Vampire Breed (Kiera Hudson Series Book Four)

by Tim O'Rourke

  At the top of the stairs, Sparky dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together as if in prayer. He rocked back and forth on his knees as in worship. Who could demand such reverence, I wondered? But in my heart I knew who it was, it was that invisible man that Murphy, Luke, and Potter had talked about. But what was he doing at the manor? Had he been there all along, secreted into the shadows and watching all of us? Murphy had wondered how this man had always been one step ahead of us, been able to move his followers, like Mrs. Payne, into position – perhaps he had been there all the time?

  Sparky glanced up at the figure that stood before him, his hands clasped together. But I knew, like me, Sparky couldn’t see through the darkness that radiated from the figure. It was impenetrable - like a cloak surrounding him. Then the figure struck Sparky with his foot, sending him sprawling onto his arse. Turning away, the figure climbed the stairs to the secret hospital where the half-breed children lay dying, only kept alive by Doctor Ravenwood’s and Lord Hunt’s medicines.

  As I lay captivated by Sparky’s bright yellow stare, I could see the figure and Sparky enter the ward hidden in the attic of the Hallowed Manor. The children in their beds recoiled even before the figure or Sparky had come close. It was as if they could sense their hatred for them. I watched as Doctor Ravenwood came from his office at the end of the ward, and he begged Sparky and the other not to hurt his patients and it was then I knew how blind I had been - I hadn’t seen it!

  How had Sparky, on returning to the manor with Mrs. Lovelace, while my friends and I had fought the vampires in the clearing by the summerhouse, managed to single-handedly kill her and all the half-breeds? He also managed to overpower Doc Ravenwood and take two of the remaining children hostage. He had an accomplice – this invisible man had been waiting for him at the manor – they had acted together.

  And the vision was over. No longer could I see Sparky and the winged stranger go from bed to bed, killing each of the half-breeds in turn. The pictures disappeared as quickly as they had come, like a T.V. being switched on then off.

  With Sparky still astride me and grinning into my face, I reached out for the broom, which I had dropped. Curling my fingers around it, I bought the broom handle up into the air intending to bring it crashing down on top of Sparky’s skull. But it was violently snatched from my hand.

  I looked up to see who had taken it from me. Phillips was standing over me grunting and panting. He pounded the broom against his chest then threw it to one side. Sparky looked up at Phillips and drooled, “Let me eat the girl now – I can feel her heart beating in her chest – it will be ripe and bloody!”

  Then Sparky yelped as Phillips knocked him flying off me with the back of one of his giant claws.

  “Get away from her! She’s not to be harmed – not yet anyway!” Phillips roared.

  Sparky got to his feet and shook his head from side to side. He looked at Phillips and whimpered pathetically. He caught me looking at him and then giggled.

  Phillips pulled me to my feet.

  “Let me go!” I yelled, kicking and punching at him. “You can’t treat me like this!”

  But Phillips was too strong and his hold was like a vice. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nik. He stood in the shadow of a ticket booth, tucked away from view.

  “You told on me! You saw the hole and told on me!” I roared at him. “You ain’t ever going to be redeemed now. You’ll rot in hell!”

  Phillips, Sparky, and the wolf turned to see who it was I was screaming at, when two winged creatures flashed past me in a wave of shadows and clattered into Phillips and Sparky.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Taken by complete surprise, Phillips crumbled to the floor, his giant black wings sending up a shower of dust and dirt from the ground. Sparky howled and the second werewolf darted away, all of them taken by surprise.

  “Take these!” someone barked from beside me. Looking to my right, I could see that Nik had now appeared from the shadows of the ticket booth and was nudging what looked like a pile of rags across the ground towards me with his snout. I peered at the rags and could see that in fact it was my long black coat that I’d been wearing the day of my capture beneath the mountains. Snatching it up, I pulled it on and immediately checked the pockets. I was relieved when my fingertips brushed over my iPod, the CD I’d taken from the monastery and Murphy’s crucifix given to me by Potter. To have some of my possessions back was incredibly liberating as if I’d already escaped from my prison – but of course I hadn’t.

