Taken by the Beast (The Conduit Series Book 1)

Copyright © 2014 by Conner Kressley & Rebecca Hamilton

All rights reserved.

The book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without the permission of the publisher. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For our readers, with love.

I ran through the hallway, throwing open closets like a lunatic. Just shy of two hours—that’s what it had taken me to completely screw up what my best friend Lulu did daily with ease. In that time—one hundred and eleven minutes to be exact—I had burned three grilled cheeses, knocked over a vase that I hoped wasn’t too expensive, and (most importantly) ‘misplaced’ her three year old son.

It was safe to say I wasn’t the domesticated type.

“Jack, this isn’t funny!” I yelled, pulling open the final closet door and coming up empty.

My breathing came more labored now, and not just because I had been running nonstop for the last several minutes. This hall was my last chance. I had now officially covered every inch of this house, attic and all. The little guy was nowhere to be found, and my panic was quickly twisting into dread.

The doorbell dinged, at once breaking me from my train of thought and sending my heart into my throat. What if that was Lulu? What if she forgot her keys? I would have to explain to her how I lost her kid, and that would no doubt send her eight month pregnant butt right into labor.

It might not be Lulu, though. Maybe it was the cops. New Haven was about as big as a shoebox, and before I’d moved away from here all those years ago, it was certainly the kind of place where your wayward child could show up on your doorstep with police escort. Lord knows I had.

I kicked off my heels, because if my seventeen-year-old self had taught me anything, it’s that cops who have come to chastise you don’t really care for the hooker heel look. I doubted that would change just because I’d aged a decade since then.

As I got to the door, I bit my lip, bracing myself for one sort of confrontation or another. The doorbell rang again.
God, help me
. I twisted the handle and pulled the door open in a ‘rip the Band-Aid off’ sort of way.

Before me stood a polished woman, best guess mid-twenties, wearing a sundress and sporting the sort of unwavering blonde hair that could double as a hard hat if need be. Pearls circled her throat, a purse sat clutched between her hands, and she smirked as she looked me over head to toe.

“How very forceful of you,” she said, running her hand up and down the doorframe. “I would be more careful with it, though. It’s palmetto. Imported all the way from the Carolinas.”

I grimaced. Before I left for New York, New Haven was a farming town. We had two general stores, a diner, and a movie theater that was always three months behind the rest of the country. You could set your watch by it. I hated the town back then, but not nearly as much as I hated it now. Ten years away had seen this place morph into a sort of retreat for the newly wealthy. The general stores gave way to day spas, the diner was replaced by a Starbucks, and last I heard, the movie theater was vying to house an independent film festival in the fall.

And all of that would be okay. I had never been the type of woman to bat away progress, after all. But it came complete with people like her, and that rubbed me the wrong way.

“I’ll try to keep that in mind—you know, when handling it,” I said, trying hard to keep the smarm out of my voice. “Can I help you?”

“Other than refraining from treating my best friend’s door like a jilted lover, you could invite me in,” the woman said, and she brushed past me, completely nullifying the need for an invitation.

“Y-your best friend?” I stammered.

As far as I knew,
I
was Lulu’s best friend. Sure, she had been cordial with some of these
nouveau riche
housewives, but that was more out of necessity than anything else. It wasn’t who she really was.

“That’s right,” she said. “Though, to be honest, I’m a little peeved at her. Lulu promised to let me know before she hired a housekeeper. I had more than a few qualified candidates in mind.” She removed a pastel glove and ran her finger along the counter. She lifted her hand and looked at the pad of her pointer finger with disgust. “Not that you aren’t doing an adequate job.”

“I’m not a housekeeper,” I said, folding my arms over my chest.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I’d hate to think Lulu was actually paying you for this.”

“Who
are
you?” I asked, marching after the woman.

“Ester Jacobs.” She gave me a little nod.

“I see. Well, I’m Charisse Bellamy.”

“Oh,” she said, setting her purse on the chair, careful to miss the apparently dust-ridden counter. “Lulu’s new friend. I’ve heard of you.”

“Ha!” I scoffed more loudly than I intended. “Well, given that I’ve known Lulu since we were crawling around in the dirt, I’d say that makes
you
the new friend.”

“What a charming visual. Forgive me for not recognizing you at first. When Lulu told me her model friend from New York was coming for a visit, I naturally pictured someone a little …”

“Thinner?” I finished, noticing the way Ester’s eyes traced my curves. I posted my hands on my hips and dared her to look away. “In the real world, there are a lot of different standards of beauty.”

“Evidently.” Ester pursed her lips. “In any event, I’m here for Jack. Not that this interaction hasn’t been delightful.”

Uh-oh. That’s right. I still haven’t found Jack.

“I … He’s asleep!” I said before thinking.

“Asleep?” Ester said with narrowed eyes. “Why, it’s nearly four in the afternoon. Something tells me Lulu wouldn’t be fond of the idea of you throwing off her son’s sleeping schedule like this.” She made a clicking noise with her tongue. “Of course, I suppose that’s something only a mother would think of.”

I bristled, not so much because she had hit a nerve or anything. Sure, kids were something I wanted … in the far off future. It was sort of the way a person wanted to go to Europe or plan for retirement. I was going to think about it, just not today.

No, the thing that really pissed me off was the slithering notion that she might be right. Lulu
was
a mom, and I wasn’t. There were things that she went through that I wouldn’t understand, things that this stuffy witch apparently would.

