Blood Run
Authors: Christine Dougherty
The Blood Run Trilogy
Book One ~ First Promise
Book Two ~ Two Riders
Book Three ~ Last Chance
Christine Dougherty
The Blood Run Trilogy
By Christine Dougherty
Copyright © 2011 by Christine Dougherty
All Rights Reserved
The Blood Run Trilogy
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and/or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
For advanced information about this or other works by Christine Dougherty, sign up for the mailing list at:
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Contents
Also by Christine Dougherty
Faith, Creation, All Lies Revealed
Faith was three the first time her twin sister died. The second time, she was ten. Discover the paradox of Faith. Book One in the Faith Series.
Click here to preview and buy on Amazon
Darkness Within, A Collection of Horrorific Short Stories
These bone-chilling, mind-wrenching short stories will leave you wondering about the people around you…and yourself.
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Messages
James Smith is receiving messages. Will he find the right answers? Follow James as he pieces together the puzzle in this taut, psychological thriller. You'll be guessing until the last page.
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The Devil Stood Up
Could the Devil, Himself be the ultimate hero? This is the brutally told story of how the Devil, after countless millennia of strictly doing God’s will of punishing sinners in Hell, decides to lay down a Judgment of his own.
Click here to preview and buy on Amazon
Born Lucky, The JD Chronicles,
Adventures of a Reluctant Psychic
At three days old, JD was blown clear of the explosion that killed his mysterious parents and set him on a path of uneasy discovery. A reluctant psychic, JD chooses to live in the safe world of a mental institution, unable to control the things he ‘sees’…sometimes with unwelcome, and even dangerous, consequences.
Click here to preview and buy on Amazon
The Boat
The undead aren’t the greatest threat to those who have survived.
Click here to preview and buy on Amazon
Evil Eight, Eight Tales of Horror
This collection of short stories will have you up late into the night and then chase you down in the nightmares which are sure to follow. Zombies, Vampires, Ghosts and Human monsters alike crowd the pages of Evil Eight. Contains the best selling short story 'Stephen King'!
Click here to preview and buy on Amazon
Dedications
A special thank you to the early readers, Anne Francemore and Rich McGee for their insight and to Michelle Revelle, who shared a good portion of the 80s with me.
Thank you, Pauline Nolet, copy editor and proofreader, for keeping me tidy.
***
As always, dedicated to my husband, Steve Dougherty.
Love you, Biggie
***
Book One ~ First Promise
Chapter 1
1985
The horse’s hooves pounded the shadowed forest floor, kicking up clods of leaves and mud. The girl grasped the pommel with both hands and lowered herself into the wild thrash of the horse’s black mane. His breath streamed over her in hot, rhythmic clouds. She could feel the desperation in the straining muscles of his neck and shoulders, and her knees tightened on his sides. She’d never ridden him so fast, but now he ran as though his life–their lives–depended on it.
They did.
She chanced a look over her shoulder. The man was still behind them and, unbelievably, closing the distance. It didn’t seem possible; how could two legs hope to outdistance four? Yet it was true. The horse’s mane whipped across her face, stinging, but she could still see the man’s mouth gaped wide and black, a cavern that housed a damned soul. He was less than twenty yards from them, now less than eighteen and still accelerating, his dark and ragged clothing streaming behind him like the pennants on hell’s car lot.
“Please, Ash, run, run!” It was a whispered command, as there was no hope of the horse hearing her plea, even if she yelled. His pistoning hooves and the breath tearing through his great lungs drowned out all other sound. The world became a blur of passing trees, black mane, and overwhelming fear.
Then she saw the edge of the forest, the light and open pasture beyond, and her heart leapt into her throat. She squeezed Ash tighter between her knees and leaned all the way over, pressing her head next to the horse’s neck until she could hear the blood pump through his veins.
There was nothing she could do; it was up to Ash to get them to the clearing. They would make it. They would.
She glanced back once more.
To her horror, the man was nearly upon them. His neck seemed to have elongated and there was a dull fire in his bulging eyes. He seemed alight from the inside, and a muddy orange glow radiated from his widening eyes. He raised one white hand high over his head to deliver a blow, and his nails caught a dapple of sunlight. They blackened instantly, and a rill of smoke was there and gone like a rumor. The man screamed, it was a sound as empty and insane as screeching brakes on a rain-slicked highway, and he brought his hand around in a swipe, catching the retreating horse across one leg.
The horse’s answering scream was mingled pain and triumph as girl and horse breached the forest and burst into the gray white brightness of a mid-winter early afternoon. He continued to run until they were halfway across the field, and then the girl sat up and relaxed the pressure of her legs. Her trembling communicated itself through the reins to his sensitive mouth, and he slowed to a nervous canter and then huffed to a full stop, his head dropping almost to the ground. From a distance, it would have looked as though he’d merely stopped to try and crop the winter grass of the cold, January-brown field.
