Then, as I paced my kitchen floor, cradling the two sick babies to my chest, I remembered I had heard of two Vampyrus doctors who were trying to find a cure for those sick half-breeds who were born out of human and Vampyrus mixing.

“So, placing the babies back into the box, I raced across the country to the place known as Hallowed Manor where the two doctors named Ravenwood and Hunt carried out their work. As I handed them over to Doctor Hunt, he asked where the two children had come from. I told him I couldn’t answer that. Ravenwood was more insistent, claiming that they wouldn’t be able to help them if they didn’t know the children’s heritage. Not wanting to put my daughters’ lives at risk, I told Ravenwood I believed the babies were a result of a human and Lycanthrope mixing. Both Hunt and Ravenwood looked at me, then quickly closing the box, Ravenwood raced into the back of the manor with them. Then gripping me by the shoulder, Hunt looked into my face and whispered, ‘You must never tell anyone about this. Forget what happened here today. Forget about these two children.’

“I told Hunt that I would never be able to forget them, as they were my daughters. Hunt squeezed my shoulder as if in some way he understood. He then turned to head back into the manor to join Ravenwood. As he reached the huge front door, he turned and said, ‘What are their names?’

“I didn’t know? Had Pen named them? So looking back at Hunt, I said ‘Meren and Nessa.’

Hunt nodded and disappeared back into the manor and closed the door.”

“But Meren and Nessa knew that you were their father,” Potter said.

“Yes,” Murphy nodded. “Hunt and Ravenwood were very good to me. They let me visit my daughters as they grew older. They were always very sick, weak, and fragile. But on good days, I would often take Meren and Nessa into the grounds which surrounded Hallowed Manor.

When the weather was warm, I would take them out to the summerhouse and read books to them.

They were never really well enough to play games, but we enjoyed the time we spent together. Ravenwood and Hunt were very kind and kept my secret for me. I came to suspect – although I could never be sure – that Meren and Nessa weren’t the only two Vampyrus-Lycanthrope half-breeds being cared for in that secret hospital hidden in the roof of Hallowed Manor. But like Hunt and Ravenwood had never really pressed me about my secret, I respected theirs. Then, when Meren and Nessa reached the age of about fifteen years, their health deteriorated to such a point that they became bedridden and never left that secret hospital ward again.

Ravenwood and Hunt had my daughters fixed up to machines and other contraptions, but they were just keeping them barely alive. The girls stopped growing, stopped aging. They had died years ago – way before Sparky and Luke got their hands on them. I just couldn’t let them go.”

“Why not?” I whispered.

Then raising his head to look at me, Murphy said, “Because they were all I had left of Pen.”

“Did she ever visit them?” Potter asked, rubbing his ribs with his hands.

“No,” Murphy said. “Meren and Nessa asked about their mother, and I spoke of Chloe.”

“Why?” I breathed.

“Because she would have made a better mother,” Murphy said. “Over the years I left messages for Lilly Blu in the Times Newspaper just like Pen had told me to, but I never heard anything back from her. I checked the newspaper so often, it bordered on obsession. But Lilly Blu never replied. So to let go of her in a small way, I told Meren and Nessa about Chloe saying that she had passed over a few weeks after their births. It was a lie – but we were all living a lie, I figured.

Did one more hurt?”

“But lies do hurt,” I said, glancing down at my father’s body, then back at Murphy.

Murphy drew a deep breath. Then, taking his pipe from his coat pocket, he lit it. Behind a haze of blue smoke, he started to talk again. “My brother was unaware of the double life I was leading, so when he came to me a few years later and told me of the secret relationship he was having with the wolf, Kathy Seth, I panicked. I was desperate for my brother not to fall into the mess I had. I couldn’t tell him about what had happened to me, and how the unhappiness of mixing with a wolf had almost destroyed me and my life. Paul was in thick with the Elders, he had devoted his life to their teachings – he was a Black Coat, after all. So just wanting to protect him from the pain and misery that I knew lay in wait for him if he continued his secret relationship with Kathy Seth, I refused to help him. I told him to have nothing more to do with the wolves – to get shot of Kathy Seth and her son, Jack from his life. But like I had been in love with Pen, Paul loved Kathy and had come to love Jack as his son.

