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  “Lilly Blu. Murphy’s bit of skirt that he used to knock about with. Meren’s mother,” I said.

  “Does Murphy know that Lilly is back?” Kiera asked me.

  “Yes, I told him, while you were sleeping,” I said. “I’m not sure what he thinks about that. He didn’t say much. But I guess he’s got some explaining to do to Meren. She thinks her mother is someone else.”

  “I know how much that hurts,” Kiera said.

  “Murphy is going to have to go easy with Meren as she has been blubbing over the loss of her friends in Wasp Water,” I explained.

  “She did witness her friends being decapitated,” Kiera reminded me. “She just needs time – she needs her mum.”

  I gently eased Kiera on top of me. Her body felt warm against mine and I pulled the blankets over us. She propped her head in her hands, resting her elbows on my chest so she could look down into my face as I explained what had happened to me after I’d been captured in the woods that surrounded the Dead Waters.

  “Lilly Blu led me and Jack to this railway station. It was full of dead people – at least I think they were dead. There was this old guy named Noah who was punching out tickets and sending people back through the cracks to their past lives.”

  “Why?” Kiera frowned.

  “He wanted the humans to remember their past lives – the lives they led before the world got pushed,” I said, not knowing if I was explaining what I had discovered very well. “If the humans could remember then they’d realise what the world was like – should be like – and go fuck with the Wolf Man. They would stop letting their kids being taken to those schools where they get matched.”

  “The Wolf Man is Luke Bishop – Elias Munn – isn’t it?” Kiera said.

  “How did you guess?” I asked her.

  “Just a hunch,” she shrugged. But I knew it was more than just a hunch. She had seen it somehow. “So why did Lilly and this old guy Noah want you and Jack to go back through the cracks?”

  Staring up into Kiera’s beautiful face and combing the fringe from her eyes with my fingertips I told her how they had wanted us to unmask the photographer. I explained that there were in fact two photographers – Kayla and Sam.

  “Kayla and Sam?” Kiera sounded surprised. “But why them?”

  I took a deep breath and said, “The woman who you grew up believing was your mum, Jessica, and Luke, they tricked them…”

  “My mother is here, too?” Kiera cut in.

  This was going to be difficult, so much of what I had to tell Kiera was going to be difficult, but I wasn’t going to lie to her again to protect her. I’d done that before and it had only caused her more pain. “I killed her,” I said, looking straight into her eyes. “But just like she was in the world before it got pushed, Jessica Hudson had been turned by Luke. She was evil. She helped kill Sam. She held him down while Luke beat him to death. She would have done the same to Kayla if I hadn’t killed her. You’ve got to believe me, Kiera, if there had been another way… but there wasn’t. I had no choice.”

  “I believe you,” Kiera said, but I could still see the sadness in her eyes.

  Not wanting either of us to dwell on the subject of her mother, and knowing how much more uncomfortable truths I had to tell her, I said, “When I went back through the cracks, I met up with you – well, not you exactly – the Kiera Hudson of this pushed world. I had to place that picture of you and your father in your flat – her flat – so I could later find it and give it to you. But the other Kiera…”

  “I don’t want to know what she was like,” Kiera said softly. “She isn’t me and I’m not her.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure,” I said.

  Kiera gently nodded her head. “I’m sure. What else did you have to do?”

  “I had to deliver some letters to Sophie…” I started.

  Kiera gently placed her fingertips over my lips. “I don’t want to know about that either,” she said

  “Why?” I asked. “Nothing happened…Kayla was there…”

  “I know nothing happened,” Kiera whispered. “I just don’t want to be reminded of a nightmare I recently had.”

  “Nightmare?”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” she said with another gentle shake of her head. “What I want to know is, why didn’t you let me know somehow that you weren’t really dead?”

  “For the same reason I had to leave you that picture in your flat of you and your father,” I told her.

  “How come?” Kiera frowned.

