Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series #2)

by Tim O'Rourke

  “Oh, is that his name?” I said. “He wasn’t very talkative last night. I did ask him, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

  “James is a little deaf, perhaps he didn’t hear you,” she tried to explain.

  He heard me alright, I thought. Mrs. Payne must have sensed that I wasn’t convinced, because she added, “We don’t really know him that well.”

  “How come?” I asked around a mouthful of cornflakes.

  “After the disappearance of Lord Hunt, Lady Hunt let the last chauffeur go and hired James,” she explained. Then looking at me, she added, “In fact, she let all of the staff go except me.”

  “Why did she keep you on?” I half-smiled.

  “No one knows this house or The Hunts like I do,” she said with some pride.

  “So why the new driver?” I asked her.

  Mrs. Payne stared at me and said, “Why so many questions? Are you on duty?”

  “Nope,” I said, matching her stare.

  “I thought police officers were always on duty,” she said with a wry smile.

  “Not this one,” I said back.

  “Lady Hunt wanted a change I guess. The last driver could be very cantankerous at times and Lady Hunt never got on very well with him. Besides, Lady Hunt is very much into her charity work.”

  “Charity work? What’s that got to do with hiring herself a new chauffeur?” I asked feeling bemused.

  “James can’t walk,” she said, as if I should have already known this. “Lady Hunt has done a lot of great work for the disabled and believes that everyone should have an equal chance of employment.”

  “Apparently he had an accident or something years ago and hasn’t walked since,” Kayla cut in.

  I looked across the table at her to see that she had removed the earphones and turned off the iPod.

  “Really?” I said, somewhat bewildered. “But he drove me all the way here,” and I pushed my empty bowl to one side and took a banana from the pile of fruit.

  “Lady Hunt had the Rolls Royce converted so it could be driven by a disabled driver,” Mrs. Payne cut in.

  It was hearing this that I understood why the chauffeur hadn’t got out of the car last night for Lady Hunt and me. He’d stayed in the vehicle when she’d gotten out at the railway station and again on our arrival at the manor. All off a sudden, I felt incredibly guilty and wondered perhaps if I had judged him unfairly. I regretted calling him a jerk.

  “So what about Marshal?” I asked them.

  “What about him?” Mrs. Payne said.

  “Is he new here too?”

  “Yes, he was hired by Lady Hunt after Lord Hunt disappeared,” she explained.

  Then raising my hand to my face, I said, “So what about…you know…the bandages?”

  “The bandages?” Mrs. Payne said, and I couldn’t help but notice her glance at Kayla. There was a pause – it lasted only a fraction of a second – but long enough to be noticeable. “Oh, them,” she eventually said. “Marshal was born with a facial deformity and a twisted spine.”

  “Yeah, his face scares the shit outta me,” Kayla cut in.

  “That’s quite enough of that, thank you very much,” Mrs. Payne glared at the girl.

  “Another one of Lady Hunt’s charitable works?” I asked.

  “Lady Hunt came across him by chance on a visit to a homeless shelter. Marshal had been living on the streets since he was not much older than Kayla is now. He had fallen foul of the law and because of his deformities, he had never been given the same opportunities in life like the rest of us. Lady Hunt therefore took it upon herself to give him sanctuary here, and in return, Marshal tends to the grounds and he has become quite an accomplished handyman. Lady Hunt has even provided the funds for him to have reconstructive surgery. The bandages are covering the scars while they heal,” she said.

  Looking at Kayla, I said, “Gee, your mother sounds like a real saint.”

  “She can be okay, I guess,” Kayla said thoughtfully.

  “Only okay?” Mrs. Payne cut in. “After everything that your mother has done for you?”

  Pushing her chair back from the table, Kayla jumped up. “What would you know about anything!” Kayla shouted at Mrs. Payne. “You’re just the housekeeper, so keep your nose out of my business!”

  “Don’t you dare speak to me like that!” Mrs. Payne snapped back, her face flushing scarlet.

