What’s happening here? This should be frying me! I thought. But then again, I was dead – did I not feel pain now?

More out of frustration than spite, McCain bore the end of the electric stick down into the palm of my hand again. I looked up at McCain and couldn’t help but notice that his nose had started to bleed.

Staring at him, I said, “Your nose is bleeding, sir.”

McCain removed the stick from my hand and he wiped the end of his nose against his suit sleeve. Looking down, I could see blood smeared up his wrist. McCain touched the tip of his nose with his fingers and looked at the globules of red that now covered them. He glanced at me and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, spreading the blood across his upper lip like a crooked crimson moustache. I looked down at my hands, they were blistered and raw. The skin around my fingers had turned black and crisp in places, and streams of white liquid-fat oozed from the fleshiest parts of my hands.

McCain looked at them too, and realising that I wasn’t in any pain, he turned to the Greys standing behind Sam and me and said, “Get them out of my sight. Send them back to their rooms.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Kiera

I was woken by the sound of the telephone ringing. Potter groaned beside me and rolled over. Without surfacing from beneath the bed covers, I fumbled blindly about the bedside table as my hand tried to locate the phone. I plucked the receiver from its cradle and dragged it under the covers with me.

“Hello,” I groaned, still partially asleep.

“Hudson! Hudson, is that you?” an irritable and obnoxious voice asked.

“Speaking,” I mumbled, rubbing sleep from my eyes with my free hand. I felt Potter’s hand brush against my thigh and flicked it away.

“It’s Inspector Cliff Banner,” he barked down the phone at me. He didn’t sound happy.

As soon as I realised who it was on the other end of the phone, I yanked the blankets from over my head and sat up.

“I’ve got some good news and bad news for ya,” he snapped.

“Okay,” I said as I tried to focus on what he was about to tell me.

“The good news is that your friend Emily Clarke is still in the land of the living, walking around as pretty as you like!”

I felt relief and shock all at the same time to hear this piece of news. I had convinced myself that Emily had been murdered by McCain.

“So, what’s the bad news?” I asked cautiously.

“You’ve been wasting my fucking time!That’s the bad news!” he roared down the line at me. “I got onto the bank first thing this morning - gave ‘em your friend’s details. Within the hour they had faxed me back with a list of transactions she’s made in the last week!”

“Oh…” I started to say, but he cut me dead and continued to rant.

“How long did you say she’s been missing?”

“About four days.”

“Jeezus wept! According to these bank records, she was buying Cadbury’s chocolate fingers in the local Seven-Eleven at ten-thirty yesterday morning for crying out loud!” he bellowed.

I felt Potter’s hand brush against my thigh, and again I brushed it away.

Then it hit me. Banner hadn’t actually spoken to or physically seen Emily Clarke. He was just going on a computer printout from credit card transactions. Credit cards which were rightly in Emily Clarke’s name, but not necessarily being used by her.

“Has anyone been to the store and spoken to staff or checked out the CCTV?” I asked Banner.

“Has anybody been…?” he sounded exasperated with me. “Listen, I’m up to my frigging neck in shit down here and you expect me to go running around town on some fantasy…looking for your friend who is supposedly missing! Jeez, if this is her idea of going missing, I’d hate to see what happens when she gets fucking lost!” he bellowed.

“I just thought you could send someone down to the store to check…” I started

“Listen here, smartarse, you’ve got a badge…fucking use it!” and he hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” Potter groaned from beneath the blankets. Then, snaking one arm around my waist, he tried to drag me back under the covers with him.

“Banner,” I said, taking his arm from around me. “The copper I spoke with at the police station yesterday. The one who couldn’t give a shit about what’s happening at Ravenwood.”

“What did he want?” Potter asked, poking his head from beneath the blankets.

“He reckons Emily Clarke is alive and well and buying chocolate in the local Seven-Eleven,” I told him, throwing on my dressing gown and heading for the door.

“How does he know that?” Potter mumbled, still half asleep but already reaching for his cigarettes and lighter.

“He doesn’t know for sure,” I said looking back at him. “But he’s too lazy to go and check it out.”

“Do you want to check it out?” Potter asked, peering at me bleary-eyed through a haze of blue smoke.

“Straight away,” I said, heading out of the room and across the landing to the bathroom.

