“Kiera,” my father gasped. “I’ve never heard you use such language before.”

“Please stop,” Seth shrieked with enjoyment, wiping tears from his eyes. “Please, I can’t take anymore. He is actually telling you off for swearing like any decent father would. Oh Christ, this is amazing. I love it. Love it!”

I pulled again at my restraints, just wanting to be free so I could tear his face off.

“Just let us go!” I roared at him.

Wiping the last of his tears away, Seth looked at me, and still trying to contain his laughter, he said, “That’s a choice only you can make, Kiera Hudson.”

“What choice?” I yelled at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Okay, okay,” Seth said, finally getting to grips with his fit of hysterics. Then kneeling before me, his back to my father, he lowered his voice and said, “We both know that isn’t really your father, right?”

“Right,” I whispered looking over his shoulder at my father, and in my heart knowing it really was, but just in a different time – a different when. He was the same man, and the sight of him tied petrified looking to that chair crushed me.

“We both know that the man you love – Potter – will make his way here. He won’t be able to resist. When he does, he will die. Simple. The only way you will stop that from happening, is if you warn him in some way, or you stand shoulder to shoulder when he arrives and defend him. It’s still very unlikely that he will survive, but the odds will be better stacked in his favour with you beside him. But the thing is, and this is the real trick, you won’t be able to warn or help Potter if you are a statue.”

“What are you talking about?” I snapped, pretending I had no idea what he was going on about.

“Kiera, you know what I’m talking about,”

he smiled at me, his voice still just a whisper. “I can see the faint lines – cracks – forming around your eyes and mouth. Before very much more time has passed, your flesh, your body will start to crack and peel, just like a statue. How will you help your beloved Potter then?”

“You don’t really think you will...” I started, but Seth just smiled back at me like a crazy.

“But does Potter really deserve your help – your undying love?” he teased. “After all, we know he would fuck anything with a pulse.” Then looking me up and down, he added, “Or not.”

“Don’t judge everyone by your own disgusting standards,” I hissed back at him.

Ignoring my remark, Jack Seth continued.

“But to stop yourself from turning to stone, you need flesh and blood. Now, if I’m not mistaken, I can only see one place where you are going to get some of that around here,” and he glanced back over his shoulder at my father.

“You evil, fucking...” I started, finally understanding the true horror of the trap Seth had set for me. “I’m not going to eat...”

“Why not?” Seth cut in. “What difference does it make if you eat him? After all, it’s not as if he is your father. You’ve just told him you’re not his daughter.”

“You can’t do this!” I roared at him as he stood up before me. “I’d rather die than eat...”

“That is a choice you are free to make,”

Seth grinned at me. “But then so will your father and Potter. I really couldn’t give a shit either way.”

“You won’t get away with this!” I screamed at him. “Potter will be here soon and will rip your fucking heart out!”

“Potter won’t be here for a good few hours yet,” he smiled. “I will make sure of that.

No, no, no, there is still plenty of time to make your choice.”

“I won’t choose,” I spat at him.

“That’s up to you,” Seth said, heading back towards my father. “But don’t be too hasty in making up your mind. Those cravings I know you have will become unbearable before long, your flesh with start to harden. But I will stay with you, Kiera, I won’t leave your side. Because once you start to turn hard and cold, how will you get across the room to feed if you choose to save Potter over your father?”

“I won’t choose,” I said, staring at my father. “You won’t get me to choose between my father and Potter.”

“So you are his daughter then?” Seth quickly said, seizing on what I had just said.

“Kiera, you are my daughter,” my father said, his eyes wide in fear. “And I love you. Don’t worry – help will come – you just wait and see.”

I felt like screaming in agony at the choice Seth had given me. How could I choose? Even though Potter had cheated and lied to me, I couldn’t let him walk blindly into a trap and to his death. But I wouldn’t feed off my father to stop that from happening. If I didn’t get any of the red stuff, I would turn into a statue and be unable to help either of them.

The burning sensation in my throat and stomach was already there, reminding me that before long I would need blood again, if I were to stop myself from cracking up. The effects of the rat were already fading. I stared back across the room at my father. He looked scared and helpless.

