The Crumpled Sword Read online

  The Crumpled Sword - Text copyright © Sydney Presley 2017

  Cover Art by Emmy Ellis © 2017

  Images from Pixabay

  All Rights Reserved

  The Crumpled Sword is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  The author respectfully recognizes the use of all trademarks.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from Sydney Presley.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s written permission.

  THE

  CRUMPLED

  SWORD

  SYDNEY PRESLEY

  Prologue

  “David Arthur Jolie, wake up.”

  He heard her, that big sister of his who always seemed to want to hurt him—in between being nice. David had grown up so far in part fear of Rachel, and her constant insistence that she harm him in some way, be it scratching or pinching, kicking or poking, had him terrified at times. He tried not to let her see it, the fear. Tried to act like a tough boy, as though what she did had no effect on him.

  He didn’t want to let her know he’d woken up. If he pretended he was asleep, she’d go away, wouldn’t she?

  No, she wouldn’t. She never had before. She’d keep on until he opened his eyes and took whatever she wanted to dish out. At ten, she had four years on him, was stronger, devious, and well able to make out to their parents that she hadn’t done anything to him at all. That he pinched and hurt himself. A conniver, that’s what she was sometimes.

  “I know you’re awake, brother of mine,” she whispered in the malevolent way she adopted when she visited him during the night. It was so different from her ordinary little girl voice, which was like any other ten-year-old girl’s—sweet and innocent, a kind of melody that was a balm to their mother’s soul, so she’d said.

  He imagined his sibling’s flame-red hair, her lime-green eyes—the only one in their family with such coloring. David had heard once, by eavesdropping (much to his shame), that she was an anomaly, sent to them from the Angels of Wereling, and they claimed she was a special shifter who would do great things once she became an adult. That’s what their father had interpreted from his dreams, anyway, and so he treated Rachel like a princess and David a pauper.

  David was just a kid, a normal werewolf, nothing special, and he was reminded of that fact on a daily basis. Him ratting on her was always put down to jealousy on his part, the younger brother sulking in the shadow of his sister’s shimmering exuberance. That wasn’t the case at all, it really wasn’t, but they never believed him, his family choosing to blame him for every one of Rachel’s misdemeanors, even though he protested that he hadn’t done what he’d been accused of. He apparently wanted to be the red-headed, lime-eyed wonder, his father had said. He wanted to do great things, his mother had said.

  Untrue, all of it. All he wanted was for her to leave him alone.

  “Please,” he whispered back. “Not tonight, Rachel.”

  “Not tonight?” she asked. “It has to be tonight.”

  “Hurt me tomorrow.” With his quilt over his head, he shivered, despite his breaths coming out heavy enough to warm the air.

  “No. I can’t.” Rachel sounded petulant. A brat. “She said it has to be now.”

  “She?”

  Who was she?

  “Yes, I do whatever she says. I thought you knew,” Rachel said.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “She said you knew. She makes me do it.”

  Rachel’s whisper had David shivering even more. It had a chilling quality to it, always did when she was like this, and if he were looking at her right now, he’d bet her eyes were glowing, her hair seemingly on fire as it so often appeared in the dead of night. He hated seeing Rachel that way. It meant she’d hurt him bad. Meant she’d draw blood.

  “I don’t ever want to hurt you,” she said.

  “Why do you then?”

  “If I don’t, she’ll hurt me. She watches. She knows everything. She told me that, too.”

  The idea of someone watching them frightened David even more. “Where does she watch us from?”

  “She’s all around. We don’t see her, but she’s there. I only see her in my dreams, though. She said…she said I have to take out your eyes so you can’t see the one you’re meant to be with, whoever that is. You’ll ruin her if you get together with that person.”

  David didn’t understand and said so.

  “I don’t understand, either,” she said, “but she takes control of my body. I…I can’t stop her.”

  David poked his head out from under the quilt. Rachel’s eyes weren’t blazing in the darkness, and neither was her hair. She was a shadow shape, that was all. So whoever she was, she hadn’t quite got a hold on Rachel yet tonight. Maybe in two minutes, maybe in five, his sister’s eyes would light up and David would suffer.

  “Tell her no?” he asked. “Go back to bed and fall asleep, and when she appears in your dreams, just say no?”

  “I’ll try. But I might have to come back in here.”

  Rachel shuffled out of his room, and he wondered why tonight? Why had she told him about the woman in her dreams tonight and not before? Was Rachel scared of her? Was the woman’s request just too much for Rachel? Taking out his eyes was more evil than anything Rachel had done to him in the past. Maybe that was why she’d revealed that someone else directed her actions. And that was just weird, wasn’t it? Unheard of unless it was the Angels of Wereling doing it.

  David hid under the quilt again and closed his eyes. But he didn’t sleep. He stayed awake until morning, and when he heard Rachel’s voice coming through the old and weary floorboards, chatting to their mother as though nothing untoward was going on, he thought it was safe for him to get up.

  Safe for now, anyway.

