Dead Water (13 page)

One by
one, they swept out of the sky and landed on the shore before us.
Their wings buzzed, hummed, and fluttered behind each of them. All
of them were female, apart from one.

“
This is Peter,” Meren said, introducing him to
Murphy.

“
Good to meet you,” Murphy said, pumping the boy’s hand up and
down.

“
Thank you,” Peter said politely.

I got the sense he was still unsure of what had truly just
happened to him. As far as I could understand, the boy had spent
his entire life hidden away in the attic at Hallowed Manor. He had
been murdered by Luke and Sparky, only to have come back to life
again as a statue in a world that had been
pushed
out of place. Fuck me – no
wonder he looked so bewildered and lost.

“
This is my twin sister, Alice,” Peter said, ushering a
meek-looking girl to the foreground. Just like her brother, Alice
had light blonde hair, which was long and curly. Both had hazel
eyes, which were bright and keen. In fact, as I looked at the
gathering of teenagers, I noticed all of them had eyes just like
Kiera. All must have been half and half’s, just like
her.

“
Good to meet you,” Murphy smiled at the girl.

“
Hello, she said, just above a whisper.

Sensing
their unease, Murphy hooked a thumb in my direction and said, “This
is Potter. He is a Vampyrus, just like me.” Then, looking at Kiera,
he added, “And this is Kiera. She is a half and half, just like
you.”

A soft
murmur went through the small gathering of half and half’s as they
all turned to look at her. I could see Kiera looked embarrassed at
the sudden attention.

“
Hi,” Kiera smiled back at them.

The
others looked back at her in awe. They had followed her this far
after all.

“
Why were you not in that hospital with us?” one of the female
half and half’s suddenly asked. Her voice was soft.

“
I was never ill like you,” Kiera started to explain. “I am
like you, though. I am half Vampyrus, half Lycanthrope, a half and
half. But unlike you, soon after I was born, I was placed into
these waters and they made me strong. Just like they’ve helped me,
these waters have now helped you. You will no longer be fragile,
weak, and ill. You will no longer need the red stuff to stop you
from turning to stone. You will be the people you were born to
be.”

“
I feel my heart beating,” Peter smiled, pressing his hand
against his chest.

“
I feel mine beating too,” Kiera smiled back at him.

“
I’ve never felt so hungry,” Alice said.

And she wasn’t the only one. Since being
pushed
back into this world, I had
lost my appetite. Other than blood, food had just become a
tasteless mush, but now, as I stood on the shore, my stomach ached
not for blood, but food. Knowing that Kiera and Murphy had plenty
to discuss with the others, I wondered what more I could bring to
the party.

“
How about I go and find us something all to eat?” I asked.
“I’m sure I’ll be able to find something.”

“
I could come with you?” Kiera said, looking over at
me.

“
No, it’s okay,” I smiled. “You stay. It looks like you’ve got
a lot of explaining to do. I’ll be back real soon.”

Kiera
stepped away from the others and came towards me. Slowly, she
raised her hand and pressed it flat against my chest. “Your heart
is beating too,” she smiled up me. Her skin looked radiant, her
hair almost glowing in the moonlight. “It’s beating
fast.”

“
It always used to around you,” I said, gently placing my hand
over her heart. I could feel it gently thumping away.

“
Are you all right?” Kiera frowned. “You look like you’ve got
something on your mind. I thought you’d be glad to be alive
again.”

“
I’m worried about Murphy,” I said.

“
Murphy?” Kiera asked. “But why? He has his daughter
back.”

“
That’s what bothers me,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at
where Murphy stood with Meren and the others.

“
I’m not sure what you mean?” Kiera frowned at me
again.

“
You said at the end, when we
push
the world back, we go back to
where we came from, right?” I said, looking into her
eyes.

“
Right,” she said.

“
Well, Meren is dead back there, so is Murphy,” I breathed.
“We’re all dead back in that world.”

“
But the Elders showed me Murphy and Meren...” Kiera
started.

