Vampire Breed (15 page)

Had I been captured again? Was I back in my cell in the zoo?

My brains felt scrambled, and my heart thumped so hard that it felt as if my eyes were going to explode in their sockets.

I banged weakly on the door with my fists, and a dull thud echoed back at me. The red winking light moved in the darkness – it was coming towards me, then dropped to the floor and disappeared.

“Where am I?” I whispered, and knocked the cold sweat out of my eyes.

“You’re somewhere safe,” a voice said, and a strong set of arms wrapped themselves around me and held me close. My head rested against their chest, and the faint smell of tobacco coming from their shirt made me realise that the red light I had seen had been the end of a cigarette being smoked in the dark.

“Potter?” I barely managed.

“I’ve got you, sweet-cheeks,” he whispered, guiding me back towards the bed in the corner of the cell.

“Where am I?” I asked again as he gently laid me down.

“In the cells beneath the police station,” he answered, his voice was soft, like a dream floating over me.

“Police station?” I mumbled.

“That’s right.” he said, his voice still a whisper. “We’re safe here.”

“I’m thirsty,” I told him.

“I’ll get you some water,” he said.

“I don’t want water,” I groaned as the pains in my stomach twisted like a corkscrew. “I want some…”

“No, Kiera,” Potter said, and I could feel one of his strong hands stroke my sweat-dampened hair from my brow.

With my eyes closed against the pain, I gripped his arms and pulled him close. “Please Potter,” I begged. “Just a little – it will take the pain away.”

“No,” he said firmly and pushed me down onto the bed.

“Please…”

“No,” he insisted.

“I hate you!” I spat.

“Don’t most people?” he said, and as I flopped back onto the bed, I could picture his face with that wry smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

I opened my mouth to speak and said…

“…
What are the odds of me escaping a cell only to find myself freely sleeping in one on my first night of freedom?”

“I’m sorry,” I heard Nik say.

I opened my eyes to see him standing in the doorway. His giant fur covered frame almost blocking out the pale light that came from the corridor outside.

“Sorry for what?” I asked him.

“For biting through that wire,” he grunted.

“Let’s just forget it and get some sleep,” I said. “Tomorrow I’m going to go and get my friends I left by the fountain and then go and find Doctor Ravenwood. You and me can both go our separate ways.”

Nik came into the cell and lay on the floor beside my bed.

“Why don’t you just run, Kiera – save yourself?” he asked.

I reached down and from my rucksack I pulled out a can of the tinned fruit that I had taken from the supermarket. On the front of the tin was a picture of a ripe juicy apple that had been cut in half.

“See that apple, Nik?” I asked.

“What about it?”

“You see those seeds? If you took them and planted them in the ground each one would grow into another apple tree. In turn those trees would produce apples and each apple would be full of seeds which again if planted would make several more apple trees and so on it goes.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said.

“Well if you just kept on planting those seeds, in the end you would end up with a world covered in apple trees. That’s just the same as the vampires. The more the Vampyrus feed on humans, the more vampires will just keep on multiplying until in the end…I won’t need to run, because there will be no place left to run to. The world will be infested with vampires. I will have to stop running someday – so today seems as good a day as any.” Closing my eyes, I turned towards the wall, and added, “Instead of having a world of apple trees there will be a world of…

“…pain,” somebody said
.

“Hopefully her pain has gone,” another voice said.

I opened my eyes to see a teenage boy and man standing in the doorway of my police cell staring in at me. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, not believing what I was seeing. The boy was Isidor and he didn’t look like a boy at all really, it was just that he looked dwarfed by the height of Jack Seth who stood beside him.

The first thing I noticed was that Isidor looked a lot better. His short dark brown hair looked freshly washed, and although his face looked tired, his blue eyes glistened, and his little beard was neatly trimmed beneath his chin. He wore a black jacket and combat trousers to match. I looked at Seth, and he looked older than I remembered him. He wore a baseball cap, which was pulled low across his brow and his eyes glowed yellow from his sunken eye sockets. His face still looked emaciated and his skin was waxy and pale. He stood bent forward, so as not to scrape his head against the ceiling of the cell. Seth wore the black denim jeans and blue denim shirt I‘d seen him wear before. The red bandanna was still knotted about his scrawny neck and his body still looked painfully thin.

