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

Without saying a word, Melody removed her coat. Beneath it she wore a white shirt. It was open at the throat and I couldn’t help notice how the roses inked on her smooth skin grew down into the V between her breasts. I looked away, feeling my cheeks flush red. She flicked her hair, the snow that had covered it falling away in flakes. Her thick, pink hair cascaded about her shoulders and down her back. Apart from the photograph I’d once owned of us together, this was the first time I’d actually seen Melody as an adult. If the two worlds reflected each other like I believed, then Melody would be eighteen years old, just like me. And just like she had in that photograph, Melody looked so beautiful. Never before had I seen anyone as beautiful as her.

Should I tell her? I wanted to. I had waited so long to tell her so!

Easy, tiger!
I heard Potter whisper as if he was standing right beside me.
Play a little hard to get, for fuck’s sake.

“Why are you staring at me so intently?” Melody asked. “It’s me who should be staring at you. After all, you’re the one who is dead.”

“I’m sorry,” I said and looked away.

“Sorry for
staring, or sorry you’re dead?” she said, crossing the tiny living room to the fireplace. She knelt down and placed a couple of logs into the grate.

“Both, I guess.”

Melody lit the logs. Clouds of black smoke chased sparks up the chimney.

“So you are one of these Dead Angels?” Melody asked, standing up and brushing soot from her hands.

“Yes,” I said, looking at her again. I could lie, but what would be the point? I hadn’t risked everything by coming to look for her, only to tell her a pack of lies. If Melody were to ever fall in love with me again, then I wanted her to love me for who and what I truly was, just like she had before the world had been
pushed
. She had loved me once before, so why not again? 

“Tea?” she asked
, crossing the room and heading through a door.

“Okay,” I said, watching her disappear, then reappear carrying a tray. On it I could see two china teacups, a bowl, two silver spoons, a small jug of milk, and a metal teapot. Melody hung the teapot from a hook over the fire and placed the tray down onto a small table set between the sofa and the armchair. She casually gestured in the direction of the sofa and said, “Sit down.”

Taking my rucksack from my back and placing it down onto the floor so it was within reach, I said, “Aren’t you scared of me?”

“Do I need to be?” she said, taking sugar cubes from a bowl on the tray.
“One lump or two?”

“None for me.
I’m sweet enough,” I half-smiled. Potter had told me once that all girls liked a guy who could make them laugh.

Glancing over at me, and unsmiling, Melody said, “I don’t think I have any reason to be scared of you.”

Why did I ever listen to Potter? I’d never seen him make Kiera laugh. Cry more like. I pushed any other words of wisdom that Potter might have given me from my mind and looked at Melody.

She took the teapot from over the fire and poured the boiling contents into the two cups. Melody then splashed a drop of milk into each of them. Handing one of the cups to me, I stirred the tea with one of the silver spoons.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” she said, peering at me over the rim of her teacup. She took a sip and placed the cup back onto the china saucer.

There was a long silence between us. I soon began to feel uncomfortable, so placing my cup onto the small table, I said, “If you don’t mind me saying so, this all seems a bit surreal.”

“What does?” she asked me.

“Us sitting here drinking tea together, it’s not quite how I imagined it to be when I met you again,” I explained.

“Again?” she said with a slight frown. “We’ve never met before. How could we have? You were murdered. I wrote about it for the local newspaper.”

“Then what am I doing sitting here drinking tea with you?” I said. “Should I be lying in the cemetery?”

“Creatures like you don’t die,” she said back. “Vampires creep out of their graves, don’t they?”

“And they drink blood and not tea,” I said, looking at her. “I’m not a vampire. I’m a Vampyrus. There is a difference.”

“Vampyrus,” she said thoughtfully.

Had that word struck some kind of hidden chord inside of her? I couldn’t help but wonder.

“Do you recognise that word?” I asked, sitting forward in my seat.

“No,” she said with a shake of her head, but I wasn’t so sure Melody was being honest about that. “I haven’t heard that word before.”

“So what have you heard?” I asked her over the sound of the fire hissing and cracking in the grate. The room had started to warm up, making it feel snug and cosy.

Melody sat in the armchair opposite me, and over her shoulder I could see snow pelting against the windowpane. “I’ve heard the stories – the legends – about these Dead Angels that are going to come and destroy the wolves. They will be led by one – a female. She will be called Kiera Hudson. She will be this great warrior who will slay the wolves and leave them dead.”

“Is that what you’ve been told?” I said, thinking of my friend Kiera. She was nothing like the person Melody described.

“I’ve spent my life investigating – researching these stories,” Melody said. “There have been hundreds of rumoured sightings of this Kiera Hudson and the Dead Angels she travels with. I’ve spoken to humans who believe that they were once winged creatures – just like your father believed you to be. Other humans claim to remember past lives they lived in a world not to dissimilar to this one.”

“Why have you spent so much of your life investigating these stories?” I was interested to know. “Do you remember a past life, just like some of these humans do?”

She shook her head again.

“Why then?” I asked.

“Because if there is a Dead Angel out there who is coming to kill the wolves, then I want to know about it,” Melody said. “It’s important to me.”

“Why?” I frowned.

“Because I want to protect my species,” she said. “I’m a wolf.” 

    
Chapter Thirteen

Kayla

Potter sat behind the wheel of the car with a sulky look pulled down over his face. He didn’t like hearing the truth. We sat in silence until we drew close to where Kiera had lived. The rain had eased a little, but Potter still kept the windscreen wipers sliding back and forth as he peered up at the houses we passed.

