Vampire Breed (26 page)

“What are you doing here, boy?” Seth woofed.

“I came to save you,” Nik barked softly.

“I told you I never wanted to lay eyes on you again,” Seth said. Now get out of my sight.” Then looking at Potter with his yellow eyes, he added, “It looks like your friend, Murphy, was right about me all along.”

Without saying a word, Potter walked directly towards Eloisa. She smiled at him and her eyes twinkled. Potter’s face looked grim and his eyes a dull black. Then, so quick if I’d blinked I would have missed it, Potter shot his arm out and thrust his claw into Eloisa’s chest. It all happened so fast that Eloisa still had that smile on her face as Potter ripped out her heart. She looked at him as if to say something, but all that came out of her mouth was a thick jet of black blood. Eloisa fell forward, crashing face first onto the floor of the hangar.

With her heart still beating in his fist, Potter walked back to Seth. Holding the heart out in front of Seth’s huge face, he said to the wolf, “You might not have murdered those women, but you helped take the heart of somebody I loved.” Then, dropping Eloisa’s heart on the floor in front of Seth’s giant paws, Potter looked into the wolf’s eyes and said, “I guess that makes us just about even.”

I couldn’t believe what I had just seen and those words from Ravenwood’s message swam sickeningly in the front of my mind.

“…
Elias Munn plunged his fist into her chest and tore her heart out…”

“No!” I screamed over the edge of the walkway. “Potter, what have you just done?”

No sooner had those words left my mouth, Isidor and Kayla came running down the stairs above me. “What’s happening?” Kayla called out.

Potter glanced over his shoulder and saw me standing on the walkway above him. Within an instant, he had flown up to join me.

“What did you just do?” I gasped.

He looked into my eyes and said, “You asked me last night if I had feelings. Murphy was my friend – like a father to me – and I loved him. Do you really think that I’d let his death go unpunished?”

“But you just ripped her heart out,” I said still in shook at what I’d just witnessed.

“And they took Murphy’s,” he said flatly.

I looked into his eyes and they looked dead and heartless. “You’re scaring me,” I told him, blinking away the tears that were standing in my eyes.

Coming closer, Potter said, “Now go straight to The Hollows and wait for me. I’ll come back with Luke, I promise.” Then leaning in, he kissed me on the cheek and at the same time, he whispered in my ear, “It’s not me you have to be scared of, sweet-cheeks.”

He turned away, leapt over the edge of the stairs and landed on the ground in front of Seth. Leaning forward, he said something to the werewolf, then strode purposefully between the gap in the hangar doors and out into the dawn.

I looked over my shoulder at Kayla and said, “Did you hear what he said to Jack Seth?”

Kayla looked at me and nodded.

“What did he say?” I snapped at her.

“If Seth harmed as much as one single hair on your head while he was gone in search of Luke, he would rip his heart out with his teeth and…” Kayla stopped.

“And what?” I demanded.

“Potter said that he would eat Jack Seth’s heart,” Kayla shuddered.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

With my head spinning, I made my way down the stairs to the ground floor, Kayla and Isidor close behind me. Eloisa’s body lay to one side, and a thick pool of blood trailed from beneath her. I looked away. Seth was twisting and contorting from a werewolf back into human form. His limbs almost seemed to stretch as if made from putty and his head looked as if it was being sucked in on itself. When he had completed his metamorphosis, he looked down at his son.

“You’re not welcome here,” he hissed.

“But I saved your life,” Nik yelped like a lost puppy.

“And took countless others,” Seth said.

“So have you,” Nik suddenly snarled. “You have murdered hundreds.”

“Not for many years,” Seth shouted back. “I’ve been trying to redeem myself – to lift the Lycanthrope curse.”

“You seem to have a funny way of showing it,” Isidor suddenly cut in.

“And what’s that supposed to mean, boy?” Seth turned on him.

“Betraying Murphy like you did beneath the mountains,” Isidor said standing firm against the serial killer. “He was our friend and he trusted you.”

Glancing over at Eloisa spread face down on the floor, Seth said, “And it looks like I’ve paid for that too.”

