Vampire Hunt (Kiera Hudson Series #3) (14 page)

“I love you, Kiera,” he whispered.

“I…” I started, but couldn’t finish.

“What’s wrong?” he hushed against my cheek.

“It’s nothing,” I said, and I hated myself for lying to him. I hated myself because I couldn’t tell him that I loved him back. I couldn’t say those words to him, because deep down inside of me, lost in those deep, overpowering feelings I had for Luke, I also felt something for Potter, too.

Luke must have sensed something, because he stopped kissing me and eased himself away.

“Is everything okay, Kiera?” he asked me, and I couldn’t help but notice the hurt in his eyes.

Maybe I should just tell him?
I thought to myself. But what could I say? That every time he held me, I couldn’t help myself thinking about that jerk, Potter? I couldn’t explain how I felt to him, when I didn’t really understand myself. I knew I had feelings for Luke, strong feelings, but if I were in love with him, would I be thinking about Potter? Maybe I did really love Luke, but perhaps there was a part of me holding back – not able to give myself totally to him. Perhaps it had something to do with trust? It seemed that everyone I‘d gotten close to recently had let me down, tricked or lied to me in some way. Perhaps that was the reason?

So leaning forward, I gently kissed Luke and said, “It’s not you, Luke, it’s me. I just need some time to get my head together. So much has happened in my life over the last six months or so. My whole life feels like it’s been tipped upside-down.”

Holding my face in his hands, he kissed me on the tip of my nose and said, “I understand, Kiera. But I just want you to know that I’m here for you.”

“I know you are,” I whispered, resting my head against his chest.

Then, from above, someone shouted, “Who wants some food?”

Looking up, Luke and I parted, and I sunk beneath the water, so just my head was peeking out.

“Whoa, sorry guys,” Isidor said, looking down at us, his face flushed red with embarrassment. “I didn’t know…erm…sorry.” Then turning away on the path that Luke had led me down, he shouted over his shoulder, “I’ve cooked some wild rabbit if you want some,” Then he was gone, disappearing through the gap in the rocks.

I looked at Luke and he laughed. “Want something to eat?” he smiled.

“Are you kidding?” I grinned at him. “I’m starving.”

We swam back to the rocks, and shivering, we pulled on our clothes. Throwing on my bra, I tried to fasten the clasp at the back.

“Here, let me help you,” Luke said coming forward.

Stepping back, I said, “No, I’ve got it.”

“If you’re sure,” he said, pulling on his shirt and walking away back up the rock path.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to help me, I just didn’t want him to see the bony lumps I’d just discovered sticking out between my shoulder blades, and I wondered how he hadn’t noticed them as he’d washed me in the water. I twisted my arm up my back and brushed my fingers over the lumps. They felt hard and I’m sure that as I pressed them with my fingertips they moved. Snatching my hand away, I felt sickened by what I had discovered.

Chapter Twenty

Trying to shove the thoughts of those lumps on my back from my mind, I followed Luke into the overhang. However much I tried not to think about them, I knew what they were and the thought of them made me sick. How long would it be until I had those bony black fingers wriggling about? Would they hurt? God, I hoped that they didn’t hurt. I wished Kayla were with me so that I could show them to her, confide in her. But I did have Isidor, and I decided that I would find a moment together so that I could show him – see if it really was the start of me changing. I know that Potter didn’t like or trust him, but I was glad that Isidor was with us.

I could see that Potter had lit a small fire, which he was prodding with a stick. Someone had made a makeshift spit and attached to it were three skinned rabbits. Isidor was slowly turning them over the fire. It was nice to see Potter and Isidor working together and not arguing for a change.

Murphy was still sitting by himself away from the others and his face looked haggard and old, way older than the forty-five years that he was. Luke walked passed him without saying anything, and went and sat by the fire. I wondered what was so bad about these Lycanthrope – werewolves – that had upset Luke and Potter so much. It was as if Murphy had betrayed them in some way.

