Dead Flesh (2 page)

I turned on the
taps and splashed cold water across my cheeks, washing away the
blood-red tears that had dried on them. Once they had gone, I began
to fill the bath with cold water. Not hot and no bubbles like I’d
enjoyed so much before…before dying…but the colder, the better. I
liked the water to be ice cold now. To feel it lap against my pale
skin made it tingle, it made my flesh feel alive and it numbed my
cravings for the red stuff. Death hadn’t silenced them – it had
made them worse – added another layer to my torment. There were
supplies of Lot 13 left behind by Doctor Ravenwood in the makeshift
hospital hidden in the attic. But there wasn’t much. I knew that
Kayla, more than Potter and Isidor, had been drinking it. I
couldn’t stop her and part of me didn’t want to. She had been
through enough – she had been murdered, her life taken away from
her – so at night, I lay awake and listened to her sob herself to
sleep from down the hall. How could I add to her suffering?

With the
bathroom in near darkness, I brought my face close to the mirror
fixed to the wall above the sink and stared into it. My face now
looked just as it had before dying, not deformed and misshapen like
it had when waking in the mortuary. To look at me, I appeared
normal, my bright hazel eyes losing none of their sparkle, my skin
pale as always, but without blemish. I dropped the blanket from
around my shoulders, letting it flutter to the tiled floor. I
rolled back my shoulders and my wings unfolded from my back. They
were as black as ever, those bony fingers folded into fists at the
tip of each wing. I looked at my fingers and my claws appeared like
a set of knives, and my mouth filled with blood as my fangs drew
down from my gums. I looked at my naked reflection, at the
half-breed
staring back at me, and there
were cracks. Not on the surface of the mirror, but on me. I’d first
noticed them on the morning after fleeing the mortuary. All of us
had slept in, and I had woken to find Potter lying next to me, his
head resting against my chest.

I had gently
eased myself away, not wanting to wake him. Once in the bathroom, I
had looked at myself in the mirror. I’d wanted to know if being
dead had changed me. Did I still have my wings, my claws, my fangs?
And yes I did, but there was something else. When in my true
half-breed form, there were now cracks. With my fingertips, I
touched the skin covering my left cheekbone. The cracks were very
faint, barely visible, but they were there. Like the tiny cracks
you get at the bottom of a very old china teacup. There were
others, too. A network of cracks like a very faint spider’s web,
covered my neck, shoulders, and down between my breasts, over the
flat of my stomach and down across my thighs. I rubbed at them,
then snapped my hand away. I looked at the dust-like powder that
now covered my fingers. I rubbed my fingertips together in a
circular motion and it felt as if they were covered in ash.

Potter had
stirred in the other room, and I swung the bathroom door closed. I
didn’t want him to see me like this. What was happening to me? Like
I said, it was as if I were cracking up.

That had been
six weeks ago, and now as I looked in the mirror, the cracks were
still there, more visible, as if deeper somehow, giving me an
ancient-looking appearance. From a distance they looked like
wrinkles, the kind that I shouldn’t be finding until my late
fifties – but I was never going to reach my late fifties, right?
Now that I was dead, was I going to age? Was I going to stay at the
age of twenty for the rest of eternity? Every young girl’s dream –
but not mine. I knew deep inside of me I wouldn’t last another
fifty years alive or dead. Whatever curse or blessing the Elders
had cast upon me wasn’t for eternity – it was for now. How long was
now? Weeks, months, years, before I cracked up totally and turned
into a pile of ash – just like the palace where I had died?

I just had this
feeling, like a knot in my stomach, that I was back from the dead
for a limited period of time. But why bring me back at all? Why
bring any of us back? Couldn’t we have been left to rest in peace?
I mean, isn’t that the whole point of dying – that we finally find
peace? Was bringing me back just a punishment for failing to make
my choice? No. I didn’t believe that. Why punish Potter, Isidor,
and Kayla too? I had been brought back for a reason – we all
had.

I turned off
the taps and changing back, I took my iPod from the shelf and
slipped into the water. Turning it on, I thumbed through the
tracks, and closing my eyes, I lay back and listened to Leona Lewis
sing
Happy
.

