Dead Flesh (18 page)

I thought of
the fight I had witnessed that morning and said, “So someone like
Pryor wouldn’t make a good match?”

“How do you
mean?” Sam asked me.

“Well he seems
like a rebel – someone who rocks the boat – stronger willed,” I
explained. “I guess a wolf would have a job trying to crush his
soul once inside him.”

“Yeah, perhaps
you’re right,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s why he’s such a
jerk, like it’s some kind of act so he isn’t matched. But if that’s
what his game is, it could backfire on him.”

“Why?”

“Because the
wolves want to match with as many of us as possible,” Sam said.
“Remember they only get to pull this crazy shit every five years
and only in one town at a time, and they only get six months to do
it. Those of us who aren’t matched get to go home – back to our
families. See, Pryor can kick off as much as he likes, but McCain
will just beat it out of him – break him. There are very few kids
who aren’t eventually matched.”

“Does it scare
you?” I asked Sam.

“Does the
thought of being matched scare you?” he shot back.

“I don’t know,”
I said honestly. I really didn’t know how I felt about matching as
I believed it really had nothing to do with me. I’d come from
another place – another reality. But now that Sam had asked me the
question, I realised now that I was living at Ravenwood, I ran the
risk of being matched just like he might be.

“Like me,
you’ve probably just grown up accepting the fact that one day it
might happen to you,” he said. “A bit like getting cancer, I guess,
that’s how I came to see it. The odds weren’t in your favour, but
you just prayed that you’d never get it.”

“I guess,” I
said, pretending I’d had similar thoughts while growing up. In a
way I felt like I was tricking him. Sam seemed like a nice guy, and
I really didn’t understand what it must have been like to grow up
knowing that one day you ran the risk of having your soul taken by
a werewolf. I’d had to grow up coming to terms with the fact that I
was a half-breed and that had been bad enough, but whatever I
turned out to be, I was still going to be Kayla. I was never going
to lose my identity – have my soul taken away from me. “Don’t you
hate your parents for letting them take you?” I asked him.

“Do you hate
yours?” he shot back.

“It’s different
for me,” I told him. And keeping up the pretence, I said, “My
parents both died in a boating accident so I had little
choice.”

“I’m sorry that
your mum and dad died,” he said. “My parents died too.”

To hear him say
that made me wonder how much longer I could keep lying like this to
him. I had no idea how he was really feeling. I wondered what the
penalty would have been if the parents refused to let their child
go, but I couldn’t ask for fear of blowing my cover. I was meant to
know all this stuff if I’d grown up in this world just like him. So
I said, “When the wolves turned up in Wood Hill, did some of the
parents try and hide their children or smuggle them away?"

“What would’ve
been the point?” he asked, looking at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“The wolves know exactly who does and doesn’t have children in town
– the government gives them access to the census. Anyway, a few
weeks before McCain arrives in town, everyone knows that he sends
spies, wolves that have previously been matched and look human. You
must have heard that?”

“Something like
that,” I nodded briefly.

“And you must
have heard what happened years ago in that town...what was it
called now?” he said scratching his head and looking at me as if I
might know the answer. But of course I didn’t. “It doesn’t matter.
Anyway, some parents did try and resist and the wolves did that
thing with their eyes. They looked into those parents’ eyes and
drove them half mad. They were never the same again, like
vegetables I heard.”

As I sat and
listened to Sam talk, I remembered the people of Wood Hill and
understood why they tried so hard not to make eye contact with
those who passed them on the street. Then, I thought of the woman I
had seen with the pram and the doll which had had its eyes removed.
As if reading my thoughts, Sam started talking again.

“If any of the
kids resisted being taken, the wolves would just stare into their
eyes and they would be driven half mad with what they saw in them,”
he said. “I heard about this woman from one town, I think it was
some years ago now, who was so desperate for her child not to be
taken, that she cut her son’s eyes out then removed her own, so
neither of them could be brainwashed. How bad is that?”

