Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series Two (Book 8)) (11 page)

“Cracks?” Melody asked.

“Haven’t you seen them?” I said, cocking one eyebrow, pointing heavenwards with one finger. There was no way that she hadn’t.

“The cracks that have appeared overnight in the sky?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I nodded. “Something happened which I don’t think should have, and it’s caused those cracks to appear.”

“What happened?” she asked, sitting forward on the sofa.

“I think I was meant to die last night, but someone took my place and it’s changed things – it’s made cracks appear,” I said, trying to figure out in my mind at the very same time I was trying to explain the cracks to Melody. 

“Why were you meant to die?” she asked me, a frown creasing her pretty face.

“I had decided to sit and wait for you at a railway station,” I said,
wondering if I sounded stupid. “I’d decided not to budge until you showed up, even though danger in the shape of a pack of berserkers was only seconds away.”

“Why were you so convinced I was going to show up at the station?” Melody asked, that frown growing deeper with each passing second. 

“Because I had a photograph of me and you together,” I said. “But the photograph hadn’t yet been taken. So I was convinced that whatever might come to pass in this world, we were destined to meet up again so that photograph could be taken.”

“Where is this picture?” Melody said, holding out her hand. “Show it to me.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because it no longer exists, and perhaps it never should have,” I told her. “The man who took my place last night said the picture would lead me into a trap. But he also told me to come and find you.”

“Why?” Melody asked.

“He said you would be waiting for me.” Then with a half-smile, I added, “And in a way, he was right. You were waiting for me. You said yourself that you knew that one day I would come back. Why were you so convinced of that?”

She looked away in the direction of the fire. The flames danced in her eyes, making them shine bright again. “Because I believed you to be a vampire and vampires come back, don’t they?”

Sitting forward in the armchair, I stared at Melody, even though she had looked away from me, and I said, “I think somewhere deep inside, in a box that you’ve tried to keep a lid on, you do remember something.”

“Why would I lie about something like that?” she said, getting up from the sofa and chucking another log onto the fire. A flurry of sparks disappeared up into the chimney.

“Because you’re scared that if you remember too much, then you’ll go mad like your mother did,” I whispered. “Who would want to remember being murdered by their own mother? I don’t blame you for not wanting to remember something like that.”

“Stop it,” she suddenly hissed, her back turned to me as she stood before the fire.

“That’s the real reason you’ve spent your life chasing around after whispers, rumours, and half-truths,” I said, standing up. “You need to know whether you were going mad like your mother, or if the stuff you’ve buried deep inside is real. You’ve not been looking for proof in the existence of winged creatures, but proof that your dreams and memories are more than just that – that they had once been very real.
Because if they are real, then you’re not seeing ghosts, hearing voices, or going mad.”

Melody turned to face me, but said nothing. Her chest hitched up and down as if her heart was racing.

Looking into her eyes, I said, “You knew I would someday come back, because in your heart, you knew I was real. You do remember me.”

Leaning in close to me, Melody suddenly crushed her lips against mine.

Chapter Seventeen

Kayla

We swept over the town of Havensfield. Below we could see a line of flashing police lights as they snaked through the darkness toward the carnage Potter and I had left behind. Perhaps some of those residents who had been peering out of their windows had reported us. What would they be able to tell the cops? That they had seen winged creatures? Their stories would keep reporters like Melody Rose busy for a while. But thinking of her only made me feel sad and regretful. Not because it had been her who had reported on mine and Isidor’s deaths, but because my brother died in this world hoping that he might find her again. If only he hadn’t been so stubborn and stayed back at the railway station that night. But what I regretted the most was that I hadn’t spotted Melody’s name on that newspaper clipping Sam had shown me. Sam had had it with him as he lay asleep in the waiting room while Isidor had told us his story. Perhaps if Sam had listened too, he might have recognised Melody’s name and been able to tell Isidor that she was alive in this new world and where she might be found. But the strangest thing of all was the fact it had been Sam in his future who had taken the picture of Melody and Isidor together. His mother would send him to take it, just like she had sent me to take a photograph of Kiera and her father and deliver Potter’s letters to
Sophie.

Potter swooped alongside me, his wings pointed upwards as he glided through the cold night air.

“So how do we go back and deliver the letters to Sophie?” he shouted over the roar of the wind.

“The same way I got here,” I told him, thinking of the train I’d taken.

