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  “I think it was that which…” he started.

  “That’s why she was cruel to me,” I breathed. “It was like she was getting her own back on her brother somehow.”

  “Perhaps?” my father said thoughtfully.

  There was another long silence between us as I tried to get to grips with everything he was telling me. Then looking at him, I said, “So did you get rid of that dead baby just like you disposed of that man?”

  “No!” he said, with a grimace. “I wanted nothing to do with the murder of a child. Your mother took the baby and buried it. I don’t know where. I didn’t want to know. I had helped her once before and that had trapped me. I wasn’t going to incriminate myself any further in her crimes.”

  “You could have gone to the Vampyrus!”

  I insisted.

  “I couldn’t! Your mother was carrying you at the time. I hoped that a child of her own would settle her. Besides, she got in with that Blackcoat and found the Elders’ religion. I thought that her curse would be sedated, if not cured, as she was in with the Blackcoat. How would she be able to carry on if she was amongst the very people who would kill her if they discovered what she was truly like? I wasn’t going to walk out on you or Lorre and Kara. I feared what she might do to you all if I were not around.”

  “You could have taken us – run away!” I insisted.

  “Run where?” he said back – not angrily.

  He sounded more frustrated, as if he were desperate to try and prove his innocence to me.

  “Do you know what it’s like being tracked by the Vampyrus? They are relentless. It’s been hard enough for me on my own since your mother made those accusations about me. I wouldn’t have gotten very far with three children. And what would your mother have said? I had stolen her three children, two of which she would say I had stolen from the humans. That’s what she would have said, Jack. I was trapped – you’ve got to believe me.”

  “I do want to believe you,” I whispered, but my mind was so fucked up by now. I no longer knew what to believe.

  My father took a step towards me, and placing one hand on my shoulder, he said, “If I were this monster your mother has told you I am, why didn’t I just run and run and run? Why did I risk coming each year and leaving you those presents? Do you know how dangerous that was for me?”

  I looked at him, and he stared into my eyes. I thought of all those presents he had sent us. “Why did you leave that raw bloody meat for my mother?”

  “It was meant as a warning,” he said. “I was trying to remind her of the blood she had spilt, the flesh she had torn apart,” he said. “I was hoping I could scare her – make her believe that if I was captured, I would tell the Vampyrus and the Elders everything – that I wouldn’t fall alone.”

  “But you were caught in the end,” I said.

  “There was a trial and the Elders believed you.”

  My father took his hand from my shoulder, and with a look of confusion on his face, he said, “I was never captured. There was no trial before the Elders.”

  “Yes there was,” I said, searching his clear blue eyes again. “Earlier this year, Mother and Father Paul disappeared for a week or more, and on their return, they said that they had been in The Hollows, that there had been a trial…”

  “Is that what they told you?” he barked.

  “There was no trial – I was never captured.”

  “But…” I started, my brain beginning to squirm.

  “On my return last Candlemas to leave those presents, I discovered a secret about your mother and that Blackcoat. A secret that would destroy both of them. A secret far darker than the lies your mother has spread about me. So I paid the Blackcoat a visit and told him what I knew. I threatened to tell the Elders if he didn’t get his brother and his team of Vampyrus that hunted me off my back. I told him your mother had to withdraw her accusations or I would give up their secret! They agreed, and I was free of the lies and the Vampyrus hunters at last.”

  “I know their secret, too. They mixed and it is forbidden…” I started.

  “Their secret was far darker than any mixing they might have got up to,” my father said.

  “What is this secret?” I asked, feeling as if I were going to be sick.

  Slowly, my father took a step closer to me, leaned close, and in a whisper he said, “Your mother and Father Paul…”

  He suddenly stopped mid-sentence and my face was splashed with something hot and sticky. I flinched backwards, and touched my face. I looked at my fingers and could see that they were covered in blood – my father’s blood.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jack

  My father made a gargling noise in the back of his throat, and staggered backwards, his hands to his chest. I looked at his hand as blood trickled between his fingers. There was something else sticking out of his chest – a claw! I looked past my father to see a spray of shadow, like huge, black wings beating incredibly fast. Then they were gone and so was the claw that had been sticking out from my father’s chest. My father slumped forward, then onto his knees. I ran towards him, taking him in my arms.

  My heart was beating in my ears like a drum. “Dad!” I cried out.

  He rolled back in my arms, his head resting in the crook of my elbow. His eyes flickered open then closed as a thick line of blood trailed from the corner of his mouth.

  “Please, Dad,” I cried out. “Please don’t die. We’ve only just met again. I don’t want to lose you.”

  His eyes slowly opened, just showing the whites. My father made a gargling noise in the back of his throat as if he were trying to say something.

  With tears streaming from my eyes and onto his face, I leant close to him. With my ear just over his mouth, he whispered something.

  “Dad, what are you saying?” I whispered.

  He tried again, his words nothing more than deep, labored rasps. “You believe…me…

  please say…”

  “I do believe you,” I whispered back, cradling him in my arms, his blood staining my coat.

