Wolf House (Potter's Story) Read online

  Reaching down, I picked up Drake’s head by the hair. It felt heavy in my hands as it swung against my leg. I went back to the bloody mess that had once been Madison. Bending down, I took the crucifix from beneath a lump of flesh. Holding it up before me, I watched the moonlight wink back at me as it reflected off of it.

  “I’m sorry, Madison,” I said and like a distant memory, I had trouble remembering her face. Maybe that was for the best. Perhaps I should forget about what happened between me and Madison at the Wolf House. It would be our secret – my secret.

  I put the crucifix in my pocket, turned, and headed back to the town of Little Hope with Drake’s head dangling from my fist.

  22

  I reached the Little Hope railway station just before dawn. With Drake’s head still swinging by the hair from my fist, I entered the car park. There were two vehicles parked next to one another. One was a Chrysler, the other a van, but both were black in colour. The headlights of the car flashed twice at me, and I covered my eyes with my free hand.

  The passenger door swung open and someone got out. At first I couldn’t see who it was as I was blinded by the headlights. But as I got nearer, I could see that it was Harker who had gotten out to greet me. The way the dying moonlight glinted off his bald spot I would recognise anywhere.

  “Have you caught this rouge Lycanthrope?” he asked me.

  Without saying anything, I chucked Drake’s head at him. It bounced off the tarmac and rolled towards his feet.

  Harker glanced down at it and said, “Drake?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” I hissed. “I don’t cut people’s heads off for the fun of it. That’s why you never caught him, he was working from the inside. He knew your every move so he could work around you.”

  “Can I trust you on this?”

  Lighting a cigarette, I said, “There’s a house on the other side of town. My guess is that by morning you will receive a call into the police station from the owners saying that they woke to find a huge hole in their daughter’s bedroom wall.”

  “Constable Drake?” Harker asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “No, me.” I told him. “I followed him last night to the house. I saw him with my own eyes as he tried to take the little girl, so I killed him. You won’t have any more child killings in Little Hope.”

  “Constable Madison?” he said.

  “Dead,” I answered blowing smoke through my nose.

  “How come?” he asked flatly.

  “Drake killed her when she discovered he was the killer,” I told him.

  “That’s a shame,” Harker said. “She was a good officer.”

  “Was she? I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Where are my friends?”

  Harker raised a hand into the air, as if giving a signal, and the side door to the van slid open. Luke stumbled out and fell to his knees. He was blindfolded and his hands were bound behind his back. Murphy followed as he was shoved from the darkness of the van. Like Luke, he was blindfolded and bound. He hit the ground hard and cried out in pain.

  “I think that concludes our business,” Harker smiled and held out his hand for me to shake.

  I looked at him and said, “You put a bullet in my sergeant, I won’t forget that. Watch your back, Harker.”

  Without shaking his hand, I flicked my cigarette away and walked over to my friends. Kneeling down, I removed their blindfolds and restraints. I watched Harker pick up Drake’s head and throw it into the boot of the car. He then climbed back in behind the steering wheel and both vehicles drove away into the night.

  Turning back to my friends, I could see that Murphy was as white as paper and looking gaunt. A filthy bandage had been tied about his thigh. It was stained brown with dried blood.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Do I bloody look okay?” he barked. “You sure took your time!”

  I looked at Luke then back at Murphy and said, “Well don’t thank me all at once! I’ve just saved your bacon!”

  Reaching out, Luke placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “Thanks Potter – you did good.”

  “Did I?” I asked, looking down at Murphy.

  “You’d do even better if you got me back to The Hollows so I can get this bullet out of my leg!” he snapped, and then out of the corner of my eye, I saw him wink at Luke and smile. I’d done good.

  Snaking our arms around Murphy, we hoisted him to his feet as he limped across the car park. As we went, I felt something digging in my trouser pocket and it was sticking into my thigh.

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  “What now?” Murphy groaned.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the photograph of the old guy and the cute little girl. Wrapped around it was Madison’s cross.

