Return to Red Creek by Nathan Hystad (free ebooks romance novels .txt) 📕

wet hair, Tom could tell the man wasn’t from the area. The two guys were maybe a few years older than Tom, but neither of them was out of shape.

“I think we better talk this through,” Tom said, approaching them. Now he finally let his gun lower to his side, but he was watching them all, especially this Darrel guy.

“Rich, what are you doing here?” one of the girls asked.

“Isabelle, it’s my job to keep this town safe. We got a call about a group of people roaming the streets with guns,” Rich said. Tom saw the markings on the ground at the same time as Rich, but the deputy responded first. “What is that? What’s going on here?”

Seeing this pentagram felt so out of place, it took Tom a moment to even recognize what the symbol was. It was an ancient icon, but with the red paint and the unlit candles in the points’ corners, he knew what this one was for, and he didn’t like it one bit. Not after all the talk from Rich about demons and supernatural creatures.

“It was here when we arrived,” the unnamed man blurted out.

“I want some names. I’m Detective Tom Bartlett from Gilden Police Department.” Tom waited for someone to take the lead.

“Darrel Watson. This is my daughter Isabelle,” the local said gruffly.

Tom’s gaze moved to the young man standing with his arm around a girl. “I’m Brent Collins, sir. I’m here for spring break.”

Tom thought that was an odd thing to say, but he bit his tongue. “And you, miss?”

The girl was maybe around twenty years old, and she stepped forward with her hand out as if they were meeting for a job interview. “Taylor. Taylor Alenn. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Tom’s eyes went wide. They’d just been talking about the Alenns. “Does that mean you’re Paul Alenn’s daughter?” The question hadn’t even ended before he clued in. The man beside her was her dad. “Never mind. My brain’s a little waterlogged.” He stepped forward and shook the girl’s extended hand. He shook Paul’s hand too, and the man’s grip was firmer than expected.

“That’s me. I take it the young deputy here has told you about my history, then?” Paul asked, and Tom nodded, finding himself liking the man after only a brief interaction. Their presence in Red Creek while all of this was going on was somewhat unsettling. The pentagram behind the group wasn’t helping.

“Rich told me a little about it. What brings you to Red Creek?” Tom asked, and he instantly noticed all the people glancing at one another, as if trying to answer a non-vocalized query.

Paul was the one to speak, and Tom could tell he was the leader of the pack. Darrel was likely the most dangerous, but they were looking to Paul for direction. That was a good piece of information. All Tom needed to do was get him talking, and the rest would follow. “Officer… sorry, Detective Bartlett, I came here because my daughter decided to visit Red Creek in secret. She was supposed to come home to the city, but lied to me, saying she had to stay at school for the week to work on a project.”

Tom shuffled from foot to foot as the numbness began to creep in from his rain-soaked pants. He was starting to see the picture here. The girl, Taylor, was the one from twelve years ago, when the Smiths were caught. How did it all tie together? “And you, what? Saw a missing girl and thought Conway Smith’s long-lost cousin came to finish what he started?” Tom asked this with a slight curl to his lip, as if he was attempting a joke.

Paul stole a glance to his daughter and slapped a hand to his face. “Son of a bitch! That’s it!”

Tom was confused, and said so. “What’s what? Mr. Alenn, you need to be more forthright with me if you want me to help with whatever this is.” He waved a hand around the barn and ended up pointing at the pentagram painted onto the hard dirt floor.

Taylor stepped out of her boyfriend’s grasp, toward her dad and Isabelle. “That’s what we’ve been forgetting about. The bond. Someone has to control it, help it, nurture it. Feed it.”

Tom shivered at her last two words. “Hold on there. What are you talking about? Help, nurture, and feed what?”

They all paused. Taylor looked at Rich before meeting Tom’s stare. “You’ve heard of it, right? I mean, you’re from Gilden, so you must have. It’s real. The monster is real, and it’s back.”

Tom wanted to laugh, to tell the girl that she was mistaken and that they’d caught the man responsible for the missing kids, but he couldn’t. Tom knew as well as Sheriff Tyler did that Carl wasn’t the guy. He might have been involved, but he wasn’t the ringleader. Otherwise, Tom wouldn’t be staking out the condo building when the man was in custody. He also wouldn’t be standing like a wet rat inside an old barn during a thunderstorm.

Rich was nodding, and Tom couldn’t find it in him to argue. “Tell me all about it,” he said.

He wasn’t prepared for what came next. Taylor and Paul went into a long tale, dating back as far as the early eighteen hundreds in Germany, ending at today. They claimed their ancestors had bargained with the creature when they’d stumbled upon its nest in northern Germany. It gave them something, though these two weren’t quite sure what that was. Protection, maybe, or long life, but they knew that was part of it.

Tom listened as Paul explained about his mom’s brother being killed by the monster, a family sacrifice in the fifties. He listened as the storyteller regaled Tom with his own sordid past with the Smiths, and Tom grinned as he heard the man recount Sheriff Cliff with so much admiration, it was seeping from the author.

Before him was a group of people that had been here for that