  “Or what?” Kayla spat back.

  “You wait until your mother gets home,” the housekeeper warned her.

  “And then what?” Kayla snapped. “What’s she gonna do, pack me off to another boarding school? Well if you didn’t already know, there isn’t a school in the country that will take me. So it looks as if you and mother are stuck with me.”

  “Right, young lady,” Mrs. Payne said, “get to your room and don’t come out until you’ve learnt to keep a civil tongue in your head!”

  “You can’t tell me what to do, so why don’t you just do us all a favour and piss off!” Kayla yelled, snatching up the iPod. She stormed out of the back kitchen door and onto the grounds of the manor.

  “Well, that couldn’t of gone any better,” I sighed.

  “You don’t know what she’s like,” Mrs. Payne complained.

  “So what is she like?” I asked, raising an eyebrow and getting up from my seat.

  “There’s something wrong with her,” she said, her voice sounding angry.

  “She’s not the only one,” I whispered to myself as I went after Kayla.

  It was cold outside, so I was glad I’d put on a jumper. A strong wind blew about the eves of the old manor as I passed down the side of it and towards the front of the building. I went around the front and down the gravel path. Ahead of me, there was a wide open grassy area and in the distance, I could see Kayla propped against a tree, her knees drawn up under her chin. I walked towards her and as I did, I looked back at the house and up towards the ‘forbidden’ right wing. I hadn’t noticed it the night before, but the right side of the building was hidden by scaffolding and thick sheets of tarpaulin, which kept most of it hidden from view. On the ground, just beneath the scaffolding, were four large yellow skips and each of these had been filled with rubble and masonry. Perhaps that part of the manor was being renovated after all, but I couldn’t see any workmen or builders.

  Turning front again, I headed towards Kayla. “Want to show me around?” I asked her.

  She just shrugged her shoulders.

  “You might as well,” I said. “You’ve got my company for a whole week, so we should try and be friends.”

  Taking the iPod and placing it in her pocket, (I guess it was hers now, at least until I left) Kayla said, “Why did you cover for me back there?”

  “I don’t know what you mean?” I said, helping her to her feet.

  “You told that old bag that it was your fault I’d been late for breakfast.”

  “Oh, that. Aren’t friends allowed to cover for each other from time to time?” I smiled and looped my arm through hers.

  “You’re not what I expected,” she said, leading me through the trees and away from the manor.

  “What were you expecting then?” I asked her.

  “I dunno,” she said. “Somebody a bit older to start with. And not so…easy going, I guess. I thought coppers were meant to be serious all the time.”

  “Why don’t you just forget I’m a cop for a while – I’m a person too, you know,” I smiled.

  “Okay,” she smiled back.

  “I know you’re pissed off that your mother asked me -” I started.

  “To come down here and spy on me,” she said.

  “Is there a reason to spy on you?” I asked her, ducking down to avoid a low-hanging branch.

  “You tell me,” she said. “My mother’s told me you have a bit of a reputation for being a smart-arse – like you have this knack of working out things real quick.”

  “Did she?” I said. “What else did she tell you about me?” I asked.

/>   “That you had been suspended from the police, but she didn’t tell me why,” Kayla said. Then looking at me with a twinkle in her eyes, she added, “Are you like one of those rebel cops who’s always breaking the rules and getting into trouble with their superiors?”

  “No,” I told her. “I don’t think I am.”

  “So why were you suspended then?”

  “I haven’t been suspended…I’ve been…”

  “What?”

  “Given some extended leave,” I told her.

  “What you’re telling me is that your boss thinks you’re a pain in the arse, but he doesn’t know what to do with you,” she said, leading me out into a wide open area with the most wonderful flowerbeds I’d ever seen. Mrs. Lovelace would love it here, I thought to myself.

  “How did you figure that out?” I asked Kayla.

