Dead Night (16 page)

“Lady Hunt was eventually found a week later by a friend of the family. There had been a heavy snow during that time and Kayla’s remains were eventually discovered a week later, then her brother’s almost two weeks after that. Eventually Lord Hunt was found frozen to death, ten miles from where he had left Kayla’s body. It’s believed that he walked aimlessly into the blizzard and died of hypothermia,” Murphy said. “So, in the same way they were murdered in The Hollows, they were murdered here, too,” I said, looking down at their graves. “But while they were both murdered
there
by Luke,
here
they were murdered by their father.”

“Just like I said,” Murphy grunted.

“Almost the same, but different –
pushed
somehow. But Kayla and Isidor must never find out what happened to them here – they shouldn’t even be
here!
”

“So why have you shown me this?” I asked him, frowning.

“This isn’t the sole reason I brought you here,” Murphy said, “there is something else.”

Without saying another word and keeping close to the trees, Murphy led me around the edge of the graveyard. We hadn’t gone very far when he flapped his hand at me, signalling me to get down. I crouched behind a gravestone that tilted slightly to the right and peered over the top.

“What am I meant to be looking at?” I whispered to Murphy, who was hiding behind a gravestone to my left.

With the pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth, Murphy pointed into the distance. From my hiding place, I looked in the direction he was pointing and saw a man standing alone in the middle of the graveyard. He was staring down at one of the headstones. He was tall, with black hair that was swept back from his brow. It was as I looked at his drawn and ashen face that I recognised him, and my stomach knotted. The man I was spying on was Kiera’s father. Hadn’t he died of cancer a few years back? I wondered.

I shot a look at Murphy and as if reading my thoughts, he whispered. “He is still very much alive here.”

Turning my head, I peered over the top of the grave again and watched as he gently rested a tiny bunch of flowers on top of the headstone; he then lent forward and kissed it. With his head cast down, he turned and walked slowly back across the graveyard. When he had gone, Murphy stood up and rubbed the small of his back with his hands.

“C’mon,” he said.

As I set off after him, I started to fear what it was that he wanted to show me.

Murphy stood before the headstone, and not wanting to look at the name carved into the face of it, I stared at the flowers that Kiera’s father had left behind. Some of the petals broke loose in the wind and scattered over the grave like confetti.

“Look at the grave,” Murphy whispered.

“I am,” I said.

“Look at the name.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to.”

Lowering my eyes, I looked down at the headstone, and read the name written across it:
Kiera Hudson.
It made me feel sad to look at her name, and although I knew Kiera was dead – she wasn’t to me; she was still very much alive.

“How did she die?” I whispered, now unable to tear my eyes from her grave. The smell of his tobacco smoke made me half-crazy for a cigarette, but I couldn’t, not here.

“In this world, Kiera was similar to the Kiera we know and love. She was a twenty-year-old rookie cop. She lived just around the corner from the flat where she once lived, but you know that already.”

“So apart from her father still being alive, what else is different?”

“Kiera was shot in the line of duty while attending a robbery,” Murphy explained. “It was no big deal in this world, as cops die all the time; it didn’t even make the newspapers.”

“But I thought her body was discovered on the side of a mountain, just like the others,” I said, feeling confused.

“A completely different mountain,”

Murphy said. “Miles from where Kayla and Isidor were discovered. Her death was never connected to theirs. Besides, apart from your friend Sophie, no one knew the name of the body that was brought down from the side of that mountain. As far as this world is concerned – Kiera Hudson, the young rookie cop, was shot in the line of duty. No one really cared, the robber was human, so no Treaty conflicts there, and every morning before setting off to work, her broken-hearted father comes and lays flowers on her grave.”

“What about her mother?” I asked him.

“She died giving birth to Kiera,” Murphy told me. “Her father raised his daughter on his own. She meant everything to him.”

“But Kiera will want to see her father – she loves him – she made him a promise...” I started.

“No!” Murphy snapped. “She must never find out that her father is still alive here.”

“So why have you brought me here?”

