Читать книгу: «Haunted: Penance / After the Lightning / Seeing Red»

Lisa Childs
Haunted

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Tara Gavin, Jennifer Green and Jenny Bent—

working with such awesome, inspiring ladies

has been a wonderful gift!

To Paul, Ashley and Chloe—my family—

the greatest blessing in my life!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Coming Next Month

Prologue

Europe, 1655

Strong hands closed over her shoulders, shaking her awake. Elena Durikken blinked her eyes open, but the darkness remained, thick, impenetrable.

“Child, awaken. Quickly.”

“Mama?” She blinked again, bringing a shadow into focus. A shadow with long, curly hair. “Mama.”

“Rise up. Hurry. You have to go.” Her mother’s strong hands dragged back the blankets, letting the cold air steal across Elena’s skin.

“Go? Where are we going?” She couldn’t remember being awake in such blackness before. Usually a fire glowed in the hearth, the dying embers casting a glow over their small home. Or her mother burned candles, chanting to herself as she fixed her potions from the dried herbs and flowers strung from the rafters.

“Only you, child. You must go alone.” Mama’s words, the final way she spoke, chilled Elena more than the cold night air.

“Mama…” Tears burned her eyes and ran down her face.

“There’s no time. They will come soon. For me. And if you are still here, they will take you, too.”

“Mama, you are scaring me.” It was not the first time. She had scared Elena many times before, with the things she saw, the things she knew were coming before they ever happened.

Like the fire.

“Is this…is this because of the fire, Mama?”

Mama didn’t answer, just pulled a cape over Elena’s head, lifting the hood over her hair. Then she slid Elena’s feet into her boots, lacing them up as if she were a small, dependent child, not a thirteen-year-old girl she was sending alone into the night. Mama pressed the neck of a satchel against Elena’s palm. “Ration the food and water. Keep to the woods, child. Run. Keep running….”

“How can they blame you for the fire?” she cried. “You warned them.”

Even before the sky had darkened or the wind had picked up, her mother had told them the storm was coming. That the lightning would strike in the night, while the women slept. And that they would die in a horrible fire. Mama had seen it all happen….

Elena didn’t know how her mother’s visions worked, but she knew that Mama was always right. More tears fell from her eyes. “You asked them to leave.”

But the woman of the house, along with her sister-in-law whose family was staying with her, had thought that with their men away for work, that Mama was tricking them. That she, a desperate woman raising a child alone, would rob their deserted house. She’d been trying to save their lives.

Mama shook her head, her hair swirling around her shoulders. “The villagers think I cast a spell. That I brought the lightning.”

Elena heard the frightened murmurs and saw the downward glances as her mother walked through the village. Everyone thought her a witch because of the potions she made. But when the townspeople were sick, they came to Mama for help even though they feared her. How could they think she would do them harm? “No, Mama…”

“No. The only spell cast is upon me, child. These visions I see, I have no control over them,” she said. “And I have no control over what will happen now. I need you to go. To run. And keep running, Elena. Never stop. Or they will catch you.”

Elena threw her arms around her mother’s neck, more scared than she had ever been. Even though she heard no one, saw no light in the blackness outside her window, she knew her mama was right. They were coming for her. The men who’d returned, who’d found their wives, sisters and daughters dead, burned.

“Come with me, Mama,” Elena beseeched her, holding tight.

“No, child. ’Tis too late for me to fight my fate, but you can. You can run.” She closed her arms around Elena, clutching her tight for just a moment before thrusting her away. “Now run!”

Tears blinded Elena as much as the darkness. She’d just turned toward the ladder leading down from the loft when Mama caught her hand, squeezing Elena’s fingers around the soft velvet satchel. “Do not lose the charms.”

Elena’s heart contracted. “You gave me the charms?”

“They will keep you safe.”

“How?” Elena asked in a breathless whisper.

“They hold great power, child.”

“You need them.” Elena did not know from where they had come, but Mama had never removed the three charms from the leather thong tied around her wrist. Until now.

Mama shook her head. “I cannot keep them. They are yours, to pass to your children. To remember who and what we are.”

Witches.

Mama did not say it, but Elena knew. She shivered.