“
The Elders showed you statues, Kiera,” I said. “They showed
you
statues
.”

“
So what are you saying?” Kiera asked, looking suddenly sad and
deflated again.

“
I’m not sure,” I said thoughtfully. “But we both know statues
definitely don’t have freaking heartbeats.”

I turned
to walk away, and as I did, I heard Kiera say, “See you later
alligator.”

Looking
back one last time, I smiled and said, “In a while
crocodile.”

I didn’t want to piss all over her happiness – that was the
last thing I wanted to do. At first I’d been just as happy as she
had been on seeing Murphy reunited with Meren again. But if we
did
push
the world
back like we were planning on doing somehow, would Murphy lose
Meren all over again? Would I lose Murphy all over again? What were
any of us going back to? We were all dead back there. Kiera said
she was the only one who couldn’t go back. She saw that as a
punishment, but was it? Perhaps it was her gift for finally making
her choice. Perhaps Kiera was the only one who was going to survive
this?

I took
another smoke from my pocket. Lighting it, I headed back into the
forest that surrounded the lake, in search of food. I hadn’t gone
very far, when I saw movement to my left. I snapped my head around,
fangs and claws out in an instant. Movement to my right this time.
I span around to find a figure hidden by shadows between the tree
trunks.

“
Who’s there?” I snarled, bearing my fangs.

“
Shhh,” the figure said, stepping from the shadows. “It’s me,
Kayla.”

“
Kayla?” I breathed on seeing her come towards me. “Where’s
Sam?”

I didn’t
even hear her answer. The back of my head exploded in pain, and my
world went black.

Chapter Twenty-One

Kiera

Murphy built a fire so we could cook whatever culinary
delights Potter managed to find in the forest. Potter had brought
back road-kill once, before the world had been
pushed
, and had tried to kid us all
that he had hunted the muntjac down. But Isidor had spotted the
tyre tracks imbedded into the dead animal’s bloodied fur. Potter
scowled at him and they didn’t speak for a day or two after that.
Luckily, there weren’t too many roads around here, so whatever
Potter brought back would have to be fairly fresh.

As
Murphy lit the pile of sticks and branches he had collected from
the forest, I sat with the others on the shore by the fire. The
moon had started to dip in the sky and I guessed that dawn was no
more than a couple of hours away. The Dead Waters continued to lap
the shore in red waves, and in the distance I could hear the
fountain thundering its way back up into heaven – if such a place
existed.

“
What’s that noise?” Alice asked, scraping her long blond hair
behind her ears with her fingers.

“
The Fountain of Souls,” I told her. It felt odd to be telling
her such a thing. It didn’t seem that long ago that I had been here
with Potter, Murphy, Isidor, and Luke. It was I who was then
learning about this secret place hidden in the forest. “It’s
believed that the fountain runs upwards, carrying souls back into
heaven.”

“
Souls?” Peter asked, crossing his legs as he sat next to his
sister.

“
The souls of all those the Lycanthrope have murdered,” I
continued to explain. “A lot of them would have been
children.”

“
Why children?” Meren asked. “That’s a bit creepy, isn’t
it?”

“
Yes,” I said.

“
So the water is red because of all the blood that has been
shed,” Meren said, looking thoughtfully at the waves which crawled
up the shore towards her. “The Lycanthrope took lives, but the
water is somehow giving it back, right?”

“
Right,” I said as she turned to look at me. I could tell that
Meren was a quick thinker and nobody’s fool.

“
But we’re all half wolves, aren’t we?” another girl in the
group asked.

“
What’s your name?” I asked her.

“
Gayle,” she smiled.

“
Yes, Gayle, we are all half wolves,” I said. Then, glancing up
at Murphy as he dropped another armload of sticks onto the fire, I
added, “but we don’t have to be like them. Every one of us here has
a choice to make.”

“
What’s that?” asked Peter.

