Dead Push (Kiera Hudson Series Two#7)

by Tim O'Rourke

  “She had been like a mother to me,” Nik said, closing the gap between him and Potter.

  “Well I wouldn’t get yourself too upset about it,” Potter said, fixing Nik with his black eyes. “People have a habit of showing up here.”

  “We’ve searched for years,” Nik said with a shake of his head. “Eloisa hasn’t come through.”

  With another shrug of his shoulders, Potter said, “Well I guess that means a whole bunch of kids can sleep safely in their beds tonight. Now take off these chains, I need a smoke.”

  “I’ve got a good mind to rip your heart out, just like you did Eloisa’s,” Nik howled, nose to nose with Potter.

  “Oh, please don’t,” Potter smirked. “It’s only just started beating again and…”

  “Kill him if you want, little brother,” I said, anger beginning to swell inside of me. I hadn’t wanted Potter’s death to be public, so as not to draw Kiera out into the open. What happened to him deep within these cells, I really couldn’t give a fuck.

  Snarling, Nik raised his claws, ready to take Potter’s head off.

  “Stop!” Lilly Blu suddenly spoke up. “If you want to stop the photographer, then you’re going to need his help.”

  I looked sideways at Lilly.

  “We only need a drop of his blood for what I have planned,” Nik told her, not taking his eyes from Potter.

  “Your plans aren’t my plans, and I’m telling you we need him,” Lilly said, her voice soft but firm.

  With his claw still raised just an inch from Potter’s throat, Nik continued to stare brightly at him.

  “I’d listen to the lady if I were you,” Potter smiled again.

  There was a moment’s silence in which I half expected Nik to still rip Potter’s throat out. Then, swallowing hard like I had a throat full of poison, I stepped forward and placed my hand on Nik’s bare shoulder and said, “Leave him be, little brother. Another time will come when you can have revenge for what he did to Eloisa.”

  Slowly, I felt the muscles in Nik’s shoulders loosen as he lowered his claw. He turned his head towards me, his blue eyes blazing, then sunk his fist into Potter’s chest.

  Chapter Three

  Potter

  I felt Nik’s claws sink into my chest an inch, then stop. The pain was a killer and I cried out, throwing my head back and clenching my fists. I wrestled with the chains that bound my wrists, but they were too thick to be broken. I clenched my teeth as Nik opened and closed his fingers beneath my flesh. My heart thumped in my chest and this was the first time I’d felt true pain since coming into this pushed world. The kick-in that the Skin-walkers had given me in the snow outside the barn had hurt, but the pain had been dull compared to this. Nik’s fingers felt like four red-hot pokers being driven into me.

  “Fuck you,” I hissed through clenched teeth.

  Then, just when I thought I could take no more and the world began to swim before my eyes, Nik withdrew his fingers. They slid from out of my chest, glistening black with my blood.

  “You evil sonofabitch,” I groaned in pain.

  Ignoring me, Nik turned to look at his brother, Jack. Through eyes as narrow as slits, I watched warm streams of my blood trickle down Nik’s fingers, over his wrist, and down the length of his forearm.

  I dropped my head and looked at the four black puncture wounds in the centre of my chest. The blood had already started to clot there in crimson scabs.

  “Are you fucking deaf?” I spat, looking back up at Nik. “The Marilyn Monroe wannabe said you weren’t to kill me.”

  “You’re not dead, are you?” Nik said, without turning back to look at me.

  “No, but you fucking will be the moment these chains are taken off,” I grimaced, the pain in my chest easing with every passing moment. “I’ll be sticking four of my fingers into you, and I can promise you now, I won’t be aiming for your fucking chest!”

  “Shut up!” the three of them suddenly barked.

  “Jesuz!” Jack snarled at me. “Can’t you quit your bitching for just one minute?”

  “Who’s bitching?” I shot back.

  “Just be quiet,” Jack snapped, taking a step towards me. “It’s quite simple. Just keep your mouth shut. It’s not like I’m asking you to fart gold or anything. Now be quiet – or do you want to go to the guillotine?”

