Dead Lost (Kiera Hudson Series Two (Book 8)) Read online

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  Deep inside, I felt as if my heart was broken, too. Not with hurt, but with rage. It was like a cold claw had reached inside my chest and squeezed the blood from it.

  “You don’t have to be like the other wolves, Kiera,” I heard Potter say. “You might not be the Kiera Hudson I fell in love with, but you are the same. I know it.”

  With blind rage now flowing inside of me, I reached down and fumbled for the gun.

  Kiera lowered her claws and looked at Potter as my fingers brushed over cold metal. I snapped up the gun.

  The wolf standing tall before Potter opened its jaws to say…

  Clack! Clack! Clack!

  The gun jerked in my fist, Kiera lurched forward into Potter’s arms. For just the briefest of moments, I thought I saw Luke Bishop spilling dead into Potter’s arms.

  The wolf howled in pain as its fur fell away in clumps and the woman – Kiera – underneath reappeared. I lowered the gun and glanced down at it. Smoke lingered around the end of the barrel.

  I looked up through the trees to find Potter cradling Kiera in his arms. My skin turned cold with gooseflesh, and again it was like I’d had a sudden flash of déjà vu. A thin black line of blood trickled from a hole in her pale forehead and down onto her cheek. I closed my eyes to shut the image out. Now that she was dead and lying lifeless in Potter’s arms – the picture seemed more than just déjà vu, like a premonition of some kind.

  “Kiera,” Potter shouted, jarring me from my stupor.

  I opened my eyes. With the smoking gun in my hand, and the camera swinging from around my neck, I stepped out from the hiding place amongst the trees.

  Potter glanced up at me, my face still hidden by the hood.

  “You shot her!” he screamed. “You killed her!”

  Slowly, I pulled back the hood.

  “No!” he gasped, at seeing my face. “Why did you have to kill Kiera?”

  “To save your life, Potter,” I said.

  Chapter Two

  Isidor

  I watched Potter leave the waiting room and race up the platform to join Kiera, Kayla, and Sam. The train pulled into the station, steam belching from its giant black funnel. Smoke poured over the edges of the platform like fog. I could hear the approaching berserkers as they were now only moments away from reaching me and the station. The steam from the train swirled around the open waiting room doorway. Out of it stepped a towering figure.

  “Jack Seth?” I breathed, raising my crossbow.

  “Give me the picture,” Jack growled like the wolf he was.

  “No,” I said, holding it tightly in my free hand. “It’s mine.” What did he want with the picture of Melody Rose and me?

  Jack leapt across the waiting room, snatching the photograph from my hand. With my mouth wide open, I watched him tear it into strips with his ferocious-looking claws.

  “That was a picture of Mel…” I mumbled, unable to believe that the picture I had treasured for so long was now lying in tatters at my feet.

  “I know what it was, numb-nuts,” Jack snarled inches from my face. “And it isn’t what you think it is. It’s a trap!”

  A trap? I wondered. What was he talking about and where had he so suddenly come from? “What has this got to do with you?” I snapped, my crossbow aimed at his bony chest. “You’re my enemy.”

  With one blinding swipe of his claw, Jack knocked the crossbow from my hand. Before I’d had the chance to snatch it up again, Jack was reaching inside my open coat with his claw. He dragged one crooked fingernail down my chest. It felt as if my flesh was being opened by a knife that was glowing white with heat. I wailed in pain as a gash opened.

  “Don’t be such a fucking cry-baby the whole time,” Jack snarled, his top lip rolling back to show his jagged teeth. With his eyes locked on mine, he dipped one long finger into the opening he had made in me. I watched in numb horror as he drew his finger out and sucked my blood from it. I wanted to tell him that if he was planning on killing me, then he would be dead too as the berserkers that now swarmed onto the platform would kill the both of us. But before I’d had the chance to say anything, Jack Seth lurched forward, gripping his stomach with his claws. He looked like he was being shaken to his very core by a series of violent convulsions.

  “What’s happening?” I gasped as he started to change shape and size before me. But Jack wasn’t changing into a wolf like I had seen him do so many times before, he was becoming me.

