Revenant: Black Rose Files Book 2 (The Black Rose Files) Read online

  It sounded again a moment later, and Sam moved.

  A few buildings down, in the small alleyway along the side of the hardware store, she found the source.

  Two boys and another two girls were there, with one girl huddled close to the dirt path of the alley. She was much younger than the other three, who hovered over her. The one on the ground convulsed with dread.

  She knew one of the boys. She dealt with Tommy Parker more than once; as he got older, he was becoming a common nuisance to the town.

  The other two she remembered, but did not know the names of.

  The little girl wore a long dress, but it, and her short brown hair, was covered in clods and specks of dirt. Her arms were over her head. Small patches of redness were all over her skin.

  As soon as the older kids realized Sam's presence, they dropped the hunks of dirt in their hands, and the other boy made moves to make a run for it, but Samantha raised her hand.

  "Don't you move." She glared at Tommy, her hand dropping back to her hip. "What's going on here?"

  As soon as she heard Sam's voice, the little girl jerked her arms from her head. She came to her feet and ran across the padded dirt until she was behind Sam, using the woman as a shield.

  "Nothing at all, officer," Tommy said, an uneasy smile coming to his lips. "We're just playing. Isn't that right, Jenny?" He crossed his arms before him, staring not at Sam, but the frightened thing behind her.

  Sam pursed her lips, her anger barely in check. She despised bullies, and Tommy was notorious for being one of the worst.

  "That's not what I saw, Tommy." Sam moved a step forward. "Maybe we should go explain to your dad about the kind of playing you're up to..."

  She took a chance with the threat, knowing his father was not the kindest person she knew of. The other two kids looked scared enough to not be a problem, but Tommy hardened his own gaze back at her.

  "We were just messing around, Officer Miller. He wouldn't care."

  She did not have much option but to let them go, though she could infer what was going on before she appeared. She also did not want to make things worse for the little girl hiding behind her. If Sam pressed too hard, Jenny would be the brunt of his ire, and would do it in a place and way Sam could not help with.

  She set her eyes on each of them. The other two were nervous, and likely were just following whatever Tommy led them to do.

  "Go home, all of you," she finally said. "Don't let me see you back at the festival again."

  "Come on, Tommy," the older girl begged, pulling his sleeve and turning away.

  He yanked his arm from her reach and moved closer to Sam.

  Sam was not sure what he intended to do, but she brought her fingers closer to the gun on her hip.

  "Don't be stupid," she ordered, trying to keep an even tone, but the acid in her stomach churned.

  He stopped and glared at her, defiance across his face. "You don't own me." His voice rose in volume.

  "Go home, Tommy." She held her hand back as the sensation of Jenny moving behind her came; the tremble of her body kept pressing into her. "Go now, before you do something you regret."

  Please don't make me do this. The plea echoed through her mind as she tensed up more. Flashes of images swept through, knowing the situation could turn desperate in a heartbeat.

  Finally he backed a step away, though his eyes still locked on her own. She saw it in him, then. He could be dumb enough to make a move against her, to charge at her in some kind of stupid act.

  To what end? To impress his friends, somehow? They were cowering along the wall, pleading with him to go.

  Finally, Tommy said, "Aw, we were just playing around."

  He turned from Sam and walked away. "Come on; this is boring anyhow."

  Sam watched as the trio ran, disappearing around the corner of a building. She stayed in place until she could see them no longer, then turned her attention to the still-frightened little girl behind her.

  "You okay, Jenny?" she asked, coming down to her level. Dirt and grass covered her tiny frame, but Sam could see no real harm had come to her from her encounter.

  Sam brushed away some of the larger bits of dirt clinging to her face and hair as the girl sniffled, her shaking slowing.

  "You okay, honey?"

  A subtle nod came as the response, followed by a deep breath as Jenny tried to hold everything in.

  The soft breeze picked up, kicking some of the dust in the alley into the air. Sam glanced around, noticing the tornadoes formed by the wind bouncing against the side of the building.

  When she looked at Jenny again, the girl stopped quivering and stood stock-still. Her arms were at her sides and her back was straight and stiff.

  "Where are your parents?" was forming in her mind when she backed up a pace, rising to her feet.

  The eyes of the girl changed, from the blue and white she saw a moment before, into fully black. There was no other color to them at all. They had become a thick pool of dark oil and nothing more.

  Jenny's mouth opened. "Darkness comes..." The words were guttural, barely above a whisper.

  "What?" Sam regained her footing and moved closer again. As she reached out to touch Jenny, the black faded from her eyes. It ended as fast as it appeared.