  “Anything’s got to be better than…” I started.

  Before I’d the chance to finish, Jack had unknotted the red bandanna from around his scrawny throat, rolled it into a ball, and stuffed it into my mouth. My eyes bulged in their sockets as I drew air up into my nostrils. Jack’s bandanna was salty tasting where for years it had soaked up his sweat. I gagged as hot bile shot up into my throat.

  “Quiet at last,” Jack said with a sneer, turning his long narrow back on me to face his brother again.

  I glanced at Lilly, but she looked away too and at Nik. Slowly, the younger wolf pushed his blood-covered fingers into his mouth and sucked my blood from them. He shot forward, and at first I thought he had rammed his fingers too far down the back of his throat and was now vomiting. I knew the feeling. But Nik wasn’t sick. He pulled his fingers from his mouth and buckled forward at the waist. He cried out and dropped to his knees. Trying to work the bandanna free from my mouth with my tongue, I watched as Nik shook violently as if throwing some kind of fit. I couldn’t see his face, as it was cast down towards the floor, but all the same I knew he was somehow changing. I watched in silence as his fair hair grew short and darker in colour. His thin frame began to fill out, his shoulders growing broader, his neck thicker, thighs firmer. He cried out again, as if in pain, lifting his head so as to look at me. It was then I was thankful Jack had stuffed his bandanna into my mouth, for I fear I might have screamed. To look at Nik was like looking into a mirror. He was me – he had become my identical twin. He tried to stand up and staggered backwards into the cell wall. Jack and Lilly reached for him. Taking him by the arms, they helped him to stand. Nik stood just feet away from me. I looked back at myself and again I wanted to scream. Not with fear, but with madness. And it was at that moment I understood how Isidor had felt when looking at those copies of himself floating in those tanks beneath the hangar just outside of Wasp Water. Isidor had felt anger at how someone had tried to copy him, and I just hadn’t understood his feelings. But as Nik came towards me, an identical replica of myself, I felt the urge to freak out, to run away as far as I could. I knew some Lycanthrope had the ability to take on the form of another by consuming their blood. Jack had copied McCain at Ravenwood, but I had never seen it happen, and never thought I would be copied. I didn’t like seeing another me. And besides, surely my nose couldn’t look that bent and twisted out of shape. Could it?

  “Don’t look so scared, Potter,” Nik said, looking straight at me.

  Jesus, he even sounds like me, I thought.

  He reached for my face, and I flinched backwards, unable to stop looking at myself.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, slowly pulling the cloth from my mouth.

  I gasped in a lungful of air. “What the fuck is going on here?” I muttered.

  “You want to escape, don’t you?” he said, looking at me.

  It was like having a conversation with myself.

  Before I had the chance to answer, Jack gripped Nik’s shoulder and spun him around.

  “No!” he barked. “I won’t let you do it.”

  “It’s the only way if you are to get out of Wasp Water and save Kiera,” Nik said. “She’s my sister, too, remember. I saved her once before from the zoo but I had no idea back then – in that world – who she really was. I’d like to help her again.”

  “There has to be another way,” Jack said, realising what it was that his younger brother was suggesting.

  Now I’m as smart as the next guy, and I don’t know if it had something to do with the shock of seeing Nik change into me, but I didn’t have a fucking clue as to what was going on.

  Then as if in
answer to my own questions, Jack said to Nik, “I won’t let you take Potter’s place beneath the guillotine.”

  “There isn’t any other way,” Nik said as I watched them. “Luke has to believe – the world has to believe – that both you and Potter are dead. If they think you have simply escaped, they will come looking for you – they will hunt you down.”

  To look at them was like having some kind of out-of-body experience as I watched myself deep in conversation with Jack Seth.

  “Nik is right,” Lilly said, looking up into Jack’s wizened face. “If Luke believes you are both dead, it will give us the breathing space we need to try and unmask this photographer.”

  “You don’t know who it is?” Jack glanced at her.

  “No,” she said with a shake of her thick head of white hair.

