Urban Legends (An Eve Hathaway's Paranormal Mystery Collection Part 1)

By Eve Hathaway

From the Publisher that brought you popular short story series Chains of Darkness, Song of Teeth, Children of Time, Splicers and now... our two stories in 1 book!

Urban Legends, real or not?

Chains of Darkness Part 1 : The Child of Mystery

The clock is ticking, and time is fast running out for Melinda. Time for her to make her escape. And time to make a daring rescue. But not all thing bound in chains should be freed...

The only thing fifteen-year-old Melinda has been thinking about ever since she found out that she was betrothed to a man twice her age was how to escape the madness of the cult she had been trapped in. But escape seems easier said than done, especially since Melinda is being kept under the watchful eyes of her Uncle, an Aunt who never seems to sleep, and the Elders.

Melinda has the unique ability to see things no one can, like Angels and, once one Halloween, a demon. Her power also allows her to see a boy named Caleb, who isn't really a boy but has the fading aura of an Angel, get captured by the Elders. Kept in chains and tortured, Caleb’s agonizing cries are a constant reminder of why she must get as far away from the cult as she can. She must escape, and soon, but not without trying to rescue Caleb.

Does Melinda have the power to not only save herself, but to save Caleb? And if she can save him, has she saved an angel... or a demon?
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Song of Teeth Part 1 : The First Voice

The modern city of Fontel, South Carolina, has a lost history hidden beneath centuries of time and layers of darkness...

Young history buff Mark Moran is just trying to get through the everyday struggles of high school, a neglectful family, and a thankless job when he meets a young woman who fills his life with a new enthusiasm. Tatiana Byrd is mysterious and determined, and Mark finds himself unwittingly drawn to her snappy intelligence and untamed beauty.

As the two become friends, Tatiana introduces Mark to a world beneath his familiar city that he had never known existed. A secret, closed-off city beneath the city becomes their private source of exploration and excitement. Even as his home life continues to degrade, Mark finds himself engaged more and more with Tatiana’s lifelong search for possible truths to a legend of bizarre crocodiles in the underground river. This search has isolated her from her family and peers, but Mark is bewitched by her intensity and independent spirit. While they discover a passion sparking between themselves, they also make a different kind of discovery. When they stumble upon a fantastic, reptilian creature, they find themselves falling into an even deeper, dangerous world never before seen by humans.

If you wish to read more, download and find out what happens!

Other titles in Eve Hathaway's Paranormal Mystery Collection:

Urban Legends Part 2 which includes The Spawn's Blood & Pale Eyes

Urban Legends Part 3 which includes The Unbreakable Bind & Ancient Scars

Urban Legends Part 4 which includes The Grace Bearer & The Last Note

Download and discover why readers follow Eve Hathaway.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandra Ross
• Release date: Nov 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311217165

Book preview

Urban Legends Part 1

By Eve Hathaway

Published by Publications Circulations LLC.

SmashWords Edition

All contents copyright (C) 2013 by Publications Circulations LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, companies and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

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The Child of Mystery

Chains of Darkness Part 1

Chapter One

Tick Tock.

The grandfather clock downstairs ticks off the seconds that have passed since Aunt Frances and Uncle Josiah went to bed. She listens for their creaking bed-one body, then the second. In fifteen minutes, Uncle Josiah will begin to snore, but even after three years of living with her aunt and uncle, she still has no idea if her aunt ever sleeps.

Tick tock.

She suspects not-although she knows that her aunt cannot read her thoughts, she also knows that her aunt suspects something. It is the night before her fifteenth birthday-and her wedding. Melinda has been planning her escape for three months, now; ever since her aunt and uncle arranged for her to become Old Man Herman's third wife. She tries not to think about the consequences if she were to get caught. The last girl to protest a marriage had been forcibly raped by her betrothed in front of the elders. Rumor has it that she lives, still bound in chains in the basement of the man she never married, every year giving birth to a child whom she will never see. And she had merely protested-what Melinda is doing probably warrants death, if she were caught.

So, she had better damn well not get caught.

Tick tock.

She reaches over her head to twitch the curtain aside so that the light of the moon can shine on the alarm clock on the dresser. Ten o'clock: two more hours to wait. Melinda feels the exhaustion from the day's labor creep up on her, but she'd poured some of her uncle's morning coffee into a thermos earlier that morning and drank it before she went to bed, and now, it's all she can do to keep her body under the covers. Luckily, her cousin Lucy is nine years old and a sound sleeper, so she won't be awake when Melinda slowly eases out of the warm bed and tiptoes out the door.

Until then, though... tick tock.

Three years ago, her mother got run off the road on the way to Melinda's recital. In any other state, it would have meant a hospital stay; maybe a few stitches and a cast, but in Boulder, Colorado, it was a death sentence. It wasn't until she saw her Aunt Frances at the funeral that she understood why her mother never mentioned her past. Three years, living with these crazy Christian Knights, kneeling to pray and biting her tongue and singing the praises of the simple life-all the while scouting for a way out, watching and timing the patrols that circled the compound, learning which floorboards squeaked and how to move silently through the creaky clapboard house. It all came down to this night. And the boy who was not a boy, but an angel.

The elders say that he is possessed by the devil, but Melinda can see the truth behind his form. It's a gift of hers that she's kept secret in this dangerous place-being able to see angels and demons as they stalk the earth. During her first year in the compound after her mother died, she wondered if somehow the gift had died, along with her freedom, because she could not see any of their glowing auras in the people they inhabited. She still does not know what to make of the fact that the cult is so isolated that neither heaven nor hell will bother with it. But then Caleb wandered into the compound, and though she knew him for what he was, nobody else did. When they discovered he didn't know how to speak and had nothing between his legs, the elders decided he was possessed and needed to be exorcised. Since then, he has been kept in the equipment barn, crammed into a large dog crate. Nobody quite knows what the elders have been doing to him for two years, but the screams that emanate from the barn frighten even grown men into grumbling about letting the boy go.

Still, nobody dared enter the barn to do it.

The hands of the alarm clock converge on midnight. Everybody is resolutely asleep. Melinda reaches under her pillow, pulls out her old sneakers, and slips out of the room like a shadow. Tick tock. She's wearing the clothes that she brought with her when they first moved her to the compound-sweatpants, socks, Polartec fleece sweater (they allowed her to keep these because they were more useful than vain). She's carrying her sneakers-she hasn't tried them on this floor-there's no telling if they'll squeak.

Her heart is going like a trip hammer and a cold sweat breaks over her as she goes, ever so slowly, down the stairs, each step a careful consideration of her weight on the wood. The door to her aunt and uncle's bedroom is closed, but that doesn't mean Aunt Frances is lying in bed, sleeping. For all Melinda knows, her aunt could be wide awake, just waiting to throw open the door and catch her deceitful niece obviously trying to escape, and throw her upon the justice of the elders. She wants to be out the door NOW.

When she's halfway down the stairs, the banister gives a squeak. The sound might as well be a shriek piercing the silence. Melinda stifles a gasp and holds her breath. Above her, there is a muffled shifting of springs, but after a minute, neither her aunt nor her uncle opens the bedroom door. She lets the air out of her lungs, fights to keep her legs from collapsing. Somehow, she manages to make it down the rest of the stairs without a sound.

Then she creeps through the