“I was afraid you were…” Kaleigh said.
“No,” Fia assured her. “Derek didn’t know what he was doing. How to wield a sword.”
“But I saw—”
“He clopped me a good one. But with the flat of the sword, not the blade. He turned his wrist,” Fia said.
Just as Fia had been returning to consciousness, she had heard Kaleigh’s silent shouts of warning. She hadn’t understood exactly what had happened or how they had gotten to this point, but members of the high council had been prepared to kill Glen. They had been there in the woods. She had felt them. Heard them.
You saved him, Kaleigh, Fia telepathed, fighting tears that threatened to spill and totally embarrass her. Thank you. Thank you.
Kaleigh smiled up at Fia, her eyelids growing heavy. You’re welcome, she shot back.
Flooded with relief, still scared, her head pounding, her mind reeling with everything that had just happened, Fia lowered her aching forehead to Glen’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Thank you for coming. Thank you for knowing I needed you.”
The following week, back in Philly, Glen wanted to take Fia out to celebrate solving the Clare Point murders, but she had more than dinner on her mind. She met Glen at her apartment door in one of her leather miniskirts, a T-shirt, and tights. With a little makeup, the bruise on her temple and cheekbone from Derek’s sword was barely more than a shadow. Glen grabbed her, pulled her to him, and kissed her hard.
Fia tilted her head back, baring her throat to him. His touch. His kiss was enough. She didn’t need his blood.
“Dinner’s almost ready. You going to come in or are we just going to make out here in the hallway?” she asked.
“I brought stout.” He produced one of the dark, quart-sized bottles used at the Hill to bottle their beer.
“You brought stout from Clare Point?” She laughed, taking the bottle from him.
He followed her to the kitchen. “I know you don’t drink wine and this is supposed to be a celebration. What are you making? Smells good.” He stood in the kitchen doorway, inhaling the spicy aroma.
“One of the few things I can make. Fettuccine with clam sauce.” She opened the refrigerator and tossed him a head of lettuce. “Salad detail. Knives there on the counter. You can use that cutting board.” She grabbed a wooden spoon to stir her marinara clam sauce. “So any word from the boys’ lawyers?”
Fia had left the office early that day for an appointment with Dr. Kettleman. Joseph really had left town, and Fia and the psychiatrist had a good session, talking about moving on. Talking about handling a relationship with a human.
“The boys are offering statements out the ying-yang. Apparently, once they came off their high, once their lawyer talked some sense into them, they recanted the whole vampire story.” He tore off leaves of Bibb lettuce and rinsed them in the sink. “They’re saying that Derek was the ringleader and they never actually killed anyone. Of course, we know now that he’s had a history of mental illness since his mother’s suicide when he was a kid. Apparently, Derek made his friends participate in the murders in Clare Point. Threatened the boys, their families. Having Derek dead is convenient, of course. They can say anything they want. Not sure we can prove any differently.”
“Any explanation as to why Derek cut off the body parts or what he did with them?”
“Boys say they don’t know. One thought he might have wanted them to use for some kind of demonic sacrifices, but he says Derek never really said. He thinks the kid buried them in the woods somewhere.”
Fia hated the thought that parts of Bobby, Mahon, and Shannon would never be reunited with their bodies, but at least they were buried.
She tasted the sauce, touching the wooden spoon to the tip of her tongue.
By the morning after Derek’s death, the boys already had a top-notch lawyer out of Baltimore willing to represent them, pro bono, of course. Jeremy Procino, Mary Hill’s son, was making a name for himself in the newpapers already. He would see that the two young men’s rights were the focus of the case, and not the little town of Clare Point. The Kahill sept was safe for now.
“You have something else for this salad besides lettuce?” Glen struck her lightly on the buttocks. “Mmmm, nice.”
Fia laughed. Allowed him to push her up against the counter, and they kissed hungrily.
“Hey, I don’t know if I like these heels you’re wearing,” he teased. “I think you’re taller than I am.”