“Lost?” I asked, breaking the silence that had grown between us.

“The houses all look so much alike,” he said. “I’ve got to be careful, because I broke into the wrong house once and got accused of sniffing some old woman’s knickers.”

“What the fuck?” I glanced at him.

He shot me a look.

“On second thought, don’t tell me
any more,” I said, feeling suddenly sick. “I don’t want to know what you got up to with some old woman.”

“I didn’t get up to anything,” he grimaced. “I broke into the wrong house and this old girl starts hollering and screaming…”

“I’m surprised you haven’t been locked up, Potter,” I said. “Was she a wolf, too?”

“I’m not even going to discuss this with you anymore,” Potter snapped, staring out of the window and back up at the houses.

“Good,” I said. “Listening to you boast about your arthritic sex antics is making me want to puke.”

“Very funny,” he sniped. “Anyway, how can you criticize me? You’re all loved up with a wolf.”

“No I’m not,” I snapped back. “Sam and I are just friends.”

“Bollocks,” Potter croaked. “I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. I’m surprised you haven’t tripped over each other’s freaking tongues. It’s embarrassing to watch.”

“Then don’t watch, you pervert,” I shot back, annoyed that he was right and I did have strong feelings for Sam. But I wasn’t going to discuss them with Potter.

“Who are you calling a pervert?” he glared.

“Well, it wasn’t me who got caught sniffing old women’s knickers,” I reminded him with a smug smile.

“How many times have I got to tell you, I wasn’t sniffing no old woman’s
knickers.”

“So what were you doing?” I enjoyed seeing him look embarrassed and uncomfortable. It made me laugh. I loved teasing Potter.

“I was rummaging through them, that’s all,” he said without thinking.

“Oh, please, stop,” I sighed. “I’ll never be able to get that image of you rummaging through some old woman’s knickers out of my head. I’m gonna have nightmares for freaking years.” 

“She wasn’t wearing them!” he almost screamed. “They were in her bedroom drawer!”

“Poor Kiera,” I tutted, hiding my smile by turning and looking out of the car window.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell her about you and the old woman.”

“There ain’t
nothing to tell,” he snapped.

“It will be our little secret,” I grinned.

“Fuck off, Kayla!” he barked.

“Charming,” I smiled to myself again and continued to stare out of the window.

Potter drove once up the street, turned, and came back again. About halfway along the road, he pulled the car into the kerb and stopped.

“This is it,” he said, looking out of the window.

“Now you’re definitely sure about that,” I said. “We don’t want to go surprising anymore old ladies, do we?”

“Shut your fucking face and bring the photograph,” Potter said, climbing from the car and slamming it shut behind him.

The car rocked from side to side, and I got out, stifling a snigger. Potter stood on the pavement staring up at the windows. “This is definitely Kiera’s place.”

Before I’d the chance to say anything, Potter was heading up the front steps. He stood in the darkness and I joined him. He pushed his hand against the door but it was locked tight.

“Keep a look out,” he whispered.

I peered back up the street and the only thing I could see was the light drizzle falling in the luminous glow of the streetlamps.

“All clear,” I whispered back, but Potter already had the door open and was disappearing inside.

I closed it
behind me, and in the darkness I could just make out Potter climbing a staircase at the end of the narrow hallway I now found myself in. I followed him up the stairs. He stood outside a door. And just like he had before he forced it open, by putting the weight of his shoulder against it and popping the lock. He glanced over my shoulder and back down the stairs, as if making sure we weren’t being watched. Potter then stepped inside and I followed. I was momentarily thrown into darkness. Before my eyes had had a chance to grow accustomed to the dark, Potter switched on a small lamp that was on a nearby coffee table. The room shone with a weak amber glow. There was enough light for me to see that the walls were plastered from floor to ceiling in cuttings taken from newspapers. It was only then, standing in Kiera’s room confronted by the thousands of news clippings, that I realised she had some kind of obsession or compulsive behaviour. Was such behaviour called OCD? I couldn’t be sure. I watched Potter head across the sitting room, weaving his way amongst the towering piles of newspapers that covered the floor. There was a framed picture of a dark-haired woman. She was truly beautiful, and I guessed this was a picture of Jessica Hudson, the other woman Luke Bishop manipulated and destroyed before the world got
pushed
.

While Potter removed the picture from the frame, I looked at some of the cuttings Kiera had attached to the wall. Just like Potter had said, they were all about possible sightings of large, winged creatures, and humans who had been driven insane by memories of past lives they claimed to have lived. Kiera had been obsessed by it, and so too had the journalist, Melody Rose. Most of the articles Kiera had attached to her walls had been written by Melody.

“Give me the photograph,” I heard Potter suddenly say.

I turned round to find him holding the empty picture frame.

He took the photograph I had taken of Kiera and who I’d believed to have been her father, from me.

“Hang on,” I said before he’d had the chance to slide it into the frame.

I plucked up a pen from the coffee table, and turning the picture over in Potter’s hand, I wrote
PUSH
across the back.

“Who told you to write that?” Potter asked me.

“Sam’s mother,” I said.

“Why?” He took the picture and placed it into the frame.

“I dunno,” I said with a shrug. Perhaps she just wanted to give Kiera a
push
in the right direction.”

“This isn’t funny,” Potter said, looking down at the picture of Kiera and her father I had taken.

“I’m not trying to be,” I said. And really I wasn’t. I had no real answer as to why Sam’s mother would have told me to write that. “She told me I must do everything that she said, and that I mustn’t change anything or it could have disastrous repercussions.”