  Pulling my coat tight about me, I looked at Nik, and with some distrust in my voice I said, “What’s going on?”

  But before he’d the chance to say anything he was springing through the air towards Sparky, who was lunging at one of the winged creatures that flashed all around him in a blaze of black shadows. Sparky was quick, and he snagged one of the creatures with his claws. The creature almost seemed to stutter in mid-air and slow, and as it did so, its identity became clear.

  “Kayla!” I gasped, seeing her try and pull herself free from Sparky’s grasp. Her wings beat furiously and her auburn hair rippled out behind her in the morning breeze. But I could see that her once brilliant flame coloured hair now looked dull and lifeless. Then she was gone, released back into the sky as Nik lunged at Sparky and took a bite of him with his huge gaping jaws.

  There was a wailing behind me, then the familiar sound of stakes whizzing past me. Spinning round, I was overwhelmed to see Isidor, raining down a wave of stakes at Phillips. Phillips wrapped one of his wings around him as a shield, then raced towards Isidor who hovered in the air. But just as Kayla’s hair had lost its brilliance, Isidor looked pale, gaunt, and weak. He was naked to the waist, apart from the rucksack thrown over his back, and his wings that trailed from beneath his arms.

  “Isidor!” I shrieked in delight at seeing him. Whether he heard me or not, I didn’t know, as he remained focused on Phillips who raced towards him. Within feet of Isidor, Phillips launched himself into the air, stakes zipping past him as Isidor released them from his crossbow. But Isidor’s aim appeared to be off, either that or Phillips had lightning reflexes as the stakes flew harmlessly past him. Knowing that Isidor was in trouble in his weakened state, I rushed forwards towards the point from which Phillips was taking off from the ground. Even though he was more than a hundred feet away, I was upon him in an instant. It was like I had disappeared and reappeared on the other side of the walkway in a blink of an eye.

  Before I’d the chance to fully understand what had just happened, I was yanking at Phillips’ ankles and pulling him back out of the sky. He hit the ground with a sickening thud, and it sounded like I could hear every bone in his body rattle. Releasing him, he rolled quickly over, and seeing it was me who had thrown him to the ground, his face revealed a fleeting glimpse of surprise and shock.

  Without taking his eyes from me, Phillips scrambled to his feet and I was sure I could still see that look of shock in his eyes. But he recovered quickly, spinning through the air like a rocket. Then, as if from nowhere, Kayla was plummeting from above, driving her feet into him and knocking him off course. Snapping my head to the left, I watched as Phillips flew out of control into the derelict, old ticket booth, his impact causing it to erupt into a shower of splinters.

  Seizing his chance, Isidor swooped from the sky, and wrapping an arm about my waist, he raced me away over the walls of the zoo.

  “We can’t leave without Luke!” I yelled over the deafening sound of the wind that rushed over his wings. “We have to go back for him!”

  “Not now!” Isidor shouted back. “We’ve only just managed to escape!”

  Looking back, I could see Kayla tearing through the sky behind us, her wings rippling like two glittering sails. Then from above, l watched as Nik bravely continued to fight off Sparky as we made our escape.

  Clinging to Isidor, we floated silently in a mass of low-flying cloud. Kayla was beside us, her wings almost folded close, but open enough to keep he
r airborne. She seemed to have come a long way since I spied on her in the grounds of Hallowed Manor when she had practiced using her wings. The bony black claws at the end of each wing opened and closed as if snatching at the air. She looked like some kind of prehistoric butterfly, if any such creature had ever existed. On the other side of the cloud, I could see the shadows of the Vampyrus, as they soared back and forth in search of us. But we floated away with the clouds, unseen by our pursuers. Just like Kayla, Isidor was motionless, his wings slightly apart, just enough to keep him in the sky. It was then I remembered Luke telling Isidor about how the hunters amongst the Vampyrus used echolocation to track their prey - homing in on the vibrations that their giant wings made.

