Kiera Hudson & The Adoring Artist (Kiera Hudson Series Three Book 3) (2 page)

Chapter Two

I parked outside the Crescent Moon Inn and climbed from my car. My body and head ached with tiredness. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept – not all the night through at least without it being disturbed by dreams of Jack. My stomach rumbled, but I wanted to sleep first. I wanted to forget all about Potter, Sophie, and Nev for a few hours, hoping that when I woke things might not seem so bad. Who was I trying to kid? I couldn’t even begin to image how things could get much worse. The man I loved more than anything was in love with another. The woman he loved had just become a vampire and I had broken the heart of the sweetest guy I had ever met. I’d only been
pushed
a few days and my life already felt like it was falling apart. There might not be any cracks in the sky in this
where
and
when
but it still didn’t stop the feeling as if it was caving in all around me.

Pushing open the door, I stepped inside the Crescent Moon Inn. Apart from Phebe and Uri, who were both behind the bar, the inn was empty. I couldn’t help but notice how Uri glanced across the room at the clock fixed to the wall where there had once been a five-pointed star scratched into the plaster. He looked back at me and smiled.

“Been somewhere nice?” he said. “I thought you would have been back from Hallowed Manor by now.”

The last time I’d seen them both had been in the woods surrounding the manor. They had been attacking Doctor Ravenwood, and in the politest way possible I had told them both to get lost. Ravenwood might have been responsible for poisoning Sophie, but I wasn’t sure that he was our true enemy. Not my enemy at least. Sliding my hand into my coat pocket, I closed my fist around the key he had secretly slipped into my hand as he lay bleeding from the wound that Sophie had made in his throat.

“So?” Uri asked, that smile stretched across his paper-white face.

Stopping midstride, and with fists on hips, I looked at him and said, “How about I fix a chalkboard to the wall by the door and I can sign in and out of this place with an explanation of where I’m going or where I’ve been? Would that suit you?”

“There’s no need to be like that,” Phebe said, sounding more shocked than angry by my outburst.

“I just wish you’d stop spying on me…”

“Spying on you?” Uri asked, dark eyebrows raised. “No one is spying on you.”

“Well that’s what it feels like,” I said, mellowing a little. Was it really them I was mad at or something – someone – else? 

“We were just worried about you,” Phebe said. “After everything that happened at Hallowed Manor in the last couple of days…”

“I just needed some time to clear my head that was all,” I said, heading toward the foot of the stairs. Then stopping, I looked back at them and said, “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you both. I’m just tired that’s all.”

“We understand,” Uri smiled again. “Perhaps I could rustle you up some food – you must be hungry.”

“Perhaps later,” I smiled back. “I just want to sleep for now.”

“Okay,” Phebe said coming from around the edge of the bar and toward me, as Uri headed back out into the kitchen, the door swinging closed behind him. Phebe looked back over her shoulder as if making sure that we were alone. When she was satisfied that we were, she looked back at me. “I’m sorry about what happened back at the manor, Kiera.”

“Sorry about what?” I frowned. There seemed so much that she could want to apologise for. Taking part in a Turning Ceremony should have been right at the top of her list, but I doubted that it was. But was it her fault that Potter had turned Sophie? Hadn’t Phebe been nothing more than a bystander like me? Hadn’t the decision to turn Sophie been made at some higher level in the ranks of The Creeping Men? Hadn’t it been Lois Li’s decision?

“It was never my intention – or Uri’s – to want to hurt Doctor Ravenwood,” she started to explain, peeking out at me from behind her dark fringe. “We just wanted to capture him – stop him from hurting anyone else like how he tried to hurt Sophie. He was our friend too – he was like us – one of The Creeping Men. I never wanted to see Doctor Ravenwood dead.”

