Vampire Shift (Kiera Hudson Series #1) (13 page)

It was after this that my father was never quite the same. He was often quiet and he seemed to have lost his appetite and passion for his work. Sure, he still talked about his cases when I asked him, but I could feel that his passion for it had gone.

One day as we sat and watched the T.V. together, I looked up at his tired-looking face and said, “You know how you say I can
see
things?”

“Your
gift
,” he half-smiled. “What about it?”

“Well it would be a shame if I didn’t ever put it to some good use, wouldn’t you say?” I asked him. “It sure would,” he said. “What are you planning on doing with it?” “I’m going to be a cop,” I told him, and I’d never been more serious about anything in my life.   “A cop. Just like your mum…
was
,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “She would’ve been proud of you. Why do you want to be a cop?”

“Because when I do, I’m going to reopen mum’s case and I’m gonna find her for you,” I told him.

For a moment or two, my father looked as if he didn’t know what to say. At first he looked kind of angry and then his face softened and he just looked sad. “That’s a wonderful idea, Kiera, but if all those detectives haven’t been able to find her after – what’s it been now?”

“Eleven months and six days,” I said.

“How do imagine that you will be able to find her?” he asked. He wasn’t belittling me, he was trying hard not to raise my hopes – and his own, I think.

“Those other detectives might have missed things,” I told him. “They might not have seen all of the clues.” “What clues?” he asked. “There were no clues.” Sitting next to him on the sofa, I said, “There are always clues – you told me that.” “I know, but this is different -” he started. Cutting over him, I said, “I know that mum went missing before she even reached the end of our street,” I told him. Pulling away so he could look at me, he said, “Oh, come on Kiera, how could you possibly know that?” Looking him straight in the eyes, I said, “Mum left the house in her summer dress that day.” “So?”   “Well I remember that day as clearly as if it were yesterday,” I told him. “Within a minute or so of her leaving the house, the heavens opened and there was a terrible storm. It lasted a good hour or so. I hadn’t seen such heavy rain for a long time. Then there was this really loud thunderclap followed by lightning. It was so loud that I was worried for mum because I knew how scared she got during thunderstorms.”

“So knowing that she had only been gone a minute or so and couldn’t have even got to the end of the street, I guessed she would’ve come running back to the house. You know, to either get changed into something waterproof or wait for the storm to pass. But she didn’t come back. And taking into account how fussy mum was about keeping her hair nice, the least I would’ve expected her to do, was to come back for a hat. But she didn’t. Mum would’ve never stayed out in that thunderstorm – she would have come back home,” I said, looking at him.

Staring back at me, with a sudden look of realisation on his face, he said to me, ”My god Kiera, you’re right. So whatever happened to your mum, happened before that storm started?”

“Exactly,” I said. “That’s how I know she went missing on our very street – just yards from our front door.”

“But what could’ve happened – where could she have gone in such a short space of time?” he asked.

“That’s what I plan to find out,” I insisted. “When I become a cop, I’m going to check out her case and read all the statements that were taken from the neighbours in our street. Then when I’ve read them, I’m going to go visit the neighbours and re-interview them. I know I will
see
something – some small piece of detail –
inconsistencies
– that those other cops didn’t
see
. God is in the detail.”

“God is in the detail,” he repeated, then added, “Did I tell you that?”

“No, mum did,” I said and hugged him. “And I promise I will find her for you.”

But my father never saw me become a police officer. He died of pancreatic cancer two months before my passing out parade at training school. And that hurt more than everything – it felt as if my heart had been ripped out of my chest. But I intended to keep my promise to him – however long it took me, I would find out what happened to my mother. She was out there somewhere, I knew she was and my dream only reminded me of that.

Washing away my tears, I left the bathroom. I had to be at the station within two hours. How well Murphy, Potter, and Rom would take my return I didn’t know. I would just have to put my trust in Luke.

