Dead Wolf

by Tim O'Rourke

  “I didn’t hump her,” Potter groaned, spitting a clot of blood into the snow. “And she wasn’t a school teacher...”

  Not interested in his excuses, I cut him dead and said, “You say Jack Seth is behind all of this? How can you be so sure?”

  “As one of those Skin-walkers was kicking me in the bollocks, I heard him mention that Jack Seth wanted me alive,” Potter explained.

  “Then we’re in a whole heap of shit,” I said.

  “What’s new?” Potter said, snapping his broken and swollen fingers back into place.

  “Do you have to do that?” I glared at him.

  “It sounds fucking disgusting.”

  Potter looked at me and opened and closed his fists, the sound of his finger joints popping and cracking sending gooseflesh up my back. “I can see you’re starting to feel better.”

  “I ain’t gonna feel right for another couple of hours or so,” he said, arming away the blood that dripped from what looked like a broken nose.

  “I think they’ve broken every single one of my ribs.”

  “We don’t have a couple of hours to spare,” I told him. “If what you say is true, then I’m guessing that Seth got to Kiera’s father’s house before her and...” I paused, fearing what might have happened to Kiera – what she might have learnt – if Jack and her father...

  “And what?” Potter snapped, fishing around in his trouser pockets and pulling out a crushed packet of cigarettes. He took one from the packet, which was bent over like a limp dick.

  He straightened it out, popped it between his lips, and then lit it. He drew deeply on the cigarette, then coughed, the sound of his broken ribs rattling like a bag of bones beneath his chest.

  “You want to think about quitting,” I told him.

  “And what?” Potter asked again, the flat of his free hand pressed against his ribs.

  “And we don’t know where Kayla and Sam have disappeared to,” I said, pushing the thoughts of what might or might not have happened with Kiera and Seth from my mind. For now, at least. “We can’t leave without them, but we don’t have time to go searching for them, either; not if we’re to go and save Kiera.”

  “Let’s start back at the van,” Potter winced, setting off across the field, a trail of thin, blue smoke ebbing away from the cigarette which dangled from the corner of his bloody mouth. I followed, taking one last look back into the snow, hoping that I might see Kayla and Sam somewhere.

  There was no sign of any track marks back at the van. In fact, the snow was coming down so hard and fast, it had covered any sign of the footprints we would have made earlier when leaving the van to save Potter. I snatched my pipe from the front seat and lit it.

  “Well?” Potter asked me.

  “Well, what?” I snapped at him, not knowing if we should go to Kiera or search for Kayla and Sam.

  “Don’t you see I was right?” Potter said, yanking open the back doors of the police van and reaching inside.

  “Right about what?” I grunted, taking one of the long, black trench coats Potter had taken from the van. I put it on, covering my wings, and pulling the collar up about my throat.

  “Teen-wolf,” Potter said, flicking the butt of his cigarette away with his thumb and forefinger. “Sam has taken Kayla. He waited for you to turn your back, and then he snatched her.

  They’re probably halfway to the Fountain of Souls by now.”

  “He didn’t take her,” I snapped at him, deep inside hoping that Potter was wrong.

  “When are you going to stop putting your trust in these wolves, Sarge,” Potter wheezed, his chest rattling again. “They do nothing but lie and deceive. Believe me, I should know, I’ve...”

  “Screwed enough,” I cut in.

  “Only Eloisa,” Potter came back at me angrily. “And doesn’t that go to prove my point?

  She deceived me so she could go off and kill those children at the Wolf House. Then this so-called school teacher got me believing she was Kiera to delay me from reaching her. The wolves are nothing more than a bunch of murdering scum.

  Isn’t it enough to know that Jack Seth betrayed you in the caves? You had your heart ripped out because of him.”

  “But...” I started.

