Forever Young - Book 2

by Daniel Pierce

  I looked him over. Something was poking out of his jeans pocket. I grabbed it, despite his weak attempts to bat my hand away. “Interesting.” I examined the white piece of card stock. “A business card. Tell me about your company, fanger.”

  Tess nudged me. “We don’t have time. Off him, and let’s go.”

  I shook my head. “Well, Marco?”

  He leered at me. “It doesn’t matter how hard you fight or how fast you run. You can kill me. You can kill every vampire on this island. There will be more. There will always be more. The Day of Culling is at hand. Lord Malfas has willed it, and we are here to see that his will be done.”

  I rolled my eyes. It was the second time I’d heard Malfas’s name mentioned, and a Day of Culling sounded ominous. It also sounded self-explanatory, and in my experience, no one who started with mumbo-jumbo like Day of Culling had a whole lot of interest in clarifying things. I pulled my gun and shot him in the head, execution style.

  Kamila scattered the ashes. “Come on, show-off. Let’s get moving. We’ve got someplace to be.”

  I slipped the business card into my pocket and followed along.

  I had to admit I was worried about the scent of my blood ringing a dinner bell on the island. Apparently, Ferin blood carried farther on the wind than a human’s, lending the fangers yet another way to track us. I had no way to know how many vampires were out there, watching, stalking. Drooling. My hatred of them sizzled in my blood. I picked up the pace despite my wounds, anger keeping me in motion.

  I could hear waves in the distance. We were getting closer to the ocean. I also heard a plane.

  Kamila started jogging. I didn’t know if I could keep up. I was already lightheaded, and the gouges on my body were spurting now from my elevated heart rate. Why could I hear plane engines, anyway? I realized I had no idea where the airport was. My sense of direction was gone, just as my blood was leaving me, one heartbeat at a time.

  We emerged from the forest, an engine humming its staccato beat. Out there on the waves, I could see the dim light from the cockpit of a seaplane. It was small; the kind tourists ride in while secretly hoping they don’t plummet to their death in the ocean below. My heart sped up even more. We were out of time. Vampires would find us, and it would be over.

  I switched to my thermal vision, the engines leaping into focus, their colors brilliant in my sight. One person sat in the cockpit, looking at his watch over and over. The door to the cargo bay stood open, but even as we bolted for the shore, he got up and moved to close it.

  Fuck it. I had no idea if this guy was human or Ferin. I didn’t know if he knew about the shadow world hiding just under his nose or if he was completely in the dark about everything. I just knew there was no way he was getting off this island without us. I reached out with the sea itself and grabbed on to that door. Nothing short of my own death would allow that door to close.

  The pilot tried everything he could to tug it closed. He couldn’t see how one of the waves was now a fluid tentacle, powered by magical rage.

  “Run,” I told the others. I jogged along behind them, unable to keep up. I’d catch up or I wouldn’t. The die was cast.

  Kamila made it first with Daisy. She lifted the dog into the cargo hold before jumping in herself. Tess hopped in next. The pilot turned to them and said something.

  I splashed through the surf, trying to get to the plane. I was still bleeding, and the beach itself was spinning. For a second, I thought I’d been attached to one of the propellers. If I passed out, they would have to leave me here. The vampires could just kill me, and then the war would be over.

  It wouldn’t be over, though. The vampires would never let the other Ferin live. I pushed myself until stars shot through my sight and collapsed over the threshold onto the plane. Tess and Kamila grabbed me and dragged me the rest of the way inside, and that was it. The pilot, face obscured by a helmet, closed the door. He ran up to the cockpit, flicked a couple of switches, and the next thing I knew, we were on our way.

  Kamila had a first-aid kit in her pack. She cleaned my wounds and wrapped them in gauze. “Looks like you could use a good rest,” she said and stroked my hair.

  I grunted, fighting the urge to vomit. My body was in rebellion, every nerve a screech of agony, but I had no energy for words. They were beyond me. I didn’t have any energy for more. Rest was what I wanted. It was not what I could have.

