The Shadows of Stormclyffe Hall (19 page)

“This is my home now. Do you hear me? Mine!” he snarled.

Let the ghosts come. He would be ready. For what could spirits do to a living, breathing human?

Nothing. He wouldn’t let them. Leaving the main part of the house, he climbed the winding stairs in the tower at the far east of the castle where the three bells hung. The wooden door creaked open as he shoved his body against it. Wind whipped his shirt against his chest and he had to force himself to leave the shelter of the doorway to reach the bells. They were three tall, unmoving silhouettes against the moonlit night. As he approached them, he had to lean out over the structure that housed them. Beneath him was a forty-foot drop into an almost well-like pit. He ran his hand underneath each of the three bells, feeling for a clapper or anything that could strike the bell inside to make it ring. None of them had anything inside. They couldn’t ring. That part of Richard’s warning would never come to pass.

Sighing with relief, he turned away and headed for the half-open door to the tower that would lead him back down the circular stone stairway.

Dong!

The heavy ring of a bell tolled.

He spun on his heel and stared at the bells he’d just left. The bell closest to him swung slowly. Tendrils of pale light wove around its base as it rocked back and forth.

Dong!

Blood roared through him, drowning out all sounds except that one ominous
clang
, and the one that followed.

“Jane!” Without a second thought he ran, praying he wasn’t too late.

…

Jane woke to the sound of weeping. A quiet, ragged gasping that had her hastily dressing and looking about for the source of the sound.

“Hello?” She nearly smacked herself in the forehead.

Great. Smart, Jane. Way to try and talk to the creepy thing crying in the dark.

It would have been easy to stay in bed, wait for Randolph to fetch her in the morning and take her away from this place and the man who’d just shattered her heart. But she didn’t feel safe waiting around for whatever it was making that noise to come and get her. Sometimes being on the offensive was a safer move than being a victim—at least that was what she told herself.

She eased open the bedroom door and peeked out. The hallway was empty. Then she noticed the lights were moving, or rather
the shadows
were moving. Twisting, twining, coiling like phantom snakes, urging her to come toward them.

The muscles in her legs twitched, and she jerked forward, walking without control.

“No!” She struggled to regain control, but she couldn’t, something was moving her forward. Not again…please not again. Just like when she’d walked to the top of the north tower. This time though, she knew with an icy certainty that she was going to die. Bastian wouldn’t be able to save her, not this time.

Around her the world went mad. The tapestries she passed began to tear in long strips, as though a giant creature dragged its claws through the woven cloth. They fell in pieces to the ground. Invisible claws raked against the stones, leaving stark-white gouges in the rock.

If only she could scream, cry out for help. Bastian would have been able to hear. But there was no breath in her lungs, no ability to even gasp.

“He can’t save you!”
The screeching reply cut through her eardrums until she thought they might burst.

Darkness swallowed her whole, stealing all control, all consciousness.

Chapter Seventeen

Jane slowly regained consciousness. Her gaze took in the gray waves smashing against the stones below. Her chest was smeared with blood. But she wasn’t hurt. It wasn’t her blood. She whipped her head about frantically and realized in horror that she wasn’t alone.

The figure of her nightmares, the creature that haunted and hunted her, stood a few feet away, holding a white dove in her hand, blood upon her palms. The putrid smell of death and decay invaded Jane’s nostrils, making her eyes burn. Bits of flesh peeled away from the stark-white cheekbones of the monster’s face. Its lidless eyes were ruby red and glowing. Jane bit her tongue, tasting blood as she sucked back a scream.

“You’re Cordelia, aren’t you? How are you even here? We removed your bones.” Fighting to breathe each word, she sagged back against the massive rock she clung to on the cliff’s edge.

“Clever girl, too clever. Bones were only part of what kept me here. The curse I cast upon Weymouth and his family is still unbroken. I will exist so long as it does.” The terrifying creature laughed, and its horrible visage vanished, leaving only a lovely, golden-haired woman in a red cloak. It was as though the monster of her nightmares had never been.

“Why did you kill Isabelle and Richard? Why couldn’t you just let them be?” They had been so happy, so in love, and this evil woman with her spells had destroyed them and every descendant afterward.

“Why did I kill them?” Cordelia only smiled, her eyes diamond sharp and just as cold. “I was the one he should have married. I was the
proper
choice. Not some ill-bred spawn of an innkeeper. She was no better than a servant compared to me. I couldn’t let her live, not if I was to have Richard for my own.” She walked around the rock, carving a line into the stone with a sharpened fingernail. “The fool was too stubborn to see I was better, that I deserved the title of Countess of Weymouth. I’d trained for it all my life, was supposed to marry him. My father had given him permission to court me, but he threw it away on some harlot who spread her legs for him.”

As Cordelia talked, tiny red sparks danced around her, like angry hornets.

“So you succeeded, you killed them. Did you kill the maid, too?”

