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  Maybe Kiera didn’t need that kind of protection — the fang-ripping and clawing, tearing kind. Maybe she just needed a friend? Someone to be there for her — to be there for each other. Like I said, I knew she was troubled by something — the walls of her room were covered from floor to ceiling in those newspaper cuttings. It was like she was looking for something. I knew she didn’t know what, exactly, but I knew that she would see it eventually.

  The soundtrack had started to fade a little, so pulling the pillow from over my head, I climbed from my bed and padded across my bedroom to the large bay windows leading to the balcony. I pulled back the curtains a fraction and peered outside. The day looked miserable again and I had forgotten how bleak this place could be in the winter…spring…oh, who was I trying to kid? The place was freaking bleak all year round.

  From my window, I spied Isidor coming back through the woods carrying an armful of branches. His dark hair was swept off his brow and his Shaggy-Doo beard jutted from his chin. He hated it when I called it that. That’s what Potter called it and was always taking the piss. And that was another thing — being dead hadn’t stopped those two from bitching at one another. They were constantly at each other’s throats. But Isidor hit back just as hard as Potter now, or should I say Gabriel! I couldn’t help but snigger aloud every time Isidor taunted him. Seeing Potter get wound up had been my happiest moments since coming back.

  I watched Isidor drop the pile of branches onto the drive at the foot of the steps that led to the front door. He took a flick-knife from the pocket of his jeans and sat down where he began to sharpen them. Pulling on a pair of jogging bottoms, trainers, and a sweatshirt, I left my room to join him.

  “What are you doing, Isidor?” I asked, sitting beside him on the step.

  “Making stakes,” he said back, as he carved away at the tips of the branches.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why not?” he smiled at me, then went back to the sharpening. “What else is there to do around here?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re missing The Hollows and what happened there?” I half-smiled, placing my arm about his shoulder.

  “It’s because of what happened there that I’m making these stakes,” Isidor said, not looking at me.

  “I don’t understand?” I said. “That’s all finished with now, we’re safe here. Besides, we’re dead already — how can we die twice?”

  Then, stopping what he was doing, Isidor turned to face me. “You’ve noticed the changes, right?”

  “I guess,” I said, looking straight at him.

  “Then I don’t think we’re safe — dead or alive,” and he went back to his cutting.

  Chapter Three

  Kiera

  Isidor had said something bad had happened. I remembered him saying those words to me as we raced from the mortuary. And something bad had happened — people had gone missing. Not just one or two, but thousands. I had come back to find that in an instant, people had just disappeared. And as I looked at the hundreds of newspaper cuttings that covered the walls of my room at Hallowed Manor, I knew that they had been the Vampyrus, snatched back by the Elders as The Hollows had been sealed. But the Elders had said that the humans wouldn’t remember and they didn’t — it was as if the Vampyrus hadn’t ever existed. And that wasn’t the only bad thing to have happened. It seemed that the Elders had either failed to understand the consequences of their actions, or they knew exactly what would happen and this was just another part of their curse, because the world had changed. Not drastically. But it was different, as if it had been nudged off-kilter, shoved to the left a bit. There were subtle changes and as I trawled through the Internet during the hours that I sat awake unable to sleep — I noticed these changes. And it was as if by taking the Vampyrus back, the Elders had erased any subtle influence that the Vampyrus had had on human civilisation. It was my iPod that first drew my attention to these differences. Although it was still called an iPod, the Apple logo had been replaced with the shape of a crescent moon. And when I thumbed through the tracks, I noticed that some of the songs had changed slightly — sung by someone else. For example all of the Rihanna songs had been replaced by a singer named Robyn, the U2 tracks had been replaced by a group called Feedback. The band looked vaguely familiar and the songs similar in tone and music style to U2 — but like I said, just different — as if knocked off-kilter. When I tried to search for U2 on the Internet, there was no trace of them on any search engine — not even the biggest, Toogle, which seemed to have replaced Google. But other songs had stayed just the same. Bruno Mars, Leona Lewis, and many others were as they were before. But it wasn’t just the tracks on my iPod which had altered; the car manufacturer Ford didn’t exist — but there was Nord. The number one fast-food chain was McDonnell’s started back in the 1940’s by the McDonnell brothers.

  As I sat alone in the darkness of my room, the only light coming from my Moon laptop, the one that had the same crescent-shaped moon logo as my iPod, I tried to make sense of these little differences to what I had known before. Where had the company Apple gone? Ford? McDonalds? The singers and songs that had disappeared from my iPod?

  And what about the newspaper cuttings that covered my walls, which told the stories of people waking up six weeks ago to feel that everything wasn’t quite right? I knew that humans, on a subconscious level, knew that something was wrong — that something was missing — something had been knocked slightly off balance.

  I read and reread the stories of how men had woken to find their closets were full of women’s clothes, shoes, and hats. Where had these things come from? Who did they belong to? After all, they hadn’t girlfriends or wives, but why had they woken to find silver and gold coloured bands around their wedding fingers?

