Dead Statues (5 page)

The wolf spun round in search of me. Spying me in the glare of the pulsating emergency lights, the wolf sprung from the bonnet. Then the vehicle seemed to crumble as the wolf suddenly flew over me. I glanced down to see that Potter had thrown his own vehicle into reverse, smashing into us and throwing the wolf clear.

Only stunned, the wolf rolled onto all fours and came racing back down the centre of the road towards me. I crouched low on the top of the car with my fangs and claws at the ready. Then as the wolf leapt into the air, my wings shot out from within me and I flipped back through the air and over the wolf. It glanced up and howled as if wondering where I had suddenly vanished to. In that moment of confusion, I corkscrewed out of the sky and tore its head from its shoulders. The wolf’s blood spattered my face, and my tongue licked it away from the corners of my mouth. I let go of its head and it dropped through the air like a stone. With my wings closing, I skimmed just inches above the road as I raced back towards Potter. The car he had been driving looked like it had just been pulled from the crusher, and he stood propped against the bonnet with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. His arms and face were covered in streaks of blood, as were mine.

In the distance I could see that Murphy had brought the van to a halt, and the brakes glowed red like two hot coals. He lent from the window and roared at us.

“When you two have quit screwing around, perhaps you would like to come and join us! There’ll be more of those things heading our way.”

I looked at Potter as he took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it into the bushes.

“Murphy’s right, we should get going,” he said.

Then, looking him straight in his blood-stained face, I said, “You knew he was alive, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“So why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, as Potter turned to walk away. I couldn’t believe Potter could keep the fact that my friend was alive a secret. How long had he known Murphy was back from the dead? What had Murphy been doing and how long had he been back? More importantly, why had he only seen Potter and not me, Kayla and Isidor? Before Potter had gone a yard, I grabbed his arm and said, “What else haven’t you told me? What other secrets have you been keeping from me?”

Murphy pressed on the horn as he leant from the window again. “C’mon!” he roared.

Potter made to move away and again I grabbed him. “What else haven’t you told me?”

Then very slowly, Potter turned to look at me. With that look of fear – or was it sadness – in his eyes, he said, “Your father is alive, Kiera. I’ve seen him.”

I stood and watched Potter walk back towards the police van. Even though my whole body felt bruised and battered from the attack we had just endured, it was nothing compared to the pain I felt inside, knowing that Potter had been keeping the truth about Murphy and my father from me.

Potter

Murphy drove the van down across the narrow lanes with their tight curves and bends.

There was no other traffic on the road. Vast fields spread out on either side of us, a thin layer of fog hovering like dry-ice over the long grass, the tips of the blades sparkling with dewdrops in the morning light. It was a beautiful morning, and the storm of the previous night had left a crisp winter breeze in its wake. The sky was dove-white, and I wondered if snow was coming.

I turned away from the window and glanced at Murphy. He had a grim look on his face as he stared at the road ahead. The atmosphere in the van was as frosty as the chill wind which buffeted the side of the van. I dared not glance back at the others – at Kiera – I knew she was watching me. I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my head like two pointed screwdrivers. Why had Murphy come back so suddenly? Why hadn’t he sent me some kind of warning so I could figure out what I was going to say to Kiera? She saw most things at the best of times – but Murphy showing up like this was like pointing a giant finger at me. I couldn’t act – I wasn’t even a great liar. How the fuck had Murphy imagined I was going to keep something like this from Kiera? I should’ve never agreed to keep the secret about her father and Murphy coming back from the dead from her.

Murphy glanced at me and then looked away again. Could he see how pissed off I was? I wanted to ask him why. If I did, Kiera would hear me – they all would, and now wasn’t the time. Not in the van. I needed to get my thoughts together, figure out exactly what I was going to tell Kiera.

