After the first knock, Callum answered the door and smiled down at Darby. “What’s up, Big D?”
She pushed past him into the house. “I’m a Trammeler Sorceress, that’s what’s up.”
“Lock the door,” I said to him, then took off for the jeep before he had a chance to respond.
Inside the close quarters of the vehicle, Leigh’s screams filled my ears to the point my eyes wobbled inside their sockets. I clamped them shut and fumbled at the ignition with the key. When I was fairly certain I wouldn’t pass out, I opened my eyes and slammed the gas in reverse. I turned the wheel in the direction of Heartland Cemetery and hoped with everything inside me I would find her there.
A flash of yellowed nightgown to the right, and suddenly Ms. Boehing stood right in front of the jeep.
My heart rocketed into my throat. I shoved at the brakes. Tires squealed. I’d come within inches of running her down, and she hardly seemed to notice. She flitted around to my side of the jeep, hands yanking at her hair, while she shook her head hard.
“Ms. Boehing—”
“It’s tonight. She’s Three. She didn’t stop them, and it’s tonight.”
She reached a withered, clawed hand into the open window and grabbed my arm. Body odor poured off of her, and when a clump of her wiry gray hair tickled my wrist, I twisted away from her in disgust.
“Who didn’t stop them?” I asked, my voice shaky. “Stop who?”
“Leigh didn’t.”
As far as I knew, Leigh didn’t personally know this woman, but Ms. Boehing obviously knew her. But who was Leigh supposed to stop?
A puff of black smoke appeared behind Ms. Boehing’s bony shoulder and funneled into her mouth. She jerked and twitched. Her eyes flashed a brilliant blue, almost as if they were lit from the inside.
“Ms. Boehing!” I grasped her arm, but recoiled at the feel of her glacial skin. What was happening?
“There’s nothing you can do.” She leaned into the window, her grimace displaying rows of teeth as yellow as her nightgown, her diseased smell assaulting my senses. “Tonight, she dies.”
I fell back in the seat while her words crashed into me. Tonight?
Dies?
When the black smoke gusted out of her mouth, Ms. Boehing slumped over the open window. Before I had a chance to shake her, demand more answers, smoke raced between my lips with my next inhale.
Pain tore gashes down my throat, and as day turned to bluish night, my screams joined with Leigh’s.
Dad
My hand.
That was the first thing I became aware of when I…awoke? Regained consciousness? Something was biting into my palm, something hard and sharp, while something else joined my fingers together. Something sticky and strong enough to hold when I balled my hands into fists.
Where was I and why didn’t I remember how I got here? Wherever here was. I had been on my way to Heartland Cemetery to find…
Leigh.
My shuddering moan forced its way out above the screaming din that filled my head. I jerked my hand away from the sticky substance, but it gripped my entire body like some kind of cocoon.
Terror barged into my lungs, and I dragged in a gasping breath. The sticky thing was wrapped around my face, too, touching my mouth, sealing off my air. It would suffocate me, second by slow second.
My daughter. I had to find her. I had to get out of here. For her sake, I couldn’t panic.
I adjusted the thing in my palm slightly so I could run a finger over it. Teeth. Metal teeth. It felt like my car keys and sharp enough to slice my way out.
My shallow breaths spun my head, but I worked the key from my palm to my fingertips and sawed at my binding. Silk threads broke around my wrist, my elbow, and still I kept sawing. It reminded me of the way a spider web strand felt, only thicker. Bigger. But there weren’t any spiders large enough to catch a grown man. Were there?
With my arm finally free, I cut into the webbing over my mouth and inhaled putrid, dank air. The smell made me cut faster, and once the rest of my head was free, I stared into the dead eyes of Ms. Boehing.
She hung across from me in another section of web, her face so sunken in, parts of her skull had torn through her wrinkled flesh. She looked as though all of her insides had been sucked out.
I quickly looked away, fighting the urge to vomit, and cut at the rest of the web.
