"...up!" someone was saying. "Wake-up!"
"She's bleeding," I heard a gruff male voice say above me.
"Get her up and into the house," a female said.
I felt myself being lifted into the air and held by a strong set of arms. My face was resting against some kind of rough material. Opening my eyes, I looked up to see a single eye looking down at me. Why couldn't I see the other eye? I blinked and looked again. The other was covered with a dirty bandage. My eyes closed again, and I felt sick and disorientated.
"She fel from the wal," someone said. "She fel like a stone."
The voice sounded familiar and it took me a moment to realise that it was Kayla who was talking.
"Is she going to be okay?" someone else asked, and it was Mrs. Payne.
I opened my eyes again, and this time they focused to reveal the covered face of Marshal looking down at me.
"Wil she be alright?" I heard Mrs. Payne ask again, but I couldn't see her.
"How should I know?" Marshal grunted from above, his top lip curling upwards. Twisting my head slightly, a bolt of pain sliced through my skul and down into my neck.
"Where am I?" I murmured.
I felt someone touch my hand, the fingers were soft and gentle. "You're going to be okay," Kayla said, and I looked around to see her beside me. I couldn't help but notice the concern in her eyes.
Roling my head back, I could feel that rough material against my cheek again. I looked and could see that my face was pressed against Marshal's chest as he carried me in his arms back towards the manor. That sweet-musty smel lingered on his clothes and it made me feel sick. Screwing up my nose, I looked up into his face again, those filthy-looking bandages concealing most of him. Tuffs of unkempt beard poked through the gaps around his chin and neck. His hat covered his hair, but I could see straggly black lengths sticking out from underneath. He saw me study him and he looked away.
I couldn't help notice that although his arms felt muscular beneath and his chest as hard as rock against my face, he seemed to tilt forward and it was then that I remembered his misshapen back.
"I think I wil be okay to walk," I told him, but without looking down at me, he grunted and continued to carry me back towards the manor.
Despite his back, Marshal carried me up the two flights of stairs and down the corridor to my room, where he gently laid me on my bed. Without looking back at me, he turned and left my room. As he did I looked at his long black coat, the sleeves and his boots.
Kayla bounded onto the bed, and crossing her legs she came and sat next to me.
Mrs. Payne appeared in the bedroom doorway with a tray which had a glass, bowl, and jug of water balancing on it.
"Kayla, don't just sit there gawking at Kiera, go to the bathroom and get me a flannel!" Mrs. Payne snapped.
Without argument, Kayla scuttled from the bed and returned moments later. She handed the housekeeper the flannel, who then poured some of the water from the jug into the bowl. Moistening the flannel with some of the water, Mrs. Payne began to gently dab at the corner of my left eye.
"Your eye has been bleeding, Kiera,' she explained. "But I don't seem to be able to find a cut or where the blood is coming from."
Taking the flannel from her, I said, "It's okay, it happens sometimes."
"Does it?" She asked, sounding alarmed.
"There's nothing to worry about," I tried to assure her, and I noticed Kayla staring at me from the foot of the bed.
"You should see a doctor, dear," Mrs. Payne said, plumping up the pilows beneath my head.
"I have, but they tel me there's nothing wrong with me," I said.
"Wel, whatever, but you need to get some rest.
You've had a nasty fal," she told me. It was then that I remembered getting the text message on my phone from Sparky, and then...everything had just gone black.
"How many times have you been told not to climb up on that wal, Kayla?" Mrs. Payne snapped.
"I'm not six-years-old anymore," Kayla muttered.
"I don't want to see you up there again," the housekeeper said, staring at Kayla. "Do you understand me?"
"Whatever," Kayla sighed, flopping down on the bed.
"And what do you think you're doing?" Mrs.
Payne snapped at her again.
Poor Kid, I thought to myself. Wings or no wings - I'd want to run away from this place and never come back.
"I'm going to sit with Kiera and make sure she's okay," Kayla said.
"You'l do no such thing," the housekeeper sighed.
"Kiera needs to get some rest. She doesn't want you -"
"It's okay," I said. "I feel fine - honestly."
"Don't talk such nonsense."
"No, I'd like Kayla to stay -" I started.
Ignoring me, Mrs. Payne, glared at Kayla and said, "Come on, you have some chores to do."
