Vampire Breed (Kiera Hudson Series Book Four)

by Tim O'Rourke

  I looked at the bowl of meat sitting in a pool of black blood. Trembling all over, I reached out and touched it with the tips of my filthy fingers. The meat felt warm and moist and I just wanted to snatch it up and ram it into my mouth. To tear it into pieces with my teeth, taste the blood on my tongue and let it sooth my burning throat. With tears running down my cheeks, I stretched out my fingers and pushed the bowl away. Turning towards the water, I cupped it in my shaking hands and raised it to my cracked lips. I poked my tongue from my mouth and licked at the water and it felt cool and wonderful. Sitting on the floor of the cell, I sipped at the water, and let it wash over my tongue and down the back of my throat.

  “Save some!” The Kiera that still wanted to escape said in my ear. “You might need it to soak the pages of the book in.”

  “But I need those pages,” I whispered aloud. “It has a secret code written on them.”

  “Save it – you’ve got a long night ahead of you and you need to be strong,” the other Kiera said.

  I took the bowl from my lips, and placed it back on the floor. I couldn’t help but notice how the water looked so nice as it sloshed against the side of the bowl.

  Trying not to think about the water and the other stuff – the red stuff, I thought of Nik and I wondered how nice it would have been to see him before I made my escape. I secretly hoped that he would come before nightfall. Although I had found him frustrating at times, he had been a friend to me.

  Then as if my prayers had been answered, there was the sound of keys rattling in the lock and the door was slowly swung open. Glancing up, I hoped to see my friend. Instead, with what little strength I had left, I edged myself away from the door as Phillips and Sparky came towards me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I scrambled onto my chair as Phillips strode in with Sparky beside him. Both were in human form. Phillips wore a black shirt that was open at the throat, and I could see the scars that ran down the length of his face and neck. They still looked raw in places, pink and mauve and I remembered how I had watched from high up in a tree in St. Mary’s graveyard as Potter had attacked him. That night seemed like years ago now. They circled me a couple of times, I noticed Sparky sniff the air as if his Lycanthrope instincts simmered beneath his Human form.

  Phillips stopped in front of me and asked Sparky, “How’s her leg healing?”

  Sparky came forward, crouched down, and rubbed his nose into the scabs that had now completely formed over the wound. He then ran his tongue up the length of it. He smacked his lips together and then turned to face Phillips.

  “I think her leg has more or less healed,” he said.

  “Are you sure?” Phillips asked, with a tinge of excitement in his voice.

  “She’ll be good enough,” Sparky smiled at Phillips.

  “I am right here, you know,” I said.

  Without warning, Phillips pushed me from my chair and sent me sprawling across the floor.

  “What was that for!” I yelled.

  Phillips came slowly forward and towered over me.

  “Who gave you the book?” he asked, his black eyes boring into mine.

  “I told you, I didn’t catch their name,” I protested.

  “Liar!” Phillips roared. Sparky almost seemed to giggle behind him.

  Phillips reached out and picked up ‘The Wind in the Willows’ and flicked through it. I nervously glanced up at the ceiling. Sparky caught my stare and I immediately looked back at Phillips. His long, bony fingers were methodically turning the pages, and then they stopped. He slowly raised his head and looked at me.

  “There are pages missing,” he grunted. “Why have you ripped pages from the book?”

  My mind raced and the pain in my stomach grew worse and it felt as if my innards were being ripped from me. I had to think of something and quick. Then looking up at him, I winced and said, “Well what do you expect when you don’t provide any toilet paper? What am I meant to do?”

  Phillips eyed me suspiciously, and then said, “You’re a savage!”

  “Why don’t you get laughing-boy over there to go check out the hole?” I said with as much confidence in my voice that I could muster. “He’s obviously got an amazing sense of smell!”

  Phillips glanced at Sparky who seemed to have lost his sense of humour all of a sudden.

  “Aw, Phillips you can’t be serious?” Sparky barked.

  Then looking back at me, Phillips said, “I’m taking the book.”

  “No you can’t…” I started to protest, but then I realised that I didn’t actually need it to assist my escape anymore, as I would be gone tonight and they would discover the hole tomorrow anyway. But if my dreams – memories – were true, the book had some deeper meaning – it had a code hidden within its pages.

  Seeing my distress, Sparky began to chuckle again, and if I hadn’t of needed all of my remaining strength for what lay ahead of me that night, I would have punched him straight in his fucking face.

  “Tell me who brought the chair or I’ll take that as well,” Phillips said.

  A surge of panic now swept through me, as I knew that without the chair my escape would be over.

  “I don’t know their name,” I tried to convince him.

  “This is your last chance! Tell me their name or the chair goes!” Phillips warned.

  I looked at him and I knew that he meant every word. But I remembered Nik had told me that if he’d been discovered bringing me the book and chair, Phillips would have ripped his throat out.

  “They never told me their name!” I shouted.

  Phillips looked at me then turned and snatched up the chair.

