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  I remembered me and Sam sitting in my room back at Ravenwood School.

  “The boat left the jetty and we made our way out to sea. Peering over the edge of the boat, I glanced back at the beach as it slipped into the distance and I saw something odd.” I could remember Sam telling me.

  “What did you see?” I’d asked him.

  “It wasn’t a something, but a someone who had caught my attention. Standing on the shoreline was a figure, their feet were half in and half out of the water,” Sam had explained.

  “So what was so odd about that?” I’d said.

  “It was really hot and this person was dressed in jeans and a blue hoodie, with the hood pulled up over their head. I tried to see their face but I couldn’t, as it was covered by the hood,” Sam had told me.

  And as I now stood in the sea and watched him, I knew it had been me he’d been talking about. Sam had been right. We had met before, just like he said we had. But not just yet. I had something else to do first. In the time it took Sam to blink, I had shot back up into the sky and soared away.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Potter

  I raced through the light that was now streaming out of the cracks. It wasn’t warm like sunlight, but icy cold. It kind of made my skin feel dead and tight, like I was going to start cracking too. Murphy, Meren, and Isidor flew alongside me. Isidor held his crossbow in one hand, the other arm flung wide, his wing hanging from beneath it. He could be as dumb as fuck sometimes, but he was always good to have around in a scrap. He had as much fight in him as the rest of us. He probably wasn’t as savage as his sister, but he still didn’t take any prisoners. From what I witnessed in Snake Weed, Meren seemed to enjoy a good fight too, but then again she was Murphy’s daughter, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that she enjoyed a good kill.

  “One o’clock,” Murphy roared over the howling wind. I looked to my right and could see several Vampyrus racing toward us. They swept just inches above the ground like we did. We shot toward them. I heard a thwaping sound as Isidor released a volley of bolts from his crossbow. Three of the Vampyrus shot backwards through the air as if suddenly going into reverse gear. Flying so close to the ground, they crashed, rolling over and over. I smiled at the sounds of their backs and necks snapping. Two of the remaining Vampyrus peeled off to the left and right. I went after one, Murphy the other. Meren and Isidor shot ahead to confront those coming at them.

  Snarling, I clattered into the approaching Vampyrus. We grappled with each other as we spun out of control through the air. Our wings jostled together as we spun around and around, over and over. We raked at each other with our claws. I caught a glimpse of his eyes and they were as black as my own. He was strong and gnashed at my face with his fangs. I jerked my head backwards out of reach. He lunged at me again. Raising my elbow, I drove it into his face. I felt his bloodless lips crush against his fangs. Hot blood jetted up my forearm. I pulled my elbow back and could see something long and white smeared with blood protruding from my arm. It was one of the Vampyrus’ fangs embedded in my flesh. Its mouth was now a gaping black hole, just one razor sharp fang jutting from its purple and swollen gums. Its eyes rolled wildly in their sockets as blood sprayed from its mouth. Taking my chance, I brought my face forward, driving my forehead into the bridge of its nose. I heard the sickening crunch of bone breaking. I glanced into the Vampyrus’ dazed and confused face, then sunk my fangs into its throat. I spat free its windpipe and Adam’s apple as the Vampyrus dropped from the sky, its wings fluttering uselessly on either side of its back.

  Plucking its fang from my arm, I tossed it away, banked to my right, and went after my friends. Meren had somehow managed to climb onto the back of another Vampyrus. She almost seemed to ride it like some kind of freaky-looking glider. The Vampyrus shook violently, desperate to shake her free as she paddled her claws over and over through the air, stripping the creature free of its flesh. Realising that she didn’t need any assistance from me, as Meren seemed to be doing perfectly well on her own, I searched the skies for Isidor. I saw him soar close to a Vampyrus. As he shot past, he pressed the barrel of his crossbow against the Vampyrus’ right temple. Within a fraction of a second, the Vampyrus’ brains were exploding out of its left ear. Nice, I smiled to myself, now searching for Murphy. I looked back to see him up to his elbows in guts as he drove his claws into the stomach of a Vampyrus he was struggling with. He pulled his arm free, entrails swinging from it like snakes. The Vampyrus rolled over mid-air, then dropped like a stone.

  With the Vampyrus now dead, I swooped in and hovered in the air next to Murphy. “Well that was easy enough,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?” Meren said, pointing over my shoulder.

  I glanced back to see what looked like a black storm cloud racing toward us. There must have been at least five hundred Vampyrus heading our way and toward the station.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Kiera

  Noah opened the ticket booth door and stepped out onto the concourse. He wore a smart blue railway uniform. For someone who looked so old, I had expected him to walk with a stoop or at least a shuffle. But he came quickly toward me with his back straight.

  “Kiera Hudson,” he almost seemed to marvel, looking me up and down. “You have no idea…” he trailed off.

  “No idea about what?” I asked him.

  “How much I have looked forward to this day,” he said with that big smile of his. “I knew that you would eventually find your way to this station. It was meant to be.”

  “You said I was on a journey, and you said my destination was my choice,” I reminded him. “Well, I choose to go home.”

