And now it wanted Alex.
He didn’t know how he knew that. But he did. Nick ran from the outbuilding and the storm struck him with furious force, slamming him back against the wall outside. The trees were an ocean in the tempest, the wind howling through them, leaves and other debris whirling through the air. Rage, that was what he felt in the land and in the storm. Rage born of terror. The land itself was screaming and the air screamed with it.
‘I’m sorry,’ he tried to say but the storm snatched his voice away.
This was wrong. All wrong. The woods seethed with rage and he – he remembered what it was like to have that force turned on him. Long ago, so long ago, another lifetime…
They’d come in the night, ready to torch the house, him and his brigade, ready to burn down the relics of the old imperial oppressors and make way for a new Free State. They’d done it before, all over the country, watching these symbols of the aristocracy blaze and then fall to ashes. And it had felt so good to vent that rage. He’d lost friends and brothers, his family torn apart by independence and civil war, and this was justified.
But when they reached Kilfayne, when they reached Wildewood Hall, the people they were there to represent stood side by side with their landlord to drive them away. Bewildered, his brigade had fallen back to the woods and the women…
Dear Jesus, the women had called up a storm like this and the woods had surged to life. He’d seen men torn apart, crushed, swallowed up by the earth until, at last, he was the only one left.
A woman had stood over his broken body, long dark hair, wild blue eyes. Sally’s grandmother, perhaps, or great-grandmother. She looked just like her, filled with the same power, the same determination, a wise woman bent on revenge. He’d begged for his life and she’d taken it anyway. She’d smiled a knowing smile and told him he’d make amends. That he’d go on making amends. She was the last thing he saw before brambles and vines wound about his body, before leaves and mulch filled his mouth and crushed themselves down his throat, before the earth dragged him under. He didn’t know anything for a very long time.
Not until Sally had danced in the wild wood, and summoned him back again. She’d told him the time had come. Guardian, she’d called him. The walker in the woods.
And he’d failed.
Reality slammed back into him, cold and hard and awful. It left him gasping in the wind and the rain, in the howling night. Something was happening. Something terrible. Right now.
Alex. He needed to get back to Alex.
Nick sprinted through the storm, barrelling through the back door of the building and into the boot room, almost falling on his face as the wind cut off.
The house was far too still and far too quiet. Even the raging tempest outside seemed muffled and distant. Wildewood Hall closed around him like a trap.
‘Alex?’ he yelled, his voice far too loud in this silence.
He didn’t bother to pull off the raincoat and the boots, just kept going, forcing his way through the kitchen door and up the corridor to the main hall.
There was laughter above him, light and delicate, the sound of children twisted to mockery. He could imagine them, all the hollowed-out ghosts, leaning over the bannisters of the upper galleries, looking down on him. Sweet voices turned to something cruel. And others too. Men, raucous and brutal. Women, their voices ringing like music or the song of mockingbirds. More of the spirits than he had sensed in years. They clustered around now, hungry for whatever sport they could make. Sally had always been there, shielding him, in life and in death. But now Sally was gone.
And the old god was loose.
He could feel the walls of Wildewood Hall pulse with malice sunken into them over a thousand years.
‘Your time here is over, guardian. You have failed. You never really had the strength beyond what your creator could lend you. And she was always flawed. She stole you to begin with and what starts with a lie will always come undone. She made you from the dirt of humanity as much as the dirt of the forest.’
His creator? Did it mean Sally?
Nick struggled on, trying to ignore them, feeling the drain on his stamina. He felt almost dizzy with fear, but he pressed on.Strength was seeping away with every footstep he took within the walls of this cursed building.
‘Alex,’ he shouted again, her name almost a sob. She had to be all right. He should never have left her. ‘Alex, answer me!’
How many ghosts were there in Wildewood Hall? Crom must have trapped and corrupted so many over the centuries. Blaise was only the most successful of his conquests, Nick realised, the one who dragged down all the others, a man so corrupt and dissolute that his fall had been just a light and careless step into darkness. And after that the two of them had been partners in crime. Crom needed a physical form to free himself, someone to possess, someone to house his spirit and to feed from. To use in order to feed from others.
Women from Kilfayne had married into the line of the de Wildes, he knew that from Sally. It had been part of their plan to strengthen the wild woods. It had worked too. For centuries they’d protected this place, because it held that monster in check. And now…now there was only Alex left with the blood of both. Maeve may have Sally’s power one day, but she was only a child yet.
And that dark power had no use for a child, thank God.
He had used Blaise Chambers. But Chambers had been killed, shot through the chest on the cellar steps, his blood soaking into the earth below. Where Nick’s blood had joined it…
Crom needed a host. A living host.
‘Alex!’
You had one job, his heart screamed at him, still carrying echoes of Theo’s voice.You had just one job. You’re the caretaker, the guardian. You only had one job.