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you. He’s asleep. Come back later,” I said, motioning toward the still open door.

“You sure about that?” She smiled.

My teeth clenched, wondering what she knew that she wasn’t telling me. But I didn’t have time to consider that. A shriek, loud and decidedly panicked, sounded from outside.

I darted to the door to find Lulu standing in the driveway, a spilled bag of groceries littered at her feet and her hands clawing at her temples, the way they did only
when she was really freaking out.

“Jack!” she yelled, her eyes planted on the backyard. “Jack get back from there!”

Leaving the groceries behind, she bolted toward the house faster than any pregnant woman this close to popping ever should.

“Lulu, slow down,” I said, flinching at the fire coloring her eyes. “The doctor said you’re supposed to take it easy.”

“And
you
were supposed to be watching him!” she said much louder than I had anticipated. She pushed past me, almost knocking me down with her momma bear bruteness as she made her way out the back door to the huge expanse that was her backyard.

I went after her, trying hard not to react to the smug satisfaction that Ester didn’t even attempt to hide.

“That’s the strangest nap I’ve ever seen,” Ester remarked as she followed me outside.

At first, I didn’t see him. The yard was completely empty, save for the customary swing set and sliding board that seemed to be everywhere now. God, people sure loved to procreate around these parts. But as I followed Lulu’s running (and bouncing) frame, that quickly changed.

Jack was beyond the white wooden fence that cut off the backyard and separated it from Bookman’s Woods, which had always traced the outskirts of much of the town but seemed bigger now than it had when I was a kid.

Jack splashed around, running his hands through a shallow running stream and laughing like some sort of carefree hyena.

I bolted toward them, easily catching up with Lulu as she made it to the fence.

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” she yelled, moving down the fence, looking for the break that Jack had undoubtedly squeezed through. “Jack, you get back from there!”

She was breathless, holding her belly and wheezing.

“Lulu, calm down!” I said, scanning the fence. “He’s right over there. We can see him. There’s no reason to—”

“What the hell do you know?” she barked at me. “You were supposed to be watching him, and you let him go here of all places! Do you have any idea how dangerous—” She bent forward, clutching her stomach and panting even harder.

“It’s just a stream, Lulu,” I said. I reached for her, but Ester was already there, making soothing sounds into her ear and pulling her away from me.

God, how’s that for symbolism?

Jack stood up, as if sensing his mother was in pain. His eyes cut to the left, and following them, Lulu pointed.

“Th-there,” she muttered breathlessly.

A piece of the fence had broken, leaving the smallest of openings in the otherwise unyielding white wood.

“I’ll get him,” I said

Lulu was way too pregnant to crawl on her belly, and I had seen enough women like Ester to know that they didn’t get their hands—much less their dresses—dirty for anything.

The look Lulu shot me told me she would rather be going to get her son herself. But she was too winded, and I was too ready. I quickly
slid through the tear in the fence, or as quickly as a woman with curves could. The tear was small and the edges of the fence were jagged. It didn’t surprise me when one of them scored into my back.

I winced, but kept moving. After wriggling my ample hips and bottom through the fence, my legs came through easily. Looking back, I saw a hint of blood, my blood, across the wood. Whatever. I would bandage up later.

Jack waded out of the stream and hobbled over to me, and I scooped him up into my arms, giving him a half-guilty, half-grateful hug. “What were you thinking, Little Man?”

He mumbled something in baby speak, something that sounded like “He talks” or “He walks.”

Kids are so weird.

Letting him go, I ushered Jack through the tear. Obviously, he made it through much easier than I had, artfully dodging my bloodstain with plenty of room to spare. I, on the other hand, wriggled around like a fish caught on a hook, no doubt ruining my favorite pair of jeans in the process.

Jack scrambled away from me and jumped into his mother arms.

“You shouldn’t be holding him,” I said, getting to my feet and checking out all the dirt that was now caked into my outfit.

Yep. Ruined.

“I’ve got him,” she said, keeping her eyes away from me.

“But the doctor—”

“Goddamn it, I said I’ve got him!”

I reared back, knowing better than to push my best friend any further.

“Ester,” Lulu said, turning to the prim woman. “I need you to—”

“Get a contractor to fix that fence?” She shot me a look before continuing. “I already sent a text. He’ll be here within the hour.”

“Thank you.” Lulu sighed in the way you would expect to hear from someone who had just heard their husband had come out of surgery fine. But this was a fence. It was a stupid fence that blocked woods that Jack was
barely
in. Yes, I had screwed up, but was it really that big of a deal?

“Lulu, I’m sorry. I was making lunch. I didn’t—”

“Look, I need to lay down for a bit,” she said dismissively. “Just … just make sure that fence gets fixed.”

“All right,” I muttered at her back as she walked away.

“I’ll show myself out,” Ester said, shooting me another withering glance. “After all, I know when
I’ve
overstayed my welcome.”

She smirked as she walked past Lulu, giving her a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. It was a simple gesture, but it hurt. Maybe Ester was right. Maybe I had been here too long. Maybe after everything that happened, this wasn’t the place for me.

I turned back to the woods, staring out into the trees as though I could see my future among them or something.

I felt so alone. Even here, even among Lulu and the town where I had spent the first seventeen years of my life, I felt like an outsider. If only Mom were here. If only I could retreat into her the way I always used to when things went wrong. I never felt alone so long as I knew she existed in the world. And maybe that was the thing. Maybe now that she was no longer in the world, alone was all I would ever feel.