Dead Flesh (9 page)

He felt me
tremor and whispered, “You want the red stuff, don’t you?”

With my arms
and legs entwined around him, I murmured the word, “Yes.”

Then,
positioning his neck so it brushed over my lips, Potter said, “Well
drink then, it’s not as if you can kill me, Kiera.”

I could smell
him against me, but more than that, I could smell the blood beneath
his skin. It made my head spin, and even though I didn’t have a
heart, I could feel a beating starting to build throughout my body.
It started in my head, then to my chest, fingertips, and toes. As
the beating grew faster and more intense, so did my desire to
pierce his skin with my own fangs. But if I did, would those cracks
in my flesh appear? Did it matter if they did? Did I really care
anymore? All I wanted was to bite him - sink my teeth into him as
he made love to me.

And as he moved
gently over me, I could feel my claws growing from the tips of my
fingers and I dragged them down the length of his back. He sighed
and moved faster. I could feel the warm sensation of his blood
beneath my claws and the smell was intoxicating. It filled the air
like the sweetest of scents. The beating inside me got faster and I
pulled him down on top of me, never wanting to let him go. It was
like I wanted to be a part of him somehow. It was like our
lovemaking wasn’t enough – it didn’t bring us close enough.

With my head
spinning and feeling more alive than I’d had when I was living, and
my skin feeling as if it was on fire, I lunged forwards and sank my
teeth into his neck. His blood gushed into my mouth. I’d only ever
been drunk once before and the sensation I now felt was similar to
that. It was like feeling tipsy – the initial happy, giddy feeling
you get before you have too much and start to feel ill.

As I sucked
away at his neck, I could feel my wings spreading open beneath me
and for one awful moment those pictures of me standing in front of
the mirror in my room, cracked and broken-looking, swam before me.
I opened my eyes and looked at my arms which were wrapped about
Potter’s shoulders. But instead of the cracks, my skin almost
seemed to shine – glow. It was as if taking his blood was somehow
revitalising me, like rubbing moisturiser into dry skin.

I closed my
eyes again, the soft feel of my wings beneath me making it feel as
if we were making love on a soft bed of feathers. Entwining his
fingers with mine, Potter raised my arms above my head, and kissed
my breasts, never stopping moving above me. A thin trickle of his
blood ran from the corner of my mouth; seeing this, Potter licked
it away with the tip of his tongue. Then, without warning, he
buried his face into my neck and I felt his fangs pierce my
flesh.

I cried out. It
didn’t hurt, not really. If it did, I doubted that I would have
felt it anyway. My body felt as if it was on the brink of bursting
with ecstasy and there was nothing that could have drowned out that
feeling. It was like a madness had overtaken me and I would let him
take as much of my blood as he wanted – needed. And when I started
to feel lightheaded and that spinning feeling came back, I sank my
teeth back into his neck and let his blood gush into my mouth.

It was then, as
we made love on the floor, drinking from each other, I realised
that we had become one and the feeling of pleasure was almost
unbearable. Our lovemaking then took on an eagerness that was like
a ravenous hunger until we both collapsed in each other’s arms.

I rested my
head against Potter’s chest as he drew in breath. Just as my body
had seemed to thump, so did his. I could hear the blood gushing
through his veins. But I didn’t want it now. The thirst for it –
the lust for it – had gone. It was like I had been thirsty but now
my thirst had been quenched.

“That was
wrong,” I whispered against him.

“Was it?” he
said back. “I thought it was…”

“I don’t mean
it like that,” I told him.

“What did you
mean?” he asked, rolling onto his side and staring into my eyes.
His eyes were black and I could read nothing in them.

“Making love
with you is like nothing else,” I said, breaking his gaze and
running my fingertips across his hard, flat stomach. “But the blood
thing – I promised myself that I wouldn’t take the red stuff…that I
would try and beat it.”

“I don’t think
it’s there to be broken,” Potter said.

“What do you
mean?”

