Eternal

by V. K. Forrest

  Fia plopped down on a barstool. “Are you talking or serving?”

  Sorcha grinned and reached for a bottle of ale in a bucket of ice. “Serving.” She popped open the top with a bottle opener and passed it to Fia. “So how have you been?” She leaned over, elbows on the bar. “Well, not so great lately, I guess, with what’s going on here, but you know—how’s life in the big city?”

  Fia felt totally out of her element; the music, the wild atmosphere, the beer, someone asking her to talk about herself. She didn’t know what to say.

  “I miss you, you know.”

  Fia leaned over to hear her better. “Miss me?”

  Sorcha was Fia’s age and pretty with pale red-blond hair, blue eyes, and killer cheekbones. Her lover and soon-to-be husband had been killed in Ian’s raid, so she’d never had the opportunity to be married, or give birth, either.

  “I miss talking to you, seeing you,” Sorcha said. “You used to call me…or least return my calls.”

  “I’m sorry.” Fia looked down at the dark bottle in her hands. “I’ve been busy. You know, long hours at work.”

  “I know. But not any busier than the rest of us.” Sorcha grabbed a beer for herself and leaned on the bar again. “I just figured you had your life in Philadelphia. Your FBI career.” Her voice sounded wistful. Hurt. “We were good friends, Fia. For a long time. What happened? What did I do wrong?”

  Fia made herself look at Sorcha. “You didn’t do anything,” she said softly. “It’s me.” She was quiet for a minute, thinking. She had shut Sorcha out. And Eva. And Alana. They had all been such great friends for a long time. Hundreds of years. And then, Fia had gotten caught up in her life with Joseph, then the FBI…her human life…and…

  She wasn’t sure what had happened. Why. She had just pulled back from Clare Point and everyone here, including her friends.

  Sorcha waited, sipping her beer.

  “I don’t know what to say.” Fia grimaced and looked up. “I’m sorry?”

  Sorcha grinned, sliding her bottle across the bar to clink against Fia’s bottle. “To old friends.”

  “Old friends,” Fia agreed.

  As the two talked, the party around them gained momentum. Maybe it was just the beer and lack of sleep, but as the hours passed, the music seemed to Fia to get louder, the movement of the bodies around her more frantic.

  By her fourth beer, Fia was beginning to think it was time she made her exit. Sorcha had wandered off with Eva to dance with a human couple sporting plastic, glow-in-the-dark fangs and Fia was left alone on the bar stool to finish the last of her beer and find enough energy to walk out.

  She was watching a woman dance…actually, watching the woman’s Gucci shoes—they were really cute—when her buddy from earlier in the evening swooped in, satin cape flapping.

  “A dance, madam?”

  She was going to say no. She had no intentions whatsoever of dancing with him. How did one slow dance to Def Leppard, anyway? But then he drew his hand down his throat, catching Fia’s attention, and she slid off the stool, mesmerized by the steady pulse in his throat.

  “Billy’s Got a Gun” throbbed in her head as Jeremy wrapped his arms and his cloak around her. It was just so easy…easier even than with the men she picked up in bars. This guy asked her if she’d like to taste his blood.

  Everything, everyone, was spinning around Fia. She brushed her lips against Jeremy’s throat and he moaned. She bit gently, testing the waters. He groaned.

  She’d only intended to take a tiny sip. No sex of course, and just a taste. But he wanted it. Wanted her. It was what all the humans in the room wanted.

  Jeremy’s blood warm and sweet and tangy on her tongue, she caught him in her arms as he passed out. Realizing what she had done, she glanced around, afraid someone had seen her. But there were other young sept members on the dance floor supporting their unconscious partners.

  There were humans lying on the couches, on the floor. Sorcha was kissing a good-looking human wearing a costume straight out of the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula, including the spectacles and top hat.

  Fia eased Jeremy’s six-foot frame onto the carpet. As Arlan said, he’d remember nothing in the morning. If this party was like the ones in the old days, while still unconscious, the humans would be transported back to where they had come from and in the morning they would be weak, hung over. They would remember nothing of where they had been or what they had done. At the very most, they would all talk about the weird dreams they had had.

