The wolves stood just feet away, snarling and snapping their huge jaws at us.
“Feeling good?” Potter asked, without looking at me.
“Oh yeah,” I sighed, then sprang forward at the wolves.
One of them raised itself on its giant back legs, swiping at me with his razor-sharp paws. In a blink I had dropped to the ground, and skidded between the wolf’s legs. With my claws outstretched, I sliced them through the wolf’s legs just below each knee. I looked back to see the wolf sinking to the ground. It rolled onto its back, clutching at the bleeding stumps where its lower legs had been just moments before. The creature howled in agony, and I walked slowly toward it. I wouldn’t end its misery too soon.
I glanced to my right to see Potter playing something close to football with the other wolf’s head. Reaching the wolf that now howled in torment, I looked down into its gaping jaws. It would have been those jaws that would have happily ripped me to pieces if I had given the creature half a chance. Without saying anything, I raised one foot and drove the heel of my boot down into one of its bright yellow eyes. I twisted my ankle, driving the heel deep into his brain. The wolf let out one more agonising howl, then fell still.
I pulled my boot free from its face. Potter came and stood next to me and we watched together as the dead wolves slowly returned to their human forms – the humans the wolves had matched with and stolen their souls, lives, and skins. At least they were free to pass on now – get pushed someplace else, perhaps back to the world that it had once been.
We turned our backs on their lifeless and mutilated bodies.
Closing his fist over mine, Potter looked at me and said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Tilting our heads back and spreading our wings, we shot up into the night sky.
Chapter Sixteen
Isidor
The fire crackled in the grate. Melody poured more tea from the pot into my cup. The metal spoon rattled against the side of it as I stirred in the milk. Wind gusted against the remote cottage, and snow now sat thick against the window frames. Melody sat opposite me on the sofa, her knees drawn up as she sipped her tea.
I looked at her. “The Melody Rose I fell in love with wasn’t a wolf. But then again, perhaps she was? Maybe she didn’t know herself. Perhaps she was murdered before she’d had a chance to find out who or what she really was.”
“She was murdered?” Melody asked.
“By her mother – your mother – if that makes sense,” I said, taking another sip of tea.
“My mother is dead,” Melody said.
“So is Melody’s mother,” I told her. “She hung herself.”
Melody’s cup rattled against the saucer as she almost seemed to flinch. “Hung herself?”
“I think so – although I can’t be sure,” I tried to explain. “She was a wicked woman. She was cruel to Melody and eventually murdered her.”
“How do you know she murdered the Melody you speak of?” she asked, watching me over the rim of her cup.
“Her mother was some kind of religious nut,” I said. “She had the basement decked out as some kind of makeshift chapel. The day Melody went missing, I went to that basement and hid in the shadows. I listened to her mother tell God in a prayer how she had rid the devil from Melody by killing her.”
“Did you report her to the cops?” Melody asked me.
I shook my head. “There was no point. The only laws she feared breaking were God’s. Knowing she would’ve never seen anything like me before, I stepped out of the shadows in the chapel. My wings trailed from beneath my arms and she must have heard the gentle hum of my wings, as she glanced up at me. I told her not to look at me, and she dropped to her knees in fear. ‘What did you do?’ I asked her. ‘I killed the demon within my child by sacrificing her,’ she’d confessed.
“I dragged Melody’s mother to her feet and held her by her arms. She stared at my wings and asked me if I was an angel. I told her that I was and her Lord had sent me to deliver a message to her. Melody’s mother cowered before me. I told her God was angry with her for what she had done to her daughter and he would never forgive her. She must have believed I was an angel, as she begged for forgiveness. I think she feared that her soul was doomed. I told her the only way she would ever find God’s forgiveness was if she were to sacrifice herself. I left her sobbing on the chapel floor. Sometime later, I discovered she had hung herself from beneath the staircase in that chapel.”
Melody didn’t say anything to what I had told her, and a heavy silence fell over the room. The wind screamed outside as it blasted snow against the cottage in mountainous drifts. I got the feeling that something in what I had just said had connected with Melody on some level. I stirred my tea again, the spoon clinking against the china cup. The noise sounded as loud as gunfire in the silence.
“My mother hung herself,” Melody suddenly whispered.
I looked at her. Was I surprised by what she had just said? Not really.
“My mother raised me alone, and like me, she was a wolf,” Melody started to explain. “We had a basement at home, just like the one you described, and she could always be found down there surrounded by hundreds of candles as she prayed to the Black Coats and the Elders. But it was during one Candlemas that she came screaming and howling up from the basement, locking the door tight behind her. She looked terrified.”
“What scared her so much?” I asked.
Melody stared across the small sitting room at me. “She claimed to be haunted by a vision of a winged creature.”
I lowered my cup, placing it down on the table. “Did she say what this creature looked like?”
