Read Online Vampire Hunt (Kiera Hudson Series #3) by Tim O'Rourke - Free Book Online

the corner of his mouth, Potter said, “Don’t go getting any funny ideas, kid.” Then, blowing smoke in Isidor’s face, he added, “I didn’t do it for you, I did it for somebody else.” Then glancing over at me, Potter flicked the cigarette away, barged past Isidor and headed towards Murphy.

Chapter Ten
    We ran all night, Murphy our guide in the dark. Occasionally, he would find another path, one which led away from towns and main roads. Most of our escape was spent clawing our way through undergrowth, snaking between trees. At one point, we walked for miles upstream to hide our tracks from any of the vampires that may still be hunting us.
    Most of our journey was spent in silence, each of us lost in our own thoughts. My own mind was filled with doubt and feelings of betrayal.
    Why had my mum been with Phillips and Sparky on the T.V.? Was she working for this invisible man? She couldn’t be!
    But if she were aligned to him, what part did my mum play in all of this? Then I remembered the tiny body of the boy lying in the woods at The Ragged Cove, his tiny hand clutching hairs from my mum’s head. Had she killed that boy? Never! Knowing my mum like I remembered her – she would never get involved in anything that would harm another person. Maybe she was pretending to be a part of it – perhaps to save her own life. That had to be it – or perhaps she didn’t realise the danger she was in.
    My head throbbed and I felt sick. I felt as if I no longer knew myself, either. In my mind’s eye, I saw that vampire flying backwards down the tunnel beneath the well. I knew I had done that, but how? Was this the Vampyrus coming out in me? Was I at last changing? But what did that mean? Would I, too, grow fangs like the others? Would those wings with their wriggling black fingers work their way out of my back? I shuddered just thinking about it. And then a thought hit me like a freight train. Would I start thirsting for blood?
    I desperately needed to know. So as we waded up stream, the icy cold water numbing my toes through my boots, I caught up with Luke.
    “Do you think my mum is a part of all of this?”
    “I don’t know, Kiera. I really don’t know what to think,” he said gently.
    “But how would that be possible?” I asked him.
    “I don’t know,” he said again.
    “But you were one of the last people to have seen her the night she disappeared back at the Cove,” I pushed.
    “She had gone by the time I got back to her,” he said, and I could see that he was struggling to find the right words to comfort me. “Phillips and Taylor took her. They told you as much themselves.”
    We kept moving upstream towards a large hill that loomed against the night sky like some giant ogre. The water sloshed about our shins, and the cold wind snatched at my long hair that bellowed about my shoulders.
    Not being able to hold back my fears anymore, I said, “Luke, I think I’m changing.”
    Slowing beside me, Luke looked at me and said, “How?”
    “Back in the tunnel,” I started, not being able to meet his gaze, “I lashed out at one of those vampires and I threw him nearly a hundred yards or so back down the tunnel. But not only that, I think that I pushed him so hard that my hand actually broke through his skin, because I ended up with his blood all over my hand. I shouldn’t be that strong, right?”
    “What else?” Luke asked.
    “Well, I can pretty much see in the dark now,” I said. “It’s like I’m kinda seeing in black and white. I can distinguish shapes, faces, stuff like that. I wouldn’t need a torch in the dark to see my way, that’s for sure.”
    “What about your eye and the nightmares?” he asked. “The eye doesn’t bleed anymore,” I said, “and the nightmares are less, but when they do come, they are different.” “In what way?”   “It’s like I can control them somehow,” I tried to explain to him, not that I really understood it myself. “I still have visions and when I