Tell your mother that the Vampyrus have found the baby’s grave. If she played no part in that baby boy’s death, she wouldn’t know…

What? I wondered, as I neared the house.

Then it hit me. I remembered the day my mother had told me and Kara that awful story. She had said my father had gone off alone to bury the baby’s body. Mother had said she had no idea where he had buried the remains. That’s what Dad had been trying to tell me. Only she would know where that poor baby lay, because she was the one who buried him there.

Wiping the tears from my face, I didn’t want her to see that I had been crying or know what had happened to Father Paul or my dad. I knocked on the front door and waited. I could hear footsteps approaching from inside, and my stomach knotted. The door swung open.

“What do you want?” she snarled at me.

“I’ve got a message from Father Paul, and as you have stopped having anything to do with him, he asked me to deliver it.”

“I’m not interested in anything he has to say,” she sneered, closing the front door.

I quickly shot my arm out, stopping her from shutting it. “I think it’s important,” I insisted.

She knocked her dark fringe from her eyes and stared at me. “I’m not interested.”

“But he says I must tell you,” I said, staring at her, my heart racing.

“Be quick,” she said, not inviting me in and keeping me out in the cold.

“Father Paul said that the Vampyrus had come across that grave where Dad buried that baby,” I lied, and kept looking straight into her eyes.

At once, they flashed orange, but she tried to hide it by breaking my stare.

“Father Paul said you should know because it might be the evidence they need to finally bring Joshua to justice,” I said. “Apparently the Vampyrus cops are going to start digging tomorrow to look for evidence – anything which might prove who killed that baby.”

“Your father killed the baby,” she snapped at me.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Just passing on the message,” I said and walked away. I listened for the sound of the front door shutting, and when it came, I darted across the street and hid behind a row of snow-covered bushes.

I didn’t have to wait for very long before my mother appeared from inside the house.

“Kara, keep an eye on Nik for me. I have to go out for a while.” Then she closed the front door behind her and set off in the snow, in the direction of the forest.

With the snow now ankle-deep, I knew I could follow her at a distance; her footprints would lead the way. With the collar of my coat pulled up around my throat, and my senses feeling numb, I followed her tracks at a safe distance. I made my way up the hill where the forest lay. Just once I saw her figure in the distance, just barely visible through the falling snow. I reached the tree line and saw her tracks disappear between the trees.

There wasn’t as much snow on the ground in the forest, and I guessed the deeper she went, the less snow there would be. I quickened my step and went after her. With every passing minute, I followed my mother deep into the forest, until at last she stepped into a small clearing ahead of me.

She glanced back, and I ducked behind a fallen tree trunk. My mouth felt dry and the hairs at the base of my neck stood on end. I waited several moments, then dared to peek around the tree. I could see my mother in the clearing. She was on her knees, digging away the snow and earth with her claws. With my heart racing in my chest, and a lump in my throat, I stepped away from my hiding place and into the clearing.

“It was you who killed that baby, not my father,” I said.

Startled, my mother jumped to her feet, clumps of black earth covering her fingers up to the knuckles. “Jack,” she gasped, trying to hide her shock at seeing me there.

“You killed that baby,” I said again, walking slowly through the falling snow towards her.

“You don’t know what you are talking about,” she said, trying to smile at me, but I could see the sudden fear in her eyes.

“It was you who murdered that landlord, not my father,” I said.

“Jack, you are mistaken. Who has filled your head with such lies?” she said, wiping the mud from her fingers.

“Only you would know where that baby was hidden,” I whispered, now just feet from her, my heart thumping.

“Your father…” she started.

“You told me that only my father knew where the baby was buried,” I reminded her.

“Oh, Jack,” she sighed, as if trying to make out that I was confused in some way.

“You’re mistaken. You haven’t remembered what I told you…”

“I could never forget what you told me and Kara that day,” I whispered. “It’s like it was only yesterday. I don’t stop dreaming – having nightmares – about what you told me. You killed the baby.”

“Jack,” she said, and although her lips were smiling, her eyes weren’t. They looked cunning and bright.

“Carry on digging,” I told her, pointing at the ground where she had already started to claw away the earth.