I looked at her doll-like face – it had an impish quality. There was something very likeable about Phebe, but there was something else too – like I couldn’t really trust her. I wanted to. I felt more at ease in her company than I did her boyfriend. It appeared that he pulled all the strings in their relationship. Was she even a little scared of him? Maybe scared was too strong a word, but I couldn’t help but notice how she seemed meeker when he was about, like a turtle disappearing back into its shell at the first sign of danger. If I’d trusted her more, perhaps I would have dared let her into my confidence and tell her that I wasn’t so sure that Doctor Ravenwood was dead. I might have told her that when I’d returned to the spot beneath the willow tree where he had fallen, his body had vanished. It had either been stolen away or he’d gotten up and flown away. I couldn’t be sure of either, but more importantly, I couldn’t be sure who I could trust in this
where
and
when
. And until I knew who my true friends were, I’d keep it a secret about what I had discovered when I’d gone to bury Doctor Ravenwood.

“I’m sorry Doctor Ravenwood is dead too,” I said, turning away and heading up the stairs to my room.

Pulling my clothes from me, I let them drop to the floor. I was too tired to pick them up. Wearing just my underwear, I closed the curtains, glancing down at the desk where someone had left a bottle of Lot 13 for me. Who had done such a thing, I had no idea, but I would find out. I would make it my business to find out. I would
see
who had left it in the end. But for now, I just needed to listen to some music to help get me off to sleep. Who was I trying to kid? The music was to drown out the sound of Potter telling me that it was me he truly loved and not Sophie. But shouldn’t such words coming from the man I was in love with make me happy? Not when you can’t be sure if they are genuine. Not when you discover that he is with another and that they are having a child together. Words of love mean little then, however much I would like to believe them. They are nothing but shallow echoes rebounding off of what I knew me and Potter had once shared before I’d
pushed
him away. 

When we found ourselves alone in the summerhouse last night, I could have given myself to him – I‘d wanted to more than anything and Potter had said he had wanted me too. But I couldn’t. It would have been wrong to do so. And if I had I would only be sitting in my room now, staring out of the window and regretting that we had.

But you’re regretting that you didn’t?
A voice spoke up from deep within me.

Potter isn’t mine in this world
, I reminded myself and the voices of doubt. As Potter had stood before me in the summerhouse, dripping wet with rain, he had confessed that he’d wished he’d waited to find true love – that he’d waited for me to come into his life. I’d never heard such words come from Potter before – he always struggled to find the right ones. But it was because he had confessed his love to me so eloquently that I grew ever more convinced that the Potter in this
where
and
when
wasn’t my Potter – not the one I had fallen in love with. This Potter was a faint reflection of the man I was in love with. He had said that he believed there was another Potter deep inside of him fighting to come forward and be heard. Was that my Potter – somewhere deep inside of the man – screaming to be heard – screaming to remember me?

Knowing that I was doing little more than torturing myself with such unanswerable questions, I plucked up my iPhone, and rolled onto my side on the bed. Wearing the earphones I thumbed through the track listing. I had no idea who had filled the iPhone with so many songs. I selected
Good Gracious
by Ellie Goulding and closed my eyes. I let the music wash over me, as I fought back the flood of questions that still filled my mind. And with sleep slowly encroaching at the corners of my brain, I heard the song change to
Bad Moon Rising
by John Fogerty. Had the song I’d selected changed so soon? My sleepy mind wondered as I let sleep take me to some other place.

Chapter Three

“Samantha Carter!” I gasped, opening my eyes and sitting upright. The room was in darkness apart from a blue strip of moonlight that fed in through a gap in the curtains. Clutching my throat, I gasped in deep lungfuls of breath. My throat felt dry, my skin hot to the touch as if I were coming down with a fever. 

