"It's not true!" I snapped, turning on my heels to look at Luke. I was hoping that he would tel me that it wasn't and that there had been some mistake. But he just stared back at me, and again I could see that sadness in his eyes. Running across the ward, I gripped him by the shoulders and said, "Please Luke, tel me that it isn't true!"
Casting his eyes down as if he were unable to look at me, he whispered, "I'm so sorry Kiera."
Letting go of him, I turned, and facing the doctor, I said, "It's not true. I refuse to believe it. My parents were human."
"One of them was," Ravenwood said and his voice had that tone again - the one that told bad news. "Your mother was one of us. She was a Vampyrus."
"Liar!" I roared at him.
"It's true," Luke said from behind me. "Your mother was a vampire bat."
"And how long have you known this?" I hissed, turning on him with tears in my eyes. "You didn't think of teling me this before?"
"I didn't know," he said, coming towards me.
"Honestly - I didn't know, Kiera."
"So, how long have you known?" I asked, tears now spiling onto my cheeks.
"When I returned back to The Holows," he said.
"The elders told me."
"So where is she now?" I demanded.
"I don't know," he said. "Al I know is that Philips took her like he took Lord Hunt."
"But why?" I sniveled.
"Why do you think, Kiera?" Ravenwood said, coming to stand by my side. "Your mother, Lord Hunt, and Isidor Smith's father are the only Vampyrus who have produced children with humans that have lived past adolescence. Whoever it is that Taylor and Philips work for, he is the one who believes the parents hold the answer. But he is wrong - we tested Lord Hunt's DNA on the half-breeds and it had no positive results whatsoever. He has realised his mistake now and is therefore in search of their offspring."
"But why?" I said, wiping the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hands. "What possible use could we have? From what Luke has told me about this Vampyrus - he doesn't sound like he would be interested in curing anyone - or any thing."
"Cure is not what he seeks," Luke said, placing a hand on my shoulder. "He is interested in your power."
"Power?" I asked. "What power?"
"Kiera, you have the gift of seeing, Kayla the gift of hearing, and we've heard that Isidor has the power of smel," Ravenwood said.
"I don't understand," I told him, every fibre of my being feeling alive and on fire.
"Kiera - you've been having nightmares right? But they're more than nightmares - they've become visions.
Tel me what you see," he said, fixing his eyes on mine.
Puling my arms tight around me, I said, "Vampyrus taking over London. Kiling passengers on the underground, creating vampires that then feed on humans that, in turn, become vampires until..."
"Until what?" Ravenwood asked me, his voice sounding stern.
"Until there are no humans left," I breathed. "But I saw hundreds...thousands of Vampyrus sweeping over London. There were so many that their wings blocked out the sun."
"What you see, Kiera, is the future...what might happen," Ravenwood explained. "Those Vampyrus you see could very wel be an army sent by the elders to protect the human race - to fight alongside them - but that we don't know. The future is not yet set, we have a chance of changing it."
"Kiera, we don't have time to waste - the future of the human race and the Vampyrus balances on a knife's edge," Luke said. "A few days ago, a Vampyrus went crazy on an inbound flight into the UK. At forty- thousand feet, he tore through the plane, gorging himself on the crew and passengers - each one of them becoming a vampire. We can't be sure, but we believe that this Vampyrus' aim was to land a plane at Heathrow, ful of bloodletting vampires which would then overrun the airport, sending vampires swarming through London. But the pilot fought back by ditching the plane into the sea, kiling al on board before they reached London."
"I saw that on the news," I told him, "the day that Lady Hunt came to visit. So do the government...the authorities know what is going on?"
"The plane has yet to be recovered," Luke said, "So no - they are not aware. But we fear it may only be a matter of time before our existence is known to the wider world. We have people in place - Vampyrus that have worked their way over the years into positions of power within governments around the world, but they wil only be able to bury so much of the truth. And if your nightmares are visions of what is yet to come, then it won't be long before those corrupted Vampyrus like Taylor and Philips start attacking major cities across the globe."
"But I stil don't understand how I wil be of use to this Vampyrus?" I asked, stil feeling numbed and confused by everything that I was hearing. "How wil I be able to help him?"
Folding his white hair-covered arms across his chest, Ravenwood looked at me and said, "Imagine having an aly that could see into the future - predict what your enemy was going to do next. Someone who can see through darkness - see what others fail to see."