  Holding my breath, we floated like that until we were cold and wet through from the cloud moisture. How long we hid like that, I couldn’t tell; it was like time had stopped inside those giant clouds. We waited for the sounds of the Vampyrus to fade away. When the only sound was the wind tugging at the strands of my filthy, unkempt hair, Isidor and Kayla cautiously descended through the clouds and back towards the ground below.

  The road we landed on was narrow and it twisted its way into the distance, finally disappearing between two hills. The world seemed eerily silent, only broken by the odd bark or growl that came from amongst the trees that grew tall and wild on either side of the road. This wasn’t how I’d remembered the world to be – something had changed – but I didn‘t know what.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I’d watched in awe as Kayla had fluttered out of the sky. She had landed softly, and I hobbled towards her and took her in my arms. At first we didn’t say anything, we just stood in the cold wind and hugged each other. Like me, she wore a grubby-looking hospital gown, and her face, legs, and arms were covered in grime.

  “I’m sorry, Kayla,” I said.

  “What for?” she whispered back.

  “For not rescuing you,” I told her.

  “I knew you would come for me,” she said, “even though it put your life in danger and you ended up being captured yourself.”

  “It wasn’t just me - the others came in search of you, too,” I told her. There was so much I wanted to - needed to - tell her. Her mother and father’s death, the murder of Murphy. But now wasn’t the time.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about Phillips,” she said.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I told her.

  She pulled herself away from me, and over her shoulder I could see Isidor standing in the middle of the deserted road. Like all of us, his feet were bare, and he wore a baggy pair of striped pyjama bottoms. His body was deathly-white, and where I had once remembered a well-defined chest and stomach, I could see his chest plate and ribs almost seeming to poke through. The stubby-looking beard which grew from his chin was now long and black and the bottom of it nearly touched his chest. The black flaming tattoos covering his upper arms and neck looked as if they had been etched on the skin of a deflated balloon.

  I looked at him and he met my stare.

  Half-smiling at me, he said, “You look like shit, Kiera.”

  “It’s good to see you, too,” I smiled, and it was then I realised I couldn’t remember the last time I had smiled.

  Like I had embraced Kayla, I limped towards him, and threw my arms around his bony shoulders.

  “It’s good to see ya,” he said and squeezed me so tight I thought my ribs were going to snap inside of me. Then in my ear he whispered, “She doesn’t know I’m her brother – she doesn’t know me at all.”

  “Okay,” I whispered and squeezed him back. “I’ll leave that for you to tell her.”

  “Thanks,” he said back, then pulled gently away.

  Turning to face Kayla, I said, “Hey Kayla, this is Isidor.”

  Coming towards us, her eyes wide and staring she said, “I’ve seen you a couple of times before - I think you tried to escape once, didn’t you?” she said to Isidor.

  “I tried a few times,” he said, throwing his crossbow across his naked back, “not that it got me very far.”

  “So how did you both get out?” I asked them.

  “That wolf set us free,” Kayla said.

  “Yeah, he came to my cell, just before dawn and said that if I wanted to escape than I should follow him. At first I thought it was some kinda sick joke,” Isidor explained. “Then I saw Kayla was with him, and he had my crossbow and rucksack. So before he changed his mind, we went with him and he told us to wait in the shadows by the entrance to the zoo.”

  “I asked him what we were waiting for,” Kayla cut in, “and he told us that we would soon know. It wasn’t long before I saw you racing up that path towards us with Phillips and Sparky chasing you down. It was then that I realised that it was a breakout.”

  “Why do you think that werewolf helped us?” Isidor asked, rubbing the tops of his arms in an attempt to keep warm.

  I thought of Nik and how he had been cursed by his father. I could only imagine the horrendous crimes he had committed, but he had been true to his word and he seemed to be in search of redemption in one way or another.

  “He had to do it,” I told them.

  “Why?” Kayla asked. “Phillips will kill him for helping us.”

  “Maybe that’s what he wanted,” I whispered, almost to myself.

  “But, why?” Kayla pushed.

