The Dead Man's Blood, page 1
Contents
Afterlife Calls
The Dead Man’s Blood
Copyright © 2025 K.C.Adams
Author's Note
Prologue
1 - Niamh
2 - Edie
3 - Niamh
4 - Edie
5 - Niamh
6 - Edie
7 - Niamh
8 - Niamh
9 - Edie
10 - Edie
11 - Niamh
12 - Edie
13 - Edie
14 - Niamh
15 - Edie
16 - Niamh
17 - Edie
18 - Niamh
19 - Edie
20 - Edie
21 - Niamh
22 - Niamh
23 - Edie
24 - Niamh
25 - Edie
26 - Niamh
27 - Edie
28 - Niamh
29 - Edie
30 - Niamh
31 - Edie
32 - Niamh
33 - Edie
34 - Niamh
35 - Niamh
36 - Edie
37 - Niamh
38 - Edie
39 - Niamh
40 - Edie
41 - Niamh
42 - Edie
43 - Niamh
44 - Edie
45 - Edie
The Vampire's Revenge
Also by K.C. Adams
Acknowledgements
Afterlife Calls
The Ghost Hunter’s Haunting
The Ghost’s Call
The Mummy’s Curse
The Necromancer’s Secret
The Witch’s Sacrifice
The Mean Girl’s Murder
The Poltergeist’s Ship
The Dead Man’s Blood
The Vampire’s Revenge
The Demon’s Daughter
Writing as Kristina Adams
What Happens in Hollywood Universe
What Happens in…
What Happens in New York
What Happens in London
Return to New York
What Happens in Barcelona
What Happens in Paphos
Hollywood Gossip
Hollywood Gossip
Hollywood Parents
Hollywood Drama
Hollywood Destiny
Hollywood Heartbreak
Hollywood Romance
Standalones
Behind the Spotlight
Hollywood Nightmare
Boxsets
Welcome to the Spotlight
What Happens in… books 1 and 2
What Happens in… books 3 - 5
What Happens in… the Complete Collection
Hollywood Gossip books 1 - 3
Nonfiction
How to Write Believable Characters
Writing Myths
Productivity for Writers
Poetry
Revenge of the Redhead
The Dead Man’s Blood
Afterlife Calls
K.C. Adams
Copyright © 2025 K.C.Adams
ISBN: 1230008712950
All rights reserved.
This book or any part of it must not be reproduced or used in anyway without written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations used in a book review.
First published in 2025 by Kristina Adams Publishing.
Cover design by Miblart.
www.kristinaadamspublishing.com
Author's Note
The Dead Man’s Blood is written in British English, which means we eat lasagne and read cosy books. We also spend an absurd amount of time debating what a bread roll is called. And the correct answer is a batch. I’ll also accept a cob or a bread roll.
While this book is a cosy read, it contains discussions of filicide and domestic violence. There are no scenes containing them directly.
If you, or someone you know, is affected by these issues, you can find a list of support services across the UK here: https://www.womensaid.org.uk/womens-aid-directory/
It was really important to me to explore in this book the fact that there’s more than just paranormal evil out there. Vampires and ghosts aren’t the only ones who can lack humanity. The only way those people don’t win is if we stand together. Our differences are our strengths.
Prologue
‘Do you ever have a bad dream that won’t go away?’
Abigail stopped playing with the Lego in front of her and studied her friend. His blue eyes were redder than usual, and they didn’t seem to have opened all the way. ‘Sometimes. Do you?’
Oscar spun a piece of red Lego on the table and nodded.
Abigail frowned. ‘What happened?’
‘Are you sure you want to know? It’s really bad.’
Abigail resumed building her Lego house. It was raining outside, so they were stuck playing in the classroom. It was boring, so she needed a way to keep her hands busy. ‘I’ve seen a lot.’ She didn’t elaborate, just hoped her expression told Oscar she’d understand better than most people would.
Because she really, really would.
She doubted anyone else in the class had a dad who was possessed by a demon. Let alone a demon who’d possessed her a year earlier and wanted to hurt her friends.
‘I have this dream where a house is on fire.’ Oscar picked up the Lego brick and twisted it in his hands.
Abigail stopped building again. ‘Your house? Like, where you live now?’
Oscar shook his head. ‘No, I’ve never lived there. I don’t think I’ve ever been there. But it feels like I have.’
‘That’s odd,’ said Abigail as she tried to detach a yellow Lego brick from a blue one. The colour combination didn’t fit what she was trying to build, but she needed the yellow brick.
‘Exactly.’ Oscar turned away, watching the rain patter against the glass a few feet away. Some of their classmates sat facing it, playing with Playdough. Others were doing jigsaws or drawing. He sighed, turning back to his friend. ‘It gets worse. I feel like I’m trapped and can’t get out.’ He shook his head again, as if trying to get rid of the image. He lowered his head, turning away from the Lego table but still playing with that singular brick. ‘I woke up screaming.’