I thought back to how I'd seen into the darkness in the crypt beneath St. Mary's church in The Ragged Cove. But that had only happened once. "But its not a precise thing that I can do," I told Ravenwood. "It's very hit-and-miss."
"Your gift is stil developing," he told me. "But you must realise that your abilities are getting stronger each day. You have more and more of theses visions - you see more. It wil only be a matter of time before you have complete control over your gift."
"But my eye, it bleeds - I pass out," I told him.
"That's just a symptom of your developing powers," Ravenwood said. "That wil soon pass as you become accustomed to your power."
"But what about Kayla and this other one...Isidor Smith? What do they bring to the party?" I asked him.
"Just like you, Kiera, can you imagine what an asset Kayla would be to our enemy? You could send her forward to spy. From behind closed doors, outside buildings, from miles away she would be able to hear them plotting. To listen in as they planned their next strike - their next move. From great distances she would be able to know from which direction the enemy approaches, their numbers, and the fear in their hearts.
Isidor, with his sense of smel, would be able to track the enemy - never lose their scent - hunt them down until they could run no more. Imagine, Kiera, having an army with such gifts - they would be invincible."
"An army?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. "There are only the three of us."
"You don't realy think that once our enemy understood what it was that was so special about your DNA, what made you so unique, that he wouldn't use that on the other half-breeds who had been born?"
Ravenwood asked me. "Even if they were born sick and feeble like the ones you see in this room, he would be able to heal them like we plan to do and who knows what powers they might have."
"But why do the half-breeds have the potential to be so much greater than a Vampyrus?" I asked the doctor.
"We don't know, is the honest answer," he said scratching his white wiry hair. "It must be something to do with when the two sets of DNA come together. We know that other species of bat have undeveloped eyesight and there are many myths that bats are, in fact, blind. This is untrue - some bats can even see ultraviolet light. So perhaps when human DNA and Vampyrus DNA is thrown into the mix together, it creates an enhanced ability of sight. We know that some bats hear in sonar, and others have an incredible sense of smel - perhaps these abilities are greatly magnified when the two species mix."
"Like some potent cocktail?" I said.
"Perhaps," he said, flashing a thin smile at me.
Then looking at both Luke and Ravenwood, I said, "But even if this were al true and I was some freaky half-breed, Philips, Taylor, and whoever it is they work for seem to be forgetting that there is no way on Earth that I wil betray my own race and fight alongside them."
Then staring at me, Ravenwood said, "You seem to be forgetting two things, Kiera."
"And what are they?" I asked, cocking my head at him.
"You don't actualy have a race that you belong to.
Secondly, they have the best bargaining tool that your enemy could ever want."
"Which is?"
"They have your mother," he replied with a grim smile. "And the fathers of Kayla and Isidor. I think they'l be able to make the three of you do anything that they want you to do."
With my heart sinking in my chest and wanting to throw-up, I said, "And you seem to be forgetting, I don't actualy believe any of this shit." Then pointing to the children lying asleep in their beds, I added, "I'm nothing like them, or Kayla. I mean look at me, I don't have wings!"
Taking me by the hand, Luke whispered, "Let us show you."
Folowing behind Doctor Ravenwood, Luke led me into the shadows in the far corner of the room.
Hidden in the darkness was a doorway. Pushing it open, Ravenwood ushered us into a smal room at the far end of the ward. The room consisted of a desk that was littered with pieces of paper which were covered with equations and handwritten notes. There were files and medical instruments that I had never seen the likes of before. In the corner, there was an examination couch, and attached to the wals were several x-ray negatives of limbs and I guessed they were pictures of the insides of the kids sleeping in the ward.
Taking a clunky-looking camera from the desk, Ravenwood looked at me and said, "Kiera, take off your top and go lay face-down on the couch over there."
"I'm sorry?" I said, puling my top tightly about me.
Seeing that I looked uncomfortable at his sudden request, he said, "It's okay, Kiera, I'm a doctor. I just want to examine your back."
"Why?" I said, looking across the room at Luke as he might also have the answer.
"I want to prove to you one way or another that you are a half-breed," Ravenwood said.
"How?"
"With this," he said, holding the huge camera. It looked like something that they would have used in the early nineteen-hundreds. The front of it appeared to have a long protruding lens which stuck out like an accordion, and it had handles on either side. As I looked closer at it, I could see that it wasn't made of plastic or metal, but wood.