“A teenage boy, naked to the waist and long, black wings trailing beneath his arms,” Melody said. “Sobbing, my mother would explain how this ghostly apparition would flutter all around her as she tried to pray in the basement. Sometimes I would stand silently at the top of the stairs leading down into the basement and listen to her howl. I couldn’t tell whether they were howls of fear or remorse. Then one day I returned home to find her hanging from beneath the stairs. She left no note or any reason as to why she had done what she had. But from that moment on, I decided I would spend as long as it took – my whole life if necessary – to find out if winged creatures like the one she had described really existed. So I have spent the last five or six years chasing down every story, whisper, or rumour that I’ve heard about winged creatures. Then yours and your sister’s bodies were discovered up here on the mountainside and I covered the story of your murders. I was fascinated by how your father believed that you had wings hidden inside of you. Why would he have thought such a thing about his two children? He took his own life before anyone had the chance of asking him. So here you now sit, Isidor, and he was right, you did have wings.”
“Do you blame me for your mother’s death in this world?” I asked her.
Melody looked at me. “Should I blame you?”
“No more than I should blame your mother for the death of the Melody I knew and loved,” I said. “No more than I should blame my real father for the death of the Isidor in this world. The father I knew wasn’t a killer.”
“But you said that we are all one in the same, just that we had been… pushed?” she said.
“We are the same, but there are differences, too,” I tried to explain. “You look and sound identical to the Melody Rose that I knew, but you claim not to be her. You claim that you have no memories of me or what we once shared together. But I think your mother remembered her other life – her other self. She might not have realised that they were memories – she thought they were ghosts come to haunt her – but it was just the two worlds overlapping. It was the other world seeping into this one through the cracks.”
“Cracks?” Melody asked.
“Haven’t you seen them?” I said, cocking one eyebrow, pointing heavenwards with one finger. There was no way that she hadn’t.
“The cracks that have appeared overnight in the sky?” she as
ked me.
“Yes,” I nodded. “Something happened which I don’t think should have, and it’s caused those cracks to appear.”
“What happened?” she asked, sitting forward on the sofa.
“I think I was meant to die last night, but someone took my place and it’s changed things – it’s made cracks appear,” I said, trying to figure out in my mind at the very same time I was trying to explain the cracks to Melody.
“Why were you meant to die?” she asked me, a frown creasing her pretty face.
“I had decided to sit and wait for you at a railway station,” I said, wondering if I sounded stupid. “I’d decided not to budge until you showed up, even though danger in the shape of a pack of berserkers was only seconds away.”
“Why were you so convinced I was going to show up at the station?” Melody asked, that frown growing deeper with each passing second.
“Because I had a photograph of me and you together,” I said. “But the photograph hadn’t yet been taken. So I was convinced that whatever might come to pass in this world, we were destined to meet up again so that photograph could be taken.”
“Where is this picture?” Melody said, holding out her hand. “Show it to me.”
“I can’t,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because it no longer exists, and perhaps it never should have,” I told her. “The man who took my place last night said the picture would lead me into a trap. But he also told me to come and find you.”
“Why?” Melody asked.
“He said you would be waiting for me.” Then with a half-smile, I added, “And in a way, he was right. You were waiting for me. You said yourself that you knew that one day I would come back. Why were you so convinced of that?”
She looked away in the direction of the fire. The flames danced in her eyes, making them shine bright again. “Because I believed you to be a vampire and vampires come back, don’t they?”
Sitting forward in the armchair, I stared at Melody, even though she had looked away from me, and I said, “I think somewhere deep inside, in a box that you’ve tried to keep a lid on, you do remember something.”
“Why would I lie about something like that?” she said, getting up from the sofa and chucking another log onto the fire. A flurry of sparks disappeared up into the chimney.
“Because you’re scared that if you remember too much, then you’ll go mad like your mother did,” I whispered. “Who would want to remember being murdered by their own mother? I don’t blame you for not wanting to remember something like that.”
“Stop it,” she suddenly hissed, her back turned to me as she stood before the fire.
“That’s the real reason you’ve spent your life chasing around after whispers, rumours, and half-truths,” I said, standing up. “You need to know whether you were going mad like your mother, or if the stuff you’ve buried deep inside is real. You’ve not been looking for proof in the existence of winged creatures, but proof that your dreams and memories are more than just that – that they had once been very real. Because if they are real, then you’re not seeing ghosts, hearing voices, or going mad.”
Melody turned to face me, but said nothing. Her chest hitched up and down as if her heart was racing.
Looking into her eyes, I said, “You knew I would someday come back, because in your heart, you knew I was real. You do remember me.”
Leaning in close to me, Melody suddenly crushed her lips against mine.
