Darper Danver: The Complete First Series Read online

  "Do you agree?" I ask, turning to Becky. "Can all of this be hushed up?"

  "You killed my brother," she replies, her voice trembling as she holds Lenora's gun in her shaking hand. "You let Cassie take the blame. You stood back and let her go to prison. You're as bad as each other."

  "We'll talk about this later," Mulcahy says with a sigh. "Let's just -"

  "You killed my brother!" Becky shouts, raising the gun and aiming it at me. "It was you, all along!"

  "I want you to step outside, Becky," Mulcahy says, clearly losing his patience. "Step outside right now and let me deal with this situation, or -"

  "You killed him," Becky says, stepping closer, with the gun still pointed straight at me. Tears are streaming down her face, and I wouldn't blame her if she pulled that trigger. The truth is, if it wasn't for Edie and Donovan, I'd have ended my own life a long time ago. "You let Cassie take the blame," she continues, "but it was you."

  "Okay," Mulcahy says, sighing again, "this mess has gone on long enough." With that, he turns and shoots Becky point blank in the chest, dropping her to the ground like a dead weight before turning back to me and aiming the gun at my head. "I am sick to Christ of all the lawlessness around here," he says, stepping closer to me. "Seems like the best thing I can do is wrap up all the pieces of this thing and just get rid of it completely. Like when surgeons cut out a cancer and take some extra flesh from the edges, just to be sure it ain't spread. I just want you to know that I'll look after Edie and Donovan. They'll be okay. They'll never want for -"

  He stops speaking as Cassie twitches slightly in my arms.

  "I thought you told me she was dead," Mulcahy says, aiming his gun at her.

  "She is," I tell him, bracing myself for what's about to happen.

  "Then -"

  Before he can finish, Cassie raises her head. She briefly makes eye contact with me, and I can see the anger and fury burning in her soul before she turns and looks up at Mulcahy. Her body clicks and grinds with every move. It's just like it was five years ago.

  "This..." Mulcahy says, taking a step back. "You -"

  And that's when Cassie launches herself at him, landing square on his chest and knocking him to the ground. As he falls, Mulcahy fires a single shot into the ceiling, but the gun falls from his hand. Realizing that I don't want to see this, not again, I close my eyes and put my hands over my ears, but I can still hear the sound of Cassie ripping his body apart with her bare hands.

  Becky Madison

  The pain is intense, raiding out from the wound in my chest. I think I blacked out for a moment, but as I roll onto my side, it's as if the agony has woken me. I reach down and feel hot, wet blood on my shirt, and when I take a look I find that the bullet hit me just below the right breast.

  "Fuck," I mutter, before I realize that there's a strange sound coming from behind me. I freeze, and at first I'm convinced that Mulcahy is going to shoot me again. I close my eyes, terrified at the thought that his gun is probably aimed straight at the back of my head, but finally I realize that I can hear a completely different noise. It's as if someone, or something, is being chewed and ripped apart. I heard something similar once: many years ago, when I was just a kid, we went to visit a farm, and I remember the sound of the pigs eating a goat carcass that was thrown into their pen; I remember the sound of them ripping the bone and flesh apart.

  That's what this sounds like.

  Slowly, filled with fear and struggling against the pain in the right-hand side of my chest, I turn and look across the cabin. At first, I'm not sure what I'm looking at. There's no sign of Mulcahy at all, but a few meters away there's some kind of strange, shifting mess on the floor. It's larger than a person, although the orange glow from the lamp is getting dimmer and dimmer, which makes it hard to work out exactly what I'm seeing; in fact, it's more like there are two people on the ground, with one of them on top of the other, making the ripping, chewing sound.

  And that's when I realize that it's Cassie, on top of Mulcahy, ripping his body apart.

  Filled with panic, but determined to get away before she sees me, I start dragging myself toward the door. After a moment, Cassie suddenly looks directly at me, her dark eyes blinking rapidly for a few seconds before she looks back down at Mulcahy and continues to tear him to pieces. It's as if she doesn't see me as a threat; either that, or she figures I'm wounded and she can pick me off when she's ready.