“So?” She nipped him lightly on his chin. “That a problem for you, Special Agent Duncan?”
He reached around her and cut off the flame under her sauce. “Not a problem for me, Special Agent Kahill. That a problem for you?” He drew his hand up her thigh and under her skirt.
Fia let her eyes drift shut, and when she closed them, it was only Glen she saw. Ian was gone.
Fia didn’t know how long this thing with Glen was going to last. If it could last. But today in Dr. Kettleman’s office she had decided she wanted it enough to try to make it work. She wasn’t sure if it was possible for a human and an immortal to love one another, but she realized over the last few days that she wanted to know the answer to that question.
Glen slid her skirt upward with both hands. “You want to retire to the bedroom?” he whispered in her ear. “Or are you a counter kind of girl?” He slapped the top of the kitchen counter.
“I don’t know.” She met his mouth hungrily. “I’m thinking I might be both…”
A week and a half after the death of Derek Neuman, Fia returned to Clare Point in the dead of night. In the rear of the little museum on the quiet street, she stripped naked and pulled the black cloak over her head. Her dagger in her hand, she followed the others silently into the velvet darkness of the room. To the scarred table that had become a representation of their lives’ mission.
Above the table, the candles in the black oak chandelier sparked and hissed and the room, at once, glowed.
“Caraidean,” Gair intoned.
In the days following, the general council would meet to discuss what had transpired over the last few months in Clare Point. Where the mistakes had been made and how they could be corrected. But tonight…tonight this was not about the sept. It was not even about their survival. It was about the world, about God’s humans.
The Kahill sept had vowed to make the world a safer place for the humans and tonight another name would be brought to the table. A pedophile’s case would be discussed. A vote would be taken.
Fia flexed her fingers, tightening them around the hilt of the dagger she held in her hand. At times, she wondered if she was worthy of this monumental task. She wondered if she could live up to the expectations of her sept. Of mankind. Of God.
But tonight…tonight of all nights, with the taste of Glen still on her lips, she knew this was where she belonged and she knew what she must do.
“A name,” she whispered. “Present a name.”
“A name,” the others chanted.
Fia looked up to see the cloaked figures, their canines bared, and she knew that she was one of them. She knew that for all her shortcomings, she was loved.
She smiled to herself. Was there anything more a vampire could wish for?
The Kahill vampire clan has lived among humans for hundreds of years in Delaware’s peaceful village of Clare Point. In Undying, V.K. Forrest introduces readers to Arlan, a fierce member of the clan who must fight his desire for a love most forbidden…
UNDYING
As part of the Kahill clan’s special operations “kill team,” Arlan is devoted to ridding the world of its most depraved human members. He’s been asked by fellow clan member and FBI Agent Fia Kahill to assist in one of her investigations: the notorious Buried Alive Killer case. Arlan agrees to meet with one of Fia’s key informants, Macy Smith, but he’s completely unprepared for his response to the young woman. Blond, petite, and achingly beautiful, Macy is everything Arlan could want in a woman—and it’s clear the attracti
on is mutual. Although Arlan once vowed he would never again let himself fall in love with a human being, he surrenders to his overpowering desire for Macy…
Soon, Arlan and Macy keep mysteriously crossing one another’s paths, even in Clare Point. In Macy, Arlan can sense a loneliness that reminds him of his own and a vulnerability that tugs at his soul. But Macy is a drifter with a past far darker than even Arlan can imagine. And when the Buried Alive Killer strikes again, he learns that Macy has a deep connection to the case—one that will put her in the crosshairs of the killer if Arlan can’t find a way to protect her…
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
UNDYING,
now on sale at bookstores everywhere!
Chapter 1
He stood beneath the lengthening shadows of the Acropolis, high on the hilltop over the city of Athens, and watched as the last rays of sunlight faded. With the coming of darkness, he could feel the evil of the night slither in on its belly, much like the quarry he sought tonight.