The ghost turned wicked eyes on her, devilry lighting them up. “Oh yes. Little Nessy, she was too friendly with the young heir to Stormclyffe. I saw the way he looked at her, hungry eyes, hands aching to touch her. A servant! I took care of her. Made her hang herself.” Cordelia shut her eyes, a sinister smile curving her lips. “Such a lovely sound, when a neck breaks.
Pop!
Like snapping a twig. The only drawback is that death is instant. I would have loved for her to suffer.”

Nausea rioted through Jane’s stomach at the thought of the poor housemaid. Randolph had been right, and Nessy was one more victim.

“Now the last heir has come home.”

“The last heir?” Jane was determined to keep that woman talking. Surely it could give her time to come up with a plan to escape. Or for Bastian to realize she was missing and find her.

“Yes.” Cordelia’s smile was full of rotted teeth. “All I need is to claim one male heir for my curse to be complete. The others escaped me. None of them would surrender to my will, not even when I stole everything they loved from them. I killed countless children, lovers, wives, pets. Anything that held value to a Stormclyffe heir, I stole it away. But none of the men would give themselves over to me. Bastian is the last one. And he will be mine.”

“Did you kill his father?” Jane asked. Part of her had wondered and needed to know.

The witch smiled. “Oh yes. He thought he was so clever coming back here to mend the castle. But that’s not what needed mending. I appeared before him on the road, intending to stop him. He swerved away from me and rolled that metal beast into a ditch. His life was gone before I could steal his soul away.”

Tears stung Jane’s eyes. Poor Bastian. It was a good thing he would never know the truth of his father’s death. Better that he think it an accident than part of the true curse on this place.

“Why do you need Bastian? Why not leave him be?”

“I must have him, you fool. He is the last chance for what I want: to lay claim to Stormclyffe as mine. If I own him, I own this castle. He’s more handsome than I’d hoped. Even more so than Richard.” Cordelia’s matter-of-fact announcement made Jane break out in a cold sweat. Cordelia was going to kill her. She was a threat to the ghost’s claim on Bastian.

“What? No demand that he’s yours? That you have the right to live?
How pathetic.
I’m going to kill you, just like Isabelle. But I’ll push you far out, let you hit the water, break every bone in your body. You won’t die right away, oh no, you’ll drown while in intense agony. You will suck in the cold, salty water and perish. Then Bastian will be all mine.”

“Like hell, you bitch! He won’t agree to be yours.” Where the rage came from, Jane didn’t know. But for a brief second, the ghost’s control over her weakened.

“Silence! He will agree to give himself to me if he thinks it will save your life.” Cordelia snarled and cast the dove’s body over the edge of the cliff, speaking in language Jane recognized as Latin. What little power Jane had recovered was torn from her again.

Her arms and legs belonged to Cordelia and her desires. The harsh pounding of the waves below was a siren’s song to Jane, demanding she spread her arms wide and leap.

She clamped her fingers tighter around the boulder she leaned against. Her eyes closed instinctively, still resistant to the foreign power holding her in its grasp.

In the safe darkness of her closed eyelids, twin flames burst before her, growing larger. A vision of horror filling her mind, enveloping her. The flames morphed into bloodred eyes with slitted pupils.

“You will die…”
The hiss slithered into her head and heart, its venom burning her from the inside out.
“You will pay for coming here. He is mine…forever mine!”

Jane screamed as invisible talons slashed her chest and face. She let go of the rock to clutch her cheeks. The world pitched around her, and the pebbles beneath her shoes slid. The wind tore the shout of terror from her lips.

She dug her nails into the rocks and grass at the cliff’s edge but couldn’t catch a hold of anything. Her vision tunneled as the overcast skies winked out.

“Today you die!”
The earsplitting laugh was as sharp as a thousand nails dragged over metal. It was a sound of pain or death. A sound of pure evil.

“No!” She gasped, her hands slipped free down a few more inches on the edge.

This is what it feels like to die
.

The racing heart, the blood roaring in her ears. No last moments of regret, no thought of loved ones or better days. There was only panic, terror, and then acceptance. Like climbing the stairs in the dark and reaching the top, expecting one more step. Only to have that moment of confusion and fear as you expected to fall before your foot struck the wood.

Bastian. His face filled her mind, the crooked grin he flashed her so often that made her knees buckle. The way he feathered kisses at her temples when he wanted an excuse to be close to her and knowing she adored it… She would never know such love again, and he would be alone. Her last sight would be the shrinking view of a cliff’s edge far above her.

An explosion of light, followed by a shrill scream as piercing as a train whistle, cut through Jane as the lady in white appeared above her. Cold fury in her gaze, Isabelle looked at Cordelia and then leaped straight at Jane.

Jane sucked in a breath. Something soft, like mist, settled over her skin, sinking in with a tingling warmth.

“Let go, Jane. Let go,”
Isabelle’s words were soothing, as though coaxing a babe back to sleep.

“She’ll kill me, I can’t!” Jane gasped, her voice breaking.

“Yes, you can. Trust me, Jane. Have faith. We must mend what once was broken. This is the only way. I’ve waited for you, centuries of waiting. Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh, to have the strength to return and save us.”