  “What’s that?” Luke asked me.

  “A crucifix,” I whispered.

  “You’re not going all religious on us, are you?” Murphy grumbled.

  “No,” I said thoughtfully. “You can have it. It will keep you safe.”

  Murphy took it from my hand and tucked it into his shirt pocket and grunted.

  “Who’s the picture of?” Luke asked me.

  I looked down at the photograph of the old guy and the beautiful little girl as she sat smiling in that chair, clutching her Barbie doll. Tearing it into tiny pieces, I said, “I don’t know,” and scattered it to the wind.

  23

  We took Murphy back into The Hollows where a Doctor named Ravenwood removed the bullet. He told Murphy he would survive but would always have a limp from now on. This pissed Murphy off but he learnt to live with it. The crucifix he wore on his tie and for some reason, he said it was his lucky charm.

  Luke stayed with Murphy in The Hollows while his leg healed. I stayed long enough to fight any growing cravings and then came back above ground. What was the point of staying in The Hollows when I had no one there?

  I stayed in a small motel and waited for them. Most days I did nothing apart from lay on my cheap bed and watch the T.V. in the corner. Eventually, I took a piece of note paper from beside the phone and wrote Sophie a letter. But before I’d even finished, I’d screwed it up and tossed it in the bin.

  I had to let go – somebody had told me I needed to – but who had said that? I couldn’t even remember her name, let alone picture her face.

  Bored almost out of my mind, Murphy and Luke arrived back from The Hollows. Almost kicking my motel door in, Murphy limped into my room and barked, “Get off your lazy arse, Potter, we’ve got work to do!”

  “Work? What kind of work?” I asked him.

  “We have another suspected vampire outbreak,” Luke said.

  “Where?” I asked, keen to get going.

  “It’s miles from here,” Murphy told me. “A place called the Ragged Cove. Now get your shit together and let’s get going!”

  So I left with Murphy and Luke for the Ragged Cove and forgot all about the Wolf House and what happened there. But I didn’t – not really. There was something that sat in the back of my mind, like an itch that I just couldn’t reach.

  Slowly it came back to me, what it was that I couldn’t quite remember about my time spent at the Wolf House. I was with Kiera in the caves below the mountains. Seth had just released us from our cell. I was staring at her – not Kiera – Seth’s companion, Eloisa.

  Kiera had elbowed me in the ribs and said, “Remember the hairy tongue!”

  “Who’s this?” I had asked Seth, unable to take my eyes off the woman standing next to him.

  “Does it matter?” he had asked me.

  “It does if we’re to trust you,” I said.

  “This is Eloisa – my lover,” he smiled, reaching out and stroking her face with his hooked fingernails.

  But whatever had seemed so familiar about Eloisa faded away like a puff of smoke, and I hadn’t thought any more about it.

  Then, as me, Seth, and Eloisa had taken refuge at the pol
ice station in the town of Wasp Water, she had seemed to want to befriend me. She had called me Sean. How did she know that was my name? Nobody called me Sean, not even my folks had as a boy. I had always been known as Potter.

  Even Kiera had thought it strange as we had rowed together in the cafeteria at the police station.

  “I see that you’re on first-name terms with the werewolf –because that’s what she is, Potter. She’s also a child killer and so is her lover, Jack Seth!” Kiera had shouted at me.

  But I hadn’t made the connection. The itch was still itching but still, I was unable to reach it, so I said to Kiera, “You are jealous and that’s what this is all really about. You’re not pissed at me because I made plans without you – you’re pissed because I’ve been spending time with her.”

  Something inside was telling me something was wrong. It was like I had a secret that even I didn’t know about. But Kiera saw it, she saw everything. As we lay in bed after making love at the facility, she had turned to me and said, “So, what about you? What’s your secret?”

  “I’m not sure that I have one,” I said.

  “Yeah, you do,” Kiera smiled, and pinched my arm.

