Kiera Hudson & The Lethal Infected (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

“What are you doing here?” I gaped. Potter was standing over me dressed in a smart charcoal coloured suit. He wore a black shirt that was open at the throat. I had never known him to wear a suit before. It looked good, stretched tight over his broad chest and powerful arms. 

“I could ask you the same question,” he said, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Get your stuff and let’s get out of here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I scowled.

“Who are you?” Nev said, standing up, a look of bewilderment in his face.

“Who are
you
?” Potter shot him a disdainful look.

“I’m Nev…” he started.

“Nev?” Potter smirked. “What’s that short for – Neville or summin’?”

“My name is pronounced, N
eev
…”

“Good for you,” Potter said, turning his back on him and looking down at me. “Get your shit together, we haven’t got time to waste…”

“I’m Kiera’s friend,” Nev tried to cut in again.

“And I’m her boss,” Potter snarled, turning on Nev again and going toe to toe with him.

“But it’s her night off and it’s her…” Nev started, not backing down and holding his ground with Potter.

“Nev is right,” I said, standing up. “I’m not at work now…”

“You were only whining a few days ago about wanting to be paid some overtime, so now’s your chance,” Potter shot at me.

“I wasn’t
whining
,” I said, placing my hands on my hips. “I don’t whine.”

“No?” Potter scoffed, taking the smouldering cigarette from his mouth and dropping it into Nev’s glass of sparkling water. “You seem to be doing a pretty good impression right now.”

“Whatever the problem is, it will have to wait until tomorrow,” I said, dropping down into my chair again, folding my arms across my chest.

“It can’t wait until tomorrow,” Potter said, fixing me with his jet black stare. “We have to deal with this tonight.”

“What is it you actually do as a job, Kiera?” Nev asked looking confused. “I thought you said you were some kind of receptionist…”

“She is, and I have a shitload of typing for her to get through,” Potter barked at Nev. Then turning to look at me again, Potter said, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”

Our eyes locked, both of us trying to read what the other was thinking. Part of me was mad as hell that Potter would dare to come storming into the restaurant on my birthday and demand that I leave. But there was another part of me racing up to the surface that was desperate to know what the urgency was all about. But more than that, the thought of working with Potter on another mystery was just too hard to resist.

So breaking Potter’s stare, I looked across the table at Nev. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”

“Really?” Nev asked, looking suddenly crushed.

My heart sank in my chest. I couldn’t look at him. The guilt I felt inside threatened to overwhelm me, and if it did, I might not leave with Potter – however much I wanted to. However much I hated myself for feeling it, I knew my loyalty and heart belonged to Potter, even if he wasn’t mine in this world. I just couldn’t shake those feelings off, however much I tried.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered at Nev, pushing my chair back and standing up again. 

“Me too,” he whispered back.

Gripping my arm, Potter led me back across the restaurant to the door. I stopped and looked over my shoulder at Nev. He sat alone at the table by the fire. It was then I remembered the card he had drawn for me.

“I’ve got to go back,” I said to Potter.

“He’ll get over it,” he said, dragging me through the open doorway and out into the night.

Once outside, I pulled myself free of Potter’s grip. “What’s so important that you think you have the right to storm in there and drag me away from my friend?” I demanded. “And how did you know where I was going to be? Have you been watching me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, hot-lips,” Potter said, skulking away from where I had parked my Mini and to a darkened corner of the car park. “Murphy told me.”

“Murphy?” Then I remembered telling him that I was going out with a friend for dinner at the Light House tonight.

“If you don’t want to be found, don’t tell people where you’re heading,” Potter said, disappearing into the darkness.

I went after him. “Where are we going? My car is back over there.”

I felt a hand grip mine and pull me into the shadows out from the glare of the lights spilling from the restaurant windows. I felt Potter against me, his breath against me. I felt my heart miss a beat. In fact, it felt like it had stopped altogether as he pulled me close.

“Where we’re going we won’t need your car, we can fly,” he said. In the darkness I felt and heard the heavy rustle of his wings breaking free of his back.

“Where are we going?” I whispered, as he snaked one arm about my waist.

“To a party,” he said, his pale face and dark eyes looming out of the darkness just inches from me.

“A party?” I frowned.

“And you’re dressed perfectly for the occasion. You look as hot-as-fuck tonight, Kiera Hudson,” he smiled, soaring up into the night with me held in his arms.

When the Ragged Cove was nothing more than a sea of twinkling lights in the darkness below me, I let my own wings spring from my back. Potter loosened his grip on me and I swooped away. My long, black hair fluttered about me, as did the dress I was wearing. Potter swooped in close, taking one of my hands in his.

