“I’m sorry,” I said, going to him. “I never meant to…”

“I don’t want your apologies, Kiera,” he said, his voice softening.

“What do you want?” I asked him, looking into his eyes.

“I want to know what it is you listen to on that goddamn iPod the whole time,” he smirked.

Taking the iPod from my pocket, I handed it to him and said, “Why don’t you take a look?”

I watched Potter scroll down the list of songs with his thumb. “I don’t suppose you have ‘I’m your man’ by Wham, do you?” he smiled.

“No,” I smiled back.

“Oh, okay, what about this?” he said, removing the earphones so we could both listen to the song that he had chosen. Placing the iPod on top of the locker, he took me in his arms as ‘Just the way you are’ by Bruno Mars started to play.

The music filled the tiny room, and Potter brought his lips close to mine. Slowly, we started to sway against each other as if sharing a dance. Although his lips hovered just above mine, he didn’t kiss me. I listened to the words of the song that he had chosen, and closing my eyes, I kissed him. We turned around and around to the music and it felt as if I were at a prom instead of in a hangar.

The song swept me away to another place, and I let Potter take me there as he held me in his arms. Those feelings of nervous excitement and fear washed over me again, like they always did when we were together. My stomach fluttered, and this time it wasn’t the cravings making it summersault. My skin prickled and my heart raced. Entwining his strong hands in my hair, he kissed my face and then in my ear he whispered, “What I really want, Kiera, what I’ve only ever wanted, is you.”

Easing me down onto the bed, the song continued to play, and at that moment in time I felt a feeling of such intense happiness, that I didn’t want to let him go, because I believed that if I did, that happiness would go with him. Tugging at each other’s clothes, I ran my hands over his chest and stomach, up his back, and through his hair. The last time that we made love, we had been manacled in the caves below the mountains. This time was different – I felt free to explore him and for him to explore me. With the gentle voice of Bruno Mars singing in the background, we made love; and unlike in the caves, our love-making wasn’t rushed and desperate. This time it was gentle, caring, and seemed to last forever.

We lay facing each other on the narrow bed, and held each other. The music had stopped long ago and all I could hear was the sound of our breathing as it fell in time with each other.

“So, what’s your secret?” he asked me, his voice just a whisper in the dark.

“What do you mean?” I asked, although I knew exactly what he meant.

“What was written in that book?” he brushed my hair with his finger tips.

“Have you ever heard of the name Elias Munn?” I asked.

He was silent for a moment as if contemplating his answer. “That story is just a myth,” he said. “Is that who Ravenwood believes is behind all of this?”

“Yes,” I told him.

“But that’s like saying Father Christmas is real,” he whispered. “The story of Elias Munn is a fable – a ghost story the Vampyrus tell their kids to spook them – it’s nothing more than that.”

“Do you know the story about the half-breeds?” I whispered.

“No, I’ve missed that one,” he said.

So, as we lay in the dark next to each other, I told him what was written in the message left by Ravenwood. At the end, Potter lay quietly for several moments, then said, “Kiera, I don’t know how much of this is all true, but it just sounds like a fairy tale to me. I’ve heard loads of different stuff about the humans and the conflicts that they had eons ago, but I’ve never heard one about a half-breed that has to make a choice between the Vampyrus and the humans. I mean, how does that work, exactly? What if you chose now? What if you just snapped your fingers and said, “I want all Vampyrus to die”, is it gonna happen? I don’t think so.”

“Maybe it’s not that easy,” I said. “Perhaps there is some kind of test – something I have to do first.”

“Like what?” he replied. “Run the hundred meters? Come first in a fancy dress competition? Win the X-Factor? The whole thing sounds ridiculous if you ask me.”

“Putting it like that, it does sound a bit odd,” I said, running my fingertips across his chest.

“Kiera, Statler and Waldorf were just a couple of crazy old men…”

“Who?” I asked.

“Hunt and Ravenwood – you know Statler and Waldorf?” he said.

“Who are they?”

“The two old men from The Muppet Show,” he said, sounding bemused that I had no idea who they were. “They are just like Hunt and Ravenwood – to crazy old men.”

“Hunt wasn’t crazy,” I said.

