Immortal

by V. K. Forrest

  “No.”

  “No?” Fin walked back into the living room, unbuttoning his uniform shirt. The house had no central air, only window units, and tonight they didn’t seem to be doing the trick. “You empty some of these boxes? Put some stuff away?” he asked, knowing full well Regan hadn’t.

  “Didn’t get to it.”

  Fin stood at the end of the couch. He glanced at the TV. A Wile E. Coyote wannabe crept across the screen. “You look for a job?”

  “At night?”

  Fin whipped off his shirt. “Damn it, Regan! You didn’t clean up. You didn’t fix the faucet that you promised you would fix two days ago. You didn’t do anything about a job. What did you do?” He didn’t intend to raise his voice, but it came out that way.

  Regan jumped up off the couch, throwing down the remote. “What did I do?” he shouted back, headed for the door, barefoot. “Same thing I do every day, Fin. I disappointed you.” He walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  Fin tossed his sweaty shirt on a box near the end of the couch and turned to watch the coyote on the screen swallow a puppy on a leash, whole.

  “Hey, what’s goin’ on?” He tried to play it cool, but he sneaked a glance at her. She was cute. No, better than cute. Way hot.

  She shrugged suntanned shoulders. “Just out for a midnight walk. You?”

  “Um…” He hesitated. “Roommate’s got someone over.” He looked down and rubbed his bare feet together, trying to brush off some of the sand. He wasn’t a great liar. “I was just—you know—trying to kill some time before I went back to the apartment.”

  “Ah,” she said. Her voice was liquidy. Sexy. She wasn’t just hot. She was hot for him. “So you want to?” She nodded in the direction of the dark beach.

  “Want to what?”

  “Go for a walk. Maybe a swim?” She turned her head to look at him, her lips pursed. It was practically an invitation to kiss her.

  Suddenly he felt like such a dork. His heart was racing. His armpits were sticky. This kind of thing didn’t happen to him. Women didn’t try to pick him up. His brother, yes. His friends, sure, but never him. “Sure.” He stood up at the very same moment she did, and her breasts brushed against his chest. Her nipples were hard beneath the thin, tight tank top. She looked up at him and he did what she obviously wanted him to. He kissed her.

  He kissed her gently first, just to be sure he hadn’t misread things, but when she slipped her tongue into his mouth, he went for it.

  The guys were not going to believe this…

  They kissed twice more. She fondled his balls through his board shorts and, feeling bold, he fondled her breasts.

  Holy Mother of God—he was going to get laid tonight. By a stranger he met on the boardwalk. Unfucking-believable.

  “Come on,” she whispered, breathy in his ear. “Let’s go for that walk.”

  “Sure.” He let her take his hand. Then he remembered he didn’t have his wallet. He’d left it back at the rental. That meant he didn’t have the foil-wrapped coin he would need. He hesitated, stifling a groan of frustration. How could he have left without his wallet? How could he be unprepared at a moment like this?

  But his place was just a couple of blocks away. He could run to the house, run back. But what explanation would he give for the ten minutes he’d be gone? What if he was mistaken? What if she really wasn’t offering to have sex with him? Then he’d look like an idiot.

  “What’s the matter, hon? Don’t want to go for a walk with me down by the water?” She wore her long hair down and it blew in the breeze, partially obscuring her pretty face. “Where it’s dark? Where we can have a little privacy?”

  There was no mistaking the meaning in her voice. She definitely wanted to have sex with him.

  “A condom,” he heard himself say. “I…I left in such a hurry that I forgot my wallet.”

  She took his hand, directing him toward the steps that led to the beach and out of the lamplight. “Don’t worry,” she said, tapping the cloth bag she wore on her shoulder. “I’ve got everything we need right here.”

  He smiled as he hurried down the steps, unable to believe his luck. There was no way anyone was going to believe this story when he tried to tell it tomorrow.