“How do you feel, Kiera?” Isidor asked, rubbing his unshaven chin with the back of his hand.

“Better…I think,” I whispered, realising that those pains in my stomach had gone along with that incredible thirst. “How are you feeling?” I asked, realising that the last time I’d seen him, he sat slumped on the seat by the fountain in the town square.

“Not a hundred percent, but a million times better than I did,” Isidor smiled at me from the doorway.

“And Kayla?” I asked, trying to stand up, but my legs still felt as if they were made from jelly.

“She’s still sleeping,” Seth cut in.

“Sleeping where?” I asked, not entirely trusting him.

Sensing my distrust, Isidor came forward and said, “It’s okay, Kiera. Kayla is asleep in the cell next door.”

“How long have I been out of it?” I asked, my mouth feeling dry and my tongue like an old piece of carpet.

“Four days,” Seth said.

“Four days!” I croaked.

“You’ve been going cold-turkey,” Seth almost seemed to grin and his yellow eyes sparkled.

“Kayla and I have been going through the same,” Isidor explained. “I woke up from my nightmare yesterday.”

“Nightmare,” I whispered almost to myself. “I’ve had plenty of them.”

“You were delirious,” Seth said. “You’ve been shaking, convulsing, and God only knows what else as you battled your addiction to human flesh.”

“Is it over then?” I asked.

“There will be a constant battle going on in your body, heart, and soul for the rest of your life,” Seth explained. “You’ll never be free of it, but you’ll learn to control it. Then staring at me from beneath the brim of his baseball cap, his eyes took on a sudden glow and he smiled, “God knows, Kiera, that I have to fight my urges every time I’m near you.” And just for the briefest of moments I knew he wasn’t joking, as I saw those images again in his eyes – the snapshots of him with his hands around my throat, his skeletal frame lowering itself over mine.

Breaking his stare, I looked at Isidor and said, “Where’s Potter?”

“He’s gone to get more supplies, before nightfall,” Isidor said.

“Supplies?” I asked.

“We’re leaving at dawn tomorrow,” Isidor said.

“Leaving for where?” I asked him.

“The Hollows.”

“The Hollows? But what about Luke?”

Grinning, Seth looked at me and said, “When Isidor says we’re leaving for The Hollows, he means,
us
– Potter isn’t returning to The Hollows, he’s going back to the zoo to rescue Luke.”

Struggling to stand up, I said, “I’m going with him.”

“He’s already got a partner,” Seth grinned.

“Who?”

“Eloisa,” Seth said, still smiling. “Remember her?”

How could I forget that stunningly beautiful woman – Lycanthrope? “Yes,” I told him. “I remember her.”

“She’ll look after your friend, Potter,” Seth said. “And I’ll look after you.”

I straightened up, shoved past Seth, and I left the cell. Over my shoulder I shouted, “Potter must be going out of his tiny mind if he thinks I’m going anywhere with you!”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Isidor came after me down the passageway that led between the cells.

“Does Potter really think I’m going to go anywhere with that freak?” I asked as I eyed Isidor.

Isidor took my arm gently and stopped me from going any further. Looking back at the cell we had come from, as if to make sure that we weren’t being overheard, he said “Kiera, we don’t have time for this. Potter has a plan.”

“A plan?” I grimaced. “Who put him in charge?” I couldn’t hide the anger I felt for Potter for even suggesting that I go anywhere with Seth.

“Potter will be back soon,” Isidor said. “You should talk to him because he won’t tell me anything. It’s as if he doesn’t trust me.”

“I thought after what happened in the caves between you two that you were okay with each other now?” I asked him.

“Obviously not,” Isidor sighed.

“Okay, I’ll talk to him, but I’m not happy,” I said. “Where’s Kayla?”

“This way,” Isidor said and he led me away down the passage.

“Does she know you’re her brother?” I asked him as we walked.

“No, not yet,” Isidor said. “I haven’t had a chance to speak to her about anything. Like me and you, she’s been out of it for the last few days.”