I shut the door and ran a shower. As the water warmed, I dropped my dressing gown and stood naked in front of the mirror. I didn’t want to release my claws, fangs, or wings, but I had to know. With my wings fluttering behind me, and those little black claws rolled into three-fingered fists, I stared at my reflection. I felt sick as the cracks appeared around my eyes and the corners of my lips. They spread like wild ivory down my neck, over my shoulder, and across my breasts. They covered my stomach, my hips, and the length of my legs down to my toes. I looked like an ancient statue, like the one outside the summerhouse back at the manor. As I stepped closer to the mirror, I felt a slight relief to see that the cracks weren’t as deep and ragged as they had been. The blood I had sucked from Potter’s neck had worked in filling the cracks for a while, but now the effects were fast wearing off.

Then, from behind me, I heard a noise and gasping out loud, I spun around. Potter was standing naked in the bathroom with his back to the door. Without saying anything, he came towards me. He held his wrist up to my mouth. I looked down and could see the green and blue veins beneath his skin.

“I can’t,” I whispered, tears beginning to stand in my eyes. “I feel like some kind of drug addict.”

“Stop thinking of it like that, Kiera,” Potter said gently, holding out his arm. “Are the living addicts because they need air to survive?”

“But they’re not hurting anyone by breathing in air,” I said, looking into his black eyes.

“And neither are you,” he said back. “You can’t hurt me, Kiera, I’m already dead, remember?”

“But you might not always be here,” I said. “What happens then? I might have to hurt someone to survive.”

“Kiera, I’m never going to leave you,” he whispered, brushing his wrist against my lower lip, and the smell of blood was almost intoxicating. It made me feel as if I was losing control – losing my mind. He looked into my eyes and said, “Kiera, the cracks are back and they will only get worse. Then what? They become so bad that you crumble into a pile of dust. What happens to me? I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of eternity here without you. I couldn’t do that. I know taking my blood isn’t perfect, but until we figure this whole thing out, it’s the best that we can do.”

“And what if we don’t figure it out?” I whispered, the smell of his blood driving me half-crazy.

“Tiger, you have the knack of figuring everything out,” he half-smiled. “You’re Kiera Hudson.”

Then, unable to fight the urge anymore, I lunged forward, sinking my fangs into the fleshy part of his wrist. His blood exploded into my mouth and I gulped it down. It felt hot as it splashed over my tongue and down the back of my throat. I heard Potter making a hissing sound, as if in some small way he was in pain. But even though I knew that, I just couldn’t stop until I was full.

With my head feeling dizzy and light, I loosened my jaws around Potter’s wrist and withdrew my fangs. He gripped his arm with his free hand and held it high above his head to slow the flow of blood that oozed between his fingers.

“Did it hurt?” I asked, wiping his blood from my lips with my fingertips.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sting a bit.”

“You didn’t say it hurt last time,” I said, feeling a little guilty.

Then looking at me, Potter smiled and said, “Sweetcheeks, the last time you did that to me, we were making love and I was so turned on, you could’ve ripped my freaking head off and I wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

“It didn’t hurt me, either,” I winked back at him.

Potter glanced at the shower then back at me. “Fancy having your back washed?” he asked me.

Then, pushing him gently in the chest and guiding him back to the bathroom door, I smiled and said, “I’d rather have a coffee.”

I closed the door and stood alone, those little black claws opening and closing at the tips of my wings.

Although what Banner had told me wasn’t conclusive proof that Emily Clarke was still alive somewhere, it did raise my hopes that she was perhaps safe and well. Perhaps she had rented a room? But what I couldn’t understand was why she hadn’t contacted her sister, Elizabeth.

With these thoughts clawing away at me, I took my shower and got dressed. Potter had made me a coffee and he sat at the kitchen table smoking. I took my iPod and checked it for any messages from Kayla. There weren’t any. Should I be worried? Not yet, perhaps. It was just short of ten o’clock, so maybe she had been in class all morning? Did these ‘Greys,’ as Kayla described them, even bother to teach the kids at Ravenwood?

Isidor came into the kitchen and waved away the smoke that lingered like a cloud above Potter and the kitchen table. “What’s the plan?” he asked me.

“I’ve got a lead I want to follow up in town,” I explained. “I thought Potter and I would go and check it out.”