  Then meeting her gaze I said, “Just like us, Kayla, I think that all he wanted was to be free. And maybe he has his freedom now.”

  Cocking an eyebrow at me, Kayla said, “Whatever you say, Kiera. I won’t pretend to understand what you’re going on about and I’m too cold to be bothered to find out. Let’s say that we find ourselves some meat.”

  Hearing Kayla say this, I gripped her arm and said, “What do you mean? What sort of meat are you talking about?” From the corner of my eye, I could see Isidor staring at the both of us.

  “Whatever it was they were giving us back at that zoo,” Kayla started, “I don’t know what sort of meat it was, but it was delicious and I can’t get enough of the stuff.”

  I glanced at Isidor and something struck me. He looked like a corpse that had been warmed-up – all bones and loose skin, and I looked pretty much the same. But although Kayla looked battered and bruised in other ways, she didn’t look undernourished. Kayla looked as if she had eaten well during her time in captivity at the zoo. And although my whole being craved for the red stuff like an agonising itch that wouldn’t go away however much I scratched it, Kayla was yet to understand that she was addicted to human flesh.

  Knowing that this wasn’t the time to explain to her what the Vampyrus and Lycanthrope had been feeding her, I dreaded the moment when I would have to tell her everything that had happened while she had been held prisoner. With my heart sinking in my chest at the thought of that conversation, I put my arm around her shoulder and said, “C’mon, we should find somewhere to hide until we can figure out how we get Luke out of that place.”

  Supporting me as I limped down the country road, Kayla said, “Kiera, why are you limping? Have you got something wrong with your leg?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said back, “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Okay, sure,” she smiled, happy enough with my reply. Then, she added, “Hey did you meet my father at the zoo?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, not knowing what to say.

  “I think he musta escaped like us,” she smiled at me.

  “What makes you think that?” I asked her, knowing that by now he was probably dead.

  “Because he stopped coming to see me,” she said, and looking into her eyes, I wondered if she actually believed that.

  I glanced back over my shoulder in search of Isidor, another person to join in the conversation, so I wouldn’t have to answer all of Kayla’s questions. But he walked several feet behind us, his head stooped low and I guessed he could hear all of Kayla’s questions and he was wondering how he was going to tell her that he was her brother
.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The track leading away from the zoo carved its way through dense areas of woodland. I was grateful for the trees that climbed high above on either side of us, as they offered a natural camouflage against any of the Vampyrus that might still be searching for us high above. But all the while I kept heading east, towards the town that Nik had called Wasp Water.

  When the trees thinned out along the roadside, I ushered the others towards the bushy hedgerows to avoid being seen, just like Murphy would have told us to. Thinking about him, I put my hand into my coat pocket and brushed his tiny silver crucifix with the tips of my fingers. We made our journey in silence, all us looking paler and weaker by the minute and I knew that like me, Kayla and Isidor were fighting their cravings for the red stuff. My stomach continued to cramp, and even though the morning air was bitterly cold, hot beads of sweat streamed from my forehead. Kayla’s fiery red hair lay matted to her brow and cheeks in damp clumps and Isidor staggered along the uneven road, cradling his feverish body with his arms.

  I don’t know for how long or how far we had walked, but the meandering track that we had been walking on widened and we found ourselves on a road, which had signposts and markings on it. I prayed that we were nearing the town and hopefully some help.

  A small cluster of houses appeared ahead but I could see no signs of life anywhere. The world seemed eerily silent, only broken by the sound of crows squawking from high up in the trees. As we drew nearer to the houses, I could see that some of them looked as if they had been smashed down, like buildings that had been bombed during the Second World War. Now all that was left was mountains of rubble, with the foundations protruding from the ground like twisted limbs. Even through the pain of my cravings, itching skin, and agonising thirst, that voice inside of me, the Kiera that was pushing me on, told me that something was terribly wrong. But my thoughts of searching for help – for Potter – nagged away at the corners of my mind and I knew that we must keep on going. We needed to find food, water and some clothes.