Dead Flesh

by Tim O'Rourke

  Chapter Forty-One

  Kiera

  We had been drawn to the chapel by the sound of the beating music – the screams told us we were heading in the right direction. The gates to the school were locked, and peering through them, I could see several cloaked figures racing back and forth across the lawn. The school with its high walls, search towers, and wide gravel path were just how I had seen it in my nightmare. And as I watched the figures racing around, I knew these were the Greys that Kayla had spoken about. I had seen them in my nightmare too – they had come from the school and had dragged that man back inside. But what or who were they?

  There was a grinding sound. I looked right to see Potter breaking the chains that were fastened around the black iron gates. They came away in his claws and clattered to the ground. The music continued to beat in the distance and so did the terrified screams of children. I looked left and Isidor threw open his coat, and with lightning speed, his crossbow was in his hands.

  “Ready?” I asked, looking at the both of them.

  “I’m always ready, tiger,” Potter winked back at me. Then, he was gone, racing away up the gravel path in the direction of the music and the screaming. His claws glinted in the moonlight and a small part of me pitied anyone who got in his way tonight. I knew that Potter had been frustrated hanging out at the farmhouse, and now that he had the chance to hunt some werewolves, I don’t think anyone or anything could stop him.

  I glanced at Isidor, who still stood beside me, his crossbow at the ready. “Let’s get Kayla and then get out of here.”

  “Sounds good to me,” he said, racing up the winding path after Potter.

  I hung back for just a moment, and when they were both some way ahead of me, I reached into my pocket and took out the bottle of Lot 13 that I’d sneaked from Isidor’s supply which he had brought with him to the farmhouse. I unscrewed the cap and brought the little glass tube to my lips. I didn’t want it. I really didn’t – but I couldn’t risk cracking-up if I needed to change into my half-breed form while trying to rescue Kayla. And by the sound of the chaos unfolding in the distance – I guessed that the chances of that were pretty high. So, tilting my head back, I poured the gloopy pink liquid into my mouth. I screwed up my nose at once. It tasted disgusting. How had the others managed to drink this shit? I wondered. It was so bitter in taste, my eyes began to water. Closing my eyes, I gulped the rest down. I placed the empty tube back into my coat pocket and headed after Potter and Isidor.

  My feet whispered over the gravel path as I raced forward. I looked down and my feet were just a blur beneath me. This was the first time since returning from The Hollows that I had tapped into those inner abilities that being a half-breed gave me. As I raced forward, it felt incredible to feel the wind against my flesh and my long, flowing hair. Deep inside of me, I understood Potter’s desire to be his true self for as much of the time as possible. Being a half-breed was a rush. Maybe I was finally beginning to accept what I truly was.

  In the distance I could see Potter standing over several of the Greys who were now lying on the ground at his feet. Isidor caught up with him just before I did. I looked down at them, their grey robes so tattered and torn, they looked as if they had been put through a paper shredder. The grass looked black and sticky, and I could see that it was blood. Some of the Greys had been decapitated, and their hooded faces lay some way off from the rest of the bodies.

  “What happened here?” I said, looking down at the carnage.

  “He did,” Isidor said, gesturing towards Potter with his crossbow.

  “Why?” I asked Potter.

  “They got in my way,” he said.

  “But...” I started.

  “But nothing,” Potter said, staring at me. “I did them a favour.”

  “How do you figure that out?” Isidor asked him, looking at the Greys spread across the grass before us.

  Potter reached down with one blood-soaked claw and lifted up one of the Greys’ heads by the top of its hood. Swinging it before him like a lantern, Potter yanked back the hood and I stumbled backwards. The face beneath the hood was hideous. It was grey and wrinkled like a rotten prune. The mouth hung open to reveal a set of yellow-stained teeth. But it was the eyes. It looked like they had been burnt out with hot pokers. There were scorch marks around them, and the eye sockets were deep and surrounded by flaky black skin.

  “What’s happened to their eyes?” I gasped.