  Chapter 3

  Fin heard his cell phone ring but he was slow to wake. He was having the most delicious dream; he and Elena were on a boat anchored off a Greek island. They were sunbathing in the nude on the deck, the soft sound of the Aegean lapping at the sides of the hull, amazing blue sky framing the already perfect images. She had the most exquisite breasts, firm and round with dark nipples that—

  The phone rang again and Fin felt himself being pulled from the dream. The sensation was so strong that he wanted to reach out to Elena and clasp her hand, hoping she could keep him from drifting away.

  And then suddenly he was back in the tiny bedroom of the rental house. The room was dark and hot and his bare legs were tangled in the bed sheets. Eyes still closed, he fumbled with his hand, in search of his phone on the nightstand. Only it wasn’t beside the bed where it belonged. He lifted his head from his pillow, squinting in the early-morning darkness, trying to remember where he had plugged it in the night before to recharge. The single outlet beside the bed didn’t work, which was a pain in the ass because not only could he not recharge his phone on the nightstand, but the lamp didn’t work either.

  Thankfully, the phone stopped ringing. Fin let his head fall back on the pillow. It was probably Regan. Fin had never heard him return to the house last night after he’d stormed out.

  Fin lay there for a minute and then opened his eyes. Regan had always called at odd times, from all over the world, usually when he was partying. What if he had gone out and scored? What if he was high? Fin was supposed to be babysitting his little brother, keeping him clean. Keeping him safe. If Regan had gotten himself into any trouble, Mary Kay was going to kill Fin.

  The cell phone rang again and Fin sat up, listening to locate it. Something glowed on the far side of the room on top of a cardboard box. The phone. It continued to ring.

  Scrambling to reach it before it stopped again, Fin stubbed his toe on something solid on the floor. “Ouch! Mary, Mother of Jezus,” he cursed, hopping on his good foot. He grabbed the phone and flipped it open as he tried to unplug it from the wall charger. Still leashed to the wall, he had to lean over to speak into it. “Regan?”

  “Fin? That you?” The voice was thick with a Gaelic Irish accent.

  “This is Fin.” He managed to finally unhook the phone from its charger and he stood upright. It wasn’t Regan. Balancing on one foot, he rubbed his throbbing, injured digit. “Who’s this?”

  “It’s yer uncle Sean. Jezus, Fin. Ye don’t recognize yer own uncle’s voice?”

  Fin hobbled back to the bed. “Not at—” He glanced at the nightstand, trying to see what time it was, but of course he hadn’t plugged his alarm clock in because of the faulty outlet. “At whatever godawful time of the morning it is.” He lowered himself to the edge of the bed.

  “I’m sorry to wake ye, I am,” Sean went on dramatically. “But I need ye, Fin.”

  “You need me?”

  “I can’t do this again. I swear by Christ’s bones, I can’t,” his uncle moaned, his accent so thick Fin could barely understand him. Sean’s accent always got heavier when he became emotional, which seemed to happen with more frequency as he got older.

  “You can’t do what, Uncle Sean? What’s wrong?”

  “He’s dead. Murdered. Don’t ye see, I can’t handle another murder case.” The chief of police sounded near to tears. “I just haven’t got it in me.”

  “Uncle Sean, calm down.”

  “Ye have to come. Ye have to help me, Fin.”

  Fin rose from the bed to go to the light switch by the door. Panic fluttered in his chest. Had Regan been killed? But that was impossible. Or nearly so. A person had to seriously know what he was doing to kill a vampire.

  But there had
been the beheadings two summers before, so it was possible. And Regan had double-crossed the Rousseau brothers in New Orleans. They certainly knew how to kill a vampire. “I’ll help you, Uncle Sean, but you have to tell me what’s happened.”

  Fin flipped the switch and the single overhead bulb cast a dingy light over the twin bed surrounded by boxes. He grabbed the uniform pants he’d worn the night before and stepped into them. “Who’s dead, Uncle Sean?”

  “Ye have to come now before people start getting up, goin’ about their business. We can’t have this, Fin. Not on our beach, we can’t.”

  His uncle still wasn’t making any sense, but Fin wasn’t sure he was going to any time in the near future. “Who’s dead?” he repeated. “Not…not Regan?”

