The Curse Keepers Collection (106 page)
Read The Curse Keepers Collection Online
Authors: Denise Grover Swank
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Romance, #New Adult & College, #Paranormal, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban, #Romantic, #Ghosts
Ellie nodded, unsure what else to do.
“Someday you’ll fall in love. Find a man like your father, who loves you fiercely.” Her voice softened and Ellie strained to hear. “Don’t go for the flashy men, Ellie. They’ll only break your heart. My friends thought your daddy was boring, but he gave me a life full of so much love . . . ” Her voice broke and fear filled her eyes. “There’s so much to tell you and not enough time.”
“Momma, please,” Ellie cried. “
Pleasssse
. . . ”
“
Oh, Ellie
,” she whispered, sounding devastated. “I wanted to protect you from the ugliness of the world, and I brought it to your front door.” Her eyes fluttered and her grip on Ellie’s hand loosened.
Ellie watched her chest, waiting for Momma to take a breath and when it didn’t come, Ellie grabbed her shoulders and shook. “Momma! Please, Momma! Don’t leave me all alone.
Mommaaaaa!
” she screamed, shaking her mother and getting no response. She collapsed on her mother’s bloody chest, the smell of copper filling her nose as cries racked her body, ignoring the warm, sticky liquid covering her cheek and clothes.
Daddy had told her to protect Momma and she had let him down. What would he think of her now?
She sobbed on her mother so long that she felt the warmth of the body beneath her begin to seep away. Opening her eyes, she saw the shadowy figure of an older man with white hair and a white beard floating over the staircase. She should have been frightened, but somehow she knew he belonged to the voice that had helped her.
“Ellie, you are strong and brave. When it is your time, you will make an excellent Curse Keeper.”
She lifted her head in an exhaustion so deep she thought she would drown in it. “You said the man who killed Momma was a Keeper. I don’t want to be a Keeper anymore.”
“Elinor, you are
destined
to be a Keeper. It was foretold from the beginning of time. You are more special than any Keeper before you. I’ve been waiting centuries for you to arrive. The forces of nature have finally heard my plea and sent you so that I may finish the job I began with your ancestor, Ananias Dare. Tonight begins a chain of events that brings us to the end.”
“
I want my momma
,” Ellie wailed in anguish.
“Daughter of the sea and witness to creation, your first sacrifice has been made.” His light faded slightly, and he sounded sad.
“It will be the first of many.”
Ellie was too tired and in too much misery to care what he was saying. Luckily, the man seemed to have a similar idea in mind.
“Tonight the unraveling of the curse begins. But I will take all memories associated with the curse from you, so that the events of tonight will be locked deep in your mind. I need you to be willing to accept your role when the time comes.” The image moved closer and his voice softened. “But you will also lose all other memories of the curse. They’ve already begun to slip away. You will believe it is because you told Claire, and you will be filled with a heavy burden of guilt. I’m sorry, but it is the best way.”
Ellie looked up again, shaking her head as confusion overwhelmed her. “I don’t understand.”
“I know, but one day you will. When the time comes for you to know, you will remember everything.”
Then the light faded and he was gone, leaving Ellie with her mother. She looked down at her hands, realizing they were drenched in blood. Holding them out in horror, she glanced down and saw blood covering everything—her mother, her nightgown, Bunny, the floor. She started to scream.
A door downstairs banged and Ellie screamed louder. The bad men had come back, but she couldn’t make herself get up. She couldn’t leave Momma. Sobbing, she grabbed her mother’s arms and shook. “Momma, get up! Momma,
please!
”
“Ellie!” her father shouted in panic downstairs. “
Ellie!
”
She heard his footsteps on the stairs before his horror-stricken face appeared. His feet faltered, and he fell on his knees on the top step.
“Oh, God. Oh, God.” He crawled toward them, his eyes wide with fright. “Ellie? Where are you hurt?”
Ellie shook her head, trying to catch her breath. “Momma.”
He reached for her mother, carefully touching her shoulder with shaking fingers. “Amanda?” When she didn’t answer, he became more insistent. “
Amanda?
” He began to sob, grabbing her arms and pulling her up. Momma’s head leaned back, her long red hair hanging behind her. Daddy’s hand got tangled in it as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. “No!
God, no!
”
Ellie watched in horror as her father fell to pieces in front of her.
He rocked Momma back and forth, crying so hard he couldn’t catch his breath and uttering incoherent sentences.
“ . . . my fault . . . I shouldn’t have gone . . . ”
Ellie got to her feet and walked to her parents’ room, feeling like her body was moving and she was just watching it happen. She grabbed the phone off her mother’s bedside table, and her shaking fingers wouldn’t cooperate, making four attempts to press 911.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
The phone to her ear, Ellie moved to the bedroom door, not recognizing the man at the end of the hallway.
“Is there an emergency?” the operator asked.
“My momma,” she whispered. “She’s dead.”
“What happened?”
Ellie couldn’t answer. She could only stare at her parents. The events of the night had begun to fade, making her memories fuzzy.
“
Little girl?
” the operator became insistent.
Momma died because Ellie had told Claire about the curse. Momma died because of her.
This is all my fault
.
Dropping to her knees, tears filled her eyes as the horror of her guilt washed through her.
She had killed her mother.
A dark, bitter anger swelled in her chest, replacing her overwhelming grief. No, Ellie had played a part, but the stupid curse had killed her. Her chest burned with fury and she swore the curse was dead to her forever. She didn’t want to be part of something so evil that it would kill her mother.
“Little girl?” the operator repeated. “I’ve located your address and I’m sending a police car and ambulance now.”
Ellie dropped the phone to the floor and slumped against the wall, staring at her parents as her grief broke loose again, making everything move in slow motion and feel like it was a million miles away.
Her father continued to cry, mumbling about the curse and her mother’s death being his fault. She wanted to tell Daddy that it was her fault, not his, but he’d hate her. How could he not? She’d already lost Momma; she couldn’t lose Daddy too.
Ellie tried to imagine a world without her mother and came up with nothing—only darkness and despair and emptiness. But there was one thing she knew, the devastating proof in front of her: her life would never be the same.
The voice whispered in her ear.
“Yes, witness to creation. This changes everything.”
To my daughter Emma, whose stubbornness simultaneously exhausts and inspires me.
C
ONTENTS
C
HAPTER
O
NE
I felt the demon before I saw it. The mark on my palm tingled slightly, and the tattoo on my back began to burn.
“Curse Keeper.” The low voice floated in the wind.
I sighed. Yep. A demon. No one knew my recently initiated title except for the spirits and gods of the Croatan Indian tribe, along with five other people. I was Elinor Dare Lancaster—otherwise known as Ellie—multi-great-granddaughter of Ananias Dare, one of the original colonists from the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Only the colony wasn’t lost anymore. The entire thing had reappeared out of thin air a month and a half ago. The reappearance was the signal that a four-hundred-year-old curse had been broken, cracking the gate to Popogusso—the Croatan word for hell—and releasing a slew of spirits, demons, and gods that had been locked away by my ancestor Ananias and Manteo, the son of a Croatan Indian werowance. I was one of two Curse Keepers, a title passed down from generation to generation. While I was the Dare Keeper, Collin Dailey was the Manteo Keeper. And it wasn’t a coincidence that the curse had broken while he was on duty.