Chapter Seventeen
Kayla
We swept over the town of Havensfield. Below we could see a line of flashing police lights as they snaked through the darkness toward the carnage Potter and I had left behind. Perhaps some of those residents who had been peering out of their windows had reported us. What would they be able to tell the cops? That they had seen winged creatures? Their stories would keep reporters like Melody Rose busy for a while. But thinking of her only made me feel sad and regretful. Not because it had been her who had reported on mine and Isidor’s deaths, but because my brother died in this world hoping that he might find her again. If only he hadn’t been so stubborn and stayed back at the railway station that night. But what I regretted the most was that I hadn’t spotted Melody’s name on that newspaper clipping Sam had shown me. Sam had had it with him as he lay asleep in the waiting room while Isidor had told us his story. Perhaps if Sam had listened too, he might have recognised Melody’s name and been able to tell Isidor that she was alive in this new world and where she might be found. But the strangest thing of all was the fact it had been Sam in his future who had taken the picture of Melody and Isidor together. His mother would send him to take it, just like she had sent me to take a photograph of Kiera and her father and deliver Potter’s letters to Sophie.
Potter swooped alongside me, his wings pointed upwards as he glided through the cold night air.
“So how do we go back and deliver the letters to Sophie?” he shouted over the roar of the wind.
“The same way I got here,” I told him, thinking of the train I’d taken.
“Through a crack?” Potter asked.
“No, by train,” I said, banking left in the direction of Havensfield Railway Station.
Potter followed me. “I took a train to the Hudson River, and ended up in Kiera’s apartment,” Potter said, and I then knew he understood how the whole passing backwards and forwards by the trains worked.
“I took the train to the Hudson River too, but unlike you, I didn’t end up in Kiera’s apartment so I could leave the photograph, but up at Bleak Point Railway Station,” I explained.
“Why do you think you went off course?” Potter asked me.
“Why does any train veer off onto a different set of tracks?” I yelled sideways at him.
“How the fuck should I know?” he hollered back. “I’m not a train driver.”
“Someone moves the points,” I said. “Perhaps someone pushed or pulled a lever they shouldn’t have.”
“So what train do we catch back to Sophie’s where and when?” he asked as we dropped out of the sky.
Taking the love letters he had once sent Sophie from my back pocket, I waved them in his face and said, “I was told I had to catch the mail train.”
“Now how did I know you were gonna say that,” he smiled grimly at me as our feet touched down onto the platform. It was still night and any commuters that might be heading into town on the early train were yet to climb from their beds. There were two platforms and both were desolate. I could see a large, circular-faced clock attached to the station wall. It read 03:23 hours. With our wings withdrawing into our backs, we headed along the platform. There was a small waiting room. Potter rattled the handle, but it was locked.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking freezing,” he grumbled, pulling up the collar of his coat.
“We’re not meant to feel the cold. We’re dead, remember?” I said, looking at his pale face.
“Yeah, well, I don’t actually think I’m dead anymore,” he said. “My heart is beating again at least.”
“How come?” I asked.
“Me, Kiera, and Murphy took a dive in the Dead Waters,” Potter explained. “It kind of got the old ticker pumping again.”
“Do you still have the cravings for the red stuff?” I was curious to know.
“Yeah, but not as bad as before,” he said.
“I still get them real bad,” I told him, the sound of the station clock ticking away behind me against the wall.
“I kinda guessed that by the way you sucked that Skin-walker’s face off,” Potter grinned at me.
“If I hadn’t fed my thirst, my skin would’ve started to crack and go hard again.” I pressed my fingertips to my face. “It’s starting to piss me off.”
“As soon as we have delivered the letters and we get back to our own where and when, we’ll head for the Dead Waters,” he said. Then, thrusting his hands into his coat pockets, he puffed out his cheeks, and looking in both dir
ections along the track, he groaned, “Where the fuck is this train? It’s freezing.”
“I don’t think the mail train runs to a timetable like a normal train,” I said.
Stomping his feet up and down to keep warm, Potter looked at me and said, “So you never told me what happened that night in the field after Sam had seen his mum hanging out beneath the tree? I thought you said he hated the bitch.”
“She didn’t seem like a bitch to me,” I said.
“The mother-in-law never does at first,” Potter remarked. “Give it time.”
“She isn’t my mother-in-law, and never will be,” I said back.
“Jeez, the way you and Sam have been drooling all over each other, I’m surprised you’re not married, spawned eight pups or more, and got divorced already.”
“We’re not gonna have any pups,” I snapped.
“Sam’s a wolf, ain’t he?” Potter grinned at me.
“Look, do you want to know what happened, or are you just gonna stand there all night being a dick?”
“I’m sorry,” Potter chuckled, taking a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lighting one. “I’m just taking the piss.”
“That’s all you ever do,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Kayla, honest,” he smiled mischievously.
It was so hard to stay mad at Potter for long, and that’s what drove me crazy about him. So, taking a deep breath, I said, “When we reached Sam’s mum, he just kinda stood there open-mouthed and stared at her. It really was like he had seen a ghost. For so long he had believed his parents to have drowned in that boating accident. So when he saw her again, he couldn’t help but gasp, ‘“You’re alive!”
‘“I’m so sorry, Sam,” his mother said, and she reached out and took him in her arms. She held his face against her chest and stroked his hair. It really looked as if she genuinely cared for him, despite what Sam had told me about her.
“After the initial shock of seeing his mother again, and discovering that she wasn’t dead, Sam asked her what had happened that day on the boat. His mother said she didn’t have time to explain.
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