by Siara Brandt
Blood Curse: Deadrise VI
Siara Brandt
Copyright © 2017 by Siara Brandt
ISBN-13: 978-1974527113
ISBN-10: 1974527115
BLOOD CURSE: DEADRISE VI
First Edition. All right reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction
or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form is forbidden without
the written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either
The product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or undead, business
establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Printed in USA.
BOOKS BY SIARA BRANDT
A Restless Wind
Blood Scourge: Project Deadrise
Blood Storm: Deadrise II
Savage Blood: Deadrise III
Blood Reckoning: Deadrise IV
Blood Moon: Deadrise V
Blood Curse: Deadrise VI
Dark of Peace
Into Night
Kadar’s Quest: The Legend of Iamar
Render Silent
Shadow of the Phantom
Stealing Cady
Tales from the Water Lily Pond
Tangled Vines
The Ashes and the Roses
The Belly Dancer and the Border Agent
The Haunting of the Opera
The Meadow and the Millpond
The Patriot Remnant: Return to Freedom
The Shadow’s Fall
The Water Lily Pond
To J. It’s a good thing a zombie apocalypse didn’t happen
while you were halfway around the world in Thailand.
Chapter 1
Abram Rawles wanted to be anywhere else than where he was right now. Collecting discarded items for the church rummage sale was not his idea of a productive day. In fact, in his opinion, this was about as far away from a productive day as a person could possibly get, especially when he considered that most of the items he was hauling around were going to sell for nickels, dimes or, at the most, the occasional quarter.
All morning, however, he had managed to smile and make pleasant conversation and keep his thoughts to himself as he’d loaded the bed of his pickup truck with all sizes and shapes of cardboard boxes, at least the stuff that had actually been in boxes. At the first two houses, he’d been lucky. The boxes had been in fairly good condition. Unfortunately, that had not been the case with the last two houses. He was still grumbling to himself that at least half of the boxes had not only been overflowing but had bottoms that were precariously ready to fall out. One of the boxes had actually spewed its jumble of disorganized contents all over the ground right before making it to his truck. To make matters worse, a board game had been in the box. Hundreds of game pieces and fake money had fluttered out in every direction. All of it had to be picked up before he could move on to the next house. It had been a damned nightmare. To his further chagrin, there had about a dozen plastic bags at the last house that he’d had to stuff into the narrow space behind his seat. He didn’t even want to know what was in those. The bags were heavy, dusty and they smelled like cat.
From what he’d seen so far, most of the stuff sticking out of the boxes belonged in a dumpster somewhere, or better yet, a bonfire. But he had kept that thought to himself, too, and now he was mentally checking off the houses on his list. One more to go.
In his rearview mirror, he eyed the scuffed legs of an ugly chrome chair with an orange seat that was sticking up from the bed of his truck behind him and shook his head. The thing must have been around since the 60’s. Who the hell would hold on to something like that for this long? Who the hell would want to buy it? Thank goodness there weren’t any matching chairs. He wasn’t going to be able to fit much more back there, even if he did some rearranging-
Hell.
He breathed out the profanity as a sudden thought occurred to him. If the next house had a lot of stuff, he just might end up having to make two trips. After an impatient groan, he turned the key in the ignition and checked behind him before backing out of the long, pot-holed driveway.
Saturday was supposed to be his day off. Technically, it was his day for getting things done around his own house, not helping everyone else by hauling off their unwanted junk or, worse yet, standing around talking about the weather. Weather that was supposed to cooperate for once. It had rained for three straight weekends in a row. If the latest reports were right, today was supposed to be a perfect day, not too cold, not too hot. But more importantly, it was not supposed to rain. He had an overgrown yard to mow thanks to the unrelenting rain. He also had trimming to do, a garden to plant and, if he had time, he’d finally fix that screen door before the cat or something else figured out there was an easy way inside the house.
He tamped down his simmering annoyance with a little more resolve as he re-gripped the steering wheel and tapped out an impatient rhythm with his thumb as he made a left turn onto a newly-graveled road. Just what he needed. More dust. The stuff in the back would be coated. He just hoped he wasn’t going to be the one who would be expected to clean it. But there was just one more house to visit and he was done, he reminded himself as he put his window up.
Ariene had asked him to pick up the boxes, so he needed to bite the bullet, quit whining and get it over with to keep the peace. Who was he kidding? He’d do his damndest to get her the moon if she asked for it. After three years of marriage, he was even more love-struck than the day they had taken their vows. He still didn’t know how he had gotten so lucky. If Ariene wanted him to be more involved in the church, it was, he reminded himself, a small thing to do to make her happy. She wasn’t like other wives. She didn’t make many demands on him, nor on his time. She even went along with what some might consider his near-obsessive prepping. So a few hours out of his morning, one morning, to pick up some boxes didn’t seem like such a big deal when he really thought about it. Griping about it sure wasn’t going to help. He’d done enough of that already. Anyway, Ariene was always saying that the good he did would come back to him in some way somewhere down the road. Maybe she was right. She’d give him one of her smiles when he got back home and that in itself was enough to make it all worthwhile.