“You must make sure that she never finds out, Potter,” he said. “If Kiera finds out that her father is still alive, then like you say, she will want to see him, speak with him, it would only be natural. But she can’t. Our Kiera is not
his
Kiera.”

“They come from two different
whens,
” I said, trying to make sense of everything.

“Exactly,” Murphy grunted. “And what if Kiera were to meet her father? Would she then want to push the world back and lose him all over again?”

“But I can’t keep a secret like that from her,” I told him. “She has a right to know that her father is still alive.”

“She has no rights!” Murphy glared. “She doesn’t have the right to be here – none of us do.”

“So why are we here?” I snapped back at him.

“Beats the shit out of me,” Murphy said.

“But until we figure out why we are here, none of us must get involved with our past lives.

“Like me and Sophie?”

“Yeah, just like you and Sophie,” he said.

“Look what happened. She remembered you. All those feelings she had for you weren’t really her feelings. They were the feelings of the Sophie from the world trying to shine through the tracing paper. Those feelings that she suddenly had, broken memories and half dreams, would have driven her mad in the end. This world is all that these people know and care about. Kiera’s father believes his daughter is dead, and she is, as far as this world is concerned. What would happen if he knew that she was living again on the other side of the country? It’s not her – it’s not the Kiera that you are in love with; it’s the Kiera who was brought up in a world where wolves live amongst humans. It’s a world where she is dead.”

“I don’t know if I can keep something like this from her,” I said.

“You must keep her away from her old life, Potter,” he warned. “If her father should see her, then perhaps the world will merge just a little bit more, then a little bit more, and I fear that could be catastrophic for all of us.”

“How come?”

“I think Lord Hunt went mad because some part of him remembered the Vampyrus.

Perhaps on a subconscious level, he knew that he had been a Vampyrus. Remember, he couldn’t be taken back into The Hollows because he died above ground. Maybe this world and the other one started to merge and it sent him mad. We know what he was babbling on about is true. There was a race of winged demons living below ground – us, Potter. What if enough people start to remember their other existence? What if the Vampyrus were to come back into this world? What would the world be like then? We’ve got to find a way of pushing that sheet of tracing paper back into place – get things back to how they were. So you can’t risk Kiera, Kayla, or Isidor finding out what happened to them here.”

“But I don’t want to keep secrets from my friends, especially not from Kiera,” I told him.

“She would hate me if she found out that her father was still alive and I hadn’t told her.”

“Then you better make sure that she never finds out,” Murphy said with a grim look on his face. “If Kiera even suspected that her dad was still alive, the need to see him would be unbearable, I should know.”

“What do you mean?” I quizzed.

“My wife and daughters are still alive here,” he said, and looked away into the distance.

“I’m not, I’m dead. But they are alive, not very far from here.”

“How do you know?” I breathed.

“Just like Kiera wouldn’t be able to resist, I had to go and see them for myself. It’s okay, they didn’t see me. But to watch Chloe, Meren, and Nessa, broke my fucking heart. Knowing that they were alive, but unable to go to them was enough to drive me insane. I’m Chloe’s husband and Meren’s and Nessa’s dad. But not here. I might look like him in every way, but I’m not him and they’re not mine. If I were to have contact with them, they might start to remember how they truly died, in that hospital, hidden in the attic at Hallowed Manor. Would their dreams become haunted with images of them as half-breeds? And what of Chloe, she had died – would she die here, too?”

“But if we push the world back, then won’t your daughters go back to being half-breeds – aren’t they dead in our world? Aren’t we all dead?”

“This world wasn’t meant to be, Potter, that’s why I believe the other is trying to seep through,” Murphy said, pumping grey clouds of smoke from his pipe. “It’s like it’s trying to right itself in some way – but with disastrous consequences.”

“So why did the Elders do this?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.

“Was this their plan? Did they intend for this to happen? Or was it a mistake?”

“What did they say when they brought you back?”

“Basically they said I was a prick for trusting Jack Seth, and an even bigger prick for releasing him from prison,” he moaned. “And I guess they were right – just like you had been.”

“So they are punishing you for that?”