"What's that?" I asked him.
"A camera of sorts," he smiled. "You have nothing to fear, Kiera. I'm sure your friend Luke wil be watching out for you."
Looking towards Luke again, he nodded and said, "It'l be okay, I wouldn't let anyone hurt you. I promise."
Believing in him, I went to the couch and began to unbutton my shirt. Glancing up at Luke, I asked, "Do you mind?"
Smiling to himself, he turned his back. Once my shirt was off, I climbed onto the couch and laid on my front. Ravenwood came towards me, with the camera- type contraption in his hands.
"This might feel a bit cold," he warned, placing the end of the machine between my shoulder blades. He then very gently moved it down the length of my back to the base of my spine, then up again around both sides of my ribcage. The end of the device did feel ice- cold and I felt the skin on my back tighten with goosebumps.
"Put your shirt back on. I'm al done," he said.
Climbing off the couch, I threw my shirt back on.
"You can turn around now," I told Luke. He looked at me and he stil had that boyish grin tugging at his lips.
"You're so juvenile," I tutted.
Ravenwood placed the camera-thing on his desk and flipped a switch on the side of it. The machine made a purring noise as a cone of briliant white light shone from the lens. The light shone against the wal and I looked at it. It was like watching an old black and white movie. At first, the moving picture seemed blurred and out of focus. Ravenwood adjusted a few dials on the side of the device and the image on the wal sharpened. And as it did, I could see that it was some sort of x-ray of my spine and ribcage. The camera, or whatever it was, had recorded my insides and was now playing the images back onto the wal. But as I studied the images, I could see that my spine and ribcage looked different - different from pictures that I had seen in human anatomy books. I had way too many bones and there was shading over my lungs.
"That can't be me," I gasped.
Ignoring me, Ravenwood went to the wal and taking a pen from the pocket of his scrubs, he pointed at the images being played out. "This is amazing," he said, and I could sense the excitement in his voice. "I've never seen such a developed set of wings that have yet to break through the skin." Then, jabbing at the wal with the tip of his pen, he said, "Look Luke, can you see the humerus? And look! There's the radius and ulna. The bones are perfectly formed."
"I don't believe it," I trembled, those tears standing in my eyes again. "I would know if I had al those extra bones in me. They would be heavy. I would know that they were there."
"Not necessarily," the doctor said, not being able to take his eyes from the weird-looking x-ray. "You've always had these bones inside you, Kiera. Why would you feel any different? It's al you've ever known. And besides, these bones aren't heavy - they're mostly holow - you know, to be able to help you fly better."
Pointing at the wal I said, "What are those dark patches over my lungs?"
"Oh that's just the patagium," he beamed.
"In English," I said, tears now running down my cheeks again.
"Your wings, Kiera - that's what they are! My god -this is amazing!" he shouted.
"Wel, I'm glad that you think so," I started to sob, holding myself tightly. "But I don't want to be some freaky-flying-rodent. I just want to be human."
Turning on me, totaly unaware of my distress, he said with excitement, "Actualy bats are more closely related to humans than they are to mice or rats."
"If that's meant to make me feel any better, it doesn't," I said, chocking on my tears. "I don't want this! I don't want any of this!"
Seeing that I was growing more and more distraught with each passing second, Luke came towards me and snaked his arm around my waist. "Get off of me," I screamed, pushing his arm away. "Don't touch me!"
"Kiera..." he started, but I didn't let him finish whatever it was he was going to say. I just wanted to get out of that room, away from those black and white pictures of my insides. The thought of having black leathery-looking wings hidden beneath my skin made me want to puke. I couldn't bear the thought of it. Part of me wanted to tear myself open and pul those disgusting things out of me. I couldn't even begin to comprehend what al of this meant. The thought of not actualy being human but some freaky half-breed made me feel almost insane.
Why hadn't my father told me? I screamed inside. Had he even known that my mother was a Vampyrus? And why hadn't my mother told me? I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of hatred for her. How could she have done this to me?
Trying again to comfort me, Luke put his hand on my shoulder. Shoving it off, I stood-up. "I hate the Vampyrus," I hissed at him. "I wish I'd never met you Luke Bishop. I hate you!" Leaving him looking stunned and hurt, I ran from the room.