“No, Jack…” she started.

“Dig!” I suddenly screamed at her, the anger and hate I had been suppressing finally starting to take hold of me. “I want to know the truth. I want you to face the truth of what you’ve done!”

“No,” she said, looking suddenly startled by the anger and rage in my voice.

“Fuck you then!” I screeched at her.

“I’ll dig and make you see what you have done!”

With one swipe of my arm, I knocked her to the ground. I dropped to my knees and began to claw away at the earth with my fingers. I hadn’t dug very deep when the smell of rotting meat wafted beneath my nose. I gaged, arming away the spit which swung from my chin. How did the body smell so bad after all this time? Shouldn’t it be just a bunch of bones?

“Please, Jack!” my mother suddenly screeched. “Stop!”

Deaf to her pleas and just wanting to know the truth once and for all, I clawed and dug away the earth with my fingers. They felt cold and raw in the wet ground. The stench became stronger with every handful of mud that I clawed away. I saw the bones of that baby, then, I felt something, soft and spongy. I forced the earth to one side and then howled in disbelief and revulsion. What was left of the face staring out of the ground at me was almost black with rot and swollen with maggots, but I knew it was Lorre. I fell backwards in horror and sprayed vomit from the back of my throat.

I crawled on all fours away from the shallow grave, my vomit melting the snow around me. How much more could I take? I felt as if I were going fucking insane.

“What have you done?” I screeched at my mother. “What have you fucking done, you bitch! You killed my sister! ” Then the final words my father had uttered rang in my ears.

Your sister… he had said. Your sister is dead was what he had been trying to tell me.

“I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about,” I heard my mother say. “She was a human. Big fucking deal. So what? Who gives a shit?”

“I give a shit!” I roared and sprang through the air at her. I wanted to rip her eyes out.

It was only as I clattered into her, throwing her several feet back through the air, I realised what I had just done. How had I managed to jump so far through the air? And why did my body feel as if it were burning up from inside out?

“So there is some wolf in you after all,” I heard my mother say as she leapt to her feet. Her eyes were now a bright orange and her claws seemed longer – sharper looking somehow.

“Why did you have to kill Lorre?” I panted, trying to rein in my anger – fearful of what might happen to me if I just let go of it.

“She finally realised she was human,”

mother said with a wry smile. “That’s why I had to break up that silly little fling she had going with the posh wolf-boy. If Lorre hadn’t have figured out she was a human, he certainly would have.”

Then sticking out her tongue, she seductively licked her lips. She flicked her tongue upwards and I was shocked to see that the underside was covered in a fine, black fur.

“Oh please, Jack,” don’t look so disgusted. There’ll be a day when you’ll come to understand what pleasures the female Lycanthrope tongue can give.”

“So what if Lorre figured out she wasn’t one of us?” I demanded.

“She would have gone looking for her real parents, of course!” she barked. “She would have discovered she had been stolen away by me. She would have hated me, reported me to the Vampyrus, and…”

“What you really are would have been discovered,” I breathed, seeing how deep her deceit went. Then looking at her, I said, “Did Father Paul know about what you did to Lorre? Is that the secret you shared?”

“No,” she said with a smile. “He knew nothing of this or anything else.”

“So what was this secret that you shared?” I asked her, fearing what it could be.

My mother looked at me, and the nastiness and hatred seemed to vanish for a moment. “I did love Father Paul, may be too much, and that was my problem.”

“What is the secret?” I snarled, not wanting to feel pity for her.

Then staring at me through the falling snow, and with what looked like tears building in her eyes, she said, “Me and Father Paul had a…”

“What’s going on?” someone suddenly asked from the other side of the clearing.

Both me and my mother spun around to see Kara standing at the edge of the tree line. She looked at me and my mother, then at the shallow grave. Seeing Lorre’s bloated and maggot-infested face sticking up from beneath the ground, Kara covered her face with her hands and began to scream.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Jack

“What’s happened to Lorre?” Kara cried out. “I thought she was a nurse.”

I glanced back at my mother. I feared now that Kara knew the truth, my mother might turn on her, too. “Kara!” I howled, running towards her. “Get away from here! Run! Run!