Undying

by V. K. Forrest

  Fia met Arlan on the path beside the toolshed. He was just walking along, hands in his pockets as if he belonged there. “You been to the scene?” she stopped and asked.

  He nodded.

  She noted he was a little pale. And still as devastatingly handsome as ever. He was always getting offers in big cities to try his hand at modeling. With a face and a body like his, he could sell a ton of tight black BVDs from a billboard in Times Square or Tokyo.

  “You just walked over and had a look at a dead family of five, buried to their chins, and no one stopped you?”

  “No one stopped two pitiful cats checking out their owners’ remains.”

  She knew Arlan had the ability to morph into any animal. She’d once seen him morph into a nine-foot-tall polar bear in her mother’s backyard. But he usually kept it to applicable animals. Animals native to the area. The whole idea was to be able to blend in. And while he could be feline, bovine, or canine, he couldn’t split himself into two animals. Not even two measly five-pound cats. That was beyond his gift. “Two of you?”

  “Found a friend. He’s over there.” He pointed behind him. “Other side of the shed. Family cat. He didn’t see anything. He was out chasing rabbits in a field somewhere when it happened. He came upon them after they were dead.”

  “He call it in?” she quipped.

  It was a poor attempt at humor. Neither of them smiled.

  “Hey, my girl called,” she said, giving Arlan a tap on the arm. He was still wearing his sunglasses. The color seemed to be coming back to his suntanned cheeks. Who would have thought a vampire would tan so well? “She says she’s here, though I didn’t see her. Don’t think I saw her, anyway. There’s so many people. It’s crazy.” She gestured in the direction of the driveway commotion.

  “What’d she want?”

  “Believe it or not, she’s agreed to meet me.”

  He made a face, demonstrating he was impressed with Fia’s skill as an agent.

  “She won’t meet me here, though. Later tonight. On a deserted beach, of all places.”

  “You think it’s safe?”

  It was Fia’s turn to make a face. “For me? She’s the one who ought to be scared of me in the dark.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He smiled. Their gazes met. His smile slipped. His focus drifted with his thoughts. “I saw them, Fee. It’s pretty awful.”

  “I’m sure it is. I saw the last family.” She put her sunglasses back on. It was really too dark for sunglasses now. Neither needed to wear them. But they were both hiding behind them. Hiding the emotions they both knew had no place here. No place in doing their job.

  “So what did you think?” she asked, pushing past the tightness in her chest that ached as much for Arlan as it did for the family and for those who had to see them this way. Arlan had always been what their resident wisewoman called a gentle soul. “Tell me your gut reaction.”

  “One crazy son of a bitch.” He shook his head. “I mean kids? Grandma?”

  She grimaced. “I know.”

  “How is he getting them in the holes? How long is it taking him to dig the holes?” He became more manic. Talking faster. “How’s he physically managing it, Fee? How’s he subdue a whole family? How does he get in and out without anyone, including the family cat, seeing him?”

  “All the autopsies, so far, showed the use of an injectable drug in each of the victims’ bloodstreams. The actual drug varies, but it’s enough to knock them out for a short time. Sometimes he digs the holes hours before he imprisons the family. That was the case on the last one, the only one I actually saw. But once, before I was following his cases, I read in the files that he made a father dig the holes for his family before rendering him unconscious. We could tell from the blisters on his hands and the blood on the shovel. In all the incidents, we think the killer buries them while they’re drugged, then allows them to come to.”

  “So they have to watch each other be strangled?” Arlan asked incredulously. “Unfucking believable.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as if to attempt to wipe the foul taste of the killer’s sin from his mouth. “I want this guy.”

  “I want him, too,” she said.

  “No, I mean when we get him, I’m going to be on the kill team. My dagger goes into his black heart first.” He made an angry stabbing motion.

  “I wouldn’t mind being there with you,” she said gently, trying to temper his emotion. She hesitated. “Look, I gotta go. I’ve got those agents from the Baltimore office waiting for me.” She walked past him, patting him on the arm as she went by. “Catch up with you at the car later? We’ll find a place to stay, grab something quick to eat before I make the meet.”

  “We talking double bed or singles?” He lifted a brow suggestively.

  “I’m monogamous, Arlan. I have a boyfriend. I’ve told you that, what? Like a hundred times in the last year.”

  “You never know when the answer will be different.” He turned around to watch her go, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Catch you later.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. See if I can talk to my kitty buddy. Maybe find some cat chow.”

  Fia smiled to herself as she walked away, wishing she could fall in love with Arlan.