  * * * *

  The sun shone bright this morning, the rays bouncing off the lake’s surface. David had managed to get through breakfast unscathed, and Rachel seemed to have forgotten their nighttime conversation. That was fine by David—he wasn’t about to remind her. If he did, she might take his eyes out at some point today, and he wanted to see that beautiful sun go to bed again, sinking behind a hazy horizon, not have blood pouring down his face and pain shrieking in his eye sockets.

  The craft he and Rachel sat in—basically a deep-sided rowboat with a small motor—bobbed with the gentle current. Trees surrounded the lake, and somewhere in those trees to the right stood their cabin, the home ensconced in the woods so no one apart from family, the postman, and a few people from the village knew it was there. Hikers stumbled across it from time to time and knocked on the door for a cup of water or directions to High Ford Peak, but other than that, they were left alone to live as they saw fit. Which was, as their mother had often told them, in seclusion because of what they were.

  Crags of rock stuck out from the water, individual islands they had to navigate around and between whenever they set off from the shore. It was like looking at a map of the world if viewed while standing at the top of High Ford Peak. Sometimes, after he’d climbed the hill, David wished it was a map and that he could jump down onto one of the crags, which would be his own private island, and live away from the family he didn’t seem to fit into.

  While Rachel cast her line out into the depths, David imagined being at home, in the back garden, pulling up carrots or a swollen, knobbly cauliflower t
o go with the salted pig that had been hanging in the shed for a while now. David had already snagged some potatoes from the ground earlier this morning, and the feast he envisaged had his stomach rumbling. If they caught fish today, though, the pig would be off the table.

  David hoped they didn’t catch a thing.

  “I’m tired,” Rachel said. “Watch the line, will you?”

  She clambered away from the side and propped herself against the bowed back end of the boat, half sitting, half prone. Eyes closed, she was soon snoring, and David judged by the position of the sun that he would wake her up once it glittered behind the largest tree in the woods, the one that loomed over their cabin and gave him nightmares if he stared at it through the window before floating to the Land of Nod.

  Tired himself, he found his head bobbing every once in a while, the heat of the day luring him to shut his eyes and catch up on the sleep he’d lost, too. He scooped water from the lake into his hands then splashed his face, the cold shocking him alert. The rod didn’t get tugged—no bites from the fishes. He was hot and bored, sweat dripping down his temples and spine, and throughout the hour he kept half an eye on Rachel. He didn’t trust her not to sneak up on him and give him pain.

  The sun had moved so slowly, but it hung beyond the tallest tree now. He imagined the rays beating down on the washing on the line in their small back garden, sheets drying to a crisp and smelling of summer. David turned to prod Rachel’s leg, make her rouse, but she was already awake and stared at him with her startling eyes, her vibrant hair seemingly alight—Oh, God, no—and his stomach turned over.

  “She’s got to you,” he whispered.

  Rachel nodded, and it seemed a part of her real self was still able to get through—she frowned and her mouth skewed in what he thought might be sorrow.

  “I can’t stop her now,” Rachel said. “Not now my hair…my eyes… I’m so sorry… You stop her. Stop me. Kill me or I’ll end up killing you.”

  Aghast, he nodded back, although he wasn’t going to kill her. That wasn’t right. Panic wrenched him to his feet so the boat swayed and the fishing line slid from its holder and into the water. Rachel zipped to standing in an instant and came toward him, her hands outstretched, her fingernails suddenly longer than they’d ever been. And while he didn’t understand how, he knew why they had grown so quickly—they were primed to dig into his eye sockets and send him blind.

  She gripped his head, those spiteful nails scraping his scalp, and he took hold of her wrists and tried to pull her hands off. Useless. Rachel always had been stronger…

  “I will fucking kill you,” she said, her voice not hers but someone else’s—some woman’s—and it had to belong to another person, because she’d cursed. Rachel never cursed.

  David managed to free himself and backed away, panting and gawping at her, wondering what he was supposed to do now.

  Get her away from you until the fire-hair goes out.

  She advanced again, lunged, and there was nothing he could do but dive into the lake. She hissed at him over the side of the boat, hands raised, talons longer still, and her hair and eyes grew brighter.

  “I’ll do it, yes, Idaline,” she whispered then lurched at him, grabbing but missing him by a meter.

  He had a moment to wonder who Idaline was and know that it was her, she, then his only option was to swim to the back of the boat, the water fighting against him, pushing him away from what he wanted to do.

  Must keep us apart.

  He tugged at the motor cord—one, two, three yanks—and got himself away from the propeller as quickly as possible. The boat leaped at the sudden thrust of the engine, and with no one directing the craft, Rachel wavered, losing her footing.

  She disappeared down into the boat.

  Treading water, he watched as his sister headed for one of the tallest island crags.

  Then he closed his eyes.

  Oh, God, what have I done?

