He shot back and upwards into the wooden beams which spanned the roof. Dust showered down like rain from above and covered me. Dorsey clung to one of the beams with his claws and pulled himself up. I watched as he bounded along and over the beams high above with the grace of a hound. His long, dark hair billowed out behind him as he howled in rage. Then, dropping like a stone, he leapt down at me. His claws ripped through my shirt, tearing three long gashes in my chest. As I breathed, my lungs felt as if they were on fire.

Dorsey spun around on the hay-covered floor and readied himself to pounce again. His mouth was open, and his gums were swollen with a mass of jagged teeth.

“Here, boy!” I barked, lunging myself at him. With my arms pin-wheeling on either side of me, I slashed through his blazer and flesh, sending up a spray of blood. The wolf-boy yelped in pain, his claws scraping across the ground. “Don’t make me kill you,” I warned him again.

Ignoring me, Dorsey sprang into the air again. I ducked, skidding away across the floor. I looked up to see Dorsey bound back off the side of the barn and come racing towards me. With my back hunched, I crouched low and thrust one of my claws out before me like a set of knives. The wolf-boy was coming at me too fast to slow down.

I felt my claws slice into his belly as he became skewered on my fist. He looked at me in shock and surprise. A thick stream of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

“Why did you make me kill you?” I whispered, slowly withdrawing my claw from within him. He shook violently, and I caught him.

With his head resting in the crook of my elbow, I looked down into his face as he twitched in my arms. His bright yellow eyes began to fade, and turn a pale blue. His burnt flesh changed, too.

It kind of smoothed out, unwrinkled before me, revealing a handsome-looking boy of about twelve.

Where his burnt skull had once been bald, blond hair started to show through. It was the same colour as Elizabeth’s – his mother’s. I looked down at the small schoolboy I cradled in my arms.

“Why did you have to fight with me?” I whispered.

Closing his eyes, he whispered, “The nightmare is over for me now, thank you.”

Coughing up a clot of blood, he twitched once more in my arms, and then fell still. I could feel something pressing against my leg, from within his blazer pocket. I searched inside and removed an iPod. I looked at the small crescent-shaped moon logo on the back and thought of Kiera.

“Kiera!” I breathed, placing the iPod into my coat pocket.

Then, just as I was about to let the dead boy slide from my arms, there was a burst of white light. I looked up to see a hooded figure standing in the open doorway of the barn, holding up a camera.

“What the fuck?” I said, my eyes still partially blinded by the flash of white light.

I blinked, desperately trying to focus.

When I looked again, the hooded figure was standing before me. A pair of bright yellow eyes, burnt from within the darkness beneath the hood.

Fixing me with its eyes, the hooded figure whispered, “Where is Kayla Hunt?”

I tried to resist the bright yellow eyes from beneath the hood as they locked onto mine. I knew where Murphy, Kayla, and Sam were heading, and I felt like screaming it over and over again. I fought not to. I tried to look away, to break that stare, but I couldn’t.

“Where is Kayla Hunt?” the hooded figure whispered again, bright yellow eyes spinning round and around.

“The Dead Waters,” I whispered back.

“Thank you,” the hooded figure said, the brightness now fading in their eyes.

I shook my head from side to side, as if just waking from a deep sleep. “Thank you for what?” I breathed.

“The photograph,” the hooded figure whispered, turning and heading back towards the barn door where a snarling pack of berserkers now stood.

“The photograph?” I whispered, then looked down to see I was still holding the dead wolf-boy in my arms.

Gently, I placed him on the floor, before I was roughly dragged out of the barn and into the snow by the berserkers. They outnumbered me; there were too many for me to fight and possibly win. There were several Skin-walkers too, hidden by their human skins and disguised as cops.

Before I knew what had happened, I felt a blow to the small of my back. I cried out and dropped to my knees in the snow.

The berserkers howled and yelped with a feverish excitement as another kicked me in the face. For the second time that day, I felt blood gush from my nose. I collapsed forward in a heap, the snow turning red with my own blood, as the berserkers and Skin-walkers set about beating me to a bloody pulp.

“Jack doesn’t want him dead,” one then woofed, as if reminding the others. “This one is going to be put on trial for the murder of the boy and his mother.”

