Dead Flesh kh2-1 Read online

  Dead Flesh

  ( Kiera Hudson 2 - 1 )

  Tim O'rourke

  Tim O'Rourke

  Dead Flesh

  Prologue

  She thought it would hurt, but in fact, dying was agony. It felt as if her entire being had been stretched, pulled and twisted out of shape and then sucked in on itself. There was blackness and it rushed at her like a wall. Solid and unbreakable. She looked into the darkness and it was as if she were standing at the very edge of the universe and staring down into nothingness. The silence was deafening and it made her want to scream.

  There was a crashing sound. The noise cut through the darkness. Her lungs emptied as the air was forced from them like a balloon being strangled. Branches clawed at her like hands trying to break her fall as she appeared in the night sky above the trees. Dropping like a stone, she cut a jagged path through the leaves and branches as she tumbled to the woodland floor below.

  The young girl hit the ground, her head bouncing off the leaf-covered floor with a gut-wrenching thud. She cried out, throwing her hands to her face and rolling over onto her back. Opening her eyes, she noticed something had gone wrong. Her hands didn’t feel right against her face. The young girl counted the fingers on her right hand. One, two, three….

  Three!

  Turning, she looked at her left hand — it was worse.

  Two! What’s happened to my fingers?

  She staggered to her knees like a drunk and touched her face with her three-fingered hand.

  “NO!” she screamed, and this time it wasn’t inside her head; her voice had forced its way out of her throat. Patting her face with her hands, she knew that she was in trouble. The lower half of her face had slipped. Her face, once beautiful and perfect was now grotesque; nose and mouth were now imbedded into her left cheek. Her face looked distorted, like a child’s painting that had been hung upside down while wet and the colours and shapes had bled across the paper.

  Her blond fringe swung in front of her eyes like a curtain and she knocked it away. Moonlight shone through the canopy of trees above her head in milky shafts. Then she was startled by the sound of a dog barking in the distance.

  Or was that the sound of a bigger creature? A wolf perhaps?

  The noise came again, which was followed by another and another. Cocking her head to one side, the young girl listened. The barking came again and it was followed by the sound of snapping jaws and woofing. She knew there was more than just one of these creatures, there were several of them, and they were getting closer.

  Spinning round, the young girl peered into the darkness. In the distance and weaving towards her amongst the trees, she could see torchlight. The beams of light sliced through the night and splashed against the tree trunks.

  “This way!” A voice barked. “This way!”

  The barking and howling grew louder and keener as the creatures raced towards the area of the wood where the girl had appeared. She looked back one last time, then ran deeper into the woods.

  The sound of woofing and snarling came from the throats of the young girl’s pursuers. They had reached the area where she had appeared, but she had gone.

  “I want this entire area locked down!” one of them ordered. Then wheeling around, he hissed at the others, “Don’t just

  stand there! Get after her!”

  Without question, the others in the pack set off after the young girl, ferocious-looking, whining, and slobbering.

  She raced amongst the trees with the agility and speed of a wild horse. Her long hair billowed out behind her like a mane, and her brilliant green eyes glinted in the moonlight. In the distance she could hear the sound of howling as they raced after her. Her legs propelled her forward as she stumbled and staggered through the woods. Her arms whispered by her side, working like pistons.

  She broke into a clearing, and ahead in the distance she could see turrets spiralling up towards the moon like giant ogres. The building sat on a hill and was surrounded by trees and a stone wall.

  With sweat streaming into her eyes, the young girl raced across the field towards it, leaving her would-be captors deep in the woods. Reaching the wall, she looked up at it towering above her. The wall was at least twenty foot tall and she wondered if it had been built to keep something out or to keep something locked in. With her three-fingered hands, she gripped hold of the wall and began to climb. And as she went, the young girl stifled the urge to scream out in agony as her hands bled. Once at the top, she held on with hands that looked like bloody claws.

