Dead Night (7 page)

“Sorry, Grandma,” I gasped, sounding as shocked as her. “I’ve got the wrong flat.”

“Help!” the old woman screamed at the top of her voice, and for such an old woman, her voice was strong and ear-piercing.

“Take it easy,” I hushed, just wishing she would stop.

“Pervert!” she screeched, pulling her bed clothes up around her chin.

“I’m not a pervert,” I tried to assure her, stuffing her knickers back into the drawer. “I’ve got the wrong flat. I thought someone else lived here.”

“You’re a pervert!” the old woman screamed again. “Somebody help me – there’s a man in here sniffing my knickers!”

“Now hang on, Grandma,” I said, unable to believe what I was hearing. “I wasn’t...”

“I’ve read about young men like you in the newspapers,” the old woman croaked. “You’re one of those kinky types.”

“
Kinky?”
I blustered and for the first time in my life, I was lost for words. “I’m not kinky!”

“Get out!” she screamed again.

I could hear movement from the adjoining flats. So, not wanting to be caught in the old woman’s flat clutching a pair of her giant knickers, I looked at her one last time, told her I was sorry, and fled. As I raced down the stairs, a door opened above me.

“What’s going on?” a man shouted, sounding half asleep.

“Pervert!” I heard the old woman screech again.

Yanking open the front door, I slipped back out into the night. Not knowing what direction to head in, I turned right, and pulling the scarecrow’s coat tight about me, I disappeared into the shadows. I reached the end of the street, looked back one last time, and on seeing a man in pyjamas stagger from the flat that I had broken into, I turned the corner.

There was a covered doorway, and pressing myself flat against the wall, I waited for the man to go back inside before I spread my wings and flew away. Being discovered as a knicker-sniffing pervert was one thing, but being noticed for swooping up into the night with a set of clawed wings was something else altogether. It was as I waited in the dark for the man in the pyjamas to go away, that I noticed Kiera’s beat-up old Mini parked at the kerb, just outside the doorway that I was hiding in. Turning around to see that the door to this flat was ajar, I realised the mistake I had made, so I pushed it open and stepped inside.

Sophie

The burning sensation in my leg began to ease, so I pulled myself up onto the backseat of the police car and peered out of the window. I’d lived in Ripper Falls all of my life and I knew that we weren’t heading towards the police station.

For some reason, the cops were taking me out of town and into the country. With every mile the roads became narrower and more remote. Trees grew tall and leafless on either side of the road, and between the black and twisted trunks, I could see miles and miles of desolate farmland.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked them.

The cop in the passenger seat didn’t say anything; he just kept staring straight ahead.

Glancing at me in the rear view mirror with his yellow eyes, the cop who had zapped me grinned and said, “Just taking a little detour.”

“Where?” I pushed, trying not to look into his eyes, but wanting to know where they were taking me.

“To a little place I know,” the happy-zapper cop grinned at me in the mirror. “It’s nice and secluded...”

“Look, I’m either under arrest or I’m not,”

I said, beginning to sense that I was in serious trouble with these guys. “Either take me to the police station or release me.”

“We’ll take you to the police station,” the cop said, “but first I thought we could have ourselves a little party.”

“Party?” I breathed, but I knew what he meant and I rattled the door handle. It was locked and couldn’t be opened. “Just release me.”

Ignoring me, the happy-zapper glanced at the other cop and said, “I don’t know about you’

but human women are so freaking horny, don’t you think?”

The cop in the passenger seat just grunted and stared straight ahead.

Grinning to himself, the other looked back at the road and smiled, “I’ve seen some beautiful female humans, but you are
lush!
” and I saw him wink back at me in the rear view mirror. “I bet you’re gonna be so sweet.”

I rattled the door lock again, my heart pounding in my chest. The driver saw the fear in my eyes and this seemed to excite him somehow as he twitched in his seat and straightened his trousers at the crotch. Then the other officer suddenly spoke and said, “Lady, if I were you I’d put on your seatbelt.”

“Say what?” I spat.

“So you don’t get hurt in the crash,” he said calmly, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

The happy-zapper cop must have read my mind as he glanced at his colleague and said, “What crash?”

