Anxiety over Amy kept me awake. My stomach twisted in restless knots. When I did sleep the dream was fainter than before. A hint of whirling metal and noise. I woke to darkness, unsure what had disturbed me. The last few nights rushed back and I braced myself against the cold. It didn't come. The window was shut, the curtains still drawn. No cold girl. But…why? Wait. Was that the orchard door opening? I lurched to the window and threw it open myself.
Caught in pale fingers of moonlight, a small figure with light hair set off toward the moor. The cold girl, like I'd seen her in the orchard before. I wasn't going to be fooled into following her again. Not after last time. Maybe she had nothing to do with the Pattern anyway. She didn’t fit. There must be other Dead in an old place like this that didn't belong to the Pattern. I had several nights of broken sleep to make up for. I should just be grateful that she hadn't dragged her nails over my window tonight.
I got back into bed but it was hard to rest easy. The absence of the cold girl at my window felt worse than the missing book. Clues were being snatched away from me. Something had come to my attention recently that was important. I just couldn't figure out what. My head was fuzzy with sleep. If I stopped trying to grasp it, maybe it would come to me.
I dreamt that Mum leant over me, gently kissing my forehead. I sank further into the deepest sleep I'd had for months. The scent of rosemary and violets filled my room when I woke, cheeks wet with tears. Sorrow. Loss. A negative space that ached without voice inside me. I didn't even have the right words to trip over, trying to describe it. It was a cleaner grief though. A scalpel cut rather than a ragged tear. For the first time since the accident, I wanted to be closer to Mum, think about her, remember her and not fight against it.
My violin was really hers. I needed to hold something that had been Mum's. It was too soon to try reading her books. But the violin… I hadn't played it in days. The house was quiet. Now would be a good time. I shoved thoughts of the Pattern and my absent visitor out of my mind. Right now, I needed a way of communicating without words. I shoved a tangled hank of curls out of my face and moved toward my violin case. Something splintered under my bare foot with a dry-wood crunch. The violin case was already open and empty. I cast about for my violin, a sick knot of dread pulling tight under my breast bone.
It was broken.
The air rushed out of my lungs in a ragged breath. I doubled over as if I'd been kicked in the gut. It couldn't be broken. Not un-saveable. The world was spinning too fast and there was nothing to hold on to. Even the bow wasn't mine: it was Mum's most recent one. She had loaned it to me for the audition which caused that last argument. A good luck charm. Not that there'd been any luck, even before the accident. There had been no one to return it to afterwards, and Dad had just started getting rid of Mum's stuff, so I'd kept it.
My eyes were hot, almost arid. I wished I was able to cry properly when awake like a normal person. Instead, I just stared and sobbed tearlessly as I shook with adrenalin. The splintered teak lay limp in my cupped hands. A few horse hairs held the remains of the bow together. It would never draw my voice, the real one that didn't stutter, from my violin again. I gritted my teeth around a scream, screwing my eyes shut.
I couldn't bear to look at my violin. It would be easier to look at my own dissected hand. I cradled the broken bow like a wounded bird. Only when I felt the bite of broken wood, did I realize I'd clenched my hands into fists. Sharp splinters drove into the pulp of my fingertips. Hot wetness as blood trickled from my hands. Drip…pat… Just like the hen Helen had watched Kate kill.
I abandoned any hope that the violin could be repaired. Another link with Mum broken. Its neck had been snapped off and shoved violently through the waist. The bridge was a twisted hole with one curlicue of an F-hole still discernible. The scroll had been stamped on; there were fragments of peg on the rug.
Not broken. Destroyed.
It was a warning.
You too can be silenced forever.
A fury, complete and all encompassing, swept over me. I'd heard and read that anger was red. The red mist. This wasn't red. It was a darker colour like old blood, edged with black. I knew now how people in a rage could do murder. My hands still shook but not with shock now. I wanted to so badly to hurt someone that my head was light and black spots zipped past my eyes.
I had been battered in the accident, lost my parents through death or neglect, my voice, my health, my hopes for the future. I was losing my sister. I had had almost every tie with my mother severed with cruel indifference. I had been terrorized, bullied, ignored and shoved aside. And I had endured all of it like an abused donkey because I could not speak out.
And now this. Haze had sent a warning, hitting at me where it would hurt most.
That was stupid of him. Very stupid.
I didn't stop to think who he had used. It didn't matter. He had authored this. A calculated blow.
I moved slowly, methodically collecting every splintered fragment. I made a neat pile, teak match sticks and wooden shards. Then I shut down every thought and desire I had save one; I would destroy Haze for this. For trying to take Grace and for hurting me.
I had only wanted to stop him before. Now I want to wipe his memory from the face of the earth. This time the cold came from me, radiating in zig-zag waves. These shadows were mine. Haze had thrown down the gauntlet.
Fine. Game on.
