“Oh my god...” his father said, looking horrified as he moved towards him. “Trace, I’m sorry.”
Trace shifted to his right and yanked on the short rope, pulling the door open and flooding the small cottage with sunlight. His father hissed as he was forced to retreat to the far side of the cottage where the sun couldn’t reach him.
“Don’t!” his father yelled.
“I’m sorry, father, but I have to make sure that she’s okay,” he said as he slammed the door shut and took off for the woods.
He could still hear his father screaming his name when he reached the woods. He looked up at the bright afternoon sun, noting that he would only have a few hours before his father would be able to leave the cottage and come for him. That was more than enough time to make sure that Mary was safe before he was forced to say good-bye. He needed to explain things to Mary and make sure that she knew that he’d be back for her once he reached his immortality so he could take care of her.
Maybe she’d run away with him and his father, he thought as he navigated his way through the thick swamp. That way he wouldn’t have to wait until he reached his immortality. The more he thought about it, the more he liked this plan. He knew that his father wouldn’t be happy, but once he saw how sweet and gentle Mary was, he’d be more than happy to help keep her safe.
This could really work, he thought excitedly, quickening his pace, eager to find Mary and tell her. A half hour later he stumbled through the thick foliage, gasping for air and grinning hugely when he spotted Mary sitting by the stream.
She looked up at him as he stepped out of the woods, making him frown when he realized that she wasn’t smiling. She’d always greeted him with a smile and a warm embrace, but now she looked nervous. He swore softly. Of course, she was nervous. Her Pack would punish her if they found them together again.
“I’m so glad you came, Trace,” she said, brushing back those golden locks that he’d love to run his fingers through.
“Of course, I came,” he said, reaching for her only to find her stepping back. “Mary, what’s wrong?” he asked, taking another step towards her.
“Nothing,” she said, smiling brightly.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, running his eyes over her face, her well-worn brown dress, hands, and bare feet and sighed with relief when he didn’t find any bruises or cuts marring her beautiful pale skin.
“Why would I be hurt?” she asked, stepping away from him as she toyed with her apron strings.
He reached out and gently took her hands in his, refusing to allow her to pull away again. “Mary,” he said, looking into her eyes, “I saw him strike you.”
She shrugged it away as if it were nothing. “I broke a Pack rule.”
“What rule?” he asked, frowning when she pulled her hands free.
“Mary, what-oomph!” The air rushed out of his lungs as he crumbled to the ground, barely able to register Mary’s pleased smile as he watched the large wooden mallet race towards his head, again.
Chapter 1
Westdrom, Maine
Present Day
“Charlie! Oh my god, don’t pee on that!” Samantha pleaded as Charlie raised a dark furry leg and gave her a pointed look that could only be taken as a threat.
Samantha pulled on her old fluffy pink bunny slippers as she eyed her brother’s pain in the ass German Sheppard that he’d left with her when his unit had been deployed two months ago. She pointed a finger at him, trying to look stern as she said, “If so much as a drop hits that staircase, you will never have another slice of pepperoni pizza.”
The dog eyed her for a moment before shifting his attention to the two-story colonial house’s original staircase that she’d spent last weekend sanding. The wood was bone dry and would happily absorb every drop Charlie gave it and then Sam would have to come up with the five thousand dollars needed to replace the staircase.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Charlie lowered his leg, his eyes never leaving hers, looking for a reason to go through with the threat. She stood up, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s right, buddy. You better remember who controls the pizza in this house.”
Charlie huffed as he padded past her to the front door. Sam was just about to run upstairs and grab her flannel bathrobe, but then shrugged and followed the horrible dog that hated her outside. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to see her in her brother’s old Superman pajamas out here. They were ten miles from town, and their nearest neighbor was eight miles away and only here during the summer. She could walk around naked all day and never have to worry about another soul seeing her, except maybe for the deer that liked to walk around the small clearing in the backyard.
She didn’t bother grabbing Charlie’s leash since the dog would take that as a challenge and drag her out back through thorns, weeds, and over rocks in the stream before he happily dunked her ass in the mud, again. He seemed to really enjoy making her life a living hell, something that she’d reminded Nathan of numerous times before he’d left. Each and every time, he’d sigh heavily and tell her that it was all in her head and that Charlie loved her.
Her eyes narrowed on the dog as he showed her SUV tire a lot of love. The entire time he stared at her, daring her to say something about it. She narrowed her eyes on him as she bent down and picked up an old slimy tennis ball. Standing up slowly, she held it up.
“Uh oh, does Charlie want his ball?” she asked in a syrupy sweet voice as she moved the ball from side to side, smiling as the little bastard’s eyes narrowed on his favorite ball. Just when he put his leg down and crouched to spring at her, she pulled her arm back and let the ball go flying through the trees and thick brush. “Go get it!”
The dog threw her one last dirty look that promised all sorts of retaliation and took off through the brush where she hoped he finished his business. He had a nasty habit of leaving his little “packages” as her Grandmother Powers used to call them, around her truck. She didn’t care what Nathan said. She wasn’t paranoid.
That dog was out to get her.
