Kiera Hudson & The Lethal Infected (10 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Reaching the top of the stairs, I paused outside the door. What would I find in there? More half-breed children dying in their hospital beds? Would they be attached to machines that kept them alive while Lord Hunt searched for a cure?

“Are you okay?” Potter asked, joining me outside the door.

“Don’t concern yourself about me, Potter,” I said, taking a deep breath and pushing open the door. “You seem to have enough of your own problems to deal with.” 

“See, there you go again,” he sighed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, peering around the edge of the door and into the darkened room on the other side.

“Yeah, you do,” he said, brushing past me and stepping into the room. “I was just trying to be nice…”

“I think you should stop trying to be nice and be professional, if you can manage that,” I said. “I think we should keep our relationship entirely work-based. It will probably be easier.”

“Easier for who?” he asked.

Ignoring him, I shone the candlelight about the room. There was a table nearby with an opened box of candles on it. Next to it was a candle that had burnt right down to the wick. I went to the table and picked it up. I studied what was left of the small piece of wax. I then took a fresh candle from the box, lit it, and handed it to Potter. “Do you often use candles at Hallowed Manor?” I asked him.

“Only on special occasions,” he said.

“Like tonight,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, like tonight.”

“So the lights don’t often fail or go out?”

“Not that I can remember?” he said.

“Who would usually keep charge of the candles?”

“Mrs. Payne, I guess,” he shrugged. “She’s the housekeeper after all. Why, is it important?” 

“Perhaps,” I said, moving away and going deeper into the room. We were now in the very roof of Hallowed Manor and the wind sounded louder – fiercer – up here as it gusted about the ancient eaves. Rain drummed off the roof like thunder. Just as I remembered the room to be, there were no windows. As I peered around the makeshift hospital, my stomach knotted as the light from my candle fell over several hospital beds running down each side of the room. But there were no machines with flashing lights beside them or any half-breed children in them. But why have the beds if there weren’t any sick half-breed children in this
where
and
when
?

“Why are there beds in here?” I asked Potter.

“In case we get sick.”

“Sick?” I glanced at him.

“We can’t very well go to a human hospital when we get ill, can we?” Potter remarked. “Our DNA would blow the doctor’s and nurse’s fucking minds.” 

“So who nurses you here?”

“Hunt and Ravenwood, I guess,” he said.

“You only guess?” I said.

“I’ve never needed to stay here. I’m a picture of health,” he said, drawing deeply on his cigarette. “And besides, I’ve heard that Mrs. Payne’s bedside manner ain’t all that. Murphy stayed here once. Problems with his hip. I heard that Mrs. Payne tried to find any old excuse to give him a bed bath. Dirty old cow. But then again, it’s the closest thing that old fart Murphy has got to getting blown…”

“I think I get the picture,” I shuddered, turning away.

“I’m just saying that I’d rather die than let that old cow try and jerk…”

“What’s through here?” I said, changing the subject and heading for the door at the end of the ward. I knew exactly what was on the other side of the door. It was the laboratory. It was the place where Doctor Ravenwood had told me that I wasn’t human - that I was a monster.

“It’s where Hunt and Ravenwood work on their potions or whatever they call them,” Potter said, striding past me and pushing open the door. As he went, I knelt down, holding my candle close to the floor. With my head turned sideways, I looked back down the length of the ward. I could see a trail of wax splatters. They were dry, so they hadn’t come from my candle. 

“Lost another shell?” Potter said.

“Ha-ha, how very amusing,” I said, getting back to my feet and pushing past him into the laboratory.

“Where did you get it anyway?” he asked.

“Nev made it for me – it was a present,” I said, casting the room in candlelight.

“Buying you gifts now is he? Must be serious,” Potter said, trying to sniff out more information about Nev and I. “What’s the special occasion?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, peering about the room. But it did matter – it mattered to me that Potter had no idea that it was my birthday. It mattered that he had forgotten.

Just like the time Luke and Ravenwood brought me into this room, I could see a desk that was littered with pieces of paper covered with equations and handwritten notes. As before, there were files and medical instruments. I went to the table. There was a wooden rack that housed ten bottles, one that had contained the queets and garlic mix. The bottles were empty. I could see there were three vacant places on the rack where bottles had once been housed. They were now missing. One I suspected had housed the bottle of Lot 12. The second missing bottle had been used to carry the poison. And the third?

Turning on the balls of my feet, I saw the examination couch where I had once sat and let Ravenwood prove to me that I really wasn’t human. Next to it on a table was the clunky-looking camera he had used to x-ray me – to show me the wings hidden beneath my skin.