  “Werewolves have been staring into them,” Potter said, tossing the head aside.

  “Who or what are they?” Isidor asked. “They look human.”

  “I’m guessing that they were the former teachers of this school,” Potter said. “McCain and his merry bunch of wolves would have needed to control them somehow – to get them to go along with his cruelty. If they went against him, then they used their good old-fashioned mind control by staring into their eyes. Some of these Greys might have even been the parents who we’ve heard tried to break their children out. Who knows and who really cares? They’re dead now. Let’s leave them in peace.”

  “But why do this to them?” I asked him.

  “He’s not allowed to kill them, remember – goes against the Treaty,” Potter said.

  “So why kill Emily Clarke?” Isidor asked him.

  “How should I know?” Potter shrugged, heading off towards the music and the screaming, which was coming from the other side of a tall line of trees.

  We followed him, but Isidor’s question wouldn’t leave me. So why had McCain murdered Emily Clarke if he could have silenced her another way?

  Potter burst through the tree line. There was a chapel with a white wooden roof and a spire that stretched up into the night. The screaming was coming from within the chapel. But now that we were closer, I could hear another sound, one that I had last heard in The Hollows. It was the sound of wolves snarling, barking, and howling.

  “Game on,” Potter said, his black eyes almost seeming to sparkle with excitement.

  “Let’s just try and get Kayla, then go,” I told him. “No more killing if we don’t have to.”

  “Sure,” Potter said, wiping the Grey’s blood from his claws, as if cleaning them before going into battle.

  “I’m being serious, Potter,” I told him.

  “I’m deadly serious,” he said back, and before I’d the chance to say anything else, he was running towards the chapel, shredding his shirt free as he went. Isidor and I ran after him, but Potter was already raking apart the locked chapel doors with his claws by the time we had caught up with him.

  The door fell away in splinters, and once there was a hole large enough to squeeze through, Potter leapt inside. There was a small foyer, and now that we were inside, the music was deafening. The chapel was illuminated in random flashes of bright white light. I peered through the darkness and froze. Kayla was standing in the middle of the chapel, with a giant wolf standing before her. She looked as if she had been hypnotised. Kayla’s face was blank-looking, her mouth open, as the wolf stared into her eyes. Then, the wolf was flying backwards across the chapel. I looked right and I could see Isidor reloading his crossbow.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Kiera

  With the chapel door lying in splinters at our feet, a flood of shrieking and terrified children shoved past us and out into the night. A timid-looking girl with tears streaming down her face spotted Potter’s huge claws and came to a standstill before him. She looked up into his face, her bottom lip wobbling and her body trembling. She was so fixated on Potter that she failed to see the giant paw that lunged from the darkness of the chapel and grabbed for her. Potter saw it though, and in a blaze of movement, he had seized hold of the attacking werewolf and dragged it into the foyer.

  With his claws and fangs flashing in the strobe lighting, he pulled apart the wolf’s giant jaws. The cracking sound that came from the wolf as its face was torn apart was so loud that it could be heard over the boom-boom of the music which was still playing.


  The young girl stood rooted to the spot and watched as Potter sunk his fangs into what was left of the wolf’s giant head. Then, as if in the early stages of throwing a fit, the girl began to shake all over in fright. Her mouth dropped open and she began to scream. Potter snapped his head up and looked at the girl. With blood smeared around his mouth and stringy pieces of flesh hanging from his fangs, he said to the girl, “If I were you, sweetheart, I’d get out of here before this turns nasty.”

  How much nastier Potter intended this rescue to become, I dared not imagine, but heeding his warning, the girl turned on her heels, and screaming, she fled the chapel. With her cries fading into the distance, Potter stood and wiped the blood from his mouth with his forearm.

  Catching me staring at him, he looked at me and said, “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said back and turned to look at Isidor, who was now firing wave after wave of stakes into the flashing darkness. The sound of howling nearly drowned out the song The Time by The Black Eyed Peas, which was now thundering throughout the chapel. Then, from within the darkness, I saw a series of bright yellow lights begin to flash. It took me a moment to realise that it wasn’t part of the strobe lighting that I could see, but the burning eyes of the wolves as they came towards us.

