Haunted: Penance / After the Lightning / Seeing Red. Debra Cowan

      The woman in the middle of it, screaming, crying out for God to forgive them. Pain tore at Elena, burning, crippling. She dropped to her knees, clutching her arms around her middle, trying to hold in the agony. Trying to shut out the image in her head. She crouched there for a long while, her mama’s screams ringing in her ears.

      Run, child. Her mother’s words sounded in her head. Keep running.

      She forced herself up, staggering on her weakened legs, turning away from all that she’d known, all that she’d loved.

      Behind her, brush rustled, the blackness shattered by the glow of a lantern. Oh, God, they’d found her already.

      The glow fell across her face and that of the boy who held the lantern. Thomas McGregor. He wasn’t much older than she, but he’d gone to work with his father and uncles, leaving his mother, sister, aunt and cousins behind…to burn alive.

      As they’d burned her mother. “No…”

      “I was sent to find you. To bring you back,” he said, his voice choked as tears ran down his face. Tears for his family or for her?

      Her mother had seen this, had tried to fight this fate for her daughter, the same fate that had just taken her life.

      “You hate me?” she asked.

      He shook his head, and something flickered in his eyes with the lantern light. Something she had seen before when she’d caught him staring at her. “No, Elena.”

      “But you wish me harm? I had nothing to do with your loss.” Nor did her mother, but they had killed her. Smoke swept into the woods, too far from the fire to be real, and in the middle of the haze hovered a woman. Elena’s mother.

      “I have to bring you back,” Thomas said, his hand trembling as he reached for her, his fingers closing over her arm.

      The charms will keep you safe.

      Had her mother’s ghost spoken or was it only Elena’s memory? Regardless, she reached in the pocket of her cape, clutching the satchel tight. Heat emanated through the thick velvet, warming her palm. As if she’d stepped into Thomas’s mind, she read his thoughts and saw the daydreams he had had of the two of them. “Thomas, you do not wish me harm.”

      “But Papa…”

      Other memories played through Elena’s mind, her mother’s memories. She shuddered, reeling under the impact of knowledge she was too young to understand. “Your papa is a bad man,” she whispered. “Come with me, Thomas. We will run together.”

      He shook his head. “He would find us. He would kill us both.”

      Because of what she’d seen, she knew he spoke the truth. Eli McGregor would kill anyone who got between him and what he wanted.

      “Thomas, please…”

      His fingers tightened on her arm as if he were about to drag her off. Elena clutched the satchel so closely, the jagged little metal pieces cut her palm through the velvet.

      He shuddered as if a great battle waged inside of him. “I cannot give you to him. Go, Elena. You are lost to me.” But when she turned to leave, he caught her hand as her mother had, trembling as he pressed something against her bloody palm. “Take my mother’s locket.”

      To remember him? To remember what his family had done to hers? She would want no reminders. But her fingers closed over the metal, warm from the heat of his skin. She couldn’t refuse. Not when he had spared her life.

      “Use it for barter, if need be, to get as far away from here as you can. My father has sworn vengeance on all your mother’s relatives and descendents. He says he will let no witch live.”

      “I am not a witch.” She whispered the lie, closing her eyes to the glowing image of her mother’s ghost.

      “He will kill you,” Thomas whispered back.

      She knew he spoke the truth. Like her mother, she could now see her fate. But unlike her mother, she wouldn’t wait for Eli McGregor to come for her. She turned to leave again, then twirled back, moved closer to Thomas and pressed her lips against his cheek, cold and wet from his tears.

      “Godspeed, Elena,” he said as she stepped out of the circle of light from his lantern, shifting into the darkness and the smoke, letting it swallow her as she ran.

      This time she wouldn’t stop…she wouldn’t stop until she’d gotten as far away as she could. And even then, she wouldn’t ever stop running….

      From who and what she was.

      Armaya, Michigan, 1986

      The candlelight flickered as the wind danced through the open windows of the camper, carrying with it the scent of lavender and sandalwood incense. Myra Cooper dragged in the first breath she’d taken since she’d begun telling her family’s legend; it caught in her lungs, burning, as she studied her daughters’ beautiful faces.

      Irina snuggled between her bigger sisters, her big, dark eyes luminous in the candlelight. She heard everything but, at four, was too young to understand.

      Elena, named for that long ago ancestor, tightened her arm protectively around her sister’s narrow shoulders. Her hair was pale and straight, a contrast to Myra and Irina’s dark curls. Her eyes were a vivid icy blue that saw everything. But, at twelve, she was too old to believe.

      Ariel kept an arm around her sister, too, while her gaze was intent on Myra’s face as she waited for more of the story. The candlelight reflected in her auburn hair like flames, and her green eyes glowed. She listened. But Myra worried that she did not hear.

      She worried that none of them understood that they were gifted with special abilities. The girls had never spoken of them to her or one another, but maybe that was better. Maybe they would be safer if they denied their heritage. Yet they couldn’t deny what they didn’t know; that was why she had shared the legend. She wanted them to know their fate so they could run from it before they were destroyed.

      “We are Durikken women,” she told her daughters, “like that first Elena.”

      “You named me after her,” her oldest spoke, not questioning. She already knew.

      Myra nodded. “And I’m named for her mother.” And sometimes, when she believed in reincarnation, she was sure she was that woman, with her memories as well as her special abilities.

      However, most of the time Myra believed in nothing; it hurt too much to accept her reality. But tonight she had to be responsible. She had one last chance to protect her children; she’d already failed them in so many ways. They didn’t have to live the hardscrabble life she’d lived. They didn’t have to be what she was—a woman whose fears had driven her to desperation.

      “Our last name is Cooper,” Elena reminded her.

      “Papa’s name,” she said, referring to her own father. None of their fathers had given his child his name, either because the man had refused or she hadn’t told him he was a father. “We are Durikken, and Durikken women are special. They know things are going to happen before they happen.”

      Pain lanced through Myra, stealing her breath again as images rolled through her mind like a black-and-white movie. She couldn’t keep running and she couldn’t make them keep running, either.

      She forced herself to continue. “They see things or people that no one else can see. This ability, like the charms on my bracelet—” she raised her arm, the silver jewelry absorbing the firelight as it dangled from her wrist “—has been passed from generation to generation.”

      But Myra was more powerful than her sisters, had inherited more abilities as a woman and a witch. That was why she had been given the bracelet—because her mother had known she would be the only one of her three daughters to continue the Durikken legacy.

      Myra’s fingers trembled as she unclasped the bracelet. She’d never taken