I pushed those thoughts away – right out of my head. I knew I mustn’t be drawn into Jack’s story. I had to focus, stay calm, so I was ready to save my father and Potter when the time came. Jack might have been an eight-year-old boy once, but not anymore. He had become a twisted and brutal killer. I stared again across the dimly-lit room at my father to remind myself of that fact.

Jack stepped away from the window. With his back to me, he went across the room to my father.

Taking a handful of his hair in his fist, Jack yanked back my father’s head.

“Still alive,” he said, over his shoulder at me. Then he added, with a wry smile, “Can I tempt you with something to eat?”

I looked away, back at the pile of dust on the floor beneath my chair. Jack let go of my father’s head, and I heard an audible crack as his chin slammed into his chest. My father groaned in pain.

“Whoops,” Jack said, wincing at the sound.

Knowing I had to entice Jack away from my father before he peeled any more flesh from him, I said, “How did you deal with that anger, Jack?”

He looked at me, a little bemused, his head to one side.

“How did you feel knowing that your father had hurt your sisters real bad, but you couldn’t do anything to help them?”

“Helpless,” he said, with a smile. “Just how you feel now, knowing that you can’t help the ones you love.”

I glanced at my father, then back at Seth.

“It made you feel angry, didn’t it? Did it rattle the monster’s cage inside of you?”

“Just like yours is rattling now,” he said, taking his seat in front of me again.

“What else did your mother tell you?” I asked, wanting him to get back to his story, to take his mind off the room, and what I was planning.

“She told me a lot more,” he smiled, but it wasn’t a sneer or a happy smile – it was a grimace, like he had just tasted something really bad.

“What did she tell you?” I asked him, slowly turning my wrists in their chains fastened behind me.

With the light fading in his eyes again, like he was slipping into some kind of dream, Jack said, “It was a weekday, and I hadn’t attended school for some time, not since the night we had fled my father…

Chapter Five

Jack

…Mother said it was too dangerous to attend the local school, as my father would be lying in wait to steal us away from her. On this particular day, she had left Lorre in charge of Kara and Rik at the safe house, and had led me down to the beach. It was still early February and bitterly cold. As we walked along the sea wall, she relayed to me an incident that had occurred between her and my father, just after I had been born. Mother recalled it had been as cold as the wind that whipped around us now. She told me my father had been in a furious rage about something, she couldn’t quite remember what, but his face had been white and livid and his eyes had shone bright yellow with anger.

“When your father got into one of his rages, the muscles around his jawline would flex in and out as his teeth changed shape inside his mouth. The hair on his head and arms would begin to bristle up as he fought the urge to change. I knew the signs and I could tell I was going to get another beating.”

For protection she had turned to the wooden cot before the fireplace where I had been sleeping and plucked me up, pressing me close to her chest, believing the rain of blows that she was expecting wouldn’t fall if she were holding me in her arms. To emphasise the sheer disregard that my father had for me, she said, “He didn’t care one bit that I had you in my arms. He clawed at my face, opening up a large wound that ran from beneath my right eye and down over my chin. I was terrified, Jack. I fell backwards on to the floor. I managed to roll on top of you to protect you.”

I listened with a morbid curiosity as she pulled me close and slipped her arm around my shoulders. “He then repeatedly kicked me, spat on me, and dragged me around the room by my hair.”

As I snuggled up close to her, I asked, “What did you do? How did you get away?”

“I somehow managed to claw myself free from him and I ran from the cave. I remember running barefoot, clutching you in my arms.”

As we sat on the sea wall, my head rested against her chest, she described how clots of blood had gushed from her nose and mouth, leaving a red coloured trail of her escape between the caves.

“I got clear of the fountain and ran all night until I found a small hollow between the roots of some ancient tree in the forest. As you know, a Lycanthrope can heal from injuries far quicker than any human, but I was a real mess, Jack. For the best part of a week, I hid with you in that forest, feeding us with wild rabbit and hare that I managed to hunt down.”

“What did you do when you were feeling better?” I asked.

“I had to go home – back to your father,”

she said.

“But why?”

“Because of your sisters,” she explained.

“I couldn’t leave them with him.”

“Didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked her.

