Coryburn Girls: Devil Take the Hindmost

The Coryburn Girls are up to no good. On the cusp of the change they find themselves thrown in to the start of the delicate tensions of a war that they hadn’t anticipated. While navigating their own fresh starts the possibility of a life beyond their sisterhood beckons, they are lead down the start of a separate path, but will they find each other before its too late?

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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coryburn-Girls-Devil-Take-Hindmost-ebook/dp/B012KLKF7O/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Or if you want a cheeky deal on the collection of the Coryburn girls why not buy the collective ebook or paper back! Here’s that little link you need, its available now! Today! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coryburn-Girls-Collection-R-Appleby-ebook/dp/B06Y5Y5KXF/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Chapter One

It was but a day and night that had passed by, time trickling like sand in a timer. Dusk was returning to the town that had been so eerily quiet for most of the day. Kayetelynn and Annabella had been laid slumped against the walls of their bedroom, unmoving and unconscious. In the middle of the room, a heavy wooden box with the most curious carvings, sat playing host to the gloriously impressive, blood diamond that had been stolen, many times over history and twice by the two girls rendered motionless.

Chrystyne and Eustace each sat patiently on their daughter’s beds. Waiting, watching Kayetelynn and Annabella slowly begin to rise, lifting the fog from the haze of unconsciousness. Aching and confused the girls struggled to find their bearings in the dim room.

Eustace was the first to speak; he was cool, calm and calculated, his voice trickled slowly as he spoke; “What did you do?”

The internal cringe, the knowing there was no way to hide this mistake or make it a secret.

Kayetelynn was unsure, she shrugged before she pulled herself unsteadily to her feet, the once blood soaked bandage fell from her hand, landing on the floor crumpled, stark bright white against the opulent rug at her feet. Annabella swallowed slowly staring at the unravelling bandage, pulling it away gently, to reveal scarred palms and fingertips. Her eyes drifted through her foggy memory back to the box.

Staring at the diamond and box as though somehow she could accuse it of this strange feeling that was sweeping over her in her consciousness; Annabella felt strong, much stronger than she had ever felt before. Her parents could see the scars, it was then that their parents truly began to understand, a cold panic swept them. Even their usual pale features seemed to some how become a brilliant white. Both Chrystyne and Eustace ran from the room in a panic running to the basement that had remained locked for years. Unsure of what to do Kayetelynn and Annabella ran after their parents.

Down in the dusty basement Annabella and Kayetelynn stared curiously at their parents sighing relieved in front of a mirror. The mirror, heavy, ornate and beautiful, showed only the image of the room, and not the four breathless occupants ignoring the piles and layers of dust that swept across the room.

In one swift motion Chrystyne’s hand came down on Annabella’s cheek; reprimanding her for putting them all at risk. Bewildered Annabella and Kayetelynn were directed back to their room rather aggressively. The relief had left Chrystyne as soon as a reality had settled back in.

Chrystyne lifted the diamond from the box. Finally ready to explain. “This, this saved our bloodline, by stealing your own blood.” Kayetelynn and Annabella looked on bemused. Eustace grumbled, adjusting himself before he began to speak. “The blood diamond absorbed your blood, did it not? I asked a question.” Kayetelynn nodded, he continued, “The box is but an old Nosferatu legend. It is believed to be a destroyer and a maker of our very existence. By taking your blood, it saved our most direct bloodlines, now the purest of the pure. But in preserving ours, it has destroyed many others. Half fangs, they are now what they once were, it will have undone them. And we are in danger.”

Chapter Two

Their father seemed weaker, like he had the weight of the world upon him, now wrapped in a shroud of concern and worry.

“If as you say, that the stone has undone them, am I wrong in presuming they survive?”

“There will be a tide of hell unleashed, desperate hell. Annabella what have you done?”

Annabella struggled to reply, unsure of how they knew that this had all been down to her, like somehow this had all been intentional, “I only did as the dream dictated.”

This did nothing to sooth her parents. “Tonight we must leave here. Tonight you will go to London and us to the boarder just as we planned.” Eustace left the room to summon the coachmen and carriages. In haste he loaded their luggage to leave ahead of the girls.

“You will meet the luggage in London, and you will need this.” He handed Annabella a sealed envelope. “These instructions will help you when we cannot.” His last words sounded uncharacteristic of his normal manner, they were heavy and sorrowful. Perhaps more that he was forced to bid farewell too soon; in conditions that he would in time break his heart, as though he knew the fates before them. The myths that had been created to the legends of the stone and box, in old stories that had been passed to generations as bed time tales.

“There will be a fall out; there will be a time that half fangs will know no other way. Their very existence as it had been all these years has become them, their last shred of identity in our existence; they will be unwilling to go back to what they once were. Mortal lives will pain them. Be wary of their clumsy pursuits.”

Kayetelynn nodded and hugged Chrystyne, “for the dead, we travel fast, my dears be at speed.”

Kayetelynn and Annabella said one last goodbye before setting themselves into a carriage made of the darkest wood and most decadent of fabrics. They sat restless as the wheels began to creak and bounce at speed against the old cobble stone roads.

Coryburn Girls: Winds of Change

Two girls on the journey of discovery, but are they about to lose all that their family had built? Will they destroy the life they know in pursuit of their own gains and adventures? What is the fascination with the stone that will change the destinies of everyone they have ever known?

https://www.amazon.com/Coryburn-Girls-Change-R-Appleby-ebook/dp/B00XEPEDU6?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc#nav-subnav

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coryburn-Girls-Change-R-Appleby-ebook/dp/B00XEPEDU6/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Or if you want a cheeky deal on the collection of the Coryburn girls why not buy the collective ebook or paper back! Here’s that little link you need, ebook available 8th July! https://www.amazon.co.uk/Coryburn-Girls-Collection-R-Appleby-ebook/dp/B06Y5Y5KXF/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Chapter One

In the crisp warm air Kayetelynn and Annabella walked arm in arm through a dimly lit garden; taking the time to smell a rose on their stroll. As though nothing out of the ordinary could ever happen in their lives; as though nothing out of the ordinary ever has happened. In complete honesty, tonight was a rare night off from chasing leads as politely and as unassumingly as possible. It had become an exhausting experience, often met with dead ends at the assumption that the girls were in fact no more then dreamers or trouble stirring to have something to gossip over.

