As quickly as she had taken it off, Kayla puled her top back over her head and covered her wings. They weren't like the giant sized wings I had seen grow from Luke's back; Kayla's were smaler and trailed halfway down her back. They didn't have that leathery look either; they seemed finer, like those of a butterfly's.
Although they were black, the wings had looked like they had been splashed with liquid silver. They had almost seemed to shimmer in the light of the hazy sun.
"Do they fold away?" I asked her as she stood looking at me, her arms now folded across her chest.
"What I mean is, can you make them disappear into your back?"
"No," she said, shaking her head. "But they are so soft, they lie flat against my back, just like an extra layer of skin."
I couldn't think of anything to say, so I said, "Okay." I was stil reeling inside from what she had shown me. It wasn't like I hadn't seen this sort of thing before, but finding out that Kayla was a Vampyrus was like being hit with a sledgehammer. It was the last thing I had been expecting.
"So you can see now why my mother asked you to come here," she said turning away and heading back towards the shelter of the trees.
"What do you mean by that?" I asked, catching up with her.
"Your mother said that someone was stalking you.
That someone was coming to the manor and watching you. She wanted me to find out who it was."
"That's only half of it," Kayla said, weaving her way through the trees. "She wants you here because of what happened to you in that other place."
"The Ragged Cove?" I asked.
"Yeah, that's the place," she said glancing at me.
"Don't you get it? You've seen people like me before - and survived. Now that my father has vanished, my mother doesn't know what to do."
"But if you're a Vampyrus, your mother must be one, too," I said.
"That's the problem, Kiera," Kayla said, leading me towards the iron gate that I'd been driven through the night before. "I'm not a true Vampyrus. My father is one - but my mother is human. So I don't realy know what that makes me - and my mother doesn't know either."
I looked at Kayla and al I could hear was Dr.
Keats voice in my head. "How do we know that living right amongst us aren't the children born out of relationships between humans and these 'Vampyrus' as you call them." And here I was looking at the result of one of those unions.
"Did your mother know that your father was a Vampyrus?" I asked her.
"No, not at first," she said, as we reached the ancient stone wal that circled the grounds of the manor.
On the other side of it, I could hear the sound of the water from the moat lapping against the wal.
"For years, it seems that my father lead a double life," she started to explain. "On one hand, he was this successful businessman, the head of a multinational company developing renewable genetics. He was married with a daughter, but secretly he was a creature from below ground who could grow wings, fly at incredible speeds, and had almost invincible strength."
Before I'd the chance to say anything, Kayla disappeared up a stone spiral staircase set into the wal.
I folowed her. At the top, the stairs leveled out onto a narrow ledge that ran around the top of the wal. I peered over the top, and for miles al I could see were the barren and featureless moors, stretching out into the distance. The ground seemed almost black, with a spattering of green where some vegetation had sprung up between the huge, jagged rocks. The sight had a prehistoric feel to it, like we were the very first humans to encroach upon this land.
Kayla hoisted herself up onto the lip of the wal and I joined her. The wind raced al around us, forcing bruised-looking clouds over the sun, turning the day overcast and bleak.
"How my father kept it from my mother for so many years, I don't know," Kayla continued. "I understand now that like vampires, he would often crave blood - human blood - but to quench his thirst he would have to go beneath ground, to where he came from, his home."
"The Holows," I said, looking at Kayla, her thick auburn hair bilowing out in the wind like a mane.
"Yeah, that's what he caled it," she said, looking ahead over the moors. "He would tel my mother and me that he had to go away on business for a week or two, but realy he was going back home, to his real home. He'd go on one of his business trips three or four times a year."
"Were you or your mother never suspicious?" I asked her, now understanding the complications of being in love and sharing your life with one of these creatures. My mind couldn't help but turn to thoughts of Luke.
"I wasn't, but I don't know about my mother," she said. "It was just the way it was for as long as I can remember. But things started to change - I started to change . "
"In what way?" I asked.
"When I was about fourteen, I had these lumps appear on my back, just between my shoulder-blades.
