Annora Snow (The Girl Who Travelled Backward) (Kiera Hudson Series Four Book 1)

by Tim O'Rourke

  Shaw turned to look at him once more. “It’s a bar on the other side of the outpost. It’s not great, but there are rooms to rent there. It’s the best I could fix up with such short notice. I only got word from HQ yesterday that you were being posted out here.”

  Karl wasn’t sure what to make of Sergeant Shaw, but she had arranged some accommodation for him, so he was grateful to her for that at least.

  “Go with Lisa and get some rest and I’ll see you at the station tomorrow,” Shaw said, stepping aside.

  Karl brushed past her and the dead girl lying on the floor. As he did so, he glanced down one last time. He thought that something about the way Lucy May lay stretched out on the floor didn’t seem quite right. Something didn’t quite fit, but he couldn’t be sure what.

  “Is this yours?” he heard Selina ask as he headed to the doorway that had been cut into the container.

  Karl glanced back to see Selina stooping down and snatching up his mobile comlink from off the floor. “Yes, it’s mine,” he said, reaching for it.

  As he took it from her, she closed her long, slender fingers around his hand. Her eyes met his and her stare lingered just like the hold she had on his hand. As he broke her piercing stare and pulled his hand free of hers, Karl was struck at how cold her touch was.

  “Come on, I’ll show you the way to the Night Diner,” Lisa said, heading out onto the rickety gangway.

  Karl followed her, but then stopped in the doorway, glancing back at Sergeant Shaw. “What time should I be at the station tomorrow morning? I wouldn’t want to create a bad impression and be late for my first duty.”

  “Be at the station tomorrow evening. Come after dark,” Sergeant Shaw said with a faint smile. “Outpost 71 is far more exciting to patrol at night.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The year 1973…

  “Get off me!” Annora screamed at Nik Seth. The volume of the music was so loud in the bar that she doubted anyone would hear her screams. Perhaps Nik had already thought of that and that was why he had brought her to the cloakroom?

  “Don’t be shy.” He grinned at her, his teeth no longer white and even, but yellow and jagged. “You weren’t shy on the dance floor when you were rubbing my cock.”

  Annora couldn’t remember having done such a thing. Sure, Nik was good-looking—had been good-looking before he had changed into the freakish half man—half wolf that he now was—but she would have never acted in such a way, however hot he had been. Rubbing the groin of strangers wasn’t her thing. Never had been and never would be. However much she wanted to be reckless since escaping her old life, manhandling the dick of a perfect stranger hadn’t been on her bucket list of things to do.

  “I said, back off!” Annora screamed at him again, knowing she was in great danger.

  But Nik didn’t back off. He pushed himself against her, pressing her flat against the wall. He looked into her eyes with his blazing stare, wanting to reignite the spell he had previously cast upon her. This time, when Annora looked into Nik’s eyes, she didn’t see herself being pleasured by him. She saw herself screaming in pain. She saw her blood on his hands, around his mouth, and matted in the bushy whiskers that covered the sides of his face. Unable to bear the sight of such depraved images, she looked away. Annora knew if she didn’t act fast, then what she had seen in Nik’s eyes wouldn’t just be some nightmarish image, but would happen for real. She needed to call for help. She needed back-up. But where was her comlink? She dropped her free hand to her thigh, her fingers searching for the gun that should be strapped to her thigh.

  What am I thinking of? Annora screamed inside. What’s a comlink? And why would I have a gun strapped to my thigh? I’ve never owned a gun and definitely wouldn’t know how to use one. And who would I be calling for to come and back me up—save me?

  With the cloakroom suddenly swimming in and out of focus, Annora knew that she dare not faint. If she did in the company of Nik Seth, she may never wake up again. Annora snapped open her eyes and tried to focus. Her eyes fell on the pot of umbrellas. Something inside told her that an umbrella could be used as a weapon. With the right training and knowledge, anything could be turned into a weapon. Even parts of your body could become lethal weapons. But how did she know such things? She had never been in a fight before.

