Taboo (A Tale of the Talhari Book 1) (3 page)

He met her gaze and nodded. “I wish we would have gotten there sooner.”

Chapter Three

Sydney woke suddenly. She’d left the bathroom light on, just in case she didn’t sleep through the night, but was surprised to see it hadn’t been necessary. Sunshine glinted through her bedroom windows. Everything was bright and that seemed all wrong. Cora was gone. It should have rained today. There should have been thunderstorms, not sunshine.

And there were creatures in her town. Horrific, nightmare creatures.

She pushed the covers aside and sat up.

How could any of this be real? How could Cora have died so suddenly? One minute everything was all right, the next, some creature was charging at them. And would Alaric really come back to update her? Who was he anyway? And who were his friends. She didn’t know if she could just sit here and not do anything. That wasn’t her nature.

What was that thing? Where had it come from? How did it even exist?

She got up and crossed to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, brushed her teeth, and then slid into her robe and slippers.

She’d brought Cora to the magazine to help her, Sydney, with research for an article she was writing on the life of the Israelite king, David. Cora had been trying to make changes in her life to make up for the bad decisions she’d made in her twenties. Decisions that had left her working a dead end job. Sydney had been getting Cora to help out with research, had bought her to the magazine to help with various other tasks, too. She wanted Cora to be visible to the decision makers. The hope was that when a position opened that didn’t require any advanced education, Cora would be considered. She’d make more money, get benefits, and have a job she could enjoy…possibly a career.

That had been the plan. But now, Cora was dead.

Sydney trudged down the hallway, past the stairs—deciding coffee could wait—and into her home office where she had access to various news sites and online databases.

She booted up her laptop, deciding to take a quick look at the local news and newspaper websites to see if they had reported anything about Cora.

While the computer booted she jogged downstairs to make coffee.

She’d purchased her home because every room on the first floor had expansive picture windows that looked out onto her picturesque street of colorful bungalows, cottages, and Cape Cods. Last night she’d shut the curtains on every one of them so she didn’t have to see outside and think of the thing she’d seen. Every time she closed her eyes she saw that thing, and every time she looked out the window she’d imagined it loping up the center of her street. Now, in daylight, she paused to open the curtains and let the sunlight in to dispel the shadows.

In the kitchen, she did the same thing. The sight of her back yard with its lawn chairs, flowers and herb garden made her feel a little bit better. They were familiar. They made her feel safe.

She brewed coffee and was back upstairs in her office in minutes. She searched the online newspapers, news sites, even a few disreputable sites, but could find nothing about her friend’s death. It appeared Alaric and his team were good at covering up murder.

She spent the next few hours surfing the news sites of towns as far away as Charlottesville, looking for anything she could find about similar attacks, but she found nothing.

Could last night have been an isolated incident? She didn’t think so. That creature had come from somewhere.

Then it occurred to her. Alaric and his team had covered up Cora’s death. What if this wasn’t the first time they’d done that sort of thing.

She returned to the local news sites and began searching for reports of missing people. If that thing stayed within the city there was no telling how many people it could have attacked.

Almost immediately she started finding stories about people who’d gone missing.

A husband and father of two had last been seen two weeks previous. His wife said he’d taken the dog out for a walk around nine that night. A seemingly harmless endeavor since they lived in such a quiet town. They lived near a restaurant and bar, so there were often people walking the sidewalks near their loft. Dogs had to use the bathroom, people were out getting drinks; at least they would have been at nine.

He hadn’t come back. The dog had been found the next morning wandering around the neighborhood alone. The cops thought the dog’s location may have been an indicator of where the husband had gone, but he’d never been found.

And he wasn’t alone. Two women had gone missing a week ago.

She read a few lines down and laughed humorlessly.

The two women had a condo on Jefferson and had told neighbors they were heading out for a run. Jefferson was where she and Cora had been attacked.

The women had never been seen again.

And there were more. When she finally finished reading, the tally was up to twenty-three. Twenty-four counting Cora. And it hadn’t just been downtown. It had been all over Lynchburg.

So many over the span of just six months. Why wasn’t anyone doing something about this?

She pushed out from the desk and went to a drawer where she kept various local maps. She leafed through the stack until she found her runner’s map of Lynchburg, then grabbed four pushpins from an adjoining drawer. She spread the map across the wall and pinned it in place. Grabbing more pushpins, she began setting them in the map where people had gone missing. As she worked, a pattern emerged. Although the disappearances seemed to be spread throughout the city, all of the people had gone missing within a half mile of the James River Heritage Trail.

Bingo. Whatever these creatures were, their home base was somewhere close to the trails.

The trails were scenic paths surrounded by trees, bushes thick with foliage and colorful plants. People came to the trails to bike, run, or walk. They went for miles. They were popular for their beauty and also because in the dead of summer, if you had to be outside, the trees kept the paths cool. And most importantly, you could get nearly anywhere in that section of Lynchburg using the trails. If it were at night, you’d never be seen.

She looked down at the clock display on the monitor and was surprised when she saw the time. She’d been at it nearly two hours. Although she hadn’t found out anything about whatever it had been that attacked her last night, she’d figured out where the danger zones were.

She wondered if Alaric knew about the trail connection, then decided he must. At the time it seemed like an eternity, but in reality it hadn’t taken his team long to get to them. She and Cora couldn’t have left the magazine more than ten minutes earlier.