Wiping her hands off on her pajama pants, she walked back into the house, deciding this would be the perfect opportunity to have a hassle free breakfast. Something she hadn’t had since she moved in with Nathan after she’d left Craig.
It was funny how four months ago her biggest complaint was Craig throwing the newspaper away before she could read it. Their mornings together had been quiet, relaxing, and comfortable. The only thing that interrupted their quiet routine had been the talk of the wedding. The wedding that should have happened two months ago, but didn’t thanks to Craig and the cashier at Anne Marie’s Bakery.
Apparently, Craig liked his coffee with a little something extra, and Beth provided it. Of course, their break up probably wouldn’t have been so bad if the two of them hadn’t stumbled out of the employee bathroom with their pants down around their ankles for all the customers to see, including her. Then again, she probably would have survived that humiliating moment if Craig hadn’t taken the opportunity to announce to one and all that she was horrible in bed. That had also led to him pointing out that she was too damn fat to turn any man on.
Instead of yelling at him or at least bitch slapping him, Sam had been left speechless. Later, of course, she’d thought of a hundred different things she could have said to him. That always happened to her. She was really horrible at handling confrontation, which was probably why her high school debate teacher had handed her a library pass the second week of school with a look of pity and told her she could skip class for the rest of the year. It had been humiliating, but at least she didn’t have to worry about passing out and hitting her head on the podium, again.
Nathan, “the gifted one” as she liked to call him, never had to worry about having the right thing to say at the right time. He was smooth, confident, funny, and if anyone was stupid enough to piss him off he usually just beat the hell out of him.
The only good thing about the news of her humiliation spreading through the small
town like wildfire was that it had brought Nathan to the little bakery when Sam couldn’t do more than sputter and pray that she didn’t add to her humiliation by passing out. Her brother simply strolled into the bakery, nodded in greeting to a few friends before coming to stand next to her. He looked from her red face to Craig’s lipstick smeared mouth and wrinkled clothes and smiled like it was Christmas morning. Although Nathan had been disappointed that it had only taken one punch to knock Craig out, she’d honestly never seen him happier.
He’d actually whistled a jaunty tune as he’d put his arm around her shoulders and led her out the door, but not before he’d drop-kicked Craig in the stomach for good measure. That really seemed to make his day. Not even the four hours during one of the hottest days of the summer they’d spent packing up her junk and moving it out of the small house she’d shared with Craig could dampen his mood. For weeks afterwards, she’d look over at him when he sighed dreamily and found him once again smiling fondly.
She flicked on the kitchen light as she walked into the dark room. Why anyone would build the kitchen on the south side of the house, she would never know. Granted, whoever built this house probably hadn’t foreseen two generations of Powers ignoring the upkeep of the property.
Sam walked over to the large porcelain sink and yanked open the yellowed curtains, revealing what should have been a beautiful sight. Instead, all she saw a large ratted nest of briars, old leaves, and twigs with just a hint of sunlight peeking through. She groaned as she reached over and flicked on the coffeepot. It was just another sad reminder of all the work that was waiting for her.
Not that she was really complaining. Thanks to all the work around the house and property she was able to stay busy when she wasn’t working at the hospital. It made pretending that she didn’t have a social life by choice that much easier, because of course, no one would believe that she had to rush home right after work every single night because she missed Charlie, the bane of her existence.
She reached over the coffee machine and opened the cabinet that had seen better days and sighed when the handle broke off in her hand. Without batting an eye, she tossed the rusted handle onto the counter to join the rest and reached into the cabinet for her blueberry pop tarts and almost cried when all she found was an empty box.
Damn it.
She’d have to settle for strawberry pop tarts, her second favorite. She’d really been looking forward to starting her day with some blueberry goodness. Oh well, she thought, placing her breakfast tarts in the toaster. At least she could look forward to eating her breakfast in peace without a hundred-pound hound from hell stealing her food.
Just as the mouthwatering aroma of heated strawberry and icing hit her nose the light in the kitchen flickered out. Her eyes automatically shot to the coffee pot that had just been warming up and ready to spurt out the lifesaving elixir only to find the red light off.
Sam grumbled as she grabbed the flashlight off the counter and extra fuses for the fuse box and headed for the pale-yellow basement door that had been the star of most of her childhood nightmares. It figured that the one time she needed Charlie he was off terrorizing squirrels. It didn’t matter that she was a grown woman, she hated going down into the old cellar.
Always had and always would.
It was creepy, dark, and gave off a sinister vibe no matter what Nathan said. Of course, he’d never been scared of the cellar. Nothing ever scared him. When they used to come here as kids to visit Grandma Powers the little bastard used to hide down there, leaving Sam to Grandma’s cheek pinching, reminiscing, and prune remedies. Hours later he’d come back upstairs smiling, covered in dust and picking spiders off his clothes and god, how she’d envied him.
