Free Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series #2) by Tim O'Rourke

so vivid – so real. And why did my eye keep bleeding? Like the visions of the plane crash I’d seen yesterday – had the pilot really been screaming that the cockpit had been breached by them before it had fallen out of the sky and nose-dived into the sea? I wanted to keep telling myself that it was my imagination working overtime – that perhaps what had happened in The Ragged Cove had disturbed me more than I first had thought, and the nightmares and visions were a consequence of that. Maybe Dr. Keats had been right. No, she thought I was raving mad but I knew I wasn’t.
    If the nightmare had been some kind of vision, then had Philips really been to my flat and ransacked it? But why? What had he been looking for? If it had been some sort of premonition, that would mean Phillips was still alive and Taylor would be close by. And if they were together, Luke, Potter, and Murphy would be hot on their tail. After all, didn’t they say they were going to track them?
    Stepping from the shower and towelling myself dry, I wondered if coming to the Hallowed Manor had been such a good idea after all. For months, I’d been looking for – searching – each and every newspaper and news report for anything that might suggest their return and as soon as I turn my back….
    Kiera, what are you thinking of? I scolded myself. It was just a dream. It had been the first night away from my flat since leaving The Ragged Cove and somewhere deep inside I was probably feeling insecure. That was all I was feeling – I was being paranoid that now I had left Havensfield behind, Luke was going to put in an appearance and I wouldn’t be there. I was two hundred and fifty-five-and-a- half miles away staying on some godforsaken moor. How would he ever find me?
    “Stop it!” I groaned to myself as I pulled on a pair of jeans, boots and jumper. “Stop torturing yourself.”
    But I couldn’t stop. I needed to know if the nightmare I’d had about Phillips burgling my flat had been some vision or just a dream. How would I know? I still had a whole week down here. So taking my mobile phone from my bag, I went to ‘contacts’ and scrolled down to ‘Sparky’. Hitting ‘message’ with my fingernail, I wrote the following text:
    Had to go away 4 wk can u check on flat?
    Thanx. Kiera. x
    After hitting the send button, I tucked the phone into my jeans pocket and left my room in search of Kayla.

Chapter Eight
    As soon as I stepped into the passageway outside my room, there was that smell again – the sweet-musty odour that I had noticed last night. Even though it was nearly nine a.m., the corridor was very dark as all the doors leading from it were shut, and there wasn’t any windows. I could see a grey patch of light ahead of me where the daylight shone up the staircase from below. I could see the silhouette of a figure sitting further down the passageway. To guide myself in the gloom, I trailed my fingertips along the wall. It was then I noticed that they felt sticky, as if someone had covered them in some kind of varnish which hadn’t yet dried. I brought the tips of my fingers up to my nose and it was the strange varnish that was making the manor smell so odd. Perhaps it had something to do with the renovation of the manor. Maybe the builders had been tasked to varnish the entire place. But who had ever heard of varnishing wallpaper?
    Wiping my hands against my jeans, I walked towards the light and the figure sitting at the end of the passageway. As I drew closer, I could see that Kayla was sitting on the top stair waiting for me.
    Looking down at her, I said, “Thanks.”
    “For what?” she asked, taking out the earphones and offering me back my iPod.
    “For waiting for me,” I smiled, then added. “You can keep hold of my iPod for the time being, I’m in no rush to have it back.”
    “Thanks,” Kayla mumbled, as if saying those very words caused her pain.
    “So what’s for breakfast?” I asked.
    “Dunno,” she replied, and