  What she had believed to be turrets, she could now see were search towers. There were four, and each was manned by a hooded figure. Their faces were hidden by the robes draped over their heads and shoulders. The search towers cast beams of light across the grounds like giant lighthouses.

  The sound of barking and woofing echoed in the distance. Glancing over her shoulder, she could see her pursuers run free of the woods and start across the field towards her. Turning her back on them, the young girl leapt from the wall and into the grounds of the strange-looking building.

  Pressing her back against the wall, she inched her way around the circumference of the building. She watched the hooded figures high up in their towers as they covered the grounds with their searchlights. Small plumes of breath leaked from her cheek and disappeared into the darkness like small clouds. The building itself was in total darkness, not one light burnt from inside. Apart from the odd rustle high in the trees above her, the building and its grounds were silent.

  What could this place be?

  She reached a set of black iron gates in the wall, which were padlocked. They stretched up into the night sky like bony black fingers. To the right of the gates stood a wooden sign, and engraved upon it were the words:

  Welcome to Ravenwood School

  Before she had the chance to even ask herself what sort of school would be surrounded by twenty foot high walls and searchlights, an alarm had started to sound. Covering her ears with her deformed hands, the girl winced at the sound of the alarm that wailed across the grounds like a World War Two siren. The hooded figures swung the searchlights, picking out a figure that was running away from the far side of the school. It headed towards the trees which lent against the wall like drunks propping up a bar.

  Screwing up her eyes to get a better look at the figure, she could see it was a man. His face was panic-stricken and his eyes bulged from their sockets in fear. But he looked overweight, and with several chins wobbling like whale blubber, he was no match for the four hooded figures that raced across the grounds behind him.

  The figures howled, leaping through the air and snatching hold of the escapee. The noise which came from the figures was nothing like she had ever heard before. It sounded as if they were choking on their own tongues.

  “Pleeeaaassee,” the male screeched, his voice sounding as if his throat had been cut. “I just want my son!” Then he fell silent.

  The young girl couldn’t see how they had silenced him, but she watched as they carried him like a stretcher, making their way back into the school. The searchlights followed them, then swung away, leaving the building in darkness.

  Standing amongst the shadows, with the sounds of those dogs now yakking and slobbering on the other side of the wall, she crouched onto all fours and crawled away into the undergrowth, then…

  Chapter One

  Kiera

  …I sat up in bed. I rubbed my eyes, covering the backs of my hands in the blood that dripped from them. The last broken fragments of my nightmare jabbed into my brain like broken pieces of glass. I’d dreamt the same dream for over a week now. It always started and ended in the same place. I didn’t know the girl’s name or what she had been running from. We were connected, though. The f
ingers, the shift of her facial features knocked out of place — but that wasn’t all that had been knocked off balance. But the more I thought about her after waking, the foggier the dream became, and faded away like an early morning mist.

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed. The room was in semi-darkness, the first rays of morning light creeping around the edges of the heavy curtains. Wrapping my blanket about me like a shroud, I crossed my room to the adjoining bathroom. After leaving the mortuary, Potter had raced us through the night. We only had one place to go, and that was back to Hallowed Manor. The manor had belonged to Doctor Hunt, it had been where Kayla had grown up, it was her home and she had wanted to return.

  Hallowed Manor was ideal. It was remote, laying miles from the nearest town on the Welsh Moors. Surrounded by a moat, walls, and a gate house, it was somewhere we could hide in safety — be apart from the rest of the world, the rest of the living. At first, being together had been wonderful. To have my friends back had seemed like the Elders had blessed me, but now I wasn’t so sure. Now I wondered if their blessing wasn’t in fact a curse, like they said it would be. We were all dead. Yes, we still inhabited the Earth, but not really. Not like the living. We were freaks and not just because we were dead. The Elders had called Potter, Isidor, and Kayla angels — but what sort of angels were they? Potter was a chain-smoking Vampyrus with attitude, and the rest of us were half-breeds — half and half’s as the Elders had called us — half Human and half Vampyrus. Not only didn’t we belong amongst the living, we were a completely different species. And I was cracking up — not mentally, although I had questioned my sanity since waking up in that mortuary six weeks ago. I was physically cracking up.