Arlan walked quickly through the Agora, keeping his head down, leaving behind the noisy tourists boarding their tour buses.
Two weeks ago, thousands of miles away in the little U.S. town of Clare Point, the vote had gone against a human by the name of Robert Romano. With the plunging of twelve daggers into an ancient oak table, the man’s fate had been sealed. For more than a decade, the pedophile, a monster who dealt in the underground sale of child sex slaves, had been pursued across several continents by law enforcement. Robert Romano, known by multiple aliases, had recently made the FBI’s most wanted list after the abduction of a five-year-old from a grocery store in the suburbs of Detroit. At the present time, the FBI did not know his whereabouts. Romano was careful, and he was clever.
Not clever enough.
In twenty minutes, forty-six-year-old Romano would be waiting at a designated spot on the southern end of the Agora, a spot that came to life after dark, both with ghosts of the past and the haunts of the present. The human would be there to accept a cash payment for the delivery of two male children, ages six and nine, who were currently being held in an apartment two blocks away. Delivery of the children was to be made once Romano received his cash in small currency euros. The unfortunate buyer would not receive his merchandise because Arlan would be waiting. A clean-up crew would rescue the children and see that the buyer was arrested by local police. Romano would no longer be the authorities’ concern.
Now almost dark, the warm evening air had grown thick with the sounds and scents of the ancient city. It was funny how cities all smelled the same, sounded the same, when Arlan closed his eyes. This could have been any street in any city in the world in the last thousand years.
He inhaled deeply, lifting his chin, flaring his nostrils. Someone was roasting meat in one of the nearby restaurants that catered to the tourists…lamb. Elsewhere, sewage overflowed. He caught the hint of a woman’s cheap perfume on the air, although he walked alone in the twilight. Embedded in the night air was also the sour scent of human body odor. The fetid bouquet of fleas feasting on rodents.
In the distance, beyond the ruins, Arlan heard doors opening and closing. Footsteps, both heavy and light, echoed through the gathering fog. Over time, the sputter of car and motorbike engines had replaced the rhythm of wooden cart and carriage wheels, but in his mind, they were still somehow the same.
These were the sounds and smells of humanity. For better. For worse. Despite the ugliness of much of it, Arlan longed to be a part of this world. He was jealous of the man roasting lamb for gyros on the street corner, the woman slamming the window to muffle the harsh words she flung at her cheating lover. Arlan would never know the mundane life of a mortal.
At the sound of shrill laughter, he tensed. Despite the cover of darkness, standing here in human form, he was vulnerable. He gazed intently in the direction of the noisier, busier Plaka, blocks away, where tourists flooded the streets eager to sample the moussaka and ouzo. Eager to buy their trinkets to mark their journey, they had no idea of the evil that lurked in the shadows or the salvation about to descend on two helpless children.
Arlan’s partner was late. He checked his cell phone, noting the time. No call and Regan was twenty minutes late.
Arlan worked his jaw in indecision.
The plan had been for Regan, pretending to be the “customer,” to meet Romano at the Areopagus. Arlan would serve as the lookout. Regan was to lure Romano into a secluded area amid the ruins and there, the execution would be carried out as ordered by the High Council. Arlan and Regan would carry it out together. Two daggers. Two were required by primordial sept law.
But Regan wasn’t here and time was running out. If Romano slipped out of their hands, there was no way to say when the planets and moons would align again. There was no way to know when the opportunity to catch him would offer itself again, or how many more children would lose their innocence in the intervening time.
The coarse laughter of the woman grew louder, closer. Arlan heard a second woman’s voice. They were speaking Greek. Both were drunk, or high, or both. He caught a flash of short skirt and long bare legs. Prostitutes. After dark, when the museums closed and tour groups were led to the safe streets of the Plaka, the Athens underworld came to life here. From the shadowy Areopagus situated beneath the lights of the Acropolis, one could see the whole city. In this place, one could buy drugs, sex…and even children.