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Kayla shrugged at me and headed towards the door, folowing the housekeeper.
Just as she was about to disappear into the corridor, I caled after her, "Have you got my phone?"
"Huh?" Kayla said looking back over her shoulder at me.
"My mobile phone?"
Staring at me, Kayla said, "I don't know where it is. Maybe you dropped it into the moat as you fel from the wal." Then she was gone, swinging the door shut behind her.
"Not my phone," I groaned, punching the mattress with a clenched fist. I closed my eyes and tried to recal the text message Sparky had sent me. I remembered looking at my phone, and behind my eyes those flash- bulbs popped on and off again and in those flashes of light, the words from the message that Sparky had sent swam about in front of my closed eyes. Like I was solving some word puzzle I put the words in order so that they made sense. Then, as clear as if I were holding the phone in my hand, I read the words that seemed to have appeared on the inside of my eyelids.
Bad news Kiera - your flat has been burgled.
It's a real mess here. Where are you?
Sparky. X Opening my eyes, the words shot away, like the pieces of a scrabble game being tossed around the inside of my skul. So my nightmare about Philips ransacking my flat had been true. He'd realy been there, going through my stuff. But why? And what had he been looking for? But more than that, the message from Sparky proved that my dream had been more than just a nightmare, it had been a vision - premonition - of some kind. Realising this, my body turned cold and gooseflesh crawled up my arms and legs. If the nightmare that I'd had about Philips had somehow been a window to what was happening outside the grounds of Halowed Manor, then perhaps the nightmare I'd experienced while unconscious might also be....
Could that have really happened? I asked myself as I sat bolt upright on my bed. Could vampires have realy gone berserk on the London Underground and kiled al those people? And if it were true - if that had realy taken place - what about the plane crash?
And the voice of the pilot screamed inside my head: "Mayday! Mayday! They've breached the cockpit!"
The pilot's voice seemed almost deafening inside my head. Covering my ears with my hands, I lay back down on the bed and roled onto my side. Puling my knees up under my chin, I cradled myself like a baby.
What is happening to me? And what is happening out there beyond the wals of Halowed Manor? If the world was coming under attack by vampires, why was I seeing it? I didn't want to see it! I needed to make contact with the outside world - I needed to speak with Sparky, but without my phone how would I? This place would surely have a phone. Perhaps Kayla would have a mobile that I could borrow - al teenagers had a mobile phone these days, right? But what was his number? I had it stored in my phone, sure, but I couldn't remember it. That was the whole point of storing it in my phone - so I wouldn't have to remember it. Perhaps I could get his home number by ringing directory enquires - yes that's what I would do.
Sparky would be able to tel me if any vampires had been found on that plane, if there had been a massacre on the Underground. Something like that would be al over the news and in the papers. God how I wish I had access to some newspapers right now. I wouldn't be able to stop myself from cutting and pasting. I pictured my flat in Havensfield covered with the news cuttings of vampires at forty thousand feet above ground and two hundred feet below ground.
My head started to pound and it felt as if someone or something was chipping away at my brain with a pickaxe. I didn't know if the pain was due to my fal or the realisation that I was somehow seeing what had happened, what was happening, or had yet to happen.
Closing my eyes, I thought about the show-and-tel session Kayla and me had shared that morning. There were stil questions that I wanted to ask Kayla - there was stuff I needed answers to. Some I could provide myself, like I now knew that it had been Marshal who had been up to the 'forbidden' wing. Why had he taken a tray up there and for whom? That I didn't know. But there was someone else living at the manor other than Kayla, Mrs. Payne, Marshal, and the chauffeur. I also knew that Lady Hunt hadn't gone to New York like she claimed she was going to. She was definitely going somewhere - but it was closer to home than that or she would have taken suitcases with her.
She didn't even have a handbag when she got out of the car at the railway station.
I now understood the true reason why she had asked me to come and watch her daughter - but where was she, and what was she doing? And what of Murphy, Potter, and Luke? Where were they when I needed them? What about Luke? Kayla had said that the last time she had seen him, he had looked disfigured - burnt. But there was one thing that I just couldn't work out. Sitting on that wal with Kayla, she had known that I was going to receive a text message on my phone - some seconds before it had arrived. How had she known that? I would have to ask her, I thought as my eyes drooped shut and I drifted into sleep.