  Jack looked at the both of them and said, “I won’t let my younger brother pay the price for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  “But you did the same for me, before the world got pushed,” Nik reminded him. “You let Potter and the others believe it was you who murdered all of those young women, but it was me. You went on trial before the Elders to protect me.”

  “I was given twelve life sentences, not the death sentence,” Jack reminded him.

  “For a wolf to be imprisoned deep within The Hollows amongst those Vampyrus is worse than death, and you know it,” Nik said, looking and sounding exactly like me.

  “But there was always a chance of escape,” Jack said.

  “I’ve escaped death once before, Jack,” Nik said. “Perhaps I can do it again.”

  “Then let Potter take that chance,” Jack said, as if I were no longer present in the cell. Then looking at Lilly, Jack added, “Is there an escape for my brother if he does this? You understand the wheres and whens better than anyone.”

  “There is no coming back – not to this when,” Lilly said, shaking her head. “Maybe not to any when, not ever again.”

  “Did you hear what she said?” Jack said, turning on his younger brother. “I won’t let you take Potter’s place.”

  “I don’t need anyone to stand in for me,” I said, hooking a piece of red thread from between my teeth with my little finger. “I ain’t no coward.”

  “It’s not about who has the biggest set of balls,” Lilly said, glaring at me. “It’s who serves more purpose here – in this when.”

  “Well if you speak to most of the people who know me, they’d tell you I served no fucking purpose at all, so I guess it’s me who should go to the guillotine,” I said, keeping one eye on my lookalike.

  “I want to do this,” Nik said, looking back at his brother.

  “But why?” Jack demanded. “You’re my brother.”

  “And Kiera is our sister,” Nik reminded him. “We’ve already had two lifetimes together, it’s time you shared one with Kiera.”

  “What makes you so sure that I want to?” Jack growled at him.

  “Because you haven’t led her to Luke Bishop like you were meant to,” Nik said. “Jack, apart from me, you’ve never helped anyone in your life. She must mean something to you as you’re facing the guillotine because of her.”

  Jack lowered his head, then said without looking at his brother, “I can’t choose between my brother and sister.”

  “Nobody is asking you to choose,” Nik said. “It’s my choice. I want to do this for you and Kiera, Jack. I was lucky enough to have spent time with Kiera in that zoo, and I wish I had known then that she was my sister. But you know what? In a way I’m glad I didn’t know back in that world. If I’d known, I might only have helped her because of that fact. But in my heart I know I helped Kiera because she was worth helping – she was worth saving, Jack. And she’s worth saving now. But this time, it’s your chance to save her.”

  I watched silently as Jack raised his head and looked at his brother. Even though Nik now looked identical to me, Jack slowly drew one bony thumb down the side of his brother’s face.

  “Thank you, Nikolaou,” Jack whispered.

  Feeling as if I should say something too, after all, the wolf was saving my arse, I said, “Yeah, thanks Niko-whatever-your-name-is.”

  “I’m not doing it for you,” Nik barked back at me.

  “Sure,” I said, biting my tongue so I wouldn’t make some cocky comeback.

  From deep within the cellblock, the silence was suddenly broken by the rattle of keys.

  “They’re coming for you,” Nik said, pushing his brother towards the open cell door. “Go!”

  Lilly crossed the cell, came up behind me, and swiped away the chains which bound me. They clattered to the floor. “We’ve got to get moving,” she breathed in my ear.

  I headed towards the cell door, then looked back. “No offence or anything, and I don’t want to piss all over your plan,” I said, “but I get the whole creepy lookalike thing with me, the wolves are gonna think they are executing me when really it is you, but what about Jack? Aren’t they gonna wonder where he’s disappeared to?”

  Without saying anything, Nik bent down and covered his hands and forearms in the flesh and fur that he had cast aside when removing his wolf skin. With his hands and arms bright red with flesh and blood, he smeared some across his chin. Then, standing and looking at me, he said, “Knowing that death was near, and unable to control your hatred for the wolves, you killed and then ate your cellmate, Jack Seth, as your last supper.”

  “Nice,” I said, furrowing my brow. “You sure got it all figured out.”