“Through a crack?” Potter asked.

“No, by train,” I said, banking left in the direction of Havensfield Railway Station.

Potter followed me. “I took a train to the Hudson River, and ended up in Kiera’s apartment,” Potter said, and I then knew he understood how the whole passing backwards and forwards by the trains worked.

“I took the train to the Hudson River too, but unlike you, I didn’t end up in Kiera’s apartment so I could leave the photograph, but up at Bleak Point Railway Station,” I explained.

“Why do you think you went off course?” Potter asked me.

“Why does any train veer off onto a different set of tracks?” I yelled sideways at him.

“How the fuck should I know?” he hollered back. “I’m not a train driver.”

“Someone moves the points,” I said. “Perhaps someone
pushed
or
pulled
a lever they shouldn’t have.”

“So what train do we catch back to Sophie’s
where
and
when
?” he asked as we dropped out of the sky.

Taking the love letters he had once sent Sophie from my back pocket, I waved them in his face and said, “I was told I had to catch the mail train.”

“Now how did I know you were gonna say that,” he smiled grimly at me as our feet touched down onto the platform. It was still night and any commuters that might be heading into town on the early train were yet to climb from their beds. There were two platforms and both were desolate. I could see a large, circular-faced clock attached to the station wall. It read 03:23 hours. With our wings withdrawing into our backs, we headed along the platform. There was a small waiting room. Potter rattled the handle, but it was locked.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking freezing,” he grumbled, pulling up the collar of his coat.

“We’re not meant to feel the cold. We’re dead, remember?” I said, looking at his pale face.

“Yeah, well, I don’t actually think I’m dead anymore,” he said. “My heart is beating again at least.”

“How come?” I asked.

“Me, Kiera, and Murphy took a dive in the Dead Waters,” Potter explained. “It kind of got the old ticker pumping again.”

“Do you still have the cravings for the red stuff?” I was curious to know.

“Yeah, but not as bad as before,” he said.

“I still get them real bad,” I told him, the sound of the station clock ticking away behind me against the wall.

“I kinda guessed that by the way you sucked that Skin-walker’s face off,” Potter grinned at me.

“If I hadn’t fed my thirst, my skin would’ve started to crack and go hard again.” I pressed my fingertips to my face. “It’s starting to piss me off.”

“As soon as we have delivered the letters and we get back to our own
where
and
when
, we’ll head for the Dead Waters,” he said. Then, thrusting his hands into his coat pockets, he puffed out his cheeks, and looking in both directions along the track, he groaned, “Where the fuck is this train? It’s freezing.”

“I don’t think the mail train runs to a timetable like a normal train,” I said.

Stomping his feet up and down to keep warm, Potter looked at me and said, “So you never told me what happened that night in the field after Sam had seen his mum hanging out beneath the tree? I thought you said he hated the bitch.”

“She didn’t seem like a bitch to me,” I said.

“The mother-in-law never does at first,” Potter remarked. “Give it time.”

“She isn’t my mother-in-law, and never will be,” I said back.

“Jeez, the way you and Sam have been drooling all over each other, I’m surprised you’re not married, spawned eight pups or more, and got divorced already.”

“We’re not gonna have any pups,” I snapped.

“Sam’s a wolf, ain’t he?” Potter grinned at me.

“Look, do you want to know what happened, or are you just gonna stand there all night being a dick?”

“I’m sorry,” Potter chuckled, taking a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lighting one. “I’m just taking the piss.”

“That’s all you ever do,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Kayla, honest,” he smiled mischievously. 

It was so hard to stay mad at Potter for long, and that’s what drove me crazy about him. So, taking a deep breath, I said, “When we reached Sam’s mum, he just kinda stood there open-mouthed and stared at her. It really was like he had seen a ghost. For so long he had believed his parents to have drowned in that boating accident. So when he saw her again, he couldn’t help but gasp, ‘“You’re alive!”

‘“I’m so sorry, Sam,” his mother said, and she reached out and took him in her arms. She held his face against her chest and stroked his hair. It really looked as if she genuinely cared for him, despite what Sam had told me about her.

“After the initial shock of seeing his mother again, and discovering that she wasn’t dead, Sam asked her what had happened that day on the boat. His mother said she didn’t have time to explain.

‘“And what about my father? Is he alive, too?’ Sam had asked her, and he looked close to tears.

