Voracious - (Claire Point Vampire 5)

by V. K. Forrest

  He turned to watch her, nibbling on his lip ring. “Yeah, but you’re acting weird, even for you.”

  “Can you herd the rest of them out?” Lifting her chin, she indicated a couple of guys standing around one of the two pool tables in a small room off the main barroom. Everyone else was either gone or headed that way.

  “Sure,” Tat said, but he still stood there. “That guy. The redhead. Was he bothering you?”

  Dallas was dragging a wet bar mop over the polished wood and glanced up. “Nah, but if he was, I could handle it,” she said lightly. “I hired you to tend bar; you don’t have to be my knight in shining armor.”

  She wondered if the redhead was a tourist. It was early in the season for tourists, but he’d never been there before tonight. Not since January, when she had taken over the bar. She was positive. Otherwise, she’d have remembered him.

  “I know.” Tat hesitated. “But I would. I’d be your knight in shining armor. If you’d let me.”

  She smiled, feeling a little sad. That had to be one of the nicest things anyone had ever said to her. Tat had made it pretty clear the week he’d started working for her that he was interested in her, if she was interested in him. Her first thought had been just to get rid of him rather than have to deal with the complications of his unrequited love, but he was too good an employee to lose. Instead, she had told him the truth, flat out, that she wasn’t interested. She’d given him the line about her dead husband, about it being too soon, and he’d said he understood. But sometimes she caught him watching her with a wistful look.

  Tat didn’t know about her curse. No one here in Rehoboth Beach knew. And she planned to keep it that way. It was all part of her plan for starting a new life, escaping the ghosts of her past and the witch hunt in New England.

  Dallas turned back to mopping the bar, keeping her tone light. “Take care of the stragglers, Sir Lancelot.”

  “You bet your sweet tushy, Guinevere.” Tat grinned and walked away.

  As Dallas scooped up several dirty pilsner glasses, she glanced at the front door again. She’d half expected the ginger to walk back through the door. He didn’t.

  Which was just the way it had to be.

  Aedan parked his car, thrust his hands into his jean pockets, and, with trepidation, made his way to the entrance marked EMERGENCY in glowing red letters.

  Mark had said there was something there he needed to see. What could he possibly have been referring to? Right now, Aedan was stationed in Paris. He and his team were tracking the movements of two men, a serial killer and a pedophile, at the same time, gathering evidence to be presented to the High Council. But he was a continent away from Pierre LeCruex and Dominique Rue. This couldn’t possibly have anything to do with those cases.

  The pneumatic doors in front of him hissed and opened, and he stepped into the bright light of a waiting room. There were rows of chairs lined up in front of an admissions desk. A middle-aged woman in yellow Snoopy scrubs was registering a patient. More chairs and several vending machines ran along the back wall. A young Hispanic woman sat in the front row cradling an infant wrapped in a tattered blanket. Behind her, a guy sat reading a newspaper, his left hand wrapped in a bloody towel. Aedan spotted Mark standing near a vending machine, drinking from a Styrofoam cup. A toothpick protruded from his mouth. Mark had started chewing on cinnamon toothpicks a couple of years ago when he quit smoking. Aedan sometimes wondered if the toothpick habit was worse.

  Mark looked up, sensing that one of his own kind had entered the room. It was some kind of vampire radar; it worked with zombies and werewolves, too, but not always as well. Mark nodded a silent greeting.

  Aedan nodded in return. He could smell the cinnamon of Mark’s toothpick. Must have been a fresh one.

  Get you a cup of coffee? Mark sent telepathically. When in close proximity, most Kahills could speak to each other without speaking aloud.

  Nah. Not much of a coffee drinker. Had a couple of beers.

  Not too many to be driving, I hope.

  Aedan frowned. What have you got for me?

  Mark caught the attention of the woman in the scrubs at the front desk. He pointed to the set of double doors marked STAFF ONLY. She nodded. A buzzer sounded, and the doors swung open toward Mark. Mark tossed his cup into a trash can as he walked through the doorway. Aedan followed.

