Dead Wolf

by Tim ORourke

Page 4

  Jack said. “We’ll see who you choose. ”

  Chapter Four

  Murphy

  “Where have they gone?” Potter groaned in pain, staggering to his feet.

  “If I knew that, do you think I would be standing in the middle a fucking snow blizzard calling out their names?” I barked at him. I wasn’t mad at Potter, not really, I was mad at myself.

  Although I was pissed at him for going and getting himself in the shit again with the wolves. He attracted the wolves like flies around shit.

  I looked at Potter as he lurched through the falling snow towards me. “How did you get here?” he wheezed, his hands pressed against his ribs and blood running from the cuts on his face.

  “The police van,” I said, checking the horizon again for any signs of Kayla and Sam.

  “Perhaps they’ve gone back to it to take shelter,” he suggested.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “They would have stayed here. ”

  “It’s a shame Kiera isn’t here,” Potter said, looking down at the crisscross pattern of foot and paw prints in the snow.

  “How’s that?” I asked him.

  “She’d only have to take one look at these tracks and she’d be crawling around on her hands and knees, telling us how many there were, how tall, their weight, what they had for freaking breakfast, and the last time they blew their nose,”

  he half-smiled as he thought of her.

  “Well you want to thank your lucky stars she ain’t here,” I grumbled.

  “Why?” Potter said, looking back at me.

  “Because she’d kick your freaking arse, that’s why, numb nuts!” I barked at him. “It’s not like she wasn’t pissed at you already, and now you’ve gone and humped a school teacher. Christ knows what she sees in you. ”

  “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-cover
ed 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 the images of Potter with that teacher, Emily Clarke, and to think of them made my innards twist inside out.