“Go now, child,” Mama urged. “Go before it is too late for us both.” She expelled a ragged breath of air, then pleaded, “Do not forget….”

Elena threw her arms around her mother’s neck, pressing her face tight against her, breathing in the scent of lavender and sandalwood incense. The paradox that was her mama, the scent by which she would always remember her. “I will never forget. Never!”

“I know, child. You have it, too. The curse. The gift. Whatever it be.”

“No, Mama…” She didn’t want to be what her mother was; she didn’t want to be a witch.

“You have it, too,” Mama insisted. “I see the power you have, much stronger than any of mine. He would see it, as well, and want to destroy you.” Before Elena could ask of whom her mother spoke, the woman pushed her away, her voice quavering with urgency as she shouted, “You have to go!”

Elena fumbled with the satchel as she scrambled down the ladder, running as much from her mother’s words as her warning. She didn’t want the curse, whatever the mystical power was. She didn’t want to flee, either. But her mama’s fear stole into her heart, clutching at it, forcing her to run.

Keep to the woods.

She did, cringing as twigs and underbrush snapped beneath the worn soles of her old boots. She had run for so long her lungs burned and sweat dried on her skin, both heating and chilling her. She’d gone a long way before turning and looking back toward her house.

She knew she’d gone too far, too deep into the woods to see it clearly with her eyes. So, like Mama, she must have seen it with her mind. The fire.

Burning.

The woman in the middle of it, screaming, crying out for God to forgive them. Pain tore at Elena, burning, crippling. She dropped to her knees, clutching her arms around her middle, trying to hold in the agony. Trying to shut out the image in her head. She crouched there for a long while, her mama’s screams ringing in her ears.

Run, child. Her mother’s words sounded in her head. Keep running.

She forced herself up, staggering on her weakened legs, turning away from all that she’d known, all that she’d loved.

Behind her, brush rustled, the blackness shattered by the glow of a lantern. Oh, God, they’d found her already.

The glow fell across her face and that of the boy who held the lantern. Thomas McGregor. He wasn’t much older than she, but he’d gone to work with his father and uncles, leaving his mother, sister, aunt and cousins behind…to burn alive.

As they’d burned her mother. “No…”

“I was sent to find you. To bring you back,” he said, his voice choked as tears ran down his face. Tears for his family or for her?

Her mother had seen this, had tried to fight this fate for her daughter, the same fate that had just taken her life.

“You hate me?” she asked.

He shook his head, and something flickered in his eyes with the lantern light. Something she had seen before when she’d caught him staring at her. “No, Elena.”

“But you wish me harm? I had nothing to do with your loss.” Nor did her mother, but they had killed her. Smoke swept into the woods, too far from the fire to be real, and in the middle of the haze hovered a woman. Elena’s mother.

“I have to bring you back,” Thomas said, his hand trembling as he reached for her, his fingers closing over her arm.

The charms will keep you safe.

Had her mother’s ghost spoken or was it only Elena’s memory? Regardless, she reached in the pocket of her cape, clutching the satchel tight. Heat emanated through the thick velvet, warming her palm. As if she’d stepped into Thomas’s mind, she read his thoughts and saw the daydreams he had had of the two of them. “Thomas, you do not wish me harm.”

“But Papa…”

Other memories played through Elena’s mind, her mother’s memories. She shuddered, reeling under the impact of knowledge she was too young to understand. “Your papa is a bad man,” she whispered. “Come with me, Thomas. We will run together.”

He shook his head. “He would find us. He would kill us both.”

Because of what she’d seen, she knew he spoke the truth. Eli McGregor would kill anyone who got between him and what he wanted.

“Thomas, please…”

His fingers tightened on her arm as if he were about to drag her off. Elena clutched the satchel so closely, the jagged little metal pieces cut her palm through the velvet.

He shuddered as if a great battle waged inside of him. “I cannot give you to him. Go, Elena. You are lost to me.” But when she turned to leave, he caught her hand as her mother had, trembling as he pressed something against her bloody palm. “Take my mother’s locket.”

To remember him? To remember what his family had done to hers? She would want no reminders. But her fingers closed over the metal, warm from the heat of his skin. She couldn’t refuse. Not when he had spared her life.

