“You have a head start, little one,” he whispered. “So use it. Let your body run free and your soul run free along with it, until it gives up the fight and lets me take you. I’ll be following. Closely.”
I nodded, taking a breath, his words prickling my skin.
“Go,” he said.
And I went for it, as quickly as my giddy legs would carry me, and charged through the tunnel like a girl possessed.
Chapter Thirty-three
Thecoldstonewallsof the tunnel felt tiny around me. The lantern flickered, and my breaths sounded savage.
My body knew I was going to die.
I made it through the tunnel with my heart racing and threw myself through the door to the tomb under Garway church. I heard whispers sounding loud, as though I was in another world. Dead knights breathing secrets. Eerie lights shining from vaulted graves. Sacred, twisted, beautiful… almost beguiling. But I didn’t have time to stop and listen. I saw Hans’ coffin in the corner, and I knew the exit was somewhere on the opposite side, but no matter how frantically I searched, there was no door to be found. Did Hans create it? Was it imaginary? Was there no door at all and I was destined to die here in this tomb surrounded by the dead?
Be more careful amongst the dead, Katherine…
Hans’ words came slamming back to me, loud and clear in my head.
It was enough to make me shiver, so I started pounding a fist against the wall, desperate. There had to be an exit somewhere…
Come on. COME ON!
It was when I heard Hans’ slow, solid footsteps echoing through the tunnel that fear catapulted me to search faster, harder.
COME ON!
Open your eyes, little one!
I spun around to the tunnel, footsteps getting louder, echoing…
Open your eyes!
I spun back to the wall and there it was, a solid wood door with a big round handle. What the hell!?
I tugged it open to find steep stone steps leading up into the night. I bounded up them two at a time with the lantern still flickering, and found myself in the grounds of the church I’d come to know so well.
This couldn’t be real, surely? There was no door from the church to the tomb. I’d have seen it hundreds of times. Was this imagination? Was this whole thing one crazy fantasy of my mind?
My heart said no. My heart told me this was as real as real could be. The limits of the rational were fake, and my eyes were open to a whole other world.
The lantern flickered and died as I stood there, mesmerised.
Luckily the moon was bright enough to light my way.
The familiar gravestones were all around me as I hurried up the path and past the old yew tree. I kicked my heels off and took the long route up the bank at the far side, and the moonlight lit up the church in a midnight glow.
It was absolutely beautiful.
I got flashes, like cards being dealt one after the other of all the things that had happened here. So many people finding faith in the Lord, so many ceremonies and powerful events. Weddings, christenings, funerals, over and over in a cycle. Sunday services, and candles being lit in reverence, and people praying to God. And now there would be me, taking my final breath at the hands of the man I loved. ThevampireI loved.
The huge sense of fate was almost enough to sink my body into acceptance,almost. Until I saw the shadow of Hans approaching across the grounds.
No.
My body had a final surge of flight left in it. Just like on the cobblestones.
I kept stumbling further along the path, my bare feet soaked by the damp grass, until I broke from the familiar route and darted through the gravestones, just like I had as a little girl, and slammed straight into…