  “No!” I yelled. “You said I could use it to help heal my leg. Don’t you need my leg to be better?” I pleaded.

  Phillips turned at the cell door and grunted.

  “Your leg is good enough for what I have planned for you!”

  Sparky then turned, produced a large broom from the corridor outside and threw it at me.

  “And clean this cell – it’s disgusting!”

  “You clean it, you piece of shit!” I shouted.

  Phillips slammed the cell door shut, taking my chair and my chance of freedom with him.

  “No! Bring them back!” I screamed. But it was no good, from within my cell I could hear Phillips stomping away down the corridor, Sparky chuckling insanely beside him.

  I got to my feet and limped over to the cell door. I banged on it with my fists and roared over and over again.

  “Let me outta here! I’m not an animal – it’s you who should be locked up in here, not me!”

  I slid down the door and settled on the floor, rolling into a ball. I looked up at the ceiling and wiped away the hot tears that ran down my dirty cheeks. The last shards of daylight shone through the square hole and I knew that my escape was over. The thought of spending the rest of my life locked in a zoo terrified me and I knew that the thought of escape was the only thing that had kept me going over the last few days. Now that had been taken away from me, I didn’t know how I would get through tomorrow – let alone a life time of captivity. And what about the book with the code? He had taken it.

  What was it that Phillips had in store for me? I wondered.

  Tomorrow morning he would come for me and the thought of that moment filled me with dread.

  I rolled onto my back and looked up at the square hole and the wire mesh. Over the last few days, as I had toppled on the chair, frantically scratching away the plaster, freedom had seemed so close – but it was something I now believed I would never have.

  Closing my eyes, I pictured lakes, forests and mountains. I imagined running towards them, feeling the sun on my face, the rain on my skin, the wind tugging at my hair and the…broom! My mind screamed at me suddenly.

  I can use the broom that Phillips gave me to get out of here!

  Clambering to my feet, I snatched it up from the floor. I looked up at the square hole and could see only blackness outside. There was no moon
tonight and I was grateful for that, because tonight I was going to escape and the darkness would hide me.

  Taking hold of the broom firmly in my hands, I raised it above my head and began to jab away at the pages from the books that I had pressed into the holes. The paper began to fall away in large chunks and land on the floor of my cell. I continued to prod away at the papier-mâché until I had broken it all free.

  Once I could see the edges of the wire mesh, I worked the handle of the broom under it and pulled it loose. The edge of the mesh hung down like a drooping lip and I turned the broom over and worked the head of it between the edge of the wire and the hole. I yanked on the broom and bent the wire mesh back on itself, so there was a gap. Standing back, I looked up at it, but could see that it still wasn’t quite big enough for me to squeeze through.

  If only I had that chair with its little silver caps for just one more night, then I would have been able to have scraped away enough of the plaster to release one more side of that wire mesh. But I hadn’t one more night – I only had tonight and I would just have to improvise and make the best of the broom.

  Then, I heard a growl come from behind the hatch. I froze in the darkness, my heart racing against my chest.

  The paw never bought food at this time of day – it had always been early morning!

  Maybe it had heard the sound of the broom banging away at the ceiling – perhaps that was what had roused its attention. I listened intently and I could hear whatever it was moving about outside the hatch. Pulling the broom away from the hole, I quickly swept the pieces of paper into the corner of the room and lay down on top of them.

  I lay in the dark and waited. The paw beyond the hatch – if that’s what it was – continued to move about, woofing and barking into the night.

  What was it doing?

  Maybe I had been discovered and it was signalling for Phillips to come quickly to my cell. Then I could hear movement in the corridor outside, there was an animal out there and it was coming towards my cell. I lay as still as I could, hoping that if it was Phillips and he did look in to check on me, he might think that I was asleep and leave me alone.

  But what about the hole?

  I opened my right eye and peered up at it. The wire mesh hung down, bent and twisted out of shape.

  Anyone would notice it – even a dumb Vampyrus!

  Then the sound of scraping against rust filled my cell as the black iron door was swung open.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nik came sauntering silently into my cell; the only sound he made was the soft whisper of his paws upon the ground.

  “What do you want?” I asked impatiently. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I was burning up with fever, my stomach was cramping and I didn’t want my escape delayed.

  “That’s nice,” he woofed. “I risk everything to come and see you every night and that’s the thanks I get!”

  “Why do you bother then?” I asked, as I continued to lay motionless on top of the pieces of paper.

  “Because I’m curious,’” he purred again.

  “About what?”

  “You!”

  I looked up at the hole and could see that he was standing directly beneath it. If Nik stayed there, I doubted he would notice it.

  “Look Nik, I don’t mean to be rude – but I think you should go,” I told him. “I’m already in enough trouble with Phillips and if he finds you in here – we’ll both get it!”

  “Where’s your sense of fun?” he asked.

  “Sense of fun?” I asked disbelievingly. “I lost my sense of fun months ago,” and I thought of how much life had changed since arriving at The Ragged Cove.