“Use it for barter, if need be, to get as far away from here as you can. My father has sworn vengeance on all your mother’s relatives and descendents. He says he will let no witch live.”

“I am not a witch.” She whispered the lie, closing her eyes to the glowing image of her mother’s ghost.

“He will kill you,” Thomas whispered back.

She knew he spoke the truth. Like her mother, she could now see her fate. But unlike her mother, she wouldn’t wait for Eli McGregor to come for her. She turned to leave again, then twirled back, moved closer to Thomas and pressed her lips against his cheek, cold and wet from his tears.

“Godspeed, Elena,” he said as she stepped out of the circle of light from his lantern, shifting into the darkness and the smoke, letting it swallow her as she ran.

This time she wouldn’t stop…she wouldn’t stop until she’d gotten as far away as she could. And even then, she wouldn’t ever stop running….

From who and what she was.

Armaya, Michigan, 1986

The candlelight flickered as the wind danced through the open windows of the camper, carrying with it the scent of lavender and sandalwood incense. Myra Cooper dragged in the first breath she’d taken since she’d begun telling her family’s legend; it caught in her lungs, burning, as she studied her daughters’ beautiful faces.

Irina snuggled between her bigger sisters, her big, dark eyes luminous in the candlelight. She heard everything but, at four, was too young to understand.

Elena, named for that long ago ancestor, tightened her arm protectively around her sister’s narrow shoulders. Her hair was pale and straight, a contrast to Myra and Irina’s dark curls. Her eyes were a vivid icy blue that saw everything. But, at twelve, she was too old to believe.

Ariel kept an arm around her sister, too, while her gaze was intent on Myra’s face as she waited for more of the story. The candlelight reflected in her auburn hair like flames, and her green eyes glowed. She listened. But Myra worried that she did not hear.

She worried that none of them understood that they were gifted with special abilities. The girls had never spoken of them to her or one another, but maybe that was better. Maybe they would be safer if they denied their heritage. Yet they couldn’t deny what they didn’t know; that was why she had shared the legend. She wanted them to know their fate so they could run from it before they were destroyed.

“We are Durikken women,” she told her daughters, “like that first Elena.”

“You named me after her,” her oldest spoke, not questioning. She already knew.

Myra nodded. “And I’m named for her mother.” And sometimes, when she believed in reincarnation, she was sure she was that woman, with her memories as well as her special abilities.

However, most of the time Myra believed in nothing; it hurt too much to accept her reality. But tonight she had to be responsible. She had one last chance to protect her children; she’d already failed them in so many ways. They didn’t have to live the hardscrabble life she’d lived. They didn’t have to be what she was—a woman whose fears had driven her to desperation.

“Our last name is Cooper,” Elena reminded her.

“Papa’s name,” she said, referring to her own father. None of their fathers had given his child his name, either because the man had refused or she hadn’t told him he was a father. “We are Durikken, and Durikken women are special. They know things are going to happen before they happen.”

Pain lanced through Myra, stealing her breath again as images rolled through her mind like a black-and-white movie. She couldn’t keep running and she couldn’t make them keep running, either.

She forced herself to continue. “They see things or people that no one else can see. This ability, like the charms on my bracelet—” she raised her arm, the silver jewelry absorbing the firelight as it dangled from her wrist “—has been passed from generation to generation.”

But Myra was more powerful than her sisters, had inherited more abilities as a woman and a witch. That was why she had been given the bracelet—because her mother had known she would be the only one of her three daughters to continue the Durikken legacy.

Myra’s fingers trembled as she unclasped the bracelet. She’d never taken it off, not once since her mother had put it on her wrist, until tonight. Her daughters had admired it many times, running their fingers over the crude pewter charms, and she knew which was each one’s favorite.

Elena had always admired the star, the sharp tips now dulled with age. Irina loved the crescent moon, easily transformed—like Irina’s moods—from a smile to a frown, depending on the angle from which it dangled. Ariel favored the sun, its rays circling a small, smooth disk. Despite its age, this charm seemed to shine brighter than the others. Like Ariel.