  A human, lying half under an end table, caught Fia’s hair and twisted it around his fingers. She crawled toward him. He lifted his chin, groping her breasts and offered his neck, already dotted with punctures. She only took a couple of sips. She didn’t know how much of his blood had already been drained. Then Eva, stretched out on the end of couch, beckoned her.

  Fia half crawled, half dragged herself to the couch, where a human male lay passed out in Eva’s lap. Eva smiled, her mouth red with the man’s blood.

  Fia lowered her head and drank greedily.

  Fia didn’t know how long she was on the floor or how many humans she sampled or how many vampires she shared her own blood with. It had been a very long time since she had overindulged this way and after a while all the faces faded. She saw nothing but blood. Smelled nothing but blood. Tasted nothing but sweet, forbidden, human blood.

  It was almost dawn when she stumbled up the cellar steps, missing one flip-flop. She left the other under Mrs. Hill’s kitchen table. In the gray dawn, Fia cut across yards and slunk into her mother’s house. She thought she would do better just to shower, get dressed, and get on with her day, but by the time she let herself into the Seahorse bedroom, she was so tired that she decided to lie down. Just for five minutes. Then she would have to get up. She was meeting Glen for breakfast. She had work to do. A life to return to. A real life.

  Fia must have dozed off. She missed breakfast, grabbed a shower. A glance at her neck in the mirror while dressing made her realize that the tank top she had intended to wear under her suit jacket was definitely not going to do today. She stole one of her little brothers’ turtlenecks out of the laundry room. Maroon. She hated maroon. She found Glen on the front porch in an antique glider. She dropped down beside him. “Mornin’.”

  He glanced at her. Then a double take. “You okay?”

  Sounded like genuine concern.

  She lowered her sunglasses from her damp hair and sipped from the white mug in her hand. Mornings like this, she wished she drank coffee. She could have used the extra kick of caffeine. “Fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. You look…hungover. I thought you said you didn’t drink.”

  She would have smiled had her head not felt as if someone were driving nails into it with a pneumatic gun. What she had told him was that she didn’t drink alcohol, at least nothing beyond a good Hill stout. She’d never said anything about overindulging in blood.

  “I don’t. Just a bad night.” She tugged on the too-tight collar of the ridiculous-looking turtleneck and leaned her head back on the swing. “Old haunts, shall we say?”

  He studied her for a moment and then gazed out over the well-manicured green lawn. The fishpond in the side yard gurgled. Midmorning traffic crawled by. No one in Clare Point was ever in a hurry. It wasn’t as if they were going to grow old and die before they completed their task. They had all the time in the world…and maybe then some.

  “You went out last night,” he said quietly.

  She opened her eyes, cut them in his direction. Pain knifed through her head.

  “I couldn’t sleep either. I heard you go out. One forty-five. Pretty late for a small town like this.”

  Not knowing what to say, Fia said nothing. She sipped her tea, making a mental note to be more careful about slipping out at night while in his vicinity. Of course it probably wouldn’t matter after today. He was returning to Baltimore, she to Philadelphia. Cases would get solved. Lives that had intersected would never
cross again. It was the nature of an FBI agent’s job. Life.

  Glen was quiet beside her and she watched him through the dark lenses of her Maui Jims. “Guess these walls are thinner than we realized.” She hesitated. The bites on her neck burned and she tugged at the turtleneck again, wondering if they really hurt or if it was just guilt that stung this morning. She should never have gone to the party last night with Fin. She was a member of the high council, for sweet Joseph’s sake. She should have shut the party down.

  “I heard you talking to your fiancée,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Table-linen matter still not settled?”

  He watched a nuthatch teeter on the edge of a stone birdbath in a flower bed. “Old haunts?”

  “What’s that?” she asked. Her mind was working sluggishly this morning.

  “You said old haunts kept you awake. You mean an old boyfriend?”