Kayla

Lot 13 tasted
bitter, as usual, but I screwed up my nose as it slowly rolled down
the back of my throat. It was disgusting and nothing like real
blood. The real stuff -
the red stuff
-
was lovely. Lot 13 was like Diet Coke - the red stuff was like the
full-fat version. There was no comparison. But it was better than
nothing and it dulled that constant itch that wouldn’t go away. But
that itch, the one that drove me half-crazy at times, seemed like a
mild irritation today - like a wasp hovering around your ice cream,
compared to the noise.

I could hear
Kiera going to her bathroom, even from my room all the way down the
hall. The sound of the water rushing from the taps and filling the
bath was almost deafening and I wanted to scream at her to turn
them off. But there had been a lot that I had wanted to scream
about lately, so taking one of my pillows, I buried my head beneath
it. With the pillow smothering my face and ears, I could still hear
the sound of Kiera’s blanket flutter to the floor. She stopped and
I knew that she was looking at herself in the mirror again. Not out
of vanity - Kiera wasn’t like that - she was looking at something
else. I didn’t know what, but I knew that she was staring at
herself again. I could see it in her eyes. Kiera hadn’t been the
same since coming back - but then again, I don’t think any of us
had been the same.

I heard Kiera
climb into the bath and at last, the sound of running water
stopped. My hearing wasn’t usually this intense - but whenever I
got upset - angry or frightened, the sounds around me became louder
- oh yeah - loud wasn’t the word. Sometimes I felt like stuffing my
fingers into my ears and screaming. There had always been a
soundtrack
, as I had called it, since the
age of six - a faint background noise, like someone whispering at
me from behind a wall. But sometimes it intensified and was worse
than deafening. And it was like that today and had been since I’d
come back from The Hollows - the dead.

Listening to
music helped and I was forever swiping Kiera’s iPod - the music
helped to drown out the
soundtrack.
But
Kiera had it now - she was listening to it in the bath. I could
hear the music hissing from beneath my pillow. I had my own but it
was busted. Dropped it throwing a hissy-fit at my mum and cracked
the screen - the thing was screwed after that.

And I knew it
was because of my mother, my father and…I didn’t want to think of
the other one’s name, that the soundtrack had been cranked up to
full. Since being back from The Hollows, I’d had time to think -
reflect about everything that had happened there. I’d wanted to
come back here, it had been my idea, it was my home. But to walk
the quiet corridors and passageways, to sit alone in the vast
kitchen, and walk the grounds had made me think of the ones I had
loved and lost…because of
him
.

I was angry -
no - I was fucking raging inside. Even though I was dead I could
still feel things – pain. I still hurt. But even though he
humiliated me, cut my ears off and then murdered me, I knew that I
was angrier at myself than him. How had I been so dumb? Why had I
been so flattered by the words that he had whispered? And I knew
the answer to those questions - I had been desperate. I had been
desperate for the red stuff that he had supplied me. But even more
desperate to be loved. I had lost my mother and father but I had
found a brother - Isidor. Why hadn’t I turned to him? Even when he
tried to warn me, I didn’t listen. For someone who can sometimes
hear too much - I had failed to hear my brother’s warnings and
that’s why I was freaking angry with myself.

But hey, Kayla,
you’re alive, girl - you came back from the dead - you got another
shot. But not really. I’m still dead, right? The Elders told me I
was a Dark Angel - a
dead
angel more like.
And what exactly was a dark angel? What was I brought back for? To
help protect Kiera, they had told me. Protect her from what? I
mean, Kiera didn’t need looking after - I’d seen her kick more
Vampyrus butt than I cared to remember; she looked after Kiera and
I wished that I could be more like her. Kiera was my protector -
she was my friend, my sister.

Maybe Kiera
didn’t need that kind of protection - the fang-ripping and clawing,
tearing kind. Maybe she just needed a friend? Someone to be there
for her - to be there for each other. Like I said, I knew she was
troubled by something - the walls of her room were covered from
floor to ceiling in those newspaper cuttings. It was like she was
looking for something. I knew she didn’t know what, exactly, but I
knew that she would
see
it eventually.