Even now, in the dingy little camper, an aura surrounded the child, glowing around her head as spirits hovered close. Did Ariel know what her gift was? Did either of her sisters? Her daughters needed Myra’s guidance so they could understand and use their abilities. They were too young to be without their mother, but she couldn’t put them at risk. All Myra could hope was that the charms would keep them safe, as they had that first Elena so long ago.

Myra knelt before her children where they huddled in their little makeshift bed in the back of the pickup camper, their home for their sporadic travels. This was all she’d been able to give them. Until now. Until she’d shared the legend.

Now she’d given them their heritage, and with the help of the charms, they would remember it always. No matter how much time passed. No matter how much they might want to forget it or ignore it. Like that Elena from so long ago, even though she’d feared her future and tried to outrun it, she’d never thrown away the charms. She’d known how important they were, and so would Myra’s children.

She reached for Elena’s hand first. It was nearly as big as hers, strong and capable, like the girl. She could handle anything…Myra hoped. She dropped the star into Elena’s palm and closed her fingers over the pewter charm. The girl’s blue gaze caught hers, held. No questions filled her eyes, only knowledge. At twelve, she’d already seen too much in visions like her mother’s. The girl had never admitted it, but Myra knew.

She then reached for the smallest—and weakest—hand, Irina’s. Myra worried most about this child. She’d had so little time with her. She closed Irina’s hand around the moon. Hang on tight, child. She didn’t say it aloud; for Irina, she didn’t need to—the child could hear unspoken thoughts.

Myra swallowed down a sob before reaching for Ariel. But the girl’s hand was outstretched already. She was open and trusting, and because of that might be hurt the worst.

“Don’t lose these,” she beseeched them. Without the protection of the little pewter charms, none of them would be strong enough to survive.

“We won’t, Mama,” Elena answered for herself and her younger sisters as she attached her charm to her bracelet and helped Irina with hers.

Despite her trembling fingers, Myra secured the sun charm on Ariel’s bracelet, but when she pulled back, the girl caught her hand. “Mama?”

“Yes, child?”

“You called it a curse…this special ability,” Ariel reminded her, her voice tremulous. She had been listening.

Myra nodded. “Yes, it is a curse, my sweetheart. People don’t understand. They thought our ancestors were witches who cast evil spells.”

And they had been witches, but ones who’d tried to help and heal. Her family had never been about evil; that was what had pursued them and persecuted them throughout the ages.

“But that was long ago,” Elena said, ever practical. “People don’t believe in witches anymore.”

Myra knew it was better to warn them, to make them aware of the dangers. She’d shown them the locket earlier, the one nestled between her breasts, the metal cold against her skin. It was the one Thomas had pressed upon Elena all those years ago. Inside were faded pictures, drawn by Thomas’s young hand, of his sisters, who had died in the fire. Their deaths could have been prevented if only they’d listened and fought their fate. “Some still believe.”

“Mama, I’m cursed?” Ariel asked, her turquoise eyes wide with fear. Her hand trembled as she clutched the sun.

No one more than I. Myra had lost so much in her life. Her one great love—Elena’s father. And now…

“Mama, there are lights coming across the field!” Ariel whispered, as if thinking that if she spoke softly they wouldn’t find her. Maybe she didn’t hear as much as her sisters, but she understood.

Myra didn’t glance out the window. She’d already seen the lights coming, in a vision, and so she’d hidden the camper in the middle of a cornfield. But still they’d found her; they’d found them. She stared at her children, memorizing their faces, praying for their futures. Each would know a great love as she had and all she could hope was that theirs lasted. That they fought against their fate, against the evil stalking them, as she would have fought had she been stronger.

She just stood there next to the camper, in the middle of the cornfield, as they took her children away. The girls screamed and reached for her, tears cascading down their beautiful faces like rain against windows.

This wasn’t Myra’s final fate; her death would come much later. But as her heart bled and her soul withered, this was the night she really died. The night her children were taken away.

Chapter 1

Barrett, Michigan, 2006

The wailing sirens and shouting voices receded to a faint hum as the light flashed before Ariel’s eyes. Glowing through a thin veil of mist, bright but not blinding, it granted her such clarity that she could see what others could not.

