Vision in Faith (Legends of the North Book 3) (17 page)

James sat on the floor next to her, pulling her head to his chest and wrapping his arms around her. Slowly, he rocked her from side to side, brushing the hair off her forehead and running his hand through her hair again and again until she quieted.

"Shh. it doesn't matter."

"I saw him," she said as she leaned back from James and rested against the side of the bath. The cold of the bathroom floor seeped through her thin pyjamas and grounded her in the present rather than in her vision.

"You saw who?"

James's shoulder brushed against hers as he leaned back and took her hand in his. "When you were attacked, the devil… it had the face of an eagle before it transformed into the face of a… 'man'." She made air quotes with her free hand, because a man was a loose description for what she'd seen.

"Is that where the blood came from?"

She shook her head. "He was tied to a tree, but then soldiers came to cut his ties and dragged him towards the river. They forced him into the water, but before they could do anything he broke free. He killed them all, James. Whoever—
whatever
—it is, he killed them all, and there was just so much blood." With a sob, she buried her head against his shoulder, trying to block out the images of blood and the river running red.

 
After Vicky had described her vision to him in the bathroom, neither of them went back to bed, deciding just to sit and drink coffee in the kitchen. He felt wired by the time eight a.m. rolled around, and he called Matt.

After a brief explanation of Vicky's vision, Matt had said he and Emma would come straight round. When Matt hung up, he called Jess and told her the same thing. She said she and Rob would be right there too. James watched Vicky hand out cups of coffee as they all arrived and, even under the circumstances, he couldn't resist the pull of a smile on his lips. She looked very comfortable in his kitchen.
It could be our kitchen.
He shook his head because
that
kind of thought just wasn't helpful at that moment.
 

Once Matt had his hands wrapped around his coffee cup, he started. "From what James has told me, I think it's obvious we need to go back to where the forge was."

Rob let out a groan, and James couldn't agree more. "I don't see the point, Matt. We dug up half the bloody field where the Roman forge was supposed to be and found exactly nothing." James almost laughed at the scowl Matt threw his way. He wouldn't be surprised if he stomped his foot; Matt never did like not getting his own way.

"Yes, thank you for that, James. But need I remind you that we found the shields out by the fort after Jess had her vision. The sword in Vicky's vision, the man forging it…" Matt gave James that look, the one that said, "Do I really need to carry on explaining it to you?"

"Fine. Let's go. But if you're wrong and we end up digging the morning away for no reason…"
 

As he was about to follow Matt out of the house, Vicky stopped him with a hand on his chest. Pressing his lips to her forehead, he said, "It's okay. You stay here."

"It's not that. It's just, I'm not sure you'll find anything there. I—"

"I know I said that, but Matt is probably right. He usually is about stuff like this. We won't be that long, I promise." He wrapped his fingers around her chin, tilting her head up so he could capture her lips with his, and then he strode out of the kitchen after Matt and Rob.

Vicky sat down, wrapped a hand around her coffee mug, and stared at it as though she'd find the answers in its murky depths. She jumped when a hand landed on hers.

"What is it, Vicky? James going off to dig up a field hasn't put that look on your face."

 
She looked up into Emma's concerned eyes but knew her friend wouldn't understand. How was she supposed to explain that in the midst of all this chaos, she felt at home right there, with James, in his house? But this wasn't his house, was it? A vision of Altenbury Hall loomed in her mind, and she pictured James sitting at that dining table with that woman. Just like her vision, Vicky knew she would never fit in at Altenbury Hall, the granddaughter of a lowly gardener. And no doubt if she did try, James's mother would definitely have something to say about it.

Does it even matter?
Something was coming for them, and if they didn't stop it then none of them would see Altenbury Hall again.
 

That thought sobered her and she straightened, aware that Emma was still waiting for an answer. "I'm not sure Matt is right. When he… it killed the soldiers with that sword, they were down by the side of the river and he left the sword speared into the bank. If Matt thinks we are going to find that sword then he won't find it by where the Roman forge used to be. I think it's buried by the river." Vicky leaned back in her chair and took a long sip of her coffee to distract herself from the look on Emma's face.

