Page 47 of The Taking of House Westwood

She smiled back. “That’s Tani. She —”

A surprised curse silenced her. Owen craned his head toward the front.

“Hugh, to your left!” Isaac bellowed.

There was an awful screaming from the horses, and a pained grunt from someone in the driver’s seat. The wagon lurched once, then shook violently. Tani cried out, burying her face in Sophie’s back. Owen’s arm clutched tight to Sophie.

The wagon seemed to rise up from the front almost as if time had slowed to a crawl. Sophie heard Tani shriek in her ear, and then stars burst in her field of vision as her head struck something hard and unyielding. Her last conscious thought was of the weight of Owen’s arm being yanked violently away. Then blackness took her.

Chapter Eighteen

McClearn Farmstead

“These came for you this morning, Sir. Arrived by rider from Wyndhaven.” Rory’s wife Ilarra pressed another handful of letters into his hand. She pushed a lock of her straight blonde hair out of her eye, and left with a squeeze to Clayton’s arm.

More missives arrived every day. He’d written the letter to the guild that Isaac had haltingly dictated to him during his sporadic moments of lucidity. Considering the state Clayton had found his friend in, he considered it a miracle the man could speak at all.

He’d found Hugh Moren’s battered and broken body shortly afterward, his bright red blood soaked into the dirt of the road. The overturned and crushed wagon was next, the carcasses of the two horses torn to pieces.

Gods, so much blood.

And not a trace of Sophie or Owen.

He sipped from his tea, and sat down on the porch steps of the main farmhouse. The afternoon sun was waning, the colors muting, washing out into the grays and purples of the coming evening. The yard was empty, the fields deserted. Harvest was still a few weeks away, so the tending needs were minimal.

The hands avoided him at all costs. Even Rory seemed to limit his interaction with his friend and employer. Ilarra was the only person who seemed to treat him the same. Perhaps she was able to look past the sorrow etched into the crags of Clayton’s still handsome face. Maybe it was just relief that her Rory had been left safe on the farm, rather than being involved in the disastrous rescue attempt.

Clayton tore open one of the letters and read it. He set it aside on the weathered floorboards of the porch.

Another one.

He’d thought Isaac mad, the grandiose delusions of a man delirious from his head injury.

Clayton had been wrong.

From all over the land, the responses came, nearly all of them in the affirmative. He’d seen nothing like it since The Levy. Whatever the nocturne had put in motion was gaining speed, events now uncontrollable. He looked west at the setting sun. Clouds were billowing into the sky, their shapes tinged with ominous blues and purples. There would be storms soon.

He’d asked Isaac over and over if he could remember anything that may have happened to Sophie or Owen. Nothing. While he did remember Galan dying at the hands of one of the nocturne, he remembered nothing of the attack on the road. Usually, Ilara would shuttle him out of the room after a few minutes, admonishing Clayton that he needed to allow his friend to convalesce. It didn’t matter though.

Nothing mattered anymore. His daughter, his flesh.

Gone.

It would have been easier to have found their corpses in that wreckage. To have returned them to the ground with his own two hands, just as he’d done with his wife. Instead, he had the agony of the unknown, an unknowable fate at the hands of an implacable, monstrous enemy.

He remembered the last Incursion well. He remembered what the nocturne were capable of doing to captives. The thought made him tense with rage, with loss. “It cannot end this way.” he whispered, shaking with anger

It won’t, Clayton.

He looked down at the folded letter sitting on the porch, the paper fluttering in the evening breeze.

* * *

Chapter Nineteen

He closed the barn doors, the breeze having turned chill, the clouds blotting out the last of the setting sun. Perhaps the storms would reach the farm too. He’d thought of riding tomorrow. Just riding. Maybe he’d never come back.

Maybe he’d ride until he met his wife and daughter in the next life.

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