by Tim O'Rourke
“He started it…” Potter said blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth.
“You started it back in the Gate House,” Luke snapped back.
“I give-up!” I cried, throwing my hands up into the air. “Coanda, just lead me to this Dust Palace so I can get this over and done with.”
“Follow me,” Coanda said, scrambling down the rocky ledge we had landed on.
I followed after him and looked up to see Potter and Luke climbing down behind me. They didn’t even look at one another.
Once we had reached the cracked and ash-covered ground, we stood and watched the battle rage in the distance. The sky above the Light House was alive with Vampyrus as they fought one another. Even though I was some distance away, I could hear the sound of their giant wings beating and their agonising screams of pain and occasional triumph as they did battle with the Vampyrus.
On the ground, another battle was being raged as the mutant half-breeds ran wild, clawing at and feeding off the fallen Vampyrus. Coanda had been right, the resistance he had put together was outnumbered by the army Munn had grown, either be it artificially or by brainwashing.
I couldn’t bear to watch those freaky imitations of Kayla, Isidor, and me anymore, so turning to face Coanda I said, “Which way is it to the Dust Palace and the Elders?”
“Over there,” Coanda said, pointing in the opposite direction to the battle. “But I think we’ve got a problem.”
“What sort of a problem?” I asked, turning to look in the direction that he was pointing. But I didn’t need any answer from him to tell me of the imminent danger we faced as I looked at the wave of mutant half-breeds that were racing towards us across the wasteland.
Chapter Thirty-Three
They came at us, their eyes burning red on either side of their grotesque faces. They might not have been able to fly, but they had our speed. A wake of red dust and silver ash billowed up behind them as they raced towards us. Their claws gleamed in the orange glow cast by the lava that circled the Light House. The sky had turned a blood red and the stalagmites twinkled overhead like rubies.
We formed a line. There was nowhere else to go. We were surrounded from behind, in front, and above as a flock of Vampyrus swooped towards us. Potter spat away the cigarette that dangled from the corner of his mouth and flexed his claws as he readied himself to fight. Luke’s wings beat behind him and he brandished his fangs.
“Do you have a plan?” I asked Coanda.
“No, but I do,” someone said from above us.
We all looked up to see a tall, lone figure standing on top of the ledge we had just scrambled down from. Even with his baseball cap pulled down so that most of his face was cast in a shadow, it was his wild, yellow, gleaming eyes that gave him away. There Jack Seth stood. His emaciated figure silhouetted against the crimson sky.
“I thought you were dead?” Potter growled with annoyance at seeing Seth again.
“And you’ll be glad I’m not,” Seth said back.
“We don’t need your help, Lycanthrope,” Potter hissed.
“Are you so sure about that?” Seth smiled, nodding in the direction of the approaching half-breeds. “Your situation doesn’t look good.”
“I’ve been in worse,” Potter grumbled.
“Time is running out,” Seth reminded us. “Do you want my help or not?”
“Yes,” I yelled, answering for all of us.
“Kiera!” Potter snapped.
“Shhh!” I told him. And however much it pained me to do so, I looked up and said, “Yes, we need your help, Jack Seth.”
“On one condition,” he smiled back, the red bandanna knotted about his scrawny throat flapping in the rising wind.
“Oh great, here come the conditions,” Potter sighed.
“What do you want from us?” I called up to him, knowing the half-breeds were now on our heels.
“I come with you to the Dust Palace,” he yelled back.
“No way,” Luke cut in.
“Done!” I shouted. “Now get your scrawny arse down here and fight!”
Without wasting any further time, Seth stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled like a man trying to attract the attention of his wayward dog. No sooner had he taken his bony fingers from his mouth, there came a rumbling sound which was so loud and violent, the ground beneath my feet began to shake. I looked up to see Seth tearing the flesh from his body in bloody strips and as he took on his werewolf form, a pack of giant wolves scrambled over the rocks and began to howl into the night. Their jaws were huge, like caves that were filled with razor-sharp teeth and thick, ropey lengths of drool sprayed from them.
Without needing any prompting from Seth, the werewolves leapt from the rocks and bounded towards the approaching half-breeds. The werewolves’ bear-sized bodies shook with muscle and their fur gleamed crimson in the light from the Light House. With their colossal paws, they swiped at the half-breeds sending them flying through the air. Others lunged with their giant jaws, easily fitting the half-breeds’ heads into their mouths. With a quick shake of their powerful necks they had torn the half-breeds’ heads clean off.
Jack Seth leapt from the rocks and landed in front of me, and even though he stood on all fours, he was big enough that he could look squarely into my eyes.
“Thank you for coming to help us,” I said, trying hard not to be caught by his stare.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Kiera Hudson,” he woofed at me, and the hair blew back off my face. “I didn’t come back for you or your friends. I want an audience with the Elders as much as you do. I have my own race to think of and I want the curse that haunts us lifted.” Then he was gone, bounding away, his giant jaws snapping and snarling at the first half-breed he came across.
“Doesn’t that guy ever die?” Potter asked no one in particular as he stood and watched Seth and the other werewolves slice their way through the half-breeds.
“Perhaps he’s hoping you die first,” Coanda replied.
