Taken by the Beast (The Conduit Series Book 1) (2 page)

I ran my
fingers through my hair and tried not to cry. Instead, I just kept staring out at those woods. And the funny thing was, for a second, it felt as though something might be staring back.

By the time dinner rolled around, things had calmed between Lulu and me. I would like to think that was because Lulu realized she had overreacted about the whole ‘scary-woods, must-have-fence’ thing. But in all honesty, my chicken piccata probably had more to do with it. Lulu loved that recipe, and she had ever since my Grandma No Neck taught it to me during that summer I spent in the mountains.

That, paired with a bottle of wine, and Lulu could loosen up after just about anything. She was pregnant, though, so I would have to hope the piccata was especially potent tonight.

She scooped what was probably her third helping onto her plate and started to dig in.

Looks like it’s doing the trick.

My eyes gravitated from her to Jack, who was half covered in macaroni and cheese and completely over whatever perceived trauma Lulu inexplicably imagined he would face once he got
three
feet past the tree line.

“It’s different this time,” she said through a heaping mouthful. “What is that?”

I smiled. “I started adding in tabasco.”

“Really? Since when?” She stabbed at a cube of chicken with her fork.

“About seven years ago,” I said, wincing at all that statement revealed.

“Good God!” Apparently the effect hadn’t been lost on Lulu, either. “It has
not
been that long since we’ve spent real time together.”

“High school,” I said. “Not that I didn’t beg you to come with me.”

“Not this again,” she said, grinning and wagging her finger at me. “What was I going to do in New York, Char? I’m not pretty like you.”

“That is insanely untrue. For one, everyone thought we were twins growing up. You’re a freaking supermodel.”

“No,” she answered, grabbing Jack’s leaking juice cup and tightening the lid. “
You’re
a supermodel. I got magazines in the attic to prove it.”

“You kept those stupid things?” I asked, leaning back in my chair.

“Are you joking? You were pretty much famous.”

“Tell that to my agency,” I mumbled, pushing food around on my plate with one of Lulu’s heirloom forks. I guess Ester hadn’t influenced her too much. Yet. “I wasn’t ‘pretty much famous’ enough to keep them from pretty much dropping my ass.”

“Morons.” She scoffed. “The world is full of them. It doesn’t take anything away from you.”

“Except an income,” I answered. “Speaking of which …” I wriggled uncomfortably in my chair. “I owe you a lot of money. I haven’t forgotten about that, and I will absolutely pay you back once—”

“Enough,” she said, raising her hand in stop-right-there fashion. “You’ve had a rough go of things, Char. Money should be the least of your worries.”

“Tell that to Medi-Collections. They’ve called me twice this week. Turns out chemo isn’t cheap.”

Images of my mother, of the way she looked at the end, strapped to machines and struggling for air, assaulted me the way the cancer had assaulted her. As always, tears stung my eyes.

Keep it together, Char. Streaky-mascara-face is not your best look.

I blinked hard and stared at my place. “I just want you to know I don’t expect a free ride.”

“And you aren’t getting one,” Lulu answered, reaching across the table to place her hand on mine. “You’re not here for nothing, Char.” She gave my fingers a little jiggle. “With Eddie gone so much for work, it’s not really feasible for me to be by myself right now, especially with Jack.”

“‘Cause I do such an amazing job watching him,” I muttered. “I really am sorry about earlier. What about the guy who’s supposed to fix the fence?”

Lulu sighed and pulled her hand back to beside her plate. “Ester texted me before we sat down. The project at the Coleman Mill is running long. They’re going to be three days. At the earliest.”

The anxiety in her tone didn’t make sense. It was only a fence. Not even the whole thing—just a single board … half of a board, actually. What was the big deal? But the way Lulu’s hands twisted around her napkin told me it was a big deal to her.

“It’s okay,” she mumbled. “Eddie left the gun.”

“The gun?” I almost choked on the air, my eyes flying wide. “Lulu, I get that your friends probably expect things to be perfect around here—Lord knows Ester seems like the type—but it’s
a piece of wood
. What the hell do you need a gun for?”