  "Becky!" Fisher says, crawling toward me.

  Turning to him with a sense of relief, it takes me a moment to remember that he's the one who killed Bobby. I stare at him, barely able to contain my anger but, at the same time, feeling as if I'm frozen in place.

  "You have to get out of here!" he shouts, pushing me toward the door. "I'll hold her back, but you have to run!"

  "What is she?" I ask, staring past him. Cassie is still ripping Mulcahy's dead body apart, although she's working much more slowly now, almost as if she's a little bored by the process. After a moment, I realize that although I can barely see her face now that her wet, straggly hair is hanging down, her eyes are staring straight at me.

  "That's not Cassie," Fisher says. "Not anymore. This happened once before, five years ago. There's this ghost, and it takes control of her body -"

  "Darper Danver?" I ask, watching as Cassie rips Mulcahy's arm from his shoulder. "Is that who she thinks she is?"

  "She doesn't think she's Darper Danver," Fisher replies. "She is Darper Danver, at least for now. She's possessed. It won't last forever, but I swear to God, Becky, when she's finished with Mulcahy, she'll be after you next."

  "She's insane," I say, turning and spotting a gun on the floor nearby. "She's deluded," I continue, pushing back as Fisher tries to get me over to the door. "This is all in her head. She's obsessed with this Darper Danver bullshit -"

  "It's not in her head," he says. "Please, Becky, you have to trust me. This is real, and you have to get the hell out of here right now. I can handle her, I can keep her away from you, but only if you run!"

  "Fuck you," I say, before lunging toward the gun. Although Fisher tries to stop me, I manage to grab the handle, and I quickly turn and fire straight at Cassie, hitting her in the side of the neck. I pull the trigger again, but there's only a faint clicking sound, as if the gun is out of ammunition. As I land painfully on my side, however, I realize that while blood is pouring from her wound, she barely seems to have reacted. She merely stares at me for a moment, before opening her mouth and hissing at me.

  "Stop!" Fisher shouts, grabbing me and dragging me across the cabin. He opens the door and pulls me out into the rain, before dropping me in the mud. "I swear to God," he continues, "you have to get out of here right now!"

  Struggling to get to my feet, I feel a blinding pain in my side and drop back onto my knees.

  "You have to run!" Fisher shouts.

  "I can't," I stutter breathlessly, feeling as if the pain in my chest is getting worse and worse. "I can't even stand up!"

  Pulling the door shut, Fisher picks me up and starts carrying me away from the cabin.

  "Don't worry," he says, stumbling through the rain, "she'll be busy with Mulcahy's body for a while. She doesn't like leaving the cabin, so I'll take you back into town and then I'll come back and..."

  I wait for him to finish. "You'll what?" I ask. "What the hell are you going to do about that thing? How -" Before I can finish, I notice the door of the cabin swing open, and I see Cassie's figure standing in the doorway. "Fisher," I say, filled with panic, "she's coming after us."

  "No," he says, still carrying me away from the cabin, "that's not possible. She'll be busy with Mulcahy's body -"

  "She's coming!" I scream.

  Fisher turns and finally he sees that I'm right. Cassie has started running awkwardly toward us. Fisher turns again and starts running, but it's too late and something heavy slams into us, knocking us to the ground. I land hard on my face, and the last thing I hear before I black out is the sound of Cassie hissing into my ea
r.

  Epilogue

  They arrived at dawn, responding to multiple reports of flames and smoke spotted in the forest. Fire trucks struggled to get along the rough gravel paths, and eventually the final part of the journey had to be completed on foot. It wasn't until shortly after 7am that teams reached the cabin, by which point there was nothing left apart from a smoldering wreck.

