I Belong to the Earth (Unveiled Book 1)

by J. A. Ironside

  I saw them, stark silhouettes against the starless sky; somehow emptier than the void overhead. That supernatural doubled vision was stronger than ever. I saw Grace, wasted and yellowing; over her, Kate was glorious in a sweeping gown, dark-reddish hair blown by the wind. Eyes very bright. Haze obscured the body he wore. It was just a poor lad, a bit older than Grace. Went biking over the moor in picturesque Yorkshire and was taken by the watcher as a meat suit. Hardiman. No amount of love could excuse what he had done. What he had become… could it? Uncertainty made me pause. I'd let Ciarán off the hook. Clayton even. Okay, so neither of them was a multiple murderer obsessed with love for one woman. But in a split second, I felt more kinship with Haze than I ever had with Helen. More kinship with Kate, even. Love, grief, loss—I understood. But not Helen's motives. Of Helen, Kate and Haze, which of the three was worst?

  Haze turned and I forced myself to hold his gaze. Never was good at speaking. Not when I lost my childhood stammer. Not when it came back even worse after the accident. I hated exposing myself emotionally. But force hadn't worked, wouldn't work on Haze. He knew force, understood darkness. He could manipulate it and the people who carried it. And we all carried some darkness. Fine cracks for those oily shadows to slip through. Spaces where we hate and resent and envy, and it festers like infection in a wound. That's where Haze lived and operated.

  The Pattern was hitched to the same weaknesses and hatreds. That's why I'd thought it was Haze doing it all. I studied his face. Devoid of human emotion. Kate watched me with the closed, unblinking stare of a predator. It was almost impossible to see Grace now. Somewhere at the back of my mind, Helen was jabbering hysterically. I paid no attention to her. Too busy trying not to tremble.

  I really hoped I'd guessed right.

  "I c-c-came for my suh sister." Good, almost steady.

  "I told you not to interfere." Bars of shadow fell across Haze's face. He was so beautiful that it was inhuman. It was no good telling myself I wasn't scared. Helen went suddenly still in my mind, a mouse in the shadow of a hawk.

  "I w-want G-Grace!" I let anger colour my tone. Anything was better than fear.

  "She is gone, you foolish child. Do you like your life so little, that you would throw it away to no good purpose?" He sounded almost curious.

  "I can suh-see more th-than you. She's still th-there. You're killing her!" Grace was almost buried under Kate, who hung on like the grip of death. Pleading and emaciated Grace peered out through the invader. It no longer mattered what I'd done to her or she had done to me. She was my blood. She was bound to me, as I was bound to her. If I could just get hold of her… I inched forward.

  Haze threw out his arm. I planted my feet and stood against the rush of howling darkness that pushed at me, pulling and pinching. Scratching for a way in.

  Blood for blood. The one helpful thing Helen had said.

  The way of all life is the blood… Kate had read that from the bible.

  Images and phrases from the last two weeks flooded my mind. I remembered a younger Grace protecting a younger Emlynn from the lash of her father's belt.

  Chicken's blood smeared on small girls’ hands and Kate's voice saying "I've bound us together-"

  Mrs Cranford's face as she was wheeled into the ambulance light years ago. Her mouth forming a word. I had thought she was saying 'Haze'. I watched it again from within the eye of the storm.

  'Help them…'

  My heart went from a trot to a gallop. Help them? But that meant…

  Helen threw herself at the barricade I had put around her. For a dizzying moment I was fighting a war on two fronts, within and without. Between the two was a light space. One I had never found before, though I knew suddenly that it had been there all the time. The place I had been searching for. All the answers were there; all I had to do was look…

  The righteous shall go into life eternal

  But Kate wasn't righteous, at least by Helen's standards. Didn't deserve rest.

  Thy likeness shall endure unto all generations.

  Likeness… likeness… no. Remembrance. Thy remembrance…

  Helen's howling reached pitch that vibrated through my bones.

  I had the answer.

  "That's it!" My words were so unlikely that both Helen and Haze stopped dead.

  Deafening silence. No one moved. No one except Kate.

  Her rush caught me unprepared. I sprawled backwards, winded by the hard ground. Old hurts and new all screamed at once. My head hit rock and I saw stars for the second time that night. Struggling for breath, even before the hands closed round my throat.

  Grace was tightening her grip on my windpipe, weeping and begging to stop.

  Kate strangled me, a look of vicious pleasure on her face.

  Haze regarded us, sardonic but proud of his Kate.

  Too much punishment. Knocked around too much lately. Consciousness was slipping away.

  And then I would join the Dead. So would Grace. So would Amy. No!

  Become a gateway not a tunnel…A gate could close…

  Blind and deaf, I reached into my pocket and came up with a handful of dirt from Kate's grave. With flagging strength, I flung it into her face. The effect was immediate.

  She screamed and leapt back as if I had thrown boiling acid rather than dirt. Her gaze wavered between murderous and wary. I readied another handful of grave dirt while gasping air through my bruised throat.

  "The righteous shall go into life eternal…" I gasped. By these words were you bound…

  Kate swayed as if struck. Faint, her eyes widened in fear.

  My nerves thrummed. The words of the second line perched on the tip of my tongue, birds ready to take flight. I could banish Kate. I knew I could. I might even get Grace back.