“Who was there to tell?” she said. “I have no living family, apart from a brother, and he is as bad as your father. He has well and truly given into the curse. My mother is dead and my father is…well, he doesn’t want to know me. And what would’ve been the point in going to the human authorities? What was I going to tell them – that I was living with a murderous werewolf?”

I looked at my mother’s face and tried to picture what she must have looked like after my father had beaten her bloody. She was thirty-three years old, with a soft, olive coloured complexion.

Her eyes were such a dark brown in colour that it was often impossible to make out her pupils. She had a very defined cupid’s bow, and her lips were full in shape. To me, my mother was beautiful, and I hated the thought of my father destroying that beauty.

I thought about that story for a long time and it wasn’t the only story she told me. As time passed, the stories grew worse and more sickening until my dreams were haunted by them.

It was with little wonder that when Blackcoat Father Paul, the cleric for the Vampyrus church, arrived with a birthday present from my dad, I was racked with shame for accepting it. I had been introduced to Father Paul about a year before the night we had left my father. He was what the Vampyrus called the Blackcoat. He was a religious man. As far as I could understand, the Vampyrus didn’t worship the man named Jesus, but four Elders. It was they who the Vampyrus believed would be their eventual saviors, and after death, lead them to an eternal life. I don’t believe my mother had any real knowledge of this faith – or religion.

Father Paul appeared to be a very gentle man. He was tall and thin, with black hair which was swept into a parting. Like the other Vampyrus I had seen since leaving my father’s house, his skin was soap white. His eyes were blue, but on some days they could look dark grey, almost black. Father Paul's lips were thin but they lit up his face with a boyish glow when he laughed or grinned. I think the name Blackcoat, came from the black clothes he wore. His shirts and trousers were jet-black, just like the long cloak he wore fastened about his shoulders with a silver chain. I could remember two occasions seeing this Blackcoat visit our cave when my father had been at work. On both occasions my mother, just like our visit to the safe house, had forbidden me or my brother to say anything to my father. So I hadn’t.

As I sat at the end of my bunk bed in the safe house, and he handed me an oblong shaped parcel, I wondered if he hadn’t been in some way responsible for helping my mother escape from my father.

“It’s a present from your father,” he said.

“Have you caught him?” I gasped, my heart missing a beat.

“No,” he said, looking at me as he handed the parcel over. “That was left behind at the place he was hunted to. Your father managed to escape before the trackers reached him. All that was left was this parcel with a note asking that it be given to you on your birthday.”

“Should I have it?” I asked, looking up into his blue eyes.

“It’s not for me to decide,” he said softly.

“I am just the messenger. Why should you be deprived of a gift on your birthday? You have done nothing wrong.”

I took the gift and turned it over and over, looking from my mother to Father Paul and then back at the present. Slowly, I removed the wrapping paper in strips, revealing bit by bit the treasure hiding inside. What a treasure it was. A shiny, new toy racing car. My face shone with joy as a smile of sheer pleasure exploded across it. I looked up at my mother who gave me half a smile, and then looked across the room at Father Paul.

“Do you want to keep it?” he asked me, and even he looked delighted at the sight of my joy.

I nodded, not daring to say the word “yes”

as I could sense my mother’s disapproval. Father Paul then asked if I had a message he could take back to my father, should the trackers catch up with him. This time, I replied by shaking my head.

Father Paul climbed from the bed and left the room with my mother. As soon as I was alone, I ran my fingers over the car, spinning the wheels with my fingertips. I turned it over and over in my hands and studied every inch of my new toy. My mind was instantly thrown back to happier memories of being at home and playing cars on the rug in front of the fire with my dad.

The sound of my mother throwing open the door as she charged in pulled me out of the past. She slammed the door shut behind her and stood with her back to it, glaring at me and my birthday present, which lay in my hands.

“How could you?” she barked in disbelief.

“After everything your father has done! Haven’t I told you? Don’t you care?”

Without thinking, I let the toy racing car slip from my fingers and onto the bed. I felt like a thief disregarding the item he had just been caught stealing. She moved away from the door and took a few steps towards me and began to holler again.

“I just don’t believe you, child! How can you accept that from him? After all that he has done!”