“
We choose how we wish to lead our lives,” I said, looking at
the group before me. “You can make your lives wonderful – make them
count. Or you can choose a different path, like those wolves who
decided to take the lives of others. That isn’t a life – that’s an
existence. Forever looking over your shoulder, waiting for the
Vampyrus to catch up with you.”

“
But apart from my dad and his friend, Potter, there are no
other Vampyrus here,” Meren said, as if in deep thought. “There are
no more Vampyrus to police them. The Lycanthrope are the police
here. So, who then will stop the wolves from killing?”

“
Us,” I said, looking at the group.

“
But there is only a handful of us,” Gayle spoke up. “We can
never defeat the wolves.”

“
Not on our own we can’t,” I said. “But
together
we can. Together we can do
anything – if we’re determined enough. Maybe that’s why the Elders
forbid mixing between the Vampyrus and the Lycanthrope. Perhaps
they feared what we would become. If we choose wisely, we can
become the best of the Vampyrus and wolves. Like wolves, we have
great sight, we are loyal to our own kind, our jaws have an
incredible crushing pressure when we bite...”

“
But doesn’t our enemy have these exact same traits too?” A
girl sitting near the back of the group spoke up.

“
You’re right. They have those skills too – but do they have a
set of these?” I half-smiled, releasing my fearsome claws. “Not
only can we swipe, slash, and rip, but they are also pretty neat at
causing some serious blunt force trauma. You should see the damage
my friend Potter can do with his fists when he gets going.” Then,
glancing at Meren, I added, “Your father is pretty handy
too.”

Meren
smiled back at me.

“
Unlike the wolves, we can move at incredible speeds,” I said,
then flashed amongst them in a fleeting spray of shadows, so as to
prove my point.

“
I’ve heard that in some parts, that’s called
blinking
,” Gayle
said.

“
I like that,” I smiled back at her. “Okay so we can
blink
but we can also do
this!”

With a
quick and sudden shake of my shoulders, I released my wings and
shot into the air. I hovered above them, those claws at each tip
snatching at the air. “We own the skies; the wolves don’t,” I
said.

“
So we can escape quicker than the wolves,” Alice
said.

“
No,” I said. “Any army that controls the skies wins the war.
We can look down upon them. We can see where the wolves are. Where
they are heading, how big their number is, and we can strike from
above before they even know we are there. And with our ability
to
blink,
we can
change our formation instantly. The wolves won’t know which way to
turn. They won’t know from which way our attack will
come.”

“
You make it sound like we are going to war,” Peter said,
looking up at me hovering above their heads.

“
Not war,” I said, dropping slowly out of the sky and settling
on the shore again. “An
intervention
.”

“
What’s that?” Alice asked.

“
This world has been
pushed
,” I started to explain. “This
world is run by wolves. They have overrun the humans and bent them
to their will. They are matching with human children and are slowly
destroying them. If we do nothing, then the humans will no longer
exist. In the world I grew up in – the world I came from – that was
called genocide.”

“
What do we care for the humans?” another of the half and
half’s spoke up.

“
Do you not care that human children are taken from their
parents, driven out in the night and held captive in prisons
masquerading as schools? Does it not frighten you that these
children are chosen to be matched with wolves, and those that
aren’t are sent back to their homes, towns and villages, turned
dumb so that they cannot speak of the horrors they have seen? If we
stand back and do nothing – regardless of the fact we are not
humans – then we may as well join the wolves. Because to sit back
and do nothing, is as bad as taking part. But each and every one of
us gathered here now are only able to do so because of the blood
that has been shed by the humans. If it wasn’t for the blood spilt
into these Dead Waters – then we would be dead also. We are not
human; you are right about that, but the best part of me – the part
I cherish the most – is my humanity. The ability to love and be
loved – to offer kindness and understanding – those are the things
I want to define me. All those qualities make us different from
those wolves. And I believe we are different because we have been
bathed in the Dead Waters. We have the humans to thank for being
different to the other wolves. I am proud to be different from the
rest. We owe the humans that at least. I, for one, cannot sit on my
hands and do nothing – I have to intervene. I have to
push
back.”