Kiera Hudson & The Lethal Infected (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Leaping down the front steps, I could see Ravenwood darting into the wood on the opposite side of the lawn. Wasting no time, I set off after him. I raced across the lawn and into the wood. Shafts of bright summer morning sunlight cut through the gaps in the trees. There was a brisk wind, but no rain at least. The leaves made whispering noises overhead like children sharing secrets behind cupped hands. I could see Ravenwood zigzagging through the trees ahead.

“Doctor Ravenwood!” I called after him.

He glanced back, saw me. With eyes brimming with fear, he set off again. Was he heading toward the summerhouse? Did he know that Sophie was really alive and that I’d saved her? Was he hoping to make one last attempt at ending her life? I ran after him so fast that to the casual onlooker I would have looked like nothing more than a fleeting blur. Ravenwood raced ahead, matching my speed and agility. Then something caught my eye. Two darker shapes racing through the woods, approaching from either side. I shot forward, head down, picking up even greater speed.

I could clearly see Ravenwood ahead of me now. He looked back, his face masked in fear. The two black shapes I had seen shoot from behind the trees fluttered all around him. Ravenwood cried out, waving his white fur-covered hands in the air. Drawing closer still I could see that it was Uri and Phebe who had caught up with him. They were lunging and swiping at him with their claws. Blood sprayed up into the air, splattering the nearest trees.

“Leave him!”
I roared, jetting forward and shoving Uri and Phebe aside.

Uri flew back through the air, crashing into a tree trunk some feet away. Phebe landed on the ground in a pile of wet leaves. Both sprang to their feet as Ravenwood set off again, deep into the wood.

“Who put you in charge?” Uri sneered, coming at me. He didn’t look so friendly now.

“Back off!” I shouted, raising my claws like a fistful of razors.

“You’re meant to be one of us,” Phebe said, leaping backwards.

“I’m on my own in this world,” I snapped.

“He murdered Sophie,” Uri said. “She became one of us.”

“Sophie’s not like us, she’s a vampire,” I corrected him. “Ravenwood
is
one of us.”

“But he’s a murderer,” Phebe tried to remind me.

“And I want to find out why,” I snapped at her. “Now go back to Hallowed Manor. I can handle this.”

“But he’s dangerous,” Uri warned me. “He not only killed Sophie, he tried to kill Murphy too.”

“I can deal with this,” I tried to convince them.

“Why do you want to protect him?” Phebe asked, her long, dark hair blowing about her face in the wind, wings shimmering.

“The only thing I want to protect is the truth,” I said, staring at her.

“The truth about what?” she asked, as if prepared to hear me out.

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” I said. 

“C’mon,” Uri said, taking his girlfriend’s arm. Then looking back at me, Uri added, “I’d get after Ravenwood if I were you, before you let a killer get away.”

I watched them head away from me, back through the wood toward Hallow Manor. Losing sight of them amongst the trees, I turned and set off after Ravenwood. I flitted forward, my wings out now, and claws and fangs at the ready. I knew Uri and Phebe were right about Ravenwood. He had tried to kill Sophie and he had attacked Murphy. But I believed he had only done that because he was scared. He was keeping a secret and wanted to get away. I believed that secret was the reason he had poisoned Sophie. I hadn’t gone far when I caught sight of Ravenwood ahead of me again. He wasn’t heading in the direction of the summerhouse, but the weeping willows. I raced after him.

Just before reaching the clearing on the other side of the weeping willows, I made one last desperate lunge forward. I gripped Ravenwood with my claws, dragging him down onto the leaf-covered ground.

“Let me go!” he blasted.

“I can’t do that,” I said, fighting with him as he tried to break free from the hold I had on him. But his strength proved greater than mine as he threw me off him. I spun over and over through the air, thumping down onto the ground at the base of a large tree. A spray of copper coloured leaves shot up from beneath me, seesawing through the air like giant pieces of confetti. My hair hung down over my face and I clawed it away. Springing back to my feet, I charged forward again. Ravenwood saw me coming and raised his giant claws.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Hudson,” he growled, stooping low as if reading himself to attack.

“I just want to know why you wanted to kill Sophie,” I said, lowering my own claws so that he could see I wasn’t a threat to him.