  Chapter One

  David stood halfway up High Ford Peak, staring down at the lake. It still looked like a map of the world all these years later, but the beauty of the scene didn’t erase the guilt he carried with him. Rachel had been gone three decades now, an accident he hadn’t intended leading to her death. The boat was supposed to have sped between the crags until it reached the other side and surged up onto the bank. The sudden shift of Rachel falling into the boat had changed its direction and—

  He sighed. There was absolutely nothing he could do about it now, although it didn’t stop him from reliving it every anniversary—at other times, too. She had been dead at ten years old and he’d become a murderer at six. That’s what his parents had implied. Of course, they hadn’t said it outright, but their lime-eyed, flame-haired daughter who had apparently been destined for so much could no longer fulfill whatever prophesy had been set out for her by the Angels of Wereling. And it wasn’t any use expecting David to do whatever Rachel had been fated for. David was useless.

  They’d actually said that one to him.

  He turned so he faced away from the lake and gazed across at the forest. The chimney of the family cabin peeked out, the red-brick rectangle at odds with the lush greenery surrounding it—pines, oaks, a few birches. It had been tough to enter the property—for different reasons than those in the past. Before on his visits, he’d feared the repeated silent accusations from his parents, but they were no longer there, dying themselves a fortnight ago in a similar boating accident to Rachel’s. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it would be his turn next. Swallowed up by a lake that wanted to digest all the Jolies and keep them in its wet, marsh-riddled belly.

  Three members of the same family so far, their bodies unfound by the local search and rescue. How was that possible? Even the Angels of Wereling hadn’t been successful in their attempts to bring the Jolies back to the surface so they could have a proper, decent burial. David knew little about his heritage or the Angels, but he knew those Angels were supposed to help whenever they could. Had they even tried to find his parents and sister?

  He sighed. Once again he would be setting out a marker in the cabin garden—no, two this time—that represented graves for bodies that weren’t even there. It had been his job, penance as a child, to place Rachel’s homemade wooden cross, the thing heavy and cumbersome in his tiny hands, but he’d managed it in the end. Yes, it stood haphazardly, leaning to the left a bit, but it was there as a reminder of what he’d done to her.

  Two weeks ago, David had not only returned to help with the search of the lake but to also find out what the hell had happened to his parents that day. His mother hadn’t gone fishing as a rule—she hadn’t liked the water at all, even more so once Rachel had been submerged beneath it—so why the change of heart? Had his father insisted? It wasn’t hard to imagine that. What Len Jolie wanted, Len Jolie got.

  Had got.

  David’s job would be made more challenging with the lack of witnesses. Out here, people rarely fished, the hike from the town too far. Why come all the way to the lake for fresh trout or whatever if it was available from the local fishmonger or supermarket? And who ate trout these days, anyway? He’d refused to eat it since Rachel—

  After a huge sigh had left him breathless, David began the slow walk back down High Ford Peak. It was rough going—all that uneven terrain and brambles that snagged at the hems of his jeans—but he made it to the bottom with only a couple of minor scratches to his bare arms. The sun shone as brightly as it had thirty years ago and, funny enough, it dawdled behind the same tree as it had when David had turned to wake Rachel from her nap. Maybe not so much of a coincidence as he’d like to think. His subconscious would have dragged him up the peak at the correct time. It always did.

  He reached the cabin, his skin overheated and screaming out for a cooling shower. He let himself in through the scarred wooden door, thinking if he were to sell the place that it would need a bit of an overhaul beforehand. It was sturdy enough, just dated and crying out for a coating of fresh paint
and some new flooring. The furniture was all right, nothing modern, but it wasn’t too old-fashioned, either. Could be classed as retro these days, with the nineteen-seventies vibe going on.

  He climbed the stairs, heading for the bathroom. The tub stood on four dumpy legs, the shower not electric but it had enough power behind it to give the body a decent blast. Once refreshed by the warm water and pine-scented soap his mother had loved to make, he dried off and wandered into his old room for fresh clothing. While he dressed, he remembered the night Rachel had told him the woman called Idaline directed her thoughts and actions. The next day, until she’d gone weird in the boat, she’d been her usual self. He stared at the floorboards, the ones he’d heard Rachel and his mother talking beneath, and crouched to look through the inch-wide gap between two of them, a loose knot he’d poked out as a kid. Yes, he’d look, just for old time’s sake, and see what memories it gave him.

  Someone stood in the kitchen.

  David bit back a shout of alarm. Who the fuck had the cheek to enter the cabin without knocking? It took him a moment to remember where he was. Things were different here. Residents left their doors unlocked, and people walked into homes unannounced and planted themselves in a chair until the owner came back. Nothing like the city where he lived now—a doorbell or knuckles were a visitor’s best friend there.

  He got up, composed himself by taking a few deep breaths, then made his way down the stairs. At the kitchen doorway, he studied the visitor, who had his back to David, staring out through the window into the rear garden—a bloke, close to six feet, dark hair, medium-to-large build.

  “Can I help you?” David asked, walking into the room.

  The man’s body jolted, then he whizzed round, eyes wide as though he was severely alarmed—or was that surprised? He seemed to center himself and smiled.