Kiera Hudson & The Adoring Artist (Kiera Hudson Series Three Book 3) (4 page)

Chapter Six

I hit the dial button and pressed the phone to my ear. It rang at the other end. There was no answer. I hit the disconnect button and tried again. It continued to ring without answer. Tossing my phone onto the passenger seat, I shot forward along the road as fast as my tired old car would go. I took the bends in the narrow coastal roads at speed as I made my way in the direction of where Nev lived. With no idea as to why Nev had sent me the message and why he needed my help, I pushed the pedal down as far as it would go. The engine made a chugging sound, and for the first time I wondered if Potter had been right when he had once left a message on the windscreen telling me to get  a new car as the one I had was nothing other than a piece of junk. But I knew I would never get rid of her. Even if I could one day afford a better car, I wouldn’t swap. Not ever.

“Come on, girl,” I whispered through clenched teeth as I navigated the tight bends in the roads. “Don’t let me down now.”

Over the brow of the next hill, I could see the chimney poking out of the roof of the cottage where Nev rented the barn. Feeling as if the back wheels of my car had lifted from the surface of the road, I raced my car up and over the hill and down the other side. I followed the last of the winding road, pulling to a shrieking stop outside the cottage. I noticed at once the bike that Nev rode into town to buy groceries for his landlady, Mavis Bateman, was missing from outside. Had Nev cycled into the Ragged Cove and fallen from his bike? Was he lying in some remote ditch somewhere unconscious and therefore unable to answer his phone? No, that wasn’t it. If he had fallen, had some kind of accident, he wouldn’t have texted me, he would have telephoned for an ambulance. No, whatever kind of help Nev needed couldn’t be provided by paramedics. Snatching up my phone and holding it in my fist, I climbed from my car and shot up the garden path toward the barn. Almost unware that I was even doing it, my eyes shot from left to right as I inspected the path, looking for any signs of a disturbance – any sign of clues. But there were none that I could see. I was beginning to get used to that.

Reaching the barn door, I pushed against it, but it was locked. I rattled the handle more in frustration than believing that I would get inside. I stepped away from the door. There were no windows for me to see through.

“Nev?” I called out in the vain hope that he was inside.

“Can I help you?” I heard someone ask.

I spun around to find an elderly woman on the path behind me. She stood propped forward, hands resting against a walking frame. I could see that she wore supports on each wrist and they travelled up her arms and beneath the sleeves of the cardigan she wore. Her hair was nothing more than a few white wispy strands that fluttered in the breeze from each side of her narrow skull. Her skin looked paper-thin and wrinkled. She wore worn looking slippers on her feet and I couldn’t help but think of Murphy.

“You must be Mrs. Bateman,” I said.

“Mavis,” she smiled sweetly, her eyes a keen blue despite her obvious old age.

“Mavis, my name is Kiera…” I started.

“So you’re Kiera Hudson,” she smiled again.

“Do you know me?” I frowned, unable to forget how Phebe and Uri had seemed to know me already during our very first meeting.

“I feel as if I do,” she said, her voice a soft croak. “Nev hasn’t been able to stop talking about you since you first met.”

I blushed.

“Oh dear, perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything,” she sighed. “I’ve embarrassed you and him probably if he ever found out. You won’t say anything, will you?”

Wearing a smile, I shook my head. “You don’t know where Nev is, do you?”

“Nev left yesterday morning. He’s gone away,” Mavis said, supporting herself against the frame.

“Away?” I said. “You don’t know where, do you?”

“Oh dear, where was it now?” she said, raising one gnarled hand to her face. I can never remember the name of it. It’s the place he likes to go and sit and look at that statue…”

“Snake Weed,” I cut in.

“Yes, dear, that’s the place,” she smiled, deep grooves frowning at the edges of her wrinkled lips. “He won’t be back until tomorrow evening. He promised to come back and go fetch some shopping from the town. He’s good like that.”

“So Nev hasn’t called you or anything?” I asked her.

“No, why, is there a problem?”

“No problem,” I smiled back at her. How could I tell her about the text message I’d received from Nev? I didn’t want to worry her. “I’m sure Nev will be back tomorrow as promised. I’ll come back then.”

“Okay, dear,” she said, as I walked slowly back along the path with her toward the cottage. “Would you like to come in for some tea and cake?”