  “Regan? Why would Regan be dead, Fin?” Sean became temporarily sidetracked, typical behavior for him. “Is there something ye haven’t been telling us? Mary Kay was just saying the other day—”

  “I don’t know why Regan would be dead.” Fin closed his eyes and opened them, trying to clear his head. “He wouldn’t,” he said into the phone, grabbing a clean T-shirt from a laundry basket his mother had delivered the day before. He took the phone away from his ear for a moment so he could pull the shirt over his head. “Who’s dead, damn it?”

  “Ye don’t have to raise yer voice, lad. We haven’t identified the victim yet. A young man. Nice looking. Was.” Again, emotion threatened to choke Sean’s words.

  “A human?” Fin asked, feeling panicky again, but for entirely different reasons. “We’ve got a dead tourist?”

  “’Fraid we have, Fin.” Sean sounded utterly defeated.

  Fin dug in the laundry basket on the floor again looking for clean socks. “Where?”

  “Ye can’t miss it. I got my car parked right on the boardwalk.”

  Sure enough, Fin had no problem finding Sean’s police cruiser, its blue and red lights flashing on the boardwalk in front of Sal’s Pizzeria, blocking the view of the alley. Neither did a dozen other people. By the time Fin hurried south on the boardwalk on foot, the sun had risen and a crowd of locals and tourists had gathered near the chief of police’s car, craning their necks, trying to get a better look at whatever was going on in the alley. Jon Kahill, one of the youngest members of the Clare Point police force, was trying to keep the crowd back, but he was having difficulty.

  Fin pushed his way through the throng, recognizing about half the faces. “Back up,” he grunted. “Please, have some respect.” He spotted one of his mother’s neighbors, Jim, who appeared to have been out walking his Irish greyhound. “Jim, can you give Jon a hand here?” Fin grabbed the dog’s leash out of Jim’s hand and passed it to an HF in jogging shorts. “Could you watch Sugar for a few minutes, ma’am?” Then to Jim, “I want everyone back another twenty feet.”

  Jim looked at Fin, then at Jon, hesitated, then turned to face the crowd, opening his arms. When he spoke, it was with a voice of authority. “If you’ll just step back, ladies and gentlemen, we can let the police do their job.”

  Thank God you got here, Fin, Jon telepathed. The chief’s in a way.

  Just keep them back, Fin shot back. He walked around the cruiser and spotted three people walking briskly toward him from the opposite direction. Send someone to block the south side, too, he telepathed to Jon.

  Who? We’re a police force of sixteen, counting you.

  I don’t care. Anyone, as long as it’s one of us.

  Fin turned into the alley. It was darker here. Cooler. Like all Kahills, he had a keen sense of smell. The moment he turned the corner, he smelled the scent of dying human flesh. There was no smell like it on God’s earth.

  At the far end of the alley that ran between the pizzeria and the arcade, he spotted his uncle, a Hispanic man in an orange jumpsuit, and another one of Clare Point’s finest, Pete. They stood in front of a large blue Dumpster. On the street behind it sat another police cruiser, its lights flashing.

  The chief of police, in a police uniform too large for him, turned around, spotted Fin, and ran straight for him, his sagging abdominal fat jiggling. Tears dampened the middle-aged man’s cheeks. “Sweet Jezus, you’re here,” he cried, his arms flung wide as if he intended to take Fin in his arms.

  “Chief,” Fin said aloud, then telepathed, Uncle Sean! You’ve got a civilian here. A human. Get a hold of yourself.

  Sean stopped short, took a deep breath, and when he spoke again, though his voice quavered, he sounded more in control. “Officer Kahill.”

  “What have we got?”

  “A dead kid,” Sean said, stepping aside so that Fin could get a better look. He hung his head, his sagging jowls deflating. “Someone’s son. Someone’s brother. Dead.”

  Fin took a breath as he shifted his focus from his uncle to the body in front of the Dumpster. His first impression, ten feet away, was that the young man, who appeared to be in his early twenties, not only wasn’t alive, but had never been so. His face was so white, it was blue. Waxen. He looked like a department store mannequin, seated casually, one knee up, his ivory hands resting on his knee. He had straight, shaggy blond hair and a couple of days of blond fuzz on his cheeks. He was wearing flowered board shorts and a T-shirt advertising a famous surf shop in Florida. He was so carelessly good looking that he could have been a surf shop dummy, posed on a surfboard.