  I turned on the taps and splashed cold water across my cheeks, washing away the blood-red tears that had dried on them. Once they had gone, I began to fill the bath with cold water. Not hot and no bubbles like I’d enjoyed so much before…before dying…but the colder, the better. I liked the water to be ice cold now. To feel it lap against my pale skin made it tingle, it made my flesh feel alive and it numbed my cravings for the red stuff. Death hadn’t silenced them — it had made them worse — added another layer to my torment. There were supplies of Lot 13 left behind by Doctor Ravenwood in the makeshift hospital hidden in the attic. But there wasn’t much. I knew that Kayla, more than Potter and Isidor, had been drinking it. I couldn’t stop her and part of me didn’t want to. She had been through enough — she had been murdered, her life taken away from her — so at night, I lay awake and listened to her sob herself to sleep from down the hall. How could I add to her suffering?

  With the bathroom in near darkness, I brought my face close to the mirror fixed to the wall above the sink and stared into it. My face now looked just as it had before dying, not deformed and misshapen like it had when waking in the mortuary. To look at me, I appeared normal, my bright hazel eyes losing none of their sparkle, my skin pale as always, but without blemish. I dropped the blanket from around my shoulders, letting it flutter to the tiled floor. I rolled back my shoulders and my wings unfolded from my back. They were as black as ever, those bony fingers folded into fists at the tip of each wing. I looked at my fingers and my claws appeared like a set of knives, and my mouth filled with blood as my fangs drew down from my gums. I looked at my naked reflection, at the half-breed staring back at me, and there were cracks. Not on the surface of the mirror, but on me. I’d first noticed them on the morning after fleeing the mortuary. All of us had slept in, and I had woken to find Potter lying next to me, his head resting against my chest.

  I had gently eased myself away, not wanting to wake him. Once in the bathroom, I had looked at myself in the mirror. I’d wanted to know if being dead had changed me. Did I still have my wings, my claws, my fangs? And yes I did, but there was something else. When in my true half-breed form, there were now cracks. With my fingertips, I touched the skin covering my left cheekbone. The cracks were very faint, barely visible, but they were there. Like the tiny cracks you get at the bottom of a very old china teacup. There were others, too. A network of cracks like a very faint spider’s web, covered my neck, shoulders, and down between my breasts, over the flat of my stomach and down across my thighs. I rubbed at them, then snapped my hand away. I looked at the dust-like powder that now covered my fingers. I rubbed my fingertips together in a circular motion and it felt as if they were covered in ash.

  Potter had stirred in the other room, and I swung the bathroom door closed. I didn’t want him to see me like this. What was happening to me? Like I said, it was as if I were cracking up.

  That had been six weeks ago, and now as I looked in the mirror, the cracks were still there, more visible, as if deeper somehow, giving me an ancient-looking appearance. From a distance they looked like wrinkles, the kind that I shouldn’t be finding until my late fifties — but I was never going to reach my late fifties, right? Now that I was dead, was I going to age? Was I going to stay at the age of twenty for the rest of eternity? Every young girl’s dream — but not mine. I knew deep inside of me I wouldn’t last another fifty years alive or dead. Whatever curse or blessing the Elders had cast upon me wasn’t for eternity — it was for now. How long was now? Weeks, months, years, before I cracked up totally and turned into a pile of ash — just like the palace where I had died?

  I just had this feeling, like a knot in my stomach, that I was back from the dead for a limited period of time. But why bring me back at all? Why bring any of us back? Couldn’t we have been left to rest in peace? I mean, isn’t that the whole point of dying — that we finally find peace? Was bringing me back just a punishment for failing to make my choice? No. I didn’t believe that. Why punish Potter, Isidor, and Kayla too? I had been brought back for a reason — we all had.