  With such strange thoughts at the forefront of her mind, and knowing that she had to escape Nik and the cloakroom, she turned to look at him once more. Before she knew what had happened, Annora had driven her forehead into the bridge of Nik’s nose. She head-butted him with such force, that he staggered backwards, and Annora saw stars before her eyes. Seizing her moment, she shook her head, then lunged for the pot of umbrellas. She pulled one free of the brass pot. Annora span around as Nik pounced. Blood streamed from his nose and into his mouth.

  “Fuck you, bitch!” he roared, blood and spit flying from his lips. His burning eyes almost seemed to spin in their sockets as he raised his hooked claws.

  Annora drove the pointed silver tip of the umbrella at Nik. She lunged at him with it like a jouster. As she did so, the umbrella flew open like a domed-shaped shield before her. The umbrella appeared to be made of a black leathery type material.

  “Back off!” Annora screamed, thrusting the pointed tip of the umbrella at Nik.

  “You can’t just walk out on me now,” he said, trying to peer around the edges of the open umbrella at her.

  “What happened between us was a mistake…” she started.

  “I’m not talking about that,” Nik said. “You’ve seen too much. You’ve seen me. You’ve seen what I am.”

  “I haven’t seen anything,” Annora said, although they both knew it was a pointless lie. She would have said anything to get away from him—from the Night Diner. If only she could think straight, she might be able to reason with him. But how could she think straight when her whole world, in the space of such a short time, seemed to have been turned on its head? One minute, she had been standing in some derelict roadside diner on the outskirts of Rock Shore, then, she somehow miraculously ended up in a bar in 1973! And if that wasn’t enough crazy shit for one night, she had danced with the hottest guy she had ever seen, only to discover that he was some kind of freaking werewolf. But how could any of that be true? How could any of it have happened? Had she perhaps crashed Mr. Parker’s wreck of an old car on the way out of town, and now lay in a snow-filled ditch at the side of the road, bleeding and hallucinating as she swam in and out of consciousness? That was the most credible answer she could think of. But why had she felt the urge to reach for a gun? And what was a comlink? Some kind of radio?

  Annora had no idea. All she could be certain of was that she needed to get away from Nik Seth and the Night Diner, whether it be a dying hallucination or not.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The year 2067…

  “Don’t take too much notice of what the sarge says,” Lisa said, leading Karl along the upper walkway toward a patrol vehicle that hovered in the air on the other side of the support rails. The vehicle’s red and blue emergency lights lit up the night sky in flashing strobes. Although the rain had stopped, the walkway was wet and slippery underfoot. “Sergeant Shaw’s bark is worse than her bite. She just takes a while to get used to. But her heart is in the right place.”

  “I’ll try and remember that the next time she’s chewing on my fucking arse,” Karl said, as Lisa climbed over the rail high above the ground adjacent to where the patrol vehicle hovered on autopilot in mid-air.

  Fearing that she might slip and fall, Karl gripped her by the arm. “What are you doing?”

  She looked down at his hand, then at him. “You don’t need to concern yourself, Potter. I’m just climbing into the patrol car, that’s all. You want me to take you to the Night Diner, don’t you?”

  “I’ve got my own car, we can go in that,” Karl told her, loosening his grip on her arm.

  “Okay, sure,” she said with a shrug before dropping down off the rail and back onto th
e walkway.

  They rode the shaky lift back down to ground level. The street was still busy with people bustling back and forth in the dark and the neon glow of nearby street lights. Karl led Lisa to his beat-up old car. The passenger door wailed on unoiled hinges as he pulled it open for her to climb into. With her helmet tucked under one arm, she stood and stared at the car with a look of concern splashed across her beautiful face.

  “Is this thing safe?” she asked, glancing over the top of the car as Karl made his way to the driver’s side of the vehicle.

  “Yeah, it’s safe-ish,” he said, shooting her a sideways smile before climbing in behind the joystick.

  Lisa got in, placed her helmet in her lap, and heaved the door shut behind her.

  Karl prayed the car would start as he pressed his forefinger down onto the joystick trigger. To his relief, the engine hummed to life. He slowly steered the car away from the litter-infested gutter and headed into the line of slow-moving traffic.

