“They are not burns,” Elizabeth said, standing and placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “They are the result of a bad matching.”

“Apart from seeing your son on that video helping to carry your murdered sister from her room, I’ve never seen him before,” I frowned, realising that there was now more to this murder than I had first seen. “How could he have recommended me?”

“Oh no, it wasn’t my son who gave you such a glowing report,” she smiled down at me.

“No, it was me, Kiera Hudson,” someone said, and I looked up to see Jack Seth stroll into the room.

Chapter Forty-Six

Kiera

Jack Seth towered over us. His rake-thin figure was covered by a loose-fitting denim shirt and jeans. Around his scrawny neck was tied his red bandana. His face was as emaciated as ever, and on his head he wore a baseball cap. The beak was pulled down low over his brow, and his crazy yellow eyes burned in their deep, sunken sockets. The lines around his mouth looked like valleys and his teeth were nothing more than brown rotting stumps.

Potter pushed his chair back and jumped up, his claws out.

“Sit down, Potter,” Seth grinned, flapping a long fingered hand at him. “I haven’t come here to scrap with you.”

“So why are you here?” I breathed, getting up and standing next to Potter. “I thought you were dead – I thought you died in The Hollows.”

“Sorry, but no,” Seth sneered, taking a seat and putting his feet up the table. “It seems that the Elders had other plans for me.”

“Like what?” I asked, still reeling with shock at the sight of him.

“For nearly two hundred years, I’ve waited for this moment, Hudson,” he smiled at me, but I knew it was false, I could see rage seething in his eyes.

“What are you yapping on about?” Potter snapped.

“The Elders brought me back, just like they did you,” he sighed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his legs at the ankles. “But my punishment was far greater than any of yours.”

“Punishment?” I asked him, his burning eyes never leaving mine.

“I’d resisted you, Hudson,” he said, and rubbed his bony temples with his fingers. “I’d resisted a lot. All I wanted was my curse to be lifted. I didn’t want to be a Lycanthrope anymore. I hadn’t killed in lust for years. I’d paid my dues for what I’d done, and all I wanted was to reach the Dust Palace and have my curse lifted by the Elders.”

“And you really thought they were going to do that...” Potter started.

But before he’d finished, Seth had sprang from his chair. Smashing one of his skeletal-like fists down onto the table, he screeched, “I helped you!” Then, looking around the room, he seethed, “I helped all of you.” Spittle swung from his mouth and dribbled down his chin. “All you had to do, Kiera Hudson, was make one simple decision, and I could have been free of my curse.”

“The decision I had to make wasn’t simple,” I tried to remind him.

“You used me!” he roared, his eyes blazing. “You threw yourself at me – you made it impossible for me not to kill you.”

“Once a killer always a killer,” Potter barked at him.

“Not true!” Seth shrieked, punching the table so hard with his fist again that the TV Potter had placed on it actually bounced up and down. Then, coming around the table, Seth looked into my eyes. I saw Isidor and Kayla jump up, fearing that Seth might strike me, but he brushed them aside. Standing before me, he looked into my eyes and I stared into his. “I resisted you right up to the last,” he whispered, and it was like there was only us in the room – in the world. “How I fought my desires to take you, Kiera. It drove me half insane to be near you and not be able to take you then kill you.” And in his eyes, I could see myself as he hurt me. And although I was in pain and just wanted to scream over and over again until my throat was raw, I let him do those unspeakable things to me. It was like I was unable to resist him. His naked form was disgusting, like a skeleton that crows had picked the flesh from. In his eyes, I could see myself groaning with desire as I pulled him on top of me. He had me locked in his stare and I would have done anything for him, I would have let him do anything to me – kill me. My desire for him was unimaginable and I wanted him more than I had ever wanted...

...Potter dragged me backwards and spun me around. “Don’t look into his eyes, Kiera!” he barked. “Don’t look into his eyes.”

Seth began to chuckle, then took his seat back at the table next to Elizabeth and the burnt-looking boy that Kayla had called Dorsey. “But you weren’t looking into my eyes in The Hollows, were you, Kiera?” Seth grinned and I caught a glimpse of those rotting stumps that protruded from his black gums.

“I didn’t have to,” I whispered.