They were smal at first, like pimples. But they never burst or went away, they just gradualy got bigger. My mother was concerned, but my father just kept brushing it off as something to do with puberty and that they would go away. But they didn't. Then, one day at one of those boarding schools, I was in the showers and one of the other girls started screaming and pointing at my back. Al the other girls looked at me then started screaming too."
"What had they seen?" I asked her.
Reaching up and rubbing her left shoulder, Kayla said, "Just about here, a little black lump had started to poke through my skin. It was hard and felt like a piece of bone. I didn't know what it was and to be honest, I was so scared at the sight of it that I started to scream, too. Anyway, I was taken to the nurse's room and she covered it with a bandage, not because it was bleeding or anything, just so she didn't have to look at it, I guess.
The headmaster caled my parents and they brought me back here. My mother was almost hysterical when she saw that little piece of black bone sticking out of my back. I remember her screaming, 'Michael what is it?
What's wrong with our baby?' "Without being able to take his eyes off my back, my father whispered, 'Leave it to me, I'l get a friend of mine to look at it.' 'What friend!' my mother holered at him, as she wrung her hands together.
'He's a doctor I know,' my father tried to comfort her. 'He'l know what to do.' 'But why can't Kayla go to see our doctor?' my mother begged him.
'Just leave it to me,' he said, taking her in her arms.
"I remember my mother sobbing against his chest.
But I caught her peering at me, Kiera, and it was fear that I saw in her eyes. It was like my own mother was scared of me," Kayla said.
Sitting listening to her, I could see a kind of sadness in her eyes so I took one of her hands in mine.
She didn't flinch or pul away, but just let it rest there on her lap.
"So what did this doctor friend of your father's say?" I asked her.
"We didn't go to him, he came to us," she told me.
"He was a thick-set man, with a pale complexion and glasses perched on the end of his nose which drooped down like a beak. I remember lying there on my bed, looking up at him thinking how much he looked like an owl. After roling me over onto my front and gently prodding the piece of black bone, I heard him whispering to my father from the corner of the room.
But I could hear some of what he said.
'The Terminal Phalanx is coming through,' the doctor whispered. 'What can you do about it?' my father asked him, and like my mother's eyes, I could hear the fear in his voice. 'This is uncharted ground, Michael - you know that, don't you?' the doctor said to my father, in an uneasy-sounding voice. 'But we can't risk them growing,' my father almost seemed to plead with him. 'Al I can do is cut it off, stitch up the hole, and pray that it doesn't grow back,' the doctor said. "Then looking back over my shoulder, I saw the doctor coming towards me with a needle. 'This might sting a bit,' he smiled "The next thing I knew I was waking up in my room," Kayla said. "My father was sitting on the edge of my bed and stroking the hair from my brow.
'My precious Kayla,' he whispered, and for the first time in my life I thought I could see tears in his eyes. 'I'm so sorry.' 'I love you daddy,' I smiled and drifted back into unconsciousness. "What had the doctor done?" I asked her, alarmed by her story. "He had removed that piece of bone and sewn up the hole that it had left behind," she said, rubbing her shoulder with her free hand, almost as if it stil hurt in someway.
"But it came back, right?" I asked.
"Not straight away. About six months later, I guess," she explained, again staring out across the cracked and boggy wasteland before us. "When I returned to school, my once good friends had started to keep their distance. They caled me 'Stickleback' and other stupid names. Although I pretended it didn't bother me, it did. I was miles away from home and I was scared."
"What of?" I asked her, my heart aching.
"Those words that I'd heard the doctor whisper into my father's ear - Terminal Phalanx - I couldn't get them out of my head. So one afternoon after class, I went to the school library and Googled those two words. And do you know what they meant?" she asked me.
I shook my head and shrugged.
"They are the bones located at the tips of the fingers and toes," she said and grimaced. "I couldn't believe what I was reading. I mean, how could I have fingers or toes growing out of my back? What sort of a monster was I turning into? I was so scared, Kiera."
I thought of the three boney fingers that I had seen at the tip of Luke's wings and knew exactly what they were. I only had to come to terms with a sprinkling of acne as a teenager - and I thought that had been horrific enough. How I would have coped with fingers growing from between my shoulder blades I did not know.
