Vampire Wake (Kiera Hudson Series #2) Read Free Page A

things that I had in The Ragged Cove? Had I really been working the night shift with men that claimed to be a race of vampire bats? If I had been told such a thing by anyone, wouldn’t I have had the same reaction to them as Keats had towards me? I mean this was the stuff of fairytales, horror movies, and books. But I knew that it had all been real, I hadn’t imagined any of it. And in the darkness at night as I lay awake, the T.V. set flickering in the corner, I would think of Luke and the brief time that we had spent together. Those feelings that I had felt for him would come flooding back and they would feel as raw and intense as they had when he had held me close to him, when he’d kissed me and enclosed me in his wings.
    Had I really felt love for him? Or had it just simply been my emotions freaking out due to the unimaginable situation that I had found myself in? Had it just been lust? The guy was a hottie. But when I thought of him, his jet-black hair, bright green eyes, and fit body, I knew it was more than those things that made my soul ache for him. Like everything else that had taken place it, was hard to explain to myself, so how would I ever get the likes of Keats to understand or believe me?
    Within days, of leaving The Ragged Cove and returning to my room in Havensfield, the nightmares had started. It was strange, because although I could see more than I always wanted to when I was awake, my dreams were a blur; a mosaic of broken images, distant voices, violence and death. The result was always the same; I would wake in my bed, but more often than not on the couch, with my heart thumping in my chest and gasping for breath. Then one night, as I sat gasping in air, I noticed something warm and wet trickling down my cheek. Dabbing at it with the tips of my fingers, I was horrified to discover that I was bleeding from my left tear duct.
    Leaping from the couch, I raced to the bathroom and looked in the mirror to find a crimson stream of tears running from my eye. Taking a piece of tissue, I wiped it away, leaving a red smear across my cheek. At first I didn’t do anything, telling myself that I must have unknowingly rubbed my eye in my sleep and scratched it with one of my fingernails. But it happened again the next night, and the night after that, a stream of blood-red tears flowing from my eye. For weeks I didn’t mention this to Keats, I kept it to myself.
    Then the red tears came during the day, but it was more than that. I started seeing things. I mean more than seeing. Those flash-bulbs would go pop again inside my mind’s eye. Fleeting glimpses of crime scenes, bodies laying dead and bleeding, their eyes turned towards me. The images became more horrific – terrifying – like waking nightmares. I would get snapshots of catastrophes; buildings reduced to rubble; iron girders twisted out of shape; planes falling from the sky; trains crashing, piles of bodies stacked as high as mountains, limbs entwined like a grotesque puzzle; row upon row of open graves for as far as my eye could see. These images, however quick, came without warning and when I least expected them, they hit me like a blow to the head. They left me feeling confused, dazed, and nauseous. Then the tears would come, thick and red – almost black. It was as if holes the size of pinpricks had opened in my mind and was bleeding the anguish and suffering of those who I saw in those flashes.
    In the end, I had to tell Keats – I had to tell someone. At first I didn’t tell her about the visions I saw, just about the tears. Immediately, she sent me for CAT and MRI scans, but they found nothing. Doctor Keats became suspicious and that tone crept into her voice again, whenever I mentioned the tears. So I told her about the pictures I saw in my head. How it was like being in the dark, then suddenly the blackness is lit-up with a flash of white light revealing the gruesome scenes hidden within.
    Keats wanted more detail. “Kiera, who are these