  What about the passenger trains that had stopped suddenly, en route to their destinations because the drivers had suddenly vanished? The co-pilots, who suddenly looked up to find that they had taken off without a pilot, and were now thirty thousand feet above ground. And the patients who bled to death on operating tables, the medical team gone.

  My walls were covered in a thousand similar stories, and even though I knew what had happened to all of those missing people, I still found it hard to comprehend that so many Vampyrus had infiltrated human civilisation and made lives for themselves. Those who had been left behind were now left to stare, dazed and confused. It must have been similar to being halfway through a conversation only to suddenly forget what you were talking about. That awful searching, scrambling of the mind as you tried desperately to remember but just couldn’t.

  Sitting in one of the dusty armchairs that I had taken from the attic, I looked at the walls, which were a collage of black and white lines of print and faces. Why had I collected them? I didn’t really know the answer to that. Potter said that I had lost my freaking mind. He either failed to see the changes that had taken place since coming back from The Hollows — coming back from the dead — or he just refused to notice them. But I think Isidor and Kayla understood why I had collected all of those news cuttings and trawled for hours on the Internet.

  Each day, Kayla and Isidor would make the long drive into the nearest town and a buy a copy of each available newspaper. They would bring them to me, and sometimes in silence, but more often than not while listening to music Kayla selected on my iPod, we would cut the articles from the newspapers and tack them to my bedroom walls.

  Glancing at them, I could see that they both looked lost, a perpetual look of confusion engraved across their faces. Isidor was eighteen, Kayla sixteen, and neither would grow any older. But like me, the euphoria of being alive again had worn off and the reality of being dead but alive weighed heavily upon them. Coming back to life where things had changed, however slight, had changed them too.

  “What do we do?” Isidor had asked me as the three of us had sat and cut articles from the newspapers.

  “How do you mean?” I asked, cutting carefully around an article about how no one could understan
d how a Chief of Police had never been appointed in London. And if there ever had been one, what had been their name and where were they now?

  “What do we do for the rest of eternity?” Kayla asked, stopping what she was doing and looking at me. “We didn’t come back to sit on the floor of your room cutting up newspapers. I mean I love spending time with you Kiera, but…”

  “What did the Elders tell you?” I asked, peering over the corner of the newspaper at them.

  “They said we were angels — dark angels — whatever that’s s’posed to mean,” Isidor said, scratching the tiny beard that jutted from his chin. “They told me I was to be called Malachi, Kayla, Uriel and…” with a smile on his face, he added, “And Potter was to be called Gabriel.”

  I smiled back and said, “I wouldn’t let him hear you call him that.”

  “I know — it’s great,” Isidor grinned. “It really pisses him off.”

  “Did they say anything else?” I asked them.

  “Only that you would need us to help you,” Kayla explained, going back to her cutting. “But they didn’t say how or with what.”

  “They said I’d been ‘cursed to walk in the shadow of death’, as they described it,” I told them, laying the scissors on the floor beside me. “They said I was one of the Dead Flesh — cursed.”

  “But a curse can be lifted, right?” Isidor said.

  “The Elders said that it could be, but they didn’t say how,” I told him.

  “So how will you know?” Kayla pushed. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to wait,” I told her, taking the newspaper article I had cut out and tacking it onto the wall along with the others. “I’m just going to sit in my chair over by the window and wait.”

  “But what about the changes?” Kayla asked me as she knocked her auburn fringe from her brow. “Why do you think some things are different now?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her, looking straight into her green eyes.

  “It’s like kinda freaky,” Isidor said. “I noticed it as we raced to the mortuary to get you. We passed a motorway sign which gave directions to London. Except the sign didn’t say London. It said, Linden. I had to look twice because at first, I thought I had misread the sign.”

  “How can London be called Linden?” Kayla asked, sounding spooked.

  “I don’t know the answer to that either,” I told her, picking up another newspaper from the pile on the floor. “Like I don’t know why people are all raving about a book called Harvey Trotter who happens to be a twelve-year-old dragon slayer.” Then, holding up the paper, I pointed out an advertisement for the movie of the book. “It appears that Harvey Trotter amp; the Dragon’s Throne was written by someone called K.J. Dowling.”

  “K.J. who?” Isidor said, staring at the newspaper advert. “I mean couldn’t J.K sue this K.J dude? She’s been ripped off.”

  “But that’s the thing that scares me the most,” I said, looking at both Kayla and Isidor. “I don’t think Harry Potter exists here — a version of those books, yes, but not the ones we know. Wherever here is, they have their own version of the Harry Potter books, like they have Moon instead of Apple, McDonnell’s instead of McDonald’s and a whole other bunch of stuff.”

  “Linden instead of London?” Isidor said.

  “That’s right,” I nodded.

  “So where are we then?” Isidor asked.

  “Are we like in a different time or something?” Kayla added.

  “No — not a different time,” I said looking down at the newspaper in my hands. “Look at the date — its twenty-twelve all right — but just a different version of it.”

  “But how has that happened?” Kayla pushed, as if I knew all the answers. “I mean, I know I died and all, but those Elders had brought me back within hours. How come so much has changed?”

