Dead Flesh (33 page)

“He’s that
burnt kid?” Potter sniped, looking at me in disbelief.

“They are not
burns,” Elizabeth said, standing and placing a hand on the boy’s
shoulder. “They are the result of a bad matching.”

“Apart from
seeing your son on that video helping to carry your murdered sister
from her room, I’ve never seen him before,” I frowned, realising
that there was now more to this murder than I had first seen. “How
could he have recommended me?”

“Oh no, it
wasn’t my son who gave you such a glowing report,” she smiled down
at me.

“No, it was me,
Kiera Hudson,” someone said, and I looked up to see Jack Seth
stroll into the room.

Kiera

Jack Seth
towered over us. His rake-thin figure was covered by a
loose-fitting denim shirt and jeans. Around his scrawny neck was
tied his red bandana. His face was as emaciated as ever, and on his
head he wore a baseball cap. The beak was pulled down low over his
brow, and his crazy yellow eyes burned in their deep, sunken
sockets. The lines around his mouth looked like valleys and his
teeth were nothing more than brown rotting stumps.

Potter pushed
his chair back and jumped up, his claws out.

“Sit down,
Potter,” Seth grinned, flapping a long fingered hand at him. “I
haven’t come here to scrap with you.”

“So why are you
here?” I breathed, getting up and standing next to Potter. “I
thought you were dead – I thought you died in The Hollows.”

“Sorry, but
no,” Seth sneered, taking a seat and putting his feet up the table.
“It seems that the Elders had other plans for me.”

“Like what?” I
asked, still reeling with shock at the sight of him.

“For nearly two
hundred years, I’ve waited for this moment, Hudson,” he smiled at
me, but I knew it was false, I could see rage seething in his
eyes.

“What are you
yapping on about?” Potter snapped.

“The Elders
brought me back, just like they did you,” he sighed, leaning back
in his chair and crossing his legs at the ankles. “But my
punishment was far greater than any of yours.”

“Punishment?” I
asked him, his burning eyes never leaving mine.

“I’d resisted
you, Hudson,” he said, and rubbed his bony temples with his
fingers. “I’d
resisted
a lot. All I wanted
was my curse to be lifted. I didn’t want to be a Lycanthrope
anymore. I hadn’t killed in lust for years. I’d paid my dues for
what I’d done, and all I wanted was to reach the Dust Palace and
have my curse lifted by the Elders.”

“And you really
thought they were going to do that...” Potter started.

But before he’d
finished, Seth had sprang from his chair. Smashing one of his
skeletal-like fists down onto the table, he screeched, “I helped
you!” Then, looking around the room, he seethed, “I helped all of
you.” Spittle swung from his mouth and dribbled down his chin. “All
you had to do, Kiera Hudson, was make one simple decision, and I
could have been free of my curse.”

“The decision I
had to make wasn’t simple,” I tried to remind him.

“You used me!”
he roared, his eyes blazing. “You threw yourself at me – you made
it impossible for me not to kill you.”

“Once a killer
always a killer,” Potter barked at him.

“Not true!”
Seth shrieked, punching the table so hard with his fist again that
the TV Potter had placed on it actually bounced up and down. Then,
coming around the table, Seth looked into my eyes. I saw Isidor and
Kayla jump up, fearing that Seth might strike me, but he brushed
them aside. Standing before me, he looked into my eyes and I stared
into his. “I resisted you right up to the last,” he whispered, and
it was like there was only us in the room – in the world. “How I
fought my desires to take you, Kiera. It drove me half insane to be
near you and not be able to take you then kill you.” And in his
eyes, I could see myself as he hurt me. And although I was in pain
and just wanted to scream over and over again until my throat was
raw, I let him do those unspeakable things to me. It was like I was
unable to resist him. His naked form was disgusting, like a
skeleton that crows had picked the flesh from. In his eyes, I could
see myself groaning with desire as I pulled him on top of me. He
had me locked in his stare and I would have done anything for him,
I would have let him do anything to me – kill me. My desire for him
was unimaginable and I wanted him more than I had ever
wanted...

...Potter
dragged me backwards and spun me around. “Don’t look into his eyes,
Kiera!” he barked. “Don’t look into his eyes.”