“No good will come of Potter’s and Sophie’s mixing,” he said, eyes bright and burning now. “Humans and Vampyrus shouldn’t mix.”

“But you promised you would help Potter and Sophie,” I tried to reason with him. “You knew about the baby…”

“The baby,” he almost seemed to laugh. “The half-breed? There is…”

A dark blur shot across my eye line, causing me to lose sight of him for the briefest of moments. When he was visible again, Ravenwood was staggering forward, his claws to his throat. Blood spurted through them and down the front of his shirt in thick black streams. I felt suddenly bewildered. What had happened? Then, as if a sudden gust of wind had blown beneath the willow trees, I saw Sophie drop out of the sky and into the clearing. The morning sun shone off her shimmering wings. They looked as if they were covered in glitter. Blood dripped from her fangs and onto her chin. I looked over at Ravenwood then back at her.

“What have you done?” I gasped, heart suddenly racing.

She smiled, her thick, long hair blowing about her bare shoulders. She still wore the sequined dress she had been wearing the night before. “I saved you, Kiera, just like you saved me.”

“You ripped his throat out!” I shouted at her.

“Before he ripped yours out,” she said.

“He wasn’t going to hurt me,” I said, running across the clearing toward Ravenwood. He stumbled forward and I caught him in my arms. As gently as I could, I laid him down onto the ground beneath the willow trees. He made a gagging sound in the back of his throat. His white claws were soaked red now. Ravenwood’s eyes rolled back into his skull behind the half-moon shaped glasses.

“Look what you’ve done,” I murmured at Sophie, as she stood watching me from the centre of the clearing. She almost seemed to glow in the light from the rising sun.

“He tried to kill me and he would’ve killed you, too, Kiera,” she said matter-of-factly.

Sophie might look beautiful, but it seemed that Potter had created a monster.

Ravenwood made a spluttering sound. I looked down at the bubbles of blood that had formed about his lips. I felt one of his hands close over mine. His lips opened and shut, as his eyes rolled to look at the trees blowing back and forth in the wind overhead. Blood ran from each corner of his mouth. He moved his lips again. It was as if he were trying to say something – tell me something. I lowered my head, turning my ear to his blood-speckled lips.

“It’s okay, Kiera…” he gasped. “…I can hear the wind in the willows…” 

“You remember me, don’t you?” I whispered.

With a faint smile on his lips, Ravenwood closed his eyes and took his last rattling breath. His grip on my hand loosened and fell away, leaving me holding a small silver key that he must have placed there.

Chapter Twenty-Eight 

I closed my fist around the key. I didn’t want Sophie to see it. My instincts told me that it was something that Ravenwood had only wanted me to know about. What the key opened, I had no idea, but it must have some importance or Ravenwood would have never secretly passed it to me before he died. I looked down into his upturned face. And although his neck was a red mess from where Sophie had slit his throat with her claws, he somehow looked strangely at peace – as if he now knew that everything would turn out okay somehow. Had he hoped that it would be me that would fix things? But what was there to fix? Back in the study before he had fled, Ravenwood had spoken of
them.
Had he been referring to The Creeping Men? But they were my friends. Ravenwood had almost seemed to sneer at the thought of Potter and Sophie mixing – or having a child. Was he so disgusted at the thought of half-breeds being born that that had been his motive for trying to kill Sophie? What other reason could there be?

Slowly, I took his glasses off and placed them next to him on the ground. The willows whispered overhead. To hear the sound of the trees bristling in the breeze I couldn’t forget how Ravenwood had smiled faintly before dying and had said that he could hear the wind in the willows. Had he been trying to tell me somehow that suddenly at the very end of his life he remembered me? Had he remembered leaving a copy of the book
The Wind in the Willows
for me to find in his cottage on the outskirts of Wasp Water? That seemed like so many lifetimes ago now. But had he remembered it? Did the key Ravenwood had secretly passed to me lead to another clue just like the letter he had once written in the pages of that book?

“What the fuck happened here?” I heard someone gasp.

I looked up to see Potter run into the clearing. His wings were out, as were his claws and fangs.

“You killed him, Kiera?” Potter asked.

“Not me. Sophie killed him,” I said, glaring at her.

