Dead Push (Kiera Hudson Series Two#7) (2 page)

I had heard that name before. Lilly Blu was the wolf Kiera said she had to find.
But more important than that, Lilly Blu had once gone by a different name. That name had been Penelope Flack. And in the world before it had been
pushed
, she had been Murphy’s lover and the mother of his two daughters.

Jack

I ignored Potter and looked at Lilly Blu.

“Good to see you again after so many years,” I said, not surprised by her appearance, but grateful for it at least. Just like the fucking humans and Vampyrus, wolves were becoming harder and harder to trust – but I hoped I could trust her. The world was no longer the same – not because it had been
pushed
– I’d had plenty of time to come to terms with that fact – the wolves in this new world were no longer the same. There seemed to be very little loyalty between them. Had there ever been much? Not really – but there had been some, and that had been enough. So I couldn’t give a shit about the Skin-walker that had just had its head bitten off. They weren’t really wolves anyhow. I had never been truly happy with that part of the deal when the Wasp Water Treaty had been made. There were very few wolves left that could change into human form at will – only those that had been pushed from the other world could do that. But with the help of Bishop they had found a way – by matching with human children. It wasn’t the matching that bothered me – I had killed plenty of those little fuckers throughout my time, but a wolf is a wolf, not some freaky forced mismatch, so wolves could masquerade as humans. And the process didn’t always work. The Berserkers were the result of that. Bishop had never understood my unease, taking pleasure in reminding me that I too had once been human until the Elders had cursed us. He could see no difference between those like me who had once been fully human and had been cursed, and those humans who had been matched with a wolf. He blurred the lines for me until I could no longer see the difference – but there was a difference – deep inside of me, I was sure of that.

Over time, alliances change and I wasn’t so sure of my allegiance to Luke Bishop anymore. Two hundred years ago we both had a common goal – a purpose that drove us – and that was waiting for the return of Kiera Hudson to this new world we had been
pushed
into. We wanted to fuck with her like she had fucked with us in The Hollows. Me and Bishop had both wanted to make her and her friends suffer and watch each of them in turn die. But I felt differently now. Not about her friends – they could die for all I cared – but not Kiera. When I had made that pact with Bishop all those years ago, I had just wanted revenge. I had been happy to make a pact with Bishop with the intention we would torment, torture, and then murder Kiera Hudson. But that plan didn’t rest easy with me anymore, and that’s why I couldn’t let Bishop use Potter to ensnare Kiera. Bishop was still ignorant to the fact that me and Kiera were brother and sister and I needed to keep it like that – for now, at least.

When Kiera had set me free from that room as Potter and Murphy approached, I knew she couldn’t let me die at the hands of those who sought me out, and I knew I could no longer lead her to Bishop. So my
plans had to drastically change, but I feared I had already set too much in place – mine and Bishop’s plans were too far advanced. The photographer had already changed much, and I didn’t know if there was any way of unravelling that. So I had sent out the only wolf I still trusted with a message that I needed to speak with Lilly Blu. We had met only once before – many years ago – but she was known to have an understanding of the layers – the different
whens
and
wheres.
Where her knowledge came from, I didn’t know or care. That was her business – but she had an understanding, and that was enough for me. If anyone could seal the cracks that the photographer had created, then it was Lilly Blu. The one thing I knew for certain was she had very little love for Bishop and the Treaty. I didn’t know whether the photographer was a friend or foe, let alone the photographer’s identity. All I knew was that this photographer had an understanding of the
wheres
and
whens
just like Lilly Blu did.

But would Lilly help me? I couldn’t be sure. But she was here now, wasn’t she? The wolf I had sent with the message had reached her. I broke Lilly Blu’s piercing
yellow stare and looked at the other wolf. Just like Lilly had, the wolf stood up on its back legs and peeled back its skin of fur like a coat. But unlike Lilly, the other let their skin fall away so it formed a pile of bloody flesh and fur on the cell floor. The wolf stood naked before us in his human form.

“Thank you, little brother,” I said, looking across the cell at Nik.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said, coming behind me and breaking my chains with his powerful claws. They clattered to the floor and I rubbed my wrists with my long skeletal fingers.

“I fucking knew it,” Potter said, looking at Nik. “I knew I’d seen you before. In that hangar on the outskirts of Wasp Water…”

“Where you murdered Eloisa,” Nik barked back at him.

Potter shrugged his broad shoulders as if her death had meant nothing to him and said, “She had been the murderer.”

“She had been like a mother to me,” Nik said, closing the gap between him and Potter.

“Well I wouldn’t get
yourself too upset about it,” Potter said, fixing Nik with his black eyes. “People have a habit of showing up here.”

“We’ve searched for years,” Nik said with a shake of his head. “Eloisa hasn’t come through.”

With another shrug of his shoulders, Potter said, “Well I guess that means a whole bunch of kids can sleep safely in their beds tonight. Now take off these chains, I need a smoke.”

“I’ve got a good mind to rip your heart out, just like you did Eloisa’s,” Nik howled, nose to nose with Potter.

“Oh, please don’t,” Potter smirked. “It’s only just started beating again and…”

“Kill him if you want, little brother,” I said, anger beginning to swell inside of me. I hadn’t wanted Potter’s death to be public, so as not to
draw Kiera out into the open. What happened to him deep within these cells, I really couldn’t give a fuck.

Snarling, Nik raised his claws, ready to take Potter’s head off.

“Stop!” Lilly Blu suddenly spoke up. “If you want to stop the photographer, then you’re going to need his help.”

I looked sideways at Lilly.

“We only need a drop of his blood for what I have planned,” Nik told her, not taking his eyes from Potter.

“Your plans aren’t my plans, and I’m telling you we need him,” Lilly said, her voice soft but firm.