Her eyes moved over to Jack. Her hands gripped the napkin even tighter. “It’s nothing,” she said, almost panting. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Because I’m not a mom?” I asked, already sick of that notion.

“Because you’re not
from
here,” she answered. “At least not lately. New Haven isn’t the same place we grew up in, Char. Things have changed, and we’ve had to change with them. The woods are part of that.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, tilting my head. “How could the woods change?”

“Look.” Lulu swigged another sip of water. “It’s not important, and neither is this whole money thing. Eddie makes a good living, certainly good enough that you don’t have to worry about stupid stuff like paying me back for snacks or whatever ridiculousness is cooking in that whacked out brain of yours.”

“I just want to
do
something. I don’t want to overstay my welcome,” I lamented, remembering what Ester had said.

“Then do something,” Lulu answered. “Get a job if you want. I, for one, would love the idea of you sticking around for more than a few weeks. Who knows, you might even find that this is somewhere you can call home again. Until then, my guest room definitely is.”

She stood, cradling her pregnant stomach and letting out the sort of belch girls only do when guys aren’t present.

“That was amazing. Thank you.” She smiled, the first non-strained gesture she’d made since the fence incident. “But I think Jack here is getting drowsy, and I need to sleep for a week after that.” She pulled Jack gently from his booster seat and took his hand. “Just remember to lock up before you go to bed, okay?”

I nodded.

Lock up. Right. Then she won’t need the gun.

Ugh.

“And Char,” she called over her shoulder from the kitchen doorway. “Do try not to be so hard on yourself. These morons out here, they don’t know the girl that I do.”

***

I should have known better than to ever think Lulu would let one little transgression taint a friendship that had survived almost a decade of not being in the same zip code.

Still, I was a guest in this house, one who had no way to show my host how unbelievably grateful I was to have her—not to mention her guest room—in my life. Pulling out my laptop, I decided that if I couldn’t pay for rent, food, or practically anything else (thanks a lot, medical bills), then I could at least try to chip in where I could.

For whatever reason, this fence was bothering Lulu enough to consider brandishing a firearm. Setting that bit of lunacy aside, I figured if I could take matters into my own hands and fix the stupid thing, then that might be a good way to show her how appreciative I was for all she had done and was doing for me.

Never mind that the closest I had ever come to real manual labor was that time I had to provocatively press a sledge hammer against my chest for the cover of Maxim.

Fixing a fence couldn’t be that hard. A bit of wood, a couple nails, and some of that elbow grease I always heard the camera people talking about, and the job would be done. Lulu wouldn’t have to wait three days for those carpenter idiots to finish whatever crap they were doing at Dumbass Mills. It would be finished.
I
would have finished it, and aside from loosening Lulu’s death grip on that pistol, maybe getting something accomplished would actually make
me
feel better.

I opened the browser and searched for the nearest hardware store.

One hour away.

“Seriously?” I muttered to myself.

For all the expanding this stupid town had done, one would think a hardware store would be among the first improvements. Of course, my luck didn’t work that way.

A drive out of town for a piece of wood was impractical; I couldn’t afford the wood and nails if I spent all my money on a tank of gas. I would have to go to the town’s open market. And I
hated
the town’s open market.

I glanced at the clock and cursed under my breath. It was after eight, which meant most of the vendors would have closed shop by now. As much as I wanted to let Lulu wake up to a newly mended fence, it would have to wait until tomorrow. Better than three days, sure, but not the perfect surprise I had hoped for.

An image of a very pregnant Lulu snoring and clutching her pistol flashed through my mind. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so … okay, it was still pretty funny. But it was strange, too. What was it about those woods, and what had Lulu meant when she told me I wouldn’t understand?

On a whim, I typed Bookman’s Woods into the search engine. Bookman’s Woods was a mammoth, a national reserve really. It stretched through pieces of four towns and two counties and held more than three endangered species. But according to the search results, it turned out that wasn’t all it held.

A news article from the Freemont Times (the second town to the left) led the search results.

THIRD BODY IN TWO WEEKS FOUND IN BOOKMAN’S WOODS.

