Chapter 8 - The Mark on the Skin
Leo didn't move. His boots felt glued to the gravel drive. His gaze darted from the smoking, motionless form of his father on the lawn to the older man holding the silver revolver. The air between them tasted of burned powder and stale ozone.
"Who are you?" Leo demanded, clutching the heavy leather ledger tightly against his chest. "How do you know my mother?"
Harlan lowered the gun slightly, his steely gray eyes locking onto Leo with an intensity that made the boy want to shrink into the shadows. "I am the reason you were allowed to take your first breath, child. And right now, I am the only thing standing between you and the thing that used to be Julian Vance. Get in."
On the lawn, Julian’s charred fingers twitched. A low, wet gasp rattled from the dead man's throat as the white phosphorous burns on his chest began to seal themselves with creeping black moss.
Terror overrode suspicion. Leo bolted toward the passenger side of the sedan, wrenched the door open, and threw himself inside. Harlan stepped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and threw the transmission into reverse. The tires spun on the wet gravel, spraying stones into the fog, before gripping and hurling the car backward down the lane.
In the glare of the headlights, Julian sat up. His posture was broken, his chest blackened and smoldering, but his gaze remained locked onto the receding vehicle. As the car swung around to face the main road, the creature rose to its feet and began to run after them, moving with an impossible, loping speed that matched the accelerating engine.
"He's following us!" Leo yelled, turning in his seat to stare through the rear windshield.
Harlan didn't look back. He calmly shifted into drive, his hands rock-steady on the leather-wrapped steering wheel. "He will follow the blood. That is what the ritual bound him to."
"What ritual?" Leo’s voice cracked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled photograph, thrusting it toward Harlan’s profile. "You were there! You, my mother, and him! What did you do to my father?"
Harlan glanced down at the photograph for a brief second, his expression hardening into stone. He accelerated, the speedometer creeping past sixty as the sedan navigated the winding, tree-choked country road.
"Your father was a member of the Blackwood Covenant," Harlan said, his voice flat and instructional, like a teacher reciting a well-known history. "A collective of seven families who inherited this valley three centuries ago. We made an agreement with the earth beneath the trench: prosperity, wealth, and health in exchange for a tithe every fifty years."
"A tithe?" Leo felt a cold dread pooling in his gut.
"A blood tithe," Harlan corrected. "Eight years ago, it was the Vance family’s turn. Your mother was carrying you. Julian agreed to offer the unborn child to the Blackwood Trench to satisfy the debt. But at the final hour... he broke his oath. He tried to take you and run."
"So you killed him?"
"No," Harlan said, glancing at Leo with a cold, unsettling pity. "Your mother killed him. She offered Julian's life in place of yours. The earth accepted the trade—conditionally. But the ground never forgets a broken promise, Leo."
Harlan reached out with one leather-gloved hand and yanked the collar of Leo’s gray t-shirt to the side, exposing the boy’s right shoulder.
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Leo gasped. Beneath his collarbone, etched into his own skin in faint, raised, reddish lines, was the exact same brand: the three interlocking triangles. It was pulsing with a dull, thumping heat that matched the rhythm of his racing heart.
"You are marked, boy," Harlan whispered as the car roared into the deep woods. "Julian isn't coming to hurt you. He is coming to drag you down to the trench, so the earth can finally have what it was promised."
