The Whispering Dead: Gravekeeper Book 1

by Coates, Darcy

  To George’s mind, Emma had sullied his family’s lineage. He murdered her in retaliation. And his pride had been so strong that he’d accepted a life in prison without breathing a single word about the secret baby.

  Keira closed her eyes in grief at the idea of the child perishing alone in the basement. She hoped it had been quick; Blighty’s temperature dropped alarmingly at night, and it was probable Emma’s baby had not survived until morning.

  Emma’s family could have told the police about the child, but they had never been found. Depending on how remote their new home was, they might not have even known their daughter was dead.

  Even when Frank hung himself in the mill—directly over the room where he’d shared so much time with Emma—the secret trapdoor had not been found. And Emma was still chained to Blighty cemetery, knowing that her child’s remains went unrecovered.

  Keira shook herself out of the unpleasant thoughts as she reached the main road. Drawing attention to herself would be unwise. Even if Dane wasn’t still hunting for her, she didn’t want to bump into the constable if he responded to her call that night. She switched the flashlight off and waited for her eyes to adjust to the night. Indistinct shapes rose from the gloom as she moved alongside the road, keeping near to the woods so she could vanish into them if she heard or saw anyone coming. The only way she could be caught was through ambush.

  She prayed Mason and Zoe had made it back to town okay. Her phone’s battery had died as she’d finished her call to Sanderson. She only hoped that they weren’t still on Dane’s property.

  They’d better not be; I kept Dane away for nearly an hour. She rubbed strands of wet hair out of her face and picked up her pace despite the aching ankle. They might be waiting at the fountain, or even at my cottage.

  She didn’t know what the time was, but her gnawing exhaustion suggested somewhere around three in the morning. Eventually, the empty fields were swapped out for houses. Then the houses became shops, and she was back on Blighty’s main road. She still kept to the shadows, even though the streets were empty.

  Keira tried not to dwell on her friends’ conspicuous absence. She’d told them to get indoors; they were probably in a house, waiting for dawn. She passed the florist and followed the lane leading to her cottage. Mason’s car had disappeared from the base of her driveway. She let herself relax a little. He, at least, had made it back.

  If they’re not waiting at the cottage, I’ll recharge the phone and call them. Then I’ll have the hottest shower of my life and sleep for an eternity. She blew out a breath, and the wind snatched away the cloud of mist. It was the wrong choice to let Mason take Daisy. I’d give almost anything to have some company tonight.

  She’d reached the part of the lane that passed near the creek, and Keira watched it tumble behind its bordering vegetation. The starlight-tinted water was almost hypnotic. Something small tugged at the back of her awareness, and Keira slowed to a halt. Exhaustion had made her lower her guard as she neared home, and it took her a moment to realize what had unnerved her.

  I’m not alone.

  She turned and dropped in the same motion. A fist arced toward her. It carried a wickedly sharp blade. She dodged, and instead of plunging into her, the knife scraped her shoulder.

  Keira retaliated with a jab into her assailant’s torso. Her fist hit him squarely in his chest, forcing him back, but robbed her of her balance. Her ankle, already weakened, turned, and she collapsed into the dirt.

  But she knew who her attacker was. In the instant her fist had connected with him, the familiar sense of dread flowed through her, leaving her feeling both tainted and repulsed.

  Gavin Kelsey straightened, one hand massaging where he’d been hit, his drenched blond hair falling nearly to his curling lips. Their scuffle in the general store had left bruises on his neck, she was pleased to see.

  Pain sparked from the cut on her arm. She raised a hand to the mark. It was bleeding freely. Apply pressure, her subconscious said. Stop the flow.

  “I knew it.” His words were almost manic in their triumph. There was something wild about him. It was as though he was buzzing from anticipation. “I knew it would be you.”

  She needed to find a way to disarm him. She couldn’t hurt him enough that he would go to the police, but she needed to make sure he left her alone for good.

