by Tim O'Rourke
“The cracks, Kiera,” he whispered, looking away from me.
I pushed away from him, and all of a sudden I felt angry and confused. How did he know about the cracks? Had he been spying on me? I didn’t want anyone to see me like that. I looked like a monster — a freak. “How do you know?”
“I saw you…” he started.
“You’ve been spying on me,” I hissed, feeling defensive. Nothing made me angrier than the thought of my privacy being invaded and I couldn’t help but think of the time in the shower block back at the Police Station in Wasp Water. The thought of Jack Seth watching me had driven me half insane.
“Take it easy, tiger, I’ve shared a room with you, remember?” Potter said. “That was until you kicked me out.”
“I didn’t kick you out,” I told him, looking away. “It was just…”
“You didn’t want me to see the cracks,” he said and moved closer towards me. “I saw you one morning. You had got up early but hadn’t shut the bathroom door properly. I could hear you running a bath and I came to the door hoping that perhaps we could share the water, if you know what I mean?” and he half-smiled at me. “Anyway, I pushed the door open just a fraction and saw you standing in front of the mirror. Your wings were out and they looked beautiful, just like now,” he said and brushed them with his fingers. “But it was as I stood and watched you that I saw the cracks in your flesh.”
To know that he had seen them made me feel uncomfortable and I wrapped my arms around my chest; I felt less vulnerable like that. Sensing this, Potter pulled my arms free and wrapped his muscular arms around me. “What do you think those cracks are?” I asked him. “I look like an ancient statue. Grey and cold, cracked and weather-beaten. I look ugly.”
“No one could ever accuse you of being ugly,” he half-smiled again and kissed me gently on the forehead. “But I know that’s why you’ve been distancing yourself from me.”
“I was scared,” I told him. “Scared of what those cracks might be and what might happen to me.”
“So have you got it all figured out yet, Sherlock?”
“I think the red stuff, helps,” I whispered, not wanting to admit that the stuff that I feared the most was going to be my saviour.
“How do you figure that?”
“I’d been scared of being with you,” I started to explain. “Scared of making love to you. I know that when we do, it’s hard not to change — you know, the Vampyrus side of me comes out and it’s when that happens that the cracks appear.”
“But it was different this time?” he asked me.
“Right,” I told him. “But only because I drank your blood. It was like the cracks absorbed your blood somehow. Like a dried out sponge being held under a tap. I opened my eyes, and instead of my skin looking old and split, it was glowing — radiant.”
“So this can be stopped?” he asked me, sounding more hopeful than I.
“But at what cost?” I asked him. “I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity needing the red stuff. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Who says that you have to hurt anyone?” He asked me.
“Something tells me that your blood won’t always be enough,” I told him. “Like any addiction, it grows and grows and you just need more and more.”
“How do you mean?” he frowned.
“Take your cigarette habit,” I started to explain. “Have you always smoked so much? You didn’t start smoking sixty or seventy cigarettes a day like you do now. You started with just one or two, I bet. But soon that wasn’t enough to satisfy your need. Soon you needed more and more. That’s what an addiction is — you just want it — even when you know it’s killing you — you just want more. Well I don’t want to live my life like that, because there is only so much of your blood that I can have — and what then? I turn to humans and we all know what happens then…”
“Vampires,” Potter said.
“Vampires,” I nodded and looked away. “We can’t ever go back to that or our deaths would have meant nothing.”
“There’s got to be an answer to everything that has happened, not only to us but the world since we came back,” Potter said.
“And I intend to find it,” I told him. “It feels like I’m being punished by the Elders for not making that decision back in The Hollows. It’s like they are making me suffer.”
“But all suffering has to end,” Potter said. “It can’t go on forever.”
“But I guess it’s how it ends that matters,” I told him.
“So what’s the plan?” he asked me, running his fingers through my hair.
“I don’t believe we are the only ones who have been pushed, as you call it,” I said, leaning in close to him again. “Kayla and Isidor have gone to place some adverts around the nearby towns to see if anyone comes forward.”
Then, there was a crack of lightning from outside and the rain began to fall heavier against the roof and the side of the summerhouse. “We should get back to the manor, Kayla and Isidor might be back by now.”
“Let’s wait until the rain eases up,” he said, pulling me close. The temperature inside the summerhouse had grown cold, and gooseflesh had covered my naked body. Potter wrapped his arms about me, his body felt warm as he held me against him.
Then, placing his face next to mine, he said, “Whatever happens, Kiera, we’ll find a way through this.”
I closed my eyes and kissed him, those intense feelings that I had for him started to wash over me. “We should be getting back,” I whispered, half of me knowing that Kayla and Isidor would be waiting for me but the other half wanting Potter again.
“Let’s just stay a while longer,” he smiled, easing me back onto the floor of the summerhouse.
“Until the rain stops,” I whispered, hearing it lash against the window to my right. And as Potter ran his hand up the inside of my leg, I turned my head slightly to look at the rain streaking down the window pane. It was then that I screamed.