“It’s what we
are…it’s what you are,” he whispered. “Taking blood now is as
natural as breathing air. But I guess it’s more important to us, as
technically we’re dead and we don’t need air to survive. But we do
need blood…”

“I don’t need
it,” I cut over him, the fear of becoming addicted to the red stuff
scaring me.

“Are you so
sure?” Potter asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.

“What’s that
s’posed to mean?”

“The cracks,
Kiera,” he whispered, looking away from me.

I pushed away
from him, and all of a sudden I felt angry and confused. How did he
know about the cracks? Had he been spying on me? I didn’t want
anyone to see me like that. I looked like a monster – a freak. “How
do you know?”

“I saw you…” he
started.

“You’ve been
spying on me,” I hissed, feeling defensive. Nothing made me angrier
than the thought of my privacy being invaded and I couldn’t help
but think of the time in the shower block back at the Police
Station in Wasp Water. The thought of Jack Seth watching me had
driven me half insane.

“Take it easy,
tiger, I’ve shared a room with you, remember?” Potter said. “That
was until you kicked me out.”

“I didn’t kick
you out,” I told him, looking away. “It was just…”

“You didn’t
want me to see the cracks,” he said and moved closer towards me. “I
saw you one morning. You had got up early but hadn’t shut the
bathroom door properly. I could hear you running a bath and I came
to the door hoping that perhaps we could share the water, if you
know what I mean?” and he half-smiled at me. “Anyway, I pushed the
door open just a fraction and saw you standing in front of the
mirror. Your wings were out and they looked beautiful, just like
now,” he said and brushed them with his fingers. “But it was as I
stood and watched you that I saw the cracks in your flesh.”

To know that he
had seen them made me feel uncomfortable and I wrapped my arms
around my chest; I felt less vulnerable like that. Sensing this,
Potter pulled my arms free and wrapped his muscular arms around me.
“What do you think those cracks are?” I asked him. “I look like an
ancient statue. Grey and cold, cracked and weather-beaten. I look
ugly.”

“No one could
ever accuse you of being ugly,” he half-smiled again and kissed me
gently on the forehead. “But I know that’s why you’ve been
distancing yourself from me.”

“I was scared,”
I told him. “Scared of what those cracks might be and what might
happen to me.”

“So have you
got it all figured out yet, Sherlock?”

“I think the
red stuff, helps,” I whispered, not wanting to admit that the stuff
that I feared the most was going to be my saviour.

“How do you
figure that?”

“I’d been
scared of being with you,” I started to explain. “Scared of making
love to you. I know that when we do, it’s hard not to change – you
know, the Vampyrus side of me comes out and it’s when that happens
that the cracks appear.”

“But it was
different this time?” he asked me.

“Right,” I told
him. “But only because I drank your blood. It was like the cracks
absorbed your blood somehow. Like a dried out sponge being held
under a tap. I opened my eyes, and instead of my skin looking old
and split, it was glowing - radiant.”

“So this can be
stopped?” he asked me, sounding more hopeful than I.

“But at what
cost?” I asked him. “I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity
needing the red stuff. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Who says that
you have to hurt anyone?” He asked me.

“Something
tells me that your blood won’t always be enough,” I told him. “Like
any addiction, it grows and grows and you just need more and
more.”

“How do you
mean?” he frowned.

“Take your
cigarette habit,” I started to explain. “Have you always smoked so
much? You didn’t start smoking sixty or seventy cigarettes a day
like you do now. You started with just one or two, I bet. But soon
that wasn’t enough to satisfy your need. Soon you needed more and
more. That’s what an addiction is – you just want it – even when
you know it’s killing you – you just want more. Well I don’t want
to live my life like that, because there is only so much of your
blood that I can have - and what then? I turn to humans and we all
know what happens then…”

“Vampires,”
Potter said.

“Vampires,” I
nodded and looked away. “We can’t ever go back to that or our
deaths would have meant nothing.”

“There’s got to
be an answer to everything that has happened, not only to us but
the world since we came back,” Potter said.

“And I intend
to find it,” I told him. “It feels like I’m being punished by the
Elders for not making that decision back in The Hollows. It’s like
they are making me suffer.”

