speed, his crossbow was in his hands.
“Ready?” I asked, looking at the both of them.
“I’m always ready, tiger,” Potter winked back at me. Then, he was gone, racing away up the gravel path in the direction of the music and the screaming. His claws glinted in the moonlight and a small part of me pitied anyone who got in his way tonight. I knew that Potter had been frustrated hanging out at the farmhouse, and now that he had the chance to hunt some werewolves, I don’t think anyone or anything could stop him.
I glanced at Isidor, who still stood beside me, his crossbow at the ready. “Let’s get Kayla and then get out of here.”
“Sounds good to me,” he said, racing up the winding path after Potter.
I hung back for just a moment, and when they were both some way ahead of me, I reached into my pocket and took out the bottle of Lot 13 that I’d sneaked from Isidor’s supply which he had brought with him to the farmhouse. I unscrewed the cap and brought the little glass tube to my lips. I didn’t want it. I really didn’t — but I couldn’t risk cracking-up if I needed to change into my half-breed form while trying to rescue Kayla. And by the sound of the chaos unfolding in the distance — I guessed that the chances of that were pretty high. So, tilting my head back, I poured the gloopy pink liquid into my mouth. I screwed up my nose at once. It tasted disgusting.
My feet whispered over the gravel path as I raced forward. I looked down and my feet were just a blur beneath me. This was the first time since returning from The Hollows that I had tapped into those inner abilities that being a half-breed gave me. As I raced forward, it felt incredible to feel the wind against my flesh and my long, flowing hair. Deep inside of me, I understood Potter’s desire to be his true self for as much of the time as possible. Being a half-breed was a rush. Maybe I was finally beginning to accept what I truly was.
In the distance I could see Potter standing over several of the Greys who were now lying on the ground at his feet. Isidor caught up with him just before I did. I looked down at them, their grey robes so tattered and torn, they looked as if they had been put through a paper shredder. The grass looked black and sticky, and I could see that it was blood. Some of the Greys had been decapitated, and their hooded faces lay some way off from the rest of the bodies.
“What happened here?” I said, looking down at the carnage.
“He did,” Isidor said, gesturing towards Potter with his crossbow.
“Why?” I asked Potter.
“They got in my way,” he said.
“But…” I started.
“But nothing,” Potter said, staring at me. “I did them a favour.”
“How do you figure that out?” Isidor asked him, looking at the Greys spread across the grass before us.
Potter reached down with one blood-soaked claw and lifted up one of the Greys’ heads by the top of its hood. Swinging it before him like a lantern, Potter yanked back the hood and I stumbled backwards. The face beneath the hood was hideous. It was grey and wrinkled like a rotten prune. The mouth hung open to reveal a set of yellow- stained teeth. But it was the eyes. It looked like they had been burnt out with hot pokers. There were scorch marks around them, and the eye sockets were deep and surrounded by flaky black skin.
“What’s happened to their eyes?” I gasped.
“Werewolves have been staring into them,” Potter said, tossing the head aside.
“Who or what are they?” Isidor asked. “They look human.”
“I’m guessing that they were the former teachers of this school,” Potter said. “McCain and his merry bunch of wolves would have needed to control them somehow — to get them to go along with his cruelty. If they went against him, then they used their good old-fashioned mind control by staring into their eyes. Some of these Greys might have even been the parents who we’ve heard tried to break their children out. Who knows and who really cares? They’re dead now. Let’s leave them in peace.”
“But why do this to them?” I asked him.
“He’s not allowed to kill them, remember — goes against the Treaty,” Potter said.
“So why kill Emily Clarke?” Isidor asked him.
“How should I know?” Potter shrugged, heading off towards the music and the screaming, which was coming from the other side of a tall line of trees.
We followed him, but Isidor’s question wouldn’t leave me. So why had McCain murdered Emily Clarke if he could have silenced her another way?
Potter burst through the tree line. There was a chapel with a white wooden roof and a spire that stretched up into the night. The screaming was coming from within the chapel. But now that we were closer, I could hear another sound, one that I had last heard in The Hollows. It was the sound of wolves snarling, barking, and howling.
“Game on,” Potter said, his black eyes almost seeming to sparkle with excitement.
“Let’s just try and get Kayla, then go,” I told him. “No more killing if we don’t have to.”
“Sure,” Potter said, wiping the Grey’s blood from his claws, as if cleaning them before going into battle.
“I’m being serious, Potter,” I told him.
“I’m deadly serious,” he said back, and before I’d the chance to say anything else, he was running towards the chapel, shredding his shirt free as he went. Isidor and I ran after him, but Potter was already raking apart the locked chapel doors with his claws by the time we had caught up with him.
The door fell away in splinters, and once there was a hole large enough to squeeze through, Potter leapt inside. There was a small foyer, and now that we were inside, the music was deafening. The chapel was illuminated in random flashes of bright white light. I peered through the darkness and froze. Kayla was standing in the middle of the chapel, with a giant wolf standing before her. She looked as if she had been hypnotised. Kayla’s face was blank- looking, her mouth open, as the wolf stared into her eyes. Then, the wolf was flying backwards across the chapel. I looked right and I could see Isidor reloading his crossbow.
Chapter Forty-Two
With the chapel door lying in splinters at our feet, a flood of shrieking and terrified children shoved past us and out into the night. A timid-looking girl with tears streaming down her face spotted Potter’s huge claws and came to a standstill before him. She looked up into his face, her bottom lip wobbling and her body trembling. She was so fixated on Potter that she failed to see the giant paw that lunged from the darkness of the chapel and grabbed for her. Potter saw it though, and in a blaze of movement, he had seized hold of the attacking werewolf and dragged it into the foyer.
With his claws and fangs flashing in the strobe lighting, he pulled apart the wolf’s giant jaws. The
The young girl stood rooted to the spot and watched as Potter sunk his fangs into what was left of the wolf’s giant head. Then, as if in the early stages of throwing a fit, the girl began to shake all over in fright. Her mouth dropped open and she began to scream. Potter snapped his head up and looked at the girl. With blood smeared around his mouth and stringy pieces of flesh hanging from his fangs, he said to the girl, “If I were you, sweetheart, I’d get out of here before this turns nasty.”
How much nastier Potter intended this rescue to become, I dared not imagine, but heeding his warning, the girl turned on her heels, and screaming, she fled the chapel. With her cries fading into the distance, Potter stood and wiped the blood from his mouth with his forearm.
Catching me staring at him, he looked at me and said, “What?”
“Nothing,” I said back and turned to look at Isidor, who was now firing wave after wave of stakes into the flashing darkness. The sound of howling nearly drowned out the song