His mood lightened considerably as he eased his foot on the brake and turned left onto another gravel road. One more house. He felt just like a kid with only an hour left of school before summer break.
Damn. They’d just graveled this road, too, so he left his window up.
If he was lucky, Ariene would have breakfast waiting for him when he got home. He was getting hungry. She had admonished him more than once not to show up too early to pick up the boxes, but he had wanted to get the chore over with as soon as possible, so of course he hadn’t listened to her. Even as he pulled into the driveway of the rambling white farmhouse, he was beginning to regret not listening to her all over again. There were no signs of life anywhere around the big, two-story house. Waiting around again for people to get out of bed wasn’t something he was looking forward to. He’d gotten people out of their beds at the first two houses. He hoped it wasn’t going to be the same here. But he had already pulled into the driveway, so he shut the engine off, opened his door and got out of the truck.
It was one of those early summer mornings when everything was wrapped in silence and fog. And slowly-drifting gravel dust. There was no wind, so the mist was rising in little swirls from the dew-drenched grass all around the farmhouse. The trees and shrubs were dripping with moisture, too. He made his way up the driveway, kicking
himself mentally as he realized that he probably could have saved himself a whole lot of time and even more aggravation if he had just listened to Ariene in the first place and slept in for once. Waiting on people who were still getting out of bed just made everything take longer. Another hour of sleep wouldn’t have hurt anything. Except that it wasn’t easy to break old habits. He had awakened long before daylight like he always did and, after his usual cup of coffee, he was ready to go. He pressed his lips together in an impatient line as he passed under a rose-clad trellis and started up the flower-bordered walkway. If he knocked on the door and everyone was still in bed, like the first two houses. Or even worse, if the dog started barking . . .
But the dog wasn’t barking. In fact, the dog wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Before he reached the porch steps, he saw that the front door was open, which hopefully meant that someone had to be awake. Someone should have heard his truck door slam. With any luck, they-
“What the hell- ” he muttered under his breath as he climbed the porch steps.
A wicker chair was overturned on the front porch. He couldn’t imagine the meticulous Dades leaving a chair lying on its side like that. They didn’t have any small kids and there hadn’t been a storm or any strong winds last night, or even for the past few days, that would have accounted for it.
“Hmm,” he murmured to himself as he shrugged and dismissed the overturned chair. It wasn’t his business what they did with their porch furniture. He righted the chair, knocked on the screen door, then looked around as he waited.
The Dades had a massive, shaggy grey dog, a stray that they had rescued years ago. They were like that, generous and kind-hearted almost to a fault. But there was no dog at the door. And no dog on the porch. The dog was old. Maybe it was going deaf. And maybe the family was in the kitchen at the back of the house eating breakfast. He’d been in the house more than once. He knew the layout. But the house seemed too quiet for a family breakfast. Too still. There were no dishes rattling. He heard no hum of conversation. And they should have heard him knock. Maybe they weren’t home, Bram thought. Maybe he should have listened to his wife.
He lifted his hand to knock again and hoped that Elwin Dade wasn’t going to hold him up too long. Elwin liked to talk. And normally he’d be all right with that. But not today. Today he had a lot of work waiting for him.
As he stood there on the porch, a slight wind rose out of nowhere, a mere breath of dust- and mist-laden air that blew lightly against him. To his surprise, it brought a faint but familiar smell with it, a smell that he recognized as the stench of death. There was no mistake about it. After three tours overseas, he knew what death smelled like. He turned and stared at the fog-shrouded yard for the space of several heartbeats. He looked at the dark, solid mass of forest at the edge of the yard, his gaze narrowing as he scanned the edge of the timber. The fog blurred everything, but as far as he could see, nothing moved out there. At least nothing that he could see.
Some animal had probably died in the woods and was decomposing. It happened all the time. At least he hoped it was an animal. Had to be, he told himself as his frown deepened. Whatever was out there, it wasn’t his concern. The cycle of life and death was a naturally-occurring part of any forest. In fact, ironically, last Sunday’s sermon had been about death, about how it was not the end of a man’s life, but merely a transition to another more spiritual existence. About how
the ancient Hebrews believed the dead went to Sheol, a netherworld where they had a shadowy existence.
Well, right now Bram still didn’t see or hear any signs of life, shadowy or otherwise, but a strange feeling came creeping over him, a feeling he hadn’t felt for a long time. Everything around him was too quiet, he realized. Even the birds were silent when they should be filling the woods with their morning songs. It was like all of nature was holding its breath, already aware of some danger, waiting for him to discover whatever threat was out there hidden by the fog.
He scanned the tree line again through trained eyes, more thoroughly this time. He still couldn’t shake the eerie sensation that something wasn’t quite right, that something was off. It was the mist, he told himself. Mist could do that. It could be disorienting, even menacing when you couldn’t see what was out there. And sometimes his past, he admitted, came back to haunt him in unguarded moments.