“No?” Potter whispered. “Then why did he give his son away as a baby? Why did he send his daughter to those schools where she was bullied? Why did he experiment on them, for crying out loud? I’m telling you, Kiera, the guy wasn’t too tightly wrapped.”

“He was trying to find a cure,” I said.

“It sounds to me that his work was more important to him than anything else,” Potter said.

“But he helped me escape,” I insisted.

“Oh yeah, I was forgetting – a kids book about some toad with cross-dressing tendencies is just the thing you need when trying to escape. I must have missed that episode of Prison Break!”

I rolled on to my back and looked into the darkness. Although I was glad I’d confided in Potter and he had put things into perspective like only he could, I still felt unsure and didn’t think that Hunt or Ravenwood would have lied to me. Whatever the truth, once I was in The Hollows, I would seek out this Felix Coanda. After all, the very room I now lay in had a locker with that name on it. Turning my head against the pillow to face Potter, I said, “So, what about you? What’s your secret?”

“I’m not sure that I have one,” he said.

“Yeah, you do,” I said, and pinched his arm.

“You’ll find out what it is tomorrow,” he said. “I can’t tell you what it is now.”

“Why not?” I asked him.

“Because you would only try and stop me from doing what it is that I have to do,” he said.

“You’re scaring me now,” I whispered and rested my head against his firm chest.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” he hushed, folding his arms around me. “I’m just doing an old friend a favour.”

“Has it something to do with Seth and Eloisa?” I whispered. “You said that Seth wouldn’t be coming with me into The Hollows and Eloisa wouldn’t be coming back with you and Luke from the zoo.”

“Wait until tomorrow,” he said. “Everything will seem clearer then.”

“Have it your way,” I said, yawning, now too tired to press him on the point any further. I closed my eyes, and the steady sound of his heartbeat soon had me drifting off to sleep. As I was about to slip into unconsciousness, Potter whispered, “I love you, Kiera – do you love me?”

“I’m not allowed to fall in love,” I mumbled. “Ravenwood…

Chapter Thirty-Six

…grabbed hold of my right leg and I wailed out in pain. It was dark and I was outside. I could see the facility I had fled from on the other side of the field. I could hear the sound of running and the gnashing of pointed teeth in the undergrowth all around me.

The wolves, they’re coming after me!

I looked down at my leg and could see a long, open wound running the length of my shin. The blood which poured from it glistened black in the dark. There was something silver and metal-looking in the cut.

I must have tripped and ripped my leg open on some barbwire fencing and some of it had got entangled in the wound.

To look at the gaping hole sent splinters of pain through my body. My stomach began to lurch and the urge to throw-up was almost impossible to resist.

The sound of woofing came, and out of the darkness came hundreds of brilliant yellow eyes. I dug my fingers into the long grass and tried to drag myself away from them, but in every direction I turned, a hundred pairs of those evil eyes came out of the darkness at me.

My leg continued to burn with pain and my head began to feel woozy. The world began to seesaw around me and my vision began to blur. I looked back at my leg and willed it to stop hurting. In the glare of the moonlight, I could see the metal winking back at me.

Then something huge and powerful came striding towards me. It had a large black skull and meaty forearms. It made a series of deep grunting sounds and then appeared to grow in size. I peered at it and realised that whatever it was, wasn’t growing in size but standing up on two muscular legs and spreading a pair of giant black wings. It then began to beat its chest with two solid fists and roar into the night.

“Get back, you filthy wolves. She’s mine!”

I could hear the surrounding wolves begin to whine. Some were less brave than others and I heard them scampering away into the grass, but others stayed.

“She’s ours!” one of the werewolves protested.

The beast looming before me swung a huge, powerful arm into the air as a warning and bellowed:

“Get away I tell you! She’s mine!’

The last of the werewolves bounded away, and as they did, the creature roared after them:

“Back to the facility and remove any trace of what’s gone on there!”

My mind swam in and out of consciousness and the pain from my leg devoured me. I then felt myself being roughly picked up and held tightly against a mass of course, wiry hair. Before the blackness finally consumed me I opened my eyes again and found myself peering into the face of a terrifying-looking Vampyrus.

I wanted to scream but the sound was drowned out by…