  But she was right, I did have a secret. I just couldn’t remember it – not until I fought with Seth in the hangar. I had nearly killed him, he was dying in my arms when, Nik had raced in, begging for me to let his father go. Nik was confessing to the murders of all those women.

  “It’s true,” a voice had said, and I looked up to see Eloisa walking across the hangar floor towards me. Her long, blond hair bounced beautifully about her shoulders and her eyes glimmered like crystals. I looked her straight in the eyes and she stared right back. Her eyes shone yellow and I saw a flash of her and me making love in the woods somewhere.

  Shaking my head to rid myself of those images, I said, “So you’re this wolf’s mother?”

  “I’m not his mother,” Eloisa smiled with her perfectly-formed lips. “Nik’s mother died when he was just a baby. I am Jack’s lover, that is all.”

  I stared into her eyes, then slowly released my grip on Jack. In my mind’s eye, I could see us kissing, holding each other close. Breaking her stare, I looked down at Seth who lay at my feet, and I kicked the giant beast away with my foot.

  Seth began to come round and Nik started to talk to him, but I wasn’t listening to what they were saying – I couldn’t. My head was alive with vivid images of Constable Madison – I mean Eloisa.

  Madison! The named screamed across the front of my mind. How had I forgotten?

  Without saying a word, I walked directly towards Eloisa. She smiled at me and her eyes twinkled. In them I saw her as a little girl sitting in that chair, smiling and clutching her Barbie doll to her chest as she sat next to her grandfather. Then, I saw the old man being dragged from the house by the townsfolk of Little Hope. They took his clothes from him as they screamed that they wanted to see his fur. They wanted to see the werewolf! Dousing him with petrol, they stuck a match to him. I saw the little Eloisa Madison watch from her tiny chair as her grandfather disappeared in a cloud of smoke and flame.

  When the townsfolk had gone, she went quietly into the front garden and gathered together her grandfather’s clothes. She took them to his room, and as she placed his frayed-looking jacket, trousers, and scuffed brown shoes into the wardrobe, I heard her swear to herself that one day she would have vengeance against the people of Little Hope. Like they had taken her grandfather from her, she would take their children from them. She wanted the townsfolk to find their children in the very chair she had watched her grandfather die from.

  Then, in her eyes, I saw her slink down the stairs as I stood in my room and Drake took a whiz in the woods. She took the chair and placed it in the front garden and sneaked back into the house again. She waited for me to go to sleep that night so she could sneak away and find her prize. She returned with the little boy and just managed to position him in the chair before I woke. But I nearly caught her as she sneaked from the house. I chased after her, thinking it was Drake, but he had heard the howling and come into the woods – that’s why he had been there that night.

  As I drew closer to her, Eloisa’s eyes began to widen and I wondered if she knew that I was remembering who she really was. Her eyes sparkled and in them I saw us making love, she was lying on top and staring down at me, casting me under her spell. And as I lay and dreamt that I was making love to Sophie, Eloisa crawled away, her skin revealing the Lycanthrope that was hidden beneath and she raced off to the town of Little Hope. While I was dreaming and Drake was searching the woods for us, Eloisa stole the little girl, shook her to death in her mighty jaws, and sneaked back into the house, placing her in that chair.

  Once the murder had been committed, she raced back to the woods, changed back into human form, and wrapped her longs legs about me. Eloisa waited for Drake to discover the body and raise the alarm. She had a perfect alibi.

  Believing I was in my room, tricked by the dummy I had constructed, Eloisa crept from the house, but Drake had caught her. Knocking him unconscious and believing I was in the window upstairs, she had made her way back into town and to the little girl’s bedroom.