  “Kiera,” he smiled again. “Let’s take a seat. I have so much to tell you.” He took my arm and gently guided me to one of the many benches scattered about the concourse. It was as I sat down, I noticed that everyone else had vanished. It was like they had simply evaporated. There was only Noah and me left.

  “Where has everyone gone?” I asked him, my voice now echoing off the marble walls and floor of the vast railway station. The lights on the departure boards had also flickered out.

  “There are no more journeys to be made,” Noah said. “Everything rests on your friend Kayla.”

  “And if she fails?” I asked, scared of what his answer might be.

  “Then we all do,” he said, his smile now faded.

  “So there are no winners?” I said.

  “There are always winners and losers, that is the way of things,” Noah said thoughtfully.

  “So if we lose, who wins?” I asked.

  “The Elders, of course,” he said, as if perhaps I should have already known this.

  “And what about Luke?” I asked Noah, sensing he seemed to know – understand – this world.

  “Luke is like you,” Noah said.

  “I’m nothing like him,” I said, offended by his comment.

  “I don’t mean like that,” Noah said, gently patting me on my knee with his wrinkled hand. “Like you, Luke is just another pawn in the Elders’ games. They feed off his misery just as they feed off yours. It’s what makes them strong – holds them together – is probably a better way of looking at it.”

  I could remember Potter telling me that Lilly had explained to him how the Elders fed off my unhappiness. It was what kept them alive. So they were using Luke, too. I looked at Noah and said, “Why us?”

  “Because you both are two different sides of the same coin,” Noah explained. “One side dark, the other light. You don’t need me to explain which of you is which.” He smiled, those wrinkles around his eyes and mouth as deep as the ones in the sky outside. “You both are being tormented, but in different ways. Luke’s struggle is hate, and yours is love. Don’t both emotions cause the greatest pain?”

  “So I’m being punished because I try to be a good person – do the right thing?”

  “There have been other people like you who have been punished because of their kindness,” Noah said.
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  “But why us?” I asked Noah. “Why me and Luke?”

  “Why not?” Noah asked right back.

  The Elders had said something similar once when I had asked them why. They had told me that all of us are chosen, but none of us ask to be. They said that not one of us had asked to be born, that decision had been made for us all.

  “So we were chosen at random?” I asked.

  “Like I’ve already tried to explain Kiera, your heart is full of love and Luke’s full of hate,” Noah said. “You could say that to some you are the embodiment of love, and that Luke is the personification of hate. The Elders chose you both wisely. They hoped that you would form a union before the world got pushed. But you fell in love with another. But if the Elders’ plan had been realised, then what a union you and Luke would have made. Both ends of the spectrum coming together – it would have been agony for both of you. But neither of you would have been able to walk away – break that union. Luke’s hatred and jealously would have stopped him from letting you go, and your love for him would have kept you at his side, despite your pain.”

  “But what happens when I die? What happens if Kayla is successful in her mission and kills Luke?” I asked. “Will the Elders die too?”

  “No, no, no,” Noah laughed kindly. “They will just move on. Choose another. But they can only choose another once you are both dead. They feed off all suffering, but by choosing you in particular, they have made a bond that can’t be broken until your death. The Elders will then choose another to suck pain and misery from. That is the way of things. That’s what they have done for as many years I can remember. The Elders have to be destroyed.” He winked at me.

  “And how does someone do that?” I asked him.

  “Just like you kill any other living thing, you cut off the one thing that keeps them alive,” Noah said. “For you and your friends it’s air. For the Elders, it’s pain.”

  “And they have been feeding off mine and Luke’s?” I said.

  “Exactly,” Noah smiled, rubbing his ancient hands together. “So they sent you into this where and when.”

  “To punish us?” I asked.

  Noah looked at me as if in deep thought. “What was the real reason you refused to make your choice in the Dust Palace?”

  “Because I love my friends,” I said. “I knew that they loved the world, that’s why they had crept from The Hollows to live in it. I knew that they loved the humans, too, or why else did they spend their lives trying to protect them? If I chose the humans, then the Vampyrus would have died. If I had chosen them, then the humans would have died. I would have deprived my friends of those they loved as much as I did.”

  “So you decided not to choose because you loved your friends?” Noah said.

  “Yes,” I said. “My friends’ happiness means more to me than anything.”

  “More than your own?” Noah asked.

  “Yes,” I nodded.

  “So now do you see why you were pushed here as I know you and your friends like to call it,” he smiled.

  “The Elders saw the love I have for my friends as a weakness. They saw another way of hurting me other than making me choose between the humans and Vampyrus,” I breathed as if I was seeing clearly for the first time.

  Noah nodded his head slowly up and down. “That’s why your friends were brought back with you,” Noah said.

  “So I could watch them suffer?”

  “No,” Noah said with a shake of his head. “So they could be taken away from you again. The Elders win either way.”

  “How come?” I asked, but I already knew in my heart the answer. I just wanted him to speak it out loud. If he did then I could no longer deny what I already knew to be true in my heart.

  “If you send your friends home, you lose them,” Noah said. “But if you keep them here, with you then you will continue to watch them suffer and then die. Either way you will lose them and the Elders know your pain will be beyond imagination.”