“What’s this party all about? I thought you said it couldn’t wait?” I said over the ripple of the wind and my bristling wings.

“It can’t wait,” he smiled sideways at me. “It’s a once in a lifetime kind of thing.”

A once in a lifetime kind of thing? What was that supposed to mean? I wondered as we raced through the night together. A bit like my twenty-first birthday. That was only ever going to happen once, and Potter had screwed that right up. Then glancing at him again, I wondered if he had. He said he was taking me to a party? A birthday party, perhaps? I dared to hope – to dream. But how would Potter know it was my birthday? Murphy! I smiled. He had told Potter that it was my birthday, just like he had told him where I was going to be tonight.

Sensing that I had figured out what Potter was up to, any anger that I felt toward him for dragging me away from Nev melted. I curled my fingers tighter about his and flew closer toward him. What more could I have asked for on my twenty-first birthday than to be swept up into the night by the man I loved and to be taken to a surprise birthday party? Perhaps Jack had been right and Potter and I were meant to be together in this layer… perhaps we were going to be married just like we had planned… perhaps we were going to have a daughter…

…perhaps it was just a dream, Kiera…

I pushed that voice of doubt –
reason
– from my mind. I didn’t want anything to destroy the feelings of happiness that now washed over me.

“So where is this party taking place?” I asked Potter.

He looked at me, his wings looking tatty and torn as they rippled in the wind. “The party is being held at a place called Hallowed Manor.”

“Hallowed Manor?” I breathed, trying to contain my shock.

“Yeah, it’s a big place, set in its own grounds. It has a fucking moat going all the way around it and a drawbridge.”

“It sounds like some kind of fortress,” I said, pretending I had never been there before. But I had. It was where I had first met Kayla and Isidor, and where Potter and I had shared our first kiss in the gatehouse. I thought it had been Luke I’d been kissing, but it hadn’t been. Potter had said that I secretly knew that it had been him all along and not Luke. But I‘d always denied that, but perhaps Potter had been right.

“I guess it is like a fortress,” Potter said thoughtfully.

“So who else is going to be at this party other than me and you?” I asked, needing to know. Not only had I first met Kayla and Isidor there, but my friends Doctor Ravenwood and Lord Hunt had been doctors there. Hallowed Manor was where they’d had a secret hospital wing hidden in the attic. It was where they had nursed the sick half-breeds like Meren and Nessa. It was where Ravenwood and Lord Hunt had developed Lot 13.

Potter looked sideways at me.

“Who else is going to be there?” I asked again, my heart summersaulting in my chest.

“Friends,” Potter smiled, holding my hand tighter still.

Looking front again and feeling more excited than I could ever remember feeling, I raced through the night sky with Potter at my side once more. On the horizon, I could just make out the hulking shape of Hallowed Manor. Desperate to know which of my friends would be joining me for my secret birthday party, I raced toward it.  

Chapter Thirteen

It had started to rain by the time Potter and I swooped out of the night and settled on the gravel drive that twisted its way towards Hallowed Manor. Did it feel good to be back? I wasn’t sure. It was like I’d already spent much of two lifetimes here. Some of the memories I had for the manor house were good and others not so. I looked back toward the trees which led to the clearing and the summer house. I had only good memories of the times I spent there with Potter. Beyond the summer house hid the tiny cemetery beneath the weeping willows. I couldn’t help but wonder if all those tiny graves of the dead half-breed children were still there. I hoped not.

The wind had picked up and there was a sudden chill in the air. I shivered, pulling the shawl tighter about my shoulders. The rain came down heavier now, driving into the branches of the trees that bent to and fro in the wind. I looked back down at the gatehouse and the drawbridge. It had been pulled up, shutting off the outside world from Hallowed Manor and its secrets. I wondered what secrets were hidden behind its walls in this world. I guessed I was soon to find out as Potter took me by the hand and led me up the drive to the large wooden front door.

“You said there were friends here?” I asked him, feeling little apprehensive now. “Will I know any of them?”

“You might,” Potter said, as if not wanting to give anything away.

I glanced sideways at him, rain dashing the lapels of his suit. He could be an arse at times, I knew, but it appeared he had dressed up for the secret birthday party he had obviously arranged for me. Together we climbed the steps that led to the front door. He pushed it open. I glanced inside. There was only darkness. I lingered on the top step.

“Are you okay?” Potter glanced at me, as if being able to sense my unease.

“Just a little nervous, I guess,” I shrugged.

“You have nothing to be nervous about,” he said, letting go of my hand and stepping inside.