Arlan made the decision. There was no time to call the council. No time to await further instructions. The sept had been watching this bastard for eighteen months. They couldn’t afford to let him go. The Kahill sept’s duty to God would not allow it.
One moment Arlan was a thirty-something guy in jeans and a black leather jacket and the next he transformed into a hundred-pound canine with a mangy spotted coat and yellow eyes. The physical morph came easily to him, like slipping on a worn leather glove.
The moment the morph was complete, Arlan felt the change in his psyche. Judgment grew hazier. In this animal body, he lived for the moment. Surrounded by the scent of dangers, he had to force his man-brain to remain in control of the beast. He could feel that control stretched taut, thin and tight as a wire.
Arlan slinked behind a rock and darted across the footpath, behind the women, his tail brushing a skirt. One of the prostitutes cursed him, first in Greek, then Italian, but they continued walking. Hundreds of packs of wild dogs roamed the streets of Athens. The locals gave them no notice. Arlan knew he could blend in with the others.
Knowing he had a few minutes before Romano would appear, Arlan had time to assess the area and determine how he could fulfill the mission alone. He wondered if it would be safer to appear as a man or as he was now, a four-footed predator. He trotted lightly up a slight, rocky incline, skirting the silvery light cast from the Acropolis, blending into the shadows of the olive trees.
It was fully dark now and while Arlan was not a superstitious man, mentally, he crossed himself. At night, in ancient places like these, the haunts came out. A man or beast could do his best to ignore them, but there was no denying their presence. The coarse yellow hair along his spine bristled and he caught a whiff of something that was not living, but not quite dead. Out of the corner of one rheumy eye he saw a misty human form floating just above the pathway.
Some said ghosts held no real presence, that they were only impressions left from the past. Arlan didn’t know what they were; he only knew that he did not like this feeling of being watched. He had experienced similar encounters in several places in recent months; the Coliseum in Rome, Stonehenge in England, and the blood-soaked battlefield of Culloden in the Highlands of Scotland.
Bypassing the wispy spook, Arlan kept his head down, letting his long tongue loll. His yellow eyes took in his surroundings. With his long muzzle and enhanced sense of smell, he observed as only God’s four-footed creatures could observe.
Stones pinched the pads of his feet as he followed a path tread heavily by tourists in the
daytime. The Agora had once been a marketplace, a public area that served as an integral part of the ancient Greek city-state. It had not only offered a place to trade, but it also served as a forum to its citizens. Here, men once gathered to buy and sell commodities and also to discuss business, politics, and current events. Here was where Greek democracy first came to light, setting an example to other great cities in the ancient world.
At the far end, the rocky hill overlooking the Agora was where Arlan would meet Romano. The area of the Agora known as the Areopagus had been the sacred meeting place of the Greek prime council, which had once combined judicial and legislative functions in the sixth and fifth centuries BC. Much later, the apostle Paul was said to have stood on the same rocky hill and preached to early Christians.
A holy place. A haunted place.
Arlan caught the scent of another dog on the night air and thrust out his muzzle. He twitched his black nose. Two dogs, three. More. A pack.
The muscles in Arlan’s rear haunches tightened as the dogs approached. Arlan could become any of God’s creatures, although he was better at some manifestations than others, and some were much more difficult to keep in check. Despite his experience, there was always a moment of panic when he encountered a creature of the species he’d manifested into. There was the chance they would know him for the charlatan that he was and attack him. It would be impossible for them to kill him because he had to be beheaded to die, but dog bites could lay a man up for weeks.
A whine and then a growl halted him. Out of a grove of stunted olive trees came three, four, five dogs, all his size or larger. A big gray with the pelt of a wolf led the pack of three females and a sullen young male. Animals did not speak, but they communicated. Members of the Kahill clan had some form of extrasensory perception; they could all, on some level, communicate with each other without speaking. Arlan’s accompanying gift was the ability to communicate with animals.
Eternal Page 26
