Kiera Hudson & The Creeping Men (6 page)

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and dried my hair. Water dripped from the ends, making little puddles on the floor. Potter had said that he didn’t believe in the existence of vampires and werewolves because he had never actually come across one during his many investigations. But if he wanted proof, why didn’t he just take a look inside himself? He was a Vampyrus after all. He was a paranormal creature just like me. We were different, but neither of us were truly human. We looked human, but that was all. Both of us were just wearing a mask. A mask that hid a dark beauty within.

Letting the towel flutter to the floor, I stood naked before the mirror. I wiped away the mist that covered it and looked at myself. Raising one hand before me, I thought of the claws hidden inside. I closed my eyes and willed them to appear – for my human fingers to stretch out of shape and become claws. But even without opening my eyes, I knew that nothing had changed. I lowered my hand and looked at my reflection – into my eyes. They were the colour of hazel as they always were, but the brightness – that spark of fire – was missing. My hair was raven black as ever but there was no blue tinge that coloured it when I was changed. When I was in my true form. Shaking all over as if chilled, I rolled my shoulders back as I tried to set my wings free.

Nothing.

I rolled my shoulders back again. That’s all I had ever needed to do to release those black leathery-looking wings that lay hidden inside of me.

Again nothing.

I felt suddenly panicked. Where had my wings, claws and…

I stepped closer to the mirror. I pushed my lips back with my fingertips and inspected my teeth. Where were my fangs? Why wouldn’t they appear? What was wrong with me? Was I a mere mortal in the new world? Was I human after all? For so long I had been scared – sickened even – by what I was. But now that creature had been stripped away I felt a sudden sense of loss. I felt naked somehow. Vulnerable.

If I wasn’t a half and half in this world, was Potter a…

There was a sudden knock at my door.

I picked the towel up, wrapping it tight about me. The knocking came again and I went to the door. “Who is it?” I called out, half expecting to open the door to find an envelope tacked to it with a warning written inside.

“Room service,” the voice said from the other side of the door.

I recognised the voice to be Phebe’s, so I opened the door. She stood on the landing, balancing a tray in her hands.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the tray from her. “Can you add it to the bill and I will settle up later?” I needed to search my case for a purse of some kind. Did I even have any money?

“The account has already been settled,” Phebe said.

“By whom?” I asked her.

“The agency,” she said, turning to head back down the landing.

“The temping agency?” I called after her, surprised that they would pay for my accommodation.

“That would be the one,” she said, disappearing back down the stairs.

Closing the door with my foot, I carried the tray across my room, placing it down on the desk. The two white slices of bread were stuffed with slices of cheddar and diced red onion. My stomach summersaulted. I picked up the sandwich and took a bite. While I chewed, I poured myself a cup of tea from the pot. A deep boom suddenly rattled the windows of my room. It came again from outside. Setting down the teacup, I went to the window, pulling back the curtain.

The sky lit up blue and mauve as the night rocked with thunder and the start of a summer storm. As I stood and watched the lightning streak across the sky, I couldn’t help but wonder if the earlier thunderclap I’d heard had really been Potter soaring up into the night after all. Had it just been the sound of the approaching storm? I let the curtain fall back into place. Perhaps Potter was just like me in this world – a mortal? I wondered as I sat in the chair by the window and sipped my tea.

When I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I unwrapped the towel from around me and crawled into bed. With thoughts of Potter at the fore of my mind, I drifted into sleep…

…I was following him into a deep wood. No, it wasn’t Potter. The person I followed was painfully thin. He walked just ahead of me, not looking back once. He was naked to the waist. His white emaciated shoulders and arms shone like marble in the moonlight that streamed through the tree branches overhead. I couldn’t be sure if he even knew I was there. I continued to trail behind, but I seemed very close to the ground as if I was crawling through the leaves and mulch covering the floor of the wood. It was as I looked down, I saw that I wasn’t crawling at all, but propelling myself forward on four giant paws. They were covered in sleek black hair, as was the rest of me. I looked back over my shoulder at the long tail that swished there. I was a wolf.

Looking front again, I saw that I had lost sight of the figure. I bounded forward, leaping over fallen tree trunks and thick branches. I wanted to call out to whomever I had been following, but the only sound to escape my throat was a deep booming howl.