  14

  I lay on the airplane floor, gasping. There were no seats. There was one seat next to the pilot, but he didn’t invite any of us to sit beside him and none of us wanted to ask. Well, none of us but Daisy. She had no fear or shame. She wandered up to the cockpit and took the passenger seat, and after we got up to a good cruising altitude, the pilot shrugged and put the seatbelt on her.

  If we wound up hitting any turbulence at all, the women and I were hosed. At least Daisy would be safe, though. It didn’t strike me as at all odd until we got underway.

  Tess pulled disinfecting wipes from her bag and started cleaning her spikes. “So that was new and different and shitty. Looks like the war is heating up.”

  I groaned. “Just what we needed. Because it hadn’t already escalated to the point where the bad guys were willing to attack civilians on a cruise ship.”

  “Vamps gonna vamp.” Kamila shrugged. “We knew it was going to heat up sooner or later. At least we were able to get out. It was by the skin of our teeth—Jason, don’t touch. I swear to God.” She swatted my hand away from the bags of cargo surrounding us.

  “Sorry. Force of habit. I’m kind of a nosy bastard. Besides, you never know when there might be a vampire stashed in the bags.”

  “It’s not vampires. It’s weed.” She rolled her eyes then sighed. “Anyway, the issue is their use of demonic means to figure out where we’re going and what we’re doing.”

  The pilot scoffed. “You’re not going to have to worry about that much longer.” His accent was pure, upper-crust British, the kind you only hear in dramas where people are hunting foxes or plotting to invade India.

  “Oh no?” Tess turned to look at him.

  “No. Trust me.” He scratched Daisy’s head.

  We didn’t have much choice other than to trust him. I didn’t know how to fly a plane. I didn’t think Tess did either. Kamila? Well, nothing would surprise me. She might be older than the United States, but if any of us was likely to have taken flying lessons, it was probably her.

  Not that I wouldn’t have put it past Tess. She’d just spent most of her second life with Margaret, and Margaret was too preoccupied to be dealing with something as mundane as flight.

  I took the business card out of my pocket and examined it. It had been spattered with blood, my own and the vampires’. Not a great mix as far as I was concerned. “Morning Star Pty Ltd. What a great name for a company. Fills me with confidence. Oh wait, that’s dread.” I shoved the card back into my pocket. “The guy we spoke with…” I glanced up at the pilot.

  He waved his hand. “Don’t mind me. I just fly the plane.”

  “Right.” I tugged at my collar. I was going to need to change my clothes if we were going to be around any other people. These were wet, salty, and covered in blood. “The guy we interrogated. He mentioned Malfas.”

  “Sure. I remember that.” Kamila yawned. “Haven’t they all by this point? I’m not sure why. Do they think it’s going to scare us or something? Even if it does, it’s not like we’re going to let them go, and it’s not like we’re going to just, I don’t know, stop being Ferin. It doesn’t work that way.”

  Tess snickered. “Right? Oh, look, here’s my Ferin on-off switch. I’ll just push a button and go back to being a normal girl.” She sighed, and it was a lonely noise. “Sometimes I miss that.”

  I grinned but kept pushing. I needed to get things back on track. “Okay, but seriously, though. Do you remember them mentioning Malfas before the war started?” I swallowed, but I didn’t look away. “Before I showed up?”

  Kam
ila looked up at the roof. “I’ve certainly heard the name, but it wasn’t bandied around as often. It was more whispered than said aloud. I saw it in demonology books, rather than heard it tossed out by vampires. We had problems with vampires, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t like this.”

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Tess?”

  She ran her tongue along her teeth for a moment. “Not exactly. I do remember Margaret or, more often, Mort mentioning him. They were the real scholars, the bookworm types. They were the ones who knew you were coming, Jason. They’d gotten their hands on one of the vampires’ prophecy scrolls. It was written on human skin in a Ferin’s blood.”

  I recoiled. “That’s just. . . unsanitary.”

  “Totally. I refused to touch it.” She looked out the window and sighed. “I suppose the vamps have it now.”

  “They must.” Kamila snorted. “Or else they didn’t realize those two had it and torched it with the rest of the place. And good riddance to that particular piece of bad rubbish because that’s just disgusting. Although I have to ask, why would a vampire waste Ferin blood on writing down a prophecy? Isn’t that just something you can eat?”

