COME, THE DARK: (Forever Girl Series Book Two) by Rebecca Hamilton

Author:Rebecca Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Tags: paranormal fantasy
Publisher: TeZLA Publishing
Published: 2015-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

Last Day of February, 1692

The sharp night air is like ice melting on my skin, easing away my pain, stirring an energy in me that slowly renews my strength. A strange calm washes through me, though my heart does not steady. Determination takes hold in my core, thumping within me, and all over again it’s like the first night I met Tess and William. As though the earth is a beating drum.

The air is soiled by the pungently sweet scent of rotten fruit and the musk of a skunk. I lift some overripe winter berries from the ground. The bumpy, crinkled skin of the fruit turns smooth as my touch heals them to a fresher state. I pop them in my mouth. They roll over my tongue, velvety and cool. A few Daphne berries are all it takes to kill a small child, but to me, they are a lifeline. Eating them has the same warming effect as drinking alcohol, and my whole body relaxes and reenergizes.

Time stretches ahead of me, though I feel the urgency of needing to travel such a great distance before sunrise. Normally my senses lead the way, but with my mind racing with fear that I’ll waste time heading in the wrong direction, I have to stop to think.

Tess said to go west. I study the land around me, the trees, the stones. Moss grows on the north. From that, I determine my westerly path and trek steadily in what I hope is the right direction.

Nighttime casts a whitish blue ambience over my world, and the towering trees with their knobby bark send the flutters of a fragment through my mind.

I’m a child peeking over my freckled shoulder at Ma’s smiling face. She reaches past me and brushes a new stroke of color onto a small canvas.

The trees in the woods tonight have the same clumpy appearance as Ma’s painting. She was the one who taught me about art. And when the Morts stole my parents, it was the art that made me feel safe. I can remember the night the Morts came.

Ma stays home to do her pottery while Pa takes me to see the horses. We’re on our way back from the farm when he loses control of the car.

As I float in and out of consciousness, dark figures dangle in the corners of my vision. The Shadow Men. One of the times I wake, I startle with a gasp, roll to my side, and check on Pa. He isn’t breathing. I grab his wrist to check his pulse. It’s fading. Fading...

I slip back into sleep.

An ambulance never comes.

Then, as though it was all a dream, I wake, and Pa is driving us home. Quiet. Eyes focused on the road. But it hadn’t been a dream. A wound at his temple is still bleeding. My body still aches, and my shoulder and hips are bruised from the seatbelt. A new kind of darkness surrounded us, shadows whipping by the windows as Pa drives.

Suddenly, I feel helplessly alone.

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