  “Doesn’t this thing fly?” Lisa asked, scanning the dashboard and seeing that, despite the car being dilapidated, it had obviously been fitted with tech upgrades.

  “The vertical thrusters are fucked,” Karl said, pushing forward on the joystick and manoeuvring around several cars that were crawling ahead of him. Horns blasted in his wake.

  “You swear quite a bit, don’t you,” she said, glancing sideways at him.

  “Do I? I hadn’t noticed,” he said, staring ahead. “I must take after my father.”

  “Does he swear a lot?” she asked.

  “Yes, he did.” Karl smiled to himself as he remembered his father. “He swore every other word.”

  Lisa looked at Karl. “You said he did.”

  “My father’s dead,” Karl said, yanking the joystick sharply to the left and weaving ahead of the traffic.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve no need to be sorry, it wasn’t your fault,” Karl said, glancing at her perfect profile. “My mother’s dead, too.”

  Lisa caught him staring at her. “Oh, my God, that’s terrible. If you don’t mind me asking, what happened?”

  He quickly turned his head, looking once more through the windshield. “They died seven years ago,” Karl started to explain, “just before my eighteenth birthday. They were both Temporal Officers like us. They were partners. I think my mother was the brains of the partnership and my father was the brawn. As far as I’m aware, there wasn’t a case they didn’t crack.”

  “So… what happened?”

  “They attended a routine call, which turned out to be anything but routine,” Karl said. “It was a robbery that went wrong. They were both shot dead. The killer has yet to be caught. But he will be one day. I’ll make sure of that.” Wanting to change the subject, he said, “So where is this Night Diner?”

  “Take a left at the top of this street and follow the road until you come to the edge of the outpost,” Lisa said.

  Karl followed her instructions. The closer they got to the edges of the outpost, the lighter the traffic became. They sat in silence until it started to become uncomfortable. Lisa began to wonderer if she had offended him by asking questions about his parents’ death, although on first appearances, she wondered if a guy like Karl got offended by very much. He seemed to be pretty thick-skinned, but perhaps some of that was just an act.

  Wanting to break the silence, she eventually said, “You’re still not convinced that Lucy May died of a drug overdose.”

  Karl shot her a sideways glance. “Are you?”

  She avoided answering his question by asking one of her own. “Did you really see three killers like you said you did?”

  Karl kept looking front. “I’m not sure what I saw,” he said, and that was the truth, as far as he was aware. Had he had some kind of vision? Or had he simply fainted like Sergeant Shaw believed he had? Had what he’d seen been nothing more than a hallucination before passing out? “All I know is that something about the way Lucy May was lying on the floor of that slum wasn’t right. Something just didn’t fit. If my mother was still alive—if she had been in that container—she would have seen it.”

  Lisa frowned at him. “Seen what? What would your mother have seen that you couldn’t?”

  “I don’t know, but my mother didn’t miss a trick,” Karl said more to himself than Lisa. “I just wish that I was more like her.” Ahead, Karl saw a bright neon sign shining in the dark. It read Night Diner. “I guess this is the place.”

  “Yes,” Lisa said, as Karl steered his car into the vehicle port outside the bar.

  Without getting out of the car, Karl peered out of the side window at the building Lisa had directed him to. The buildings surrounding it looked derelict and near to collapse. Many of the outer walls had tumbled down, leaving large stacks of brickwork and masonry on display. What was left of the buildings looked scorched and burnt. The surrounding area looked like a bombsite, and the only building left standing was the Night Diner.

  Karl got out of the car and Lisa followed. After taking his case from the backseat, he kicked the door shut. The dull thud of music and raucous laughter came from the bar. The Night Diner was tall, dark, and uninviting. Why it had been named the Night Diner, Karl had no idea. Wasn’t that the name given to the vampires and werewolves that had once raged war against the humans? Perhaps the name was a nostalgic idea conjured up by the owner? Karl glanced at Lisa, who stood with her helmet tucked under one arm.