I raced forward. Something shone brightly in the moonlight ahead. It was a stream snaking its way through the ancient trees. I stopped, stooping low on my haunches to peer down into the water. A wolf peered up out of the stream at me. I leapt backwards, before realising it was me that I saw. I edged my way forward again, fearful but yet curious to see myself as a wolf – the wolf I knew had always been lurking deep inside of me. Just like the wolf that had lived inside my brother, Jack Seth.

“Hey,” I heard a voice say.

I looked up to see the person I’d had been following. I could see his face now. Jack Seth was sitting on a large rock on the other side of the river. The NY baseball cap he so often wore was pushed back on his head, revealing his emaciated face. The red bandanna was still knotted about his throat and his wiry legs were lost beneath his blue jeans. He wore nothing on his feet, and his long bony toes were dangling in the water.

“Jack?” I said.

“Looking good, little sis,” he smiled from the other side of the river. “Nothing looks as fine as a female wolf.”

“Is that what I am?” I asked him.

“Part of you always has been,” he reminded me. “The better part of you.” He grinned again, his lips stretching wide.

“I’m not sure that I want to be…” I started.

“You are what you are, little sis,” he said, standing up. “Just be you, Kiera, and you’ll be fine. I promise. Just don’t let anyone put a leash on ya.”

He turned, heading away from me on the other side of the woods, disappearing amongst the trees there.

“Jack!” I called after him. “What did you say? What does leash mean?”

There was a noise behind me.

A scream.

I whirled around…

…to find myself lying cold and naked on the floor of my bedroom at the Crescent Moon Inn. My throat was dry and I was drawing deep pulls of air into my lungs. The first rays of sunlight were seeping around the edges of the curtain, making patterns on the carpet where I lay. I pulled myself up, onto my knees, just like the wolf in my dreams. But who was it that had screamed?

I reached out for the bed, wanting a sheet to cover myself with. It was then that I noticed something dark and sticky streaking my hands. I held them up in the light that streamed around the curtains and stifled a scream. Both my hands were soaked red with blood.

Careful not to leave bloody handprints anywhere, I got to my feet and went to the bedroom. I held my hands before me as if carrying an invisible tray. Something warm and wet splashed onto my face, following the contours of my cheek to the corner of my mouth. Tentatively, I licked at it with my tongue and could taste blood. Was I weeping tears of blood in this new world? Was the first red tear the first sign of the creature coming forward inside me again? Did I hope for that, or did I fear it? Whichever, I couldn’t help but feel an undeniable twinge of excitement in the pit of my stomach. Would my fangs, wings, and claws soon reveal themselves to me again? But what would be the point if I were the only such creature in this world? What if Potter was just human here?

What if I were a wolf here? I suddenly thought – the last remaining fragments of my dream scattering to the back of my mind. Potter hated wolves. He saw them as his enemy. He distrusted them – perhaps there was even a part of him that feared them. What if my dream had been more than just that – a premonition of some kind? I had dreamt the future before – of things yet to pass. Was the dream and the red tear the start of the creature coming from within? And what would that creature be this time? The vampire or the wolf?

You are what you are, little sis,
I heard Jack whisper as if he was standing just over my shoulder.
Just be you, Kiera, and you’ll be fine. I promise.

With my brother Jack’s words ringing in my ears, I stood before the bathroom mirror, a spike of fear working its way upwards, wondering what kind of creature I would see reflected back at me. I looked and could see only me. My eyes were dull and tired, my sleep obviously disturbed by nightmares of being a wolf following Jack through the woods. But who was it that had screamed? And where had the blood come from that now covered my hands in a red mess? Another black tear splashed onto my cheek, but it hadn’t come from my eye as I first thought. There was a small cut on my right temple at the hairline. Leaning toward the mirror, I lifted my black fringe and inspected the cut. It was no more than a centimetre in length and not very deep, but it was bleeding quite a lot. I washed the blood from my hands, then taking some tissue, I pressed it to the cut. With my fingers to my temple, I went back into my bedroom. Bending down, I inspected the carpet, following the small spatter of blood back to the spot on the floor where I had woken. It was then I saw the black specks of blood glistening back at me from the corner of the desk. My dream had obviously so disturbed me that I had rolled from my bed, striking my head against the corner of the desk before hitting the floor.