  “What is it with you and the wolves anyhow?” Potter cut over me, the snow now settling on the shoulders of the black coat he had put on. “It’s almost as if you have a soft spot for ‘em. It seems to me that it doesn’t matter how many times they trick, deceive, and murder, you’re still prepared to give them another chance.”

  “Bollocks!” I growled at him.

  “You forget that not only did you die because of Seth, but Sparky murdered both your daughters – and yet you still give them the benefit of the doubt,” Potter said, limping towards me.

  “You take the piss out of me because I’ve been seduced by a couple of wolves, but they fucked with my mind – what’s your excuse, Sarge?”

  I raised my fist to...to do what? Punch the man I loved as a son because he was speaking the truth? No, I couldn’t do that. Potter stared straight back at me, unflinching.

  “Why?” he asked me. “What is it with you and the wolves? Can’t you see they are not to be trusted? They are nothing but lying, filthy scum, and I ain’t going to stop until every single one of them is dead. Skin-walker, berserker, Lycanthrope, or any other kind of freaking wolf would all be dead if I had my way.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I breathed, lowering my fist. “Sometimes, Potter, you can’t always help who you fall in love with.” I then turned and climbed into the van and closed the door.

  “What’s that s’posed to mean?” Potter shouted as he came around the front of the vehicle to the passenger side and climbed in. He cried out in pain as he pulled himself into the seat.

  “It means nothing,” I said, starting the van.

  “You’re not in love with a freaking wolf, are you?” he groaned, and I couldn’t tell whether it was in pain or disgust.

  “Not me,” I said thoughtfully, and rolled the vehicle slowly forward over the snow-covered road, the tyres making a muffled crunching sound in the night. “Okay. So let’s say you are right about the boy, Sam.”

  “I am right,” Potter cut in, taking another crumpled-looking cigarette from the equally crumpled-looking pack.

  “We go and get Kiera, and then head for the Fountain of Souls,” I said, steering the van through the snow.

  “Can’t this heap of junk go any faster?”

  Potter asked.

  “With all the bitching you’ve been doing because you’ve got a few broken ribs, I didn’t think you’d feel like flying,” I barked.

  “They will heal themselves in the next hour or two...” Potter started.

  Then glancing sideways at him, I said, “If I’m right about Kiera and Seth, and you’re right about Sam and Kayla, we don’t have an hour or so while you heal up. Get some rest. Kiera’s father’s house isn’t far from here.”

  Drawing on my pipe, I looked back through the windscreen, fearful of how much Kiera and Jack Seth now knew about each other’s past. Perhaps nothing at all, but I doubted it somehow. This new world seemed to have the knack of pushing the past back together.

  Chapter Five

  Kiera

  I went to the window and looked out. The night sky was almost white, bloated with snow-laden clouds. Apart from the wind that continued to buffer the side of the house, there was an eerie silence. Through the snow, I could just make out the church spire. Like the rest of the world beyond the window, it was covered white with snow, and it looked almost lost against the skyline. Somehow I felt trapped. Not by the room or the house, as I knew that I could leave at any time if I wanted to.

  I knew that I could just walk away, leaving Jack chained to the chair, my father stretched dead on the bedroom floor. But if I did that, I really would be trapped forever. There would be no resolution to this. Jack had said that Potter would come, he knew that. He had shown me th
e images of Potter with that teacher, Emily Clarke, and to think of them made my innards twist inside out.

  I would wait for answers. I needed answers. Jack was secure. He was no threat to me or...

  “How do you know Potter will come?” I whispered without turning to look back at Jack.

  “He is going to be brought here,” Jack said.

  “Will he be hurt?” I asked.

  “It all depends whether he came quietly or not,” Jack said back, his voice flat, emotionless.

  “He’ll be hurt then,” I said, knowing that Potter always put up a fight. With my back still facing Jack, I asked, “Is the photographer bringing him?”

  “The photographer?” Jack asked, and I didn’t need to look back to know he was smiling again.