Seth began to
chuckle, then took his seat back at the table next to Elizabeth and
the burnt-looking boy that Kayla had called Dorsey. “But you
weren’t looking into my eyes in The Hollows, were you, Kiera?” Seth
grinned and I caught a glimpse of those rotting stumps that
protruded from his black gums.

“I didn’t have
to,” I whispered.

“You didn’t
have to because you used me,” he said, and I could hear his anger
again boiling beneath the surface. “You knew that if you threw
yourself at me, told me that you wanted me, I’d be unable to resist
you.”

“I couldn’t
make the choice that the Elders said I had to,” I said. “It was
impossible. The only way out was for me to die. All of my friends
had died and I didn’t want to be alone...”

“So you got me
to make the decision for you!” Seth roared. “You coward – you silly
little bitch.”

“Get out of
here!” Potter barked at him, heading around the table. Seth seemed
unmoved by Potter’s display of anger and he remained seated.

“Have you any
idea what you put me through?” Seth screeched, spittle flying from
his lips again. “The Elders punished me all over again for killing
you, Hudson. But this time their curse was so much worse than the
original curse of the Lycanthrope. They sent me back to that night
– nearly two hundred fucking years ago, made me re-live it all over
again. Only this time, as a Shape-Shifter.”

“A
Skin-walker?” Kayla cut in.

“More than a
Skin-walker,” Seth hissed. “I don’t need to steal skins like them.
I can change into any living creature.”

“Cool,” Isidor
breathed.

“Cool!” Seth
bellowed, his wrinkled lips curling back. “It’s a fucking curse, I
tell you! I don’t want to live under this spell anymore. I want to
be a man again – just man.”

“You were never
a man,” Potter spat. “You were a filthy murdering killer.”

“I know I was,”
Seth hissed. “And maybe I deserved the curse of the Lycanthrope.
But I had tried to change. I was so close to having the curse
lifted, until
she
set me up in the Dust
Palace.”

“So the last
two hundred years hasn’t mellowed you then?” Potter asked him.

“I’ve had two
hundred years of waiting until we met again,” Seth said. “I didn’t
know when you would all put in an appearance, but I’ve bided my
time. It gave me years to make plans, get myself ready for your
return.”

“What plans?” I
asked him.

“How I would
finally get the great Kiera Hudson to make a choice,” he grinned at
me, and his eyes spun in their sockets. “But first I had to flush
you out. I got myself in with the wolves, as I can look like one of
them at will – and I don’t need no children’s soul to look like a
human, either. I took it upon myself to name a certain school after
a certain Doctor Ravenwood. An unusual name that I knew you would
be drawn to. But still you didn’t come. I thought and thought of
how I could flush you out, and knowing how much you hate injustice,
it was me who suggested the matching between humans and wolves when
the Treaty was drawn up.”

“So you’re this
Wolf Man that we’ve heard so much about?” Potter sneered at
him.

“No,” Seth
grinned back at him. “I am not he. So, the Treaty was signed and I
waited and waited. Then, I read a very interesting news article
about a young woman who had sat bolt upright during an autopsy and
fled into the night with three strange-looking friends. One of
which carried a crossbow,” he explained, eyeing Isidor. “I tracked
down that pathologist, and very wild she was too. She enjoyed me so
much, that she would have told me anything. And she did.”

“What did she
tell you?” I asked him, feeling sickened at the thought of him
tricking that pretty young pathologist into bed with him.

“What she told
me, although it was hard for me to understand her as there was a
lot of moaning and groaning going on at the time,” he winked at me,
“is that as you fled the mortuary, she asked you your name, and you
told her.”

I remembered
that.

“I had you at
last,” Seth said, rubbing his long hands together. “Knowing that it
wouldn’t be too long before you started sticking your nose into
why, and how the world had been changed, my good friend here got
herself employed at Ravenwood School, as I guessed the name would
arouse your interest.”

“But it was
your sister, Emily, who was employed at Ravenwood school,” I said,
looking at Elizabeth.

“I have no
sister,” Elizabeth smiled. “I have no twin. There is only me. I’m
Emily.”

“But we saw you
being murdered on that video footage,” Isidor said.