  Keira tried to lift her injured arm. It still moved, but it hurt like hell. Her twisted ankle would slow any retreat. And Gavin undoubtedly knew where she lived if he’d been waiting in her driveway.

  Her options were abruptly narrowed as Gavin leaped at her. The knife was directed toward her chest. Keira slammed her open hand against his forearm, breaking his hold on the switchblade, and the metal glittered as it flew out of his grip.

  She couldn’t stop his momentum, though. He was on her, pinning her to the ground, his rasping, wet breaths loud in her ears. His hands scrabbled toward her throat. She grabbed them to force them away and nearly screamed.

  Touching other parts of him had given her a warning, but this was the first time she’d had contact with his hands. And that, she learned, was where the stain truly resided.

  Her vision flashed to black, then stark white. She was in a landscape covered in snow. In the far distance, Blighty’s town lights sparkled through the frost.

  A river wove through the landscape, its surface crusted over with ice. A stone bridge interrupted the snow-dampened scene. It arced across the river, a gentle slope leading toward the forest on the other side.

  Gavin Kelsey strode toward the bridge, his fists thrust into his jacket pockets and his shoulders hunched. He looked younger, Keira thought, but not by much. The fuzzy mustache was missing. He kicked at clumps of snow as he followed the near-buried path through the covered fields.

  The bridge was already occupied. An older man leaned over the stones, staring down at the ice as he drew deeply from a cigarette. His eyelids were puffy and his nose red, and a brown paper bag at his feet contained an unidentifiable bottle.

  “Hey, runt,” the man grunted as Gavin stepped onto the bridge. “Does your father know you’re out here?”

  “None of your business,” Gavin retorted. His scowl deepened, though, and his eyes fixed on the forest ahead. “None of his either.”

  The man chuckled and stubbed his cigarette out on the stone near his elbow. “Last I heard, you were going to be in trouble if you were caught setting any more traps.”

  “I’m not. He won’t know.” Gavin’s jaw twitched. He kept walking, passing behind the man on the bridge, but the next words slowed him to a halt.

  “All right, suit yourself, runt.” The man’s face was haggard and tired, and his bleary eyes followed indistinct shapes moving beneath the ice. He seemed to have tuned Gavin’s presence out.

  A strange expression flickered through Gavin’s eyes. Keira could detect resentment, and hatred, and some sort of deep, consuming restlessness. He glanced toward town. It was at least twenty minutes away by foot. No other humans disturbed the smooth, white fields. And the older man leaned far over the bridge, his weight resting on the stone wall.

  “No,” Keira whispered, but nobody heard her.

  A wild emotion had taken over Gavin’s eyes. He stared at the man’s back, fists flexing at his side, then, faster than Keira had expected, rushed him.

  The man gasped on a cry as Gavin’s hands hit the center of his back. He grabbed for the stones he’d been resting his forearms on. His reflexes were dulled, though, and the stones were slippery with ice.

  Keira wanted to close her eyes to avoid seeing what happened next, but she was powerless to look away. Shock flitted over the man’s weathered face as he plunged over the bridge and toward the river below. The ice, an inch thick, broke under his weight. He disappeared under, then reemerged, thrashing in the hole he’d created. Keira shook her head, desperate to escape the vision. The man was drunk, and his coat was thick and rapidly absorbing freezing water. He clawed at the edges of the ice but couldn’t
find a grip.

  “No,” Keira said again, but there was nothing she could do. He disappeared under the ice, pulled by the current, until all she could see was the outline of something dark floating down the river.

  Gavin stood at the bridge’s edge, where the man had been just a moment before. His breathing was fast. A flush of color coursed over his face. And then he smiled, and a shocked kind of laughter bubbled out of him. As the streak of dark color faded into the distance, Gavin Kelsey hiked his jacket a little higher and, still smiling, turned to jog back to town.