I sat next to Luke by the fire and began to untangle my wet hair with my fingers. Potter took one of the rabbits from over the fire, and using his fingernails like a set of knives he separated the meat from the bones. Passing it amongst us, Luke and Isidor wasted no time in wolfing it down. Juice from the meat ran from their chins and between their fingers as they devoured the meat. I looked at the pink-coloured meat that Potter had handed to me and despite my hunger, I felt sick. It wasn’t the food, it smelt delicious, it was the thought again of those lumps sticking out of my back that put me off.

“Get it down your neck,” Potter said, staring at me through the flames of the fire. “You’ll need all the energy you can get if I can guess what the sarge has got planned for us next.’”

Hearing this, Murphy spoke up from the other side of the overhang. “I don’t have a plan.”

“Well, that’s reassuring to know,” Potter whispered, so as not to let Murphy hear him.

“What did you say?” Murphy growled.

“Nothing,” Potter said, shredding the second rabbit with his fingernails.

I picked at the first handful of food I’d been given, and watched Murphy come and sit with us by the fire.

“I’m sorry for what I’ve done,” he said, his head cast down, as if unable to look at any of us.

Potter waved some of the rabbit in front of him, and said, “Have some of this.”

I looked at Murphy, his back was arched over and he looked down at the food in his hands. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said, his voice sounding choked.

It scared me to hear him like this. Murphy always seemed so strong, he was our leader and I trusted in him. And I guess that I had in some way come to think of him as being a bit like a father to me. I didn’t want to see him hurting.

“It’s okay,” I told him.

“No, it’s not,” Potter said.

“But why?” I asked. “I’m sure that the sarge thought he was doing his best.”

“He couldn’t have done any worse,” Potter said. Then turning to look at Murphy, Potter said, “Why them? Why the Lycanthrope, Sarge?”

“They owed me a favour,” Murphy said. “I was angry – hurt at how Phillips and the others murdered my precious girls, Nessa and Meren. They were my daughters and I have nothing now. The last of my family has gone.”

I wanted to tell him that wasn’t true, that we were his family, but now wasn’t the right time and I didn’t know if there ever would be one. None of us would ever be able to replace his daughters.

“But Sarge,” Luke said, as Isidor sat quietly and ate. “The Lycanthrope…”

“What’s so bad about them?” I asked.

“What’s right about them is more to the point,” Potter cut in. “They’re not like you see in the movies. They don’t stroll about bare-chested with cheesy smiles and tattoos. And they definitely don’t dodge silver bullets and howl at the moon. These werewolves are not here to play games!”

“What are they like, then?” I asked, forcing down a small piece of meat.

Sitting forward and fixing his eyes on mine through the fire, Potter started to explain the true history of the Lycanthrope.

“They’ve been around for centuries. They are what we would nowadays call serial killers – because that’s what they were. Although they were human back then, they had the power of putting you into a trance with just one stare. That’s how they overcome their victims before ripping them to pieces – leaving them butchered and half-eaten. But worse than that, they stole children.”

“Children?” I asked. “Why?”

“They believed that the purity of a child’s heart would give them unnaturally long lives, and some even believed immortality. But the spell wouldn’t work unless the children were offered to them by the mothers to take. But what mother would just hand over her child?” Potter said, still not taking his eyes from mine. “So they would creep into their homes in the dead of night, and waking the mothers and placing them into a trance with their stare, they would trick them into handing over their children. It wasn’t until one night that one of these killers was stumbled upon by chance as he fled the home of a distraught mother. She had come out of her trance too early and raised the alarm. The Lycanthrope were hunted down by the men folk of the village and murdered.

“But myth and legend has it that they were turned away in death by God because of the horrendous crimes they had committed and he cursed them with a divine punishment. He sent them back to Earth, each of them with a raging thirst as he was so angry with them, he wouldn’t give them not even one drop of water. He told them that to quench their thirsts they had to drink the rainwater from the first animal footprint that they came across. It was a wolf’s footprint swollen with rainwater that they drank from. Like they had tricked all those mothers before, they too had been deceived. For what they hadn’t been told, was that whatever animal’s footprint they drank from, they would spend the rest of eternity walking the Earth half-human and half that animal – and in their case –
wolves
,” Potter said.