Chapter Fourteen
Kiera
The statue stared through the window. Even though it had no facial features, I knew that it was watching us. Lightning split the night sky open in a blue shock of light, illuminating the blank face that peered in through the window at us.
“What’s wrong?” Potter asked me.
“Look at the window,” I gasped, gathering up my clothes and covering myself with them.
“What’s wrong with the window?” Potter asked getting up and striding to the window buck naked.
“That statue is watching us,” I told him, throwing on my shirt and pulling on my jeans.
“What statue?”
“The one from outside,” I said, wedging my feet into my boots and going to the window.
“There isn’t any statue at the window,” he said, cupping his hands around his eyes and peering out into the dark.
“It was there, I’m telling you,” I breathed, standing next to him.
“Well it’s not there now,” he sighed, stepping back from the window and staring at me. He stood before me naked, his chest and muscles looking taught beneath his pale flesh.
I glanced back at the window as another streak of lightning cut the night in two. The sky lit up in a flash of blue and white and I could see that the statue was no longer at the window.
“It was there,” I insisted.
“Are you sure it wasn’t your imagination?” he asked, snaking his arm around my waist.
“Give me a break,” I groaned. “I know what I saw. Put your clothes on, we should be heading back to the manor.”
Without saying another word, Potter picked up his trousers and boots from where they lay strewn across the floor. As he put them on, I went to the door. I opened it a fraction and peered into the dark. The rain came down hard and beat off the wooden steps that led away from the summerhouse. The sky fizzed with electricity again, washing the area in light. Then, I saw it. The statue wasn’t at the window, but I knew that it had been. Although it was back on the gr
ass, it was no longer facing the summerhouse. It had turned, as if running away. I ran down the wooden steps and out into the rain. The rain was so heavy that within seconds I was soaked through and it ran done my hair and face. I knocked the water from my eyes and stood before the statue.
“Why were you watching us?” I demanded.
The statue didn’t say anything. It didn’t move. It just stood solid and heavy-looking in the rain. But it had just turned its back to the summerhouse. The way its arms and legs were now positioned, it looked as it had been in the act of running away at great speed when it had become frozen again.
“What’s going on here?” Potter suddenly asked from beside me.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, unable to take my eyes from the statue of the girl. Then, in another bolt of lightning, something glistened around the statue’s neck. It was Murphy’s crucifix. It was no longer fastened in the girl’s hand.
“Do you see it?” I whispered, reaching for the cross.
“See what?” Potter hissed.
“Murphy’s cross,” I said back, taking it from over the girl’s head.
“Maybe you should leave it,” Potter said.
“Why?” I asked him, but then I saw something that told me that perhaps he was right. It could have been just the rain, or just my imagination, but as I lifted the cross away, tears seemed to roll from the part of the statue’s face where its eyes should have been.
With the tip of one finger, Potter wiped away what looked like tears and held his finger up. “Put the cross back,” he whispered over the distant rumble of thunder. “They ain’t tears — they’re drops of blood.”
“The statue’s bleeding?” I asked him, quickly replacing the crucifix. “But that’s impossible, right?”
Then looking at me, Potter said, “Yeah and we’re dead. Like I keep trying to tell you, Kiera, this isn’t the world that we left — everything has been pushed.”
We made our way back to the manor in silence. The only sound was the rain slicing through the treetops overhead. Potter carried the holdall with my belongings. I had tucked my police badge into the back pocket of my jeans. I didn’t know if it would be of any use in the future, but I was glad I had it back all the same.
Before we had left the summerhouse, I had asked Potter not to say anything to Kayla or Isidor about the statue. He had asked me why not, and I told him that things were already complicated enough without throwing the wandering statue into the mix. But at the sight of the blood weeping from the statue, I couldn’t help but make a connection from somewhere deep inside of me. I had seen myself almost turned to stone as I had stood before my mirror, my body covered in cracks, just like the statue that now had Murphy’s cross. Whoever that girl was — had been — perhaps she had once been like me? Maybe that girl had started to see cracks in her flesh. Maybe she had been stronger than me and resisted the red stuff and she had completely turned to stone. But not completely, because it was like when she wasn’t being watched, she moved somehow.
As we stepped from between the trees and onto the rain-soaked lawn that lay before the manor, I could see by the lights burning dimly in the windows that Kayla and Isidor had returned. The electricity worked in the part of the huge house that we occupied, but there was still no light in the ‘forbidden wing’ as Mrs. Payne had liked to call it.
Potter pushed open the giant front door and we had barely had the chance to shake the rain from our wet clothes when Kayla rushed into the hallway. She was excited and skipped from foot to foot as she told us about what she and Isidor had seen and heard in the little town of Wood Hill.
Isidor joined her, and passing Potter and me a fresh towel each, I rubbed my damp hair with it. While Potter dried his chest and forearms, Isidor told us about the owner of the shop.
“He said that they had taken their children,” Isidor explained.
“Taken them where?” I asked him.
“They’ve killed them already,” Potter cut in. “I told you they wouldn’t change. The Lycanthrope are murdering scum.”
“They’re not called Lycanthrope any longer,” Isidor said, looking at the both of us.