With his claw still raised just an inch from Potter’s throat, Nik continued to stare brightly at him.

“I’d listen to the lady if I were you,” Potter smiled again.

There was a moment’s silence in which I half expected Nik to still rip Potter’s throat out. Then, swallowing hard like I had a throat full of poison, I stepped forward and placed my hand on Nik’s bare shoulder and said, “Leave him be, little brother. Another time will come when you can have revenge for what he did to Eloisa.”

Slowly, I felt the muscles in Nik’s shoulders loosen as he lowered his claw. He turned his head towards me, his blue eyes blazing,
then sunk his fist into Potter’s chest.

Potter

I felt Nik’s claws sink into my chest an inch, then stop. The pain was a killer and I cried out, throwing my head back and clenching my fists. I wrestled with the chains that bound my wrists, but they were too thick to be broken. I clenched my teeth as Nik opened and closed his fingers beneath my flesh. My heart thumped in my chest and this was the first time I’d felt true pain since coming into this
pushed
world. The kick-in that the Skin-walkers had given me in the snow outside the barn had hurt, but the pain had been dull compared to this. Nik’s fingers felt like four red-hot pokers being driven into me.

“Fuck you,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

Then, just when I thought I could take no more and the world began to swim before my eyes, Nik withdrew his fingers. They slid from out of my chest, glistening black with my blood.

“You evil sonofabitch,” I groaned in pain.

Ignoring me, Nik turned to look at his brother, Jack. Through eyes as narrow as slits, I watched warm streams of my blood trickle down Nik’s fingers, over his wrist, and down the length of his forearm.

I dropped my head and looked at the four black puncture wounds in the centre of my chest. The blood had already started to clot there in crimson scabs.

“Are you fucking deaf?” I spat, looking back up at Nik. “The Marilyn Monroe wannabe said you weren’t to kill me.”

“You’re not dead, are you?” Nik said, without turning back to look at me.

“No, but you fucking will be the moment these chains are taken off,” I grimaced, the pain in my chest easing with every passing moment. “I’ll be sticking four of my fingers into you, and I can promise you now, I won’t be aiming for your fucking chest!”

“Shut up!” the three of them suddenly barked.

“Jesuz!” Jack snarled at me. “Can’t you quit your bitching for just one minute?”

“Who’s bitching?” I shot back.

“Just be quiet,” Jack snapped, taking a step towards me. “It’s quite simple. Just keep your mouth shut. It’s not like I’m asking you to fart gold or anything. Now be quiet – or do you want to go to the guillotine?”

“Anything’s got to be better than…” I started.

Before I’d the chance to finish, Jack had unknotted the red bandanna from around his scrawny throat, rolled it into a ball, and stuffed it into my mouth. My eyes bulged in their sockets as I drew air up into my nostrils. Jack’s bandanna was salty tasting where for years it had soaked up his sweat. I gagged as hot bile shot up into my throat.

“Quiet at last,” Jack said with a sneer, turning his long narrow back on me to face his brother again.

I glanced at Lilly, but she looked away too and at Nik. Slowly, the younger wolf pushed his blood-covered fingers into his mouth and sucked my blood from them. He shot forward, and at first I thought he had rammed his fingers too far down the back of his throat and was now vomiting. I knew the feeling. But Nik wasn’t sick. He pulled his fingers from his mouth and buckled forward at the waist. He cried out and dropped to his knees. Trying to work the bandanna free from my mouth with my tongue, I watched as Nik shook violently as if throwing some kind of fit. I couldn’t see his face, as it was cast down towards the floor, but all the same I knew he was somehow changing. I watched in silence as his fair hair grew short and darker in colour. His thin frame began to fill out, his shoulders growing broader, his neck thicker, thighs firmer. He cried out again, as if in pain, lifting his head so as to look at me. It was then I was thankful Jack had stuffed his bandanna into my mouth, for I fear I might have screamed. To look at Nik was like looking into a mirror. He was me – he had become my identical twin. He tried to stand up and staggered backwards into the cell wall. Jack and Lilly reached for him. Taking him by the arms, they helped him to stand. Nik stood just feet away from me. I looked back at myself and again I wanted to scream. Not with fear, but with madness. And it was at that moment I understood how Isidor had felt when looking at those copies of himself floating in those tanks beneath the hangar just outside of Wasp Water. Isidor had felt anger at how someone had tried to copy him, and I just hadn’t understood his feelings. But as Nik came towards me, an identical replica of myself, I felt the urge to freak out, to run away as far as I could. I knew some Lycanthrope had the ability to take on the form of another by consuming their blood. Jack had copied McCain at Ravenwood, but I had never seen it happen, and never thought I would be copied. I didn’t like seeing another me. And besides, surely my nose couldn’t look that bent and twisted out of shape. Could it?

“
Don’t look so scared, Potter,” Nik said, looking straight at me.

Jesus, he even sounds like me
, I thought.

He reached for my face, and I flinched backwards, unable to stop looking at myself.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, slowly pulling the cloth from my mouth.

I gasped in a lungful of air. “What the fuck is going on here?” I muttered.

“You want to escape, don’t you?” he said, looking at me.

It was like having a conversation with
myself.

Before I had the chance to answer, Jack gripped Nik’s shoulder and spun him around.

“No!” he barked. “I won’t let you do it.”

“It’s the only way if you are to get out of Wasp Water and save Kiera,” Nik said. “She’s my sister, too, remember. I saved her once before
from the zoo but I had no idea back then – in that world – who she really was. I’d like to help her again.”

“There has to be another way,” Jack said, realising what it was that his younger brother was suggesting.

Now I’m as smart as the next guy, and I don’t know if it had something to do with the shock of seeing Nik change into me, but I didn’t have a fucking clue as to what was going on.