Abigail stared at him. ‘Did you get your mum?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, still not looking at her. ‘She tried to calm me down, but the fire felt really real. She wants to send me to get help.’
‘Who from?’
Oscar shrugged. ‘Who helps with bad dreams?’
‘Depends why you have them, I guess.’
‘My mum says it’s because some people just have more nightmares than others.’
Abigail scoffed. She’d had enough bad dreams to know there was more to it than that. The look on Oscar’s face suggested he felt the same. ‘Why do you think you get them?’
There was a glint in his blue eyes that suggested he knew exactly what was causing it. And it wasn’t what his mother kept telling him. ‘I think it happened to me. Before.’
Abigail studied him. There was something haunting about the look on his face. It made him seem older than his six years. She recognised his expression from the mirror. ‘Before what?’
‘Before I was Oscar.’
1
Niamh
‘Heeeey bestie, what’s up?’
‘What’s wrong? You never call me that.’ I turned on my car’s ignition and checked the mirrors, ready to pull away. I’d just finished decorating for the day, my muscles were sore, and I was planning a long, hot bath. Until Maggie had rang.
Just Maggie’s choice of words, and her tone of voice, made me suspicious. What was wrong? Had something else happened with Harry? It’d been three weeks since he’d disappeared and nobody had heard anything. We were all holding our breath until he returned.
Demons didn’t give up easily. The fact one was possessing Maggie’s husband of almost two decades suggested it had some sort of plan. And it’d come back to get us one day, probably once we’d settled into a false sense of security.
We’d gone to the police about Harry’s disappearance, but they weren’t interested. To them, he’d left voluntarily and just didn’t want to tell Maggie that he wanted a divorce. Especially since he was still using his debit card. Or the demon possessing him was. If it were Harry, he’d have been back home in a heartbeat. He never would’ve abandoned his family like that willingly.
But at least if anything did happen – like the demon got rid of Harry and left him somewhere – there was a record of us reporting Harry as missing.
Maggie was secretly pleased she didn’t have to play the distraught wife more, although she had played it well when we’d reported him missing. He technically was missing, so I supposed it wasn’t a huge stretch. It was just that he was missing in a way the police would never understand.
‘So…Abigail brought a friend over after school,’ said Maggie.
Not the direction I’d been expecting the conversation to go in, but Abigail had always been a bit of a loner at school – especially since she’d been possessed by the same demon that was now possessing her dad – so this was a massive improvement.
Everything Abigail had been through had left her pretty isolated from her classmates. It was good to hear she’d started the new school year on a positive, especially after how quiet she’d been the last few weeks. We’d tried to get her to open up, but she just wasn’t ready. She was too scared and heartbroken and young to articulate, or probably even understand, any of what she’d been through. Even the grownups were struggling.
None of those things explained Maggie’s tone. But until she gave me reason to worry, I was going to try to be optimistic. I had to be for the sake of my sanity.
‘Yay!’
Maggie didn’t respond. What was wrong with Abigail’s friend?
Knowing I wasn’t going anywhere, I turned off the engine. ‘Why aren’t you yaying with me? Friends are good, right?’
Unless they were like Edie’s arsehole of a friend, Dominic. Please don’t let the six-year-old have befriended a psychopathic necromancer. There couldn’t be that many more in Nottinghamshire, surely?
Maggie gulped so loudly I heard it through the phone. ‘Because…her friend talked to her earlier about having a past life. I mean, is that even a thing? Could it be a thing?’
Trust Abigail to attract someone else with connections to the paranormal. Sigh. I’d been hoping she’d have a normal life with a trickle of repressed trauma, like most people. There went my optimism.
‘I mean, I’ve never heard of it, but I’d never heard of necromancy until last year.’ Nothing surprised me anymore. Even I, as someone who could talk to the dead and cast spells, had had a sheltered upbringing. So anything was possible. Even things that were complicated and potentially headache-inducing, like past lives.
‘So it’s possible?’ asked Maggie.
I shrugged even though she couldn’t see me. ‘If the last year has taught me anything, it’s to keep an open mind. Because you never know what type of crazy is waiting juuuuust around the corner.’
*
Instead of going home and having a hot bath, I went home, said hi to Spectre – who stared at me blankly like any good ghost cat – fed Tilly, then took her with me to Maggie’s place.
Abigail was out with Josh, spending as much time with him as possible before he left for uni, so it was just the three of us.
Tilly used her furry bum to wedge herself between Maggie and me on the sofa, then nudged my hand so that I’d stroke behind her ears. She knew how to ask for what she wanted and wouldn’t take no for an answer, that dog.
The smell of freshly made lasagne wafted in from the kitchen. While I appreciated Maggie sharing lasagne with me, she hated making it. She detested shop-bought sauces and one of her least favourite things to do in the kitchen was make white sauce – even though she could make it with her eyes closed – so she only ever did it for work. However, I did like it. And the fiddly process of making white sauce was likely a distraction for her. There was no denying it: she was rattled.
