The first thing I noticed was that Isidor looked a lot better. His short dark brown hair looked freshly washed, and although his face looked tired, his blue eyes glistened, and his little beard was neatly trimmed beneath his chin. He wore a black jacket and combat trousers to match. I looked at Seth, and he looked older than I remembered him. He wore a baseball cap, which was pulled low across his brow and his eyes glowed yellow from his sunken eye sockets. His face still looked emaciated and his skin was waxy and pale. He stood bent forward, so as not to scrape his head against the ceiling of the cell. Seth wore the black denim jeans and blue denim shirt I‘d seen him wear before. The red bandanna was still knotted about his scrawny neck and his body still looked painfully thin.

“How do you feel, Kiera?” Isidor asked, rubbing his unshaven chin with the back of his hand.

“Better…I think,” I whispered, realising that those pains in my stomach had gone along with that incredible thirst. “How are you feeling?” I asked, realising that the last time I’d seen him, he sat slumped on the seat by the fountain in the town square.

“Not a hundred percent, but a million times better than I did,” Isidor smiled at me from the doorway.

“And Kayla?” I asked, trying to stand up, but my legs still felt as if they were made from jelly.

“She’s still sleeping,” Seth cut in.

“Sleeping where?” I asked, not entirely trusting him.

Sensing my distrust, Isidor came forward and said, “It’s okay, Kiera. Kayla is asleep in the cell next door.”

“How long have I been out of it?” I asked, my mouth feeling dry and my tongue like an old piece of carpet.

“Four days,” Seth said.

“Four days!” I croaked.

“You’ve been going cold-turkey,” Seth almost seemed to grin and his yellow eyes sparkled.

“Kayla and I have been going through the same,” Isidor explained. “I woke up from my nightmare yesterday.”

“Nightmare,” I whispered almost to myself. “I’ve had plenty of them.”

“You were delirious,” Seth said. “You’ve been shaking, convulsing, and God only knows what else as you battled your addiction to human flesh.”

“Is it over then?” I asked.

“There will be a constant battle going on in your body, heart, and soul for the rest of your life,” Seth explained. “You’ll never be free of it, but you’ll learn to control it. Then staring at me from beneath the brim of his baseball cap, his eyes took on a sudden glow and he smiled, “God knows, Kiera, that I have to fight my urges every time I’m near you.” And just for the briefest of moments I knew he wasn’t joking, as I saw those images again in his eyes – the snapshots of him with his hands around my throat, his skeletal frame lowering itself over mine.

Breaking his stare, I looked at Isidor and said, “Where’s Potter?”

“He’s gone to get more supplies, before nightfall,” Isidor said.

“Supplies?” I asked.

“We’re leaving at dawn tomorrow,” Isidor said.

“Leaving for where?” I asked him.

“The Hollows.”

“The Hollows? But what about Luke?”

Grinning, Seth looked at me and said, “When Isidor says we’re leaving for The Hollows, he means, us – Potter isn’t returning to The Hollows, he’s going back to the zoo to rescue Luke.”

Struggling to stand up, I said, “I’m going with him.”

“He’s already got a partner,” Seth grinned.

“Who?”

“Eloisa,” Seth said, still smiling. “Remember her?”

How could I forget that stunningly beautiful woman – Lycanthrope? “Yes,” I told him. “I remember her.”

“She’ll look after your friend, Potter,” Seth said. “And I’ll look after you.”

I straightened up, shoved past Seth, and I left the cell. Over my shoulder I shouted, “Potter must be going out of his tiny mind if he thinks I’m going anywhere with you!”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Isidor came after me down the passageway that led between the cells.

“Does Potter really think I’m going to go anywhere with that freak?” I asked as I eyed Isidor.

Isidor took my arm gently and stopped me from going any further. Looking back at the cell we had come from, as if to make sure that we weren’t being overheard, he said “Kiera, we don’t have time for this. Potter has a plan.”

“A plan?” I grimaced. “Who put him in charge?” I couldn’t hide the anger I felt for Potter for even suggesting that I go anywhere with Seth.

“Potter will be back soon,” Isidor said. “You should talk to him because he won’t tell me anything. It’s as if he doesn’t trust me.”

“I thought after what happened in the caves between you two that you were okay with each other now?” I asked him.