“Not today,” Potter growled, springing into the air.
Without saying a word, Luke took to the air after Potter. Although they now had their differences, when it came to fighting the enemy, they stood shoulder to shoulder, their dislike for each other momentarily put aside. Coanda went after them, and I followed.
We were attacked from all sides, and it felt as if someone or something wanted to rip me apart, to devour me - kill me - from every angle. As a team we flew, ran, bit, and clawed our way through the mutant half-breeds and the Vampyrus that attacked from above. Soon, the hard-panned ground surrounding the Light House had become a bloody wasteland, littered with corpses. We pushed on, following Coanda as he cut through the battle. The air was filled with the deafening sounds of squawking, howling, and screaming. Werewolves leapt and bound, the Vampyrus beat their giant wings and the half-breeds fought with a frenetic energy that was close to madness.
Coanda cut a path through the half-breeds and we followed him into a rugged area of sandy-coloured stone. “We are never going to make it, there are too many,” he roared over the sounds of battle. “Even with the help of the Lycanthrope, we are losing.”
“Any suggestions?” Potter snapped, then he bit off the face of one of those half-breeds that looked like a deformed version of Kayla.
“We’ll have to go via the Murka Tunnels,” Coanda shouted.
“Have you lost your mind?” Luke roared as he gutted a half-breed with his claws.
“There is no other way!” Coanda said.
“What are these tunnels?” I yelled, staving off another attack from the half-breeds.
“They are a labyrinth of passageways that stretch beneath The Hollows which are filled with a fog that is near impossible to see through.”
“They don’t sound so bad,” Potter half-smiled.
“They are named the Murka Tunnels because of the murky fog,” Coanda went on, ignoring Potter’s remark. “But one wrong turn and you’ll never find your way out.”
“So
unds better and better,” Potter said, driving his hooked claws into the throat of a passing half-breed. Blood jetted onto his face, and he wiped it away with his muscular forearm.
“But the fog is rumoured to drive you mad if you are in it for too long. Many have gone into the tunnels but never to be seen again, and they are believed to still be wondering around down there, driven to the brink of insanity.”
“What a load of old bollocks,” Potter grinned. “You’ve been reading too many James Herbert books.”
“I’ve heard the rumours too,” Luke cut in, shaking entrails from his claws.”
Looking at Luke, Potter said, “Someone must have gotten out of those tunnels alive.”
“How do you figure that?” Luke snapped, his anger with Potter still evident.
“How else do we know what these tunnels are like?” Potter grinned with that know-it-all smile.
Before they had the chance to start another argument, I got between them, and staring at Coanda, I shouted, “How do we get into these tunnels?”
“Follow me,” he roared and was racing away across the wasteland as if there wasn’t a moment to lose.
Chapter Thirty-Four
There were iron gates set into a nearby rock face. Over these, slats of wood had been fixed barring the entrance. Looking back over my shoulder, I could see that some of the frenzied half-breeds had broken away from the main battle and were now coming towards us. Seth stood on his back legs, rolled back his mighty head and howled at them. The noise that came from his throat was so deep that the ground shook and my bones seemed to rattle under my skin.
Potter and Luke stood beside him, dwarfed by his giant size. Baring their fangs and claws, their wings taut behind them, they slashed at the approaching half-breeds.
“Give me a hand with this,” Coanda roared from beside me.
I looked and could see that he was trying to rip off the wooden planks that barred our entry to the tunnels. With the wind now blowing hard around us, I hooked my claws around the edges of the planks and pulled. They came away in splinters. Coanda gripped the railings of the iron gate and it shook in its frame.
“Pull!” he barked at me.
I curled my claws round the thick bars and with all my strength I yanked at them. There was some give and I could hear the rock beginning to crumble away around the edges of the gate.
“Hurry!” Luke shouted, his voice almost drowned out by the screaming wind and the cries of the half-breeds.
With my eyes shut tight, I sucked in a mouthful of air and pulled as hard as I could on the gate. Coanda pulled too, and at last I felt the gate come away from the rock face in a shower of red dust.
No sooner had the gate clattered onto the ground, Coanda was shouting at the others, “Into the tunnels! Into the tunnels!”
With more half-breeds coming at us, we dashed into the entrance of the tunnel.
“Bring down the opening!” Coanda ordered. “Seal the entrance!”
As if knowing exactly what he meant, Potter and Luke began to claw frantically at the walls of the tunnel. Then, I remembered how I had watched Potter close the opening to the tunnel that lay beneath the police station in The Ragged Cove. So following their example, I started to claw at the walls surrounding the entrance to the tunnels. Rock began to fall down and cover us in dust as the mouth to the tunnel began to fill. The half-breeds snatched at us with their claws through the hole, which was fast filling up.
“Faster!” Coanda shouted. “Fill the hole!”
Like desperate animals in their burrows, we raked at the walls with our claws, and I shot a sideways glance to see Seth pounding away at the rocks with his giant paws. It showered down in jagged lumps until we had closed the entrance to the tunnel and sealed ourselves inside. I could hear the half-breeds on the other side scrambling and scratching, desperate to find a way into the tunnel.
