Shiver (Night Roamers) (19 page)

Herb was her husband and the fry cook.
He was also a former Marine and built like a linebacker. One who’d retired twenty years ago but still kept himself in pretty decent shape.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “My car is right under the light over there
,” I pointed.

“
Just be careful,” she said.

“Did you want me to come in tomorrow?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’m closing the diner after lunch. Susan’s family is having a special memorial service for her around four o’clock. You should go, it’s at Saint Odelia’s,” she said.

“
Yeah, I’ll be there,” I said, pulling on my jacket.

She patted my arm. “Okay, kid. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I walked to my car and noticed that it was beginning to snow. Shivering, I started the engine and grimaced when it hesitated.

Crap, I’d forgotten to have Nathan look at it.

Saying a silent prayer, I took off down the road and started driving back towards the cabin, watching in awe as the snowflakes grew larger. Since I’d lived all of my life in San Diego, I wasn’t used to snow and couldn’t wait to have my first white Christmas.

Beautiful
, I thought, staring at the intricate patterns of the flakes as they dissolved onto my windshield. My mother had told me once that no two were alike, and as I watched the crystal-like flakes flutter down, I smiled at their beauty.

It normally took me a good twenty minutes to drive home from work and I turned on my stereo to listen to some music. It was then that s
omething farther up the road caught my eye. As I drew closer to the dark shadow, I noticed it was a rusty old Buick pulled over to the side of the road. I thought the car seemed vaguely familiar, and an image of a girl in my grade with long, brown hair and glasses suddenly popped into my head.

Taryn Cooper?

The lights were on and the driver’s side door was wide open, but I didn’t see anyone in the vehicle. I pulled around it and stared into my rearview mirror, wondering what I should do.

I grabbed my purse and started searching for my phone to
try and call Nathan; he’d know what to do. When my phone appeared to be missing, I swore at my stupidity. I’d set it on the charger at home, and had forgotten to bring it along.

Crap.

I got out of my car and walked over towards Taryn’s vehicle. When I noticed her purse abandoned on the front seat, more alarm bells went off in my head.

Who’d leave their purse?

I stepped back from the car and stared towards the woods, wondering if she’d ventured into them. I wasn’t sure why she would, but I hadn’t seen her on the road walking towards town, either, and I doubted she’d walk the opposite direction.

The silence of the night was broken by a shrill cry.
“Help!”

Heart pounding, m
y head whipped around to the trees on the other side of the road. The voice seemed to have come from that direction.

“Help, me! Please!”

I’m not even sure why I started running towards her cries; it was probably the stupidest thing I could do, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

“Taryn?
” I hollered.

“Help
!”

I rushed towards the sound of her voice
, wishing I’d grabbed something to defend myself with just in case, like the wrench Nathan had placed in the back of my trunk.

“Taryn!
” I called, slowing down as I entered through the tall trees. It was dark and difficult to see with the moon offering very little light. I began walking deeper into the woods, now petrified that I’d made a very bad choice, but still unable to turn away from someone needing help.

A
strangled cry from behind a large oak tree stopped me in my tracks. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I slowly moved around it.

“Oh, my God,” I choked, staring at
the grisly scene on the other side. It was definitely Taryn, or what was left of her. She lay on the dirt, staring lifelessly at the sky with her throat sliced open and blood oozing from the wound.

“Taryn,” I whi
mpered, backing away in horror, expecting whatever had attacked her to come after me next. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a shadow skirting around the trees and my heart stopped.

Scared out of my mind
, I turned around to flee, but something heavy landed on me, slamming me to the ground.

“No!” I s
creamed in horror as my eyes locked with a pair of vivid yellow ones.

“Yes!
” growled the monster, holding me down with its crushing weight. It raised a sharp, pointy claw and pressed it against my throat.

“Please,” I squeaked, feeling the claw rake over my skin. “Let me go…
”

“Stupid fool,” it breathed, licking its putrid lips. “Very stupid.”

I tried to turn my head to keep from smelling the foul stench coming from its mouth. It reminded me of rotten meat and copper pennies.

“Look at me
, girl…” it hissed.

I whimpered as the creature grippe
d my neck and forced me to meet its unholy gaze. As it stared at my face, its mouth twisted into a smirk. “Ah…I… know… you…”

I stared at the monster, whose face reminded me of some kind of reptile, with green scales, wormy lips, and freaky snake-like eyes.
I definitely did not know this demon.