“Obviously not,” Isidor sighed.

“Okay, I’ll talk to him, but I’m not happy,” I said. “Where’s Kayla?”

“This way,” Isidor said and he led me away down the passage.

“Does she know you’re her brother?” I asked him as we walked.

“No, not yet,” Isidor said. “I haven’t had a chance to speak to her about anything. Like me and you, she’s been out of it for the last few days.”

“We’re going to have to tell her that Sparky killed her mum – your mum.” Then realising my mistake, I took Isidor’s arm and looking at him, I said, “I’m sorry Isidor, I know that Lady Hunt was your mother too – but you’ve had a bit longer to understand things, you know, deal with what’s been happening.”

“What about our father?” Isidor asked me. “Do you think he is still alive?”

“This is going to be hard for you, Isidor, but I don’t believe he is,” I said, and gently squeezed his arm. “He told me that he was going to end his life once he had completed the DNA coding that the Vampyrus would use to create the half-breeds. But your father was a good man, Isidor. He helped me escape in his own way. Did you not speak to him about any of this at the facility?”

“I didn’t see my father at the facility – it wasn’t he who treated – operated - on me, if that’s what they were doing. It was another Doctor called Ravenwood. But to be honest I was so drugged up on meds most of the time that I could barely speak. Then this Doctor Ravenwood stopped coming and they moved me to that zoo.” Isidor explained. “Your mate Sparky got me hooked on the red stuff and I went kinda crazy. I knew I had to get off the stuff – so I guess, like you, I stopped eating it, although doing so made me feel as if I was gonna die. But you know what? I would have rather died than spend the rest of my life eating humans.”

“How do you feel now, your cravings, I mean?” I asked him.

“They’re bearable, I guess,” he replied. “A bit like an itch that won’t go away, so I try not to think about it. But it’s still the early days, I guess.”

“And it’s that itch that will keep you alive, kid,” someone said from the other end of the corridor.

We both turned in the direction of the voice to see Potter leaning against the custody block wall. Eloisa towered behind him, her perfectly shaped legs seeming to go on forever in a pair of tight-fitting jeans. Her long, blond hair spilled over her shoulders and down the front of the black jacket she wore. Her skin was pale, but this only highlighted her blood-red lips and golden eyes. Potter took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one, his right eye closing as the blue smoke trailed up towards the ceiling. He jetted two streams of smoke from his nose and came towards me, Eloisa close behind him. I couldn’t help but notice how close she trailed him, and I didn’t like it.

“Good to see you back in the world of the living, sweet-cheeks,” He said, coming towards me.

When he was close enough, I rolled my arm back, then punched him straight in the face.

His head rocked back on his neck, and the cigarette which had dangled from the corner of his mouth span away. “What was that for!” he snapped. “I’ve been trying to save you!”

“How hard?” I asked him, then shot a quick glance at Eloisa.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, rubbing his jaw.

“I was stuck in that filthy zoo for God knows how long while you’ve been gallivanting around here!” I snapped.

Then, gently touching Potter on the shoulder, Eloisa said in the sickliest sweet voice that I’d ever heard, “Sean, I’ll go and find Jack, you two look as if you need to talk.” Then she was gone, striding away on those damn legs of hers, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Isidor slope away too.

“Sean!” I hissed. “No one ever calls you Sean!”

“It’s my name,” he snapped back.

“Now I can see why you took so long in coming to find me!” I shouted.

“Now listen here, tiger,” Potter shouted back, “storming that zoo wasn’t my idea of a rescue – it would’ve been more like suicide! That place was like a fortress!”

“Oh, yeah?” I seethed. “We’ll I managed to break out all right!”

“So what are you complaining about?” he said.

“What am I complaining about?” I almost shrieked in disbelief. “I’ve been operated on, bitten by a werewolf, imprisoned, beaten, forced to eat human flesh and to top it all off, I had to use a hole in the floor as a goddamn toilet!”

“I’ve heard that squat toilets are all the rage in places like France…” he started.

“But I wasn’t in France!” I yelled at him. “I was in a freaking zoo being treated like some kind of animal, while you were living it up with her!”

“Her?” Potter said, looking now somewhat bemused. “Eloisa, you mean? She’s not so bad.”