“We’ve got to keep moving!” Coanda barked from within the darkness.
I narrowed my eyes into slits and peered through the dark and could just make out his outline as he moved slowly into the tunnel. Then I heard the sound of fabric being torn. Within moments there was a flash of orange light as Potter flipped his Zippo lighter to life. He had ripped the sleeve from his overalls, wrapped this around a large splinter of wood that had come from the planks I had pulled down. I watched his face glow yellow as he held the flame to the torch he had made.
Smiling, he looked at me and said, “A smoker’s way saves the day.”
“That stuff will kill you,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, and so will a lot of other things,” he winked back at me.
Luke brushed quietly past us and began to follow Coanda down into the tunnel. Seth began to twitch and spasm beside us as he changed back into his human form. He looked at me, his yellow eyes glowing as fiercely as the torch that Potter held in his hand. Then, pulling the beak of his baseball cap down over his eyes, he walked away.
“C’mon, sweet-cheeks,” Potter said to me and I followed him into the tunnel.
We hadn’t walked far, when a dirty yellow fog began to swirl up from the ground and surround us. It had a bitter smell and choking quality. I covered my mouth and nose with my hands and coughed. But, the deeper we went into the tunnels, the thicker the fog became and even the light from Potter’s torch failed to light the way. Something scuttled over my feet and I gasped.
“Take it easy, tiger,” Potter whispered from within the fog,” It was just a rat.”
“I don’t like rats,” I told him. “And besides, it felt way too big to be a rat.”
“God knows what’s lurking down here,” Luke suddenly said from beside me, the fog now so thick, I hadn’t even been aware he had been there.
“That’s just your imagination,” Potter said back.
“Is it?” Seth grinned as he loomed up so close to me, that I could see the giant rat he held in his fist. It was the size of an overweight cat. The rat kicked wildly in his grip, its unnaturally long tail swishing back and forth. With his eyes spinning like two suns, Seth rammed the rat’s head into his mouth and snapped his jaws closed. The sound of the rat’s skull being crushed by Seth’s teeth made me gag.
“You’re so disgusting,” I heaved and moved away, losing sight of him again in the yellow fog.
I continued forward, and as I did I was sure I could hear the sound of voices. It was faint at first, like children whispering behind their hands. Someone brushed past me, but I didn’t know who.
“Potter?” I called out but he made no reply.
“Can anyone else hear those voices?” I asked, as the fog swirled all around me.
Silence.
Then, those little voices came again. It was definitely the sound of children – I was sure of it.
“Can anyone else hear those children?” I called out.
There was no answer, only the touch of someone as they hurried past me, as if running.
“Who’s there?” I shouted, now beginning to feel panicked and lost. Then, there was the sound of a scuffle, like two people fighting.
“What’s going on?” I called out, my heart racing as I spun around on the spot trying to locate the sound.
There was a sudden cry as if whoever had made it was in pain. I turned towards the sound. There was more running as someone pushed past me, shoving me against the wall of the tunnel.
“Help me!” a voice sounded from somewhere in the fog. “Come quickly! He’s dead!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
With my hands held out before me and my heart thumping, I staggered through the fog towards the sound of the voice that kept shouting over and over again, “He’s dead! He’s dead!” My ability to see through the dark had no effect down in Murka Tunnels. The fog was so thick and dirty I could just make out my own hand in front of my face.
I headed towards the voice as I cut my way through the murkiness. As I drew nearer, it lost its muffled quality and I realised it was Potter who was calling for help. I made my way as fast as I c
ould towards him. And then through the smog, I could just make out the glow of his torch as he waved it back and forth through the air.
I reached him, and standing so close that we almost touched, he looked through the haze at me and said, “Coanda’s been murdered.”
“What?” I gasped.
“Take a look for yourself,” Potter said, bending down.
I got down onto my knees, and put my hands to my face in shock. Spread-eagled against the wall of the tunnel was Coanda. He was slumped forward, his chin resting against his chest. Gently, I raised his head, and could see his dead eyes staring back at me through the yellow fog that swirled all around him. I looked down at the ragged hole in his chest and could see that his heart had been removed.
“Who did this?” I whispered, glancing over at Potter.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But take a look at this.”
Holding up the torch, he passed it close to the wall just above Coanda’s corpse. Written in blood above his head was this:
Kiera follow the sound of the children
“What do you think it means?” Potter asked me.
“Haven’t you heard them?” I whispered.
“Heard who?”
“The children.”
“What children?” he pushed.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said standing.
“What’s going on here?” Potter asked me as he stood up, and as he did, I saw the hand that he held the torch with was smeared with blood.
“You tell me,” I shuddered.
Potter glanced at his hand, and realising that I had seen the blood, he sighed and said, “When I found Coanda, I touched him. I thought he had stumbled and tripped in this goddamn fog – that was all. I must have got some of his blood on me.”
Before I had a chance to say anything, Seth and Luke appeared from the smog. To be able to see each other clearly, we had to stand almost side by side. I felt Seth brush against me and I recoiled. He felt me flinch, and his eyes shone at me from within the gloom and I could just make out his rotting teeth as he smiled with pleasure at the thought of repulsing me.