“But all
suffering has to end,” Potter said. “It can’t go on forever.”

“But I guess
it’s
how
it ends that matters,” I told
him.

“So what’s the
plan?” he asked me, running his fingers through my hair.

“I don’t
believe we are the only ones who have been pushed, as you call it,”
I said, leaning in close to him again. “Kayla and Isidor have gone
to place some adverts around the nearby towns to see if anyone
comes forward.”

Then, there was
a crack of lightning from outside and the rain began to fall
heavier against the roof and the side of the summerhouse. “We
should get back to the manor, Kayla and Isidor might be back by
now.”

“Let’s wait
until the rain eases up,” he said, pulling me close. The
temperature inside the summerhouse had grown cold, and gooseflesh
had covered my naked body. Potter wrapped his arms about me, his
body felt warm as he held me against him.

Then, placing
his face next to mine, he said, “Whatever happens, Kiera, we’ll
find a way through this.”

I closed my
eyes and kissed him, those intense feelings that I had for him
started to wash over me. “We should be getting back,” I whispered,
half of me knowing that Kayla and Isidor would be waiting for me
but the other half wanting Potter again.

“Let’s just
stay a while longer,” he smiled, easing me back onto the floor of
the summerhouse.

“Until the rain
stops,” I whispered, hearing it lash against the window to my
right. And as Potter ran his hand up the inside of my leg, I turned
my head slightly to look at the rain streaking down the window
pane. It was then that I screamed.

Kiera

The statue
stared through the window. Even though it had no facial features, I
knew that it was watching us. Lightning split the night sky open in
a blue shock of light, illuminating the blank face that peered in
through the window at us.

“What’s wrong?”
Potter asked me.

“Look at the
window,” I gasped, gathering up my clothes and covering myself with
them.

“What’s wrong
with the window?” Potter asked getting up and striding to the
window buck naked.

“That statue is
watching us,” I told him, throwing on my shirt and pulling on my
jeans.

“What
statue?”

“The one from
outside,” I said, wedging my feet into my boots and going to the
window.

“There isn’t
any statue at the window,” he said, cupping his hands around his
eyes and peering out into the dark.

“It was there,
I’m telling you,” I breathed, standing next to him.

“Well it’s not
there now,” he sighed, stepping back from the window and staring at
me. He stood before me naked, his chest and muscles looking taught
beneath his pale flesh.

I glanced back
at the window as another streak of lightning cut the night in two.
The sky lit up in a flash of blue and white and I could see that
the statue was no longer at the window.

“It was there,”
I insisted.

“Are you sure
it wasn’t your imagination?” he asked, snaking his arm around my
waist.

“Give me a
break,” I groaned. “I know what I saw. Put your clothes on, we
should be heading back to the manor.”

Without saying
another word, Potter picked up his trousers and boots from where
they lay strewn across the floor. As he put them on, I went to the
door. I opened it a fraction and peered into the dark. The rain
came down hard and beat off the wooden steps that led away from the
summerhouse. The sky fizzed with electricity again, washing the
area in light. Then, I saw it. The statue wasn’t at the window, but
I knew that it had been. Although it was back on the grass, it was
no longer facing the summerhouse. It had turned, as if running
away. I ran down the wooden steps and out into the rain. The rain
was so heavy that within seconds I was soaked through and it ran
done my hair and face. I knocked the water from my eyes and stood
before the statue.

“Why were you
watching us?” I demanded.

The statue
didn’t say anything. It didn’t move. It just stood solid and
heavy-looking in the rain. But it had just turned its back to the
summerhouse. The way its arms and legs were now positioned, it
looked as it had been in the act of running away at great speed
when it had become frozen again.

“What’s going
on here?” Potter suddenly asked from beside me.

“I don’t know,”
I whispered, unable to take my eyes from the statue of the girl.
Then, in another bolt of lightning, something glistened around the
statue’s neck. It was Murphy’s crucifix. It was no longer fastened
in the girl’s hand.