Showered and dressed, she called the magazine to let them know she’d be working from home today, then Sydney set out on foot on Rivermont. She wasn’t far from an entrance to the trails herself. Less than two miles in fact. So she walked up Rivermont toward Woodland Avenue to one of the trail entrances. If memory served, there were thirteen entrances, or maybe it was fourteen.

She had no intention of actually entering the trail, but she did want to have a look around the neighborhoods surrounding the entrances; see if she could find anything out of the ordinary.

The day was crisp, the sun making everything look deceptively beautiful. The tree branches shifted on the breeze as she walked. It was a gorgeous day in Lynchburg, and her friend was dead.

She had to know what that thing had been. If there were more of them, as Alaric had said, nobody in the city was safe. Anyone could be next.

It had taken her years to adjust to living in this town alone, without her family around her. But eventually she’d found her place in this nook of the world. And this day she was happy her family lived more than three hundred miles away. She couldn’t bear the thought of her nieces and nephews being anywhere near such a creature.

She’d feared she’d see that pale, blue tinged face in nightmares last night; see the claw slicing Cora’s throat; see the hooves where feet should have been. Then there had been its fangs. They were sharp and as deadly as any she’d seen in all the vampire movies she’d ever watched.

She stopped walking and shivered.

But no, that couldn’t be right. Vampires were sexy, seductive, and they sparkled. At least they did in Hollywood. If vampires were real, if somehow they really existed, would they be beautiful? Or would they look like what they were, eaters of humans?

“Hi Sydney.”

Sydney refocused on the sidewalk in front of her. She’d completely zoned out, so focused on her objective was she.

“Hey Tonya,” she said, waving to her neighbor.

“You must not be running today.”

“No,” Sydney said, forcing herself to smile, “just out for a walk. The weather is so nice today I couldn’t resist.”

“Me neither.” She waved. “Have a good one.”

“You too.”

She had this same conversation at least three more times, which made it damned hard to concentrate. Typically she would have been running on a day like today. People can’t do more than wave and smile at you when you’re running.

She crossed to the other side of the street and turned. She walked till she got to Woodland, then turned again.

The street was beautiful, full of grand houses so large her own Cape Cod could have easily fit inside any of them four times over. Lawns were perfectly manicured, sidewalks were lined with colorful flowers and streetlamps were ornate.

She couldn’t imagine the thing she saw last night anywhere near this street. She couldn’t imagine the thing she’d seen last night could even exist. How was any of this possible?

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?”

At the sound of his voice she jumped. When she landed, she turned to face him.

Alaric stood there, hair lustrous in the April sunshine. He stared down his nose at her, one eyebrow raised in question. His hands were set imperiously on his hips, and his eyes were narrowed to slits. He had on the same kind of black shirt and black cargo pants she’d seen him in last night, and they looked even better on him in the light of day. And they had looked pretty amazing last night.

This man was a walking, talking billboard for sex.

She opened her mouth, remembered her idiotic sputtering of the previous evening, and endeavored not to sound like a complete moron again. “Investigating.”

“Say what?”

“Investigating. I did a little research this morning and have discovered that while all of the disappearances, a.k.a., attacks, have happened throughout Lynchburg, not one of them occurred more than a half mile from the trails. Clearly the trails are being used as a means to—”

“Have you lost your mind?”

Her mouth snapped shut, then popped back open. “Excuse me?”

“You should not be out here. Have you forgotten that you almost died last night?”

“Of course I haven’t forgotten. That’s precisely why I’m here. The trails are dangerous. Anyone in the vicinity is in danger. That much is obvious. It’s also obvious to me that whatever these things are—I personally believe they’re vampires——they reside somewhere near the trail system. I assure you, I have no plans of stepping anywhere near that trail, I’m simply doing a little reconnaissance.”

“Reconnaissance?”

“Yes. I’m visiting all of the neighborhoods where disappearances have happened and seeing if I can locate a possible home for our perps.”

“Perps? Who are you, Nancy Drew? I have a team and we are handling it. Go home.”

“By my counting, as of yesterday there were twenty-three unexplained disappearances, today there are twenty-four. There were nearly twenty-five. I think you could use the help.”

Hands still on his hips, Alaric shook his head. His mouth opened, then shut. He even did a bit of sputtering of his own. “I don’t believe this. We don’t need your help. Go home.” This time he pointed toward the general direction of her house.

“Of course you need my help. I know this town like the back of my hand. I’ve written articles about everyone and everything to do with this city for the last seven years. Not only am I a historian turned journalist, but I know Lynchburg’s history, I know its neighborhoods, I know where disgusting creatures like that may hide. Can you say as much?”

“I’m beginning to wonder if saving your life was a mistake.”

There was no annoyance in the way he touched her chin and arched her face up toward the sun so she had to stare into his eyes. His touch was gentle.

“You have a death wish,” he said quietly. “And that’s a shame. Someone as beautiful as you shouldn’t be out running around after monsters.”

Breathless, she took a step back. She frowned down at her sneakers. “My closest friend is dead. Cora was like a sister to me. She was trying to change her life. She wanted a job at the magazine where I work, she wanted to meet someone special, she was trying to make her world a better place. Now she’s gone. I watched that bastard kill her and I have to do something. I can’t just sit inside my house and pretend everything is okay. If it were your friend, could you?”

“I’m trained.”

“Could you, trained or not?”

He gazed up at the sky and sighed. “No, I suppose not.”

“Then let me help. I won’t do anything to put myself in danger. I’ll leave that to you.”