  “I don’t know.” I held up my hands. We were getting pretty far afield here. “There’s obviously a serious connection between this Malfas demon and the war. Have either of you heard about the Day of Culling?”

  “Sure. It’s like Vampire Christmas, except instead of Santa Claus, Malfas slides down their chimney and brings all the bad little vampires nice big sacks of plasma.” Tess scoffed at me. “No, no one’s ever heard of the Day of Culling. But we’re also not people who were born yesterday, and we all know it doesn’t bode well for us.”

  “Could be a day of crullers.” I was going for humor. I missed. And I discovered I wanted a cruller. Or three.

  “Yeah, they’re stopping by to feed you donuts and not flay the skin from your bones.” Kamila tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I think all that blood loss went to your head. The issue I’m having the most trouble with right now is how they managed to find and surround us so quickly. Did they use magic to surveil us? Were they following us the whole time, or were they lying in wait? Do they have some way of moving from one place to another fast enough to count as teleporting?”

  “Any of those could be given by a demon, I guess.” Tess nodded slowly. “I guess that makes sense. It does make our job a lot harder.”

  “Well, yes, if we’re going to have to be hiding ourselves from people who can watch us everywhere we go and then teleport to get there.” I massaged my temples.

  Tess passed me a bottle of water. “Here. You’re a little light on fluids. Try to top yourself off for a minute.”

  The plane went into a descent. I gripped the nearest solid object to me. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re landing, Jason.” Kamila smirked at me. “Don’t tell me a big strong Lifebringer like you is scared of flying?”

  I gave her a funny look. “I know I lost a lot of blood, but I haven’t lost consciousness once. We’ve been in the air for maybe five minutes, if that.”

  The pilot laughed, and our plunge only increased. I thought I was handling things poorly, but then I noticed Tess closing her eyes and muttering prayers. She prayed in Latin, which struck me as odd until I remembered she’d have died before Vatican II.

  We touched down on a secluded tropical airstrip. “Welcome to Key West, boys and girls.” The pilot unstrapped Daisy, who licked his hand before trotting over to Kamila. “Hey, you weren’t nervous, were you?”

  “Key West?” I asked. “It should have taken us at least three hours. I’m not a pilot, but I’m pretty sure there’s a good amount of distance between the two.” I tried to remember specs for planes we’d insured in my first life. “You should have had to stop for fuel at least once to get us from Bermuda to Key West.”

  The pilot smirked. “Mmm-hmm. And you’ve never, say, helped a boat go a little faster than it should have?” He raised an eyebrow.

  Tess turned to Kamila. “He’s Ferin?”

  A tiny little smile played around the corners of her mouth. “It wasn’t necessarily relevant.”

  I think Tess and I gave her identical expressions of resentment.

  “Okay, fine. Yes, he’s Ferin. Specifically, Roger is an air Ferin. And he uses his gift professionally.” She grinned at him. He winked at her and patted his mustache. I had to admit, it was a good mustache. I think pilots have a secret to growing them, a sort of facial hair club known only to them. And cops, of course.

  “Listen. It wasn’t all about the powers. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Bermuda?”

  Tess perked up. “Pink sand beaches?”

  Kamila chimed in. “Cerulean blue waters?”

  The pilot and I exchanged looks. “You two have been watching too many tourism ads. It’s the Bermuda Triangle.” I glanced over at the pilot. “Are you telling me the Bermuda Triangle now has something to do with Ferin?”

  “No, not at all.” He laughed. I had the sinking suspicion he was laughing at me. “But assuming we don’t lose our heads or our hearts in a wreck, we can’t die, right? So we have plenty of time to figure out how the bloody thing works.

  “The Bermuda Triangle has been frightening seafarers, pilots, and little old ladies sitting in their comfy chairs since the bloody island was discovered. There’s nothing to it, really, just some different wind patterns. All you have to know is how to ride them. Once you get used to it, it’s all gravy from there on in. And it’s just perfect for anyone who wants to disappear or to travel unnoticed.”

