Kiera
"You know I think you're wrong about this," Potter said, as I threw a rucksack into the boot of the car. The bottles of Lot 13 hidden within it made a clinking sound.
"So why are you tagging along?" I half-smiled at him, cocking an eyebrow.
"You know why I'm coming along," he grunted. "Somebody's got to watch your back on these half-brained adventures you keep going on."
"Half-brained?" I said, the wind so fierce now that my hair blew back off my face and billowed out behind me.
"Well I don't call driving up into the mountains in search of the Fountain of Souls a smart idea. Murphy wouldn't have agreed to it," he said, throwing Kayla's and Isidor's rucksacks into the boot of the car.
"Murphy was the person who first took us there," I told him. "Besides, Murphy isn't here anymore. It's down to us to call the shots these days."
"I guess," he said thoughtfully.
"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.
"I'm fine," he shrugged. Then, changing the subject he looked back towards the manor and said, "Here come Kayla and Isidor with the wolf-boy."
I followed Potter's stare, and could see Kayla and Isidor hoisting Sam down the front steps of the manor. They carried him between them, Sam's arms draped around their shoulders. His head hung low, his chin nestled in the V-shaped strip of hair on his chest and long, clawed feet dragging behind him. Potter glanced at me and raised his eyebrows. He held open the boot, and as Isidor and Kayla came closer, he shifted the bags around inside.
"Put him in here," Potter said to them. "There's enough room."
"Sam's not going in the boot," Kayla gasped. "He might suffocate."
"He's not going to suffocate," Potter told her flatly. "Besides, he might start freaking out again and we could crash the car."
"He might die in there," Isidor said, supporting his sister.
"Rather him than me," Potter said. "Now put him in the boot."
"No," I told him, opening the rear passenger door. "It's inhumane."
"That's the point," Potter forced a smile at me. "He's not human."
"Neither are you," Kayla reminded him, helping Isidor place Sam on the backseat of the car.
Muttering to himself, Potter said, "Why doesn't anybody ever listen to me?" Once he had stopped moaning, he lit a cigarette and climbed in behind the wheel.
Sam lolled across the backseat, Isidor and Kayla on either side of him. Kayla gently positioned herself so Sam's head rested against her shoulder. I sat in the front passenger seat and closed the door. Potter started the car, and I looked back at the manor house, huge, dark and empty against the night sky. I wondered when we would see it again. It was the only permanent thing in our lives now. It had become our home.
I faced forward and said, "Okay, let's get going."
"You're sure about this?" Potter asked me, a smoke propped between his lips.
"Just drive," I whispered and wound down my window an inch.
Without saying another word, Potter drove us down the winding gravel path that led to the gatehouse. The car rattled over the drawbridge and I glanced at the gatehouse. I remembered being in there with Potter, where we had shared our first kiss. That seemed a lifetime ago and it had been. I was living a new life now - if I was really living at all. Once we had cleared the drawbridge, Potter stopped the car, climbed out, and closed the giant black iron gates. The wind pulled at them as if they were two giant sails. They clanked shut and Potter returned to the car, just as the first few spots of rain spattered against the windscreen.
We drove in silence, all of us, I guess, wondering what lay ahead at the Fountain of Souls. Was it like it had been the last time we had been there? As I sat nestled in my seat watching the rain lash against the windscreen, I thought of my life - the old one - it had changed in those caves beneath the fountain. That's where Murphy had died, where I had become addicted to the red stuff, and it was the place I realised I was in love with Potter. I glanced sideways, and his face was fixed with a grim look as he stared through the rain that raced down the windscreen. I knew what he was thinking - he was thinking I was wrong about going to the fountain again, but something told me that answers hid there. Another piece of the jigsaw, perhaps? I didn't have a heart to guide me anymore, but I did have a gut and it was telling me to go there. And did we have a choice? Sam was sick and needed help - where else could we take him? I couldn't just leave him to die. Besides, I needed to keep moving and not look back, because when I did, all I could see was Jack Seth's eyes burning back at me. I didn't want to think of what depraved acts he might have performed on me before finally taking my life in The Hollows. But perhaps Potter was right - maybe Jack Seth was full of shit and was just trying to unnerve me. But how could Potter be so sure?