  Except for the gaping wound on his throat.

  Fin took a step closer, his stomach doing a sour flip-flop. He had seen dead men before. Killed his share. But this…this murder was so obviously, so hideously pointless that it made him want to vomit.

  “No one has touched him?” Fin questioned.

  Pete moved closer. “No,” he said quietly. “Manuel Rodriguez here came by to pick up the Dumpster just before dawn. Luckily, he walked around this side before he hit the hydraulic button to lift the can for dumping.”

  “Otherwise the body propped against the Dumpster would have fallen—”

  “And the truck would have dropped the Dumpster on top of him,” Pete finished for him. “He called it in from his personal cell phone at five twelve a.m.”

  Fin looked up. “Where’s the truck now?”

  “I had Manuel move it down the street so we could use my car to block the alley.”

  “Smart, Pete.” He offered a tight smile.

  Pete’s gaze drifted to the ground and the discarded French fry cup at his feet. “Thanks.”

  “He been this way since you got here?” Fin cut his eyes at his uncle, then back at Pete.

  Pete nodded. “I was the one who told him to call you. Sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Fin took a second to get his head straight and then called to his uncle, who remained behind them. “Chief?”

  With obvious reluctance, Sean Kahill moved closer to Fin, and to the dead man. “How would you like to proceed from here?” Fin asked.

  Sean looked at him with the face of a lost child. His eyes clouded with tears again. “I told ye,” he whispered hoarsely. “I can’t do it again. It’s just not in me. Not another murder case.”

  “Well, who is going to do it?” Fin snapped, keeping his voice low so their witness wouldn’t hear him. “You’re the chief of police. You have to organize the investigation. You have to find out who this kid is. Who did this? And you have to do it fast, sir,” he said, with meaning in his voice.

  After fleeing Ireland in the seventeenth century, the Kahills had survived in relative safety for the last three centuries in Clare Point, Delaware, by taking care not to draw attention to themselves. In the last sixty years or so, their small but healthy tourist industry had been what kept money in their pockets and food on their tables. It was what enabled them to do their life’s work. An unsolved murder in Clare Point could mean the beginning of the end for the tourist trade in such a fickle economy, a risk they couldn’t afford.

  “You have to take charge of this investigation, Uncle Sean,” Fin repeated.

  “And I am. I am.” The middle-aged m
an latched his thumbs through his belt buckle, extending his elbows. “I’m taking charge and I’m delegating. I’m putting you in charge.” He pushed a finger into Fin’s chest.

  “Me?” Fin would have laughed had it been in any other circumstances. Had he not been in the presence of a dead man. “I’ve been a police officer for a day. You’re the chief. You…you’ve got others who’ve been on the force for years.” He indicated Pete, who had led the witness back down the alley toward the boardwalk.

  “Pete can’t do this.” Sean shook his head, almost in a frenzy. “You know he can’t. But you could do it, Fin. You’re…you’re good at this. It’s what you do. You investigate. For the sept. You investigate murderers all over the world.”

  Fin groaned in frustration. “This is different, Uncle Sean. I follow men. I keep track of what they do, where they go, who they see. I just report back what I see.”

  “So report back to me what you see here.” Sean turned his teary gaze to the dead man. “Please, Fin…” he begged in a whisper. “Fer the boy, if not for me.”

  Fin drew his hand over his face, down his chin, exhaling. He could see there was no sense arguing with Sean. The chief was a good man, but not a strong man. The beheadings had taken something out of him and he just didn’t seem to have regained it. The weight loss, the heavy drinking—anyone in the town could see it if they looked carefully.

  Fin glanced at the dead man. “He’s obviously posed,” he observed aloud.

  “Posed?”

  “Like the body was set there, positioned after he was dead.” The surfer’s eyes were still open. Blue. But they were beginning to cloud. The body was already in the first stages of decomposition, although Fin didn’t know yet how long it had been here. The human body started decomposing the moment the heart ceased to beat.

  “Posed,” Sean repeated. “Looks posed to me.”