“Awful,” I
whispered, feeling numb as I finally began to understand the
devastation that the wolves – Skin-walkers – were causing to these
people.

“Some of the
teachers at Ravenwood tried to object to what was happening,” Sam
told me.

“What, the
matching?”

“No, not that,”
he said, coming away from the window to sit next to me on the edge
of the bed. “Like our parents, most of them realise that they don’t
have a choice in matching, but it’s the way that McCain goes about
it – that’s what some of the teachers objected to. The brutality of
the man, that’s what the teachers didn’t like. Isn’t the matching
bad enough, why does he have to be so cruel about it? Look what he
did to you this morning.”

I glanced down
at my hands and was surprised to see that they had almost healed.
There were a few black scabs where McCain had stuck his Taser, but
nothing more. The purple swelling had gone and so had the streams
of liquid-fat. Sitting on my hands, I looked at Sam and said, “Did
you know a teacher by the name of Emily Clarke?”

“Yeah, why?” he
asked me, sounding surprised.

“Oh no reason,”
I said, breaking his stare. “I just heard a few girls talking about
her in the bathroom this morning. They were saying what a great
teacher she was and how much they missed her.”

Accepting my
lie, Sam said, “She was a nice lady and a good teacher. She wasn’t
cruel like the others. Miss Clarke stood up for us. McCain hated
her. But now she’s gone, just like the other teachers.”

“What do you
think happened to her?” I asked, trying to make my questioning
sound as casual as possible.

“McCain
probably killed her,” Sam shrugged.

“You’re kidding
me?” I said, again trying to sound as laid back as possible.

“Yeah, I’m just
messing about,” he said staring at me with those blue eyes, which
in the fading light looked almost turquoise. “I don’t mean this in
a sick way, but part of me wished that he had murdered her.”

“Why?” I asked
him, surprised by what he had just said.

“Because he
would have broken the conditions of the treaty, don’t you see?”

“Would he?” I
said.

With his eyes
open wide, Sam looked at me, and said, “Kayla are you from this
planet or what? You must know that if just one wolf kills – murders
– a human, then the treaty is broken. And if that happens then the
matching comes to an end and we’re free!”

“What if McCain
did murder Miss Clarke and the other teachers?” I whispered, not
taking my eyes from his.

“McCain
wouldn’t be that stupid,” Sam said.

“What if he’s
not stupid?” I said. “What if McCain is a killer?”

“You’d never
prove it,” Sam sighed.

Then, thinking
of how Elizabeth Clarke had told Kiera how her sister had hidden a
secret camera in her room, I looked at Sam and said, “We’ll never
know if we don’t look.”

“Look for
what?” he asked, frowning at me.

“Clues,” I said
back.

“And where are
you going to start looking for clues?”

“Do you know
where Miss Clarke’s room was?” I pressed.

“Yeah, why?” he
said and the look of fear I could see in his eyes told me he had
guessed what I was going to say next.

“We go and
check it out tonight,” I whispered.

Kiera

The store where
Emily Clarke had supposedly used her credit card to buy chocolate,
amongst other items, was on a road which lay about two miles north
of Wood Hill. We didn’t go straight to the counter and speak with
the staff. Instead, Potter and I wandered around the store and
looked to see what CCTV they had, if any. The only camera I could
see was positioned behind the counter and looked out into the store
and down at the cash registers. I looked at Potter, and we didn’t
have to speak to one another to know that if Emily had been in the
store the previous morning, she would be on camera.

I threw some
items into a basket, junk food mainly, and went to the cash
register with it. The spotty youth who was working began to process
my groceries. Once he had placed everything into a bag, Potter
asked for a pack of cigarettes.

The guy working
the cash register threw them into the bag and said, “That will be
thirteen pounds twenty, mister.”

Potter rummaged
through his jeans pockets and pulled out a roll of twenties. At the
same time I took my warrant card from my jacket pocket, opened it,
and realised that I hadn’t any money. I looked at the cash in
Potter’s fist
. My savings?
I wondered and
looked at him. Potter shrugged his shoulders at me with a guilty
grin.