With Leigh’s screams echoing inside my mind, I briefly wondered if Ms. Boehing had the chance to scream, too. And why I hadn’t heard her.
Once free, I scanned the area. The web blanketed four walls of a small room, but through a thin veil, a door appeared.
I lunged toward it, spider webs clinging to me once again, and fell out into a short hallway that led to some stairs. Ms. Boehing’s basement, if I had to guess, and I sped through the rest of it on high alert for anything that could have made me into a liquid meal, too.
I burst out the front door and reeled back at the total darkness before rushing to my jeep. Parked in the driveway. What had made me detour to Ms. Boehing’s house, and why couldn’t I remember? How long had I been there?
The drive to Heartland Cemetery flashed by in a blur of running red lights and honking horns. I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was saving Leigh, and if I was too late… I squeezed the steering wheel as a swell of emotion burned the backs of my eyes.
I turned the corner past the video store on screeching tires, then swerved into the gravel parking lot of the graveyard, my door already open before I pulled to a stop. When my feet hit the ground, complete silence crashed between my ears.
Leigh had stopped screaming.
The suddenness of it roared inside my head while other, normal sounds gradually took over—the steady clang of empty flagpoles lining the entrance from a steady wind. The hum of my jeep I hadn’t yet switched off. And the rev of my heartbeat knowing I might already be too late.
“Leigh,” I yelled and rushed at the gate.
It was secured with a heavy padlock, and the only thing I had to try to force it open was a tire iron. I popped open the trunk, retrieved the tool, and slammed the padlock with every ounce of strength I had. Every crash rattled up my arms and banged my teeth together, but the lock wouldn’t budge.
I lunged at the gate and shook it, knowing that wouldn’t do any good.
“Leigh!” I shouted. “I believe you!”
There had to be another way inside. My headlights cut through the metal gate over the winding rocky paths to some trees that grew next to the side fence. That was as good as anything, so I sprinted past the front entrance and around the side.
I shot up the chain link fence as fast as my tense muscles and old bones would let me, then went hand-over-hand on the nearest tree branch and dropped to the ground. I had never broken and entered into anything in my life, but that had been surprisingly easy. Still crouched, I let my eyes adjust to my shadowy surroundings and listened.
Sound had changed inside the cemetery. Outside the gates, wind rustled the tree leaves, but inside, everything stood motionless. The rumble of the jeep’s motor didn’t reach this far, either, though the headlights still beamed out front.
But most importantly, I didn’t hear Leigh’s screams in reality or inside my head. It was as though they had been cut off, silenced, which was ten times worse than her constant shrieks.
What if I was too late?
Stagnant, rotted air threatened to gag me, so I covered my nose with my sleeve and moved forward, mentally mapping where Kassandra’s grave was from this different angle and holding hope in my tight fists that I would find Leigh untouched. Every footstep over the rocky path was a gravelly shout in the extreme quiet. Clouds passing over the moon swung shadows around gravestones and statues, making them appear alive and pressing closer. Of course that was ridiculous, but after everything I had seen and heard today, I would never again disregard anything as impossible.
Kassandra rested just over the slight bump in the path up ahead, but I
didn’t see any sign of Leigh. Maybe she wasn’t here. Maybe Ms. Boehing’s warning had been wrong, and Leigh was waiting for me to come home.
I wanted to believe it, but deep down, I knew something was wrong, still wrong, which meant she had to be here somewhere.
Darkness hid Kassandra’s gravestone, but I could still make out its silhouette.
Watch over her, babe. Please, I prayed.
I sure hoped she could hear me.
To my left and deeper into the cemetery, thick shadows shifted. I couldn’t make out anything except more gloom, but I pivoted my feet in that direction. A steady trickle sounded the closer I drew, something wet and heavy, like falling raindrops. But it wasn’t raining.
Thunder shook the ground as if in disagreement, but it was like no thunder I had ever heard before. It didn’t start in the sky. It came from below. Kansas did get its fair share of small earthquakes, but this felt stronger, as though the earth itself was rupturing.