“Kiera, take off your top and go lay face-down on the couch over there,” I could remember Doctor Ravenwood saying.

“I’m sorry?” I’d said, feeling nervous at the time and pulling my top tight about me.

Seeing that I looked uncomfortable at his sudden request, Ravenwood had said, “It’s okay, Kiera, I’m a doctor. I just want to examine your back.”

“Why?” I’d asked. Luke had been with us in the room. I’d trusted him back then. I’d trusted both of them. I’d looked across the room at Luke, just as I was looking at Potter now.

“I want to prove to you one way or another that you are a half-breed,” Ravenwood had said.

“How?” I’d wanted to know.

“With this,” Ravenwood had said, holding up the huge camera. It looked just as it did now, like something that would’ve been used in the early nineteen-hundreds. The front of it appeared to have a long protruding lens which stuck out like an accordion, and it had handles on either side. The contraption wasn’t made of plastic or metal, but wood.

‘“What’s that?” I’d asked nervously.

“A camera of sorts,” Ravenwood had smiled. “You have nothing to fear, Kiera.”

As I now stood in the laboratory I could remember looking toward Luke. He had nodded and said, “It’ll be okay, I won’t let anyone hurt you. I promise.”

I now knew that had been a lie. Luke had hurt me. He had hurt all of us. He had never been a true friend to me.

But I had believed him back then – I had believed
in
him. So I had gone to the couch – the same couch I now stood and looked at in a different
where
and
when
.

In my mind’s eye, I could see Ravenwood coming toward me once again with the camera-type contraption in his hands. With my shirt removed, I had climbed onto the couch and laid on my front.

“This might feel a bit cold,” he’d warned, placing the end of the machine between my shoulder blades. The end of the device had felt ice-cold and I’d felt the skin on my back tighten with goose bumps.

With my shirt back on, I’d sat and watched Ravenwood place the camera-x-ray-thing back on his desk where he flipped a switch on the side of it. The machine had made a purring noise, as a cone of brilliant white light appeared from the lens. The light had shone against the wall and I could remember sitting agog as a series of pictures played out across the wall. It had been like watching an old black and white movie. I could see a picture that looked something like an x-ray of my spine and ribcage. But as I’d studied these images, with horror I had learnt that my spine and ribcage looked different – different than that of other humans. I had way too many bones and there was shading over my lungs.

“I’ve never seen such a developed set of wings that have yet to break through the skin,” Ravenwood had said.

I’d struggled to believe it then and part of me still struggled to believe it now as I stood once again in the laboratory and remembered how I had learnt what I truly was.

“Hey, Kiera, are you okay?” I heard someone ask.

“Huh?” I said, glancing up, being drawn out of the past and back into this
where
and
when
.

“You’re crying,” Potter said, coming forward and sliding his arm about my shoulder.

“Am I?” I whispered, brushing the tears away.

“Is it because of me?” he asked.

“Why does everything have to be about you?” I shouted, knocking his arm away.

“What is it about then?” he asked, looking and sounding confused.

How could I tell him that coming back to this room had reminded me of the pain I’d felt at discovering that my whole life had been a lie? That my father kept a secret from me? He had kept so many secrets from me. But even though I understood now why my father hadn’t told me the truth – why he hadn’t told me that he was a Vampyrus and my true mother had been a lycanthrope, it did nothing to take away that sense of bewilderment and betrayal I had once felt at discovering what I truly was.

I looked down at the camera – that x-ray-thing. What would it see in me now – in this
where
and when? Would it see how tattered and broken my heart must look? Or would it see something that it hadn’t seen before? Would it see the wolf that I now knew was a part of me?

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, wiping away the last of my tears and heading for the door.

“What about clues?” Potter said. “I thought we were meant to be searching…”

“I’ve seen enough,” I said, heading down the ward, past the rows of empty beds.

“So you know who poisoned Sophie then?” he said, stopping me before I could leave the secret ward and head back down the stairs.

“I have some theories,” I told him.

“Feel like sharing them?” he said, staring at me through the candlelight.

“Not really,” I said, skulking away down the stairs.

“I thought we were meant to be a team?” he called after me.

“We were once a lot more than that,” I whispered.

Chapter Nineteen

I headed back along the corridor, down the main staircase, and into the hall. Potter followed. With the candle flickering in my hand, I went to the dining room, pushing open the doors.

“At last,” Uri said, jumping to his feet. “We were all beginning to feel like prisoners.”

“You’re all free to leave,” I said, stepping aside and away from the doorway.

“What, go back to the inn?” Phebe asked, standing up next to her boyfriend. 