Pulling a sheet from the bed, I wrapped it around my bare shoulders. I inched back the edge of the curtain and sat looking out of my window across the moors that stretched away from the back of the inn. A fine morning mist swirled and churned its way across the rugged landscape. I glanced at the bedside clock and could see that it was just after 5 a.m. Although it was still very early, I knew that I wouldn’t fall back to sleep, even if I tried. Thoughts of everything that had happened since being
pushed
into this new world clouded my mind, just like the mist that covered the fields.

It wasn’t long before my thoughts were wandering in the direction of Potter. Was he really sleeping in those cells back at the offices of The Creeping Men? And who were The Creeping Men? The simple fact that the word “men” was in the title of his investigatory business suggested that there was more than one. Potter had told me there had been others, but these
others
had gone away. Gone away where? Back to The Hollows? Is that where my friends were? But did The Hollows even exist in this
when
and
where
? If Potter wasn’t a Vampyrus in this world, then perhaps The Hollows didn’t exist.

I knew that the uneasiness I felt inside would not settle unless I found out the truth. The truth about Potter. But first I wanted to find out what had happened to Amanda Lovecraft. As I showered and dressed in jeans, trainers, and a sweatshirt, I examined the facts of the case – or what I had been told by Ms. Heather Locke. I had enough investigatory experience to know that more often than not, there was a vast difference between what a witness told you and the true facts of the case. After talking with Potter last night, I knew that he wasn’t taking the disappearance of Amanda Lovecraft seriously. He saw Locke as nothing more than a meddling nanny who couldn’t let go of the girl she had grown to love as a daughter. But if what she had said was true – and until I had other evidence to suggest otherwise – I had no option but to follow the crumbs of information that Locke had given and see where that would lead me.

Regardless of whether Potter from this
where
and
when
was the Potter I was in love with, I knew that he could be stubborn and unmoveable once he had made up his mind. I had trouble shifting the views of the Potter I had fallen in love with the Potter who I was now working alongside with. Why would he listen to me or take what I had to say about the investigation seriously? He didn’t even know me. I had only come into his life just yesterday.

Clawing my long black hair into a ponytail, I took a jacket that had been packed for me – or I had packed it – from the carrying case. My keys and iPhone were on the desk. I picked up the keys, and there were just two. The key for my car, and another. The key to wherever I lived in this new world? I wondered.

Placing them and the iPhone into my jacket pocket, I headed across the room and stopped. There was something else in my pocket I hadn’t put there. I pulled out a small black leather purse and opened it. There was a single credit card with my name on it and seventy pounds of crisp notes. Was this my purse? Had I put it in the jacket pocket? I looked back at the small case I had found in the boot of my car. Perhaps I had packed that, too. Perhaps I just didn’t remember doing it. Perhaps I had done it before being
pushed
. Perhaps… perhaps… perhaps? I knew I needed answers or I’d go mad. Closing the purse, I saw something fall from inside and drop to the carpet. Bending at the knees, I stooped down to pick up whatever had fallen from the purse. It twinkled back at me as I gingerly placed my fingers around it.

With my heart starting to speed up, I looked at the tiny cross, which I now held in my hand. I knew at once who the cross had once belonged to. Tears began to glisten at the corners of my eyes as I remembered who had slipped it into my hand as he’d boarded that train beneath the station.

“I just wanted to say thanks,” I’d said to him, just as he was about to board the train. The train I had tricked him and my friends to get on so they could escape and get
pushed
back to a place where I hoped they would all find happiness together.

“What for?” Murphy had asked me.

“To agreeing to stand in as my father at the wedding,” I’d said. “I only asked because I couldn’t have wished for a better father… not ever.”

“Well, we can sort it all out when we get back,” Murphy had smiled, no idea that the wedding between Potter and me would never take place. Then leaning in close, Murphy had whispered into my ear, “Between you and me, I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter than you.”

He had pressed something into my hand, then was gone, climbing on board. I’d opened my fist, just like I had now, to find the small cross he had once given to me and that I had once given to his true daughter, Meren.

With warm tears streaming down my cheeks, I left my room.