‘How are you doing?’ I asked her, tickling Tilly behind her fluffy white ears.
‘I’m fine,’ she said in a voice that was unnaturally high pitched.
I stared at her, waiting for her to tell me the truth. We’d known each other long enough for me to see through her lie and for her to know that I could.
‘Well, I mean, how am I supposed to feel? My husband has been possessed by a demon for almost a year and none of us noticed until you went on holiday and Edie came over on her own and sensed something was wrong.’ She sighed. The bags under her eyes were a deep purple, a shade I’d barely seen before and one that no amount of make-up or skincare could hide. They were the kind caused by a severe lack of sleep and extreme stress. The kind very few things I could say or do would solve. ‘It’s so stupid. Like, if you or Edie had just gone upstairs in the last year, we might’ve known something was wrong sooner.’
‘The demon inside of Harry is incredibly powerful. There’s no guarantee we’d have noticed anything. Not just anyone can break through the wards Edie put up.’
Ben and I had checked the spell, paint, and symbols she’d drawn when we’d gotten home. They were good. The paint was even better than the one I’d been using my whole life. So much so we’d repainted all the wards on my house, Ben’s house, and Mrs Brightman’s house with it.
The wards we now used were so rare even Ben wasn’t used to them and he’d had to find them in his family’s Book of Shadows. He’d drawn them on scraps of paper a few times first, even getting some advice from Josh – who was going to study graphic design at uni – on the best ways to draw them because the shapes were so unusual.
Since Harry wasn’t living with the Morgans anymore, we didn’t have to worry about hiding the wards too much. If anyone asked, Maggie could just say they were decorative or something.
We’d made sure the wards were perfect everywhere we spent time, that way anywhere we went would be akin to a fortress. We couldn’t be protected all the time, but everyone deserved to feel safe at home.
But they hadn’t been enough to keep out a demon.
Maggie tapped her foot against the sofa. ‘That just makes it worse. How are any of us meant to feel safe? He broke your amulet!’
That amber amulet had protected me, and my ancestors, from a lot. The demon had managed to touch it and pull it from Maggie’s neck. And cracked it. It’s how Maggie had found out something was wrong. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that had been like for her or Josh. I was just glad that Abigail had been sleeping over at a friend’s house so hadn’t seen it.
Of course, she’d then seen the demon attack Edie, Fadil, and Josh, and swear at her mother. So the amulet was nothing in comparison to that.
‘What if he comes home and we don’t realise he’s still possessed? How would we know if it’s really him? What if the demon tried to hurt Abigail!’ She flung her arms in the air in frustration. Tilly looked up at her, wrinkled her nose, then lay her head back down. Why hadn’t Maggie said how worried she was sooner?
I put my hand on Maggie’s leg. ‘It’s seen what Edie is capable of now. It won’t come back without a plan.’
‘But what if it does? Or worse, if it kills Harry?’
Demons liked discarding the people they’d possessed when they were done with them, according to our Book of Shadows. So her fears weren’t unfounded. We just had to cling to the last shreds of hope that we had left or we’d never be able to function. Which, for me, as the pessimist in our friendship, was incredibly hard. Why had I bothered trying to be optimistic?
‘We don’t know it’ll come to that,’ I said. It was the most I could say without lying to her. ‘Would you feel safer if you moved into Mrs Brightman’s old place?’
We’d assumed demon Harry wouldn’t attack Maggie’s house again, but the demon had already done it twice. It hadn’t attacked in the last three weeks, but who knew how long we had?
I’d been thinking about her moving in there for a while but hadn’t wanted to overstep. She was defensive and liked her own space. I wanted her to feel safe, though. She jumped at every sound; every flash of light. It was pretty clear she didn’t feel safe in her own home anymore, and I doubted her kids Josh or Abigail did, either. We’d all sleep better if they were somewhere else.
Maggie stiffened. ‘No. I couldn’t do that.’
‘Why not? We just finished it, it’s already warded, no one’s living there, I can’t bring myself to sell it, and the demon doesn’t know about it. It’s perfect.’ The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.
Maggie pursed her lips. ‘What would the police say? Wouldn’t moving away from all the memories look suspicious?’
‘They didn’t care when we reported it, why would they care because you moved? It’s not like you’re selling the place,’ I said. ‘And if it’s about the money—’
She cut me off. ‘It’s not not about the money – Harry did bring in more money than me and I can barely afford to keep this place afloat – but this is our home. How am I supposed to explain moving to Abigail? What would she think?’
‘I think she’s more terrified of that demon than any of us,’ I said.
Her face froze. ‘Do you—do you really believe that?’
‘That demon possessed her. She probably knows it better than any of us except Harry at this point. My guess? She’d do anything to keep it away from her.’
Maggie’s shoulders sagged as she buried her face in her hands. I hated seeing her so defeated. Hated that the love of her life may never come back, and if he did he wouldn’t be the person she’d married. What had the demon learned from months of observation? From being inside Harry’s head? I shuddered at the thought.