As I felt the right side of my head cave in under the boot of one of the Skin-walkers, I knew they had the evidence to put me on trial, as they had that photograph. I placed my hands over my head to protect myself from the never-ending rain of blows. I knew now that Kiera had walked into a trap just like I had. I hoped she was doing better than me. Knowing Kiera, she probably was.

Peering through my blood-soaked fingers, I could see what looked like several statues standing alone in the field. Their heads were tilted back, arms raised in the air. I knew they hadn’t been there before. I closed my eyes, shutting out them and the pain.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Kiera

Seth took the strip of my father’s flesh away from my lips. Part of me wanted to lunge for it. My stomach cramped, and I could feel the skin around my eyes and lips start to harden and crack. Seth tilted his head back, and opening his mouth, he sucked down the stringy lump of flesh like a length of spaghetti.

He smacked his lips together, and looking at me, he said, “Shame to waste it.”

“You disgust me,” I hissed at him.

“Really?” he smiled. “You won’t be saying that in a few hours, you’ll be begging me for some of your father’s hide.”

“Never,” I snapped. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“Tell me,” he smiled, heading back to my father, who sat slumped forward in his chair, delirious with pain. “What is it I don’t understand?”

“I did make a choice back in The Hollows,” I hissed. “I chose not to choose. No one can make me do anything I don’t want to do.

That’s what choice is all about. That’s what freedom is all about. But you wouldn’t understand that.”

Seth didn’t say anything back. Instead, he entwined his twig-thin fingers into my father’s hair and yanked his head back. Then looking at me, he slowly drew one of his fingernails around the outside of my father’s right eye. My father closed his eyes, tears running down his cheeks, as he murmured, “Please. Not my eyes. Please.”

Above the sound of his desperate pleas, I heard what sounded like running water. I looked at my father and could see a dark patch growing on the front of his boxer shorts, and a thin stream of urine running down the inside of his leg.

“Oops!” Seth grinned.

“Leave him alone!” I roared, again fighting against the chains which fastened me to the chair.

“Why?” Seth barked back. “He means nothing to you. You said he wasn’t your father.”

“He is my dad!” I screamed back.

“Please let him go. He has nothing to do with this.

It’s me you hate. It’s me you want to punish.”

“Kiera,” my father sobbed in pain and fear.

“You can end this right now,” Seth roared back. “Choose between your father and Potter!”

“I can’t,” I sobbed, lowering my head.

“Please, can’t you just stop this?”

“Which is it to be?” Seth pushed.

I heard my father scream out in pain like a wild animal. Seth was raking his long, jagged fingernails across my father’s stomach. His flesh came away in bloody strips.

“Who do you choose?” Seth roared over the sound of my father’s deafening screams.

I thought of Potter, and despite what I knew, what Seth had showed me, I couldn’t deny the feelings I had for him. However much he had hurt me, lied and deceived me, I couldn’t let him walk into a this trap. In my mind all I could see was his cranky smile, that obnoxious look I so often wanted to wipe from his face, and hear the cocky remarks that spewed from his mouth. I thought of all the times we had made love, and a part of me couldn’t believe that none of those feelings had been real. However much I thought I hated him, I didn’t. I loved him, and had since that first time he had winked at me and called me “Tiger” back in The Ragged Cove. I couldn’t give him up.

“Who do you choose?” Seth roared at me again, over the cries of my father.

I looked across the room, and just wanted to be held by him again, just like we had so often done before. I remembered the nights, as a child, sat on his lap while he read fairy tales to me. I could see him sitting by my bed, soothing my nightmares away. I could see myself holding his skeletal hand as he cried out in pain, begging for painkillers as the cancer slowly ate him up, piece by piece. As I now stared at his tortured face, tied to the chair, his flesh being slowly peeled from him, I couldn’t rid my mind of those memories of my father in his hospital bed, screaming in pain.

“Stop it!” I shrieked, just wishing I could block out my father’s screams.

“Who do you choose?” Seth screamed back.

“Please,” I sobbed, dropping my head again. “I beg you.” Then, looking at the floor, feeling the chains around my wrists and ankles, and the sensation of my skin starting to crack, I could see something – something I hadn’t seen before.

Slowly, I raised my head. I looked across the room at Jack Seth and matching his stare, I said with the upmost defiance, “My name is Kiera Hudson – who are you to make me choose?”

In my heart, I had made my choice. The only way I would save Potter and my father, was if I became a statue.