“Us?”

“Richard and me. Both trapped, kept apart. Broken.”

“I’m sorry, Bastian, I’m so sorry.”

The wind was the only witness to Jane’s whispered apology as she let go.

…

Bastian reached the outcropping of rocks a few feet from Jane just in time to see her fall. The world slowed in that instant. The splatter of light rain plunked against the stones. A biting chill of wind burned his face, but all he saw was Jane.

Light bloomed at the cliff’s edge. A silvery figure in a flowing white gown appeared, and without looking at him, dropped off the edge after Jane.

“We can save them. Trust in me.”
A deep voice jolted through him. He didn’t have to look away to know that Richard’s spectral form stood beside him.

“I trust you.”

In that second, Bastian felt something merge with him. A ramming of power deep into his soul, his heart, as Richard took over. He could feel the other’s presence in him, controlling every movement, every thought, but sharing it with him.

“Isabelle!” It was Bastian’s voice but Richard’s words.

Must save her. She must not die, not this time.

Bastian moved the last few feet to the edge where he’d seen Jane, guided by Richard’s willpower as he dove onto his stomach, hand flailing out as he caught Jane’s wrist.

…

Something hard latched around Jane’s left wrist. The joint nearly snapped as she jerked to a halt. She gasped for breath and opened her eyes, hesitant to find her fate only delayed.

Above her, Bastian strained to hold her and not fall over himself. A pearly light shined in the black dots of his pupils. An otherworldly presence.

Inside her, Isabelle’s spirit leaped for joy, and Jane’s heart responded, pounding wildly against her ribs. They were two spirits united in her body. She’d let Isabelle into her, just as it seemed Bastian had let Richard into him. The ghosts were coming together because she and Bastian were holding onto each other. After two centuries of being apart, the lovers were touching through their descendants’ hands.

So long, it’s been so long my love
. Isabelle’s thoughts were heartbreaking and impossibly strong.

“Isabelle, reach for my other hand! Quick!” The veins in Bastian’s neck stood out against his skin as he reached for her. Jane swung her free arm upward, and Bastian caught it, grunting in relief as he dragged her up and over the cliff. The second she cleared the edge, he fell backward, and she landed on top of him, their bodies locked in a fierce embrace.

Jane knew what she had to do, as if something inside her whispered how to fix everything.

“You’re afraid, Bastian. You’re afraid, and you’re pushing me away, but I
know
you care for me.”

The wind whipped around them, lashing at them along with the sound of Cordelia’s shrieks. But a halo of brilliant light spread around them, keeping her at bay. She felt Isabelle leave her body, her presence instead enveloping Jane in a warm embrace.

He shook his head wildly. “You have to leave here. Tonight. Now!”

She took his face in her hands. “I love you, you arrogant jerk. You can’t change that; you can’t scare me off.” Her voice was calm. Soft. But he heard her.

He turned away, squeezing his eyes shut as a grimace of pain crossed his features. “Jane, no.”

She cupped his jaw, turned him toward her once more. She had to let go of her fear. To take a leap of faith and trust herself. “Bastian, I love you. And I know you’re afraid. But don’t be.” She traced her fingers across his forehead. Along his jaw. “Please, believe me. I. Love. You.” She emphasized those three words, refusing to let the howling winds drown them out.

She felt the tension rock his frame as myriad emotions warred on his beautiful face. “I can’t. You have to go.” The fear, so stark in his eyes stilled her heart. They were both so alike, so afraid to get hurt, but they had to be brave. It was the only way.

“Say it, say what you feel. The truth. That’s all we need between us. That’s all we ever needed.”

A hint of surrender shimmered in his eyes, and the tension in his body vanished.

“Do you always have to be so damned stubborn?” he growled and then leaned his forehead against hers. “I love you.” The press of his lips was soft but filled with fire.

The halo around them coalesced into two points of brilliant light, which grew brighter and brighter, until they shot forward, directly into the heart of the beast that was Cordelia.

“No!” Cordelia screeched.

Above him, the witch’s ghastly form burst into an inferno, a scream of rage tearing from her gaping mouth. A second later she disintegrated in a black sulfurous explosion, quickly blown away by wind from the sea.

“What happened?” Bastian gasped.

Jane panted and struggled to speak. “The curse…it wasn’t about the castle. What once was broken must be mended. It was Isabelle and Richard. They’d been kept apart all these years.” She wiped away the sea spray that mixed with tears on her cheeks. “We’re their descendants. Our love brought them back together.”

“Bloody hell, woman. Why didn’t we figure out it was just that easy?” he muttered somewhat sarcastically, his head dropping back to the ground. One of his arms settled on her back, his hand patting her once, before he left his palm to rest there.

Too exhausted to laugh, she put her cheek to his chest, her whole body limp with relief. She wasn’t sure how long they lay like that, but she couldn’t readily break the feeling of security in his arms. Isabelle’s spirit still pulsed inside her, and the ghost took control again, forcing her to sit up.