, however much I liked the feel of her touch against my bare flesh.

“I know what you are,” she whispered softly, never taking her eyes from mine. “You are one of the Dead Angels the wolves have been waiting for.”

Then, turning her back on me, she walked toward the cottage, her boots crunching over the snow. Melody pushed open the front door, then glanced back at me. “You better come in, Isidor Hunt; I’ve been waiting for you to arrive for so long.” She then disappeared into the darkness of the cottage.

Pulling the flaps of my coat closed over my chest to hide my crossbow, but more importantly my wings, I followed Melody into the cottage. I closed the door behind me. The room which I stood in was poky, but comfortable looking. Again I had images of Brother Grimm stories flash across my mind. With its stuffed sofa and armchair, stone
fireplace, ancient oak beams crisscrossing the ceiling, and heavy curtains hanging at the windows, it was the kind of cottage I imagined the grandma from
Little Red Riding Hood
to live in. There was a staircase that led up into the dark.
Was there a big, bad wolf waiting up there?
I wondered, then pushed the thought away.