  Keira’s vision blurred as spots of strange lights danced over her retinas. She came back to herself in increments. Mud stuck to her face and pain sparked through her skull as the deluge washed over her. She’d been struggling while unconscious and had managed to roll onto her stomach. Gavin loomed over her, one knee pressed into the small of her back, his hand tangled in her hair. He pulled, and she smothered a groan.

  Gavin was panting, but when he spoke, he sounded ecstatic. “Not so tough now, are you?”

  Keira tried to roll him off. He was heavy, and she couldn’t get traction in the mud with her twisted ankle. Every time she moved, he dug his knee deeper into her back. Her arm was on fire, but she clenched her teeth and refused to let him hear her cry again. Puddles of muddy water flooded her mouth as she tried to breathe.

  Gavin bent forward so he could whisper into her ear. “Dane called my dad. He said someone was on his property. I said I bet I knew who it was. And sure enough, your little house was empty.”

  Think, Keira. He doesn’t have his knife anymore, but that doesn’t stop him from being dangerous. I can’t get out from under him. So what will make him voluntarily move off?

  Gavin chuckled. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “You really hurt me in that hole of a convenience store. I stayed up last night with an icepack, thinking. I can’t call the police, or you’d just leave town. Burning your shack down is too impersonal. But look, you had to go and make it easy for me.” He applied extra weight to the back of her head. “Want to know why it’s so easy?”

  “Get your gross, greasy hands off me,” she snarled.

  He was so close to her ear that she could feel his breath tickle over her cheek. “Because no one cares about you. You’re the wild girl who wandered in from hell knows where. If you disappear, they’ll think you just up and wandered back out. No one will be worried. Most won’t even notice. And your little friends can beg and complain all they like, but the police won’t go looking for you. No one will ever know what happened to you.”

  It struck her that this must be the same train of logic he’d had on the bridge. She knew nothing about the strange man except what she’d glimpsed, but it was easy to guess that he was on the fringe of society. The perfect target for Gavin. The ideal opportunistic crime, one he had likely spent months wishing he could replicate.

  Worst of all, Gavin was right—if she disappeared, very few people would notice.

  His words made her realize something else, though. Gavin was stalling. He wanted to kill her, in the same way a starving coyote slinks ever closer to its prey, but when it came to the moment of action, he hesitated.

  I can work with that.

  She tensed up, pretending to struggle against him, and he predictably pushed her down even more firmly. She kept up the struggle for another second, then abruptly went boneless. From where he rested his weight on her back, Gavin couldn’t miss the change.

  “Hey, little mouse.” He released her hair and slapped her face. She stayed limp. “Did you seriously faint on me?”

  He hesitated for a moment, then snorted, and the weight left her back. It was all Keira could do to keep the grin off her face. Gavin hovered over her for a second, then she heard him move toward the river bank. He was going to look for his knife.

  That was a bad choice.

  Keira was off the ground before Gavin could even turn. She slammed into him, forcing him back, and they tumbled into the stream. Gavin’s shriek choked off as his head plunged under the water.

  Her cuts burned in protest, but Keira ignored them as she snatched her own knife out of her back pocket. She pushed her open palm into Gavin’s throat to twist his head back and hold it still. They came to rest with Gavin lying almost completely in the water, staring up at Keira in horror. His hands were gripping the front of her jacket, half to fight her and half as an attempt to pull himself out of the stream.

  Keira pressed her knife into his throat, just below her hand, and he exhaled a gurgling whimper. Because of the way she held him, he couldn’t pull away from the water without cutting open his own throat, and he couldn’t jerk away from the knife without submerging himself.

  She gave him a second to appreciate his predicament before speaking. She kept her voice steady and enunciated slowly to be sure he understood.

  “You got a couple of things right. I am wild. And I’m good at disappearing. I’m seriously tempted to use both of those traits tonight; by the time they find your remains, I’ll be long out of here.”

  His eyes were wide circles, and his lips shook as he opened them, but the only sound he made was a strained, terrified whine.

  “But you were wrong about something else. I didn’t arrive in Blighty by accident. I have work to do here. And I know things.” She leaned close enough to see his pupils contract with fear. “I know your secret. I saw what you did to the man on the bridge. Murderer.”

