Dead Seth by Tim O'Rourke Page B

the Blackcoats and run away. We were then going to move into his brother’s holiday home in Wales.
    “We’ll be able to start a new life together,” he assured us.
    “Nobody will ever find us,” Mother added excitedly. I knew she was talking about my father.
    I asked my mother about Lorre and whether she would be coming with us. She then explained, although we hadn’t seen Lorre in months, she had received letters from my sister.
    Apparently Lorre had managed to make herself a life amongst the humans and was training to be a nurse in the city.
    As Father Paul had little money of his own, and he didn’t own the house up on the hill from the church, he was going to go and confess to his brother that he had fallen in love with my mother, a Lycanthrope, and ask if they could live in his remote little cottage in Wales, as he intended to leave the priesthood.
    The icy hand that had taken hold of my tummy all those years began to squeeze again.
    This time around, I had a greater understanding of what was going on and what we were being asked to do. However much Father Paul protested his love for my mother, I knew she just wanted to put yet more distance between us and our father.
    Over the next couple of weeks, the situation at home continued as normal. Kara stayed at home with my mother. Nik and I continued to attend school, Father Paul still visited most evenings, and the planned escape wasn‘t discussed. Even though I was fourteen now, and had a better grasp of the situation, I still felt disjointed and insecure. Each time I went to bed, I wondered if it would be my last night in my home.
    Would we leave in the middle of the night again?
    Would it be as frenzied and as hectic as before? If so, how much notice would I be given? Would I be expected to leave everything behind again? As I lay in bed at night, I would look around my room and make a mental list of the items I would snatch up and grab if it came to us fleeing in a matter of moments again. As days rolled into weeks, I slowly began to take my most treasured possessions and place them in a small pile by my bedroom door. There wasn’t much, just my paintings, along with the water colour paints and brushes that Father Paul had bought me. On top of these I sat my toy bear, which I had bought from the caves with me. I was prepared.
    Mother started to fill my head with her stories about my father again. Her voice would be cold, yet her eyes would blaze as if on fire. I had seen this look too many times before and I knew it was a sign that another tale about my father was coming.
    I wished she would stop these stories, they made me feel sick. She could probably see the look of despair in my eyes and would add, “I’m just telling you for your own good. I think you have a right to know what your father is really like before you go deciding whether you want to see him or not.”
    From the years of stories she had bombarded me with about my father, I had a pretty good idea of what he had been like. So the days slipped by, and I became ever more apprehensive. Were we staying? Were we going?
    If so, when?
    Then, when I least expected it, the news came – and with it a change in my mother that would affect me more than I could ever have imagined.
     
    Father Paul arrived at our home that night, tearful and gaunt-looking. He told us his brother wouldn’t assist in our escape. It wasn’t an issue of money. He was furious that Father Paul had been having a relationship with my mother. He said he took the laws of the Elders seriously and the fact that mixing of Vampyrus and Lycanthrope was forbidden by them. He had been horrified at Father Paul’s confession. To hear this made me feel inferior in some way – like the Lycanthrope were animals that couldn’t be mixed with. Father Paul’s brother said that he should break all ties with my mother and the rest of us. It was like we were some sub-species.
    “My brother said I would be severely punished if the Elders were to