Coldharbour II: A Sneak Peek
Back into battle. – Laura Clarke Walker, Coldharbour II: The Dead Land
Where the Heart Should Be
Coldharbour was still a strange place:
That weird little mishmash of Victorian seaside town, mediaeval marshes, and ancient cobbles that had been marched on by Romans and Vikings and, as Alex had heard and had no reason not to believe, the Devil himself.
And it still didn’t have a Millennium Dome or an Eden Project.
Midnight frost crunched under Alex’s and Elizabeth’s boots as they meandered through the town. Alex had told Elizabeth that she really didn’t have to come with her, but Elizabeth had just said that perhaps she had her own motives, with the kind of benign smirk no one should’ve been capable of in the dead of night.
But then no one else was Elizabeth Black, a woman who looked like she’d been struck by lightning, sounded like she’d swallowed the lightning, and acted like she’d then fought the lightning and won.
They hadn’t said a word to each other since Hangman’s Hill, but then there was no need. Elizabeth would never have pushed Alex to talk about the nightmare, not when there was a perfectly good therapist she saw every Wednesday morning, even if the next Wednesday morning was the best part of a week away.
That didn’t mean Elizabeth wouldn’t have made assumptions, though, especially about the house.
Maybe she thought the dream was about that day ten years ago, when Alex and Matthew, screaming at each other in their bridal finery, had taken down the house with their Power.
Or maybe about David’s death, when Uncle Harry had smashed Alex’s father’s skull against the table in the study.
Or maybe the séance in ’84 and how Carrie had been tricked into plummeting off Coldharbour Cliffs.
That house had seen it all, soaking up their Power and their blood and their fear.
Except there was no Power now.
Not for Alex, not for Matthew, not for Elizabeth.
To think that any of them had taken it for granted – being able to heal on command or to see ghosts or to just know or feel things …
And Alex’s Power had been growing so strong.
Eleanor had said so.
Matthew had said, when it was all over, when they’d finally defeated Eleanor, that maybe Alex would miss her Power.
But she didn’t miss it.
She just found herself, sometimes, reaching out for something that didn’t come flying into her hands, or something would fall from somewhere and she’d reach out to freeze it and it just smashed against old tiles, or she’d look at someone and struggle to read their face because there was nothing filling in the gaps.
Power wasn’t everything.
She’d made that clear to Eleanor, but now she was dreaming of her.
Dreaming of her scorching hands dragging her towards the well, and how the hell could Alex have ever told Elizabeth that?
“Oh, you know your evil twin sister who murdered you twice and had a good go at the rest of us? The one that, you know, traumatised the entire family? Maybe her soul is creeping back into the Land of the Living after all, cos she’s grabbing at me in my dreams and the dreams feel too real—”
“Darling?”
Alex blinked back into awareness. Elizabeth was ahead of her, but their hands were still just about entwined, fingertips caught on bitten nails (Alex) and perfectly painted ones (Elizabeth, of course). Over the fluorescent crackle and hum of the one working street light, Alex asked how long she’d been just …
Standing there.
“Thirteen seconds,” Elizabeth said, her stare heavy and solemn, even in the shadows.
“I was just thinking,” Alex said. “Daydreaming. Nightdreaming?”
“Aye,” Elizabeth murmured, “I know.”
They also both knew Alex was due a dosage check in the New Year.
Alex was about to insist that she was fine, falling back on that old lie.
But it hadn’t been a lie, not for the best part of a year – except for the odd moment of flinging something fragile at a wall or hyperventilating in the store cupboard – but now in the witching hour when all those old monsters loomed larger than the living, when Alex’s bones were rattling under her flesh and she couldn’t pretend it was just the biting cold …
“My dreams are just dreams, aren’t they? I mean, they’re not real any more? Even if it’s The Other Side, it’s not … Cos I’ve not got Power. Yeah?”
“Whatever you saw there,” Elizabeth confirmed, “wasn’t real.”
Coldharbour II: The Dead Land comes out on Halloween. You can pre-order it – and read the first in the series, Coldharbour: A Gothic Tale of Love and Death, now.
