Dead Push (Kiera Hudson Series Two#7) (14 page)

A heavy silence hung between us, which was filled by the rain splashing into the puddles at my feet and bouncing off Kiera’s umbrella.

“So where are you living these days?” she eventually asked, her voice cooling a bit.

“Nowhere,” I shrugged, looking down at the puddles. “Why do you care?”

“You look filthy dirty,” she said. “Like you haven’t shaved or showered in days. Are you homeless, Potter? Are you in some kind of trouble? Is that why you’ve come back?”

I looked up at her as she peered at me from beneath the umbrella. “I should go,” I said.

“Go where?” she asked, her voice softer somehow.

“Back to nowhere, I guess,” I said, brushing past her.

I stepped out of the alleyway and onto the pavement. The wind blew hard and cold about me and I shivered, pulling up the collar of my coat about my throat. I walked away without looking back at her.

“What about that coffee?” Kiera called after me.

I stopped, my heart beginning to race.

Don’t get involved with the Kiera Hudson from the pushed world
, I heard Lilly Blu warn me.

“I think I still have a couple of old packs of cigarettes someplace,” Kiera said. “You left them behind when you ran out…”

I turned to face her and she stopped mid-sentence. We stood there in the rain staring at each other. It wasn’t a cigarette I wanted – it was Kiera I wanted. My Kiera or not – I just wanted to be held by her. 

“You don’t smoke,” I looked at her. “Why did you keep them?”

“I dunno,” she said, looking straight back at me, then quickly added, “so do you want that coffee or not? I’m not going to ask again.”

Kiera turne
d her back on me and headed across the road. She stepped back into the apartment block, leaving the front door open behind her.

Should I stay or should I go?

The Kiera from this world had seen me now – she knew I had been watching her. My cover had been blown. I was more likely to catch this photographer if I stuck close with Kiera, I tried to convince myself. As long as I didn’t change anything in this world, I should be okay. Right? I was only going to have a coffee with Kiera, that’s all. What changes could I make to her life by having coffee?

I looked back at the alley where I’d spent the last few days and nights freezing my nuts off. In the dark, narrow mouth of the alleyway stood the little girl. Her dark hair was plastered to her pale face with rain. Her dress was soaked through. She looked at me and waved her thin, white hand. I turned my back on her and crossed the road towards Kiera’s apartment block. I closed the door behind me.

I climbed the short flight of stairs to Kiera’s apartment. Her front door was open. I stepped inside
and shut the door. Kiera walked out of her bedroom carrying a small pile of clean clothes and a towel, handing them to me. Placed on top were two packs of cigarettes. I thumbed through the clothes.

“You left those, too, when you left,” she said, turning and heading towards the kitchen. “Take a shower while I make some coffee.”

I went to the bathroom and closed the door. I peeled of my filthy clothes and switched on the shower. Water hissed from the showerhead, coils of steam billowing up and covering the small window and mirror with condensation. Instead of getting under the water, I sat on the edge of the bath and lit a cigarette. I drew in a lungful of thick, grey smoke and began to cry. I wasn’t sure why, but my body shook as the running water drowned out the sound of my sobs. I leant forward and covered my eyes with my forearm as smoke trailed up from the tip of the cigarette dangling between my fingers. I felt ashamed for how I had treated Kiera. I had treated her bad not only in my world, but in this
pushed
world, too. In both worlds she had been hurt by me – yet, in both she still showed me kindness and love. I had obviously hurt her very badly in this world – run out on her and left her all alone – yet she had come to me in the freezing cold and taken me in. She was a friend like no other and I just kept hurting her. Kiera deserved better – they
both
did. And deep down I knew why I was crying, because it was me Kiera had been crying over the other night. However much I wanted to tell myself it had been Sparky who had hurt her – I knew in my selfish heart it had been me. What kind of man reduces the woman he loves to tears like that? Not a good man – that was for sure. I hated Jack Seth for the pain and hurt he had caused people – but if I were honest with myself – I was no better than him. In fact, I was probably worse. Jack had never claimed to have loved any of his victims. Yet I claimed to love Kiera but had done nothing but hurt her. That’s what I was ashamed of.

I wiped away my tears with my arm. I ditched the cigarette into the toilet bowl and flushed it away. Standing beneath the running water, I washed the dirt and grime from my body. The water was hot and it melted the chill that had taken hold of my bones. After towelling myself dry, I put on the other Potter’s clothes. Wearing a clean pair of black
jeans and T-shirt, I left the bathroom.

Kiera was sitting in her chair by the window and looking out into the dark. She held a mug of coffee in her hands. There was another on the table beside her. I crossed the room and picked it up. Kiera continued to stare out of the window.

I raised the mug of coffee to my lips, then stopped. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

“For what?” she whispered back, still staring blankly out of the window.

“For all the hurt I’ve ever caused you,” I said.

“It’s a bit late for sorry,” Kiera said, getting up from her chair and heading for her bedroom door. “You can stay tonight, if you really have
nowhere
else to stay. You’ll have to make do with the armchair.”

Kiera turned away again, stepping into her bedroom. Before she closed the door, I said, “Hey, Kiera.”

“What?” she said, without looking back.

“I don’t deserve a friend like you,” I said.

She closed the door, leaving me alone once again.

Chapter Nineteen

Jack

I crouched beside the trees in the woods all that night. It was bitterly cold – too cold to sleep. I dozed a little, but mostly I was awake. The photographer didn’t come and I still suspected that he or she wouldn’t – not until Melody Rose died. How the girl ended up dead – I still had no idea. Potter hadn’t said. As the wind whipped and howled through the trees, sending up gusts of leaves into the air, I wished now that I had known. That piece of information might have given me some idea as to how long I would have to follow Isi-
bore
and Melody
Doze
about for. They weren’t the most exciting of people to tag along behind.