  “It looks and sounds like a right shithole,” Karl groaned.

  “I’ll get the sarge to see if she can’t find some more suitable accommodation,” Lisa said.

  “I bet she won’t try too hard,” Karl muttered under his breath as he made his way toward the building. Before reaching the door, it suddenly flew open. Two drunken males staggered out. One bent forward at the waist and vomited. The contents of the man’s stomach splashed the ground just inches from Karl’s feet.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Karl grimaced.

  There had to be some other place he could stay. He’d happily sleep on Lisa’s sofa, or even on the floor, if she was agreeable. He glanced back with the intention of asking if she wanted a lodger for the next couple of nights. But to his surprise, Lisa was nowhere to be seen. It was like she had vanished into the surrounding darkness.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The year 1973…

  Annora peeked around the edge of the open umbrella and lunged at Nik Seth. She jabbed at him with the silver point that protruded from the top of the umbrella. He came at her with his claws raised. Each of his fingers were curved inwards like a butcher’s hook. The ends of them were capped with razor-sharp nails. Nik sprang forward, his long, bushy hair whipping about his shoulders. He raked his claws over the umbrella. Fearing that his fingers would tear through its fabric, Annora stumbled backward. But to her surprise, Nik’s claws failed to penetrate the umbrella. They simply slid over it, as if he were dragging his pointed fingernails over a sheet of metal. Startled by what she had just seen, and wondering what sort of material the umbrella was made of, she thrust it back in the direction of Seth. As the silver-pointed tip slashed just inches from his face, he darted away. Annora suddenly realised that Nik Seth was scared of the silver point. She also suspected that Nik couldn’t penetrate the fabric of the umbrella. Using it as a shield, she lunged forward, her face twisted into a grimace.

  “Get back!” she screamed. “Keep away from me!”

  She sprang at Nik and he raised his claws. He howled in fury as he tried to bat the umbrella away. Sensing his fear of it, Annora shot forward again, driving him back into the coats that hung from a nearby rail.

  “You fucking bitch!” Nik roared.

  Annora could hear that his cries weren’t in anger or fear, but pain. Had she injured him? With the umbrella still held open before her, she peered around its domed shape. Annora could see the silver point now buried deep in Nik’s right shoulder. Black blood circled the wound she had made in him. Again, he
raked his claws over the surface of the umbrella, but they did little more than scratch the black, leathery surface. With her face a mask of determination, Annora gritted her teeth, and screaming, she drove the point protruding from the top of the umbrella deeper into Nik’s shoulder. He howled in pain and his bright eyes spun wildly in their sockets. He gnashed his jagged teeth together.

  Nik slumped forward, the side of his face resting against the open umbrella. She watched as the bushy side-whiskers began to withdraw back into his face. The hair covering his head began to darken and shorten in length as he became human-looking once more. Even his hands no longer looked like claws. He made a groaning sound in the back of his throat as he almost seemed to dangle from the end of the umbrella.

  Seizing her chance, Annora pulled the pointed end from him. Nik slid down the wall and onto the floor. She held the umbrella out before her, just in case he was deceiving her and was readying himself to spring to his feet. Annora looked down at the blood that was now running from the wound on his shoulder in a thick, black stream. It wasn’t the sight of the blood that horrified her, but the fact that the blood appeared to be bubbling up like acid.

  Nik made a groaning sound in the back of his throat. Fearing that he was coming round, Annora yanked open the cloakroom door. With the umbrella still clutched in her hand, she raced out into the corridor. The music coming from the bar was deafening once more. She glanced to her left and could see a group of partygoers standing in the entrance to the passageway. Was everyone in the Night Diner like Nik Seth? Were they all werewolves? Annora didn’t have the faintest idea who or what they really were. Could she really risk fleeing the Night Diner by heading across the packed dance floor carrying a bloodstained umbrella? She didn’t think so. Over the sound of T. Rex singing Telegram Sam, Annora heard movement coming from the cloakroom. She glanced back to see Nik Seth dragging himself back onto his feet. He had one bloody hand pressed to the wound on his shoulder.