Remembering that my car still lay in the ditch up on the road, I went to the window to see if the snow had stopped. It had, but it lay in thick drifts along the road and fields that stretched out in front of the Inn. Leaving my police uniform hanging off the back of my chair – not knowing whether to wear it or not after being kicked off the team – I wrapped up warm, in a sweatshirt, jeans, and boots. Hitching on my coat, I left my room and immediately noticed the envelope tacked to my door. Taking it down, I opened it and pulled out the folded piece of paper from inside. It was written by the same hand as before. This is what it said:

Luke Bishop is not to be trusted, Kiera.

Folding the note in half, I tucked it into my pocket and headed downstairs.

Chapter Fourteen

I reached the bottom of the stairs, and as I passed the dinning area, I heard raised voices coming from the small office behind the bar. Stepping into the shadows by the door, I tried to listen to what was being said. The voices were that of the old woman and her son, Roland, and they were arguing.

“I’ve had enough, Roland,” the old woman croaked. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“Mother, I’ve already told you, I can handle it, okay?” Roland snapped.

“We need to leave here,” she said, almost seeming to plead with him.

“How many ways have I got to tell you ma? I’ve got everything under control!” Roland shouted.

“But what if they come for
us
?” she said, and she sounded frightened. “What if we’re next?”

“They won’t,” he said. “We’re safe here.”

“There are only so many cloves of garlic I can put up, only so many crucifixes and bottles of holy water I can sell before -” she started.

“Before what, ma?” he cut over her.

“Before there aren’t any more people left in this town to protect from -” she hissed and again he shouted her down.

“I’m done talking about this with you!” he barked. “I know what I’m doing.”

Without warning, the office door flew open, and he stormed from around the bar, heading straight towards me. Slinking back into the shadows, I made myself as small as possible. He passed within a few inches of me. He was so close, I could smell the sweat leaking from his pores.

Once I was certain he’d gone, I crept from my hiding place and headed towards the door. Pulling it open, I heard the old woman’s voice behind me. “Don’t be forgetting this,” she said, throwing me another bottle of holy water.

Snatching it out of the air, and not knowing if she was aware that I’d been eavesdropping, I said, “Thank you.”

“You never know when you might need it,” she said, without smiling.

Turning back towards the door, I heard her say, “If you had half the sense I think you have, you would leave this town and never come back.”

Without looking at her, I pushed open the door and sneaked out into the snow, with the old woman’s warning ringing in my ears. She was right, I should leave, run and keep running and never look back. But I couldn’t and that reason was Luke. Everything he had told me last night had turned my world on its head. Everything that I had learnt – everything I
thought
I knew – was now gone. It was like I was learning from scratch. What I’d seen last night was the stuff of horror movies and fairy tales. But I knew it was all real. I had been part of it – I had
become
part of it. Luke was a vampire bat or a
Vampyrus
as he liked to be known. But was there really a difference? There was so much more that I needed to know about him. But wasn’t that what had hooked me, the fact that he was a mystery?

When I’d been with Luke the night before, as he revealed his true self to me and told me about his world, it was like he had me under a spell and I kind of just accepted everything he had told me. But now that I was alone and he was away from me, that spell had been broken – a little at least.

Trudging through the snow, hundreds of questions now spiralled through my mind and I didn’t have the answers. Was Luke immortal? If not, did he age like a human? Was I safe with him? Then the note, which had been left for me, came to the forefront of my mind. Could I trust Luke Bishop?

Not knowing the answers to any of these questions, I struggled on towards the town. The pale winter sun was setting, and wanting to be at the police station before nightfall, I quickened my pace. I’d walked a mile or so, when in the distance, I could see something black running towards me in the snow. Stopping, I crouched low, immediately on guard. With my heart racing, I burrowed into a nearby hedgerow. Whatever it was, it was panting as if exhausted and out of breath. With my curiosity getting the better of me, I peeked from my hiding place and almost gasped in relief when I realised what it was coming towards me. Crawling from the snow-laden bush, I stood up and said, “Here boy! Come here!”

Seeing me, the Labrador came bounding forwards, its huge pink tongue lolling from the corner of its mouth. Recognising it as belonging to the old man I’d spoken with the day before outside the police station, I took the dog by the collar and patted him. The dog whined and pulled away from me.

“What’s up, boy?” I asked it.