I sped my steps.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
It came faster now, louder, like a major storm was breaking, except nothing pelted my skin. Another blast of thunder rumbled the earth, and red lightning forked across the wispy clouds. Red, not white. What the hell was happening?
Ahead, the dark took on a life of its own. On either side of the dull glow of the curving path, I couldn’t see. It was as if everything else had dropped away from existence.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
A slice of moonlight pierced the clouds and cast over a large tree just to my right. It stretched thick branches skyward, and pouring from those branches to the ground below was whatever was making that drip sound.
Not rain.
Hesitantly, I reached out my hand to catch some, and at least a dozen drops splattered all over my fingers. My stomach clamped as I lifted my arm up to the moon. My hand was drenched in red. Was that…blood? But how?
I blinked around for some sort of explanation and stumbled forward up the path. The dripping followed. It came from everywhere, and some streamed a thin, dark line toward my shoes.
I backed away, toward the other side of the path, and stopped short when my shoe crunched over dead grass. Not just dead, but a blackened sea of spiked nightmares like my yard had been. Even though I couldn’t see it to be sure, the sound alone stabbed the truth up my back—whatever Leigh was involved with, whatever was happening here, it had happened at home, too.
The Earth growled beneath my feet, as if in agreement with my realization.
Heart in my throat, I turned and found another tree split down its center. Limbs sagged from the trunk, and blood cascaded from them in sickening waves to the uneven ground below.
Why were these trees bleeding? Where was the blood coming from? Inside the—?
Oh. A head of red hair—only a head—lay just behind the divided trunk. My legs gave out, and I sank to my knees, a desperate shout welling up inside me.
“Please, no,” I groaned and fell forward onto my hands. Icy, loose dirt with rivers of blood running through it reeled me back again.
No. No, that couldn’t be Leigh. It was someone else. It had to be someone else.
I crawled forward on my hands and knees because I had to know. I had to be sure, even though what I found might well destroy me.
The rotten stink coupled with the coppery scent of blood rolled my stomach the closer I drew. The head faced away from me, and thin, sparse hair growing on half of it caught the drops of blood falling from the tree. Leigh had much thicker, wavier hair, and had colored all of her blonde hair red. I saw it that morning and hated it, but that didn’t matter now.
But if this wasn’t Leigh, then who was it? What had happened here?
I pushed myself upright on shaky legs, and at the same time, the ground rumbled a third time, so strong it threw me off balance.
Three times. Hadn’t Ms. Boehing mentioned something about Leigh and three?
“Leigh,” I shouted, trying to gain my footing, but the thundering earth drowned me out.
Something shifted to my right. A body, whose arms were firmly locked around a small gravestone, rolled to its side.
I strode closer over the shaking ground.
The dark stains streaking the body’s gray sweatshirt pulled me up short, as did the decaying odor emanating from everywhere. I forced down a swallow and circled it. This person was too thin, practically wasting away, and their feeble hands lost their grip as the earth continued to shudder. A number of curved seed pods snapped under the person’s weight.
Henderson, the gravestone read.
The earth rocked violently, knocking me down, and a great ripping sound filled the night. The person rolled toward me over the unsteady ground. A black void filled the place where her head was supposed to be. Sarah Henderson’s head. Oh, my God, it had to be her.
I lunged out of the way and heaved into the loose dirt so hard, my eyes watered. A cold sweat that quaked shivers through my body harder than the trembling earth broke out all over my skin. She was dead and then she came back and I saw her. I had hoped for a brief moment, before Leigh convinced me I was wrong, that Kassandra would come back, too. But what had Sarah even been doing here?
“Leigh!” I shouted again, but my voice was too hoarse to carry.
Finally, the ground stilled. Somewhere far off, a car alarm sounded.
I pushed to my feet, my limbs heavy from exhaustion and worry, and blinked into the darkness for some sign of Leigh. Over the steady plink-plunk of blood, I didn’t hear anything. I should have if Leigh was still here. Alive.