“No,” I said, as Potter came into the room. “You can go to your rooms for now and get some sleep. But tomorrow morning at first light, Potter and I will carry out a thorough search of the Manor.”

“And what exactly will you be looking for?” Ravenwood asked.

I looked down the length of the table where he sat. Did he remember me at least? Did he really not remember that he had been the person responsible for telling me what I really was? Did he not remember leaving that letter for me to find in that copy of
The Wind in the Willows,
hidden in his cottage on the outskirts of Wasp Water? He had warned me that one of my friends was a traitor. Did he know who the traitor was here and now? It had been Ravenwood, knowingly or unknowingly, who had pointed me along the right path that would eventually lead to the truth. Could he help me now?

“We will be searching for the missing bottle of Lot 12,” I told him. “One of you has it.”

“Well, we can sort that out right now,” Hunt said, jumping up and turning out his suit pockets. “Look, you can see I don’t have it.”

“I doubt very much that the person responsible for poisoning Sophie would be in possession of the bottle of Lot 12 now,” I half-smiled.

“But the bottle of Lot 12 could be anywhere,” Mrs. Payne sighed, as if she was already bored by the whole affair. “This place is huge. I should know, I’m the one who has to clean it.”

“I think we should do as Kiera suggests,” Murphy said, pushing his chair back from the table. His pipe hung from the corner of his mouth, even though it was unlit.

“And what are you going to be doing while we are all sleeping?” Hunt asked, coming from around the table and toward the door.

“I’ll be catching up on some sleep too,” I smiled.

“Does she have any clues?” Mrs. Payne asked Potter as if I’d suddenly disappeared into thin air.

“Beats the shit out of me,” Potter shrugged, glaring in my direction.

“Well, I’m going to bed,” Ravenwood said, brushing past me and out into the hall. I watched him go. He stopped for a moment outside his study door. Sophie cried out from behind it. He flinched then moved away toward the stairs and out of sight.

“Me too,” Murphy said, limping away.

At the door, Mrs. Payne rested one hand on Murphy’s arm. “What with your limp and all, Jim, I was wondering if you needed any help getting to your room. I could help to turn down your sheets and…”

“No, I don’t need any help,” Murphy grunted. “Now fuck off.”

I looked over at Potter, who now had a big grin spread across his face. “I told you,” he winked at me. “Murphy’s just pissed off because the only thing Mrs. Payne offered to pull down was his sheets.”

“I heard that, you arsehole,” Murphy snapped without looking back.

Without saying anything, and with her head down, Mrs. Payne fled the room.

“You really enjoy being cruel, don’t you?” I said to Potter once everyone had gone.

“I was just teasing the miserable old-fart,” Potter smiled to himself and popped a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. Then reaching out, he closed his hand around mine that held the candle.

I tried to pull my hand away.

“Don’t get excited,” he smiled through the flame at me. “I just want to light my cigarette.”

“Where’s your candle?” I asked, his hand still around mine.

“Somebody blew out my flame,” he said.

“Then perhaps you should find someone else to relight it, because it isn’t going to be me,” I said, yanking my hand away. Stooping down, I reached beneath the table, snatching up my shoes from where I had earlier left them. Potter stood in the door smoking and watching me.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, as I put on my shoes.

“To bed,” I said, heading into the hall.

“What about Sophie?” Potter asked.

“What about her?” I glanced sideways at the locked study door.

“I thought we were meant to be saving her,” he chipped in. 

“And that’s why I’m going to bed,” I said.

“Why?”

“Why not?” I said, trying to be difficult again. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow…”

Stepping forward, Potter gripped my arm. “Listen here, hot-lips, I’m getting tired of this,” he said. “I know you’re pissed off with me because of what happened here tonight, but I’ve tried to play nice. Now I just want some answers. What have you seen so far?”

“Everything you’ve seen but you just don’t know how to put it all together,” I said over the sound of Sophie crying out behind the door just a few feet away. Her cries were no longer shrieks and screams. It was as if the fight was slipping from her.

“So enlighten me,” he said, his grip as tight as ever, pulling me within an inch of him. “Who says that it was even one of us that tried to kill Sophie?”

“What time did it start raining today?” I asked him.

“What the fuck has that got to do with anything?” he scowled.

“What time?”

“It’s been raining on and off all day here,” he said.

“So we know then that it was no one from outside Hallowed Manor who swapped the bottles,” I said.

“How?”

“Like you said it’s been raining here today, the gravel path outside is waterlogged…” I started.

“They could have come by car,” he shot back.