  “I’m saving your fucking life, that’s what’s happening,” he panted. He shook violently as his emaciated face started to contort until it looked like mine. “Jeezus, Isidor, your head really is full of dumb fucking ideas.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked. Why did he want to look like me – become me?

  “Because I want you to go and find your friend, Melody Rose,” he said, looking back at me, and it was like I was staring into a mirror. “She’ll be waiting for you, trust me.”

  Jack – or was that me – glanced over his shoulder. I could see the berserkers were now climbing up and over the platform. The train was puffing and chugging its way back out of the station. I hoped that my friends had managed to make their escape.

  Turning to look at me, Jack said, “Hide! Get under the bench and don’t come out until it’s safe to do so.” Even his voice sounded like my own.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked, feeling completely creeped out. I dropped to the floor, the cigarette that Potter had given me, slipped from behind my ear and rolled away.

  “I’m going to let them kill me,” Jack said, heading back across the waiting room and closing the door. He seemed to linger by the door, looking at his new reflection in the glass window. Why did Jack want to help me? A wolf only ever helped themselves.

  From the floor, I heard the clack of the berserkers’ claws outside as they crept along the platform. I could smell them as they too sniffed the air, searching out their prey. Jack Seth turned his back on the door and I rolled under the nearest bench and out of sight.

  “Why are you doing this for me?” I whispered up at Jack from my hiding place.

  “Because you will go on to do great things, Isidor,” he whispered back. “Whereas, I will only go on to kill.”

  What great things would I ever achieve? What was he talking about? Had he gone mad? No, Jack had lost his mind a lifetime ago.

  Peering out of the darkness from beneath the bench, I watched Jack approach the small wooden ticket booth. He spied the old-fashioned radio on the counter– the one that looked just like the radio Melody would bring to the lake.

  “Let’s have some music,” I heard Jack say, and it was crazy-weird to watch him switch it on. It was like watching myself from across the other side of the waiting room. I could hear the sound of static. Jack picked it up and shook it until the distant sound of music could be heard. Slowly, the door to the waiting room swung open as the first of the berserkers crept inside. I gripped my crossbow to my chest. The berserkers’ pointed teeth shone like needles, and they raised their giant claws as they approached Jack from behind. I wanted to call out and warn him, but he knew they were there. It seemed that Jack had a plan of his own – whatever that plan might be.

  The music from the radio began to swell, drowning out the sound of the approaching berserkers. It was then as the music grew louder and became clearer I recognised it. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Melody Rose. The song Heroes by David Bowie – the same song Melody and I spent so many hours listening to together as we sat on the shore of Lake Lure. The music grew louder and louder until the walls of the waiting room began to tremor in their foundations. The bench I hid under began to shake and rattle above me. The boom of the music seemed to penetrate my motionless heart, giving it a new beat. Rolling onto my side and drawing my knees up to my chest, I watched Jack turn to face the set of levers protruding from the wall next to the ticket booth. Written above these levers were the words PUSH and PULL.

  One of the berserkers lunged at Jack’s throa
t from behind. In the very same instant, Jack took hold of one of the levers and pushed. From beneath the bench, I watched Jack, judder and shake in and out of existence. One moment he was there, then gone, then suddenly back again. Jack became translucent, then solid again. The berserkers snarled and cringed backwards. The music grew louder still until it sounded like thunder. The berserkers howled as the waiting room shook so violently, the walls started to crack open and parts of the roof fell down upon them. The floor beneath me started to shake so violently, I started to lift up then fall down again.

  I looked back at the levers but Jack had now gone and the berserkers where howling and whining. The noise of their barks and cries sounded different now. They were no longer the cries of a depraved hunger and a lust to kill, but fear. The waiting room continued to shake in its foundations as huge lumps of brick and plaster flew through the air, showering the berserkers in masonry and dust. With their long claws dragging against the ground and their snouts in the air, the berserkers cowered back toward the door, which was now hanging from its hinges. The thunderous roar of the music continued and I covered my ears with my hands, beneath the bench. I watched the berserkers flee the waiting room and disappear back out into the night. The sounds of their howling were soon swallowed up by the deafening roar of the music. But it was as I dared to peer out from beneath my hiding place, I realised it wasn’t the music coming from the tiny radio that was causing such massive vibrations. The noise was coming from outside – beyond the waiting room. With the berserkers now gone, and the waiting room collapsing all around me, I staggered to my feet and went to the door. I stood in the opening and stared up at the night sky. Looking upwards, mouth open, I wondered whether Jack had done some damage to this pushed world.

