Vampire Hollows by Tim O'Rourke Page B

were sulking because they’d had their toys confiscated.
    Coanda waited for them to catch up then said, “Let’s get going. We have a mountain to climb!”
    Potter glanced at me then up at the mountain. He then made his way towards it. I looked up at the first Weeping Peak which stretched so far into the sky, that more than half of it seemed lost to darkness.
    “Welcome to the Weeping Peaks,” Luke said, and brushed past me.
    “We’ve really got to climb that?” Kayla asked breathlessly.
    “Indeed we have, so the sooner we get going the better,” Coanda grinned.
    “Can’t we just fly?” Kayla sighed.
    “No. We can’t risk being tracked by echolocation,” he snapped, then started to climb.
    Kayla and I went after him, followed by Isidor, who still seemed quiet. The gradient of the mountain wasn’t steep like I had expected it to be, but was more like climbing a hill. Coanda stormed ahead.
    As we climbed, the last of the light faded as night drew in all around us. With it came a chilly wind that whipped up a blanket of rusty-coloured dust. We climbed for what seemed like hours, and my stomach began to rumble with hunger. And it was then that I realized that since being in The Hollows, I hadn’t craved human flesh. I wondered if that was the same for Kayla and Isidor.
    After a few more hours of walking, Coanda stopped ahead of us. He had come to rest on a jagged piece of rock that jutted out from the side of the mountain. Rubbing his huge hands together, he looked at us as we gathered around him and said, “We’ll take some rest here for a few hours and start again at dawn.”
    I watched Potter and Luke walk away from each other like two fighters preparing to duel at first light. Both slumped against some nearby rocks. Luke lay on his side, and using his hands as makeshift pillows, he closed his eyes. Potter took a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and then looked at me as he blew smoke up into the night. Isidor and Kayla lay on the ground nearby and snuggled close to one another next to a fire that Coanda had started. Wanting to be alone, I walked some distance away. I lowered myself onto the ledge of a nearby rock. Stretching out on the ground, I winced at the pain in my calf muscles. The walk had been a long one and my eyelids felt heavy with tiredness.
    Taking my iPod from my pocket, I thumbed through the tracks. Putting in the earphones, I rolled onto my side and fell asleep listening to Run by Leona Lewis.

Chapter Fourteen
     
    “ I’ve had my heart ripped out!” I wanted to scream at her. But just like my arms had refused to move, so did my mouth. I could feel the words working their way up the back of my throat, but they had become entangled around my tonsils and just couldn’t free themselves.
    Then I felt a finger force its way into my mouth. It wiggled up and down then left and right. It prodded my tongue and it tasted of rubber.
    “I can taste rubber!” I screamed inside. “Please don’t cut me open! I can taste rubber! You can’t open me up if I can taste rubber!”
    The finger ran itself over my teeth and I realised it was covered with a surgical glove.
    Of course she’d be wearing gloves! She’s doing a medical examination. They can be messy especially when it comes to cutting…
    The pathologist continued her examination of me and said, “Teeth present. I will start with the upper left side. Eight present. Seven present. Six missing. Five missing. Four present…wait a minute…!”
    I didn’t know if it was the sound of her soft voice counting backwards, but I could feel my head floating again, falling backwards…falling backwards into darkness. The nothingness took me again.
    I woke. Not in the very sense of the word. I woke up inside. My mind was awake again, but I wasn’t sure if my body had woken. But this time my awakening was different. Everything was red. The world was covered in a red film. There were shadows and these were red too. The shadows took on forms and