Only I could save him. I thought of Potter in Elizabeth’s arms. I saw him with Sophie and Eloisa, and I felt sick.

“So who will it be?” Seth asked, as if being able to read my mind.

I just stared back across the room at him.

“Perhaps you need a little something to help you make up your mind,” Seth smiled back at me, his eyes spinning wildly.

Then, turning to face my father, he slowly dragged one of his long broken fingernails across his chest. At once my father screamed in pain, throwing his head back and fighting against his restraints. Seth’s fingernail peeled away a strip of my father’s flesh, and I couldn’t help but think of how a scoop rolls back the top layer of ice-cream in a tub. Except this lump of ice cream was flesh coloured, blood-red, and covered in wiry black chest hair.

With my father’s eyes bulging from their sockets, he screeched in pain. The sound was horrendous and gut-wrenching. I pulled my hands against the chains that held them, just wanting to cover my ears and block out the sounds of his agony.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Please stop! I can’t bear it.”

“Only you can stop this, Kiera,” Jack suddenly screamed back, a thick strip of my father’s chest hanging from his hooked fingernail.

He came slowly towards me.

I looked past him and at my father. He was slumped forward, his chest heaving up and down as he sucked in lungfuls of air. Blood ran from the opening in his chest. The Vampyrus part of me wanted to leap from my chair and feed from him. The human part wanted to go and hold him in my arms, and tell him everything was going to be okay, that I would save him from this hell.

Seth stopped before me, the strip of my father’s flesh swinging from his fingers like a bloody pendulum. I snapped my head away, the smell of the blood making that feeling in my stomach burn with hunger.

Seth let the end of the strip of flesh touch my forehead. He then slowly, so very slowly, drew it down over my face, over the tip of my nose, then against my mouth. The flesh felt hot against my lips. I closed my eyes, fighting the horrific urge to snap open my mouth and swallow it whole. Seth continued to dangle the meat just over my lips.

“Hungry?” he whispered, over the sound of my father screaming out in pain behind him.

I opened my eyes and looked into his. “I’d rather die,” I whispered.

Jack smiled down at me. “Your choice,”

he whispered.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Potter

I stood over Elizabeth’s corpse, and watched it slowly change back into the wolf which had hidden just beneath the surface of the human she had once matched with. I briefly wondered what the true human had been like, what they might have become if they had never been matched with the wolf? What had the real Elizabeth Clarke been like? Did I give a shit? Not really.

I kicked the wolf out of anger and frustration at being cheated by one of them again.

Then, from behind me I heard a noise. I span round, claws out in front of me. I scanned the barn. The noise came again, like something moving behind the pile of bales to my right. I slowly moved towards the sound. The bales of hay were stacked high above, and I glanced up just in time to see them topple down onto me. I fell backwards, and as I did I saw a quick flash of movement behind them. I sprang to my feet, claws poised, and headed towards the back of the barn.

Another quick flash of movement, this time to my left. I span around to find the Oompa-Loompa kid standing amongst the bales of hay. His face looked twisted and burnt, just as I had remembered it to be at Hallowed Manor. His nose looked as if it had been melted away, leaving two puncture wounds in the centre of his face. His mouth looked as if it had been pulled into a permanent grimace. He wore the Ravenwood School blazer, shirt, and tie I had seen him in before. To be honest, he looked kind of creepy.

“Dorsey, isn’t it?” I asked him.

He didn’t reply. I watched him place what looked like an iPod into his blazer pocket.

“Been listening to some tunes?” I asked, wondering where he had come from and if he had been watching me and the wolf make out.

“You killed my mother,” Dorsey suddenly screeched, launching himself through the air at me. As he hurtled towards me, hair sprouted from his face and hands, which now looked like razor-sharp claws. In that moment before he clattered into me, I couldn’t help but see the resemblance between Dorsey and Sam. For someone so small, he was incredibly strong, lifting me off my feet and throwing me into the back wall of the barn.

The wooden planks splintered and snapped as I crashed into them. With my wings unfolding from my back in a blink of an eye, I sprang back across the barn towards him.

“Don’t make me kill you!” I roared. “I ain’t into killing no kids.”

Closing my claws into a fist so as not to slice open his skin, I hit him squarely in the chest.

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