“You didn’t have to because you used me,” he said, and I could hear his anger again boiling beneath the surface. “You knew that if you threw yourself at me, told me that you wanted me, I’d be unable to resist you.”

“I couldn’t make the choice that the Elders said I had to,” I said. “It was impossible. The only way out was for me to die. All of my friends had died and I didn’t want to be alone...”

“So you got me to make the decision for you!” Seth roared. “You coward – you silly little bitch.”

“Get out of here!” Potter barked at him, heading around the table. Seth seemed unmoved by Potter’s display of anger and he remained seated.

“Have you any idea what you put me through?” Seth screeched, spittle flying from his lips again. “The Elders punished me all over again for killing you, Hudson. But this time their curse was so much worse than the original curse of the Lycanthrope. They sent me back to that night – nearly two hundred fucking years ago, made me re-live it all over again. Only this time, as a Shape-Shifter.”

“A Skin-walker?” Kayla cut in.

“More than a Skin-walker,” Seth hissed. “I don’t need to steal skins like them. I can change into any living creature.”

“Cool,” Isidor breathed.

“Cool!” Seth bellowed, his wrinkled lips curling back. “It’s a fucking curse, I tell you! I don’t want to live under this spell anymore. I want to be a man again – just man.”

“You were never a man,” Potter spat. “You were a filthy murdering killer.”

“I know I was,” Seth hissed. “And maybe I deserved the curse of the Lycanthrope. But I had tried to change. I was so close to having the curse lifted, until she set me up in the Dust Palace.”

“So the last two hundred years hasn’t mellowed you then?” Potter asked him.

“I’ve had two hundred years of waiting until we met again,” Seth said. “I didn’t know when you would all put in an appearance, but I’ve bided my time. It gave me years to make plans, get myself ready for your return.”

“What plans?” I asked him.

“How I would finally get the great Kiera Hudson to make a choice,” he grinned at me, and his eyes spun in their sockets. “But first I had to flush you out. I got myself in with the wolves, as I can look like one of them at will – and I don’t need no children’s soul to look like a human, either. I took it upon myself to name a certain school after a certain Doctor Ravenwood. An unusual name that I knew you would be drawn to. But still you didn’t come. I thought and thought of how I could flush you out, and knowing how much you hate injustice, it was me who suggested the matching between humans and wolves when the Treaty was drawn up.”

“So you’re this Wolf Man that we’ve heard so much about?” Potter sneered at him.

“No,” Seth grinned back at him. “I am not he. So, the Treaty was signed and I waited and waited. Then, I read a very interesting news article about a young woman who had sat bolt upright during an autopsy and fled into the night with three strange-looking friends. One of which carried a crossbow,” he explained, eyeing Isidor. “I tracked down that pathologist, and very wild she was too. She enjoyed me so much, that she would have told me anything. And she did.”

“What did she tell you?” I asked him, feeling sickened at the thought of him tricking that pretty young pathologist into bed with him.

“What she told me, although it was hard for me to understand her as there was a lot of moaning and groaning going on at the time,” he winked at me, “is that as you fled the mortuary, she asked you your name, and you told her.”

I remembered that.

“I had you at last,” Seth said, rubbing his long hands together. “Knowing that it wouldn’t be too long before you started sticking your nose into why, and how the world had been changed, my good friend here got herself employed at Ravenwood School, as I guessed the name would arouse your interest.”

“But it was your sister, Emily, who was employed at Ravenwood school,” I said, looking at Elizabeth.

“I have no sister,” Elizabeth smiled. “I have no twin. There is only me. I’m Emily.”

“But we saw you being murdered on that video footage,” Isidor said.

“It was all just an act,” Seth chuckled. “Skin-walkers – wolves - can heal very quickly.”

“You’re a wolf?” Kayla gasped, staring at Emily.

“I prefer Skin-walker,” Emily smiled quite sweetly back at Kayla. “But, yes under this human skin I am a wolf. I was matched some years ago...”

“Look, this is all very interesting,” Potter snapped. “So McCain didn’t actually murder anyone?”

Sighing, Seth looked at Potter and said, “Coming back from the dead hasn’t sharpened your brain at all, has it? McCain didn’t know anything about anything. As far as he was concerned, Emily Clarke was just another teacher who decided to leave, albeit leaving her room in a rather bloody mess.”