  “It’s exactly what happened to me at school,” she explained. “If you’re different or you speak out, people think you’re a pain and it’s easier for them to either pretend you’re not there or better still, just get rid of you altogether. People like me and you, Kiera, don’t fit in.”

  “Why didn’t you fit in at school?” I asked her, the smell of the flowers a break from the musty stench that permeated the manor. “Your mother told me that you can be disruptive.”

  “She would say that,” Kayla said, sounding angry again. “I was just sticking up for myself, that’s all.”

  “Why would you feel the need to stick up for yourself?” I asked.

  “Mother didn’t tell you did, she?” Kayla said her eyes wide.

  “Tell me what?” I asked her.

  Letting go of my arm, she quickly looked back over her shoulder in the direction from which we had come, as if to make sure that we hadn’t been followed. Then quickly, she pulled her top from over her head and let it flutter to the floor. She stood before me, the pale morning sun reflecting off her round shoulders and glinting off her auburn hair. Then slowly, she turned around. Raising a hand to my mouth, I gasped, as poking around the white straps of her bra were two small, black wings.

  Chapter Nine

  As quickly as she had taken it off, Kayla pulled her top back over her head and covered her wings. They weren’t like the giant sized wings I had seen grow from Luke’s back; Kayla’s were smaller and trailed halfway down her back. They didn’t have that leathery look either; they seemed finer, like those of a butterfly’s. Although they were black, the wings had looked like they had been splashed with liquid silver. They had almost seemed to shimmer in the light of the hazy sun.

  “Do they fold away?” I asked her as she stood looking at me, her arms now folded across her chest. “What I mean is, can you make them disappear into your back?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “But they are so soft, they lie flat against my back, just like an extra layer of skin.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I said, “Okay.” I was still reeling inside from what she had shown me. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen this sort of thing before, but finding out that Kayla was a Vampyrus was like being hit with a sledgehammer. It was the last thing I had been expecting.

  “So you can see now why my mother asked you to come here,” she said turning away and heading back towards the shelter of the trees.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked, catching up with her.

  “Your mother said that someone was stalking you. That someone was coming to the manor and watching you. She wanted me to find out who it was.”

  “That’s only half of it,” Kayla said, weaving her way through the trees. “She wants you here because of what happened to you in that other place.”

  “The Ragged Cove?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the place,” she said glancing at me. “Don’t you get it? You’ve seen people like me before – and survived. Now that my father has vanished, my mother doesn’t know what to do.”

  “But if you’re a Vampyrus, your mother must be one, too,” I said.

  “That’s the problem, Kiera,” Kayla said, leading me towards the iron gate that I’d been driven through the night before. “I’m not a true Vampyrus. My father is one – but my mother is human. So I don’t really know what that makes me – and my mother doesn’t know either.”

  I looked at Kayla and all I could hear was Dr. Keats voice in my head. “How do we know that living right amongst us aren’t the children born out of relationships between humans and these ‘Vampyrus’ as you call them.” And here I was looking at the result of one of those unions.

  “Did your mother know that your father was a Vampyrus?” I asked her.

  “No, not at first,” she said, as we reached the ancient stone wall that circled the grounds of the manor. On the other side of it, I could hear the sound of the water from the moat lapping against the wall.

  “For years, it seems that my father lead a double life,” she started to explain. “On one hand, he was this successful businessman, the head of a multinational company developing renewable genetics. He was married with a daughter, but secretly he was a creature from below ground who could grow wings, fly at incredible speeds, and had almost invincible strength.”

  Before I’d the chance to say anything, Kayla disappeared up a stone spiral staircase set into the wall. I followed her. At the top, the stairs levelled out onto a narrow ledge that ran around the top of the wall. I peered over the top, and for miles all I could see were the barren and featureless moors, stretching out into the distance. The ground seemed almost black, with a spattering of green where some vegetation had sprung up between the huge, jagged rocks. The sight had a prehistoric feel to it, like we were the very first humans to encroach upon this land.