  Nik came closer, stepping from under the hole above him. I looked up and then quickly back at Nik. He came closer still and then to my surprise, he nuzzled his head against my cheek. His fur was smooth like silk and as soft as pillows.

  “I know what you are going through, Kiera. I know what it feels like to be trapped behind bars all day, unable to run free,” he whispered into my ear. “Your prison is made of stone walls, mine is the coat of fur.”

  “What are you really like?” I asked him, trying to keep his attention so he didn’t look up at the great gaping hole above.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “You’re a Lycanthrope, right?” I asked. “So what do you look like when you’re not masquerading as a wolf? How old are you?”

  “I’m sixteen-years-old,” he said, fixing me with his piercing yellow eyes. “I stand about six-foot-seven in height. I have blonde hair and am quite scrawny.”

  It was hard for me to picture Nik as he described himself when not shaped as a wolf. It was hard for me to believe that he could look human at all as I’d only ever seen him as a wolf. But to think that there was a person beneath the thick coat of grey fur, made me feel sad for him. Like he said, he was trapped too.

  “What was it that you did which was so terrible that you’ve been trapped?” I asked him, and this time I wasn’t asking because I wanted to distract him from the hole in the ceiling – I really did want to know.

  “I can’t tell you that,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “What I did is too terrible to speak of,” Nik barked at me, then with a swish of his giant tail, he slumped to the ground. “But I have cravings just like you do, Kiera. I understand your suffering – you want that flesh in the bowl over there as much as I want to rip your throat out.”

  “Rip my throat out?” I breathed, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I was hiding the mashed-up pages of that book beneath me, I would have leapt to the other side of the cell.

  “But it’s more than just wanting to rip your throat out,” he explained, never taking his bright yellow eyes off mine. And just like I’d stared into Jack Seth’s eyes, I could see glimpses of Nik’s true intentions. In those snapshots, I could see him hurting me – but it was more than just hurting me. He was torturing me, slowly and deliberately. He had me caught in his trance, and although my pain and suffering was unbearable, I couldn’t help but tell him how much I needed him, wanted him. And even though in those glimpses I was bleeding and close to death, my whole being yearned for him.

  Then those nightmarish images were gone, and Nik had broken my gaze.

  “See, Kiera, I’m nothing more than a killer,” he growled. “And like you, fight the urge to run to that flesh over there and devour it, I fight the desire to do all of those things to you that you’ve just seen in your mind’s eye.”

  “What would happen to you if you did?” I asked him, my heart racing in my chest.

  “Just like if you ate that flesh over there, you’d be lost to yourself forever. With each mouthful you would become like those other Vampyrus – Phillips and your mother – feeding off humans and creating vampires for the rest of eternity,” he explained. “And if I were to murder you now, pleasure myself – the pleasure would only be short-lived as my father’s curse would only embed itself deeper into my soul.”

  “Can the curse be lifted?” I asked him.

  “Like your curse, Kiera, it can only be lifted if you beat your cravings for flesh,” he said, “and mine will be lifted when I’ve beaten my cravings to murder and kill.”

  “So that’s what all this is about?” I asked him. “You bringing me the chair, the book – being kind to me. It’s your way of redeeming yourself somehow?”

  “It’s more than that,” he said, still unable to look at me. “You don’t know how much I want you, Kiera. Of all my victims, none have enticed me as much as you. To be in your presence drives me half crazy – I’ve never taken a half-breed before. The others have all been human. But with you, there is something different and it makes my heart race and fills me with nerves, anger, hatred; but most of all, desire. To be with you is overwhelming and every fibre of my being is screaming at me to take you – ravish you. So if I can fight the cravings that I have for you, then I can beat this – I can stop being a killer.”

  Then, looki
ng down at the large, black scab that covered my shin, I said, “But it was you who bit me, right?”

  Looking at me he said, “Yes, it was me – but it’s not what you think.”

  “So you just bit a lump out of my leg for fun?” I hissed.

  “Doctor Hunt got me to do it,” Nik barked at me.

  “Doctor Hunt?” I said, not believing what I was hearing.

  “It has something to do with a code and that book I brought you,” Nik said.

  “I don’t have the book anymore,” I stressed. “Phillips has taken it.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Nik woofed at me.

  “But the code is in it!”

  “No, its’ not,” Nik said, looking straight into my eyes.

  Breaking his stare in case I succumbed to him, I said, “But I remembered Doctor Hunt telling me that he’d hidden the code within the pages of that book.”

  “And he did,” Nik said. “But he was convinced that there was a spy amongst you and your friends – a traitor. You had a friend called Murphy, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, nodding my head.

  “Doctor Hunt told me that this Murphy and he were friends. Murphy stayed with Hunt at his manor for a while. Hunt told him of his fears, but Murphy wouldn’t believe that one of his friends could be caught up in all of this. Doctor Hunt said that he was close to finding out who it was, when suddenly he was captured and brought here to this zoo, never finding out who the spy was. But he is convinced that there is one amongst you. The book does hold a part of the code – but he made a second copy and hid it somewhere safe.”