Isidor

I followed my sister from the study, and closed the door behind me. Potter wanted to be alone with Kiera and that was cool with me. They had stuff they needed to talk about, and I'd probably say the wrong thing if I stayed. Potter would have gotten all cranky with me again, and I didn't have to do too much for that to happen.

I knew that Potter thought I was thick  -  a joke. Maybe I did get things wrong at times but I wasn't like him. I hadn't lived above ground as long as he had. He knew more about life above ground than me  -  that was a given. But I knew stuff too  -  I had seen things  -  and I wasn't just talking about episodes of "Scooby-Doo."

While Potter had been away, I'd tried to bring myself up to speed by checking the Internet for some of the stuff that Potter had talked about. I did it to keep up with him, like any younger brother who looks up to the elder one. But there seemed to be so much to learn about this strange world. And it was strange. It was strange way before it got pushed.

There was that word again. Pushed.

Push. I had seen that word before. But I had never suspected its significance until Kiera had written it down on that advert which Kayla and I had posted in the shop window. I had wanted to say something  -  I wanted to say that I had seen that word before  -  but would anyone have listened to me? Would I have been taken seriously? Not by Potter, that was for sure. He would have just ribbed me and told me I was talking shit again.

But I had kept quiet before and it had cost me my life  -  it had cost my sister's life. Back then, as we had crossed The Hollows, I felt that I was unable to say anything. I was scared that the others would have dismissed me  -  or worse, laughed at me. And could I have blamed them? Even when I was sure that Luke was really Elias Munn, I felt unable to tell my friends what I feared. I hadn't even been able to tell Kayla. I didn't think twice about killing a werewolf if I had to, I didn't hesitate drawing my crossbow in defence, but I was so often scared of saying what I felt for fear of...fear of what, exactly?

In my heart, I knew what I was scared of  -  I was scared of getting hurt. I'd been there before and didn't want to go back. For such a tall guy, with jet black hair and even darker tattoos up my arm and neck, the goatee beard and eyebrow piercing, I was too soft, I guess. I looked confident  - but I wasn't. The tattoos and stuff were there because they had to be  -  not because I had wanted them. Before the black flames, which covered my arm and licked up beneath my chin, I had been different. To wear them was like wearing a mask  -  but who was I wearing that mask for, and why? I had an idea, but would anyone listen to me?

I followed Kayla into the great hall to find the large double front doors ajar. Some of the leaves that Potter had raked into a pile on the drive now blew through the gap and circled around the hall. Guessing that Jack Seth, the boy with the burns, and Emily Clarke had left the door open on their way out, I closed it against the wind that chilled the hallway. It had been a real shame to discover that Ms. Clarke had been mixed up with Seth, as she had seemed real nice. The Oompa-Loompa (I'd have to Toogle that) with the burns, as Potter had called him, looked kinda freaky, a perfect match for Seth, I thought. But Seth had tricked us all, and now the world  -  this new pushed one, was gonna change.

The Treaty that the wolves and humans had lived by was now in tatters, and even though it wasn't our fault, we would be blamed for it; Seth would make sure of that. He had set us all up good and proper. How long would it take for the wolves to figure out what we had done at Ravenwood School? I didn't know, but I could guess it wouldn't take long before they came in search of us. Where would we run to this time? There were no more Hollows  -  we were trapped here?

Kiera would figure it out  -  she always figured everything out. But maybe I could help this time around. Perhaps I should tell her about that word push and where I had seen it before. But knowing that Potter would probably only take the piss if I told Kiera my story, I thought I would keep it to myself just a little while longer.

"Are you coming or what, Isidor?" Kayla asked, wrenching me from my thoughts.

I turned away from the front door and looked at her standing at the foot of the wide staircase. Her red hair looked as if it were on fire as it glimmered in the soft light coming from the chandelier above us.

"Coming where?" I asked her, crossing the hall.

"To check on Sam," she said, her eyes sparkling with that twinkle which had been there ever since she had returned from Ravenwood. I knew that Sam had put that sparkle in her eyes  -  she liked him. I was glad for her, but kinda sad, too. It was nice to see her happy for once. Since returning from The Hollows, I'd known that Kayla hadn't been happy. She'd seemed haunted somehow. I'd seen it in her eyes and heard it in her sobs, which had echoed through the manor at night. Now I saw something different in her eyes  -  it was an eagerness for life again and a desire for Sam to get well. That's what made me sad for her. Since returning from Ravenwood School, Sam had been ill. Night after night and day after day, Kayla had sat beside his bed, wiping the fever from his brow, and cooling his burning body with a damp sponge and towels.

"What do you think is wrong with him?" I had asked her one night, as she had sat beside Sam's bed, one of her hands folded over his.

"I think it has something to do with what happened back at the chapel," she hushed, fearful that she might wake the boy.

"The matching?" I whispered back, looking at the sallow colour of Sam's flesh. It had a sickly yellow tinge to it, and was coated in a thin sheen of sweat.

"I guess," she said, looking up at me. "You saw how his face seemed to get sucked into that wolf's. It was trying to match with him. Take his soul."

"But it didn't happen  -  we stopped it," I tried to convince myself more than her.

"Maybe we only half stopped it?" she mumbled, as if scared to say the words out loud for fear of it being the truth.

"What's that s'posed to mean?" I asked, kneeling down beside the bed and handing her a wet towel.

Kayla took it from me, and as she dabbed it against his chest, I could see what looked like waves of steam seeping from his skin. "What if the wolf has infected him somehow? I mean, look at his face."

In the pale light from the bedside lamp, I peered at Sam. His face looked swollen, as if he had been badly beaten. His eyes were swollen shut, the skin around them purple and bruised-looking. His nostrils were red and sore, and snot ran from them in thick streams. With each laboured breath he took, Sam's throat and chest made a hideous rattling noise, like he had swallowed a child's toy. Sam's lips were blistered and puckered. As I looked upon his grotesque face, I realised how much Kayla musta cared for Sam. Most girls would have been too repulsed to even look at him, let alone sit in the semi-darkness throughout the night and mop the fever from his brow.

"We should get him to a hospital," I told her.

"Potter says no," she said, her eyes fearful.

"Why not?" I asked, frowning.

"He reckons it will draw unwanted attention," she started to explain in such a tone that I knew she wasn't convinced by what Potter had suggested. "The police might start asking questions as to how he came by his injuries, who we are..."

"Couldn't we just drive him to the hospital and leave him...?" I started.

"No way," Kayla snapped. "I promised Sam I wouldn't leave him. "Besides, he knows what I am  -  what we all are. Potter's worried that in his delirious state he might talk about what he saw  -  what he witnessed us do back at the school."

"We can't just sit back and watch him die," I told her, the steam curling up from his body.

"He won't die," Kayla insisted. "I'm going to take care of him."

But I hadn't been so sure, and as I now followed Kayla through the dim narrow passageways towards Sam's room, I was fearful of what we might find.