“Sophie?” Potter said, as if seeing her standing in the clearing for the first time. “What are you doing here? I thought I told you to wait in the summerhouse…”

“And I thought I told
you
not to leave her,” I snapped at him. 

“I heard a commotion – like fighting,” Potter said. “I thought you were in danger so I came looking for you. Sophie was quite safe in the summerhouse.”

“I heard the sound of fighting, too,” Sophie said, stepping forward, her wings still shimmering about her, hair glowing in the golden sunlight. Why did she have to be so goddamn beautiful? She looked like a doll – like she couldn’t ever hurt anyone. But the gaping wound in Ravenwood’s neck reminded me that Sophie could now be as dangerous as any one of us. Turning her attention from Potter and back to me, she said in voice so soft, “I owed you, Kiera. You saved my life and I will never forget that. If it wasn’t for you, I would be dead now. You gave me a second chance. I only killed Ravenwood because I thought he was going to kill you – he did try to kill me, after all.”

“Ravenwood?” Potter said as if realising for the first time that it had been he who had poisoned Sophie.

“Yes, it was Ravenwood,” I told Potter.

“But why?” he asked, looking more hurt by this news than I’d ever expected.

“I didn’t get a chance to find out,” I said, shooting Sophie a quick glance. “He must have had a motive.”

“Perhaps he didn’t approve of the idea of humans being turned…” Sophie said, shimmering across the clearing and standing next to Potter.

“I don’t think that’s the reason why he tried to kill you,” I said. “After all, it was Ravenwood who had worked with Hunt on Lot 12, the cure that would help you change from human to vampire.”

“Kiera’s right,” Potter said. “There must be another reason… the baby, perhaps?”

“You told her?” Sophie gasped, looking straight at Potter. “How could you?”

“Kiera’s my friend,” Potter said, puffing out his chest. “And besides, if she was going to help catch the person who tried to kill you, then she had to know everything.”

“But…” Sophie pouted.

“But Kiera discovered the identity of the man who tried to kill you,” Potter said, looking down at Ravenwood’s corpse. “All we need to do now is find out why.”

With a gentle cry, Sophie suddenly placed one hand to her forehead and dropped in a dead faint into Potter’s arms.

“Maybe we should get her back to the manor house,” Potter said, scooping her up into his arms. “I think she is still very weak. I’ll get Hunt to take a look at her.”

“Okay,” I said, watching him go.

“Aren’t you coming?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder at me.

“I’m going to stay and bury Doctor Ravenwood beneath this willow tree. I think he would’ve liked that,” I said, turning my back on Potter.

I stood and listened as Potter’s footfalls faded away amongst the trees as he carried Sophie back to Hallowed Manor. Knowing that I would need something to dig Ravenwood’s grave with, I set off in the direction of the Summerhouse in search of a spade. As I approached, I could see that the door was open where Potter had rushed out, then Sophie, as both of them had come looking for me. Climbing the front steps and crossing the small porch, I peered inside. There were no tools that I could see. Turning, I went back down the steps and around the side of the building. There was a wheelbarrow, and in it were several gardening tools. One of these was a spade. Picking it up and resting it over my shoulder, I made my way back to the willow tree where Ravenwood lay dead.

Crossing the clearing, I made my toward the tree, then stopped. Had I lost my bearings? Had I made a mistake? Was I heading toward the wrong tree? I spun around and looked beneath the weeping willow trees. I couldn’t see Ravenwood’s dead body lying beneath any of them. It was as if his corpse had vanished. Dropping the spade, I ran toward the tree where I believed Ravenwood lay dead and dropped to the ground. I could clearly see the bent over blades of grass covering the area where he had been lying. There were splashes of his blood, too, which had stained the grass black. I passed my fingertips over the ground. The blood was still tacky and fresh. Springing to my feet, I searched for any signs of footprints leading to and from the area where Ravenwood had died. But there were none. How then had someone come and carried his body away? The leaves rustled overhead and I glanced up. The branches over the spot where I’d believed Ravenwood had died were broken and bent out of shape. Had someone swooped in and stolen Ravenwood’s body while I’d gone in search of a spade…? Or had Ravenwood simply played dead, and once I’d gone, he had taken his chance and simply flown away?