The little girl. Her big, dark eyes wide in her pale face, her black hair hanging in limp curls around her cheeks and over her shoulders. In that pale yellow dress she’d favored, she was dressed for school. But she wasn’t there, safe in Ariel’s second-grade classroom. Not now. She hovered before the ramshackle house, back from the curb where police cars and an ambulance blocked the street.

Ariel had left her Jeep farther down the road and walked to the house, which sat on the edge of commercial property, only businesses and warehouses surrounding it and a handful of other rundown rental houses. No trees. No grass. No yard in which a child could play. Ariel had ducked under the crime scene tape roping off the property. She didn’t need to rush around like all the other people, the ones trying to figure out what had happened or how to help. Before she’d even arrived, she’d known what had happened and that it was too late for help.

As she blinked back tears, the mist thickened and the light faded, dimly shining on just the little girl, who, too, was fading and dissolving into the mist. Ariel reached out a hand, trying to hold on to her, trying to keep her from leaving. Her voice thick with emotion, she whispered the child’s name, “Haylee…”

The little girl whispered back, her mouth moving with words Ariel couldn’t hear. What did she want to tell her? Goodbye?

The tears fell now, sliding down Ariel’s cheeks, blurring Haylee from her vision. “I’m not ready to let you go….”

She was too young to be alone. Only eight. And she’d get no older now.

Ariel’s heart ached so much she trembled with the pain. As she shook, the charm dangling from the bracelet on her wrist swayed back and forth. Her hand was still extended, reaching for Haylee as the child faded away. Ariel’s fingers clutched at the mist, slipping through the gossamer wisps until she touched something solid. Something strong and warm.

Arms closed around her. A hand pressed her face against a hard shoulder. On a gasping breath, she drew in the rich scent of leather and man. Her man.

Even with her eyes closed, she saw David as vividly as if she were staring up at him. Although she wasn’t petite at five ten, David towered above her and everyone else. With his golden hair and dark eyes, he was a throwback to the conquering Vikings of centuries ago, not so much in appearance as attitude. Or perhaps a black knight, for he was dressed all in black today—black leather jacket, black silk shirt and black pants.

His deep voice rumbled as he told her, “You shouldn’t be here. I’m going to take you home.”

“H-how did you know?” she asked. How did he always know where she was and when she needed him? She hadn’t called him. She should have. She realized that as she glanced up at his face, his square jaw taut and hard, his dark eyes guarded. But she’d called Ty McIntyre instead—for his badge, not his support.

“Did Ty call you?” Of course the police officer would have called David. They’d been best friends since they were little kids—or so they’d told her. She hadn’t known either man that long, just long enough to fall for David.

“Ty’s here?” David asked. “Oh, my God, is he the injured officer?”

Ariel blinked the last of the mist away. As it vanished, the faint hum she heard morphed into a cacophony of sirens and shouts. For the first time since arriving on the scene, she became aware of the reporters shouting out questions from the curb as officers held them back. “Mr. Koster, why are you here? What’s your involvement?”

Her. If Ty hadn’t called David, the live coverage of the scene must have been how he’d known where she was. She didn’t ask him, though, because he’d started toward the house. Unlike the media, the officers never attempted to stop him. Everyone knew the richest man in Barrett, Michigan.

They didn’t know her. Until David’s appearance, neither the police nor the reporters had really noticed her.

“Who is that with you?” a reporter called out now as Ariel followed David, his shadow falling across her.

“Who’s the redhead?” another one shouted.

David ignored them, intent on the house, its door gaping open on broken hinges.

“Ty’s hurt?” she asked him, her voice cracking. She never would have called him had she known it would put him in danger.

“I don’t know. I have to find him,” David said, then glanced down at her. “But I don’t want you to come inside the house.”

His dark eyes soft with concern, he obviously feared what she might see. If he only knew…But that was perhaps the only thing he didn’t know about her—what she saw. She couldn’t tell him because she couldn’t explain what she didn’t understand herself.

“I’ll be all right,” she promised him. It was an empty promise because she had no way of knowing if she spoke the truth. No way of knowing what might happen next. That gift had been her mother’s, not hers.

He must have assumed she meant she’d be okay by herself outside, for he withdrew his arm and started toward the gaping door. But before he could step inside, two men filed out wearing medical examiner’s jackets and carrying a small black body bag on a gurney between them.