  It wouldn't work against Haze. I didn't have any dirt from his grave, didn't even know where he was buried. He edged toward me. His rage was a thick miasma of shadow around him. He would never let us live. In general, he killed only from expediency or focused revenge but he wasn't above killing for spite. If I separated him from Kate, it would be the last thing I did before I heard my own neck snap in those powerful hands.

  Help them. I really hoped Mrs Cranford was right. I gritted my teeth.

  If I die, Mrs Cranford, I SWEAR I'll haunt you myself.

  "W-wait!" I staggered to my feet. I was dangerously unsteady.

  "I have waited long enough!" Haze roared.

  "Then t-two minutes w-won't matter." I pressed. "W-what do you want Huh Hardiman?"

  He flinched at the use of his true name. Good to know.

  "W-well? Y-you were in a huh hurry?" I raised an eyebrow at him as if he hadn't just been about to kill me.

  "We want to be together. As we should have been." Kate's voice was musical and sad without the venom it normally held.

  "It won't work l-like this. Grace isn't str-strong enough. You'll k-kill her and then you'll b-be parted again"

  Helen raged in my mind. I gripped her tighter.

  Kate's face melted into anguish as she acknowledged the truth of my words.

  "What choice do we have? If we have to kill so be it. A few seconds together is worth any number of lives." Haze was bleak. I hid my disgust. And my pity. What would I do, for a few more seconds with Mum?

  "W-wasteful. And stupid." I kept my tone business-like. "I kuh can help."

  "Help?" I tasted Haze's scorn as it thickened the shadows.

  "Yuh yes. L-let Grace go. Take muh me instead. I can carry you to where you need to go." I met Kate's gaze unflinching.

  "You think to trick us!" Haze was too far away to strike me but he raised a hand as if he wanted to.

  "No, my love. She does not." Kate looked at me considering. She drifted closer.

  "Take m-my hand…" I dropped the grave dirt and held out my empty palm.

  Fascination in her sherry-coloured eyes, Kate's hand brushed mine. She disappeared. Limp and light haired once more, Grace dropped in a faint at my feet. I s
aw her chest move. She was breathing.

  "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!" Haze started toward me.

  I gave him a look of deepest scorn.

  "What she w-wanted. Do you th-think she wanted to be trapped here in suh someone else's body? Do y-you want to stay trapped in the puh Pattern?"

  "I find the girl who fits, she comes back, we're together. That breaks the Pattern!" He showed all of his white teeth. It wasn’t a smile. We were a long way away from charm now, he and I.

  "You h-have had over two centuries to w-work this out and you h-haven't got a cluh clue have you, Hardiman!" I laughed. Brittle sounds that hit my bruised ribs like glass goblets clinking together.

  "Do not presume to call me that!"

  “HARDIMAN!” I flung the word at him and he staggered, almost dropping to one knee. I felt a rush of triumph. I could stop him, weaken him just enough to make him consider my proposal.

  “Stop -”

  “It's your ruh real name, isn't it? Answer m-me. Do you w-want to stay in the puh Pattern?" I took a deep breath. Now for the real test. Helen was beyond rage inside me. "The puh Pattern that Helen made to m-make sure you and K-Kate would never be together?"

  "What?" Haze almost whispered. It was a fine line. He could kill me in an instant. But he was hooked, I just had to reel him in carefully.

  "It's tr-true," I said, sounding much calmer than I felt. "I've g-got her here." I tapped my temple. "You should ask her yourself."

  "Helen is dead and powerless." Was that confusion in those pitch dark eyes?

  "B-but not gone." Out of the corner of my eye I saw colour coming back into Grace's cheeks. Her eyelashes fluttered.

  "Where is Kate?" He made an abortive lunge at me. I stepped back, out of his reach.

  "In a pl-place where there are stars." I looked at him sadly. Let myself feel all the pity I felt for him and for Kate. All the hurt and loss and longing that reflected my feelings for Mum, for Grace, for Ciarán. "Kate once suh said to Helen that no h-heaven would be a heaven without you. Th-that she already l-lived in a h-hell of her own m-making, because she married Clayton. Sh-she waited for you to come that l-last night."

  "I waited for her to come to me. I didn't know she was ill. I didn't know and then… I saw her dead. The servant told me. Stupid girl told me everything because I compelled her. But Kate… I should have taken her from him. Clayton. I let him live because she valued him. He didn't deserve her. She was always mine." Haze buried his head in his hands. Two and a half centuries and he never stopped loving Kate. Never stopped grieving for her.

  I was so surprised that my line of attack worked, that I nearly missed my window.

  "D-does it matter if you're alive or d-dead if you're together?"

  Haze looked up at me with wet, black eyes, lashes starred together. "Of course not," he said, low and savage.

  "T-take my hand, Hardiman, and leave that poor b-boy behind." I held out my right hand, pulling the arm he broke from its sling. Somehow it was right. A show of faith in love, however twisted it had become. We were making a new Pattern. I squelched my disgust at the thought of his touch. Hesitantly, watching my face for signs of a trick, Haze reached out, his fingers brush mine.

  Haze’s frighteningly beautiful features melted and remoulded into the gaunt, wasted features of the missing biker. His eyes rolled up in his head and fluttered shut. The dark tangle of hair faded from black to light brown, shot through with streaks of white. The biker’s knees gave way and he collapsed at my feet. He was in far worse shape than Grace. I had no idea if he was still alive and no time to find out.

  Everything winked out of existence.