I knew Haze wasn't far away. I felt the slick, viscous shadows that surrounded him pulling at me. Seeking, sending out thin tendrils for a taste of my rage and hurt. I would follow them to their source. He would be sorry. If I had any control over the Dead at all, I would make sure of that. I stormed through the kitchen, out into the orchard. I thought I was heading for the moor but a thin leash of shadow led me to the old stable. There were voices coming from inside. He was here. On my land. My home. The world was full of diamond clear, crystalline edges. My fury was all the more deceptive because I believed I was thinking clearly.
For once the icy, dark feeling of Haze's presence didn't repel me. I pushed through it like damp net curtains, ignoring the fluttering of increasing panic coming from the corner of my mind where Helen squatted. Tell me something useful or back the hell off! I flared at her. Helen subsided, quivering.
I'd never been inside the old stable building. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then I saw him. An absence in reality. The shape of a man cut in negative space. My brain catalogued these thoughts while the rest of my mind focused my entire being on calling him out.
"Haze!" I was too angry to be afraid. I wanted only to hurt as I'd been hurt. "Robbie!"
"Those are not names of mine." His gaze was a flat black warning.
"Oh?" I sneered at him. "Was it th-that no one ever gave you a nuh name? Or are you h-hiding something?"
His face clouded over with a rage that made my own anger look like a child's tantrum.
"You have a single chance. Leave. Out of respect for Helen, I won't harm you if you go now. She did me a favour once, though I doubt she intended to."
"Wuh What favour?" My voice was still strong but my fury was slipping.
"That would be between her and me." He smiled and my anger evaporated. I knew now how very foolish I'd been. Helen had shrunk back in my mind. She would be no help.
"Why? Wuh Why Grace?" I refused to look away. My heart stabbed at my ribs. His voice was doing things to me. I hated him. I hated his voice. But I felt hot and cold, and sick with desire. Sick in myself for feeling that way. Was that what it was like for Grace?
"Grace who?" He raised an eyebrow mockingly.
"My s-s-sister! W-what have you done with her?"
"Behind you." He nodded over my shoulder and I whirled in spite of myself. Grace was there. Dark auburn curls lifting in a non-existent breeze. Her face was amused, calculating. Her dark eyes sparkled with wicked humour.
"That's not Grace. That's Kate! Luh Let her go!"
"She doesn't want to be released. She doesn’t wan
t to be alone anymore, poor lamb. She wants to belong. To belong to me. She’s not strong enough to want anything else. None of them were as strong as Kate. None of them were anything at all beside my Kate." He was close enough to breathe the words into my ear. I shuddered. He aimed some of his power, his magnetism at me. I felt sick, twisting lust. The opposite of how I felt about Ciarán. There was nothing wholesome in this cloying need. It was all-consuming and at the same time I shook with revulsion. This was how he had pulled Grace in. This was how he caught them, made them do what he wanted. I pushed out blindly with my mind and that magnetic pull lessened.
Haze watched me, calm now. Deliberating. "It appears that you won't learn with a gesture. Perhaps another lesson?" He gripped my forearm in his large hand. I cried out in disgust at his touch. He wasn't hurting me but I couldn't break free. And I couldn't bear the creeping, slimy feel of the darkness that seeped under my skin where he grasped me.
"Luh let me go." My voice quavered.
"Interesting. I’ve never met a real seer before. Old Mother Greer claimed to have the gift but she was far too sodden in gin most of the time for anyone to tell, even her." The calculated scrutiny he subjected me to froze the blood in my veins. "She did teach me one thing. Pain makes a lesson stick."
"Wuh what-"
"Now, Emily Lynette, you are not to interfere further or it will be the worst for you. Helen?" He peered deeply into my eyes. If I had been stood in front of him naked, I could not have felt more ashamed and exposed. "You are to tell her nothing." He wasn't talking to me.
"O-Okay. I g-get it. Luh let me go n-now. Puh-please." I hated myself for begging but I couldn't stand it. My mind was bending dangerously under the load. My breath rose in plumes. Never been this cold. Never. The cold is alive and I am dead inside it…
"Remember," Haze said gently, then casually flexed his hand on my arm and snapped the bone.
The cracking sound made me scream long before the pain registered. My arm. He broke my arm.
"G-Grace?" I whimpered. The world was shaky, greying in and out around the edges. Grace watched as coolly as if Haze had just snapped a twig or crushed an egg. Her eyes were focused and sparkling. A small smile pulled at her mouth.
I dry sobbed in agony, hunched over with my broken arm cradled against my chest as the world slipped sideways. The floor rose up to meet me. Everything dimmed.
Grace is gone. My last coherent thought.
"It's possible that you went a little far this time, Hardiman." The sweet tone was conversational.
"Don't call me that here and now," he snarled.
A peal of laughter rang out, fading as they moved away. I fought for consciousness. No good. My grip was slipping. They could do anything to me, anything and I wouldn't be able to run or fight them…
Remember.
Haze threw this last thought at me as I slid into the dark.
I Belong to the Earth (Unveiled Book 1) Page 36