  “There is nothing more cunning than a wolf,” Nik said, staring back at me.

  “That’s for sure,” I said, turning my back on him and leaving the cell.

  Chapter Four

  Jack

  I waited for Lilly and Potter to leave the cell. The sound of approaching cops was ringing louder in my ears with every passing moment. Still I stopped at the door and looked at my brother. He sat on the bed, looking identical to the man I’d spent most of my adult life hating and wanting to kill. But under that skin, I knew it was Nik who sat there waiting to take my enemy’s place beneath the guillotine. He looked up at me and stared through Potter’s dead black eyes.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I told him, swallowing the lump that had suddenly appeared in my throat.

  “Yes, I do,” he said, sounding just like that dick Potter.

  “But…”

  “Jack, they’re coming, and if they catch you here then we will all die and all of this would’ve been for nothing,” he said.

  I looked down at the torn pieces of flesh and fur that covered the cell floor, knowing that Luke and his merry band of Skin-walkers would believe it to be me – killed by Potter – my brother – before being taken to his death. The sound of heavy footfalls grew closer still, the thud-thud-thud of them echoing off the stone corridor walls of the custody block.

  “Run, Jack!” Nik whispered.

  I looked back at the cell door, then again at my brother. Reaching out with one long skinny hand, I ran my fingers through his short black hair. It didn’t feel like my brother’s hair and nor did it look like it. I closed my eyes and pictured Nik as a small boy, sitting on the rug before the fire at our mother’s house, as he played with his toy cars. I could see the light from the fire reflecting back in his almost white-blond hair and in his pale blue eyes. That was Nik – that was my little brother I could see, before like me, he turned into a killer – an animal.

  “I love you, brother,” I whispered with my eyes closed.

  With them still squeezed shut, I turned, so I didn’t have to see him sitting on that bed looking like Potter. I didn’t want to remember him like that. I stepped into the corridor outside the cell. I opened my eyes, and without looking back, I closed the cell door on my brother. I looked to the right, and could see Lilly and Potter hiding in the shadows further along the cellblock. I headed towards them. With my eyes fixed on Potter, I headed straight for him. Curling my bony fingers into a fist, I punched him squarely in the fa
ce. There was a cracking sound as my fist crunched into the flat of his nose and he shot back down the corridor, landing on the floor.

  “What the fuck was that for?” he gargled as his nose and mouth filled with blood.

  “It made me feel better,” I grunted, walking on past him and into the shadows at the end of the corridor.

  “No wonder my fucking nose looks the way it does,” I heard him mutter, pulling himself to his feet. “What, with Murphy’s driving and people queuing up to take pot-shots at me the whole fucking time…”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be such a prick, and perhaps people wouldn’t feel the need to slap you so much,” I said over my shoulder at him.

  “Who are you calling a prick…?” Potter started.

  “Give me a break,” Lilly said, brushing past me and heading up the corridor. “We’re meant to be escaping! Save your differences until we’re out of here.”

  I followed Lilly without saying another word, Potter moaning and groaning, puffing and panting behind us as he tried to stem the flow of blood gushing from his nose. I smiled to myself in the darkness, as Lilly rounded a bend in the corridor ahead. She led us into a narrow passageway. There was a gated door at the end, and weak streams of light poured in through the bars and lit the corridor. We headed towards the light.

  I watched as Lilly fished a key from the pocket of her white fur coat. She slipped the key into a rusty-looking lock, and yanked the gate open. We spilled out into the light to find ourselves standing on what once must have been the exercise yard. The concrete was cracked and weeds grew tall out of them. The white markings of a basketball court were now almost faded away. Much of the fencing and razor wire had come down in places, and what was left was orange-brown with rust. Beyond the fence I could see what looked like a piece of scrubland which led away to a more overgrown and hilly area.

  “Follow me,” Lilly ordered, edging her way along the side of the cellblock and towards an opening in what was once the fence. I looked back to see Potter stagger out into the light. Thick clots of black blood had already formed around his nostrils. His coat flapped open and I could see that the wounds Nik had made on his chest had now healed completely. There was no sign of them.