When I clicked, a picture of a smiling girl loaded, beneath it a caption that read “Same strange markings cover the remains.”
Same strange markings? As what? The other bodies?

When I examined the picture more closely, I shuddered. She was brunette, like me. And she had blue-green eyes … also like me. In fact, she shared more than a passing resemblance with me, which made her death even more unsettling.

I didn’t want to read the article. I shouldn’t have read the article. But I couldn’t stop myself. I scrolled through quickly, learning that the girl who looked like me was named Nancy Redcliff, was a second year pre-med student at Freemont U, and had recently gotten engaged to her boyfriend of a year.

My scrolling finger froze as I neared the picture of her body. A lump grew in my throat the way it always did when I looked at something like this. But it wasn’t the gore that gave me pause.

The markings—large scratches that crisscrossed the poor girl’s back—looked just like those I saw on Dad that night … the night he disappeared.

The memories flooded my mind as fresh as if it’d just happened, when in reality, it’d been decades ago. Heck, I’d only been eight when he’d walked through the front door, silent and gruff. It wasn’t unusual for him, though. Dad was often that way. He laid concrete, and he hated it. Mom and I stayed out of his way on nights like those. But that night, for whatever reason, I decided to bring him cookies, something to make him feel better.

When I walked in, he was changing his shirt. The unexpected markings on his back took my breath away.

“Daddy! Oh, goodness! What—”

He screamed at me get out, said I would be better off as far away from him as possible.

I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong, but he brushed past me. I hadn’t even noticed the bag in his hand until I stood at the window, perched on my tippy toes as I watched him march into the woods. The same woods that Lulu was so afraid of now.

It was the last time I ever saw him.

I slammed the laptop shut. This was ridiculous. So a couple of kids got themselves killed out in the woods. It was probably an animal and had absolutely nothing to do with what happened with my father.

For so long, I had convinced myself that Dad disappeared, that something must have happened to him. Forget the telltale bag slugged over his shoulder. He would never leave us. He would never leave me.

But now that I was grown, I knew better.

My father ran away from us. Anything else was just a story I told myself to try and feel better. I was done with stories, and I was done with towns that told them. Getting yourself all worked up because there was a wolf or a mountain lion thirty miles away didn’t make any sense. God, a night in a real city would put all of these bumpkins in the looney bin.

I shook my head. I didn’t want to stay here, in some place where they spun tales tall enough to make your best friend sleep with a gun under her pillow.

I didn’t want to be that person, not for anything. And something told me that if I stayed here long enough, I wouldn’t be able to help it.

No, I would go to sleep, get up, pick up the supplies I needed from town, and fix the stupid fence. Then I would get a job, save up like crazy, and make a break for it. Maybe I could call my (former) agent and beg him to take me back.

Hell, the Sears Catalog always needs models.

I punched my pillow, trying not to think about this ridiculous place, about all it had seen me lose.

“Idiots,” I muttered, climbing into bed. “They turn their town into a pressure cooker and then they make monsters out of thin—”

A sudden howling cut off my words.

Tensing, I threw my covers off and lurched for the window. The sound was nothing. A dog, or something. I would prove that to myself.

I glared out into those goddamn woods. See, nothing. Absolutely—

A shadow moved between the trees, hulking and burly, but also tall—too tall to be an animal.

I blinked hard, once, and then again. When I looked back, there was nothing there.

Stop it, Char
.

This place would drive me crazy if I let it. It was nothing. An animal.

I got back in bed, trying to feel more New York and less New Haven. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I couldn’t let go of the howl … or the markings … or the dead girl who looked just like me.

I set my alarm for 6:45 the next morning, thinking that if I got a handle on the whole fence issue, I might be able to wrestle the pistol out of Lulu’s hand without incident. Of course, after my internet escapades last night and that howl in the distance (which was absolutely positively a coyote … right?) I didn’t really need help waking up. I’d completely missed my “window” and was on my second wind when the clock radio sprang to life, blaring ‘My Humps’ and telling me that the night was mercifully over.