Nik came forward, his giant tail swishing behind him. “But I have changed, father,” he said. “It’s not only your life that I’ve saved. I helped Kiera escape from her cage and her friends, too.”

“It’s true,” I said to Seth. “Your son helped me – I think we helped each other in some strange way. We were both fighting our cravings for human flesh together. Nik could have killed me at any time, believe me, he had plenty of opportunities. But he didn’t. Instead of killing me, he helped me and my friends. And even when I’d escaped, he kept watch over me and guarded me. I think it’s time you lifted the curse.”

“Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t do with my son!” Seth roared and spittle flew from his lips. He then came towards me, his eyes spinning in his sunken eye sockets like two burning planets.

Before he could reach me, Kayla had stepped into his path. “I so wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she hissed. “I heard what Potter said to you before he left. So
back-off,
wolf man!”

“Potter doesn’t scare me,” Seth smiled grimly.

“Oh, no?” Isidor said, coming to stand next to his sister. “It certainly smelt like Potter scared you. You don’t just talk shit – you smell of it!”

Seth looked at Isidor, and for the briefest of moments I thought that his eyes were going to pop from those sunken sockets. Without giving him the chance to reply, Kayla quickly added, “So as far as I can see, Jack Seth, you have two choices. You can either crawl back under whichever rock you came out from, or you can keep your freaking face shut, get in line, and follow Kiera into The Hollows.” Then, in a spray of shadows, she was hovering in the air just inches from his emaciated face. “Because I promise you, one more threat – just one more – and you won’t have to wait for Potter to come back and eat your heart out, I’ll hit you so freaking hard that it will explode out of your arse!”

Without saying anything, Seth smiled and turned to walk away. I couldn’t believe the change in Kayla and Isidor. Maybe Potter had been right after all; perhaps what they needed was to toughen up. However harsh he had been to them, it had changed them. For the better? I didn’t know. But they both seemed ready to confront whatever lay ahead for us.

Nik bounded after his father, and almost seeming to yap at his heels, he said, “Please, father, lift the curse.”

“No! Not ever!” Seth roared at him. “I took the blame for you – I’ve done what any father would do for their son, but now you are on your own.”

“But it isn’t just your life that I’ve saved,” Nik barked. “I’ve come with some news – news that could end all of this today.”

Hearing this, I went to Nik, and said, “What news? What are you talking about?”

“The invisible man,” he started, “the one who’s behind all of this has made a mistake. He’s visiting a site not too far away from here. He wants to oversee the site the Vampyrus are building to stage their attack against the humans.”

Isidor and Kayla came rushing over, and Seth stopped dead in his tracks and looked back at his son.

“How do you know this?” I asked him.

Looking at his father than back at me, he said, “I tortured two of the Vampyrus that had come to prepare the way for him. I’m sorry father, but it was the only way. I had to kill them.”

Seth grunted and looked at his son. “Go on, what else do you know?”

“Not much,” Nik said. “Only that he is coming above ground. I know where he is going to be, so this is our chance to take him and end this today.”

“Where is this site?” I asked him.

“About two miles from here,” Nik said. “It’s set between two mountains.”

“We should wait for Potter to return,” I said.

“It will be too late by then,” Nik said, looking at me. “We only have one shot at this.”

“I don’t know…” I started.

“If no one is going to rip my throat out for speaking,” Seth said and glanced at Kayla, “I think Nik is right. We should go now and end this. Look on the bright side, once this is all over, you’ll never have to see me or my kind again.”

“I hate to agree with him,” Isidor said, “But I think he’s right. We should go – it might be the only chance we ever have of defeating this invisible man.”

“Elias Munn,” I said.

“Who?” Kayla asked.

“That’s his real name,” I said looking at them. “That’s what this invisible man is really called. Whether he still goes by that name now, I don’t know – but his true name is Elias Munn.”

“How do you know that?” Kayla asked me.

“Ravenwood wrote it in that message he left for me,” I explained.

“What else did he say?” Isidor said.