  “She came in about forty-five minutes ago. I just happened to be headed home and heard the call on my radio. We’re waiting on the orthopedic surgeon on call to get in here. Called in a plastic surgeon, too. They need to decide which of her injuries is most pressing before they take her into the OR.”

  Mark spoke quietly, his voice steady as he fiddled with the toothpick in his mouth. He sounded like a man with a hundred years of cop experience, which he had. They walked down a wide hallway that was buzzing with activity. Doctors, nurses, and techs swarmed like bees, ordering labs, transporting patients in wheel chairs, and calming people who were in the ER on what was likely one of the worst days of their lives. Aedan sensed the woman Mark wanted him to see was experiencing the worst day of her life at this very moment.

  “She’s sedated,” he said. “So we can’t talk to her right now. Might be days before we can. I just needed you to see her.” He stopped at a curtained cubicle near the nurse’s station and glanced at Aedan.

  Aedan nodded, wishing he were somewhere else, anywhere but here. His sense of dread escalated to the point that his chest felt tight and he was struggling to take even breaths.

  “Teesha?” Mark called softly into the opening of the curtains. He tucked his toothpick into his pocket. “It’s Detective Karr.” He waited a second and then drew back the curtain and walked in, holding it back for Aedan.

  Aedan didn’t know what he had expected. He guessed he had expected an injured woman, but one look at Teesha’s face and his knees weakened. He dropped all six-foot-five inches and 240 pounds of himself onto the hard plastic chair beside the bed. His fingers found the crucifix beneath his shirt. “It can’t be.”

  Mark drew back the sheet from the young black woman’s chest to reveal a bloody wound on her breast. “Nonetheless, I think it is.”

  Chapter 2

  Aedan stared at the young woman who had, no doubt, been beautiful only an hour or so ago. She wasn’t any longer. She would never be beautiful again, no matter how talented her plastic surgeon. Aedan didn’t recognize her face, but he recognized her attacker. His gaze fell to her bare breast again.

  Raped? Aedan mouthed the word.

  Mark made a sound of affirmation. “She was found in a parking lot off Rehoboth Avenue not far from Dogfish Head. I haven’t been to the scene yet, but the local cops think it happened in an alley. She crawled out into the parking lot before she passed out, probably from blood loss. Name’s Teesha Jones. Twenty-three. She managed to find her handbag after he attacked her and left her for dead, and drag it with her. That’s how we were able to identify her so quickly. Can you believe she had enough wherewithal to do that?” He shook his head. “Survival instinct. You know how it is. Some humans have it. Some don’t. She works at a gift shop on the main drag. Found her nametag in her bag. We’re guessing she went out for drinks after work. Probably Dogfish Head; it’s popular with young people. Her car was in the lot. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to ask around.”

  “I was just there,” Aedan said, his voice sounding strange in his ears.

  “Dogfish Head?” It was a local microbrewery and restaurant and popular with locals as well as tourists.

  “In Rehoboth. Brew, on Wilmington Avenue. I was sitting on a barstool while this was happening to her.”

  “You couldn’t have known.” Mark sighed and drew the sheet over the woman’s bare breast.

  It didn’t matter. Aedan could still see the cursive “J” carved in her flesh. He’d never understood why Jay felt it necessary to sign his work. Wasn’t what he did to the women’s faces signature enough?

  “I guess she’s going to live,” Aed
an said. She was hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, but she was breathing on her own. And the fact that she had been left alone in the trauma room suggested she was out of immediate danger.

  “She lost a lot of blood, but no vital organs were affected. You know how he is. He’s good with a knife.” Mark hesitated. “It’s him, isn’t it, Aedan? It’s Jay come across the pond?”

  Aedan lowered his face to his hands for a moment, then slowly looked up, his gaze settling on the woman’s bloody, mutilated face. The medical personnel had been able to stop most of the bleeding, but now her face was beginning to swell. By morning, she’d be lucky if she could open her eyes. The surgeon would stitch up her cheeks, her forehead, her nostrils, the flaps Jay had created under her eyes. He would repair her mouth as best he could, and there would be lots of future surgeries, but Teesha would be forever left with the permanent smile Jay had carved into her face.