“This crash, you fucking animal,” the cop whispered. Then with lightning speed, he shot his arm out, gripped the back of the happy-zapper’s head, and drove his face into the steering wheel.

A jet of black blood sprayed from the cop’s face and showered the windscreen. The cop made a screeching sound and took both hands from the wheel as he tried to fight off his colleague. The back of the police car zigzagged violently across the road, and I yanked the seatbelt across my chest.

Over and over again, the cop, who had sat silently for most of the journey, drove the happy-zapper’s face into the steering wheel and dashboard. The attack was relentless. Blood with flecks of flesh sprayed around the interior of the car, spattering my face and the backseat. The attack had been so sudden and unexpected that I sat rigid in my seat, unable to breathe.

The car lurched left and right across the narrow country road as the cop fought for his life.

He reached for his attacker, but the other was too strong. Then, the happy-zapper cop began to change. What was left of his face began to contort and twist as if he were growing a giant snout. There was a tearing sound as the back of his shirt began to rip apart, chunks of black fur bursting through. As he changed, it was like he grew stronger too.

The other cop sensed this and roared, “Oh, no you don’t, Skin-walker!” If the attack hadn’t been frenzied before, the cop then went berserk as he took the Skin-walker’s head in both of his hands. There was a sickening crunch as the cop crushed the Skin-walker’s skull. Its eyeballs burst from its face and splattered the windscreen, like red and white jelly.

The Skin-walker flopped to one side and fell forward in his seat, the remains of his head running all over the steering wheel. The police car veered to the right and the cop reached for the wheel, but it was wet and slippery with the Skin-walker’s brains and he lost his grip of it. The car spun out of control, and I was thrown sideways across the backseat. And as the car flipped onto its side and rolled into a ditch, I screamed until my throat felt sore.

I lay in the foot well, my body shaking in shock and fear. What the fuck had just happened?

Why had that cop just slaughtered his colleague?

What was going on here? Was he going to do the same to me? A splinter of pain cut through the right side of my ribcage and I cried out in pain as I tried to lever myself up. The car was on its side and at first I couldn’t figure out which way I should head to get out.

There was a grunting sound from the front of the car. The passenger door wailed as the cop forced it open. I crawled forward, wedged between the seats, my hair hanging down over my eyes. Then, one of the back doors was yanked open, and I could feel a rough pair of hands grabbing for me.

“Get off me!” I screamed, kicking out with my feet.

“Get out of the car,” the cop grunted, seizing one of my arms and pulling me up and over the backseat. He was extremely strong and within moments, I was laying on my back, next to the ditch and the upturned police car.

“Get away from me!” I shrieked at him as I tried to scuttle away. He went back to the rear of the car and pulled out my holdall. The cop unzipped it and pulled out the tube of blood.

He came towards me, holding the glass tube in his hand. He was tall and broad-shouldered. Mud from the ditch and blood from the Skin-walker covered his crisp blue uniform.

He looked older than the other cop had, but it was hard to say exactly how old, as his black police cap was wedged firmly on his head, the peak pulled down so low it almost covered his face.

“Who was the girl in the morgue?” he suddenly asked me. He sounded slightly out of breath as if he were in a rush.

“What girl?” I stammered as I lay on my back looking up at him.

“I’m in no mood to play games, lady,” he barked, waving the tube of blood in my face.

Why was everyone so interested in the
morgue girl?
I wondered. Something told me that I shouldn’t tell him what I knew. I had told Marty and he was dead now. Marty told me that I should keep that blood safe – he said it had come from a vampire bat – but could that be true? With so many conflicting thoughts racing through my mind, I tried to scramble away from him again.

“Tell me her name!” he roared, taking hold of my shoulder with his free hand.

With our noses almost touching, I looked beneath the peak of his police cap and could see that, unlike the other cop, his eyes were grey with flecks of radiant blue. His lips were bloodless and pressed tightly together, and after witnessing what he had just done to his colleague, I whispered, “She said her name was Kiera Hudson.”

As soon as her name had passed over my lips, the cop froze, those blue flecks flashed like lightning in his eyes.

