“I never did,” I wanted to shout. I didn’t though, I kept my voice calm. I didn’t want to argue with her.

“So what did you do together?” she asked.

“Let’s talk before we go back,” I said, taking her by the arm.

“Where?”

“In that barn over there,” I said, nodding in the direction of the barn I had seen from above.

“We can keep out of the snow and the cold while I explain everything to you.”

“You’ve got five minutes,” she said, looking at me.

“You’re the second person to have said that to me today,” I half-smiled at her.

“Who was the first?” she asked, as I led her through the snow towards the barn.

“Kayla,” I said back.

I pulled the barn door open, and the smell of old animal feed and hay wafted under my nose.

It didn’t smell too bad, although I guessed that if Isidor was still with us, he would be covering his nose and mouth and choking. It wasn’t the greatest of places, but it had a roof, and bales of comfortable-looking hay were piled in the corners.

I closed the door and led Kiera towards the hay. I reached up and took two bales from the pile. With my claw, I sliced apart the rope which secured them. I scattered the hay over the ground, making an area which was soft, warm, and comfortable for us to sit on.

I sat down and looked up at Kiera.

“Gonna join me?”

Pulling her coat tight about her frame, she sat down on the hay a foot or so away from me. I took a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and lit one of them.

“Do you really think you should be smoking in a barn?” she asked. “What, with all the hay?”

Any other time, I would have continued to smoke regardless. Today, I crushed the cigarette between my thumb and forefinger and put it out.

“So?” she asked.

I looked at her.

“Your five minutes are running out,” she reminded me.

Knowing that I had very little time to waste, I looked at her and said, “I love you.”

“Do you?” she asked right back.

“Yes,” I said, my mind trying to remember exactly what it was that I had said to Kayla. I had expressed my feelings well back then, but now sitting with Kiera, my mouth went dry and I couldn’t think of the right words.

“You have a funny way of showing it,”

Kiera said, still staring at me. “I know you used to love her.”

“I thought I did once,” I tried to explain, my mouth feeling sticky and dry. “But after meeting you, I knew that the feelings I had for her were nothing compared to how I feel about you.

It’s you I want.”

“How do I know you are telling the truth?” she pushed.

“Look, I’m not very good with words,” I said, inching towards her and taking her hand in mine. This time, Kiera didn’t pull away. I wiped the blood from the back of her hand. Then, very slowly, I lifted it to my mouth and gently kissed it.

Her hand felt cold. I placed it against my cheek. “I love you so much,” I told her. “Would I have come looking for you if I didn’t? I might not be good with saying how I feel, but doesn’t the fact I am here now with you and not her, show you how much I love you?”

Kiera slowly cupped my face in the hand which I had pressed to my cheek and looked into my eyes. Then, very slowly, she leant forward and kissed me. Folding my arms about her, I kissed her right back.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Kiera

I opened my eyes. The back of my head hurt from where I had been struck. I tried to lift my hand to touch the lump which I could feel throbbing, but my hands wouldn’t move, they were strapped behind me. I lifted my head, and could see I had been tied to a chair. My feet were fastened with chains at the ankles. I was in a dimly-lit room. The only light was the pale winter rays that streamed through a filthy window set into the wall. I knew I was upstairs in my father’s house somewhere, as when I looked through the window, all I could see was sky and the tops of the trees in the distance. The floorboards were bare and made of wood. They looked rough and splintered. The room smelt of mildew and damp.

Green wallpaper had once covered the walls, but it now hung in long pale strips, like flesh which had been peeled from a bone. Opposite me sat another person, but I couldn’t see who it was as they were covered in a grey coloured blanket. The wind roared around the eaves and the windows rattled in their woodworm infested frames.

“Let me out of here!” I screamed, struggling to break free.

From behind me, I heard the sound of chuckling. It was dry and rasping. I glanced back over my shoulder to see Jack Seth step from the shadows, as if he had been part of the wall itself.

“Release me, Seth!” I screamed at him, his crazy yellow eyes glowing from the two deep holes in his face.

“I don’t think so,” he smiled, coming to stand in front of me.

Strapped to my chair, he towered over me like a giant stick insect. His body was so painfully thin, I wondered how it managed to keep him upright. He was dressed in a denim shirt and jeans, a baseball cap perched on his head. A red coloured bandanna was tied about his scrawny throat.

