Free Blood Moon by Jana Petken Page A

there was no death horrible enough for the likes of him.
    She stared at his face with loathing and then kicked every part of his body, not stopping until she found herself breathless. Tears once again rolled down her face. She almost wished that he still lived in order to inflict yet more pain, such was her hatred. She looked at him once more and spat on the back of his head just before she turned away.
    She knelt by Seth and put Kyle’s gun into the palm of Seth’s hand, curling his fingers around it, and placing one of them on the trigger. “I’m sorry, Seth. I’m so sorry – please forgive me,” she whispered. She despised herself for blaming Seth for the killings, but it would answer any questions that might arise when the dead bodies were found. “Dead,” she said aloud, the familiar word slipping off her tongue with ease. She had killed five men in the space of a few months. The gates of hell would be waiting wide open for her. She would go straight there, without call for God’s judgement, for he now possessed more than enough evidence to convict her.
    She stared once more into Lina’s beautiful face, failing to stop a throaty sob. For the first time in her life, she had lost a person she truly loved. Grief was beyond measure, she thought. There was no word to amply describe how she felt – desolation and sorrow fell short, as did sadness, for she had already experienced what was perceived to be those emotions. She felt physically sick. Her stomach was knotted so tightly that it constricted her breathing. If she relaxed her body and exhaled properly, she was sure a piercing, painful scream would rip its way out of her mouth. It would be irrepressible. She didn’t need to fear death anymore, she thought, for she was already in hell.

Chapter Seven
     
     
    Listening to Elizabeth Stone’s childish weeping, Margaret Mallory was at the end of her tether. She wanted to batter the stupid woman into silence, but instead she displayed a sympathetic facial expression, which played a major role in her facade of required social niceties. These nuances were necessary tools in order to achieve her goals; however, constantly having to use them tested her patience to the very limit of endurance.
    Margaret missed Madame du Pont. She found it increasingly difficult to adjust to the false character she was playing, where a compassionate ear, amiability, and feminine charms gained respect. Madam du Pont never had to conceal her thoughts or actions in her mansion, yet here she was having to put up with a mealy-mouthed pathetic bitch who in the old days would have been disposed of long before now.
    Margaret’s forced retirement had not brought her the successful life she’d hoped for. The losses suffered in Liverpool were never far from her mind, for they had completely devastated her in so many ways. There was nothing she’d like better than to get on a ship back to Liverpool, where life had been so straightforward and people had been so easy to manipulate. But that life did not exist anymore, nor would it ever return to her.
    She had unanswered questions, so many of them that they were driving her mad. There were no answers as to why a multitude of disasters continued to strike her in this new land. She would never know what or who had set her mansion on fire. Nothing more had been said or done about poor Eddie’s murder. The money that had been stolen on the night he’d been killed had never been recovered, nor had the slave, Nelson.
    Her sister, Myrtle, and her continuing absence also perplexed her. She had expected her to turn up at the door at least a month ago. She’d sent letters every week since the beginning of February, begging for news on the Knightsbridge house sale. She had wondered lately if something unsavoury had befallen Myrtle, but she’d thrown that belief out the window, and she was now convinced that her dear sister had deliberately cut off all communication with her and was on the run with her