  “Because that picture would remind you of your father,” I tried to explain. “It would stir up all those feelings you had for him. You’d have to know if your father was alive in this pushed world. The needing to know would be so great that you would have to go looking for him. And you did. But when you found him again, did it make you happy?”

  “No,” Kiera said. “It broke my heart, because not only did I have to watch him die all over again, I found out the truth about him. The truth that he had been keeping from me my whole life, and discovering that was more painful than watching him die.”

  “And that’s what Luke and the Elders wanted,” I told her.

  “So Luke and the Elders are working together?”

  “Luke thinks they are, but the Elders are just using him, just like they are using you,” I said.

  “How are they using me?” Kiera asked.

  “They feed off your pain. Kiera, they feed off your misery,” I said. “They’re like fucking leaches, but instead of sucking up your blood they feed off your heartache. The more pain you feel, the stronger they become. That’s what the choice you had to make down in The Hollows was really all about. They couldn’t give a toss whether the humans, Vampyrus, or even the wolves lived. They just wanted you to choose. Because they knew that whatever way you chose, that decision would haunt you for the rest of your life. You would agonise over the thought that you had been responsible for destroying a complete race of people. And if your pain or guilt ever began to weaken over time, they would just give you another impossible choice to make.”

  “But why not get you to choose?” she asked. “Why did it have to be me?”

  “Do you really think I’d give a fuck if the wolves were wiped from the face of the Earth?” I shot back. “No, it had to be someone who cared. Someone who had reason enough to care. In the world before you got pushed, when you believed yourself to be half Vampyrus and half human, the choice you had was between those two species. How could you make that choice? But here, and now that you understand where you truly came from, I bet they will want you to choose between the wolves and the Vampyrus.”

  “But there are no Vampyrus in this world,” Kiera reminded me.

  “Not yet,” I said. “But they’re on their way. Luke has been gathering an army to come up from The Hollows and through the cracks he has been making. He has already manipulated the wolves to bring the humans to their knees. So it’s now only the wolves standing between him and having a world dominated by Vampyrus – which has always been what he’s wanted – even before the world was pushed. But the most unlikely of people has gone and made a hole in Luke’s plans. Quite a few holes in fact.”

  “Who?” Kiera asked.

  “Your brother, Jack Seth,” I told her with a smile.

  “Jack?”

  “When he took Isidor’s place in that railway station waiting room and saved his life,” I said. “It should have been Isidor who died that night, but Jack changed that, and by doing so he caused those cracks to appear in the sky. But it’s not only Luke’s plans he’s fucked up – this whole world is gonna fall down around our ears and destroy everything.”

  “Can we stop it?” Kiera asked.

  “Lilly believes if we can reveal to the wolves that they have been deceived by Luke Bishop, then perhaps the cracks will close or war will be prevented at least. But I’m not convinced. It looks to me as if the damage has already been done.”

  With her head still propped in her hands, Ki
era looked thoughtfully down into my eyes.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked her.

  “Why do you think Jack saved Isidor’s life?”

  “Perhaps you were right about him,” I said. “Perhaps he wasn’t the true monster I believed him to be.”

  I glanced over at the window and looked up at the cracks. They were still there. The sky was growing lighter and I knew that dawn was just an hour or two away. “We should get some sleep,” I said, looking back at Kiera. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

  Kiera leant down and gently kissed me. Her lips were moist and sweet. “I don’t want to sleep just yet,” she whispered, rolling over onto her back and pulling me on top of her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kiera

  I woke to find myself alone. Potter had slipped from my arms sometime before dawn. Pulling the blankets up beneath my chin, I shivered without Potter’s strong arms to keep me warm. I could see that I was in a poky room, with wooden floorboards and white walls. There was a wardrobe against the far wall and a dressing table and mirror. I remembered Potter telling me how my friends had discovered an abandoned farmhouse in the hills above the town of Snake Weed. I guessed the farmhouse had once been the home to humans before the wolves had chased them away or worse. My clothes were strewn across the floor where Potter had cast them away during the night. The first time we had made love had been frenzied and full of passion. But the second time had been slower, each taking our time to explore each other. But it was more than that for me. I’d wanted to make the most of our time together. I hadn’t forgotten the nightmare I’d had before waking to find Potter lying next to me. I feared that perhaps it wasn’t a nightmare at all, but a premonition of what was yet to come. And if it had been a vision then I wanted to make the most of the time I had left with Potter.