It took Annabella a few moments longer than it should have to recognise the man that had come to a stop in front of them. He seemed to be a truly disgruntled and agitated figure of a man; he pushed a piece of crumpled paper into her hand.

“My- is it really you? Where have you been?” Annabella had caught him; he was immensely uncomfortable; unconsciously in his anxious state he stroked his beard, shaking his head to her question unwilling to actually speak, hoping to get away. Barely the shadow of a man they once knew.

Annabella was baffled that it taken her so long to recognise his face, after all this time she had never imagined he could change this much. “Tarron?” she pushed but he shook his head and pointed at the paper. Kayetelynn unfolded the crumpled paper and stared at the messy scrawl, “it’s an address?”

Finally he spoke, “I heard you were looking for something. That is the very last address that I was able to track it to.”

Annabella stood still in disbelief, “but Tarron that doesn’t explain the beard, you look ridiculous.” Kayetelynn’s comment dismayed Annabella who had hoped the two would be able to get along. “Kayetelynn, hush it suits him, don’t worry about Kayetelynn. She’s not been herself lately.”

Which was a lie, this was very Kayetelynn like behaviour, but Tarron nodded and excused himself despite Annabella’s weak protests; as quickly as he had come, he had disappeared.

Annabella smacked Kayetelynn on the arm agitating her sister, “what was that for?”

“You didn’t have to be so mean, he was helping us, we haven’t seen him in months and the first thing you chose to do was insult him.”

“He is being a baby”

“Lynny, you are the one acting like a child”

“I am not. I am angry. Why aren’t you? He left and didn’t even apologize; we got caught because he abandoned us, for all we know he could have told the guards where we were.”

Annabella sighed and pulled Kayetelynn to the side of the path, away from any eavesdropping passers by. In a hushed voice she finally spoke, “we got the box and we got out, we should be thankful we managed that. Do you not think that time and time again we have persuaded him to flout every one of his morals; he does it every single time because it is you who asks it of him. He loves you and you don’t feel a thing for him. He knows that, and yet still he is clinging to misguided hope that you will change and love him as he loves you. I am sorry Lynny but you don’t seem to want to even think about the entirety of this painting so please next time you see him, just apologize. Like it or not right now we still need and we are still using his help. So just think about that next time you snap at him, we still need his help. You know we do.”

Kayetelynn soured at her sister’s reasoning, more so that she had chosen to take someone else’s side over hers. It didn’t matter that Annabella was right, what mattered to Kayetelynn was her wounded pride.

Chapter Two

The air was dark and cool as Kayetelynn and Annabella made their way over the final hillside that stood in their path. Finally confronting their next adventure, before them was a seemingly unassuming home in the countryside that they had been seeking all this time. When the house finally came to view the ground seemed to lurch a little beneath their feet.

It was Annabella who took the lead like a hunting wolf on the scent of a kill. Annabella rarely wanted to take the lead for anything, not openly at least. But now more than it had ever been, the idea of being the leader was little but a thought in the tiny corner of her mind.

Annabella had felt the pull of what she had for so long been searching for; from the ridge of the hill it had all seemed so much harder, but now that she reached the walls of the house she could feel something calling to her. Everything began to feel that bit easier for her. She dragged Kayetelynn past the cold, ice-frosted windows towards the back entrance, quietly and with ease she picked and pulled at the lock hearing the final click she smiled.

Kayetelynn was open mouthed as Annabella made a line straight into the study; as though she had always known this house. Kayetelynn was in awe of her sense of direction, but her admiration fell into a sense of unease at an army of taxidermy squirrels, badgers and foxes that lined every single space around her. Annabella hissed at Kayetelynn to follow her, having seen the hundreds of draws lining the study room. Kayetelynn began to rifle through them making a considerable mess. It was Annabella who dropped to her knees and felt around the corner of the heavy rug, pulling it back to reveal a loose floorboard that creaked below her feet. It took a little bit of effort for Annabella to gently prise it open quietly.

Feeling around in the open space she felt the cold, hardness wrapped within a bundle of cheap rags. She peeled the layers of fabric away like it was an onion until she saw the core. The thing that had occupied her every thought for the last few months; night after night, with that same strange dream. The desire that had fuelled her determination and her search was now in her hand, the cold glinting blood diamond. Carefully she wrapped it back up and placed it within her bust before she replaced the floorboard wanting to keep a safe hold of the stone and never wanting to let it out of her sight.

Annabella and Kayetelynn left the door unlocked as they left; sensing that feeling that they had long overstayed their unwelcome; getting away would be a thousand times more important than locking the door behind them.

Somewhere within the house its owner had indeed awoken, with a start, leaping from his bed he ran to the window. There in the darkness he saw the figure of two girls running, desperate to get away. Clutching at his chest he knew what had been taken. It wasn’t fear that had overtaken him at the loss of something precious. Instead he smiled as he watched them leaving over the edge of the hill. “At last it is finally gone; it can be their nightmare from now.” He mumbled to himself.

He smiled getting back into his bed he nuzzled at his wife kissing her neck in the darkness. Uncaring of what mess could await them in the morning. His desire that had long since been suppressed seemed to awaken and with it a new energy.