  She crossed her ankles and watched the nuthatch. “Something like that.”

  “The guy waiting for you on the porch last night?”

  “Yeah,” she heard herself say. Then, before she could catch herself. “No…not really. It’s…complicated, Glen.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Again, silence.

  “Did you love him?”

  “Who, Arlan? No. It was his friend. His best friend.” Fia didn’t know why she was saying these things, but it was as if once she started talking, she couldn’t stop herself. “They were practically brothers growing up.” She lifted the mug to her lips. “I loved Ian. Arlan loved me. Ian…mostly he just loved himself.”

  Emotion thickened her voice. It was the first time she’d ever admitted that fact. To herself. To anyone. Sweet Mary, Mother and Joseph, what had she drunk last night? Some sort of bizarre truth serum?

  “Where’s Ian now?”

  “Gone.”

  She said it with such a finality that he didn’t ask where. She didn’t think he realized she meant dead. She knew he didn’t realize she meant dead hundreds of years ago.

  Hundreds of years? Had it been that long? Why then, did it still hurt so much?

  “And Arlan’s still coming around?”

  “Yeah.” She gave a little laugh, but there was no humor in it. It made her sad. Sometimes angry, but this morning…just sad.

  “And you and he…” Glen left the sentence for her to finish.

  “Arlan and I…” Fia searched for the right words. “I…I love him for what he’s been to me, for how he’s been there, but—”

  “You’re not in love with him?”

  Fia lifted damp lashes to watch the birdbath again. The nuthatch was gone, but two female cardinals had come in its place. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with Glen on her mother’s front porch in broad, blinding daylight. Wasn’t this the kind of talk people who were practically strangers, like themselves, had late at night in bars, half lit? Wasn’t the anonymity what made them talk outside their usual boundaries of comfort? Fia couldn’t count the number of times men had confessed to her they didn’t love their wives or they hated their daddies or they were wearing pink silk panties under their gray Armani suit.

  “No, it’s not settled,” Glen said.

  She shifted her gaze from the birdbath to the good-looking man beside her. Again, the sluggish brain. “I’m sorry?”

  “The linens. Stacy and I. We didn’t agree on the table linens. Hell, I don’t even know if we agreed what country we’re getting married in.” He looked away from her, squeezing his temples with his thumb and forefinger.

  She couldn’t see his eyes because he was wearing sunglasses, too, but she sensed unrest. Unhappiness. “Trouble in paradise?”

  He chuckled. “Something like that.”

  “So you fought over white versus ivory napkins. So what? Weddings are stressful, or so everyone tells me. You’ll work it—”

  “It’s not the damned napkins, Fia.”

  His forceful tone startled her. Then she realized that he didn’t want her to placate or reassure. He just wanted her to listen. She drew her knees closer to his, angling her shoulders so that she was looking directly at him.

  “I don’t know…I’m not sure…” He stopped and started again. “It’s not as if I ever really made any decision. You know what I mean? It just all fell into place. We started dating. Sleeping together. I liked her fine.”

  But there was no passion between them. She could hear it in his voice. Smell it on his breath. And her heart gave a trip.

  For what earthly reason, she had no idea.

  “You don’t love her but you’re going to marry her?” she asked softly.

  The conversation was so surreal. This was not the kind of exchange she was used to. In fact, she wasn’t used to exchanges at all, really, at least not of the personal sort. In bars, she listened to men’s confessions because they always wanted to come clean before they asked her back to their place. She had no real girlfriends, not in the outside world, at least. And here in Clare Point…well, everyone already knew all her deep, dark secrets.

  “I don’t know.” He lifted his hand and let it fall. “I don’t know if I love her. I don’t know if I want to marry her. I don’t know if I’m getting cold feet because every forty-two-year-old man who’s never been married does get scared at some point, or…”

  Fia wanted to reach out to him. She wanted to rest her hand on his knee. On his arm. She wanted to draw him to her breast, smooth his hair, and whisper to him that it would be all right. That he would figure it all out.