  Aedan got up out of the chair and stepped through the opening in the curtain, out into the hall. No one paid any attention to him. A small child whimpered a few curtains over, and his mother soothed him with gentle words. Mark joined Aedan in the hall. They didn’t make eye contact.

  “He’s never come to the U.S. before, to our knowledge.”

  Aedan shook his head. “But the timing is about right.” His head was so full of thoughts and images that he couldn’t think clearly. He couldn’t grab any one idea and hang on to it. He’d always known Jay would be back. He’d hoped he wouldn’t. He’d prayed. But he had always known Jay would be back again.

  “You’ll have to go to the General Council and get put on the case. I can do the investigating, but I need your input. And you deserve the kill.”

  “I’m on sabbatical,” Aedan said. “I’m not supposed to be working.” The sept insisted on a certain amount of downtime, especially for those on Kill Teams. His primary job on the team was investigating, because of his unique gift, the ability to shape-shift, not just into animals, but also humans. But he was still required to kill sometimes, and he was still required to follow the rules for kill-team members. Some people stretched the rules, people like Liam Kahill, but not Aedan. He liked sabbaticals; they helped to ground him so he could do what he had to do.

  “I know you’re supposed to be taking a break, but these are . . . special circumstances. There’s no one else available. No one who knows him like you do. The Council will complain, but they’ll go with it.” Mark glanced over his shoulder at the curtain. “You need to be—”

  “You think he’s got it in for me?” Aedan interrupted.

  Mark exhaled heavily. “I think by now he knows you’ve got it in for him.”

  Aedan closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. Suddenly, he was tired to the point of exhaustion. Maybe that was why he couldn’t think. “I’m going to go home and get some sleep.” He opened his eyes, letting his hands fall. “How about we talk in the morning. Breakfast?”

  “I can meet you at the diner. Can we make it late? I’ve been at it over twelve hours. I need some shut-eye, too.”

  “Call me when you get up.” Aedan walked away. He almost called out “thanks,” and then realized the ridiculousness of it. Who thanked someone for hooking them up with a serial rapist?

  Aedan pulled his Honda up in front of the house, hoping everyone would be asleep, expecting everyone to be asleep; it was going on two in the morning. But no such luck. The lights were blazing from Peigi’s cottage, only a block from the beach in Clare Point, as if it were midday. He let himself in the front door. The sound of automatic gunfire blasted from the den. He walked through the living room, with its chintz curtains and Georgia O’Keefe prints on the walls, flipping out lights as he went. He stuck his head through the doorway into the den. He recognized the video game on the flat-screen TV. “Black Ops.”

  “Hey, Brian.”

  Peigi’s husband didn’t look away from the TV screen. He’d died and been reborn a few months ago, so Peigi, sixty-something, was now married to a pimply-faced sixteen-year-old. Usually, there wasn’t such an age discrepancy between married couples, but because Brian had been older than Peigi the first time they had married, and because no one died and was reborn at exactly the same age each life cycle, sometimes couples got out of whack. Peigi and Brian were definitely out of whack.

  Aedan glanced at the two teenage girls sitting on the couch, one on each side of Brian, both texting on their cell phones. He knew Katy Hill, but he didn’t recognize the girl with the long, dark hair and olive skin. She wasn’t a Kahill, but she was most definitely vampire. “Hey, Katy,” he greeted.

  “Hey,” she called cheerfully, continuing to text. “You know Lia?” She motioned with her phone, but continued pushing buttons.

  “Ah. I don’t know Lia, but I know of Lia.” She was vampire, all right, but her story was complicated. She hadn’t originally been a Kahill, but had come from a family of vampires in Italy. Last summer, she’d taken a family holiday in Clare Point and had murdered several humans. Her life had been spared by the sept after Kaleigh, their teenage wisewoman, discovered a technical detail. Lia had been allowed to live, but had been forced to leave her family and all memory of them and be reborn a Kahill vampire. Now she was one of their own.

  “That’s Aedan, Lia. He’s assigned to Paris right now, tracking crazies.”