“Perhaps some other time,” I said, not wanting to waste a moment in beginning my search for Nev. “I noticed that the bike had gone. Surely Snake Weed is too far away for Nev to have cycled there?”

“He would’ve cycled to the railway station in Havensfield – it’s only about six miles or so,” she explained.

“I know the place,” I said, suddenly remembering the room I had rented there – my chair by the window and the hundreds and hundreds of newspaper clippings stuck to the wall.

“From Havensfield he would have taken the train to the nearest town – oh what is it called?” she said, scratching her head.

“Not to worry,” I assured her, knowing that I would find the nearest railway station to Snake Weed if I needed to.

“Anyway, Nev would have cycled from there to Snake Weed, found a place to camp for the night, done some painting and what-have-you – then come back.”

“Did he say why he wanted to go?” I asked, wondering if Nev had planned to meet someone there – someone who might be able to help me find him.

“He just said he was going to clear his head,” Mavis said, eyeing me. Did she suspect that he had gone to clear his head because of me, I wondered.

“Okay,” I smiled weakly. Then offering her my hand, I added, “Well, it has been lovely making your acquaintance, Mavis.”

She closed her misshapen hand about mine. “Nev was right about you, Kiera Hudson.”

“How so?” I asked.

“You are very beautiful.”

“You’re very kind,” I blushed, letting my hand slide from hers.

Without looking back, I made my way out onto the road and back into my car. Without wasting any time, I started up the engine and set off in search of Nev.

Chapter Seven

There seemed little point in heading straight for Snake Weed. Nev might not have even reached there before heading into trouble and needing my help. Mavis had told me that Nev had left home yesterday morning and I guessed it was soon after I had left him alone in the makeshift studio. That would have given him more than enough time to reach Snake Weed if that’s where he was heading. I couldn’t be sure of that. Mavis had said that’s where he liked to go, but she hadn’t said for sure that’s the place Nev had headed for yesterday. The only way I would know was if I headed for Havensfield Railway Station. I could speak to whoever worked in the ticket office and ask if they had seen anyone fitting Nev’s description. If the ticket clerk could remember Nev, he or she might also be able to recall where he had bought a ticket to. Perhaps Nev’s bike would be in the cycle rack outside the front of the station. The railway seemed the most logical place to start in my search of Nev. I glanced down at my phone on the passenger seat. I hadn’t received another text message or call from him. Although I was worried for Nev’s safety, my skin prickled with excitement. I couldn’t help it. I had something to investigate – something to take my mind off the events of the last few days. Something to take my mind off Potter and Sophie.

I hadn’t been back to Havensfield since being
pushed
into this
where
and
when
and I wasn’t sure how I would feel about that. It was the place I had been raised by my parents Frank and Jessica Hudson. I had since learned that Jessica hadn’t been my real mother – that had been the lycanthrope Kathy Seth. I had never met her, and from what my brother Jack had told me about her, I was glad I hadn’t. Jack had portrayed her as a cruel and spiteful manipulator who had tricked my father and brother. She had been a killer of human children too. But I did have her bloodline in me. I knew that I was a half and half – half Vampyrus and half wolf. As far as I knew I was the only one. The Elders had believed that made me special in some way. Had they been scared of that – feared the fact that I was this one-off – a freak? They had tormented me for being a half and half and fed off my anguish. But no more. Perhaps the real trick to stop them from ever coming back – to halt them from appearing through the cracks again – was to truly accept myself for everything that I am. After all, isn’t that what brings true happiness into someone’s life – the moment that we can truly accept ourselves for what and who we are? Does it matter then what anyone else thinks of us if we are truly happy with everything that we are? Could we ever be unhappy again? Perhaps that was the lesson I had failed to learn. But was I beginning to learn that lesson now? Was that why I had finally accepted the other side of me last night as I lay in the moonlight? I had at last accepted the wolf that lurked deep within me. To do so had certainly made me feel better. It had soothed my aching joints and burning skin. I had woken feeling refreshed and brighter than I had for as long as I could remember. But it hadn’t yet stopped the ache in my heart.