  “I wish I knew the answer to that,” I told her softly.

  “So what do we do?” Isidor asked me again.

  “We wait,” I said looking at him. “We just wait.”

  “For what?” Kayla asked, looking at me as if I’d lost my mind.

  “The answer.”

  “And how do you know it will come?” Isidor asked, shooting a glance at me, then back at his sister, as if he too couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “I don’t know where the answer will come from,” I told them, getting up and crossing my room to the chair I had positioned by the large window with the balcony. Then, sitting and looking out the window, I added thoughtfully, “The answers will come — I’ve been brought back for a reason — we all have.”

  Chapter Four

  Kiera

  All I’d been doing for the last six weeks had been waiting. But I didn’t know for how much longer I could bear it. It wasn’t only the waiting — it was the cracks. How long did I have before those cracks became splits, fractures, and then complete breaks? Either way — if I sat and did nothing, I would fall apart.

  So, as I sat alone in my room, staring out of the window at the leafless trees that surrounded the grounds of Hallowed Manor, I knew that I had to do something — anything that would break the monotony of being dead. It wasn’t like being in a book or a movie. There was no glamour to being immortal. It was a curse. And I had to do something until I was told what I needed to do to lift it.

  My thoughts were broken by the sight of Potter below. Even though it was mid-January, and the temperature was close to zero outside, I could see him stripped to the waist as he raked the leaves, which had fallen onto the wide gravel drive, into a mushy pile. Potter was restless, just like the rest of us. I watched him as he worked. His face was ashen and hard-looking, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. I could see that although he was keeping himself busy, his mind wasn’t on the job at hand, but on something else. His eyes were dark, and he seemed to stare down at the copper and gold coloured leaves as if they weren’t even there.

  On returning to the manor, I wondered if Potter and I would at last be together — just like other couples. Share the same bed, the same likes and dislikes — but that hadn’t happened. Any daydreams I might have had of us curled up together on the sofa watching movies, strolling hand-in-hand on long meandering walks had failed to materialise. At first we shared the same room — the same bed — but as the cracks started to appear in me and on me — so they started in our relationship. It wasn’t that I found myself loving Potter less, in fact, now free of The Hollows and the nightmare that I had journeyed over the last year, I felt as if I could breathe again — for a short time at least.

  But the nightmares came — the girl forever being chased — her desperate escape — the school named Ravenwood — and deep inside of me, I knew there was trouble coming for me again. Just like how you know that a storm is brewing on a warm summer’s evening. The sky starts to darken, almost thicken. The atmosphere feels almost electric. That’s how I had started to feel, as if a storm were coming and I didn’t know when, from what direction, and if I could find shelter from it.

  So gradually, Potter and I had stopped holding each other during the night. I would lay on my side, watching the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he slept, his strong arms enveloping me. But gradually we had started to sleep apart, back to back, until eventually Potter moved out of my room and then from the manor, taking up residence again in the Gate House. Somewhere inside of me, where my cravings for the red stuff kept me from sleeping, I was grateful for that. If I were to be honest with myself, I didn’t know how long I could fight the urge — need — or was it pure desire, to sink my fangs into him and feed again.

  But I missed him and my heart ached to think of him alone in the Gate House, so I often went to see him there, only to find him sitting quietly, deep in thought, and I would remember how we had shared our first kiss in that rickety shack. I would sit opposite him on the flea-bitten sofa and talk was light. But you know, I needed to be with him and I knew that he needed to be with me. Sometimes we lay before the fire tha
t he had roaring in the hearth, and I would lie in his arms and fight the tears that stood in my eyes. But before the talk turned to anything meaningful between us, I would slip away, back to the manor, leaving him to his private thoughts.

  It was as if just being together was enough, during those intimate moments we were showing how much we loved each other; but for whatever reason, words were more difficult to find when trying to express how we felt.

  I knew in my heart that Potter was hurting and I suspected now that he was away from The Hollows, he had found time to reflect on what had happened there. The betrayal by his best friend, Luke and the death of Murphy, I figured, were weighing heavily upon his soul. And like Potter, now away from The Hollows, I too was able to look back on everything that had happened. I too had been betrayed by Luke — we all had. I’d lost my mother and Murphy had been like a father to me. Sometimes, I would stand alone in the quiet of the night before the mirror in my room and look at the maze of hairline cracks that covered me. I would stare at those little black fingers that wriggled at the tips of my wings, my claws, and fangs and knew that I truly had been cursed. So many times, as I’d lain in Potter’s arms before the fire in the Gate House, I had fought the crippling urge to tell him about the cracks that covered my body when in my half-breed form. But I just couldn’t tell him. I could see he was consumed by his own worries, doubts, and grief, and being back from the dead wasn’t easy to deal with — like I said — it isn’t like being in the movies.

  So I sat at my window and watched him rake the leaves away, both of us lost to our thoughts. For how long I sat there, I don’t know — that is another thing about being dead — time kind of just stands still. Nights could seem to last fifty or sixty hours and days only moments. Like I’ve already said, the world had been shoved to the left a bit.