  I rolled onto my back and looked at the fine web of cracks that covered the ceiling. It looked like the sky on the other side of the window. I thought of everything Potter had told me and how the Elders were living and breathing off the hurt and pain they had caused me. But I knew it wasn’t just my own pain they fed off of, but the agony I felt knowing that my friends were trapped in this world with me. Knowing that I could end their suffering was what hurt me the most. But I knew if I let them go, they would forget me, just like they had in my nightmare. Potter would be in love with Sophie, and I didn’t know if I could bear the thought of that for the rest of my life. But Potter was wrong about one thing. The Elders weren’t going to get me to choose between the Vampyrus and the wolves this time. My choice this time was a far simpler one, but more painful. I had to decide whether to keep my friends with me in this pushed world and prolong their suffering and misery, or to let them go back to the world as it was before, leaving me here alone without them.

  Pushing those thoughts from my mind, and sensing that the time was soon coming when I would have to make that choice, I threw back the blankets and climbed out of bed. I snatched up my clothes from the floor. They were smeared with the human remains that had been thrown at me by the wolves. I dropped them and went to the wardrobe. I searched through the clothes I found hanging there. Removing a black fitted shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and a long, black leather coat, I left the room and went in search of the bathroom. After I’d showered and dressed, I headed downstairs. I could hear the low rumble of chatter and followed the sound across a small living room. Someone had lit a fire in the hearth, warming the sparsely furnished room. I stood by the kitchen door, unseen by my friends, and listened to them discussing their plans to attack Snake Weed that night. I pushed open the kitchen door. My friends were gathered around a kitchen table. There was a steaming pot of tea in the middle of it. One of them had obviously caught some rabbits as three half-eaten carcasses lay on plates on the table. Potter sat at the table, an overflowing ashtray before him. Murphy sat beside Meren, pumping clouds of smoke from his pipe. I was surprised that anyone was still able to breathe. Seeing me standing in the kitchen doorway, both Isidor and Kayla jumped to their feet. They came from the other side of the table and hugged me. It was so good to see them both again.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t really get to say hello last night,” Kayla said, “but it was a bit hectic – what, with having to escape from Wasp Water and everything.”

  I remembered watching her tucking into Father Taylor’s heart and smiled, “It’s okay, Kayla. I understand. I’m just glad that you are okay.”

  I turned to look at Isidor. He smiled, those black flames crawling up his neck and licking his chin. “You’re looking good,” I said, squeezing him again.

  “Never as good as you,” he smiled.

  Isidor hadn’t seemed to have lost any of his boyishness. I was secretly glad that his ordeal hadn’t hardened him – changed him.

  “Hey, I want you to meet someone,” he beamed, the piercing fixed into his eyebrow glinting in the grey light that seeped through the kitchen window. “This is my friend I told you about, Melody Rose.”

  “Hey, Melody,” I said across the table at her. She no longer wore Isidor’s coat, and like me had probably rummaged through the drawers and wardrobes in the bedrooms upstairs and found herself some clothes that had been left behind by the humans. She wore a violet coloured top, which only made her hair and the rose tattoos that climbed the length of her arms and neck look all the pinker. She wore blue jeans and trainers. She was prettier than Isidor had described her to me.

  “Thank you,” I smiled at her.

  “What for?” Melody smiled back.

  “For coming to rescue me and my friends last night,” I said. “I saw you fighting back the wolves and it must have taken a lot, as I know you’re a wolf too.”