Except that the woods were never this quiet. Not unless something was wrong. Not a breath of air was stirring. Except for the fog, nothing moved. He knew from experience that if you paid attention, even the silence could tell you a great deal. He listened more intently, closed his hand into a fist, lifted it and knocked again. His dark brows drew together into a frown. There was a tautness in the muscles of his jaw now as his instincts went automatically into full alert mode. Another old habit that had stayed with him.
He called out.
Nothing.
Okay. So obviously no one was home. He’d just come back later.
After one more knock.
Just to make sure.
His gaze was harder and more intent now as he probed the uncertain shadows, a crawly feeling raking his gut as he slowly perused the yard.
It wasn’t just the absence of the dog. It was the abandoned feel of the place. It was that smell of death hovering on the air. The wind chimes hanging on the porch jangled very faintly for a moment as another breeze drifted through the porch, and then everything went silent again.
He shook himself mentally. He needed to get a grip. He wasn’t in Iraq or Afghanistan anymore where you had to constantly be waiting for something, anything to come at you out of nowhere. There was no need for this heightened state of vigilance, he told himself. Not here.
So why was he feeling like this?
Keeping half an eye on the yard, he leaned closer to the screen door and peered into the living room, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He looked over his shoulder, past the bushes that crowded the porch, and scanned the portion of the yard that he could see. Elwin Dade put a lot of time and thought into his home and yard. Everything was as neat as a pin. The flower beds were carefully thought out and weed-free. There was even an inviting little path leading into the woods, and though he couldn’t read it from this distance, there was some kind of sign hanging there at the entrance to the trees. There was also an enviable garden area, with long rows of newly-emerging plants already sprouting. Hell, he didn’t even have his own garden tilled up yet.
He looked at the wooden swing at the edge of the carefully-manicured lawn. Thoughtfully positioned in the shade of the trees, it would be a nice place to sit on a summer day with a glass of iced tea or lemonade. The swing had brightly-flowered cushions. Bram had tried putting cushions on his own swing at home, but their cat thought the cushions were for him. The spoiled feline was always sprawled out on it, and because they sometimes found an upchucked hairball waiting for them in the morning, they had to take the cushions in every night.
He looked up at the morning sky, the portions of it that were showing through openings in the trees. No clouds. Only a deep, clear blue that was brightening as the mist dissipated. He just had to be patient a little longer, he told himself, and he’d be cutting his own grass, tilling up his own garden, planting seeds . . .
He knocked for the third time. There was still no answer at the door, so he walked to the end of the porch and leaned against the railing where he tried to look past the bushes into the backyard. Maybe someone was out there. Or in the barn. The fog was still slowly drifting along the ground in the low areas and close to the woods. And then, suddenly, as he leaned out a little further, he went still in surprise. Alarm stabbed straight into the pit of his belly.
In a place where the fog had momentarily cleared, he had seen a dark shape in the grass. Something that was undistinguishable and motionless. Something that looked like a pile of discarded laundry.
Or a body.
The shifting fog had already closed over it completely by the time Bram thumped down the porch steps. Befor
e he even rounded the side of the house, he could see that the grass was stained dark in a long line. He didn’t want his thoughts to go in that direction, but it looked like a blood trail to him. He’d seen enough of them.
It did turn out to be blood. It led to the dog. Or what was left of it.
In war zones halfway around the world you expected to see bloody scenes of violent, traumatic death, but here it was completely unexpected. Bram’s senses were on full alert now. He was watching the tree line for signs of danger, what he could see of it through the fog.
When he turned, something else in the corner of his eye drew his immediate attention. He jerked his gaze over to his left. His breath left him in a rush when he saw another shape lying in the grass. This time it was no dog.
Right away, he saw the paleness of the young woman’s face and the dark tangle of her hair. And right away, as he stood over her, he knew Salina Dade was beyond help.
She lay on her back with her body twisted into an odd position. One arm was doubled up under her. The other arm was outstretched like it was pointing to the woods.
He stood looking down at the gruesome sight of the mutilated body, trying to make sense out of what made no sense at all. Another heavier trail of blood led to the body and blackish remains spattered the grass all around her. Her throat had been brutally torn out. So had the chest and the abdominal cavity. In fact, it looked like a good part of her was missing. Bram could see the white of bone where her ribs were and the blood-soaked clothing that looked like it had been torn to shreds. Her arms had what looked like bite marks on them. And he saw something else in the bloody mess that had been her body. Something that confused him. Something that looked like a-
Tooth.
Her face was untouched. It was about the only thing that was, so he recognized her right away. Salina was Elwin and Ardella Dade’s adult daughter. He looked down at the vacant, staring eyes and the mangled body with a sick churning in his belly. No one should have to die like that. No one should have to see their child like that. He also realized in an instant that he should not have come out unarmed today. And where the hell were the Dades? His gaze scanned the yard. He didn’t see any more blood trails.