Taboo (A Tale of the Talhari Book 1) Read Free Page B

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