  I watched the rest play out like a movie in her eyes as I crossed the hangar towards her. Then I was chasing her through the woods, and she got away from me, but not from Drake. He sprung at her. Eloisa struck him with her claws, wounding him. Changing form and knowing she was close to being caught for her crimes, she staggered from behind the tree; the blood on her hands was Drake’s but she pretended it was coming from her. Collapsing in my arms, I saw her ask me my name and then tell me to look behind me. Drake was leaping through the air. He swiped me away from her with one of his giant paws in an attempt to get me to safety, but in doing so, I struck a tree and was knocked out. I saw Eloisa and Drake fight, their claws scratching at one another, jaws gnashing as each tried to kill the other.

  But Eloisa Madison was cunning and she overpowered Drake, looking into his eyes and sapping his strength until he was unconscious. Once we were both out of it, I could see that she needed to get away, she needed us to believe she was dead so no one would go after her. So, hunting down a deer, she slaughtered it, removing its hot innards and spreading them over the ground near where Drake and I were unconscious. Taking the crucifix from around her neck, she threw it onto the animal remains so there was no doubt it was her that lay ripped to shreds on the woodland floor. Before she went, I watched in Eloisa’s eyes as she lent beside me, whispering in my ear, saying, “I could kill you, Potter, but what I said was true. You are unlike any man I have ever met – and you were right – we could never be. So forget about me.”

  Then she was up and walking calmly away into the night. Drake awoke first, and as he licked at the remains to see if it were really the innards of a wolf, I lunged at him, believing he was eating Eloisa’s remains, and killed him.

  “Forget about me,” is what she had whispered in my ear, and that’s what I had done, I’d forgotten her. Until now. It had been Eloisa Madison who had murdered those children. I saw it in her eyes and she knew I had seen it; I had seen everything. She smiled at me and her eyes twinkled as I shot my arm out and thrust a claw into Eloisa’s chest. It happened so fast that she still had that smile on her face as I ripped out her heart. She looked at me as if to say something, but all that came out of her mouth was a thick jet of black blood. Eloisa fell forward, crashing face-first onto the floor of the hangar.

  With her heart still beating in my fist, I walked back to Seth. I knew I could never tell him, or anyone, why I had really killed Eloisa. But I had promised that little girl as I laid her in her grave that I would catch the killer, and I just had.

  So, holding Eloisa’s heart out in front of Seth’s huge face, I said to him, “You might not have murdered those women, but you helped take the heart of somebody I loved.” Then, dropping Eloisa’s heart on the floor in front of Seth’s giant paws, I looked into the wolf’s eyes and said, �
�I guess that makes us just about even.”

  But in my heart, I knew that it hadn’t. I got even for those children who had been murdered at the Wolf House. I was still to get even for the murder of my friend, Murphy.

  Bending over against the snow, I headed towards the zoo and my friend, Luke. I could still see the fear in Kiera’s eyes as she had witnessed me kill Eloisa for no apparent reason.

  “You’re scaring me,” Kiera had said, and those words kept going around and around in my head. I could tell her the truth, all about what Eloisa and I shared together at Wolf House, but what good would that do? That was my past; that was my secret.

  In the distance through the driving snow, I could just make out the gates to the zoo. Pulling the collar of my coat tight, I made my way towards it.

  ‘Vampire Hollows’

  Book Five in The Kiera Hudson Series

  Coming January 2012!

  Also by Tim O’Rourke

  ‘Vampire Shift’ (Kiera Hudson Series Book One)

  ‘Vampire Wake’ (Kiera Hudson Series Book Two)

  ‘Vampire Hunt (Kiera Hudson Series Book Three)

  ‘Vampire Breed’ Kiera Hudson Series Book Four)

  ‘Black Hill Farm’ (Book One)

  ‘Black Hill Farm: Andy’s Diary’ (Book Two)

  Doorways (Book One)

  About the author:

  Working away in the dead of night, Tim has written many short stories, plays and novels. His most recent book 'Vampire Hunt' (Book Three in the Kiera Hudson series) is now available. Tim is also the author of the paranormal romance series entitled 'Black Hill Farm' and ‘Doorways’ – A book of Vampires, Werewolves & Black Magic.