Not wanting to dwell again on Potter and how he had turned Sophie, I looked front, watching the winding road snaking before me. I saw a sign for Havensfield and took the right fork in the road toward it. The temptation to drive by the rooms I once rented pricked at my mind. But I couldn’t. What would be the point? That place, however much I missed sitting in the chair by the window and watching the world pass below, was not my world anymore. I had to let go of it. I couldn’t go chasing ghosts and shadows anymore. I had done that and it had brought me nothing but misery and suffering. I had to stay strong – keep the promise that I had made to myself – that I wouldn’t go looking for my father in this world. If he was here, then he wasn’t mine. He belonged to someone else. Just like Potter now did.

The road widened ahead as I drove into Havensfield. It looked like it always had. Nothing had changed – nothing had been
pushed
as far as I could see. I saw the turning I would need to take if I were going to head in the direction of the rented room I had once occupied. I drove straight past. I didn’t even glance that way and headed across town to the railway station. I found a parking spot out front and pulled in. The first drops of rain had started to spatter against the windscreen. With the hood of my sweat top pulled up, I grabbed my phone from the passenger seat and climbed out of my car. I headed across the carpark to the cycle racks. There were plenty of bikes, but I couldn’t see the one Nev used. I couldn’t see one with a basket on the front – the basket he filled with groceries on his errands into the Ragged Cove for his ancient landlady, Mavis. Turning my back to the cycle rack, I made my way across the puddle-covered carpark and stepped into the ticket office. An express train thundered through the station and the floor of the Victorian ticket office shook beneath my feet. There was only one other person in line before me at the ticket office. Once they had gone, I approached the clerk. He sat red faced and miserable looking behind the pane of glass. His jowls hung heavy about his face and he had such tired looking bags under his piggy-looking eyes that they looked almost puffed shut. His nose was purple and bulbous in shape.

“Where you heading?” he grunted.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said, offering him a friendly smile.

He peeked back at me, unsmiling, from behind the heavy bags of flesh that hung about his eyes. “Well maybe you’d like to step out of line until you’ve made up your mind.”

I glanced back over my shoulder and could see that there was no one else in line behind me. I faced front and smiled through the glass at him again from beneath my hood. “I was wondering if you can remember serving a guy yesterday…”

“I serve a lot of people a lot of the time,” he sighed, folding his arms over his chest and rocking back in his seat.

“This guy was about my age – in his early-twenties,” I started to explain. “He has dark messy hair, blue eyes and stubble…”

“Don’t remember him,” the clerk said. “Now unless you want to buy a ticket, step away from the window, I have other customers…”

“There are no other customers,” I said. “I just need to know if you saw my friend yesterday…”

“Do you have a picture?” the guy sighed.

“No,” I said, knowing that I now sounded dumb.

“Then I can’t help you,” he said.

I stepped back from the window and turned away. What was I to do now? The clerk was a complete jerk and didn’t want to even listen to me, let alone offer any help. I could buy a ticket and head for Snake Weed, but Nev’s bike wasn’t outside on the rack so he might not have even got this far or even come to the station. I could be wasting valuable time if I headed for Snake Weed and Nev wasn’t even there. Glancing up, I spotted something, then turned back to face the clerk.

“That CCTV camera,” I said, hooking my thumb back in the direction of the far corner of the ceiling, “does it work?”

“Of course it works,” the clerk grunted. “Now do you want a ticket to travel or not? You can’t just loiter here all day – it’s an offence you know…”

“I want to see the CCTV footage for yesterday morning,” I said through the glass partition.

“Are you a cop?” the guy sneered back at me with one raised eyebrow.

I had once been a cop, but not any longer. Back then the guy would have let me into the ticket office to view the CCTV with one quick flash of my badge – but now. “No, I’m not a cop,” I said.

“Then get out of here before I call one,” he said, reaching for a telephone that sat to one side on the counter behind the glass.

Knowing that I was getting nowhere fast with the clerk, I turned away and left the ticket office. I went back to my car, climbed inside, and listened to the rain bounce off the windscreen and roof. If I could just get a look at the CCTV, then I would know if Nev had come to the station yesterday and headed for Snake Weed. But the clerk was determined not to help me, however much I smiled sweetly at him. I needed someone who could be far more persuasive than me. Someone who always managed to get their own way in the end. Taking my phone from my pocket, I found Potter’s number and hit the dial button.