Guardians Of The Haunted Moor Read Online Free

Elowen’s
labour pains weren’t meeting with complete success. “It’s okay.
I’ll hang a left at the roundabout, take us over by the back
roads.”
    “ Isn’t that a longer route?”
    “ Ten minutes or so. Much quicker in this traffic.”
    “ Okay. Sorry. I’m making a fuss.”
    Gideon
took a read of the emotional pressure building up in the Rover.
Between Lee and his ma, he was surprised the windows hadn’t blown
out. “Not by comparison with that old lady in the back seat. She
just told me I had to buy two new cars.”
    “ Well, maybe we should get rid of the Escort. I saw that episode
of Super Drive as
well. Maybe we should...” He faded out, tugging at the seat belt
across his chest. “Shit. Did Zeke say how far along Elowen was? How
far she’s dilated?”
    “ Not really his area of expertise.” Gideon smiled wryly,
flicking on his indicator and trying to edge across into the
left-hand lane. “Not that it’s ours either, technically,
but...”
    “ It bloody will be when he’s having one of his own.” Lee wound
down his window, leaned out and waved his arm at the truck-driver
refusing to give way. “Back up, you fucking idiot!” He caught
Gideon’s look of amazement. “Sorry! Sorry, Mrs Frayne. I just don’t
want our experience of being parents to start with us missing the
birth. I know we’ve jumped through all these checks and social
worker’s hoops, but what if we miss it, and they decide we’re
not—”
    “ Okay. Go ahead.”
    “ What?”
    “ The blues and the twos. Hit ’em.”
    “ Are you serious?”
    “ Never more so. It’s that button there, and that
switch.”
    The old
two-tone siren was a wail these days, but the effects were the
same. The Rover came to brilliant, noisy life. The guy in the truck
decided to quit blocking the lane. Up ahead, drivers began to inch
their cars aside to clear a path. Lee sat back to watch these
effects, suddenly less of an anxious parent-to-be than an excited
ten year old. Gideon chuckled, finally getting out of second gear
and into the roundabout. “Better?”
    “ I’ve always wanted to do that.”
    “ You should’ve said. We could’ve taken her round the village at
home, chased Darren Prowse and his mates.”
    “ It’s for emergencies only, though, isn’t it? For when people
really need help, not when some copper’s just late for his
tea.”
    “ How do you think I always get home on time?” Gideon turned
right onto the narrow back road that would lead them through fields
and woodland to Truro. He gunned the Rover’s engine in
satisfaction. “Besides, if this doesn’t qualify as an emergency, I
don’t know what does.”
     
    ***
     
    Ezekiel
was stalking the waiting room outside the maternity ward. His
fiancée had done much towards humanising him, but under pressure he
sometimes resumed his heron-like posture, hunching up his shoulders
against the onslaught of the modern world. He was running his
father’s Methodist ministry full-time now, and tonight would have
suited clerical black rather than the smart shirt and trousers
Eleanor had picked out for him. “Gideon,” he said, as soon as the
doors swished open to admit his brother, Lee immediately behind him
with the old lady clinging to his arm. “Elowen is fine. The nurses
believe she’ll be in labour for some hours yet. She can have
visitors, but only two at a time.” He put out a hand in warning.
“And Michel Duroy is in there now.”
    Gideon
skidded to a halt. Zeke was growing increasingly tolerant of his
unconventional family, which Gideon and Lee were about to make
weirder still by adopting Lee’s niece as their own child. He was
softening up in the pulpit as well, disappointing his congregation
with lack of hellfire. Gideon was grateful that his first words had
been the ones he and Lee had needed to hear, not a reproach for
arriving like a blue-lit avalanche or for dragging Mrs Frayne out
with them on such a night. He clearly still had something on his
mind,