“It was all
just an act,” Seth chuckled. “Skin-walkers – wolves - can heal very
quickly.”

“You’re a
wolf?” Kayla gasped, staring at Emily.

“I prefer
Skin-walker,” Emily smiled quite sweetly back at Kayla. “But, yes
under this human skin I am a wolf. I was matched some years
ago...”

“Look, this is
all very interesting,” Potter snapped. “So McCain didn’t actually
murder anyone?”

Sighing, Seth
looked at Potter and said, “Coming back from the dead hasn’t
sharpened your brain at all, has it? McCain didn’t know anything
about anything. As far as he was concerned, Emily Clarke was just
another teacher who decided to leave, albeit leaving her room in a
rather bloody mess.”

“That’s why he
was in her room that night, sniffing the walls,” Kayla breathed.
“He was trying to figure out what had happened to her.”

“But we saw
McCain on the video...” Isidor started.

“He’s slow to
catch on, isn’t he?” Seth smiled. Then, looking at Potter, he
added. “You two aren’t related by any chance, are you?”

“That was you
on that video,” I said, fitting all the pieces of the jigsaw
together. “You said that you were a Shape-Shifter. You could look
just like him at will.”

“Not totally at
will,” Seth smiled. “It’s a little bit more complex than that. I
needed some of McCain’s blood. Not much, just a drop and that’s
where Dorsey fit in so nicely. McCain had no idea that he was
Emily’s son, he thought he was just another student.”

I glanced at
the burnt-looking boy.

“It wasn’t very
hard for me to find myself in trouble with McCain.” Dorsey said.
“That prick Pryor was always ragging on me, so I spent a lot of
time in McCain’s office being punished. But I didn’t care that
Pryor beat me, teased me, it didn’t hurt none. In fact, the more
that he beat up on me, the more chance I had of stealing what Mr.
Seth needed from McCain.”

“And what was
that?” Kayla asked curiously.

“That freak was
always suffering from nosebleeds,” Dorsey said. “He couldn’t
breathe properly half of the time. McCain was always ramming one of
those little bottles of medicine up his nose. So, one day as he
punished me, I took my chance and stole one of those medicine
bottles from his pocket. And just like I knew it would be, the tip
of the bottle was covered in blood from one of his nosebleeds.”

“A drop was all
I needed,” Seth smiled. “I licked the end of the bottle clean and I
became him. Not for long, just for a few days. Long enough to make
it look like McCain had murdered Emily Clarke in front of the
camera, which we set up.” Then, reaching inside his shirt, he
produced a packet of Cadbury’s chocolate fingers and threw them
onto the table. “Sorry, I couldn’t think of what else to buy.”

“So it was you
who used the credit card?” I gasped.

“Yes,” Seth
smiled. “Emily lent it to me. I knew you would check that out. I
wanted you to see McCain using her card – it just made the whole
thing more believable and stacked the evidence nicely against him.
And the rest you know.”

“But why frame
McCain?” I asked him. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes
perfect sense,” Seth hissed at me. “I knew that if I sent my friend
Emily to you with some mystery murder, you wouldn’t be able to help
yourself from investigating. I knew that if Emily mentioned the
camera, you would go snooping for it. Although I must say, I was
surprised you used the girl. I thought you liked taking all the
glory.”

“I couldn’t
very well disguise myself as a school teacher,” I snapped at
him.

“I was hoping
that you were going to dress up as a school girl,” Seth smiled back
at me. “That would’ve been worth catching on camera. I could have
watched it over and over again. I would have gotten a kick out of
that.”

“Shut your
filthy mouth, child killer!” Potter shouted.

“Not anymore,”
Seth grinned. “I haven’t killed anyone for years. I wish the same
could be said for your lover over there,” and he looked at me.

“What’s that
supposed to mean?” I asked him.

“You’re just
about to let McCain die, aren’t you?” he grinned back at me, and I
had to fight the urge to knock his crumbling teeth down his throat.
“I think the execution is just about to start.” Seth, then lent
forward and switched on the TV.

The screen
flickered into life and revealed an aerial shot of Wembley Stadium,
where the execution was to take place. A news reporter was chatting
excitedly about how people, most of them parents, had queued
through the night to get tickets to watch McCain’s beheading.