  “What have you done, Jack Seth?” I breathed, staring up at what looked like faint cracks appearing in the night sky.

  Chapter Three

  The Photographer

  With his black eyes bulging in their sockets, he looked at me, his mouth opening and closing as if struggling to find the right words.

  “She wasn’t Kiera,” I told him, also reminding myself of that fact. “She looked and sounded like Kiera, but she wasn’t… not our Kiera, Potter.”

  He looked down at her, then let her lifeless body roll gently onto the ground. Staring up at me, and as if still struggling to find the words, he stood. Taking a cigarette from his trouser pocket, he lit it, and drew deeply, filling his lungs with hot, grey smoke.

  “So it was you…” he said, blowing smoke from his nostrils.

  “What was?” I asked him.

  “You were… you are the photographer we’ve all been looking for?” he said, his jaw locked rigid as he stared back at me.

  “Yes,” I said, unconsciously touching the camera around my neck.

  “Why?” Potter breathed, his eyes not leaving mine. He looked as if he wasn’t sure whether to trust me.

  “To help you,” I tried to explain, but not knowing where to start. “I did it to save Kiera – to save all of us.”

  “To save us?” Potter said, taking a step closer, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, one eye closed against the trail of smoke. “Do you have any idea how much pain you’ve caused us? How much pain you’ve caused Kiera.”

  I met his stare and said, “The last time I saw you, Potter, you were getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of you by a bunch of wolves masquerading as cops. You looked to be in quite a lot of pain back then. I couldn’t have hurt you any more than they were.”

  “Don’t you know what you’ve done?” Potter said, flicking the end of his cigarette away and lighting another almost at once. “You’ve fucked things right up, and that’s just what the Elders wanted. They feed off our pain. That’s how they survive. They’re nothing but a bunch of leaches, Kayla.”

  “I haven’t been working for the Elders,” I told him.

  “Who then?” Potter snapped. “Who asked you to take the photographs?”

  “Sam’s parents,” I told him.

  “Sam’s parents?” Potter almost seemed to wheeze over a throat full of smoke. “Who the fuck are Sam’s parents?”

  “You know, my friend, Sam Brook,” I reminded him. “The boy you like to ridicule by calling him Teen Wolf.”

  “I know who Sam is,” Potter sighed with exasperation. “What I want to know is, what the fuck has his mummy and daddy got to do with all of this?”

  “A lot, I think,” I said.

  “What’s that s’posed to mean?” Potter said, sounding confused and angry now.

  “It means that like us, they are trying to defeat the Elders and put everything back as it should be. Put the world back to how it once was,” I told him.

  “How?” Potter said, eyeing me with that suspicious look again.

  “They know that Kiera is this dark angel the wolves have been waiting for,” I started to explain. “And they know if they can get her – get all of us – to unravel our past lives, then cracks will start to appear in the fabric of this world and the old world will start to push back through.”

  Potter looked at me as if something I had just said had struck some kind of chord deep inside of him. “So Lilly was right?”

  “Lilly?” I asked, one eyebrow raised. “She’s not another one of your…”

  “My what?” he snapped.

  “Women?” I sneered back, knowing how much he had hurt Kiera in the past.

  “No!” he said, looking shocked. “Lilly, or sometimes known as Pen, is definitely nothing to do with me – she’s a wolf. And besides, Murphy’s been there.” Potter almost seemed to shudder at the thought.

  “Murphy has a girlfriend?” I asked, suddenly realising a lot had happened since I’d disappeared that night in the field with Sam.

  “I guess,” Potter said, scratching his head. “Look, Murphy’s sex life isn’t the most important thing right at this moment. What does matter is whether Sam’s parents are really trying to help…”

  “They are,” I cut in. “They want what we want.”

  “And what’s that?” Potter looked at me.

  “The world to be pushed back,” I said.

  “But why?” he shot back. “What difference does it make to them?”

  “Because they are human and they remember what the world was like before the Elders pushed it,” I told him.