  “Whoever it was who took the picture of Isidor and Melody, whoever it was who took the picture of me and you downstairs while you were disguised as my father.”

  “Oh, that photographer,” Jack said, sounding amused.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “No, Potter won’t be brought here by the photographer,” Jack said.

  I continued to look out of the window, the snow seesawing down on the other side of the dirty windowpane. “Those pictures were used to trap us, weren’t they?” I said.

  “You could think of them like that,” Jack said. “Or perhaps they were to show you or remind you of what you once had, or in Isidor’s case, what could have been. Perhaps Isidor is happy now?”

  “He’s dead,” I said flatly, my stomach knotting again.

  “Are you so sure of that?” Jack whispered as if teasing me, but I wasn’t going to bite anymore.

  “I saw the Skin-walkers rip his head off,”

  I told him.

  “That couldn’t have been very nice to see,” Jack said.

  Ignoring his flippant comment, I turned around and looked at him. “So how did the photographer do it?”

  “Do what?” Jack smiled.

  “Leave that picture for Isidor? The picture hadn’t even been taken, right?” I said. “The picture of me and you as my father, Potter took that from my flat a few weeks ago, but yet, it was only taken tonight.”

  At first Jack began to chuckle to himself.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked him, starting to feel angry.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, the chains clinking around his wrists. “Thanks to you, I’ve had a very long time in this pushed world – so I guess I’ve had a chance to learn a lot more about it.”

  “So what have you learnt?” I asked him, wondering if he wasn’t starting to play with my mind and heart again.

  “The world is not as you understand it to be, little sister,” he said, and now his smile had faded and he had taken on a more serious look.

  “Some people call them the ‘slip-streams’, others, ‘cracks’ and ‘fault lines’, but most call them the ‘ doorways.’”

  “What are you talking about?” I snapped at him impatiently.

  “Some people call it clicking, pushing, burrowing, falling, sliding, but it all means the same thing,” he said.

  “What does?” I demanded.

  “Passing between the different layers of this world,” he said. “I’ve never been able to master it myself, never really wanted to, if I’m to be honest,” he said with a slight sneer.

  “What layers? What are you talking about?”

  “There are many layers, Kiera, or should I call them times and whens?” he started to explain. “Some can pass between them, and others can’t – or perhaps they can and just need a little push! I guess in the end, we all get pushed one way or another.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, shaking my head.

  “No one really dies,” he grimaced, as he tried to reposition himself in the chair. “Dying is just like having the rug pulled out from beneath your feet when you least expect it. You fall away into another time or when. That’s why some people call it falling. This world is just another layer that we’ve all fallen into. I’m guessing – although I can’t be sure as I’m no expert on this – that this is how we’ve come to be in this new world. Don’t you see? Isidor might be dead to you and your friends, but he is someplace else now in a different layer – time or when.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I hissed. “You’re just trying to excuse his murder.”

  “I murdered you and we are both here together right now. Both of us are dead, aren’t we?” Jack said.

  “Well, yes...” I started.

  “Well,” Jack cut over me, “whoever is leaving those pictures might not be doing it to trap you, but to free you.”

  “Haven’t you been listening to me!” I hissed. “Isidor is dead. How can that be a good...”

  “You haven’t been listening to me?” Jack shot back. “If this whole thing about different layers is true, then Isidor will be in another when, and perhaps this time with the person he truly loves and wants to be with. So maybe this photographer did a good thing!”

  “And the photograph of me?” I sneered.

  “That led me to you! How is that a good thing?”

  “You discovered the truth, didn’t you?” he said, his eyes burning brightly. “However much the truth hurts, isn’t it best to know it? Or perhaps you like living a lie? Knowing the truth about yourself will only help you make the right choices – the choices you need to make if you are going to survive in this pushed world. If it hadn’t of been for that picture of you and your father, would you have ever sought him out here? Didn’t that picture stir up all of those old memories and feelings that you had for him? It was that picture that brought you here. Did the photographer do such a bad thing if it led you to the truth – however painful that is?”