I looked at the
spotty youth behind the counter and I could see that he was eyeing
my badge “Sorry, but my boss says I can’t give discounts to the law
anymore – not since one of you guys issued him that ticket for
running a red.”

“What?” I asked
surprised. “I don’t expect any discount.”

“You can’t be
from around here, then,” he said back.

“No, we’re
not,” Potter cut in.

What kinda police department are they running down
here?
I wondered. Potter handed over the money and looking
at the CCTV camera above his head, he looked back at the clerk and
asked, “is there any chance we could take a look at the CCTV
footage for yesterday?”

“No, you
can’t,” he said.

“How come?” I
asked him.

“Doesn’t work.
It’s been broken for months,” The clerk explained. “The boss says
it costs too much to get fixed. He’ll be screwed if we ever have a
robbery, insurance company will never pay out.”

“Do you have
any other cameras in store?” I asked.

“Nope, just
that broken one. Why you want to know?” he asked, looking at me,
then at Potter.

“It doesn’t
matter,” I said, picking up the groceries and leaving the
store.

I threw the bag
onto the backseat of the car and slammed the door shut in
frustration. Potter popped one of the cigarettes between his lips,
lit it, and inhaled deeply.

“When are we
going to get a half-decent break?” I asked him.

Potter looked
at me and blew a lungful of smoke into the air.

“We’re running
around in circles,” I said, more to myself than him.

“Something will
turn up,” he said, leaning against the side of the car and enjoying
his smoke.

“And what if it
doesn’t?” I snapped, sounding more frustrated than cross. “Kayla is
inside that school, werewolves are free to take children at will,
we’ve got a young woman who has suddenly vanished or worse, and the
local cop couldn’t give a crap because he’s too busy screwing the
local Seven-Eleven for a discount!”

Potter didn’t
say anything back, he just puffed on the cigarette and squirted
jets of smoke out through his nostrils. When he had finished, he
flicked the cigarette into the gutter and got into the car. I
climbed in next to him, feeling more frustrated than ever. Potter
started the engine and it spluttered and wheezed to life.

“We need some
petrol. We’re nearly empty,” he said.

On the other
side of the road, there was a small petrol station with two pumps
on the tiny forecourt. “Over there,” I said, jabbing my finger in
the direction of the petrol station.

Potter swung
the car out of the car park and crossed the road to the petrol
station which stood opposite the Seven-Eleven. He drew level with a
pump, got out, and began to fill the tank. I watched him through
the car window, and it was then that I saw it. There was a CCTV
camera attached to the underside of the petrol station canopy
facing out across the forecourt.

While Potter
finished filling the tank, I climbed from the car and walked over
to where the camera was fixed. I looked up at it and studied the
position it was facing. I turned my back to face it and looked out
at the view that the camera had. I could see the whole of the
forecourt and beyond, where to my delight, across the street was
the entrance to the Seven-Eleven.

“I wonder?” I
whispered. “I wonder?”

Kiera

We went into
the kiosk and Potter paid for the petrol in full from my savings. I
didn’t show my badge before the petrol had been paid for, as I
wasn’t sure if this was something else Banner and his merry men
expected discount on. The girl behind the counter was chewing
obnoxiously on a piece of gum. I showed her my badge. She raised
her eyebrows as if to say ‘
What now?
’ and
then said, “What can I do you for?”

“I’m
investigating a missing person enquiry and I was wondering if I
could view your CCTV footage for yesterday.”

“How’s that?”
she mumbled, removing the gum from her front teeth with her
tongue.

“How’s what?”
Potter glared at her.

“Why do you
want to watch the CCTV?” she asked him.

“Because we’ve
had information that she may have been in the area yesterday, so we
need to check it out,” he said bluntly.

“What, she came
in here did she?” the girl asked.

Potter sighed
and managed a false smile as if he was fast losing his patience. “I
don’t know. That’s why we need to view the CCTV.”