  Jenny shook her head, the stringy fuzz drifting into her face twirling about in the diminishing wind. She swiped her hair back, and turned away.

  As she started to run, Sam shouted, "Wait!" Before she could manage a step, however, Jenny rounded the corner of the building.

  Samantha reached it herself, but the little girl was gone.

  What the hell?

  Samantha looked around for a little while but saw no sign of the girl. She could have become lost in the crowd of people at the festival. She even asked a few people if they knew a girl named Jenny, but none did.

  The pounding in her head worsened, muddying her thoughts. By the time she gave up her search for the girl, she was wondering if she really saw what she thought she did.

  It all occurred so fast, her perceptions could have misfired, seeing something not there.

  Even as it came to her mind, she felt it was wrong. It was real. It had to be.

  The whole thing, from the moment she rounded the corner and saw Tommy and his cohorts there, to the little girl vanishing into the crowd, was so unnerving to her, by the time she made it back home and sat in front of her easel, she was questioning her own sanity.

  Could it have been the way her nerves were firing because of Tommy? Sam's fright and anxiety over the thought of having to do harm to him to get him to stop was so strong in those moments, short as they were. Everything was suspect because of it.

  She put a fresh canvas on the easel and stared at the blank white. Exhaustion ruled her, but she also wanted to purge the things she saw, to get them out onto the bare fabric and out of her mind.

  But where to start?

  After a little while, she mixed the colors she thought she would need on the palette she liked to use. She set the brush to the canvas and laid down the first brown stroke.

  It did not take long for her to detach from herself, to allow her hands to create what they wanted while her focus drifted. Soft music from her radio became white noise, diminished into near nothingness while they moved.

  Sam loved moments like these, where she did not have to think or do anything more than allowing the paint to go where her subconscious wanted it to be.

  Shades of brown and green made the background, while other colors blended together to make a figure. She needed to get Jenny on the fabric, to capture on the canvas when she changed.

  When small waves of dizziness passed through her, she paid no mind. They were unimportant to the moment, there to distract and nothing more. She wrote them off as being products of her exhaustion and headache, which still pounded even through the disconnected feeling she painted through.

  As she went from heartbeat to heartbeat, breath to breath, Sam saw the small child emerge f
rom the paint, fleshed out further as she concentrated on one inch after another. Strands of hair, shadows beneath the eyes, all transferred from brain to brush.

  Another dizzying moment made her stop and the brush dropped to her lap, clattering against the plastic palette. Sam's vision blurred, washing away her ability to see more than the light in the room, and darkness tinged even that around the edges.

  She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to scatter the wave. It was heavy and unresponsive, as if trapped in a thick pool of oozing fluid.

  When she opened her eyes again, though, her vision partially cleared, and she locked her own to those on the painting.

  They were not Jenny's. They were not even the black, oily things she swore she saw in that fleeting moment of time in the alley.

  They belonged to someone else, and as she unfocused from them and looked at the picture overall, it was not the girl she encountered that day, but the one she had spent so much searching the woods for.

  Cassie was on the canvas, her face turned down in sadness.

  The dizzy feeling came again. The palette she held in her hand crashed to the floor, bouncing loud against the wood. A strange musty odor entered her nose, and she gagged against it, a cough coming from her lips. Her vision blurred again, and she began to fall.

  As she did, the painting on the easel shifted, kicked by her legs as they crumpled beneath her. The sight of Cassie / Jenny morphed with it, the colors fading away, drained in a heartbeat.

  Jolting pain flared at the back of her head, as her skull met the wood. The loud boom in her ears drowned every other sound, but through the haze beginning to block out her vision, the easel stop staggering.

  The last thing she saw before the darkness consumed her was a black figure replace what her brush created.

  Then her world faded.

  Chapter 4

  Samantha woke with the strange clicking noises, her leg twitching.

  She tried to move it again, but it took its time to respond. Maybe it was the pain in her head.

  The ache was so strong she did not even want to open her eyes, but the clamor coming from somewhere outside of herself was just as insistent. All of the discomfort centered at the back of her head, and, as she came back to full awareness, she had difficulty piecing together what happened.

  She sat up as the noise rose once more, realizing it was the sound of a knock on her door, loud and unmerciful to the hurt it brought her.

  She gingerly touched the spot on her skull and regretted it as it caused another bout of pain to spark.

  Sam tried to stand, pushing up with her hands and gripping the stool she always sat on at her easel. She had to stop when a wave of grogginess threatened to spill her back to the floor again. It passed, though, and she was able to manage getting to her feet.

  She had to be still for a moment, letting the woozy feelings pass, before she could try taking a few steps.