“I’ll tell you another time,” I said. Changing the subject, I looked at Nik, “How long will it take to get to this place between the mountains? Remember, there’s a storm blowing out there and we’re vulnerable in the open from Vampyrus attacks during daylight.”

“We don’t have to travel above ground,” Nik woofed.

“How come?” Kayla asked him.

“There’s a tunnel that leads right from this facility to the site,” he barked. Then turning to Seth, he added, “See, father, I haven’t let you down this time.”

“We’ll see,” Seth almost seem to sneer.

On hearing Nik mention the tunnel, I remembered the diagrams I’d seen on the computer disc. There had been a tunnel leading away from the facility but it didn’t show where it ended. Looking back at the opening, I hoped that perhaps I might see Potter heading out across the fields, but all I could see was snow. Potter told me to go straight to The Hollows, but he hadn’t known about Elias Munn making a visit to a site that was only two miles from here. If Potter were here, he wouldn’t have wasted the opportunity to attack Munn while he was vulnerable.

Looking at the others, I said, “Okay, what are we waiting for? Let’s get moving.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The entrance to the tunnel lay hidden under a mountain of rubble in the basement beneath the hangar. There was a ladder that led down into utter darkness, which didn’t pose a problem to me, but the others wouldn’t have been able to see their own hand in front of their faces. Isidor found some torches in a workshop at the rear of the hangar and shared them out.

Holding onto the ladder, I climbed down into the hole. At the bottom, just like Nik had said, was a tunnel. It was high enough for us to stand up in, although Seth had to walk stooped forward so as not to strike his head against the roof.

Torchlight splashed across the walls of the tunnel as we followed it. The sound of water dripping could be heard all around us, as well as the noise of rats scurrying around at our feet. We hadn’t gone far when Nik snatched one of the rats between his jaws and swallowed it. My skin crawled at the sound of the rat’s bones crunching and snapping between Nik’s mighty jaws.

After some time, I could just make out a pinprick of white in the distance. Speeding up, we rushed on, knowing that the end of the tunnel was now in sight. We found another set of ladders, and switching off our torches, we started to climb. We found ourselves at the edge of a tree line. Hiding amongst the trees, I could see a large, open area spread between the feet of two mountains. The area was uncovered and searchlights flooded the ground beneath the darkening sky. Snow fell all about us.

Kayla yanked my arm and we squatted by the base of a large tree. “What now?” she asked.

Peering into the distance, I could see some rocks jutting from the uneven ground. “Let’s make our way over to those rocks. It will give us cover while we take a closer look.”

The snow was falling so heavily, I hoped it would offer us some camouflage as we made our way across the open ground to the rocks.

“Are you ready?” I asked the others as I looked back at them. Even though we were sheltered by trees, flurries of snow had still managed to cover them, and they sat looking at me, shivering. Seth had his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, and its beak was covered white. Nik’s fur was silver-white and it was hard to distinguish what was his coat and what was snow.

Facing front again, I said, “C’mon, let’s go.”

With the wind screaming all around us and our clothes pulled tight, we hunkered down and made our way across the bleak, open area towards the rocks. It seemed to take forever, and by the time we had reached our new hiding place, my hands were numb and almost purple in colour. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so cold and I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering. The clouds above us were black and they lumbered across the sky shedding their snow and turning the day into night.

We peeked over the lip of the rock and stared in disbelief at what lay in the valley set between the mountains. There were hundreds of vampires shuffling back and forth. Not only could we see vampires, but to our shock, we could also see row upon row of humans and a handful of Vampyrus keeping watch over them. From our hiding place, we could see a gigantic crater in the ground at the centre of the valley. All around this huge hole were trucks, which trundled back and forth full of stone, rock, and earth. I could see humans – some as young as about ten – were manacled at the feet and joined together in a huge chain-gang. They looked pale, undernourished, and exhausted. I wondered how long it had been since they had last eaten or rested.

For as far as I could see, there were rows of people tied together with heavy chains, digging mindlessly at the rock that surrounded the crater. I watched as some of the people collapsed to the ground, too weary to stand up again. Seeing this, a Vampyrus would step from the side, yank the human from the ground, and toss it to the vampires to feed on.