How much was I going to tell her? It wasn’t only the secrets I had kept from her about Murphy and her father – there was my secret meeting with Sophie, too. It wasn’t just the fact that I had meet Sophie; it was what I had learnt from her. I knew more about being
pushed
than I had let on. Just like Isidor – I knew more. Just like the photograph had been left for Isidor, those letters – my love letters – had been sent to Sophie. Each one of them had been mysteriously pushed through her letterbox. Those letters of mine had ruined her relationship with her lover in this world. More than that, they had led her to me again. They had brought us back together, and I wondered now if Isidor’s photograph hadn’t brought him and Melody back together in some other
when
. One thing I did know for sure, just like the photograph which had been left for Isidor to find, the letters had ultimately led to Sophie’s death. Just like the photograph had led to Isidor’s death.

Now Kiera had a photograph of her and her father – the word
PUSH
scribbled across the back. Would that picture lead to her death just like it had for the others? Someone was seriously fucking with us all and I wondered if Murphy knew that. Is that why he had suddenly broken cover and come back? Still, I wish he had given me some warning. I didn’t like being caught with my trousers down. I looked at him again, and although I was glad to see my friend, I was so pissed at him that before I knew what I was doing, I had whispered, “Thanks for the warning,
friend
.”

“What are you talking about?” he whispered back from the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, what are you talking about?”

Kayla asked from the back of the van.

Suddenly remembering that there wasn’t much she didn’t hear, I glanced back at her. Kayla sat on one side of Kiera, and Sam on the other. All three were staring at me. I looked at Kiera and could see the distrust in her eyes for me. There was something more than that, though; she looked hurt.

“Potter’s known for some time that Murphy, just like us, came back from the dead,”

Kiera breathed, not taking her eyes off me for one second.

“Why would you keep something like that from your friends?” Kayla gasped, throwing me an accusing stare.

I looked back at Murphy and hissed, “Any time you want to jump in and help out here will be fine with me.”

“How much do they know?” he whispered from the corner of his mouth again.

“Did you tell her about her father?”

“Yes,” I nodded, feeling three sets of eyes boring into me from the shadows at the back of the van.

“Sophie?” he hushed.

“Who’s Sophie?” Kayla piped up. “I’ve never heard of anyone called Sophie before.”

“I have,” Kiera whispered.

I cringed at the sound of the hurt in her voice. “Now why did you go and say something like that?” I barked at Murphy.

“Sorry,” he glanced at me. “Shit, I thought perhaps you’d told her everything.”

“No,” I hissed.

“No?” he said, cocking an eyebrow at me.

“You told me not to!” I roared at him.

“I told you not to say anything about me or her dad,” Murphy snapped back. “What you say and don’t say about one of your ex-girlfriends is up to you.”

“A girlfriend?” Sam smirked.

“Hey, listen up, wolf-boy this has nothing to do with you!” I snapped back at him.

“Sorry,” he smirked back, enjoying my obvious discomfort.

“I think I preferred you in the coma,” I said.

“It’s a shame the same can’t be said about you,” Kiera remarked, springing out of her seat. “Stop the van, Murphy. I’m getting out!”

Kiera

“I said stop the van!” I yelled, screwing my hands into fists at my sides.

The police van lurched to the side as Murphy steered it off road and into a nearby field.

He applied the brakes, coming to a juddering halt.

Just wanting to be away from Potter – wanting to be on my own – I kicked open the back doors and leapt into the grass. The ground felt mushy beneath my boots from the heavy rainfall of the last twenty-four hours. It was cold and I wrapped my coat about me, heading away from the van and across the bleak-looking field.

“Hey, Kiera!” Potter called after me.

Before I’d had the chance to tell him to go screw himself, he was beside me and grabbing my arm.

“Let go of me!” I shouted, tugging my arm free. His grip was tight and he held me firm.

“Listen to me, tiger!” he said, trying to keep his voice calm – steady. “It’s not what you think.”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” I shouted, just inches from his face. “I’m not your tiger – sweet-cheeks – or anything else. Why don’t you just fuck off?”

“I know I’ve been keeping secrets from you, but I’ve had my reasons,” Potter tried to explain.

“He’s right,” Murphy called climbing from the van and landing in the mud. His feet made a squelching sound. He looked down at his slippers which were now covered in mud. “Oh sweet Jesus,” he groaned.