  At first, investigators assumed that the cabin had been destroyed by a simple act of arson. It was only a couple of hours later that the first fragments of human bone were discovered in the wreckage. With Sheriff Mulcahy failing to respond to calls, the rest of the local police department was forced to coordinate the operation to the best of their ability. By midday, two sets of human remains had been positively identified, with the local pathologist indicating that he believed one victim was male while the other was female. The flames had been so intense, the bones were charred and all the flesh had been burned away. Once photographs had been taken, the bodies were carefully removed from the scene and taken away in a pair of black bags, to be examined in more detail at an upstate laboratory.

  Around 1pm, Sheriff Mulcahy's patrol car was found abandoned near the recycling bins at Grover's Park, about a half-mile from the cabin. Shortly after this discovery, a second vehicle was found nearby and was later identified as belonging to a New York writer and journalist named Lenora Mackleberry. When Sheriff Mulcahy's charred handgun was located in the cabin's burned wreckage, it became clear to the investigators that for reason that were as yet unclear, Mulcahy and most likely Lenora Mackleberry were the two victims of the blaze. A short while later, armed officers entered the Briggs family home, looking for Cassie. They found no trace of her, although it was quickly established that Sheriff Mulcahy had been at the property approximately eighteen hours earlier, and that he'd been accompanied by Becky Madison.

  Questioned about her daughter's activities, Lucy Briggs was unable to satisfactorily explain Cassie's recent movements. Investigators deemed her answers to be evasive, but she refused to say anything other than that her daughter had been suffering from a fever when she disappeared. Similarly, Cassie's brother was unable or unwilling to provide any useful information, although he acknowledged that he had been involved in a sexual relationship with Becky Madison.

  When they arrived at the Madison house, police learned that Becky had not been seen since the previous night. Her mother Florence had failed to report her daughter missing for reasons that were deemed suspicious by the investigating officers, who were quickly convinced that Becky had at the very least accompanied Sheriff Mulcahy to the cabin. Florence Madison was pressed to explain why Mulcahy would have taken Becky up to the cabin with him, but no answer was forthcoming. Given Becky Madison's previous links to Cassie Briggs, who was believed to have murdered Becky's brother Bobby, a link between the disappearances was quickly established. By the time the bodies were positively identified as those of Sheriff Mulcahy and Lenora Mackleberry, local police had already called for assistance from federal agencies.

  Later that afternoon, Edie Benhauser returned home with her son Donovan, having spent the night and most of the day at her mother's house. Upon finding that her husband Fisher was not at home, she began to call around and ask his friends if they could help find him, at which point she learned of the incident up at the cabin. She immediately went to the police station and filed a report, listing her husband as missing and explaining everything she knew, and everything she suspected, about Fisher's involvement with Cassie Briggs. By this point, investigators had begun to comb the woodland near the cabin, looking for any sign that other individuals had been present either during or after the fire. No indications were discovered, even as the search area was widened to cover a two-mile radius.

  Distraught, Edie left Donovan with her mother and headed into the forest herself, determined to find her husband. Avoiding the search teams, she wandered alone for hours, unable to think of anything but Fisher's final words to her the previous day:

  "I need you to promise that you'll be waiting for me at your mother's house when I get back."

  As the day's light began to fade, she continued to search. Soon, however, nightfall plunged the forest into darkness. Without a torch, Edie was forced to head home. She felt almost entirely blank, as if she could no longer process information. All she could think about was Fisher, and as she reached the edge of the forest, she failed to notice the name Darper Danver scratched into several of the nearby trees. She also failed to notice, as she headed across the car park, the faintest rustling sound nearby. A few meters away, a small hole had been dug in the side of a shallow earth bank, and hidden deep in the shadow of this hole, something was watching as Edie walked away.

  Blinking a couple of times, the creature waited until Edie was out of view, before letting out a faint, rattling hiss and scuttling deeper into the ground. Far below, hidden from sight and held too deep to be heard by anyone, two anguished, terrified voices were crying out for help.

  COMING SOON

  Darper Danver:

  The Complete Second Series

  Bonus

  Resurrection

  (from The Vampire's Grave)

  Chapter One

  "MOMMA!" Eva screamed, standing at the back door. "MOMMA! WHERE ARE YOU?"

