Aerenden: The Child Returns (Ærenden) Read Online Free PDF Page A

wasn’t, but it is. The creatures
are Mardróch. Now get some sleep. You’ve been up all night and we have a long
drive ahead of us. We can talk when we get there.”
    Sleep
was the furthest thing from her mind. She wanted to scream, to run. She wanted
to shake Nick and break him out of whatever spell held him firm and emotionless
beside her. She wanted to wake, but the pain she had felt when she saw her
mother on the stairs, heard her father take his last breath, still ripped
through her and she knew this nightmare would never be over.
    Only
Nick could decipher what had happened, but his white knuckles on the steering
wheel and hard gaze on the highway told her there would be no conversation. He
remained focused on escape.
    Meaghan
opted to do the same. Closing her eyes, she let tears ease her into a dreamless
abyss.

CHAPTER FOUR
    S CREAMS ECHOED across
the cold air, startling Meaghan awake and shredding the small amount of peace
she had found. Yanking open her eyes, she gasped when blood filled her vision,
then eased from her sight in thick, crimson rivulets to reveal the dark wood of
her living room floor and the white risers of the staircase, stained pink with
her mother’s blood.  
    Logic
told her she should be in the car with Nick, escaping to an unknown
destination, but her mother’s body lay before her, twisted and tortured, bent
and bruised in death. Footsteps pounded the floor above her, but she ignored
them, dismissing the peril to focus on her mother’s pale face and the red hair
splayed across her shoulders. Meaghan reached out a hand to brush the strands
aside, to feel the softness of them between her fingers, but a stirring of her
mother’s body froze her.
    It
had not been much, only the slightest inflation of her mother’s chest, and Meaghan
would have credited it to imagination except it came again, this time accompanied
by rattling breath. Meaghan stepped back, and then froze once more when her
mother’s eyes opened, fixing Meaghan with a heavy stare.
    “Meg,”
her mother’s voice rasped. Red spittle escaped from her mouth, spraying the
front of Meaghan’s sweater. “Meg,” her mother repeated as she lifted her hand,
her fingers coated in dark, dried blood.
    Meaghan
swallowed hard. Her heart raced, but her hand drifted forward on instinct,
seeking her mother’s comfort.
    “Trust
him, Meg,” her mother’s lips moved, though her father’s voice escaped them. “Trust
Nick.”
    Meaghan’s
fingers closed around her mother’s. They felt hard, unyielding, like plastic.
    “You’re
in danger, Meg. Danger…There are things…I have to tell you….”
    Meaghan
fought to hold on to her mother’s words, but they faded, lost to the drone of
an unseen engine, the sound of rocks crunching somewhere beneath her. Then all
sound, including her mother’s voice, succumbed to silence. She squeezed her
eyes shut, opening them again to search for her mother’s face.
    She
found a black dashboard. Her eyes coasted along the smooth plastic to the car
door at her side and the handle grasped beneath her white knuckles. She
released her grip, turning her head when Nick coughed beside her. He watched her,
his eyes rimmed red, and she knew he was real and what she had just seen had
been a dream. Or rather, a nightmare.
    Her
mother was dead, and any secrets she had held had died with her.
    The
thought stabbed through Meaghan’s heart and her eyes drifted from Nick’s face,
seeking solace in whatever lay beyond the windshield.
    Dark
clouds had overtaken the sky, fulfilling their earlier promise with an onslaught
of rain and snow. Beyond the haze, she could make out the outline of tall trees
and low-lying brush that formed the edge of a thick forest.
    “What
time is it?” she asked.
    “Five,”
Nick said, his voice as hollow as her mother’s had been in her dream.
    She
nodded, too numbed by her own pain to acknowledge his. “Where are we?”
    “North
of the house by several hundred miles,” he answered.