  “I’m going to get Kayla,” Isidor shouted over the pumping music and the snarling that was now coming from the approaching wolves.

  Before I had a chance to say anything, Isidor was leaping and spinning over the heads of the wolves and releasing a volley of stakes into them. The wolves raised their colossal heads and gnashed their foaming jaws at him. But Isidor was too quick for them, and their jaws crunched down on nothing more than air. Some turned to go after him, but the main pack fixed their crazy yellow eyes on Potter and me and charged us.

  “Ready, sweetcheeks?” Potter grinned at me, and just like the words in The Black Eyed Peas song that was playing, he looked as if he was having the time of his life. Then he was gone, launching himself through the air at the wolves. His arms moved so fast that they were nothing more than a blur of movement. Fur and chunks of wolf flesh spattered the walls, ceiling, and floor of the chapel.

  I watched several of the wolves bound towards Potter, knocking him off his feet and sending him skidding on his back across the dance floor. And in the strobe lights that continued to pulse and flash all around us, everything seemed to move in slow motion. I watched as Potter disappeared beneath a mountain of fur and muscle, and I shot through the air, fangs and claws gleaming.

  My razor-sharp fingernails sliced in the flanks of a wolf, and as I felt it spasm beneath me, it snapped its giant head around to see who or what was on it. With its teeth just inches from my face, it gnashed at me. Jerking my head backwards, I buried my free claw into one of its massive eyeballs. Something close to puss burst from its eye socket and splashed me. It felt warm and sticky against my face. I ripped my other claw from its belly, dragging my nails in a zigzag motion so the wound could never be closed. The wolf shrieked and convulsed as its entrails spilled from the ragged hole that I had cut in it. Within seconds the wolf lay motionless, its giant pink tongue lolling from between its jaws. I stood up,then was swiped sideways across the chapel. I crashed into the far wall, splinters of wood showering through the air. I rolled onto my back as a huge black wolf leapt on me. Pinning me down with his giant paws, it looked into my face with its seething eyes.

  “Who are you?” the wolf roared over the music, the sounds of ripping, tearing, and howling now seemed louder than the music. “What sort of creature are you?”

  I tried wriggling free of him, but he was so heavy that I found it difficult to breathe, let alone move.

  “How dare you interrupt my ceremony!” he howled into my face, his breath so hot, that it felt as if I were staring into a furnace.

  “You call stealing the souls of children a ceremony?” I spat.

  “Do you not know who I am?” he roared. “I’m McCain, the Match Maker.”

  Realising who it was beneath the fur and remembering how he had ripped Emily Clarke to pieces, I knew that I was in trouble. I could fight back, but I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted McCain alive, but I doubted he felt the same way about me.

  “You’re nothing but a murderer, McCain, and I’m gonna prove it,” I screamed at him. “I’m gonna bring your whole world down around you. I’m going to make sure that you never hurt another child again!”

  “And how are you going to do that when you’re dead?” he woofed, then licked the length of my face.

  With his whiskered snout so close to my face, I lifted my head off the dance floor and whispered in his ear. “I’m dead already.”

  Then, I sunk my fangs into him.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Kayla

  It was like I was coming awake after an operation. The wolf had been staring into my eyes one minute, then she was gone, howling and flying back across the chapel. The wolf, Lola, seemed to be in my head as she had stared into my eyes. I could hear her breathing and a sound that I hadn’t heard inside me for a long time – the sound of a beating heart. Lola had been matching with me. But something had stopped her before the process had been complete. I looked up, and through the flashing lights I could see someone or something spinning through the air towards me. At first I thought it was a wolf, but the figure coming towards me was too agile. They moved with lighting speed as they fired...fired their crossbow.