  “And where are they now?” Potter asked, that look of mistrust still clouding his dark eyes.

  “At a station,” I said.

  “Now there’s a surprise,” he grunted, pitching out his cigarette. Then, leaning down, he scooped Kiera’s body up into his arms.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, knowing that there was still so much to do.

  “I’m going to bury Kiera,” he said, heading towards the trees. Then, glancing back over his shoulder, he added, “And you’re gonna help me. After all, it was you who killed her.”

  “But…,” I said, heading after him.

  “We can talk while we dig,” he said, disappearing into the darkness amongst the trees.

  Chapter Four

  Isidor

  The cracks were faint, like those you would see running down the side of an ancient porcelain teacup. But they were there and they stood out against the vastness of the dead, black sky above me. They shone white, like someone or something was shining a light against them. It looked like the sky would break inwards if pushed too hard from the other side.

  The waiting room slowly began to stop shaking and crumbling all around me. Whatever reaction Jack had caused by pushing on the levers had started to settle. The roof now had large holes torn into it, and when I looked up, I could see those illuminated cracks covering the night sky. Holes had appeared in the walls, and I could see through them and into the restrooms next door. Piles of rubble and dust covered the floor. Kneeling down, I reached beneath the bench and snatched up my crossbow. My rucksack lay on the other side of the waiting room. The strap looked like a snake, twisting out from ben
eath the rubble that had fallen on it. I pulled my rucksack free and it felt empty and light. The only things I had inside was a copy of Harvey Trotter & The Dragon’s Throne by K.J. Dowling, a Maggot Frogskin comic book and some spare bolts for my crossbow. I picked up the radio and shook it. There was no music now. I placed it in my rucksack and threw it onto my back. I went to the door of the waiting room and peered out into the night. The wind that blew across the valley was cold, and the rain had come back. It seemed as if the rain drops were leaking through the cracks. I looked along the platform and could see that this too had fallen away in places and now covered the tracks. I thought of my friends as they headed up into the mountains on that train. I could have gone after them – followed them – but I didn’t want to. I wanted to find Melody Rose. The urge to do so now was greater than ever. It was our destiny we should find each other – even Jack Seth had believed so. A wolf like Jack Seth wouldn’t have given up his life to save a Vampyrus like me unless there was a vital reason.

  …I want you to go and find your friend, Melody Rose, Jack had said. She’ll be waiting for you, trust me.

  What did Jack know about me and Melody? No one had known anything about her until I’d told my story tonight to my friends as we had sheltered from the storm in the waiting room. Had Jack been listening to me from the shadows of the platform? If so, had he been so moved by it he now wanted me to go and find Melody? I doubted that very much. Jack wouldn’t be moved by anything, especially not my story. So was it a trap? No, it couldn’t be. Jack wouldn’t have given up his life just to trap me. There must be some greater reason I was meant to go and find Melody. What could that reason be, other than to mend my own broken heart? I guess I would never know, unless I found her again. But where to start looking in this pushed world? And even if I found her, would she be the same girl I had known all of those years ago? She had definitely grown up into a beautiful looking woman. I had been able to see that in the picture before Jack had destroyed it. But where had that picture of us been snapped and by whom? It must have been taken in this pushed world. The last time I had seen Melody we had both been fourteen years old – just kids. Perhaps the picture gets taken when we meet up again? We both looked happy in that photograph, so she must have remembered me from the world before it got pushed. Maybe not so much had changed about Melody? Perhaps she was very much like the girl I had once known, and being pushed hadn’t changed her that much. If that was true, then perhaps the Melody from this world lived in the town of Lake Lure, just like she had before. Taking off my coat, I tied it about my waist. It trailed around the backs of my denim-clad legs like some weird kilt. The cold night air blew hard against my naked chest and icy droplets of water stung my flesh. I spread my arms apart on either side of me and let my wings uncurl. The tattered black membrane hanging beneath each arm fluttered in the wind like sheets hanging from a washing line. Potter had told me it was too dangerous to fly in this world for fear of being seen by the wolves. I was only to fly if my life depended on it. But Potter wasn’t around anymore to tell me what to do. Before he had left me for that train, he had told me he loved me as if he was my brother – my older brother. But it was about time he let his kid brother make his own decisions – right or wrong.