  “Tell your…” he said, trying to gargle around a throat full of blood. “…mother that the Vampyrus have found…”

  “Found what?” I begged, knowing that time was short for him.

  “The baby’s…grave,” he said, eyes half-closed. “If she played…no part in that baby…

  boy’s death…she wouldn’t know…”

  He coughed a thick, black blood clot from the back of his throat, spattering my face and coat.

  Trying to figure out what it was he was trying to tell me, I hugged him tight in my arms and whispered, “What was my mother’s and Father Paul’s secret?”

  With his bloody lips pressed to my ear, he whispered, “Your sister…” Then he relaxed in my arms, his head rolling to one side as if wanting to look away from me.

  “What about my sister?” I shouted, shaking his lifeless body. “Which sister?”

  My father’s blank face stared back at me, his mouth and eyes open. I let him roll from my arms and fall face-first into the sand. I clambered to my feet. My heart was beating so fast now, and I could feel a well of anger coursing through my veins like seething lava. Throwing back my head, I howled and howled up at the moon. Tears of anger and frustration poured over my cheeks, and I howled until I thought my throat was red raw.

  “Who has done this?” I screamed into the night. “Who has killed my father? Who has taken him from me?” Then, turning to face the forests, I roared, “Show yourself, you coward, so that I can rip your fucking heart out!”

  The only sound I could hear was that of my own heart racing inside of me and the constant lapping of the black waters against the shore.

  What was this secret that Father Paul and my mother had kept from me? A secret so dark that it forced them to stop the Vampyrus hunting my father? Wanting to know the truth – desperate to know what that secret had been – I knew that the only person who would tell me the truth was Father Paul. I would tell him I h
ad met my father again and demand he tell me this secret.

  I looked back at the shoreline for those cars my dad had kept for me all those years, but they were no longer there. They had gone – washed away by the red waters. With my heart aching with an anger I had not felt before, or even dreamed possible, I set off back through the forest to the home I now shared with Father Paul.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jack

  The house was in darkness. I called to him from the bottom of the stairs. “Dad? Dad?”

  It was a name I had grown so accustomed to calling him over the last four or five years, that I couldn’t break the habit, even though my real ‘Dad’ had just died in my arms.

  Getting no response, I made my way up to his bedroom. The entire house was in total darkness and I couldn’t hear a sound. I pushed open the door and peered into the gloom. All I could see was his outline sitting in the chair by the window, where I had left him thinking about my mother earlier that day. I crossed the room and fumbled around for the desk lamp. I switched it on and bathed the room in a warm glow. I was shocked to see Father Paul sitting in the exact same position as earlier. I guessed he hadn’t moved from that spot all day, as he sat and longed for my mother. He didn’t look up at me, but continued to stare out of the window into the dark.

  It was then I saw the blood. His right hand, wrist and forearm, were colored bright red.

  “Dad?” I whispered.

  He made no response. His eyelids didn’t even flicker. Slowly, I made my way towards him.

  His eyes stared blankly out through the window. I reached out with my hand when someone shouted from behind me.

  “Don’t you dare touch him!” the voice commanded.

  I span around to see a large man standing in the doorway to the room. He had a mop of thick, dark hair which was turning grey and he was dressed in a police uniform.

  “Happy now that my brother has taken his own life?” he roared at me.

  “Taken his own life?” I stammered, glancing back at the blood which covered Father Paul’s hand and wrist.

  “Slit his own wrists to drain himself of the guilt you and your family have caused him,” the police officer said, charging across the room and grabbing my by the back of my neck. His hands were huge and his fingers dug into my flesh.

  “Get off me!” I shouted, trying to pull myself free, but he was just too strong. It was then I saw the blood splashed up the front of his white police shirt.

  “You and your evil family did this to my brother!” he roared just inches from my face. “I warned him – begged him – to keep away from you filthy wolves, but he just wouldn’t listen to me.

  He loved your mother.”

  “It was you who killed him!” I screamed, catching sight of Father Paul’s bleeding wrist. “If only you had helped him. He asked you for help but you turned him away. That’s what broke his heart – not my mother!”

  “How dare you!” Father Paul’s brother roared, his face turning white with anger. “My brother was cursed the day he met your mother and the rest of you fucking wolves.”

  “He was like a father to me,” I protested.

  “He loved me like a son.”

  “Words like that are gonna get you killed,”

  he hissed. “If I were you, I’d forget you ever met him. Forget he was ever part of your life.”

  “I can’t!” I screamed at him.

  Then, tightening his grip on the back of my neck, he said, “Is the fact that you and your kind drove my brother to his death not enough? Do you want to destroy his memory, too, by claiming that he loved you like a son?”

  “But he did,” I cried.

  Then pulling me close so our noses were touching, he breathed into my face and said, “If I ever hear you so much as say one word of this – what has happened here tonight or speak about the relationship you claim my brother had with you and your mother, I will personally rip the tongues from your fucking throats.”

  His crystal blue eyes suddenly turned dead black.

  “Do I make myself clear, wolf?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Then, with his hand still locked about my throat, he dragged me from the room and down the stairs. At the front door, he yanked it open, and then threw me like an animal out into the dark and the cold.