But Paul told me he couldn’t just walk away from Kathy as she was carrying his child. To hear this filled me with rage. I knew the pain and the suffering he had not only inflicted on himself, but on that unborn child, too. But I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t tell my brother how I knew that the child would be born sick and spend a lifetime of suffering and pain, hidden from the world in a makeshift hospital at the top of some remote manor house. So I grew angry with him, when really I was angry at myself. I drove both Paul and Kathy in my car to the forest which surrounds the secret lake. If she was going to give birth, then it would be safer for both of them if the baby were born in the caves behind the Fountain of Souls.

But as we raced through the forest, Kathy went into labour early.”

Murphy stopped talking, and looked across the room at me.

“So it is all true?” I whispered, feeling numb. “Everything Jack told me is true.”

“You were stillborn,” Murphy said softly.

“Or so I first thought. I didn’t know what to do.

Your mother was bleeding heavily and Paul was a complete mess. Just like me, they believed you were dead. So I took you to the lake, wrapped you in my shirt, and hoped that my brother’s secret would sink to the bottom of those dark waters. But you floated back to the surface again and started to cry. I just couldn’t leave you. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that my brother believed you to be dead, and I believed it would be best for him if he continued to think that. I didn’t have the time to take you to the manor – not then; I had to get back to my brother. So I raced quickly away, leaving you in the care of one of my constables. I only intended for you, Kiera, to stay with Jessica for a day or two, until I had the chance to smuggle you away to Hallowed Manor. But when I returned, you weren’t sick like my daughters. You seemed to be thriving. What would have been the point of sending you to be cared for by Hunt and Ravenwood? Much to my surprise you were a healthy baby. It would have been unfair of me to have taken you to them, where you would have spent your life as little more than a prisoner. I could also see Jessica had taken to you – she loved you as if you had been her own. I could have taken you from her – but there was no need – you were not weak, fragile, or dying. So I went away, your survival a secret. It was only a short time later I discovered the wolf, Jack Seth, was living with my brother. So it was then I came up with the idea of staging his suicide. But to get my brother to agree to such a thing I would have to convince him there was a better life waiting for him away from Kathy Seth and her son, Jack. So I told him about you, Kiera. I told him that you were still alive. He wept with joy. But we didn’t have much time and he had to decide. I gave him an ultimatum. If I told him where I had hidden you, then he was to have nothing more to do with the boy Jack or his family. My brother, your father, said that it was impossible for him to choose as he had come to love Jack as a son. But, Kiera, you were his daughter – his flesh and blood – and I reminded him of that and he made his choice. He chose to be with you, Kiera, his beloved daughter.

So between us, we staged his death, letting the boy Jack and the rest of the world believe that he was dead. I helped smuggle my brother away deep into The Hollows. When enough time had passed, he took the name Frank Hudson and made himself a life above ground. I had visited with your adoptive mother one last time and told her that your father would like to now have contact with his daughter. Jessica was unsure about my brother at first, fearing that he had come to take you away. But both Jessica and Paul were both Vampyrus and they found a way. If I’m to be honest, I think Jessica married Paul so she could remain with you, and it was probably the same for my brother. I can’t be sure, as I never spoke with or saw my brother again after that. The Elders were watching me, remember, and I didn’t want to lead them to my brother or Jessica, but more importantly to you, Kiera.

“Together, you were a perfect family. I didn’t see Jessica again until she arrived in the Ragged Cove years later on her undercover assignment to find the Vampyrus who were feeding off the locals. As you know she went missing, only to discover later she had been hooked on the red stuff by Luke. Then I heard that my brother – your father – had died of cancer. So when the vacancy came up for a new recruit at my station in the Ragged Cove, I spoke to your trainer, Sergeant Phillips, and said I thought you would be perfect. Little did I know at the time he had his own plans for you. But I wanted to keep you close. I wanted to make sure you were safe and well – you were my brother’s daughter – and that made me your uncle, although you were unaware of that. I’d heard whispers that you had the ability to see things and that you were very bright – the best recruit at training school. I wondered how long – if ever – it would take for you to become of age, to make the change into what you really were. I had no idea if you would be more wolf or Vampyrus. But what I really wanted to know was why you were so healthy, fit, and bright, when Meren and Nessa were nothing more than empty shells, being kept alive by the machines at Hallowed Manor,” Murphy said.

A heavy silence hung over the room, and half of me expected Potter to come out with some wise-arse comment, but he didn’t say anything.

He just sat quietly in the corner as he, like me, tried to comprehend everything Murphy had said.

When I couldn’t bear the silence any longer, I looked up at Murphy and said, “Why do you think I survived? Why didn’t your daughters and any others like me survive?”