 
"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's go take a look," Jess said as she stood and gathered the boys' cups.

"Do you know where on the river, Vicky? And what do you suggest, Jess, that we just start digging up the bank? Don't you think people might ask questions? Nobody will see the boys because they're on Altenbury land, and who would question them anyway? But us?"

Jess sat back down and rested her elbow on the countertop, dropping her head into her hand as she pursed her lips in thought.

"My dad!" They both looked at Vicky and she laughed. "My dad has a metal detector. Wouldn't that work?" She watched as a smile spread across Emma's face and she nodded.

"That would work. And nobody would question that."

***

After some detailed instructions from her dad and some vague reasons from them, the three of them made their way down to the river by Altenbury Hall with the metal detector.

As they walked down Altenbury Lane, Vicky stopped and stared at the oak tree. It looked a sorry state with barely any leaves, but that wasn't what had caught her attention. Raising a hand to her chest, she suddenly found it hard to drag any air in to her lungs.

"What is it?" Emma called back to her.

But Vicky couldn't find the words or any words in fact, so she just raised a hand to point at the sight in front of her. She felt Emma and Jess move to stand beside her.

"I know. It's weird, isn't it?" Emma asked. "It was in one of my first visions, but we still don't know what it is. We don't think it's related to any of this though."

Vicky tore her gaze from it to face Emma. "It has everything to do with this," she whispered.

"What do you mean?"

Vicky pointed back to the carved face in the tree. "That's the face of the devil. That's the face of the thing that attacked James and me."

The only sound she could hear after those words was the quiet murmur of the river in the background and the slight rustle of the few leaves the oak tree still had on its branches. From the corner of her eye, she saw Emma look towards Jess. They were practically on Altenbury land, so if anyone should know, Jess should.

"It's always been there. Well, for as long as
I
can remember, anyway. There is a local legend that it's supposed to ward off ghosts or something, but that's James's thing. He loves old legends and folklore, so he'd be able to tell you more, but I don't think there's any record of anything, not official anyway. It's just word of mouth. I mean, look at it. It's just a carving. A bloody freaky one," Jess added with a wry chuckle.

Vicky turned back to look at the carved head again once Jess had finished speaking. But the more she stared at it, the more she thought that something just didn't look right. The chin seemed to rest between the branches, but the back looked like it was just resting in midair. Before she could really think about what she was doing, she dug her fingers into the bark and hoisted herself up to where the two branches joined, using her feet to push herself up the trunk.

"Vicky!"

She heard Emma's cry, but there was no way she was going to look back down at her from where she was right then. Clutching the rough bark beneath her fingers, Vicky held her breath as she came face-to-face
—
quite literally—with the gruesome carved head.

Exhaling slowly through her mouth, she was beginning to regret her rash decision.
Suck it up, girl. It's just a piece of wood.
As she closed her eyes, she jammed her index and middle finger through the holes where the eyes should have been and yanked. She felt it give and tugged again. It popped out of the branches with a sucking noise, and she hugged the trunk tighter as her arm holding the wooden head swung backwards.

She opened her eyes and glanced down to see Emma standing below her, both hands covering her mouth. Vicky's lip twitched at the look of shock and horror mixed on Emma's face. "Catch," she yelled before dropping the wooden head in her direction.

Emma caught it and held it up in front of her face, staring at it, her eyes wide, mouth open. Vicky turned back to the tree and caught the smell of rotting leaves and something like…
death.
Repressing a shudder as she sank her teeth into her bottom lip, she closed her eyes again.

Before she could change her mind, she thrust her hand inside the hole left behind where the head had been lodged. She cringed as she hit something cold and had to stop herself from yanking her arm back out.

