Bound In Blood (The Adams' Witch Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the body of a woman, her mouth agape in horror.
    I drew in a sharp breath. Drake moved closer to me so I turned my gaze on him. A sly smile graced his face.
    He put his arm around me, pulling me closer. “Are you scared?” he whispered.
    I couldn’t speak. These people were freaking crazy. My eyes darted through the crowd, looking for a policeman—somebody—who might stop this.
    “Don’t worry. We always do this on opening night,” Drake said, pulling me even closer, rubbing my shoulder with his hand.
    I wanted to scream at him to do something, to help the poor woman. He only sat smiling, eyes bright with anticipation. I knocked his hand off me and pulled away, but before I could wiggle completely free and run to the fire pit, the cotton clothes the woman wore caught fire from the reaching flames underneath.
    The flames spread fast. The waistline already edged with black char before the fire incinerated it. Dark gray smoke furled over the helpless woman and puffed up toward the blood red sky.
    My breath clogged my throat. I didn’t know whether to scream first, or cry.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    Isabella
    1639
     
    Isabella stared at the timbered ceiling, a chill freezing her to her core. When sleep had come to her earlier, it threw her in fits of nightmares, soaking her bedclothes through with sweat. The damp linen cloaked her in cold terror.
    For hours, as surely the sun would be forging daybreak soon, sick images threatened beyond mindfulness, beyond waking truths. A line of women on wooden crosses drifted past her eyes. Dark red and orange flames enveloped the screaming, crying women, as one after the other, a bed of hay and blackthorn at their feet caught fire from Magistrate Ludington’s torch.
    She saw Mrs. Worth, her two children reaching out for her. Louisa Pyle gone mad, pleading with her parents to save her. Martha Compton was trying to break free, the cross swaying to and fro until the first lick of flames got her.
    Then there were two on the end, who she recognized not, for their faces turned in toward one another. They did not weep or struggle, but stood proud, unfeigned, until a gentleman from the swarming crowd of villagers came forth from the shadows.
    Father?
    It was him. She could do nothing but watch as he paled white with the anger filling him. There was a set to his shoulders, a stiffness settling in that she recognized from the evenings when he had done all he could in the fields with little to show for it. The two women turned toward him, revealing their faces.
    They had the same golden yellow hair, made brighter by the fire now burning at their feet. The same hair Isabella could feel now, matted to her neck in the sanctity of her bed. The same color hair Thomas called ‘the hair of angels’.
    Orange flames reflected off single tears that sparkled like stars, two tears that dripped from the faces of her and her mother. Tears shed for their husband, for their father, who must now live without them.
    Isabella found it impossible to keep the images from her mind though her eyes were dry and tired from staring relentlessly upwards to see every corner of the dark room and the jumping shadows that hid there.
    Mrs. Worth? Impossible. She manages a family, a husband, which she honors and respects.
    Isabella drew in a fearful breath. Her head ached from lack of sleep. Though Thomas would call her naïve, a country girl, she believed Mrs. Worth to be a righteous woman. As righteous as her or her mother.
    Isabella tore the covers from her and moved to the desk her father purchased for her birthday. Just enough moonlight leaked in through the window to write and she wanted a letter for Thomas as he asked. She dared not use up another candle for her mother, Mrs. Lynne, would scold her again.
    Isabella trailed her fingers along the wood and then around the outside. They brushed along a row of ridges. She twisted to see what her fingers found. There, in the very corner of the small desk