I followed him into the gloom. Potter closed the door behind me, sending what sounded like a rumble of thunder throughout Hallowed Manor. I peered through the darkness and could see that I was standing in the vast hall. I could just make out the wide staircase that disappeared up into a wall of black. At the top, I knew the stairs spit to the left and the right. One had led to the bedrooms, the other to the forbidden wing. Was it still forbidden to go there?

There was a sudden flare of light in the darkness. Potter’s face appeared in the glare of the candle he had just lit.

“Candles?” I asked. “Is there no electricity?”

“Candlelight creates a certain kind of mood, don’t you think?” he said, the candlelight doing nothing to brighten his jet-black eyes. For a place that was meant to be the location of a birthday party, I couldn’t hear a sound. Perhaps everyone was waiting in the darkness, readying themselves to jump out, surprise me and wish me a happy birthday. I peered once again into the darkness. I could see doorways leading off it. I knew the third door to my left led to the huge kitchen.

“This way,” Potter said, heading across the hall and away from the kitchen. The sound of his shoes and my heels echoed off the highly polished floor and around the hall. Reaching a double set of doors, Potter looked at me once more. “Ready?”

“Ready for what?” I whispered.

Without saying another word, Potter pushed open the double doors. The room beyond them wasn’t in darkness like the hall. I was standing looking into the long dining room. There was a table running from one end of it to the other and it was lined with hundreds of candles. All of them were lit and bathed the cavernous room in a deep, fiery glow. Leaving me standing in the open doorway, Potter walked to the opposite end of the room, coming to rest at the end of the long table. There were several people sitting at it. And as each of them turned their faces toward me, it was as if I was bombarded with a hundred different memories of each of them all at once. Sitting opposite each other at the very far end of the table was Lord Hunt and Doctor Ravenwood. Neither of them looked any different from how I remembered them to be. Lord Hunt still looked pale and gaunt, a nest of wrinkles around his dark eyes and flecks of grey in otherwise black hair. Ravenwood still reminded me of a giant owl somehow. Perhaps it was his bushy white hair and the way his glasses always sat perched at the end of his hooked nose that made me think that. Neither of them said anything, they just stared at me as I stood alone in the doorway wearing my new dress. Both of them wore smart, dark coloured suits like Potter. I looked at Hunt and couldn’t help but wonder if he were at Hallowed Manor with his children, Kayla and Isidor. I looked at the other guests along each side of the table, but I couldn’t see them. Apart from one, I’d already met the others in this world. Murphy was seated at the table, and I was glad to see him. Next to him sat Phebe and Uri. I now understood why they had got Jeremy to cover for them at the Crescent Moon Inn. And seeing them both sitting at the table also made me feel a little guilty. Phebe had obviously only been prying into what my plans had been as they had been intending on throwing this surprise birthday party for me. Sitting opposite them on the other side of the table was someone who I knew but thought I would never see again. Mrs. Payne sat and looked at me. Her face was as wizened and hair silver as I remembered it to be. She still wore the same frumpy grey dress that she had when working as a housekeeper at Hallowed Manor. I had once believed her to be a doting housemaid to Kayla, who had been left in her charge. But Mrs. Payne had been a traitor and had helped plan the murders of the sick half-breeds hidden away in the makeshift hospital in the attic. Kayla had ripped Mrs. Payne’s throat out when she had learnt of her treachery. I couldn’t help but stare at the old woman and wonder if she could be trusted now. But what reason did I have to mistrust her in this world? She looked harmless enough as she sat, her liver-spotted hands laced together on the table before her. I looked at the group again and my heart couldn’t help but sink when realising that Kayla and Isidor were not amongst them.

“I’d like to welcome you all to this very special occasion,” Potter spoke up. All heads turned away from me and back at him as he stood at the head of the table.

My heart began to race a little. I felt kind of on the spot knowing why they had been gathered here.

“We have a new addition to our number,” Potter continued, looking down the length of the table at me. “Some of you know her well already and some of you not. So tonight we welcome this very special woman to The Creeping Men. Some friends couldn’t be here tonight to help celebrate but we know they will be thinking of her as she becomes one of us and they send their best wishes.”

Other friends? Who were they and were they really thinking of me? Kayla? Isidor? Melody Rose? Sam? My skin tingled with excitement at the thought that they at least knew of me, had heard my name, even if they didn’t remember that I was their friend.

“So if you would like to stand and raise your glasses,” Potter said as those gathered around the table pushed their chairs back, drinks in hands. They all turned to look in my direction. “Please welcome Sophie Harrison to The Creeping Men.”

I felt someone brush past me and looked around to see Sophie with a beaming smile stretched across her beautiful face.