The name I’d woken with on the tip of my tongue forced its way to the front of my aching mind. “Samantha – Sammy Carter,” I whispered, my hands still at my throat. Who was she and why had I called out her name? I didn’t know or as far as I could remember I’d never met anyone with that name before. But as sleep scuttled back into the furthest reaches of my mind, so did images of werewolves, a preacher, and a man named Harry. Who were they and why had I dreamt of them and not my brother Jack? And as I reached out in my mind to hold onto those last fragmented shards of my dream, I knew that there had been someone else in my dream. I’d dreamt about Potter too. We had been together like we had once been together before – before we all got
pushed
again. And then just like now, Potter was gone again – out of my reach and so too were the werewolves, the preacher, the man named Harry and the young woman named Samantha Carter.

Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I stood up, then fell back down again. My legs felt heavy, yet weak somehow, as if they were unable to support me. I felt suddenly scared – as if a wave of panic had crashed over me. Every joint in my body seemed to ache – crying out in pain. My throat was so sore, like I’d been gargling on broken glass. I needed cold water not only to soothe my burning throat but cool my feverish skin. Dropping to the floor, I crawled forward, but not toward the bathroom door, toward the strip of blue moonlight that bled through the gap in the curtains. It was like the beam of light had cut my room into two halves. On one side lay my bed, the bathroom and my feverish self, and on the other…I wasn’t quite sure what? But the light beckoned me toward it. It almost seemed to call out to me, tell me that I should lie in it – that cool blue rays would soothe my aching joints and simmering skin. It was like the moonlight was a cure to the thirst that raged in the back of my throat and filled my mouth like dust. Slowly, I crawled toward it, the other side of the room beyond the strip of moonlight that was in utter darkness. The light beckoned me forward and I felt powerless to stop myself from placing one hand in front of the other. 

And as I drew nearer, I got the overwhelming sense that I wasn’t alone in my room. It was like something huge and hulking lurked in the darkness on the other side of the moonlight. Although I couldn’t see what was hidden there, I knew that it watched me. It skulked back and forth in the darkness like a caged lion. Back and forth. Back and forth. Over and over. Its eyes watching me from the darkness on the other side of the room. Inch by inch, I heaved myself forward, scraping the bare floorboards with my fingernails. My legs trailed weakly behind me, skin feeling as if it had been doused in petrol then had a flame put to it. Gritting my teeth, I fought the urge to cry out, fearing that if I did the pain in my throat would intensify to such a degree that I may never speak again. I had never felt so much pain. It was agony. My hair hung damp with sweat over my eyes. Lifting one arm, I reached up, my fingertips searching for the light and the cure it promised me. The moonlight trickled over my fingertips and at once they began to cool. I inched forward, the side of my face pressed flat against the rough floorboards. I felt a sudden coolness against the side of my face. Opening one eye, I looked up to see that I’d managed to heave my pain-ridden body into the light. Rolling onto my back I let the moonlight shower me like a fountain. And although I still felt weak, the heat that had ravaged my body began to fade. With eyes closed, I lay there, in my underwear, star shaped as if bathing in the moonlight. It was as if it were recharging me, making me stronger somehow.

I was closer now to that wall of darkness. Something moved – shifted – within it again. I rolled my head to one side, staring into the black. But something told me I didn’t need to be scared of whatever lurked there. Whatever it was, was a part of me. It had always been there prowling in the shadows deep within me, waiting to be released. Lifting one arm from the floor, I reached out, beckoning whatever hid in the dark to come forward at last. As if sensing that I was finally ready to accept it from out of the shadows, the wolf came forward. It was more beautiful than I could have ever imagined it to be. As it stood on all fours, it towered over me like a giant bear. Its body was sleek and narrow and covered in a soft silky black fur, which shimmered an electric blue in the moonlight. The wolf came forward. I gently stroked its soft snout with my fingertips. It made a soft woofing noise deep in the back of its throat, its bright hazel eyes narrowing into slits as if smiling at me.

“Hello,” I whispered, the pain in my throat now almost gone.

Coming closer still, the wolf settled beside me, its giant paws resting on my chest as if protecting me. Then, lowering its head onto its paws, the tips of our noses touching, the wolf looked deep into my eyes. I looked deep back into hers as we soaked each other up.