“What are they called then?” Potter growled. “You’re not the only one who has left the grounds of the manor. I’ve seen the wolves too.”
“They look like wolves,” Kayla said, “and just like the Lycanthrope did, they can look like humans and then change into wolves. But this time around, they are different.”
“Different?” I quizzed. “How?”
“Come and have a look at what Isidor has found on the Web,” Kayla said, leading us into the large kitchen.
We followed her, and sitting before the laptop that was on the table, Isidor started bringing up pages of information. With Potter beside me, we peered over his shoulder and looked at the screen.
“See,” Isidor said, pointing at the laptop, “the werewolves aren’t called Lycanthrope in this version of reality. They’re called ‘Skin-walkers.’”
“Skin-walkers?” Potter spat, lighting a cigarette. “What the fuck are Skin-walkers?”
“Shape-shifters,” Kayla cut in, not trying to impress, but more out of fear.
“See here,” Isidor said, pointing at the screen again. “They are trapped permanently as wolves — that was their curse.”
“They were captured,” I whispered to myself as I remembered how Nik had been trapped as a wolf.
“Captured?” Potter quizzed me.
“They can’t change from wolf back into human form,” Isidor said on my behalf.
“So how do we defeat them?” I asked, for the first time realising the true nature of our enemy.
“Not easily,” Kayla answered.
“It will be piss-easy. I’ve killed plenty of wolves in my time,” Potter said, blowing a cloud of blue smoke into the air.
“Don’t be so sure,” Isidor said, looking back over his shoulder at Potter. “These Skin-walkers have the power to steal the body of any person. So how do you know if you’re killing a Skin-walker or an innocent human?”
“Bullshit,” Potter snapped. “How do you steal another person’s skin? There’d be blood, piss, and snot everywhere. These Skin-walkers would stick out like sore thumbs.”
“They don’t actually steal the skin and wear it like a coat, silly,” Kayla giggled. “By looking into your eyes, they can absorb themselves into you. It’s like they take you over — control you and your soul.”
“Just like the Lycanthrope could stare into your soul and control you,” I said, thinking of how Jack Seth had tried to control my mind with those depraved images of him taking me.
“But they do have a couple of weaknesses,” Kayla explained.
“Like what?” Potter snapped, as if eager to know so he could start hunting these creatures.
“They don’t like the sunlight very much,” Isidor said. “They much prefer the night. And secondly, when they are in human form, they only have the strength of a human.”
“So what do they hunt?” I asked Isidor, my stomach tightening as the enormity of what they had discovered became clear.
“Just like the Lycanthrope, they love to hunt children,” Isidor said, his already-pale face turning grey.
“Different name, but the same scum,” Potter said.
“But what I don’t understand,” I said, “is if all this information is readily available on the internet, why don’t the humans stop them?”
Kayla pulled up a chair alongside me and sat down. “The guy in the store back in that creepy town told us that the humans and wolves — these Skin-walkers — had signed some kinda treaty over two hundred years ago.”
“And guess where that treaty was signed?” Isidor quizzed, looking at Potter then at me.
“Where?” I breathed.
“Wasp Water,” Isidor said.
“You’re shitting me!” Potter exclaimed, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“Nope,” Isidor said, turning back to face the laptop
. “I looked it up and basically the humans fought with the Skin-walkers for as long as is recorded. But a truce was made two hundred years ago between them. The Skin-walkers got tired of being hunted and the humans grew tired of having their children snatched and slaughtered in the dead of night. It seemed that no side could win.”
“So what was this treaty that both sides were happy with?” I asked.
“That every five years, the Skin-walkers would be free to take the children from one village of their choice,” Kayla explained. “If the parents resisted, then they too would be slaughtered.”
“So they just arrive in the village, round up all of the children and kill them?” I gasped in disbelief.
“Not exactly,” Kayla said. “There were some rules negotiated during the treaty. The wolves couldn’t take children under the age of thirteen or over the age of eighteen. They could pick one village at random, but they couldn’t kill the children. There were certain conditions.”
“What conditions?” Potter snapped.
“The children would be housed at the nearest school,” Isidor said. “Held prisoner, I guess. And here they would be matched.”
“Matched?” I asked.
“Because the Skin-walkers are captured as wolves and unable to shape-shift back into human form, they are matched with human children,” Isidor said.
“But why?” I asked him.
“Because once the wolves grow from yearlings into juveniles they are the same age as teenage humans,” Kayla explained. “So each juvenile wolf that is ready to leave their pack comes to the school and seeks a match — a human child that they can steal the skin from — absorb themselves into. Any human teenagers who aren’t matched are set free.”
“And what about the ones who aren’t freed?” I asked her.
“The wolf spends the rest of its life living inside of them — inside their skin,” Kayla said.
“So why every five years?” Potter asked, grinding out his cigarette end on the stone kitchen floor.
“That is the time that it can take a yearling Skin-walker to reach the juvenile stage,” Kayla continued, her eyes growing wide. “This is the treaty that the Wolf Man negotiated.”