  Samantha glanced at the canvas, pushed so far sideways across the slats of the easel that it was ready to tip off. She narrowed her eyes and bit at the inside of her lip when she saw the only thing on the fabric was a mix of colors and the outline of a girl, but nothing distinct in any way.

  "Sam?" A muffled shout came from the front of her house.

  She passed through the hall to the door as the knob was jiggling. "You there, Sam?"

  The familiar figure of her brother, concern plastered across his face, met her as she opened the door. She had to blink and turn away from the bright morning light pouring through the opening.

  "What's up, Bart?" she asked, barely audible. The catch in her throat from lack of use left most of the words incomprehensible.

  He seemed to take in her state in only a moment. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

  She did not want to deal with him, but he pushed his way past her into her house and she sighed as she closed the door and turned toward him once more.

  "What happened to you?"

  "I'm okay," she answered, knowing it was a lie, but she was still trying to put it together, herself.

  "Then explain the blood on the back of your head."

  She touched it again, realizing there was not only a pain when she did, but that the hair around it was matted. Sam had not realized the fall made her bleed. How much had she lost?

  "I fell, that's all." She wiped her hands on the jeans she put on when she got home from the festival, hoping he would leave it alone at that.

  "Let me see," he said, grasping her shoulders and turning her around. She relented, though the quick movement made her feel a little ill, but it passed after only a second.

  He pulled at her hair, moving it aside to look at the damage the fall did. Her head hurt with the prodding, but she gritted her teeth against it, wishing he would get it over with fast.

  "You really did a number on yourself," Bart finally said, letting her go and stepping back. "You should have someone check you out, but you might need a stitch or two. How the hell did you do it?"

  "I don't need a doctor," she said, redness coming to her cheeks. She did not know how she would explain what happened to anyone. "Like I said, I just fell, no big deal." She walked past him into the kitchen. "There's not really anything else to tell."

  Sam pulled an ice pack from the freezer and began wrapping it in a cloth. Bart followed her steps into the kitchen.

  "When you didn't show up again this morning, I tried to call a few times. I was about a minute away from kicking in your door when you finally opened it."

  She put the ice pack on the back of her head and winced as it touched. She forced herself to let it stay, though, and sat in one of the chairs around the kitchen table.

  "Sorry," she muttered. "Just been really tired."

  Bart stared at her for a moment longer, then opened the refrigerator himself and began pulling a few things out. He dug out one of the pans from her cupboard and sat it on the stove.

  She protested him making her breakfast, but he shrugged her off, telling her eating would make her feel better. Until the cooking food made her start salivating, she thought eating would be the last thing she wanted.

  He made a double batch of eggs and toast and sat down across from her with his own plate full. Sam sat the ice pack aside and took a small bite.

  It was delicious; Bart was always good with eggs. She wolfed it down quickly, sopping up the last of the yolk with the bread.

  As she took the last bites, he said, "So, are you going to tell me the truth? I fed you, you owe me."

  She laughed a little at his smile, barely seen behind the thick mustache. "And we were always taught to pay our debts, right?"

  He nodded and took another bite of egg.

  She sighed as she gathered her thoughts. She wanted to tell him everything, but where could she even start? So much had been going on, so many things in her life that seemed to be spiraling down the proverbial toilet, and she had a hard time pinpointing one exact thing or another that was the root cause.

  Finally, she relented. "Things have been hard for me lately. Ever since we could not find that little girl, it seems like I haven't been right at all."

  She felt a pressure in her chest release, a wash of relief as the ball of anxiety within her uncurled for just a brief moment of time. So much she had been holding in herself. Maybe admitting it aloud could do her good.

  He nodded and let his fork fall to the plate, clattering against the ceramic. He grabbed one of the small napkins she kept in a box at the edge of the table and wiped his mouth.

  "It's been hard on me too," he said, swallowing the last of what was left in his mouth. He tipped his hat slightly, a few tufts of his brown hair escaping from beneath it. Then he let his hands brace his chin as he stared at the table. "I really wanted to find her."

  "There had to be more we could have done," Sam said, bringing her own hands to the table in front of her. She swept at some crumbs that drifted from her plate to the wood grain. "Maybe if we had more people. Or if we were better organized
. We could have brought Cassie home."

  "What else could we do, Sam?" His brows raised, and he stared at her bluntly. "We searched for days and there was no trace of her. You know as well as I do there is a lot of ground out there that has never had anyone walk on it." He shook his head. "So many places she could have disappeared into..."

  "We could have called in the State boys," she said. The breakfast churned within her as the anxiety returned. The thought of that poor child being left out there to die alone wrenched her heart.