  She stayed on her side of the porch swing. He stayed on his, but there was a sudden crackle of energy in the air. A sexual tension that hadn’t been there before. He wanted her to touch him…

  “Glen—”

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get emo on you, here.” He got up awkwardly. “I was waiting around thinking we should talk before we go back, but we’re good, right? Waiting on the autopsy, the tox reports, lab results, etcetera.”

  “Right. Yeah. Sure.” She got to her feet, pushing the swing back as she rose. It drifted forward. She felt like a complete idiot. A dweeb, her teenage brother would have called her.

  “So I guess I’ll be on my way.” He hooked his thumb in the direction of his car, parked on the street. “We’ll talk next week, right?”

  She followed him to the steps, resting her hand on a white porch column. “Sure. Talk to you next week.”

  On the sidewalk, he raised his hand in a half-wave.

  Fia couldn’t decide if she wanted to run and tackle him and kiss him, or bite him. Either would have worked.

  Chapter 14

  “I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me, Special Agent Kahill. I know this isn’t the way we usually do business.” Lieutenant Sutton glanced up at the guy in the paper hat behind the deli counter. “Smoked turkey on whole wheat, sprouts and mayo, please. But this is the kind of thing I feel weird talking about over the phone, if you know what I mean,” the policewoman continued, looking to Fia.

  “Roast beef on rye with brown mustard. No, not that piece. The rare stuff.” Fia pointed at the slab of meat in the glass deli case.

  She had been surprised when Lieutenant Sutton had called Monday morning and asked her out to lunch to talk about the case. It really wasn’t done often, dialogue between FBI and local cops, but Fia’s curiosity was piqued.

  Even though Jarrell had passed the task of researching similar past crimes for the Lansdowne police on to Morone weeks ago, Fia hadn’t been able to set the woman’s death aside the way she usually could. It was a technique cops learned early, had to, to stay sane, and it worked most of the time. But not always. Once in a while there was a case, a victim, or maybe a surviving family member who stuck with you long after the case had been solved or officially left open.

  “It’s not a problem, Lieutenant. A woman’s got to eat.” Fia watched the deli guy slice her roast beef with an electric slicer. Rivulets of bloody juice ran over the sides of the blade. �
��I needed to get out of the office for a few minutes anyway.”

  “Tough case?” Sutton accepted her paper plate from gloved hands.

  “The beheadings in Delaware.”

  A woman in brown BCBG pumps in line behind them cut her eyes at Fia.

  So beheadings weren’t polite deli-line conversation. Why was the chick eavesdropping, anyway?

  Sutton spotted Brown Pump Chick and moved up to the cash register without saying anything more. She waited for Fia at a table in the front, next to the window. The deli was a dump, but the roast beef was always excellent and it was only a couple of blocks from the Bureau’s office on Arch.

  “You were saying you were on the beheading cases.”

  “Know anything about what happened?” Fia opened the cap on her bottle of iced tea.

  “Mostly what I read in the paper.”

  “First a postmaster. Then a police officer.”

  “Jesus.” Sutton bit off a corner of her sandwich.

  “Thing is…” Fia looked down at her sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. “I’m from Clare Point.”

  “And they put you on the case?”

  “Long story involving federal bureaucracy at its finest.” Fia dropped a napkin into her lap and reached for her sandwich, realizing she was famished. “So what’s going on with the Mulvine case?”

  “Nothing, and that’s what’s irking me.” Sutton nibbled at the crust of her bread. “Nothing came back on the forensics. I did dig up this file.” She pulled a manila envelope out of her leather bag and slid it across the table. She wrinkled her nose and reached for her sandwich again. “You probably want to wait until you get back to the office to have a look.”

  Fia stared at the envelope, getting that weird feeling again. She looked up at Sutton. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but—” She stopped and then started again, thinking that no matter how she phrased it, it was going to come out rude. “I’m not sure I know how I can help you.”

  “I know. Not your case. Not your jurisdiction.” Sutton held out one hand, sandwich in the other. “The other agent who contacted me was not very helpful.”