“We’re going to have to tell her that Sparky killed her mum –
your
mum.” Then realising my mistake, I took Isidor’s arm and looking at him, I said, “I’m sorry Isidor, I know that Lady Hunt was your mother too – but you’ve had a bit longer to understand things, you know, deal with what’s been happening.”

“What about our father?” Isidor asked me. “Do you think he is still alive?”

“This is going to be hard for you, Isidor, but I don’t believe he is,” I said, and gently squeezed his arm. “He told me that he was going to end his life once he had completed the DNA coding that the Vampyrus would use to create the half-breeds. But your father was a good man, Isidor. He helped me escape in his own way. Did you not speak to him about any of this at the facility?”

“I didn’t see my father at the facility – it wasn’t he who treated –
operated
- on me, if that’s what they were doing. It was another Doctor called Ravenwood. But to be honest I was so drugged up on meds most of the time that I could barely speak. Then this Doctor Ravenwood stopped coming and they moved me to that zoo.” Isidor explained. “Your mate Sparky got me hooked on the red stuff and I went kinda crazy. I knew I had to get off the stuff – so I guess, like you, I stopped eating it, although doing so made me feel as if I was gonna die. But you know what? I would have rather died than spend the rest of my life eating humans.”

“How do you feel now, your cravings, I mean?” I asked him.

“They’re bearable, I guess,” he replied. “A bit like an itch that won’t go away, so I try not to think about it. But it’s still the early days, I guess.”

“And it’s that itch that will keep you alive, kid,” someone said from the other end of the corridor.

We both turned in the direction of the voice to see Potter leaning against the custody block wall. Eloisa towered behind him, her perfectly shaped legs seeming to go on forever in a pair of tight-fitting jeans. Her long, blond hair spilled over her shoulders and down the front of the black jacket she wore. Her skin was pale, but this only highlighted her blood-red lips and golden eyes. Potter took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one, his right eye closing as the blue smoke trailed up towards the ceiling. He jetted two streams of smoke from his nose and came towards me, Eloisa close behind him. I couldn’t help but notice how
close
she trailed him, and I didn’t like it.

“Good to see you back in the world of the living, sweet-cheeks,” He said, coming towards me.

When he was close enough, I rolled my arm back, then punched him straight in the face.

His head rocked back on his neck, and the cigarette which had dangled from the corner of his mouth span away. “What was that for!” he snapped. “I’ve been trying to save you!”

“How hard?” I asked him, then shot a quick glance at Eloisa.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, rubbing his jaw.

“I was stuck in that filthy zoo for God knows how long while you’ve been gallivanting around here!” I snapped.

Then, gently touching Potter on the shoulder, Eloisa said in the sickliest sweet voice that I’d ever heard, “Sean, I’ll go and find Jack, you two look as if you need to talk.” Then she was gone, striding away on those damn legs of hers, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Isidor slope away too.

“Sean!” I hissed. “No one ever calls you
Sean
!”

“It’s my name,” he snapped back.

“Now I can see why you took so long in coming to find me!” I shouted.

“Now listen here, tiger,” Potter shouted back, “storming that zoo wasn’t my idea of a rescue – it would’ve been more like suicide! That place was like a fortress!”

“Oh, yeah?” I seethed. “We’ll I managed to break out all right!”

“So what are you complaining about?” he said.

“What am I complaining about?” I almost shrieked in disbelief. “I’ve been operated on, bitten by a werewolf, imprisoned, beaten, forced to eat human flesh and to top it all off, I had to use a hole in the floor as a goddamn toilet!”

“I’ve heard that squat toilets are all the rage in places like France…” he started.

“But I wasn’t in France!” I yelled at him. “I was in a freaking zoo being treated like some kind of animal, while you were living it up with
her
!”

“Her?” Potter said, looking now somewhat bemused. “Eloisa, you mean? She’s not so bad.”

“Well you’ve definitely changed your tune,” I spat. “Only a few weeks ago you were babbling on about how you could barely forgive a girl for having hairy armpits let alone a hairy tongue!”