The girl dismounted, and her knees nearly buckled beneath her, but she turned anyway and checked back the way they’d come. No sign of the man. The forest was deep and deadly dark as ever, and she could see no movement there. They were safe, but her pounding heart didn’t seem to have yet gotten the message.
She unhooked a heavy, leather bag from over her shoulder and dropped it to the ground. It clunked as three wooden stakes rolled free. She leaned against the horse’s heaving flank, exhausted. Her long, black hair, so resembling the horse’s mane, fell like a curtain over her face, and she sighed, her chest hitching as tears tightened her throat in reaction.
“Hey, Promise!” A man’s voice.
She looked up, and her heart skipped in fear. Then calmed.
Mark and Lea were coming across the field from the other direction. Even from a distance, she could sense disapproval…Mark’s disapproval. “What are you doing out here alone?” he said, calling across the remaining distance. “You could get yourself killed!”
But disapproval wouldn’t stop her from hunting the beasts that had taken everything from her and from finding her lost heart: her changed little brother. She rubbed a hand across her face and then pulled her hair into a ponytail held by the disheveled pink scrunchie that her mom had given her–the last thing her mom had given her. She squared her shoulders as Mark and Lea came closer and contemplated the new name she’d given herself…Promise.
Until the day I rest in my grave, I will look for him,
she thought. The burden she shouldered felt both inevitable and right.
I made a promise
.
Chapter 2
Promise rode past Willow’s End, conscious of the sun, which seemed to perch along the distant tree line like a phoenix. She was conscious, too, of being very near her former life, when she’d been a girl named Destiny Riser and everything had been normal. The deserted houses and empty streets seemed somehow worse than haunted, and she urged Ash to go faster. His hooves clocked a hollow lament on the highway, and her old neighborhood slipped away behind them as they made their way to the outpost in Wereburg. Tears were drawn across her cheeks, and she wished her memories were as easily left behind.
Jim and Linda Riser, the parents of the girl formerly know as Destiny, had grown up in Wereburg and had started dating in 1963 while still in high school. Jim’s plans of attending community college after graduation were cut short by Linda’s unexpected pregnancy in late 1966. They did what people did–they got married–and Jim got a job at the local grocery store. Destiny’s arrival in June of 1967 coincided with Jim’s first promotion, and the young family was able to take an apartment just off of Town Center in an old Victorian that had been broken up into three residences. The Risers were on the top floor, and Linda kept house while Jim worked at the grocery. She tie-dyed a set of onesies for her baby daughter to match her own tie-dyed mini dresses. Destiny’s cradle was tucked under the eaves in the smallest bedroom. Western sun filled her nursery with a mellow white glow from morning until night.
Destiny was nine by the time her baby brother, Chance, was born. The Risers were by then living in Willow’s End with calm and mostly unthinking satisfaction.
Destiny loved her baby brother deeply at first sight and involved herself in everything from bottle-feeding to diaper changes. It seemed to her that she’d been waiting for him for as long as she could remember. She would sit cradling him without complaint as she watched
Little House on the Prairie
and daydreamed of being the fourth Ingalls sister. Even her friends weren’t always able to entice her away from time spent with the baby.
Linda and Jim were happily–if somewhat provincially–married. Linda was content to raise Destiny and Chance, and in time, Jim became the manager of the grocery store. As Destiny entered her double-digit pre-teen years, she found her parents to be more boring than infuriating, and she was not prone to the fights that some of her friends had with their parents. There was very little to conflict with them over, as she was a patient and mostly rule-following girl. She loved them dearly even though at times she felt a stirring within herself that was more impatience than pique.
Even her impatience was more with the slow, steady nature of existence, rather than with her parents themselves.
As the seventies became the eighties and Destiny turned thirteen, she started to chafe at the confines of a ‘normal’ family, a ‘normal’ town, a ‘normal’ life…it seemed to her that there must be something more than what she experienced on a daily basis. More than school, sports, homework, and living for weekends where you went to the lake or the movies–but never both in the same weekend. She understood that if she stayed on this trajectory it would turn into work, marriage, housework, children, and living for weekends where you went to the lake or the movies–but never both in the same weekend. There must be more to life than that.
Destiny was close to her mom and at fifteen, she’d broached the subject of her ‘is this all there is?’ feelings. She did so without fear of censure but with a limited ability to express what she felt. A bird who’s lived her entire life with clipped wings may know down deep that she can do
something
…she’s just not sure
what
. Her mom had been kind but vague, not really understanding her daughter’s yearnings.