  “I wanted to. I grew up hearing the stories that the Dead Angel, Kiera Hudson, was coming to kill the wolves,” Melody said. “But Isidor said that was a lie. He described you as being too beautiful inside to want to hurt the wolves. He said that you were an angel – and there had never been a more precious one.”

  “Fuck me, I think I’m gonna puke in a minute,” Potter said from the other side of the table. Then looking at Isidor, he added, “You really do talk a load of old bollocks.”

  “It’s not bollocks,” Kayla said, coming to her brother’s defence. “I think it’s a nice thing to say. And it’s true.”

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed and on the spot. I glanced at Potter and he winked at me. He was back to teasing Isidor again already.

  “If you’ve finished with all the reunions, we have more important things to discuss, like attacking Snake Weed,” Murphy said, placing his slippered feet up onto the table and leaning back in his chair.

  “How are we going to attack Snake Weed if it’s full of Vampyrus?” I said, sitting at the table and pouring myself a cup of tea from the pot.

  “They will be outnumbered,” someone said, and we all glanced up at the kitchen door. I took one look at the woman standing in the long, white fur coat to know it was Lilly Blu, also known as Penelope Flack.

  I couldn’t help but notice how Murphy’s and Lilly’s eyes locked at once across the room. Murphy took the pipe from the corner of his mouth and slid his feet from off the table. He didn’t get up to greet her. He just sat looking at Lilly.

  Lilly broke Murphy’s stare and glanced at Meren, who sat next to him. Was that a look of regret I could see in her crystal blue eyes? Did she know that she was looking at her daughter – the daughter she gave up as a baby? I glanced sideways at Meren. Did she know that the woman who stood in the open doorway was her mother?

  Lilly came onto the kitchen, but didn’t take a seat at the table. She stood before it and said, “The wolves will join us tonight before we go down into the valley and into Snake Weed.”

  “Would they be the same wolves that wanted to cut our fucking heads off less than twenty-four hours ago?” Murphy grunted. I got the feeling that Murphy seemed angry and resentful at Lilly’s sudden appearance in his life again.

  “No,
” Lilly said.

  “How many are coming?” Potter asked.

  “Six,” she said.

  “Sorry, but am I going deaf, or did you say six?” Potter shot back, his face agog.

  “I went to the council of wolves who signed the treaty of Wasp Water,” Lilly started to explain. “I’ve told them that Luke Bishop isn’t the man he claims to be. I’ve told them that he had deceived us all and is planning to invade the world with Vampyrus from The Hollows. They didn’t believe me at first, and when I told them where the information had come from, they believed me even less.”

  “Cheeky bastards,” Potter said. “I’m not a liar.”

  “You’ve got to remember that for hundreds of years, the wolves have believed that the Dead Angels were coming to destroy them – not save them,” Lilly said in her species’ defence. Then looking at me, she added, “You are coming to save us, Kiera Hudson, aren’t you? I can trust you, can’t I?”

  “I don’t know if I will be able to save the wolves,” I said. “But you can trust me.”

  As if satisfied by my answer, Lilly looked at the rest of my friends gathered around the table. “When the six wolves from the council arrive tonight, we will take them down into Snake Weed. When they see for themselves the traitor that Luke Bishop really is, they will send out the order for reinforcements.”

  “And how long will that take?” Potter asked. “Once Luke discovers us in Snake Weed, it won’t take long for all hell to break loose.”

  Glancing again at me, she said, “The wolves will come. I trust you, Kiera Hudson. Do you trust me and my fellow wolves?”

  I met her stare. “Yes,” I said.

  Murphy pushed his chair back and stood up. “Now that we have that sorted, I think we should all get some rest. It sounds like we’ve got a long and dangerous night ahead of us.” Taking Meren by the hand, he led her out of the kitchen and out into the yard at the back of the farmhouse.

  No sooner had Murphy and Meren gone, then all eyes fell on Lilly. She stood before the table looking incredibly uncomfortable. I felt kind of sorry for her. Standing up, I reached out and offered Lilly my hand.