  He met my eyes and grinned that kind of maniacal grin a person got when he knew he had met a fellow enthusiast. He wasn’t wrong. I wouldn’t have described myself as an enthusiast of the Bermuda Triangle, but as soon as he mentioned it, I found myself curious. If a Ferin with air powers could find a way to ride the air currents through it—presumably through trial and error—what could a Ferin with water powers do?

  After all, it wasn’t like we could drown.

  Tess put her hand on my arm. “Jason, no.”

  I rose up on my feet. “On the contrary, dear. Jason, yes!”

  Kamila joined Tess. “Jason, no. Maybe after we’ve dealt with the entire species trying to kill you?”

  I cursed under my breath. Someday, if we made it through all of this alive, I was going to have to come back here and try to find out as much as I could about water and the Bermuda Triangle. After all, the first people to get caught up in it were lost to water, not to air.

  The pilot must have known what I was thinking, because he grinned. “Have Kami hook us up next time you’re free. I’m sure we can work something out. It will be magnificent, I assure you. Also, given my occupation, lucrative. Buckle up, kids. We’ll be at the fridge in a jiff.”

  “The fridge?” I asked. I didn’t see a refrigerator. Or an iceberg.

  “See those two ridges of rock? Destroyer ran aground and pushed them up, making two islands. Just to the side is a hidden cache of old refrigerators. Local fishing hole of sorts, the captains keep it a bit of a secret. You can catch snapper there until you’re tired of them. We’re going in from there, on the gulf end of the key,” Roger said.

  “I take it you fish?” I asked him.

  “When I’m not drinking beer and shaping the wind,” he said, pointing to a dark line of rocks. “There we are.”

  My wounds hadn’t healed yet, but they were far enough along that I could help him to unload the plane’s cargo. Kamila and Tess pitched in, and soon enough, we were standing back on American soil, if a mile or so offshore, and it wasn’t really soil. It was more like a glorified rockpile covered with indignant seabirds. And if my nameless British friend was any kind of guide, no one knew we were there.

  I looked over at the ladies. Daisy thumped her tail on the ground a few times, her dog smile in full effect. “And next?” It was too much to hope for that we got to stay in the States.


  “We wait for that gentleman right there.” Kamila pointed to a light bobbing in the waves. A boat approached, its engine rumbling low and chugging in protest.

  “You’re on your own. Fair seas to you,” Roger said. We shook hands, and I hoped to see him again.

  “And skies to you,” I told him, meaning it.

  We stood on the rocks, the ocean all around us and the lights of Key West in our vision. A fishing boat materialized, the captain standing at the console. As boats went, it was medium. As captains went, he was small. He grinned over the wheel, his brown skin weather beaten even in the low light from his console.

  “I don’t often get people wanting to go back to the island,” he said in a musical Cuban accent. “You have the cash?”

  Tess paid him, and just like that, we set back out to sea.

  He gunned the engines, and yet again, I thought of the cruise ship as the waves began to drum against the hull.

  15

  I needed rest in order to recover from my injuries, and a sixteen-hour boat ride was a mixed blessing. I offered to speed things up a bit, but my friends wouldn’t hear of it. They demanded I stay resting. Daisy curled up into my side, and we snored all the way to Cuba.

  The fisherman was right. I’d grown up hearing stories about desperate people making the hundred-mile journey from Cuba to Key West with whatever floating objects they could get their hands on. It was a dangerous trip, and I recalled images of people clinging to life, sunburned and thirsty as they made landfall in the Keys. We were doing the reverse, albeit in better condition and a different mission. Where they sought a better life, we went to fight a war.

  We came ashore near Puerto Padre, a former mill town turned tourist area that was reputed to be the first landing spot for Christopher Columbus. The sun was down when we hit land, and Kamila’s network kicked smoothly into gear. In hours, we had documents declaring us to be innocent Canadians, traveling abroad for pleasure. I practiced being polite, and Tess practiced adjusting her accent and swearing that she loved hockey. Kamila practiced rolling her eyes at us, and we made our way to a small hotel, the bright blue paint chipped into a map of the years. It was humid, the air was sweet, and the fan spun lazily in our room. I drew a breath, locked the door, and looked at the bed with a longing that was almost painful.