She told him that like her, his father was alive, and when Sam eventually introduced me to his mother, she said that she already knew who I was,” I explained to Potter.

“How come?” Potter asked.

“She never did say, as our time with her was short,” I said. “But I’m sure she will tell us everything when we all meet up again.”

“That will be interesting,” Potter mumbled, taking another puff on his cigarette.

“You can trust her,” I tried to assure him. “She’s a human and so is Sam’s father.”

“I thought you said you’d never met him?”

“I haven’t, but Sam told me,” I said.

“So it must be true then,” Potter said, rolling his eyes.

I knew Potter disliked Sam because he was half wolf. “Look, Sam wasn’t born a wolf,” I reminded him. “He is only the way he is now because that wolf tried to match with him at Ravenwood School. If it hadn’t have been for me and Isidor saving him, he would be just like one of those Skin-walkers we killed tonight.”

Potter looked at me and sucked on the end of his cigarette. “So what happened next?”

“Sam’s mum led us away from the fight you and Murphy were having with the wolves,” I continued. “When we were at a safe distance away, she stopped just ahead of us between two large trees.”

“So how did you all suddenly vanish?” Potter asked.

“She opened one of the cracks I told you about,” I said.

“How?”

“Sam’s mother said there are cracks appearing all over the world, but most of them are invisible. Some are large, but most wolves and people pay them no attention, as they are just believed to be cracks in the ground, in walls, doorways, and broken windowpanes. But some of these cracks just appear in the ai
r. Again, they are so fine they would never be seen unless you knew what to look for – unless you had been trained to know that they were even there.”

“So how do you see these cracks or even know that they are there?” Potter asked, sounding bemused by what I was telling him.

“You know how sometimes you think you’ve seen something in the corner of your eye?” I tried to explain it just how Sam’s mother had explained it to us. “Like some kind of blur or shadow in your peripheral vision?”

“I guess,” Potter said, flicking his cigarette end down onto the tracks where it smouldered.

“Well, wolves have excellent peripheral vision and their eyes are optimized to detect motion, far greater than humans can,” I said. “These cracks shimmer, as they are unstable fault lines in the very fabric of existence. The wolves, if they know what to look for, can focus on these cracks and then open them.”

“But Sam’s mother wasn’t a wolf and neither was his father,” Potter reminded me.

“And that’s why they had come back for their son,” I said. “They had discovered that he was now part wolf and would be able to detect these cracks that were appearing. Sam would be able to help the human resistance his parents had gathered together.”

“So they were using him?”

“No, they had always loved him…” I started.

“So much so they faked their own deaths,” Potter sneered.

“Yes, in a way,” I said. “However much it hurt them, they wanted Sam to believe they had very little regard for him and that they were dead. They didn’t want him to go searching for them, as it would have been too dangerous for Sam. The wolves had heard about the human resistance that had started to grow, and if they discovered Sam’s parents, they discovered him too. They needed the wolves and the world to believe they were dead so they could work in secret.”

“So how were they planning on destroying the wolves?” Potter asked me, lighting another cigarette.

“They figured out that every time a human remembered their past lives, another crack would appear. It didn’t matter how small or invisible these cracks were, as long as they kept forming. In the end, they hoped that there would be so many cracks, that this
pushed
world would break apart letting the other world – the real world – show through. But it was taking too long, and when the Wasp Water Treaty broke down after it was discovered that McCain was secretly killing humans at Ravenwood School, Sam’s parent knew that they had to somehow make more cracks – bigger cracks. Like the wolves, they too had heard the rumours and legends about a winged Dead Angel named Kiera Hudson coming to destroy the wolves. When they read the newspaper reports and heard the eyewitness accounts from the children at Ravenwood School who claimed they had been rescued by several winged creatures, Sam’s parents suspected Kiera Hudson and her Dead Angels had arrived in this world. From a distance they had watched their son, who was last seen leaving Ravenwood School unconscious and in the arms of one these winged creatures – me.

“Believing that Kiera and the rest of us held the key to the fate of the wolves, Sam’s parents suspected that just like everyone else in this
pushed
world, we would have previously shared lives with some of the people now living here. Everyone seemed to have a double – a reflection – which was connected to those who had come from the world before it got
pushed
. Sam’s parents, therefore, came to suspect that if they could  mix things up a bit, get those living in this
pushed
world to remember us, then this new world would break apart like the cheap illusion it really is.”