  “But...” I started.

  “But perhaps this photographer isn’t your enemy,” he cut in.

  “Then who is it?” I said. “Why do they conceal themselves?”

  “That, I don’t know,” he said with a shake of his head, and I got the sense that he was telling me the truth. If he had known, wouldn’t he have wanted to have taunted me with that piece of information? “Whoever they are, they know how to click, slide, fall, and pass between the different layers – times and whens.”

  “Who will know the identity of the photographer?” I asked.

  “The one who has truly mastered the art of...”

  “What is their name?” I demanded, stamping my foot.

  Then, before Jack had a chance to answer, the sound of a vehicle approaching broke over the noise of the wind outside. I turned and looked through the window. Crossing the room, I looked outside and down the hill. In the distance, I could just make out the shape of a van fighting its way through the snow and heading towards the house.

  Potter? I wondered.

  “Release me!” Jack suddenly shouted from the corner of the room, frantically rattling his chains. “You’ve got to let me get away from here.” He sniffed the air.

  “Why?” I asked, turning to look at him.

  “Isn’t this what you wanted? Aren’t these your wolves bringing Potter here?”

  “There is only Potter...” Jack sniffed the air again. “...And Murphy! ”

  I looked back through the window. The van was halfway up the hill now. With my eyes no more than slits, I peered through the falling snow and the darkness. Jack was right! I could see Murphy hunched over the wheel of the van and Potter was sitting beside him. I knew then that whatever plan Jack had, somehow my friends had dashed it. But where were Kayla and Sam?

  “Let me loose!” Jack howled.

  “Why?” I said, turning on my heels to face him. “I thought this is what you wanted. We can at last all sit down and discuss with my friends what you have told me.”

  “They haven’t come here to talk, Kiera,”

  Jack howled. “They’ve come to kill me. They’ll rip my throat out before I even open my mouth.”

  “They won’t,” I insisted.

  “You know they will,�
� he barked at me, struggling against the chains. “Murphy won’t want you to know that he has lied and cheated you all this time. Potter isn’t just going to sit there and let me tell you how he and Eloisa were once lovers – the true reason he ripped out her heart.”

  “If you’re telling the truth, then you have nothing to fear,” I told him. “Didn’t you tell me that it was best to know the truth, however painful?”

  “It’s not the truth I fear,” he barked at me. “It’s your friends. They will take this chance to kill me. You have to let me go, Kiera – I’m your brother.”

  I looked back out of the window and could see the police van coming ever nearer. I turned away again and looked at Jack. “So this is my choice?” I whispered. “Do I choose you over my friends? Because if I set you free, Jack, there is every chance that you will come after them again – set another trap and kill them.”

  “Who do you choose, Kiera?” he said, the light going out of his eyes, that haunted look he had while telling me his story now masking his face again. “Which half of you do you choose?

  The Vampyrus or Lycanthrope?”

  I shot a glance back over my shoulder and could see the van clearly now through the falling snow. Then, spinning around, I raced back across the room towards Jack. Leaning over him so my cheek brushed against his, I whispered in his ear and said, “I choose neither side.” Then, with one quick swipe of my claws, I sliced through the chains and set Jack free. The chair toppled over as Jack sprang to his feet and headed towards the door. He yanked it open, then paused and looked back at me.

  “You know I could have freed myself at any time, don’t you?” he said. “At any point I could’ve changed into a wolf and broken free.”

  “So why didn’t you?” I whispered.

  “Because it had to be your choice, Kiera,”

  he whispered back. “I had to know if you would save me over your friends.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I had to know you believed me,” he said softly.

  “Believed what?”

  “That I was your brother. I know you, Kiera. I know you are better than me. Despite what I’ve done to you, you couldn’t let your brother die,” he said, staring back at me. “At last I have what I’ve searched for my whole life.”