“Who else was with her?” he demanded.

“No -”

“Who else?” he roared.

“A teenage boy and girl,” I cried out, his grip now hurting my shoulder.

“What were their names?”

“I don’t know!” I shouted, just wanting him to let go of me.

“What did they look like?” he hissed.

“The girl was real pretty with bright red hair,” I murmured. “The boy was tall, had black tattoos up his neck and a little beard...”

Before I’d finished telling him what they had looked like he said, “Was there another with them?”

I shook my head.

“Are you sure?” he snapped. “He’s in his early twenties, dark hair and black eyes. Smokes like it’s going out of fashion and is a real wise guy?”

“There was no one else!” I shouted, trying to convince him.

“Are you sure?” He pushed me. “He calls himself Potter.”

Then, as if being slapped across the face, my mouth fell open. For a moment everything seemed to slow down. The sound of the wind rattling through the trees and the sound of crows squawking in the unploughed fields was deafening.

Noticing the look of shock on my face, the cop shook me and said, “What is it? What do you know?”

“Nothing,” I whispered, but that was a lie.

I knew that the letters in the bag by the cop’s feet had been sent to me by a man who called himself Potter. The cop said that this Potter had smoked. I had hated Marty smoking – because when he did, he’d reminded me of someone else – someone I had been scared of. But there was something else; my feelings were changing, too. It was like there
were
feelings inside of me for whoever this Potter was or had been. But these feelings weren’t just of fear, they were of love, too. But how could I have feelings of love for someone I didn’t know – someone I had never met before?

“What do you know of Potter?” the cop said, shaking me, and it felt as if I were waking from a dream.

“I don’t know him,” I whispered. Was that a lie? I didn’t know anymore.

“Why do you look so shocked?” he came back at me, his eyes searching mine.

“You just killed a man in front of me,” I gasped.

“He wasn’t a man,” the cop hissed, loosening his grip on me. “He was a Skin-walker – an animal, and he was going to hurt you.”

“Why did you save me?” I asked him, rubbing my arm as I lay in the street. “I thought you were partners. Aren’t you just like him?”

“I’m nothing like him,” the cop snapped, slipping the tube of blood into his shirt pocket out of sight.

“What are you then?” I asked him.

He stared down at me and said nothing.

Then, when the silence became more deafening than any noise that I’d ever heard, the cop took his gun from his belt and pointed it at me.

Inching myself away, I held my hands up and said, “Please don’t kill me. I won’t tell anyone about that woman called Kiera Hudson. I only told my friend, Marty, but he’s dead now.”

Then, coming closer, the cop shoved the gun into my hand and said, “Shoot me.”

“What?” I gasped, throwing the gun into the ditch. “I’m not shooting a cop. I’m in enough shit as it is.”

The cop went to the ditch, picked up the gun and went to the car. He aimed the gun at what was left of the Skin-walker’s head and fired.

There was a booming sound that echoed back off the fields which surrounded us on either side of the deserted road. Then, he came back towards me. Pulling me to my feet, he stuck the gun in my right hand and curled my fingers around it. “Shoot me,” he said, his eyes fixed on mine.

“Are you out of your freaking mind?” I gasped.

“Shoot me,” he insisted, as he wrapped my forefinger around the trigger.

“Why?” I begged, tears starting to well in my eyes. I wasn’t crying out of sadness, but through fear.

“You tried to escape from the police car,”

he said matter-of-factly. “In the struggle, you managed to take my gun from my belt. You shot the driver in the head - by accident or deliberately, I don’t know. The car crashed and you climbed free. I came after you and you shot me with my own gun.”

“Please don’t make me do this,” I pleaded, tears now rolling freely down my cheeks.

“You’ve got to do this,” he pushed. “I can’t afford to be unmasked.”

“Please...” I started.

The gun firing was like the sky being torn apart by thunder. I flinched backwards and the gun flew from my hand and clattered onto the road. The cop crumpled before me.

“Christ that hurt,” he groaned as he dropped onto his back.

With my hands covering my face, I peered through my fingers at him. The cop pressed his hands against his thigh and I watched as blood gushed between his fingers.