  “Don’t you ever let me see your mutt face around here again. Fuck off back to the caves where you belong,” he growled, then slammed the door shut in my face.

  With my soul feeling as if it had been crushed, I staggered down the hill to the church. I felt lost; bewildered and full of hate. I slipped and tripped in the mud and dirt. I pulled myself up again, howling out loud, for my heart felt as if it had been torn apart. I had lost both of my fathers.

  Who did I have now? Who was left for me?

  Where would I go? I stumbled into the graveyard, blind with grief, and collapsed behind a gravestone. I curled up into a ball and cradled myself. With my eyes closed, and shivering uncontrollably with the cold, I believed it had been Father Paul’s brother who had killed my father by the lake. My father had been murdered before he’d had the chance to tell me Father Paul’s dark secret. His brother had killed my dad to protect Father Paul’s memory. As I lay there in the dark, I made myself a promise that one day I would kill Father Paul’s brother. I would rip his fucking heart out.

  I woke to the sound of voices nearby. It was morning. There was a fine layer of crisp frost covering the ground and me. I peered over the gravestone and could see a gathering of people around the entrance to the church. Some of them I recognised to be other Lycanthrope that Father Paul helped to relocate within the human world.

  They spoke in hushed and reverent-like voices.

  Then one of them pointed up the hill and an eerie silence fell over the ground. I looked up to see a coffin being carried down the hill, and I knew that Father Paul lay inside. His brother carried the coffin on his shoulder along with five others; all of them were dressed in finely pressed police tunics.

  They carried the coffin through the graveyard and into the church. With my heart aching, I crept from my hiding place and snuck into the church. I found an alcove and disappeared into the shadows.

  The tiny church was packed with Lycanthrope and others I didn’t recognise. I guessed they must have been Vampyrus who had come to pay their last respects. His brother stood at the very front of the church, one of his huge hands placed on top of Father Paul’s coffin. It was resting on a silver trestle in front of the altar, and it looked too small and narrow for him. I couldn’t picture him lying in there, his eyes closed, wrists bloody and torn. I could only picture him as I remembered him, with that kind smile and twinkle that would so often dance in his eyes.

  From my hiding place, I looked around at the other people gathered in the church, and realised I was now just another member of his congregation.

  Nobody here knew how much I loved him. No one understood what he had meant to me. Not one of them knew we had been as father and son.

  I felt I should have been seated just like everyone, not shoved into the shadows at the back of the church. This really hurt, this was my dad’s funeral and I couldn’t mourn him like a son. I felt as if my grief and hurt was being crushed, suppressed inside of me. I felt like standing up and shouting at the top of my voice and unveiling the truth, telling them everything. What would it matter now? It no longer had to be a secret.

  Instead, I hid in the dark and sobbed, trying desperately not to bring any attention to myself.

  I thought of all the times he had been kind to me, like the day he bought me those paints. Like all the times he had encouraged me. Remembering what he had meant to me, I just couldn’t stop myself from crying. I placed my hand inside my mouth in an attempt to silence myself. I felt as if I were physically in pain, I felt as if my chest were being crushed. I couldn’t accept the one person I had truly loved, the one person who had always given me so much love, encouragement, and hope was gone. What was
I going to do? Where was I going to go? Who was going to show me the way?

  In that one instant, I felt as if I had lost everything.

  During the service, his brother gave an account of Father Paul's life and a portrayal of what he had been like. The person he described was unrecognisable as the man I loved.

  I remained hidden at the back of the church and continued to stifle my heartbreak. As the service came to an end, I got up and quietly slipped out. I crossed the small graveyard in front of the church and stood silently by the trees in the distance. I watched as he was carried out and placed gently into a hole that had been dug into the ground. Several pairs of pale claws reached up out of the hole and carried his coffin down into The Hollows. As the wooden box disappeared from view, I stood by myself, unnoticed by the others, and sobbed beneath the trees.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Jack

  I waited for Father Paul’s brother and the others to walk somberly away from the graveyard.

  I turned my back on that little church and everything that had gone on there. Where was I to go now? But I knew where I had to go. I had to go home and confront my mother. As I made my way there, the anger and frustration grew ever more focused inside of me. My anger and hatred wavered from Father Paul, his brother, to my own father, then back to my mother again. They were the adults in all of this and the choices they had all made had changed my life forever.

  As I reached the outskirts of town, it started to snow. My feet crunched over the soft, white carpet that had fallen before me. It wasn’t the only sound I could hear. The sound of my dad’s dying words seemed to travel on the wind, which had started to blow harder.

  Tell your mother that the Vampyrus have found the baby’s grave. If she played no part in that baby boy’s death, she wouldn’t know…

  What? I wondered, as I neared the house.

  Then it hit me. I remembered the day my mother had told me and Kara that awful story. She had said my father had gone off alone to bury the baby’s body. Mother had said she had no idea where he had buried the remains. That’s what Dad had been trying to tell me. Only she would know where that poor baby lay, because she was the one who buried him there.