Knocking her fringe from her eyes, Kayla said, "One morning, I woke up and it felt as if something was sticking out of my mattress into my back. After inspecting the bed, I could see that none of the springs had come through, so with my stomach feeling as if it had been tied into knots, I went to the communal bathroom at the end of the dormitory and took off my nightdress. Peering over my shoulder, I looked at the reflection of my back in the mirror. To my horror, not only had that piece of black bone returned, but there were now six of them poking out of my back, three above each shoulder blade. But that wasn't the worst of it, Kiera. Those pieces of black bone didn't look like bone, they looked like fingers and they wiggled back and forth as if clutching at the air.
"I dropped to my knees in front of the toilet and puked my guts up and didn't stop until my stomach felt bruised and raw and my throat felt as if I'd swalowed a pint of battery acid," she said.
"Did you tel anyone?" I asked her.
"Are you kidding me?" she scoffed. "And put up with more piss-taking from my class mates? No way. I packed up a few of my belongings and fled. I ran away as far as possible."
"Didn't you come back here?"
"What? And have that quack operating on me again? No way! I never wanted to see this place again or my mother and father for that matter," she said, sounding spiteful and angry.
"Why not?"
"Because I knew that they understood more than they were letting on. And I feared that they would just send me back to school again to face my tormentors,"
"So how did you come to be back here?" I asked.
"My father hired these two guys," she said. "They were some kinda cops or something. One of them was young, in his early twenties, I guess. He was a real arrogant jerk and loved himself. The other one was older- but he was okay."
I knew straightaway who she was talking about, and the fact the Kayla's father had known Potter and Murphy made me feel kind of strange. I didn't know how I should feel - but it gave me a connection to Kayla, her father, and this place. Perhaps I'd done the right thing in coming to Halowed Manor after al.
Maybe they would come here too?
"Can you remember these guy's names?" I asked her.
"The jerk's name was Potter - I don't think he ever told me his Christian name - not that I wanted to know it. The other guy - the older one - his name was Jim Murphy I think."
"The jerk's name was Sean," I said. "You know them?" she said, sounding surprised. "How?" "They were on my shift in The Ragged Cove," I told her.
"Where are they now?" "I wish I knew," I said, looking out across the moor. "They were real cops then?" she asked. "I guess. Did you ever meet a guy caled Luke Bishop?" I asked, wondering what had happened to him and why he wasn't with his friends. "You couldn't forget him - he's a real hottie."
"Yeah, I've met him," Kayla said and my heart raced. "Where? When?" I blurted out. "The last time I ran away. He came in search of me." "How long ago was that?" I asked her, keen to know what information she had about Luke. "Two months ago - just before my father went missing," she said. Only two months ago! I thought to myself. Then that means Luke is out there somewhere and connected to the manor.
Maybe he will come here after all?
"He was a realy nice guy and very kind to me, but he didn't look cute like you say he does," Kayla said.
"What do you mean?" I asked confused.
"He looked as if he had been in some kinda accident or something, because the left side of his face was al scarred," and she looked sad as she thought of him.
I remembered how Luke had looked the last time that I had seen him, his face blistered and charred from the fire at St. Mary's Church. I felt sick inside at the thought that by rescuing me, he had been left disfigured.
"Are you okay?" Kayla asked me. "You've gone realy pale." "Hmm?" I muttered. "No I'm okay. I was just remembering something." "What?" "It doesn't matter now," I said just above a whisper. Then from nowhere Kayla said, "You've got a text on your phone." "Sorry?" I said, stil feeling dazed by what Kayla had told me about Luke. "You've got a text on your phone - or you're gonna get a text any moment now," she said, her head tilted towards me as if listening to something.
"I haven't got a text," I told her, rummaging for my phone in my pocket. Puling it out, I looked at the screen and it was blank. Holding it up to her, I said, "See, I haven't got a text come through." And just as those words left my lips, the phone vibrated in my hand.
I looked at the words 'New Message' flashing on the front of the screen.
Tapping the screen with my fingernail, the message opened and it was from 'Sparky'. It read: Bad news Kiera - your flat has been burgled.
It's a real mess here. Where are you?
Sparky. x Looking back at Kayla, I said, "How did you know I was going to receive -" But before I'd the chance to finish what I was about to say, I felt myself faling off the wal and everything went black.