Her fingers slid over something smooth, then felt rough ridges, and she circled her fingers around its width. Grasping hold as tightly as she could, she pulled whilst clinging to the trunk, her legs starting to shake from the strain of holding herself up. She felt it give and drew her arm up until she could see a silver handle, and then pulled free the blade of the sword.
The sword from my vision.

Because there, shining in the daylight, was the red orb only partially covered in dead leaves and dirt. She held it aloft and the feeling of lives past washed over her. A feeling of being a part of something bigger than just her.

As her flesh broke out in goosebumps, the sun suddenly disappeared, and a more ominous feeling hit her. She dropped the sword to her side and looked down at the ground, trying to figure out how to get down, because she wasn't about to throw a sword at Emma.
 

After the least graceful half shimmy/half slide back down the tree ever, Emma and Jess crowded around her to look at the sword. Vicky wiped away the dirt with her T-shirt until they could see the intricate carvings in the metal. She stroked her fingers over the swirls until she reached the orb and then stilled.

"I'm pretty sure this belonged to Harry," she said, her gaze still fixed on the gem.

"What makes you say that?" Jess asked with a tone of awe in her voice.

Tracing a finger around what she assumed was a ruby, Vicky said, "My mum has a ruby ring that my grandma gave her. The setting looks like this, and the same pattern is on the band of the ring. It's a bit of a coincidence if the two things aren't related, don't you think?"
 

"Shit, what if your gran was involved somehow?" Emma asked as she gently touched the hilt of the sword, her eyes wide.

Vicky shook her head in disbelief, but then again, not that long ago she hadn't known her granddad wasn't actually her granddad, and she'd never heard of a man called Harry. And she'd just pulled a sword out of a tree.

So yeah, stranger things could happen.

Chapter 19

Vicky had just finished cleaning the sword when she heard the front door slam and the stomp of feet before James and the boys walked into the kitchen.
 

She couldn't stop the smug half smile that pulled at her lips when his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. But then she felt a little guilty when she saw the mud smeared up his forearms and the streak of dirt across his sweaty brow.

"Where the hell did you get that?" he asked as he strode over to her. Dropping a kiss on the top of her head, he reached out and reverently touched the sword with just a finger, his usual scent of coffee overpowered by the smell of earth and fresh sweat. An image of a man toiling in the gardens of Amsall Hall while a pretty young girl watched his muscles flex in the early afternoon sunlight, knowing he was forbidden to her, flashed through Vicky's mind.

She shook her head as the image made her eyes water, but she wasn't sure why. She hadn't even known them. Her gaze lifted to James and her heart ached. Wasn't he her forbidden?
Screw that.
 

She grabbed his chin and turned his face so she could capture his lips with hers. And when he opened, she pushed her tongue inside to meet his.
And screw his mother.
Vicky was there, fighting for James, fighting for the others. If they did get through this, there was no way in hell she was giving him up just because his mother thought she was beneath them.

"Get a room, you two."

She smiled when Emma's comment finally registered and she released James's lips.

"Clearly, Vicky holding a sword makes James's little sword want to come out and play."

Vicky gave Rob a glare, lifting an eyebrow at him because, seriously, what were they? Twelve? Her attention returned to James when he tried to take the sword off her and she released her grip on the handle.

 
"Where did you find it?" he asked as he weighed the sword in one hand. Vicky explained about the tree and the carved head.

"Well, I'll be damned," Matt said. "I never would have thought of looking there. I wonder if it's been there all this time since the carved head was there."

James's fingers traced along the etched metal and around the gemstone. "You know, this looks really familiar, but I can't think why."

Vicky placed her hand over his and he looked up at her. "I think this was Harry's sword. He had a ring that looked the same."

"Oh, my God. You're right," James said as he handed her the sword and hurried out of the room. He came back only moments later holding a photo frame. She took it from him and saw a black and white photo of a beautiful young woman. Long, pale hair brushed over her shoulders, wearing a dress with a full skirt that reached her mid-calf while standing on, what she assumed, were the steps of Altenbury Hall.