“What – they parked it right outside the manor house and not one of you noticed it?” I came back at him. “If the killer had parked the car someplace close by, whoever swapped the bottles would have had to climb over the walls and into the grounds. He or she would’ve then had to make their way through the woods. The ground would have been muddy. The killer would’ve left dirty footprints everywhere. There aren’t any. Not in the hall, on the stairs, in the hospital wing or laboratory. And how did this mystery stranger get into the manor? Did they just walk right up to the front steps?”

“The killer could have come in through the back door,” Potter said.

“It was locked, remember?” I said, as Potter began to loosen his grip on me. “Locked from the inside. Whoever tried to kill Sophie was already in the manor. They were no stranger. They knew what you had planned for tonight.”

“How come?” Potter said, his hand falling away from my arm, the realisation that someone he trusted – one of The Creeping Men would want to kill the woman he claimed to love.

“When had you planned for the lights to go out?” I asked him.

“The others were to give me an hour to fly to the Ragged Cove and get back with you,” Potter said. “They were going to light the candles and turn the lights out forty-five minutes after I’d set off for you.”

“So that would have only given the killer fifteen minutes to cut the wires to the lights, make their way in darkness up into the attic, switch the bottle, and get down again, before Hunt went to collect the bottle thinking that he had in fact taken the Lot 12,” I said.

“But the killer wouldn’t have made their way up to the attic in the darkness, they would’ve had a candle,” Potter said.

“Then why cut the lights?” I said. “Whoever it was didn’t want to be seen, they wouldn’t then have been carrying a candle. They made their way through the house and up to the ward in near darkness. You said yourself for me to be careful on those rickety stairs and I had a candle and my vision in the dark is better than most. No, whoever swapped the bottles had made the journey up those stairs many times before.”

“But there was a box of candles on the desk in the attic,” Potter said, as if trying to find holes in my theory.

“Precisely,” I said. “That was where the killer used a candle. They took one from the box and lit it to help them identify the right bottle. That was something he or she would’ve needed some light for. Before leaving they blew the candle out and left in darkness.”

“How can you be so sure?” Potter quizzed me.

“They left that used candle behind on the desk, it had burnt down almost to the wick,” I said. “They couldn’t have taken another from the box. The box was made to fit ten candles, there was nine left.”

“That burnt down candle could be years old it doesn’t mean it was used tonight,” Potter said, trying to look for any remaining gaps in my theory.

“You said yourself that the lights have never gone out before and you only use candles to light the manor on special occasions. When was the last time that happened?” I asked.

“I can’t remember,” Potter said. 

“Exactly,” I smiled.

“Whoever wanted Sophie dead snuck into the kitchen once the lights had gone out and the candles were being lit. He or she cut the wires so there was no chance that someone could turn the lights back on. In darkness, he or she took a box of candles from Mrs. Payne’s stores in the kitchen and crept up into the attic. There, the killer lit a candle so they could identify the right bottle and replace it with the poison. They then blew out the candle, left it on the desk with the box, and made their way back down the old staircase without being seen,” I explained. “Then just before we arrived, Hunt went to the laboratory as planned and collected what he believed to be the bottle of Lot 12.”

“How do you know it wasn’t Hunt who swapped the bottles? He could have gone up there with a bunch of fairy lights wrapped about his head like a halo and no one would have given him a second look. He had every reason to go up to the attic,” Potter said.

“Why would he then have cut the lights? What would have been the point of that?” I asked him. “And besides, Hunt’s candle is fixed into a holder. Any wax that dripped from his candle would have been caught by that. But there were spots of wax on the hospital floor leading from the table in the ward and into the laboratory. Those weren’t left by Hunt’s candle. They were left by someone in a rush. Someone who only had minutes to spare – someone who hastily lit the candle – raced down the ward and into the laboratory – swapped the bottles then fled. I did briefly suspect Hunt, but the clues don’t point in his direction.”

Potter looked at me. “Who then?”

“Who else have you told about Sophie carrying your child?” I asked him.

“No one. Just you,” he insisted.

“So you didn’t even tell Murphy?”

“No,” Potter said. “You don’t suspect Murphy, do you?”

“I’m just curious as to why you wouldn’t tell something like that to your best friend, but you would tell me, someone you hardly know,” I said, looking straight back at him.

Potter took a deep breath. “We can’t talk here.”

“Where then?” I asked.

“Outside,” he said, taking me by the arm again.

“But it’s raining,” I said as he released the catch on the front door, easing it open.

“I know someplace dry that we can talk,” he said.

“Where?”

“There’s a summerhouse in the woods,” he said, taking me by the hand and leading me out into the night.