But maybe their lives weren’t as dull as I’d first thought. Why had they hidden in that wardrobe? That had taken some guts. And the
look on Melody’s face as they had come tumbling out of it – I couldn’t get that look out of my head. I had seen that expression so many times before. It was the look of sheer fear. But what did she have to be so scared of? Her mother? She seemed harmless enough. By the way she dressed, the little church, and all the praying that was going on, the mother struck me as one of those God-fearing types. Not too much to be scared of there.

So when Isidor popped his head above ground again the following morning, I decided to follow him once more. He had an anxious look on
his face as he made his way back through the woods and towards the lake. His look of anxiousness soon turned to one of relief on finding the girl waiting for him on the shore. She was dressed in the same dull clothes, but today she carried a rucksack over her shoulder. I knew then he had probably lain awake all night deep within The Hollows fretting about the girl he so obviously loved. Isi-bore had pleaded with the girl to go with him the night before. It was like he suspected she was in some kind of danger.

Togeth
er they walked along the shoreline. I wanted to stay as close as possible so as to hear what it was they talked so deeply about. Crouching low, I shook all over, releasing my coat of black fur, claws, long snout, and bushy tail. I slinked along in the shadows of the trees and the undergrowth which surrounded them.

“You won’t ever tell anyone what you saw and heard at my house, will you?” the girl asked him, her voice full of dread.

“I can’t believe you have to ask me that,” Isi-bore said, sounding hurt by her lack of faith in him.

What had the boy seen and heard that the girl could worry so much about, I wondered.

Secrets
, perhaps? I knew all about them. I’d grown up in a house with a mother who had kept plenty of them.

“I know I can trust you, but I would hate for anybody else to find out,” I heard Melody say as I crept along just feet away, my wolf shaped body low, belly brushing against the leaves and undergrowth.

“Well they won’t find out from me. I promise,” Isi-bore tried to assure her.

They reached the mouth of their secret camp, but instead of sneaking inside like they had the day before, they sat on the sand, which led down to the black coloured waters of the lake. 

Still disguised as a wolf, my black fur offered me a certain amount of camouflage on the edge of the dark woods, I watched Melody place the rucksack on the ground. She took an old-fashioned looking radio from it.  

“I thought we could listen to some music,” the girl said, smiling that crooked smile at Isi-bore.

The boy didn’t say anything; he just kinda stared back at her with that dumb look on his face. Melody switched the radio on. There was a hissing of static as she turned the silver dial on top of the radio. A song started to play. It was a song I hadn’t heard for many years. I sat and listened from beneath a nearby tree as Melody started to sing along with David Bowie as he sung
Heroes
.

The music almost seemed to animate Melody – as if bringing her to life somehow. She sat next to Isi-bore in the sand, singing along to the music and clicking her fingers. She looked happy, and for once her smile didn’t look so bad. I crouched low, my tail twitching from side to side and li
stened to the words of the song, and I couldn’t help but think of me and my younger brother – when we were younger – before we had become killers. I guess if our lives had turned out different – Nik and I could have been heroes too, instead of monsters.

“Are you wearing makeup?” I suddenly heard Isi-bore ask Melody. He sounded kinda shocked by this.

“Yeah, do you like it?” Melody smiled back at him.

“What would your mother say?” Isi-bore asked.

The mother thing again, I noticed.

“She won’t find out,” Melody said and I watched her take a lipstick from her bag. She sat and smeared it over her lips.

“Where did you get the makeup from?” Isi-bore asked.

Does it matter where she got the fucking lipstick from? I sighed. You’re meant to be telling the girl how goddamn freaking hot she looks. She wants you to tell her she looks beautiful, you dumb-fuck.

“From a shop,” Melody told him, pointing down at the pouch in her apron. Then, she added, “Comes in real handy for slipping things in.”

“You stole that makeup?” Isi-bore asked wide-eyed as if she had just confessed to spraying a bank full of customers with machine gunfire then running off with the loot.

It’s a fucking lipstick! Get a grip, I felt like hollering at him. 

“Just like you and the library book,” Melody winked at him.

Well, well, well! I smiled slyly to myself. The boy’s a thief, too. Stealing from a library, huh? But then again, that just showed what a complete and utter fucking retard the kid was. I’d never heard of someone who can’t read stealing a freaking book before. What was the fucking point in that!

“Speaking of books,” Melody cut in.
“I’ve got something for you.”

Not more reading! Surely not! I was just starting to like her too, now she had to go and spoil things. 

The girl pulled what looked like a comic book from her bag.

“Why have you got me a book?” Isi-bore asked her.

Yeah, why bring the kid a book? That’s a bit fucking cruel. I was beginning to like her again. 

“You know I can’t read,” Isi-bore reminded her.

“But I can,” Melody smiled. “I’m gonna teach you.”

Fuck me, this just gets worse and worse, I sighed, rolling onto my side in the leaves. This is going to be a long fucking day. I lay on my side and listened to Melody explain to the dumb-fuck that the comic book was called the Incredible Hulk. Why he couldn’t figure that out himself by looking at the big green monster on the
front, beat the shit out of me.

“What’s it about?” he asked, and I cringed.

He’s got to be taking the piss. No one can be that fucking thick.

“This dude – his name is Bruce Banner but he leads a secret life,” Melody started to explain. “Everyone thinks he’s like, a regular guy, but really he’s a monster. He can’t tell anyone, because if people find out
they...”