Dead Night by Tim O'Rourke Page B

from her and wondering what kind of life she had lived alongside these Skin-walkers, I said, “There’s a beautiful world out there – I’ve seen it – and me and my friends will push it back for you, I promise.”
    Then I was gone, soaring back up to the rooftop where Sophie was now hanging by her fingernails. As I raced towards her, Sophie lost her grip and began to plummet back towards the ground. Just feet from the pavement, I snatched her back into my arms and rocketed up into the night.
    “You arsehole!” she screeched, pounding her fists against my naked chest. “You could’ve killed me!”
    “And here I was thinking I just saved your life,” I half-grinned at her.
    “That copper was right about you,” she shouted over the sound of the roaring wind. “You are a wise arse!”
    “And that’s why you fell in love with me,”
    I said, racing into the clouds with her.

14
    Sophie
     
    I thought the copper who had killed the happy-zapper in the police car had been violent, but the way Potter had killed those police officers back at the flat was something else. It had been like watching a wild animal. He had moved with such speed, agility, and skill – if that’s what you could call it. He hadn’t shown any reluctance in killing any of them and somehow I got the impression that he was enjoying himself – like a lion hunting down a zebra. The animal does it out of instinct – it knows nothing else – and that’s what watching Potter had been like. But unlike in my dreams, he hadn’t scared me. If there had been another Sophie in a world that hadn’t been pushed, as Potter had described it, then I was different now. Maybe because I had grown up in a world with monsters, and I was no longer scared of the one who held me in his arms as we raced through the night sky.
    Clouds raced past us and every so often, if I dared to look down, I could see the fields racing away far below, bathed in the silver light of the moon. He sped up and there was a rumbling sound like thunder. I stared up at Potter’s face, and it looked as hard as stone. His eyes were dark, and his skin pale like marble.
    “Where are you taking me?” I shouted over the sound of the rushing wind.
    “I was hoping you might know somewhere,” he said, without looking down at me.
    “There’s a farmhouse that I’ve been hiding out in,” I yelled. “It’s pretty secluded. We could hide out there for a few days.”
    “I haven’t got a few days,” he said, and to hear that made me feel alone again. But was that really how I felt? Wasn’t I just a little bit disappointed that he would be leaving me so soon?
    “Where is this farmhouse?” he asked me.
    “On a hill near a town called Beechers Hope,” I said. “Do you know where that is?”
    Without answering me, Potter banked sharply to the left, and my stomach did that somersault thing that happens when you take off in an aeroplane. What had taken me a week by foot and the odd bus journey to travel, Potter covered the distance between Havensfield to Beechers Hope in about half an hour. With his eyes fixed firmly ahead, we shot through the clouds and circled high above the town of Beechers Hope.
    “Where’s the farmhouse?” he asked in my ear.
    In the distance I could see the black silhouette of the hill against the night sky. I pointed at it and said, “Over there.”
    Potter covered the last half of a mile in what seemed like seconds, and it wasn’t long before he was setting me on my feet again outside the derelict farmhouse. With a shrug of his shoulders, I watched in wonder as his wings seemed to shrink away into his back. He clenched his fists and locked his jaw as his claws and fangs disappeared. He wrenched the rucksack from my back and pulled out the filthy-looking coat he had been wearing. Potter put it on and pushed open the broken down front door.
    “I thought you said you had to go,” I reminded him.
    Looking back at me, he said, “I’ve got a couple of things I