Again it wined and pulled in the direction that it had appeared from. Then pulling free of me, it ran back down the road. I chased after it, taking each step as carefully as I could, not wanting to slip and break an arm, or worse, a leg. I didn’t fancy lying out in the snow with a broken leg as night started to fall. I thought of those vampires again, and my skin crawled.

Catching up with the dog by a gate in the wall, it stood and barked at me. As I neared it, the dog bounded off again, as if it wanted me to follow. So I did. Making my way across the field, I could see the dog had stopped by something lying stretched out in the snow. As I drew near, I could see the Labrador prodding it with its snout. He looked back at me and whined.

Approaching the dog, I could see that it was its owner lying face up in the snow. At first, I thought that perhaps the old man had lost his footing while out walking and had collapsed. But as I drew closer, I could see that the snow around him was stained crimson. Following the bloody splash marks, I made my way towards the dead man. I could see tracks around the body, and I was careful not to destroy them. Placing my hands over my mouth, I looked down at the mutilated body. Straightaway, I could see that this attack had been far more frenzied than the attack on the Blake boy. That had been bad enough – but this was something else. At least the boy had been left with his face.

The old man lay spread-eagle in the snow. Most of his face and neck had been ripped off. I could see the sinews and muscles that his face had once been attached to. His eye sockets were empty, just two black holes looking back at me. The man’s teeth were still intact, but without any lips, he looked as if he were grinning. His jacket and shirt had been slashed in two, revealing his torn open chest cavity. Several of his ribs had been broken and they stuck out of his chest like white-coloured fingers. His lungs had been half eaten and what was left looked like a pile of pink blancmange. The dog looked at me and whimpered. Reaching out for it, the dog licked what was left of his owner’s face, then ran off into the distance.

Kneeling down, I ran the tips of my fingers over the corpse, my eyes flitting back and forth – unconsciously taking in every minute detail. I dabbed at the blood around the main wound, then the blood further out around the edges, and then blood sprayed over the snow. I got up and paced around the man laid before me. Looking left and right, up and down, noting every little thing I could see, almost without knowing that I was doing it. Within seconds, I knew how long ago the killing had taken place, four
people
had taken part, the same three as before, but this time there had been someone new. And the tracks they had left were different – somehow odd. But it wasn’t just that. There was something missing. With the light fading fast, I set off back across the field and towards town.

Pushing open the door to the police station, I rushed in. Stomping the snow from my boots and brushing it from my hair and shoulders, I looked up to see Sergeant Murphy and Constable Potter standing in the office, on the other side of the counter.

“Bishop told us you would come back,” Potter said. “He also confessed that you know about…
us
.”

“I don’t have time for that now…” I started, still out of breath from my hike across the fields to the station.

“He hasn’t done you a favour revealing himself to you,” Murphy said, coming towards me, in that lopsided way of his. “In fact, he’s put you in even greater danger.”

“I’ll worry about that later,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “I’ve found another one.”

“Another what?” Potter said, coming closer.

“Victim,” I wheezed. “This one’s bad though. It’s not like before.”

“How?” Murphy asked, his face looking worn and serious.

“They took his face. I’ve never seen anything like it. The attack was frenzied –
savage
,” I said, and just recalling that mutilated man lying in the snow, made my legs want to buckle beneath me.

Pulling up a chair, Murphy told me to sit down and calm myself. Potter handed me a cup of water and I noted that this was the first kind thing he had done for me since taking up my post in The Ragged Cove.

Once I’d caught my breath, I looked at them and said, “There were four of them. They left tracks in the snow. I could have only just missed them.”

“By how long?” Potter asked.

“Five minutes,” I said, looking at him. Again he rolled his eyes as if dismissing what I’d just said. “Look, blood behaves like many other salty solutions and freezes at between minus two and minus three degrees Celsius,” I explained, not wanting to sound as if I were patronising him. “Blood starts to coagulate after less than ten minutes outside of the body, although if you had a shallow pool of blood, it would start to congeal more rapidly around the edges. Temperature also plays a big part – the warmer it is, the slower the coagulation – the colder it is, the faster the coagulation.”