The
soundtrack
had started to fade a little,
so pulling the pillow from over my head, I climbed from my bed and
padded across my bedroom to the large bay windows leading to the
balcony. I pulled back the curtains a fraction and peered outside.
The day looked miserable again and I had forgotten how bleak this
place could be in the winter…spring…oh, who was I trying to kid?
The place was freaking bleak all year round.

From my window,
I spied Isidor coming back through the woods carrying an armful of
branches. His dark hair was swept off his brow and his Shaggy-Doo
beard jutted from his chin. He hated it when I called it that.
That’s what Potter called it and was always taking the piss. And
that was another thing - being dead hadn’t stopped those two from
bitching at one another. They were constantly at each other’s
throats. But Isidor hit back just as hard as Potter now, or should
I say Gabriel! I couldn’t help but snigger aloud every time Isidor
taunted him. Seeing Potter get wound up had been my happiest
moments since coming back.

I watched
Isidor drop the pile of branches onto the drive at the foot of the
steps that led to the front door. He took a flick-knife from the
pocket of his jeans and sat down where he began to sharpen them.
Pulling on a pair of jogging bottoms, trainers, and a sweatshirt, I
left my room to join him.

“What are you
doing, Isidor?” I asked, sitting beside him on the step.

“Making
stakes,” he said back, as he carved away at the tips of the
branches.

“Why?” I
asked.

“Why not?” he
smiled at me, then went back to the sharpening. “What else is there
to do around here?”

“Don’t tell me
you’re missing The Hollows and what happened there?” I half-smiled,
placing my arm about his shoulder.

“It’s because
of what happened there that I’m making these stakes,” Isidor said,
not looking at me.

“I don’t
understand?” I said. “That’s all finished with now, we’re safe
here. Besides, we’re dead already - how can we die twice?”

Then, stopping
what he was doing, Isidor turned to face me. “You’ve noticed the
changes, right?”

“I guess,” I
said, looking straight at him.

“Then I don’t
think we’re safe - dead or alive,” and he went back to his
cutting.

Kiera

Isidor had said
something bad had happened. I remembered him saying those words to
me as we raced from the mortuary. And something bad
had
happened – people had gone missing. Not just one
or two, but thousands. I had come back to find that in an instant,
people had just disappeared. And as I looked at the hundreds of
newspaper cuttings that covered the walls of my room at Hallowed
Manor, I knew that they had been the Vampyrus, snatched back by the
Elders as The Hollows had been sealed. But the Elders had said that
the humans wouldn’t remember and they didn’t – it was as if the
Vampyrus hadn’t ever existed. And that wasn’t the only bad thing to
have happened. It seemed that the Elders had either failed to
understand the consequences of their actions, or they knew exactly
what would happen and this was just another part of their curse,
because the world had changed. Not drastically. But it was
different, as if it had been nudged off-kilter, shoved to the left
a bit. There were subtle changes and as I trawled through the
Internet during the hours that I sat awake unable to sleep – I
noticed these changes. And it was as if by taking the Vampyrus
back, the Elders had erased any subtle influence that the Vampyrus
had had on human civilisation. It was my iPod that first drew my
attention to these differences. Although it was still called an
iPod, the Apple logo had been replaced with the shape of a crescent
moon. And when I thumbed through the tracks, I noticed that some of
the songs had changed slightly – sung by someone else. For example
all of the
Rihanna
songs had been replaced
by a singer named
Robyn
, the
U2
tracks had been replaced by a group called
Feedback.
The band looked vaguely familiar
and the songs similar in tone and music style to
U2
– but like I said, just different – as if knocked
off-kilter. When I tried to search for
U2
on the Internet, there was no trace of them on any search engine –
not even the biggest, Toogle, which seemed to have replaced Google.
But other songs had stayed just the same. Bruno Mars, Leona Lewis,
and many others were as they were before. But it wasn’t just the
tracks on my iPod which had altered; the car manufacturer
Ford
didn’t exist – but there was Nord.
The number one fast-food chain was
McDonnell’s
started back in the 1940’s by the
McDonnell brothers.