  I looked at Noah. “My choice then is an impossible one, as it was before? Either way I lose and the Elders win.”

  “Are you so sure about that?” Noah smiled back at me, his blue eyes glistening mischievously. “I think the Elders have underestimated you, Kiera Hudson. I think what they perceive as your weakness is really your strength.”

  “And what is that?” I whispered.

  “I thought being able to see was your gift, Kiera Hudson,” Noah said. “The gift of sight is more than seeing footprints, blood splatters, and other clues. The real gift of sight that you have is being able to see into the hearts of others. But more than that, it’s being able to see into your own. If you do, you’ll see how you can defeat the Elders.”

  “If I see the answer I’m looking for, will I be able to go back home – to the world before it was pushed and be with my friends? The people I love the most?” I asked hopefully.

  Noah looked at me and smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Kayla

  With my wings buzzing on either side of me, I moved so fast that I had dragged Jessica Hudson back off the boat and down beneath the sea before she even had a chance to cry out. Holding my breath and gripping her by the throat, I rammed her face into the spinning propeller beneath the boat. Chunks of flesh filled the water like red porridge as her face disintegrated. A stream of bubbles escaped her throat as she took her final breath. I let go of her lifeless body and watched it sink in the darkness below. That’s for what you did to me in The Hollows and for what you did to Sam on that station platform, bitch, I thought.

  Shooting out of the sea in a spray of water, I sank my claws deep into the pits of flesh beneath Luke’s arms. I wasn’t going to kill him just yet, but I didn’t want him to be able to fight back. When I killed this fucking arsehole, I wanted him to be defenceless like I was when he murdered me. Before Luke had had a chance to realise what was happening, I was shooting up into the sky with him skewered to my claws. The blood that now pumped from his armpits spurted over my arms. He tried to twist himself free, kicking out with his legs. He looked back and saw that it was me who had so suddenly snatched him. I could see surprise in his eyes, but more than that, I could see fear. He thrashed about again, shooting his wings from his back. Their release threw me back, and I lost my grip on him. I spun around and raced back toward him as he tumbled through the air, blood streaming from beneath his arms. Losing blood fast and weakened, he was unable to fight me off as I took him again.

  “Kayla!” he screamed with anger.

  “Shut the fuck up!” I screamed back, thrusting my head forward and tearing one of his ears from the side of his head with my fangs. I spat the black lump of dead flesh away into the sea. I raced just inches over the surface, dragging him like a ragdoll behind me. I headed for a small alcove built into the side of the jagged cliff face. Here we would be unseen from the shore. Reaching it, I tossed him down onto the rocks, his body crashed against them. I heard bones break. Waves crashed against the rocks covering both of us in a white foam. Luke grovelled amongst the black rocks. I pulled back my hood, my long bright red hair fluttered like a flag behind me. I wanted him to see my face. I wanted him to look into my eyes as I killed him. The anger I had bottled up inside of me for so long now raced to the surface and broke free. Lunging forward, I drove my boot into his ribs. I heard several of them break like twigs.

  “Not so fucking tough now, are you, sonofabitch?!” I kicked him again.

  Luke screamed in pain, rolling over and clutching his sides.

  Leaning forward, I tore his clothes from him. With trembling fingers, he tried to hold his trousers in place. I wanted him to be naked. I wanted him to feel just as vulnerable as I had when he had stripped me of my clothes and killed me. I tore his trousers to shreds with four quick swipes of my claws, then drove the heel of my boots down onto his fingers so he couldn’t use his hands or claws to cover himself up.

  “Please, Kayla!” he screamed in agony. “I’m sorry. I did love you…”r />
  “Liar!” I screamed back, driving my foot into him again. I kicked and kicked him. Something inside of me said I should stop before I lost all reason and any kind of humanity I had left in me. But all I could see was him ripping my ears off and placing them in my dead hands. All I could see was him kicking Sam to death on that tube station platform. But more than that, this was my chance to close the cracks and go home. I raked at his flesh with my claws and I knew that it was more than just hatred for Luke that drove me on. It was my fear of him, too. I knew how strong he was and how cunning he could be. I couldn’t risk giving him once chance to take me.

  “I did love you…” he screeched, his voice now broken.

  “You never loved anyone!” I roared. “You killed us all and you killed my friend Sam.”

  “Sam…Sam?” he said, looking back at me through his black swollen eyes. “How do you know Sam?”

  Gasping for breath, I looked down at his broken and twisted body. “I met him in my future, and that’s where you kill him…”

  “Future?” Luke said, spitting a wad of blood from his mouth and onto the rocks. “How…?”

  “Through the cracks you get me to make,” I said.

  “Cracks?” Luke mumbled, rolling onto his side.

  I stood over him. “You create cracks so the Vampyrus can come back above ground and…”

  Luke shot to his feet, his broken fingers now reforming into claws, wings out and fast recovering from the injuries I thought I had caused him. He gripped me about the throat, driving me backwards into the rocks. With blood running down his face and fangs just inches from my throat, he said, “These cracks sound fascinating. Do tell me more about them and the rise of the Vampyrus before I kill you for a second time.”