  I turned off the taps and changing back, I took my iPod from the shelf and slipped into the water. Turning it on, I thumbed through the tracks, and closing my eyes, I lay back and listened to Leona Lewis sing Happy.

  Chapter Two

  Kayla

  Lot 13 tasted bitter, as usual, but I screwed up my nose as it slowly rolled down the back of my throat. It was disgusting and nothing like real blood. The real stuff — the red stuff — was lovely. Lot 13 was like Diet Coke — the red stuff was like the full-fat version. There was no comparison. But it was better than nothing and it dulled that constant itch that wouldn’t go away. But that itch, the one that drove me half-crazy at times, seemed like a mild irritation today — like a wasp hovering around your ice cream, compared to the noise.

  I could hear Kiera going to her bathroom, even from my room all the way down the hall. The sound of the water rushing from the taps and filling the bath was almost deafening and I wanted to scream at her to turn them off. But there had been a lot that I had wanted to scream about lately, so taking one of my pillows, I buried my head beneath it. With the pillow smothering my face and ears, I could still hear the sound of Kiera’s blanket flutter to the floor. She stopped and I knew that she was looking at herself in the mirror again. Not out of vanity — Kiera wasn’t like that — she was looking at something else. I didn’t know what, but I knew that she was staring at herself again. I could see it in her eyes. Kiera hadn’t been the same since coming back — but then again, I don’t think any of us had been the same.

  I heard Kiera climb into the bath and at last, the sound of running water stopped. My hearing wasn’t usually this intense — but whenever I got upset — angry or frightened, the sounds around me became louder — oh yeah — loud wasn’t the word. Sometimes I felt like stuffing my fingers into my ears and screaming. There had always been a soundtrack, as I had called it, since the age of six — a faint background noise, like someone whispering at me from behind a wall. But sometimes it intensified and was worse than deafening. And it was like that today and had been since I’d come back from The Hollows — the dead.

  Listening to music helped and I was forever swiping Kiera’s iPod — the music helped to drown out the soundtrack. But Kiera ha
d it now — she was listening to it in the bath. I could hear the music hissing from beneath my pillow. I had my own but it was busted. Dropped it throwing a hissy-fit at my mum and cracked the screen — the thing was screwed after that.

  And I knew it was because of my mother, my father and…I didn’t want to think of the other one’s name, that the soundtrack had been cranked up to full. Since being back from The Hollows, I’d had time to think — reflect about everything that had happened there. I’d wanted to come back here, it had been my idea, it was my home. But to walk the quiet corridors and passageways, to sit alone in the vast kitchen, and walk the grounds had made me think of the ones I had loved and lost…because of him.

  I was angry — no — I was fucking raging inside. Even though I was dead I could still feel things — pain. I still hurt. But even though he humiliated me, cut my ears off and then murdered me, I knew that I was angrier at myself than him. How had I been so dumb? Why had I been so flattered by the words that he had whispered? And I knew the answer to those questions — I had been desperate. I had been desperate for the red stuff that he had supplied me. But even more desperate to be loved. I had lost my mother and father but I had found a brother — Isidor. Why hadn’t I turned to him? Even when he tried to warn me, I didn’t listen. For someone who can sometimes hear too much — I had failed to hear my brother’s warnings and that’s why I was freaking angry with myself.

  But hey, Kayla, you’re alive, girl — you came back from the dead — you got another shot. But not really. I’m still dead, right? The Elders told me I was a Dark Angel — a dead angel more like. And what exactly was a dark angel? What was I brought back for? To help protect Kiera, they had told me. Protect her from what? I mean, Kiera didn’t need looking after — I’d seen her kick more Vampyrus butt than I cared to remember; she looked after Kiera and I wished that I could be more like her. Kiera was my protector — she was my friend, my sister.