“Why are you doing this?” I cried, and again I yanked against my restraints. A bolt of pain splintered up my arms and across my shoulder blades as I tried to pull my hands free of the chains.

“Why am I doing this?” he said, kneeling down so he was staring straight into my face.

“Because you failed to make your choice.”

“You said that back at Hallowed Manor,”

I said. “That’s why you tricked me into believing McCain was a killer. The Treaty has failed because of what happened to McCain. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, no, no!” he smiled, wagging one long finger from side to side just inches from my face.

“I won’t be happy until I’ve repaid you for what you did to me in The Hollows. I want to see the great Kiera Hudson make a choice.”

“But I have,” I shouted at him. “The Treaty failed because of me. I chose not to save McCain.”

“That wasn’t a real choice,” he smiled, but behind it I could see a wall of rage. “Not like the choice you were chosen to make by the Elders in The Hollows. You could have set me free, Kiera Hudson, but you didn’t. You used me because you were so fucking weak. Because you couldn’t decide between the humans and the Vampyrus, you punished me!”

As he spoke, his smile faded into a grimace and his voice got angrier. Then standing, he stood in the middle of the room. “I helped you, and that’s how you repaid me.”

“You didn’t help me,” I shouted back at him. “You just helped yourself!”

“I saved you and your friends’ lives!” he roared, spit flying from his face and splashing the dried-out floorboards. “Your back was against the wall in The Hollows. The half-breeds and Vampyrus

had

beaten

you.

You

were

outnumbered, outwitted and out-fucking-classed.

If it hadn’t have been for me leading the Lycanthrope to help you, you and your friends would have all been dead.”

“Don’t stand there like some kinda freaking martyr!” I yelled at him. “You only saved me to save yourself. You needed me to lead you to the Dust Palace and the Elders, so they would lift your curse.”

“And they were so close in doing so when you had to go and throw yourself at me!” he screamed, his fist clenching in and out, and the tendons on his neck pulsing beneath his wrinkled flesh.

“You didn’t have to kill me!” I roared at him. “Just like me, you had a choice.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” he screeched at me. “That’s the curse. The moment you threw yourself into my arms – the moment you offered yourself to me, I had to kill you. I had to take you.

I didn’t have a choice. Why can’t you understand that?”

“I wasn’t talking about that choice, you piece of shit!” I screeched back at him, my hair falling over my face. “I’m talking about the choices you and your race made before you were cursed. I’m talking about the reason you were cursed. You didn’t have to go around raping and killing children and woman. You chose to do that, and that’s why you were doomed to live as Lycanthrope.”

“I can’t be blamed for the choices my ancestors made, you stupid bitch,” he spat. “I was cursed before I was even born.”

“That’s no excuse,” I shouted back. “We all have a choice – that’s what separates us from animals.”

“So at last the great Kiera Hudson agrees that we all have a choice to make!” Then leaning in close to me again, the tips of our noses touching, he hissed, “So why did you fail to make yours?”

I looked into his crazy eyes, and again I saw us together in them. Me and him as lovers. I looked away.

“Like what you see?” he whispered into my ear. “Turn you on, does it? Want a piece of little old Jack, do you?”

“Go fuck yourself,” I spat, fighting the urge to look into his eyes again.

“You were so sweet,” he said, pressing his nose into my cheek as if sniffing my flesh.

“It doesn’t take much of a man to rape a corpse,” I hissed, the smell of his breath turning my stomach.

The side of my face exploded in pain as Seth drove his fist into my cheek. There was a cracking sound as my head snapped to the side under the weight of his blow. “You were very much alive and enjoying every minute of it,” he whispered in my ear. “You loved me.”

“I know what true love is,” I whispered back into his ear. “You have no idea what that is like.”

Seth pulled away and stood up. He looked down at me, a smile forming on his thin, bloodless lips. “You speak of Potter, don’t you?”

I ignored him and looked away.

“Potter! Potter! Potter!” he said, clapping his hands together. “What a silly little bitch you really are. The great Kiera Hudson who can see all.” Then, leaning close again, he smiled and said, “You don’t see shit, little lady.”