  “Isidor!” I screamed, feeling as if I was going to explode with happiness. I watched him spin through the air like some freaky trapeze artist as he rained down stakes on the wolves that leapt into the air after him. The wolves he hit flew backwards, their claws scraping against the wooden dance floor.

  “Kayla!” someone shouted, and I spun round to see Sam being pinned to the floor by a silver-haired wolf. Its face was just inches from Sam’s, and a glistening line of drool swung from its foaming jaws and spattered against his face. “Kayla!” Sam screamed again, and then fell silent.

  I raced across the dance floor, my claws out. But as I made my way towards Sam, I watched as the wolf’s eyes began to light up like two burning pits. Sam’s face glowed yellow beneath their stare. My friend stared back into the eyes of the wolf and then something strange started to happen. I had seen a lot of things in my young life, but nothing so freaking weird as what I was now witnessing. Sam’s face seemed to be stretching upwards, like it was made of putty. It was like the wolf was pulling his face off with his eyes. I watched as Sam’s face almost seemed to wrap around the wolf’s head like a mask. With my blood turning ice cold inside of me, I knew that the wolf had started to match with Sam.

  “No!” I screamed, leaping into the air. My wings shot from my back, as I rocketed down on top of the wolf. I sank my claws into its meaty neck and yanked backwards. Looking down, I could see Sam’s face stretching like a latex mask.

  “You won’t take my friend,” I screeched into the wolf’s pointed ear. “Release him.”

  With all my strength, I wrenched backwards again. Then, flapping my wings furiously, I lifted the wolf off the floor. But Sam came with him, swinging by his face from beneath the wolf. Their faces were now joined together and I feared that it was too late to stop them matching.

  Isidor swept past me and I screamed at him. “Isidor, help me. The wolf has got Sam!”

  With crossbow in hand, Isidor flipped backwards, releasing two stakes which buried themselves into the eyes of the wolf. The beast shuddered beneath me, then, let out an agonising howl. Its eyes ran like liquid from their sockets and it looked like custard. For a moment, I thought I was gonna puke as the smell was disgusting - like rotten eggs. With its eyes dribbling across its snout, the spell that it had cast over Sam was broken and he fell to the floor. I released the wolf. It staggered onto all fours, its giant tail swishing to and fro in a frenzy. Blind, the wolf didn’t know which way to go. It howled, then dropped to the floor, a wooden stake sticking out from the back of its skull.

  I
dropped to the floor and knelt beside Sam. He didn’t move. “Sam!” I shouted, and shook his shoulders. In the sparks of light that still flashed on and off around us, I looked at Sam’s face. It was swollen like a bruised melon. It was so puffy that I could barely see his face. His eyes were swollen shut and his lips were purple.

  “Is he dead?” Isidor shouted over the music.

  “No, I can hear his heartbeat,” I told him, taking one of Sam’s hands in my claw.

  “He should be safe now,” Isidor said. “I think Potter is making light work of the...”

  “Potter’s with you?” I gasped, looking up at him. “Where’s Kiera?”

  “Under that wolf,” Isidor said, pointing across the dance floor.

  “Go and help her and I’ll get Sam out of here,” I said, lifting him into my arms.

  “You can’t bring him with us, Kayla,” Isidor warned me. “He’s human.”

  “I’m not leaving him here,” I said. “Sam is my friend.”

  “Potter isn’t going to like it,” Isidor smiled, then winked at me.

  “That should make you happy then,” I smiled back at him, as I carried Sam in my arms across the dance floor.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Kiera

  McCain roared in pain as I sunk my fangs into his shoulder like a set of knives. He twisted above me as he tried to shake me off, but I clamped my jaws down hard. He swiped at me with his paws and missed. This seemed to heighten his anger and he bellowed in rage. I didn’t know for how much longer I could keep hold of him. I knew that as soon as I released him, he would rip my head off and that would really kill me. I doubted that the Elders would give me another chance – and if I were honest with myself – I wouldn’t have wanted one. The next time I died, I wanted to stay dead – just not yet.