The loose dirt and mess of footprints on the ground proved that someone had been here recently, but I refused to believe the battle had already been lost, despite Sarah’s decapitated body. Leigh was here. She had to be. Until I saw her, I would not give up hope.
On the winding path once again, other faint sounds emerged from the darkness the deeper I went into the cemetery. The crunch of grass. A twig snapping. I slowed my steps, an icy prickle sliding up my spine, because I no longer felt like I was alone here.
“Leigh? Are you there?” I asked, staring into the night.
The bleeding trees answered with continuous drips. Quietly, I turned in a tight circle on the path, waiting and listening.
A tired sigh rattled just to my left. I spun around at the same moment a cloud released a corner of the moon, and in front of me stood a walking dead man.
Graying flesh slumped from his chin to his dirt-streaked striped tie. His lips had peeled back from his jaw into a too-wide, grotesque smile, and his eyes lolled from their sockets.
I yelped and staggered back, but behind me, a dead woman in a soiled wedding dress grasped at my elbow before I shook her off and ran.
They came back. The dead had come back.
Kassandra…
Tears clouded my vision, but I didn’t dare stop running for fear a dead woman in a purple polka-dotted dress would come stumbling up to me like a long lost lover. Of course I wanted her back. Of course I did, but never like that.
But now the dead were everywhere, all drifting toward the back of the cemetery. I turned once again, my flesh wriggling.
Lightning sparked a brilliant red in the night sky. Where I’d been standing seconds ago knelt three figures next to Sarah’s headless corpse. Another headless woman. A woman who billowed black smoke. And the third…
Sarah’s body lurched to her feet, her arms juddering and twitching with frantic spasms. She flashed forward. Toward me.
Terror flooded to my soul, but she was too fast, too strong.
She caught me around the middle with exceptional strength. Her skin iced through my thin dress shirt, and she dragged me backward in a mess of shuddering movements. Away from the three figures.
The third person’s shock of red hair waved over her face in a sudden burst of wind. Between the wavering strands, a pair of glowing blue eyes slashed through and connected with mine for half a heartbeat, and I knew I was already too late.
&
nbsp; “Leigh,” I whispered, but even I couldn’t hear myself.
The ground the three figures knelt on cracked open, and my daughter plummeted down, down.
Leigh
Sunlight splashed on a bare arm capped with a purple sleeve covered in black dots, but that couldn’t be right because I was in a grave at night, dying. A pair of vivid blue eyes met mine, framed by blonde hair. Mom. Alive.
She stood in a field bursting with sunflowers. A light breeze that smelled like flowery perfume turned her hair and fluttered the ends of her dress. She was here, with me, just when I needed her the most. Was this heaven? Was I already dead? I reached out to make her stay at my side forever, but my hands grabbed at nothing.
She started to smile, but it broke apart with the tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Leigh. I’ve made so many mistakes.”
It’s okay, I wanted to tell her. But bursts of color behind my eyelids were floating in front of her, hiding her from me. Mom? Her perfume still lingered in my nose, along with the soil-scented death sentence.
There was a scream, and I realized it was my entire body begging for air. The fiery burn in my lungs would consume me if I didn’t open my mouth. I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I couldn’t.
So I didn’t. My mouth opened, and a strange kind of calm drifted over me. My heartbeat slowed. The explosions of color behind my eyes swept away in a gust of wind like lost balloons, leaving an empty field of sunflowers bobbing happily in the sun.
The pain lessened, the sunflowers vanished, and then…nothing.
And then something—power, a spark—something jolted through every vein in my body, awakening me. Resurrecting me. Fueling me with a strength beyond anything I’d ever imagined.
I wanted to hate it the second it coursed into me, but I felt too strong, too indestructible. It made me feel alive, more than I ever was before, even buried under six feet of dirt.
But it had zero effect on the part of me that counted most—my will to fight. In fact, that part of me seemed to have multiplied in force. It hooked my fingers into claws and tore me up through my grave a second, and last, time.
The Trinity Bleeds (The Grave Winner Book 3) Page 2