Haylee’s body, battered and broken, lay inside that bag. But not her spirit. Her spirit hovered yet on the mist, which thickened even as the light brightened. Everything receded again, the shouts of the reporters, the flashes of their cameras. She saw nothing but Haylee again.

“Ariel.” David called her name as his arm came around her shoulders, lending his strength and support with his closeness.

“Where’s Ty?” she asked, but a glance up answered her question. The officer stood near David, his dark hair rumpled, his face swollen and blood seeping through his dark T-shirt.

“What the hell happened?” David asked his friend.

Ty blew out a ragged breath. “Son of a bitch killed his daughter, then resisted arrest.”

“Wh-where is he?” Ariel stammered.

He nodded toward the house. “Still inside.”

“He’s dead?” David asked.

Another nod.

Ariel hadn’t seen Haylee’s father. But then, since he’d abused his own child, he’d probably lost his soul long ago. She gestured toward Ty’s T-shirt, where the blood seeped. “You’re hurt. You need help.”

With just a look toward the curb, David summoned paramedics, who rushed up to help his friend. “Take him to Mercy,” he directed them. “Dr. Meadows will be waiting.” His cell phone was out, pressed to his ear, before Ty could be helped toward the ambulance.

He refused the gurney, walking by himself instead. As he moved forward, unbeknownst to him, he stepped into the mist and passed through the fading image of Haylee. Ariel gasped as he turned back, his blue gaze meeting hers for just a moment before he swayed on his feet.

“He’ll be all right,” David said, his voice even deeper with conviction. “He’s strong.”

Despite his claim, David led her back toward the ambulance into which Ty was being helped. All color had drained from the officer’s face, leaving it as stark and pale as Haylee’s. He whispered to Ariel, too, but his words she heard. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, the regret all hers. She hadn’t sent him here to help Haylee. She’d known it was already too late for that when the mist had swirled into the classroom where she taught second grade and the student she’d thought absent had appeared. Like so many others Ariel had seen over the years—as a ghost.

The woman reached trembling fingers toward the television, brushing them over the image on the screen. Although the glass was cold beneath her skin, warmth spread through her. “Ariel…”

Not much of the child she’d been was left in the beautiful woman Ariel had become. Her hair was long now and a richer, more vibrant red that stood out like blood against the dead lawn of the property surrounded by crime-scene tape. Her face had thinned, her eyes, large and haunted, overpowering the delicate features of her nose and mouth.

Haunted. That was what this child was. The camera caught her reaching out toward empty space, but Myra knew what her daughter saw. The spirits had always been drawn to Ariel, even when she’d been a child. Myra wasn’t sure if Ariel had seen them then, but she obviously saw them now.

Then Myra glimpsed the charm dangling from Ariel’s thin wrist. She slid her fingertips across its image on the screen. Even though she touched glass, not the charm, she felt the heat of the little pewter sun, power radiating from it. If Ariel only knew…

Myra should have told her children everything that night so long ago when they’d been taken from her. She should have prepared them better to deal with their gifts and the curse. But they’d been so young.

Tears burned her eyes, blinding her to Ariel’s face. Giving them up had been the hardest thing she’d ever done, but they’d deserved better than her. They had deserved to live as normal lives as they could with the gifts they’d inherited. They’d deserved to be safe.

Pain pounded at her temples as pictures rolled through Myra’s mind, visions of her children. They weren’t safe. Not anymore. Maybe she’d given them up for nothing. She hadn’t hidden them from danger; she’d made them more vulnerable to it.

Weak in the knees, Myra settled back onto the hard wooden chair next to the round table covered with a brightly patterned cloth like the ones covering the walls that transformed her little trailer from drab to exotic. In the middle of the table a crystal ball glittered, reflecting the images from the television.

Mostly she used the ball as a prop, something to open the wallets of superstitious souls looking for a brighter future. So she didn’t always tell them what she saw inside her head but what she knew they wanted to hear. For a little while, they’d be happy and she’d be richer. But just for a little while.

That was as long as her happiness had ever lasted, when she’d fallen for Elena’s dad, when she’d had her children. She’d never been able to keep anyone she’d loved. She’d like to blame the curse, but she suspected it was her own fault, her cowardice.