  The dark-haired girl dropped her phone to her lap, making eye contact in a very non-teenager manner. She had a pretty smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you.” He nodded.

  “Lia’s at that stupid vampire boarding school in Massachusetts,” Katy explained with an eye roll. “We’re on a mission to get her back to Clare Point. She’s not going to go AWOL. Where’s she going to go? She doesn’t even remember those Vs in Italy. There’s no need to keep her a prisoner anymore.”

  “I’m on spring break right now,” Lia said.

  Aedan looked to Katy. “Which doesn’t explain why you’re awake in the middle of the night. You have school tomorrow.”

  Katy frowned. “I’m a teenage vampire. I can’t sleep at night.”

  She said it as if he was the dumbest guy on earth. He shook his head, but smiled all the same. It wasn’t easy being a teenaged Kahill. He knew that from experience. “Peigi still up, Brian?”

  He didn’t answer. An endless flow of zombies was coming down a dark hallway on the television. Brian frantically uttered, “Hit the button.” Aedan knew Brian was talking to whoever was on the other end of his headset and not to him.

  Aedan raised his eyebrows. On the screen an elevator door closed and a virtual Fidel Castro reloaded a Kalashnikov 74.

  “Kitchen, I think,” Lia offered.

  “Okay.” Aedan turned to go.

  “Hey, Aedan,” Katy called after him.

  He stuck his head back through the doorway.

  “Could you check the mozzarella sticks in the oven? They’re gonna beep in a minute.” She flashed him a smile and then returned her attention to her phone.

  “No problem.”

  Aedan found his Aunt Peigi seated at the table in the big country kitchen. She had her coffee mug in front of her, but a bottle of Powers Irish whiskey on the table, too.

  “That tea or whiskey in that cup?” he asked, going to the oven to check on the teens’ late-night snack.

  “A little of both.” She frowned. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  Aedan peered into the oven, grabbed a hot mitt, spun the tray of mozzarella sticks, and set the timer for another five minutes.

  “I’ve got ‘Black Ops,’ screaming zombies, and a list of topics a mile long for the next General Council meeting keeping me up,” she grumbled. “What’s your excuse?”

  He tossed the hot mitt on the counter and took a chair across from Peigi. She wore her gray hair in a short, sensible haircut. It matched her sensible personality, which was good. As the leader of the sept’s General Council, sensible Peigi kept everyone in line. Tonight she was wearing an old, plaid flannel robe and wool slip
pers. She looked like an ad for nightwear in an L.L. Bean catalog. Her day wardrobe came from the same company.

  He shrugged noncommittally. He wasn’t ready to talk to her, to anyone, about Jay. Not yet. “Takes me a while to adjust, I guess. You know, being home. Being sort of . . . normal.”

  She slid the bottle of Powers across the table to him.

  He grinned. “Thanks. I think I’ll just head up to bed.”

  She nodded, cupping her mug in her hands, but not taking a drink. He could tell something was weighing heavily on her mind. Something more than video game zombies. A part of him just wanted to get up, say good night, and be on his way. He had his own problems. But Aunt Peigi had been too good to him all these years. Since his mother’s death, she had been as good to him as any mother could be.

  Aedan folded his hands on the table. “So, what’s going on with you?”

  “You can hear what’s going on.” She motioned in the direction of the machine gun fire. “Guess you’ve heard. No one here can keep a secret or stay out of other people’s personal business. Brian’s not adjusting all that well. He refuses to go to school. He doesn’t want to talk about anything related to . . . his situation. He sleeps all day and plays those stupid video games all night.”

  He studied his folded hands. “Sometimes it takes longer to adjust. You know that. It’s overwhelming. The memories. The whole coming of age thing again and again. Realizing you’re a vampire is pretty heady stuff. Having to relive the truth of the matter, life cycle after life cycle. It’s hard. Brian always did take it harder than most of us. He’ll come around.”

  “I know. I know.” She turned the coffee mug in her hands. “I’m trying to be patient. I’ve been through it before, too. But our age difference is getting to be a problem, Aedan. A serious problem. I could live another fifteen years. Longer.” She didn’t look at him.