  His mouth worked, opening and closing again like an oxygen-starved fish.

  “You thought no one saw and that no one would ever know. But I saw. I see everything.”

  “Please.” His voice was strangled with tears. “It wasn’t—I didn’t—”

  “Yes, you did. You were going to set traps in the forest, but you were tired of killing just animals, weren’t you? So you pushed him. You left his bottle on the bridge and walked home thinking that no one would be any wiser.”

  He made a strange noise, something between a sob and a whine. “I’m sorry. It was dumb. I was so stupid— I never meant to— I never should have—”

  Disgust coiled through Keira’s stomach. She’d just accused him of taking a life, and yet all Gavin could talk about was himself. He didn’t regret his actions. He only regretted being caught.

  She could pay it forward. If she pushed his head just a little more, he’d be underwater. It might even be the same stream he plunged his acquaintance into—the riverbanks weren’t as wide at that point, but she was fairly sure it would travel to the other side of Blighty, merging with its counterparts to form the large, steady flow that washed under the stone bridge.

  Keira’s hand twitched down, and the water rose over Gavin’s ears. Just a little farther and his nose and mouth would be under too. A life for a life. Justice. At least a form of it.

  In an instant, the anger and pain vanished. She’d told Gavin she’d been sent to Blighty with a purpose, but that had been a lie designed to intimidate. She didn’t know why she was there, or who she had been before, or how many sins she herself had committed in her previous life. It wasn’t her job to punish Gavin, no matter how greatly he deserved it. Knowing how quickly she had jumped to that solution left her clammy and sick.

  Keira pulled his head up just enough to clear his ears, then spoke carefully to make sure he didn’t miss a word.

  “I’ll be watching you from now on. You can’t hide anything from me, and this will be your only warning. You’re going to leave me alone. You won’t bother Zoe or Mason again. No more traps, and no more picking fights. You’re not going to cause trouble for this town.”

  Her hand was shaking. A bead of blood appeared at the knife’s edge, and he squeezed his eyes closed.

  “Because if you become a problem for me or my friends, I will come for you.” She placed heavy emphasis on the words. “Don’t you dare think I won’t.”

  “Please,” he begged again.

  Keira held him there for a beat, watching the flowing stream dance around his head a
nd pull at his hair, then she withdrew the knife and shifted away from him. His hands were still gripping her jacket, but he released her quickly and scrambled back to shore.

  “Remember how much I know,” she said. “Now get out of here.”

  He stared at her, his eyes huge and confused, his legs shaking in the mud, then he staggered to his feet and dashed into the forest.

  Keira listened to him crash through the plants until his panicked, uncoordinated escape became inaudible, then she slumped against the closest tree. She tucked the knife into her pocket and pressed her hands over her face.

  I wanted to kill him. Tears came, and they were very, very hard to stop. I thought it would be a good idea to kill him.

  She dropped her hands and gazed at them. Their fingers had held the knife confidently. They’d been ready, almost expectant, of drawing the blade across Gavin’s throat.

  Just who am I?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Keira wasn’t sure how long she leaned against the tree and watched the raindrops fall from her fingertips. She was vaguely aware that time was passing. She just didn’t have enough mental space to care. Eventually, the cold made its presence felt, and she looked up. Although it was still drizzling, the sun had started to rise behind heavy cloud cover. It offered enough light to see but did nothing to warm her.

  Keira slipped her jacket off. Gavin’s blade had sliced through both the leather and the cotton shirt underneath. The jacket could be stitched back together, but the shirt was ruined, so she tore the rest of the sleeve off and tied it around the cut. Gavin’s blade had marked her just a few inches below Mason’s careful dressing of her earlier injury, which struck her as remarkably convenient; it would be easy to clean and dress both at the same time. She didn’t know how much blood she’d lost, but she was only moderately dizzy, so it couldn’t be too bad.