  Kayla hoisted herself up onto the lip of the wall and I joined her. The wind raced all around us, forcing bruised-looking clouds over the sun, turning the day overcast and bleak.

  “How my father kept it from my mother for so many years, I don’t know,” Kayla continued. “I understand now that like vampires, he would often crave blood - human blood – but to quench his thirst he would have to go beneath ground, to where he came from, his home.”

  “The Hollows,” I said, looking at Kayla, her thick auburn hair billowing out in the wind like a mane.

  “Yeah, that’s what he called it,” she said, looking ahead over the moors. “He would tell my mother and me that he had to go away on business for a week or two, but really he was going back home, to his real home. He’d go on one of his business trips three or four times a year.”

  “Were you or your mother never suspicious?” I asked her, now understanding the complications of being in love and sharing your life with one of these creatures. My mind couldn’t help but turn to thoughts of Luke.

  “I wasn’t, but I don’t know about my mother,” she said. “It was just the way it was for as long as I can remember. But things started to change – I started to change.”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “When I was about fourteen, I had these lumps appear on my back, just between my shoulder-blades. They were small at first, like pimples. But they never burst or went away, they just gradually got bigger. My mother was concerned, but my father just kept brushing it off as something to do with puberty and that they would go away. But they didn’t. Then, one day at one of those boarding schools, I was in the showers and one of the other girls started screaming and pointing at my back. All the other girls looked at me then started screaming too.”

  “What had they seen?” I asked her.

  Reaching up and rubbing her left shoulder, Kayla said, “Just about here, a little black lump had started to poke through my skin. It was hard and felt like a piece of bone. I didn’t know what it was and to be honest, I was so scared at the sight of it that I started to scream, too. Anyway, I was taken to the nurse’s room and she covered it with a bandage, not because it was bleeding or anything, just so she didn’t have to look at it, I guess. The headmaster called my parents and they brought me back her
e. My mother was almost hysterical when she saw that little piece of black bone sticking out of my back. I remember her screaming, ‘Michael what is it? What’s wrong with our baby?’

  “Without being able to take his eyes off my back, my father whispered, ‘Leave it to me, I’ll get a friend of mine to look at it.’

  ‘What friend!’ my mother hollered at him, as she wrung her hands together.

  ‘He’s a doctor I know,’ my father tried to comfort her. ‘He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘But why can’t Kayla go to see our doctor?’ my mother begged him.

  ‘Just leave it to me,’ he said, taking her in her arms.

  “I remember my mother sobbing against his chest. But I caught her peering at me, Kiera, and it was fear that I saw in her eyes. It was like my own mother was scared of me,” Kayla said.

  Sitting listening to her, I could see a kind of sadness in her eyes so I took one of her hands in mine. She didn’t flinch or pull away, but just let it rest there on her lap.

  “So what did this doctor friend of your father’s say?” I asked her.

  “We didn’t go to him, he came to us,” she told me. “He was a thick-set man, with a pale complexion and glasses perched on the end of his nose which drooped down like a beak. I remember lying there on my bed, looking up at him thinking how much he looked like an owl. After rolling me over onto my front and gently prodding the piece of black bone, I heard him whispering to my father from the corner of the room. But I could hear some of what he said.

  ‘The Terminal Phalanx is coming through,’ the doctor whispered. ‘What can you do about it?’ my father asked him, and like my mother’s eyes, I could hear the fear in his voice. ‘This is uncharted ground, Michael – you know that, don’t you?’ the doctor said to my father, in an uneasy-sounding voice. ‘But we can’t risk them growing,’ my father almost seemed to plead with him. ‘All I can do is cut it off, stitch up the hole, and pray that it doesn’t grow back,’ the doctor said. “Then looking back over my shoulder, I saw the doctor coming towards me with a needle. ‘This might sting a bit,’ he smiled “The next thing I knew I was waking up in my room,” Kayla said. “My father was sitting on the edge of my bed and stroking the hair from my brow.