Blood Contract

They took the Bloods' fortune. They should have left their graves alone. For centuries, an old English town has prospered from a bargain made with the mysterious Blood family. Their quarry brought employment. Their biscuit factory brought wealth. And when the last of the family was gone, everything they had built passed to the town. The price was simple. On a windswept hill overlooking the sea stands the Blood family graveyard, enclosed by an ancient wrought-iron fence and watched over by a crumbling mansion. The graves are to remain untouched until the end of the world. No one remembers why. When ambitious councillor James Cathcart sees the neglected cemetery as valuable land for development, he dismisses the old agreement as superstition and persuades the council to break it. Then fingerprints begin appearing on the palms of those who voted. Names of the living appear upon weathered gravestones. Shadows move where nothing should be moving. And beneath a town that has long since forgotten the source of its prosperity, the dead begin to stir. One by one, those responsible discover that the Bloods have not forgotten the agreement. Nor have they forgiven its betrayal. As rain sweeps in from the sea and fear closes around the town, Cathcart refuses to accept the fate waiting for him. With an occultist who understands something of the forces he has disturbed and a detective struggling to reconcile the impossible with everything he believes, he sets out to find a way to break a contract written centuries ago. But the deeper they dig into the Blood family's past, the more dangerous the truth becomes. Because this was never merely a promise. It was a contract. And some contracts cannot be broken. They can only be fulfilled. BLOOD CONTRACT is an atmospheric British gothic horror novel of ancient graves, buried secrets, supernatural vengeance and the terrible price of modern greed.