Scorched Heart (The Firebrand Series Book 4), Helen Harper [free ereaders .txt] 📗

thick layer of grime and had been fastened with a heavy, rusted padlock. The windows were boarded up.

Nobody had lived here for twenty-five years. The cottage was on the very outskirts of Barchapel and partially hidden by the overgrown vegetation. It had been boarded up after my parents’ murder and slated for demolition, but I guessed it was a case of out of sight, out of mind. The only people who came here now would be curious hikers and errant teenagers looking for somewhere to party. Perhaps that included No Angel and her buddies.

I licked my lips and reached for the padlock to see if it could be opened. As soon as my fingers grazed the cold metal, there was a loud screech from behind me. I jumped and spun, my heart pounding against my chest and my hands automatically reaching for my crossbow. Stupidly, I’d left it locked in my suitcase at the Bird and Bush.

Nobody was there – only the crow. It must have followed me. It blinked at me from its perch on top of the old shopping trolley, its dark beady eyes fixed on mine. Then it screeched again.

‘Shoo!’ I waved my hands towards it. The crow didn’t move. ‘Shoo!’

The bird raised one wing and stretched it out, looking away from me to examine its feathers. Its beak dipped as it prepared to preen.

‘Get lost, bird!’

It ignored me.

I rolled my eyes. Freaky feathered bugger. Weren’t crows supposed to be super-intelligent? Couldn’t this one work out that it wasn’t wanted? I cursed and turned my back on it. It was only a damned bird.

I reached for the padlock again, shaking it to see if I could pry it loose. When that didn’t work, I drew in a breath. ‘Sorry, Mum,’ I muttered. I tensed my muscles and slammed my shoulder against the old wooden door. It sprang open on my first attempt as the metal bolt holding the padlock in place broke loose. I was getting good at breaking down doors; in fact, these days I barely even thought about it.

The interior of the cottage was gloomy, dark and smelled of damp. I pushed the door open all the way and stepped across the threshold. There was no furniture inside. All I could see was more rubbish in the corners and old wallpaper peeling from the walls. But I didn’t need furniture to tell me what each room had been. There was a sudden blueprint in my mind’s eye: straight ahead was the bathroom; beyond that was my parents’ bedroom, and after that was the room I’d slept in.

Standing here, staring down the dirty hallway, was a very strange experience. It was almost as if the past had suddenly come to life.

More in wonder than in sorrow, I tiptoed forward on the balls of my feet as if walking normally would disturb more ghosts than I could deal with. I swung my head from left to right, marvelling at the flood of images that were running through my mind like a film. The door frame to the small living room caught my attention and I paused to crouch down and check it. There, etched into the paint with a marker pen, were tiny notches, each one rising just that little bit higher. Twelve months, fifteen months, eighteen months, all the way up to five years old. I brushed my fingertips against each one. I had been loved by my parents, of that much I was sure.

I spent some time wandering from room to room and allowing myself to enjoy what memories I could dredge up. It was only when I felt wholly ready that I entered the kitchen. This was where they’d died; this was where I’d been found wailing loudly in a pool of blood next to their bodies.

I didn’t remember any of it, but I’d read the coroner’s report and the news clippings that my uncle had cut out and secreted in the old box in his attic, together with the rest of the things he’d kept from that time. None of it had been easy reading. Stepping into the room where my parents had been murdered and my life had changed wasn’t exactly a walk in the park either.

I tried to maintain a clinical, professional eye. I was no forensic technician but I’d been trained in the basics of crime-scene investigation at the Academy. Plus, I knew enough details of the crime to know what had happened. My parents had been sitting at the kitchen table and I’d probably been asleep in the next room. Samuel Beswick had entered, brandishing his knife. He’d gone for my mother first, using her as a weapon to keep my father back.

I tried to imagine where each person had been, I tried to think like a detective, but the blood was my undoing. Even now, after all these years, traces of it were still visible. No longer vivid red but a murky shade of brown, it was barely recognisable against twenty-five years of dust and grime, but I knew what it was. It arced across the walls and kitchen cupboards in a macabre dance.

I gazed in sickened horror. My parents’ blood was everywhere.

From somewhere, there came a strange low moan. It took a moment before I realised that I was making that sound. It wasn’t fair. Why could I live through several deaths and resurrect, and they couldn’t manage even one? Why should I be special?

I choked, my breath ragged and pained. The horror and fear and agony they must have felt. The sheer amount of their blood…

I couldn’t breathe. My chest was tight and there was a loud roaring in my ears. Calm down, Emma. Calm down. I dropped to my knees and placed my palms flat against the grimy linoleum.

I was already older than they had been when they’d died. How could that be real? How could Samuel Beswick have walked in here and done that to them? I should have attacked him in the prison