  Seconds later, she heard a set of panicked feet racing down the stairs, and eventually her mother appeared at the back door, staring at her with a look of terror in her eyes.

  "What's wrong, Eva?" she asked, fumbling to get the door unlocked. "Are you hurt? Did someone hurt you?"

  Eva stared up at her, waiting until finally the door swung open.

  "Let me look," her mother said, kneeling in front of her. She pushed the hair from across Eva's face and looked frantically for any sign of injury. "Where are you hurt?" she continued, her voice trembling. "Eva, where is it? Tell me! Talk to me, sweetheart!"

  "I'm not hurt," Eva said, finally allowing herself to smile. "I just couldn't get in the back door, that's all. Someone locked it again."

  "You..." Her mother stared at her. The panic had been all-consuming, and it was clear that she was taking a moment to reset her thoughts. "You know we keep the back door locked these days, sweetheart. You have to use the front door. I told you that."

  "I didn't want to go all the way round," Eva said. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

  For a moment, Eva could see a hint of anger in her mother's eyes. If she was annoyed at her daughter's actions, however, she quickly managed to contain herself. More than anything else, she was just relieved that nothing bad had happened. Reaching out, she put her arms around Eva and gave her a hug.

  "You mustn't scare me like that," she said eventually. "Sweetheart, when you shout and bang on the door, it makes me think that something's wrong."

  "You worry too much," Eva said, allowing herself to be hugged but not reciprocating. She knew it was mean, but she couldn't help having fun with these little tricks that she regularly played on her mother. "I'm eleven, Momma. I'm not gonna get hurt every time I go outside."

  "No," her mother said, releasing her from the hug. "You're not. And do you know why you're not? Because you have a mother who takes care of you, and who looks after you, and who keeps you safe." She glanced across the back garden, her eyes briefly fixing on the nearby woods. Ever since they'd moved to this new house, Eva's mother had been haunted by the thought of the creatures that could be lurking between the trees. She had constant nightmares of foxes, badgers and all sorts of other beasts attacking her precious little daughter.

  "I just wanted a drink," Eva continued, feeling a little bored with the game now. She'd only wanted to scare her mother, not to drive her into total panic.

  "What kind of drink?" her mother asked, getting to her feet and walking through to the kitchen.

  "Cola," Eva said, following her.

  "You know we don't have cola in this house," her mother said. "That stuff's full of sugar. We have water, milk or fresh juice."

&n
bsp; Eva sniffed, before glancing over at the phone. She hated the phone. Any second, that phone could start ringing with bad news. Eva didn't understand why the phone couldn't just be disconnected and thrown away.

  "Water, then," her mother said, grabbing a glass. "You don't want cola. God knows what's in that stuff. I don't think bubbles are good for you, either. There are all sorts of chemicals in those drinks, and God knows if they test them properly. No daughter of mine is going to eat or drink anything that doesn't have a proper list of ingredients."

  "Have you heard from Daddy?" Eva asked, still staring at the phone.

  "No," her mother replied quickly, having anticipated the question. "It's Tuesday. We never hear from him on Tuesdays. You know that."

  "We did once," Eva said. "About a year ago, he was supposed to call on a Wednesday, but he called a day early instead."

  Her mother opened her mouth to argue with her, but finally she realized that there was no point. Passing Eva the glass of water, she took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. She'd learned long ago that arguing with her daughter only made things worse. Eva was an intelligent girl, and she often rang rings around her mother thanks to her ability to accurately recall even the tiniest detail of past events.

  "Do you think Daddy's mission went well?" Eva asked.

  "I don't know anything about your father's missions," her mother said.

  "But you know they're dangerous. He goes out in big army jeeps with lots of guns. That's got to be dangerous."

  "Well..." There was a pause. "He's in a dangerous part of the world, sweetheart, but he's going to be okay. He's got all the training and all the equipment he needs, and if he really gets into trouble, he can phone a friend who'll come and blow up the bad guys for him."