Marcii (The Dreadhunt Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

tightly around her neck, and thought on Tyran’s shallow words.
                  Though she may have disliked him, were his intentions genuine when he hired those mercenaries?
                  Was he just trying to protect the people of Newmarket?
                  Or was there something else afoot?
                  She didn’t know.
                  She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to.
                  Tall, thin houses that heavily contrasted the vibrant markets filled the town and rose up about the young Dougherty as she walked. Looming on either side of the narrow, cobblestoned street along which she scurried, the grey buildings hovered with a grim and uninviting air all about them.
                  Lodged between houses here and there at irregular intervals as she passed them Marcii stole wary glances down dark, dank alleyways that wound between the heavy set, thick stone structures.
                  They were cold, dark, often damp, and smelled of all things putrid and disgusting: if not rats and vermin, then instead faeces and urine.
                  Shuddering slightly, her pace quickened.
                  Soon, approaching a relatively square, squat building, set at the very end of a row of small, terraced houses, Marcii finally looked up at the slightly mouldy wooden door in her path.
                  She was home.
                  Reaching out and grasping the cold, black ring of iron that was the stiff door handle, she forced the door inwards and, with a loud, creaking groan, it reluctantly complied.
                  Cold air rushed in behind her and she shut the door quickly so as to keep as much heat in as possible.
                  Inside, the house was dark and the single room that made up the entirety of downstairs was plain and poor. Only a rickety wooden table and four chairs sat in its centre, and the all but vacant space was lighted mainly by candles.
                  Admittedly a little light filtered in through the two windows set in the one wall, on Marcii’s left hand side: the greatest benefit of being at the end of the row of terraces. But the thin glass in them was filthy enough to leave a decidedly gloomy feel hanging in the air, and as the young Dougherty looked upon the place which she knew only as home, her mother glanced up at her from her seat at the table with a peevish look in her eyes.
    “What took you so long?” Came her irritable greeting, her tone accusing and disapproving.
    “Mayor Tyran was speaking in the square…” Marcii replied by way of explanation.
    Her mother just huffed and sniffed rather loudly.
    Amanda Dougherty, though she was of course Marcii’s mother, and the young girl loved her dearly, more often than not upset her youngest daughter’s calm with just the simplest of mannerisms, or most minor of comments, for she did not think before she acted or spoke.
    Or, if she did, she didn’t care.
    Amanda was thirty-nine years of age, with thin, unhealthy looking blonde hair and blue eyes that were more than a little grim. She was tall for a woman, taller than Marcii, and had been attractive, to a certain degree, when she was younger.
    But now, as she’d grown older, she looked gaunt and, quite frankly, unappealing.
    Aside from all of that, needless to say, she looked nothing like her youngest daughter.
    Marcii sighed inaudibly, wisely keeping her thoughts to herself, and began to unload the fruits of her efforts upon the table under her mother’s scrutinising gaze.
    Thankfully though, before her mother had a chance to comment, thudding footsteps began their slow descent down the aged wooden staircase over towards the back of the room.
    The stairs always seemed to shake and wobble whenever anybody made their way up or down them, even though they were supposedly secured to the stone wall of the