“Lucky…
” it hissed, releasing its vise-like grip on my neck. “Oh… you are so… lucky… I will let you live… to suffer…but only… for now…”

Then, as clear as
day, the word “bitch” echoed in my mind and my breath caught in my throat.

Faye.

Her lips curled into an evil smile, then she leaped into the sky, but not before I caught a glimpse of her gargoyle-like body, with wings that must have measured well over twenty feet.

Stunned
that she’d actually let me go, I pushed myself up off the ground and then ran like hell back to my car.

“Where were you?
” barked Nathan when I stormed through the cabin door. “I was about ready to send out a search party!”

“Oh, my God,
Nathan!” I choked, rushing towards him. I threw my arms around my brother and wept.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, patting my back.

I looked up at him. “I…I just found a dead body!”

H
is eyebrows shot up. “What?”

I
brushed my wet cheeks. “It was Taryn Cooper,” I said, my voice shrill. “Faye killed her and then she went after me.”

“How’d you escape?” he asked
incredulously.

I moved away from him and began to pace
. “She actually let me go and said I was lucky, this time. You should have seen her,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself. “She looked like some kind of dragon or reptile. It was horrible.”

He closed his eyes and groaned. “Fuck. I can’t deal with
any more of this shit right now. I feel like at any minute, I should be waking up from this nightmare.”

I grabbed a tissue from the coffee table and blew my nose. “
I know. I wish that’s all it was.”

He walked over to the window and looked out into the darkness. “I knew we shouldn’t have moved here.
I just had this feeling that it was a mistake. With our luck, dad will show up next, and that would be the least of our worries.”

My heart stopped. I’d forgotten to tell Nathan about our dad, his body tossed somewhere in the lake. 

“Hey, Nathan, where’s mom?” I asked, deciding to tell both of them at the same time.

He turned around and sighed.
“She went to Caleb’s. I couldn’t stop her.”

My jaw dropped. “Nathan, what the hell?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “I know. I tried to keep her here, but she said that he needed her. I even tried to tell her about the vampires.”

“What did she say?” I asked.

“She told me to stop listening to you or she’d send both of us to a shrink.”

I shook my head. “
This is bullshit. We have to talk to her before she leaves tomorrow.”

“You try and talk to her
then,” he mumbled. “She won’t listen to me.”

“She’ll believe us if Duncan can back us up. Where is he?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. He said he’d be over a while ago and he never showed.”

“Okay, we’ll wait for him and then drive over there,” I said.
“I’m going upstairs to take a quick shower and change my clothes.”

Nathan didn’t respond, he just sat down in the sectional and put his head in his hands.

“Once Duncan gets here, everything will work out,” I told him. “You’ll see.”

He nodded.

I really didn’t believe it would be that easy, but I could tell he was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. So was I, for that matter. We had to keep it together, at least for mom’s sake.

I sighed and then went upstairs to take a shower. As I
stood in the shower washing the conditioner out of my hair, images of Taryn’s mangled body swept through my mind. I couldn’t get the picture of her lifeless gaze out of my head and it was all I could do to keep from going hysterical. The fact that I’d almost been killed by whatever the hell Faye had turned into wasn’t easy to digest, either. As far as I was concerned, we all needed to leave town as quickly as possible, especially after hearing Faye’s threats. Without a doubt, I knew she had plans for me, and there was no way I wanted to stick around to find out what they were.

I turned off the water and then opened the shower door for my towel.
After drying my skin, I put on a robe then leaned over to wrap the towel around my hair. As I lifted my head back up, I was met with two piercing blue eyes.

“
Jesus!” I gasped, backing away from him. “Don’t do that!”

Ethan
smiled wickedly. “Do what?”

“Sneak up on someone getting out of the shower
,” I snapped, pulling my robe in tighter.

He stepped towards me
and tugged playfully at my robe. “Looks like you’re finished, which is too bad. I’d have loved to join you.”

I slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch me
!”

Ethan moved towards me
again, this time until he had me backed up against the tiled wall. “Your mouth says ‘no’,” he whispered, staring at it. “But your eyes say something entirely different.”

I stared up at him. “Get
the hell out of my house.”

He raised his hand and touched my cheek. “Come on, don’t be like that.”

I raised my chin. “Do you think I’d just let you waltz in here and do whatever you want with me after what you said at the diner earlier?”

His eyes softened.
“I’m sorry. I know it was rotten, but I did it for your own good.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

“I was trying to protect you,” he said, turning away. He walked out of the bathroom and I followed him.

“What do you mean?”
I asked.