The one time she’d spent more than five minutes in the basement had been terrifying. Her grandmother had sent her down there for a jar of prunes for a snack when neither of them could find Nathan, who’d smartly ran off when their father had dropped them off earlier that morning. At the time, Sam had dreaded the basement and the prunes in equal measure. It wasn’t until she had the jar of prunes in her hand that her hatred for the basement won out. Her grandmother, eighty at the time, had forgotten that she’d sent eight-year-old Sam downstairs two minutes earlier and shut the basement’s only light off, closed the door, and promptly locked it.
Several things occurred during that memorable ten hours she’d stayed locked in the basement. Her fear of spiders and all things creepy took on a whole new level of terror. She’d also discovered that the old basement was soundproof, given that no one heard her screams. She would have kicked the door at the top of the stairs, but she couldn’t seem to find the narrow passageway that led to the stairwell in the pitch black. It was also when she’d discovered that the basement was haunted, which had only taken five seconds of listening to the eerie growling coming from the wall, that she hadn’t imagined no matter what Nathan says, to help her come to that conclusion. It was also one of the reasons why she avoided going down into the basement.
Of course, her inability to deal with anything stressful was probably her least favorite development from her time spent in the basement, hence the passing out at damn near everything. It was kind of funny how she could handle working a trauma and even help put someone back together, but any hint of embarrassment, confrontation, or stress had her hitting the floor. What made it worse was that everyone knew about her problem. It had made her a target all through school and made her the town joke on more than once occasion. It helped that her brother was the town’s golden boy, but not by much.
No one respected her, especially at work. She’d lost count of how many people she’d trained over the years had been promoted ahead of her. Even though she had the least amount of patient complaints, put in more hours than anyone else in the department, and had more training and experience under her belt than anyone in the emergency department, it didn’t seem to matter to Dr. Adams. When she’d worked up the nerve, and also made sure that she was sitting down just in case, to confront him, he’d pointed out that he was afraid that she’d blackout during an emergency even though it had never happened. Not once in the ten years, she’d worked as a nurse.
She paused in front of the thick oak door, half-hoping to hear Charlie’s scratching demand to be let in so that she wouldn’t have to do this alone. It really was the only thing the dog was good for, she decided. Knowing there was no other choice, Sam took a deep breath, opened the door, and told herself that ghosts weren’t real. Knowing that standing here wasn’t going to help, she reached out and placed her hand against the smooth stonewall as she navigated the steep stone stairs.
Admittedly, the cellar was well put together with its old-fashioned workmanship. It was the one thing that didn’t require Sam to spend her hard-earned money to fix. Whoever built the stone cellar really knew what they were doing. None of the rocks were falling out or even cracking. It remained cool in the summer and winter, and thankfully, had never flooded.
At the bottom of the stairs, she shifted to the side so that she could walk through the small passage that led to the cavernous basement. When she reached the end of the passageway her foot caught on something and she stumbled the rest of the way.
“Damn it!” she muttered, straightening up.
“Who the hell is that?” a man’s voice demanded, making her heart skip a beat as dread filled her.
Sam’s eyes widened when she realized that the normally dark basement was brightly lit by sunlight, flashlights, and her grandfather’s old lanterns. Her eyes shot from a group of six men, a few of them holding sledgehammers, to the wide-open cellar doors that she hadn’t been able to open in years. Her eyes shot to the pile of broken rocks by their feet and then up to the large hole in the wall.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded before common sense kicked in and once it did, she froze on the spot.
Six men had broken into her house and were tearing apart her cellar. Her breath caught when she heard the telltale click
of a gun being cocked. Correction six armed men had broken into her basement.
“Drop the flashlight,” a large man with short curly red hair said, aiming a pistol at her.
The flashlight and the box of fuses hit the floor before the last syllable left his mouth. She even put her hands up without being asked to. She wasn’t a wimp, but she also wasn’t stupid. One woman against six armed men in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly hope-inducing.
“Grab her,” the man said, gesturing to two large men, who didn’t look particularly happy to see her. She went to take a step back and take her chances when the men grabbed her roughly and dragged her over to the red-headed man.
“We really didn’t need a fucking complication with this,” he grumbled, rubbing the back of his thick neck as he shot her an accusing glare like this was somehow her fault.
Sam licked her lips nervously. “Listen, I don’t know why you’re here tearing apart my storm cellar, but I think there’s been a mistake. You have the wrong house,” she said, using the same calm, reassuring tone she used when she worked in the emergency room.
He looked around the basement and shook his head. “No, this is the right basement,” he said as he gestured to a large flat grey stone just above the small hole in the wall they’d created. Sam looked at the initials carved into the stone and frowned. She’d never noticed them before. He reached over and ran his fingers over the R first and then the T.
He tapped the spot. “I carved my marker in this rock the day we finished building this cellar.”
“Um,” she cleared her throat, trying to figure out a way to say this tactfully, “this cellar is over three hundred years old,” she pointed out.
“Three hundred and fifty-two to be exact,” the man said with an amused smile.
Okay...
“What I meant to say is that clearly you didn’t build this cellar. So, you’ve got the wrong house,” she rushed to explain when black spots started to dance around her vision. Passing out right now was not a good idea, she told herself, fighting it with everything she had as she looked him over.
The Promise (Neighbor from Hell Book 10) Page 27