“So it would seem,” he said thoughtfully.

“But maybe none of this is a punishment; maybe it’s a test, or perhaps even another chance.”

“Another chance at what?”

“At not screwing up again,” he half-smiled at me.

I looked down at Kiera’s grave again, then staring back at Murphy, I said, “I don’t like this – I’m not happy about keeping secrets from Kiera.”

Then, staring hard back at me, Murphy said, “So you’re gonna be telling Kiera how you met up with Sophie again?”

“That’s not fair!” I snapped.

“I guess that’s exactly what Kiera would say if she ever found out,” he said back, and then added, “Sometimes it’s best to keep a secret. Not because we want to deceive those we love, but because we just want to protect them.”

Tipping out the ash from his pipe, Murphy turned and headed away. I glanced one last time at Kiera’s grave and went after him. Beneath the tree with the black knotted roots, I looked at my friend and said, “Although I feel as if you’ve just shit on me from a great height, I’m glad that you’re back. I know the others will be knocked out to see you again.”

“I’m not coming back to the manor with you,” he said. “You can’t tell them about me.”

“Why aren’t you coming back?” I frowned.

“I’ve got work to do,” he said. “I’ve wormed my way back into the police, into a position where I can perhaps figure out a way of sorting this mess out.”

“Why can’t I tell the others that you’re back?”

“Because it could blow my cover. The fewer people that know my true identity, the better,” he said.

“But they wouldn’t tell anyone about you if you asked them not to,” I tried to convince him.

“Not willingly, perhaps,” Murphy said, “but it would only take one of those Skin-walkers to do that thing with their eyes, and Kiera and the others wouldn’t have to say anything.”

“So why show yourself to me?”

“I hadn’t planned to, but when the girl Sophie told me that she had seen a girl with flaming red hair and a guy with a crossbow, I knew who she was talking about. And if Kayla and Isidor were back, then I knew you would be somewhere close by.”

“So?” I said. “That still doesn’t explain why you came after me. You haven’t gone after Kayla, Isidor, or Kiera.”

“Like I tried to explain earlier, just like Kiera wouldn’t be able to resist searching for her father if she knew he was alive...” then, looking as if he wanted to continue but couldn’t, he looked at me and said, “I’ll be in touch.”

Murphy opened his wings, looked at me one last time, then shot into the sky. Within seconds, I heard a rumble of thunder, and I couldn’t be sure if it had been caused by Murphy speeding away or by an oncoming storm.

Potter

I flew away in the opposite direction to Murphy and headed back towards Hallowed Manor. When I was a few miles away, the menacing clouds, which swirled around me, started to shed their rain. I rolled over, flying on my back, enjoying the feel of it against my face. I clutched the rucksack in one hand and it buffeted from side to side in the wind. Once I could see the manor on the horizon, I dropped through the sky, soared low over the moat, and landed in the wooded area not too far from the summerhouse. I ditched the scarecrow’s coat and let the rain wash the Skin-walker’s blood from my chest, arms, and hands.

Taking shelter beneath the willow trees, I propped myself against a trunk and lit a cigarette.

I breathed in deeply and then blew out the smoke which lingered beneath the overhanging branches of the tree. I opened up the rucksack and removed the picture of Kiera and her father. They looked so happy together in it. As usual, Kiera’s beautiful hazel eyes stared out of the photograph, and although I thought I was looking at Kiera, I knew I wasn’t really. I had never met this Kiera and even if I did, she wouldn’t know me? That felt weird.

Was there another Potter out there somewhere? I hoped not, but chances were that there was. Did I want to find him? No.
One Potter was enough
for anyone
, I smiled to myself and smoked my cigarette.

I felt bad that I knew Kiera’s father was alive, and although I had kind of got my head around the reason why I couldn’t tell her, it didn’t make it easier. I placed the picture back in the rucksack and closed it. Then, I remembered I had Sophie’s iPod in my pocket. I pulled it out and switched it on. With the earphones dangling from my ears, I scrolled through the music tracks. I found the song
Fix You
by Coldplay and hit the play button with my thumb.