Then, Potter spoke and dragged me from my thoughts. "We've got company," he said through gritted teeth.
"What do you mean?" I asked, glancing at him as he stared into the rear-view mirror.
"There's a cop car behind us," he said.
I glanced back over my shoulder and over the heads of Isidor, Kayla, and Sam to see the dazzling headlights of a police car tailing us in the pouring rain. "Just take it nice and easy," I told him. Remembering the nights I had often spent patrolling in the pouring rain back in Havensfield, I added, "They won't want to get out of their car on a night like this. Not if they don't have to."
Potter eased off the accelerator just a little and steadied the car as we made our way up the winding hillside. The wind blew across the open fields and valleys and buffeted the car. Thunder continued to rumble in the distance and the night sky suddenly flashed with a streak of purple lightning overhead. Rain drummed off the roof of the car and the windscreen wipers squeaked back and forth.
The police car gained on us and at first I thought it was going to overtake, but the road was too narrow and made navigating all of the tight bends too dangerous in such treacherous weather. The cop car slowed, but it was still so close that when I glanced back again, I could see the silhouette of the two giant cops wedged into the front of the car. Their size told me that perhaps they were Skin-walkers.
"Keep nice and cool, everyone," Potter whispered, glancing up into the rear-view mirror again. "Nobody do anything that might draw attention to us."
"They're just out on patrol," I said, trying to convince myself more than him.
Ahead, Potter spotted a disused garage set back from the road. Slowing the car, he steered it off the road and onto the garage forecourt.
From the darkness, we watched the police car sail past up the road.
"See, just out on patrol," I whispered.
"All the same, we'll give them a minute or two, to get way ahead of us," Potter said and lit a cigarette.
I opened the window just an inch to let out the smoke which Potter jetted from his nostrils. Kayla coughed in the background and Potter ignored her, sucking on the end of his cigarette again. Once he was done and satisfied that the cops had got some way ahead of us, Potter crushed out the cigarette end in the ashtray built into the dashboard.
"Let's go," he said, starting the car and heading back towards the road.
Lightning cracked behind the clouds overhead, and I couldn't remember a storm so bad. Rain beat down so hard against the windscreen it was almost impossible to see the road and the treacherous bends ahead.
We hadn't gone very far, when Potter glanced in the rear-view mirror and said, "I don't believe it."
"Believe what?" I said snapping my head round. Out of the back window, I could see the cop car tailing us again.
"Maybe it's a different..." I started.
"Bullshit," Potter snapped. "They're the same cops."
The Police car sped up so its front bumper was almost touching the boot of our car. Potter kept a steady speed, one eye on the road ahead, the other checking the wing mirror. The police car eased back, and Potter kept our car at the same speed.
Ahead the road widened, just a little, and the police car accelerated fast enough to pull alongside us.
We all looked right. The cop car pulled level as we stared in, the cops turned their heads to look at us. Their heads were huge and sat on broad shoulders. They were so big; it looked as if the two cops had been shoehorned into the car. Their faces were white and ill looking. Their eye sockets were sunken so far back into their faces that they looked as if the holes bored right back into their brains. Then, from deep within those holes, bright yellow light began to shine. It was like their brains had just exploded.
The cop sitting in the passenger seat lowered his window and signalled for Potter to pull over.
Potter wound down his window, the rain lashing in. "Good evening officer," he smiled. "Is there a problem?"
"Pull over!" the cop ordered, his voice a deep growl.
Knowing that we were in trouble and there was little we could do about it, Potter did what he seemed to do best and that was to inflame the situation.
"What big bright eyes, you have officer," Potter smiled. "Are they contacts or what? And the fingernails! Wow! And the strange looking faces. I love the whole Lady Gaga thing you and your friend have got going on."
"Pull over!" The skin-walker roared, its eyes flashing.
Potter wound up his window, and sped up, pulling away from the cop car.
"Why are the following us?" Kayla asked.
"Maybe they can smell your friend," Potter hissed.
No sooner had those words escaped from his mouth, then Sam began to freak out in the back of the car.