“Is that all you’re worried about?” I snapped at him as he stood looking down at his feet in the pale morning light.

“I’ve had these for years,” he grumbled at me.

Looking in disbelief at both Murphy and Potter, I said, “You two really are just a couple of freaking jokers. You two just don’t give a shit about anyone other than yourselves.”

“Not true,” Potter cut in.

“No?” I hissed. “So why didn’t you tell me about the secrets the pair of you have been keeping?”

“To protect you,” Potter said.

“Bullshit!”

“Potter is telling you the truth,” Murphy said, slipping and sliding in the mud as he came towards me.

“So keeping secrets about Sophie is protecting me, right?” I snapped, tiny plumes of breath escaping from my mouth and disappearing upwards.

Murphy glanced at Potter, and lighting his pipe, he said, “Yeah, what was it with the whole Sophie thing?”

“Look, will you stop keep going on about fucking Sophie!” Potter barked at him. “Can’t you see you’ve dropped me in enough shit already?”

“I didn’t tell you to go and see Sophie,”

Murphy snapped back, shoving his pipe into the corner of his mouth. “That was your bright idea, not mine.”

“But you were the one who told me not to tell Kiera I had seen you and that her father was still alive!” Potter said, desperate to shove some of the blame back in Murphy’s direction.

Staring at them opened-mouthed as they bickered like a couple of schoolboys before me, I said, “I don’t care whose idea it was. Neither of you should have lied to me. I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends,” Murphy came back at me.

I looked at him and could see that he didn’t have the faintest idea how their secrets had made me feel. “Do you know how it felt to watch you – my so-called friend – get ripped to pieces beneath the Fountain of Souls? Do you?”

Murphy stared back at me, his eyes crystal blue, and pipe smoke curling up from the end of his pipe.

“It broke my fucking heart!” I yelled at him. “You became more than just a friend to me, you became like a father. I wanted you to be like a father to me, because I had to sit and watch mine be eaten away by cancer, until he was nothing more than a bunch of bones screaming out in pain like a wild animal. Then when I had to stand and watch you get your heart ripped out, then set upon by those wolves, I realised I knew how it must have felt to have your heart ripped out, because that’s how I felt when I saw my own father screeching in agony, as he begged the nurses for more morphine to take away the pain. I never thought I would feel like that again – but thanks to you two arseholes, I feel that pain again.

You’ve both known that my father is still alive, and yet neither of you could tell me.”

“He’s not your father,” Murphy said, his voice now soft, his usual gruff tone gone, like the plumes of breath which disappeared above me.

“Potter said he had seen him!” I snapped.

“I saw someone who looks like your father, Kiera,” he said. “But he isn’t the father you describe, screaming out in pain with cancer.”

“Well that’s good, isn’t it?” I shot back at him. “At least there is some redeeming feature in this world which has been
pushed
.”

“But he isn’t the man you remember,”

Murphy said. “He doesn’t know you. He knows another Kiera. That’s the Kiera he loves. The Kiera he fetched up as his own.”

“There are two of me here?” I breathed, feeling as if my head had just been plunged into a bucket of ice-cold water.

“The Kiera from this world is dead,”

Murphy explained. “Just like you, she was a cop, but she got shot dead in the line of duty.”

“What about my mother?” I gasped, wondering if in this
pushed
world, she was a Vampyrus.

“She died giving birth to you,” Murphy said. “So as you can see, there are similarities between the world – the when – we knew, and this one. Both here and there your mother is dead, and so are you, Kiera.”

“But things aren’t the same,” I breathed, my mind working overtime as I tried to make sense of what I was being told.

“What do you mean?” Potter asked me.

“My father is still very much alive here,” I said, staring straight at him. “And I want to see him.”

“And that’s why we didn’t tell you,”

Murphy said, taking the pipe from his mouth. “I knew you would want to see him, it would only be natural. But you can’t.”

“Why not?” I snapped. “I have a right to, he’s my father.”

“You have no rights here, Kiera,” Murphy said. “You shouldn’t be here.”