The fire crackled before me, sending up tiny orange sparks into the overhang. Potter continued to stare at me and I didn’t know what to say. His story was unbelievable and terrifying and just six months ago I would have laughed in his face. I was so used to just believing in fact, what I could touch, smell, and
see.
But I was now living in a world –
living a life
– where monsters roamed free right under the very noses of humans. I was one of those monsters, living a life in old outhouses, derelict buildings and caves, eating wild animals cooked over a fire, and bathing in underground lakes; it was then I realised how quickly I had slipped away from a normal existence. Living on my wits and nerves and like any other animal, I was now being hunted and this had become commonplace for me – this was now my life and I doubted I could ever go back to the one I’d had before.

“I know you say you were desperate, Sarge, but serial killers, child murderers?” Luke said, and the sound of his voice snapped me from my thoughts. I looked at him, his face looked so handsome in the glow from the fire, lighting it in shades of orange, amber and gold. It was hard to believe that he was a monster. It was hard to believe that any of us were.

“They don’t live like that anymore, they haven’t murdered for hundreds of years,” Murphy said.

“Men and women that have done that kinda shit don’t change, Sarge,” Potter said. “We should know that better than anyone. We hunted down and locked up enough of the Lycanthrope to know that they are still killers.”

“Not this pack of wolves,” Murphy tried to convince him.

“But they still feed off human blood,” Luke reminded him.

“Not these wolves,” Murphy insisted.

“So how do they survive?” Luke asked.

“They dig-up freshly buried corpses and eat them,” Murphy explained.

“Aww, bless em! I suppose that makes all the difference! And there I was thinking that perhaps they had redeemed themselves,” Potter scoffed, chucking the remains of the rabbit into the fire.

I could tell that Murphy was growing tired of Potter’s sarcasm and he shouted over the fire, “Do you really think I would enlist the help of child killers? Do you? Just after finding my own daughters murdered!”

Potter looked away from Murphy and stared into the fire.

“This pack of wolves are trying to live good lives,” Murphy continued, “They are trying to lift the curse that has been placed upon them.”

“So what’s the deal?” Isidor said as he loaded two bolts into his crossbow.

“Sorry?” Murphy almost seemed to growl at him.

“You said that you struck up a deal with one of these wolves, so what was it?” he asked, throwing his loaded crossbow over his shoulder. I guessed he believed he might need it.

Murphy paused for a moment and looked at Luke and Potter. It was if he had some bad news to tell them. “I struck a deal with Jack Seth…”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Potter yelled and stood up.

“Jack Seth!” Luke breathed in wonder…or was it in fear? I couldn’t tell.

“Didn’t we lock that arsehole up for twelve counts of murder?” Potter shouted over the fire at Murphy.

“That’s right, we did!” Luke said, now standing.

“The evidence was very circumstantial, if I remember rightly,” Murphy said, now he too was standing.

“Circumstantial!” Potter almost seemed to screech. “He was still eating one of the victims when we came crashing through the fucking door!”

“So how come he’s out roaming the English countryside?” Luke asked Murphy. “Didn’t the elders pass down twelve life sentences? One life sentence for each victim?”

“He says he was set up,” Murphy said.

“Set up! God give me strength!” Potter roared. Then, pointing at me, he added, “There was so much evidence that even Dana Scully over there wouldn’t have wasted her time investigating the case, it was so cut-and-dried!”

Then coming around the fire, Luke came close to Murphy and looking him straight in the eyes, he said, “Don’t tell me the deal was his early release in return for him tracking down Kayla?”

Murphy didn’t say anything, he just looked away and that was answer enough.

“Oh, Christ! This just keeps getting better and better!” Potter shouted, kicking the ground with his boot. “The guy is a freaking maniac!”

“He says he was innocent – that he was set up!” Murphy insisted.

“Yeah, and Santa Claus is gonna get me a date with Jennifer Lopez for Christmas!” Potter shouted as he lit himself a cigarette.

Standing, I looked at Murphy and then at the others and said, “You know, maybe we should listen to the sarge, he hasn’t led us wrong before.”

Blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth, Potter looked at me and said, “Do us all a favour, sweet-cheeks, and keep your nose outta this – you have no idea who we’re dealing with.”