  Arlan chatted with the tabby again, gave a half-hearted chase after a mouse in the toolshed with him and then wished the cat good luck. As Arlan walked, in the dark, back toward Fia’s car parked up on the main road, he wondered what would become of the dead family’s feline. Would a distant relative or neighbor think to take him home, or would he be forgotten and left to live on his own? Arlan found it sad, but there were animals all over the world left behind like Tabby. Arlan couldn’t save them all. There were days when he could barely save himself.

  There were cat rescue centers, though. Maybe, once he got home, he would give the local rescue organization a call. Surely they could find a good home for Tabby.

  Arlan was leaning against the hood of the car, wishing he had a cigarette, even though he rarely smoked, when he heard Fia’s voice. She was approaching the road from the driveway, talking on her cell.

  “Ma, listen to me. You have to calm down. I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

  Fia paused, then responded. “No, no, don’t put him on the phone. Dad’s less communicative calm than you are hysterical. Isn’t anyone else there? One of the boys?” Another pause. Fia was on the street, walking directly toward Arlan. Her high-heeled loafers tapped hollowly on the pavement. “No, not Aunt Mary. She’ll have had her sherry by now. Isn’t there anyone else there? Where’s Fin, Ma?” She looked up at Arlan. “Regan called home,” she told him. “He never made it back from Greece. He’s in some kind of trouble.” She looked down, speaking into the phone. “Ma, either you have to calm down or you’re going to have to call me back.”

  She looked up at Arlan again. “I don’t know what to do with her. I can’t understand what she’s saying.”

  “She say where he was calling from?” Arlan felt an instant pang of guilt. He shouldn’t have left Athens without Regan. Procedure or not. Fia’s brother had been headed for trouble for months. Arlan should have known this was coming. “She know where he is?” he asked.

  Fia shook her head. “Ma, I can’t come home tonight. I have an appointment I can’t—Ma, please stop crying.” Fia ran her hand over her silky hair, obviously at a loss. “Ma…”

  “You want me to go home?” Arlan offered. “Let me talk to her. I can get a rental car and be there in less than three hours.”

  “Ma…Ma, how about if Arlan comes over? You tell him what Regan said and—” She was quiet for a second; then she looked at Arlan. “She wants me,” she said, seeming nearly defeated. “I can’t deal with this,” she told him, her hand on the mouthpiece of the phone. “I can’t deal with her right now and this case. I need to go home, but—”

  “Why don’t you let me meet your Maggie tonight?”

  “She’ll never agree to it.” F
ia lifted her hand off the mouthpiece. “Ma, just a minute. I’m trying to figure something out.” She lowered the phone to her side.

  Arlan could hear Mary Kay Kahill sobbing hysterically. “So we won’t tell her I’m coming. I’ll go to the meeting place, morph, check out the situation and then decide whether or not to attempt the meeting or not. If I don’t think it’s a safe bet, I’ll call you, you call her and tell her something came up.” He shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” Fia hemmed. “She…she’s obviously scared. Brittle, I think. She has to be handled carefully.”

  “Who better than me to handle an HF with kid gloves?” He raised his hands to her, fluttering his fingers, giving her his sexiest smile.

  Fia spoke into the phone again. “Ma, I want you to go to the kitchen and make some muffins. Ma…yes, blueberry would be fine. Then cranberry nut. By the time you’ve got the second batch done, I should be almost home.”

  Arlan opened the car door for Fia and she climbed in, cell phone still to her ear. “We’ll find him, Ma. I’ll go get him myself if I have to.” Another pause. “Ma, you know how he is. He exaggerates. I’m sure he’s just drunk. I’m sure he’ll call back tomorrow saying he’s fine and on his way home.”

  Arlan got in the passenger’s side of the BMW. Both of his parents were dead and even after all these centuries, he still missed them. Sometimes he didn’t think Fia realized how lucky she was to have her parents, even if her father was a distant, self-absorbed alcoholic and her mother half crazy.

  “I’m hanging up now, Ma. Hanging up,” Fia sang as she started the car, racing its engine. “See you in a couple of hours. Blueberry and cranberry.” She hung up.

  “You’re a good daughter,” Arlan said.

  She tore away from the side of the road, leaving rubber on the pavement, and the dead bodies being loaded into ambulances behind.

  Macy left her car, unlocked, windows down, in the gravel parking lot of the state park. During the day, she imagined it was filled with minivans and SUVs; families on vacation or just celebrating a day in the sun. Unlike further north in Ocean City or Rehoboth Beach, there were no concessions, no stores lining the beach, on the Virginia Peninsula. Here were just miles of sand and ocean, for the most part, unblemished by condos, restaurants, and arcades. It was the perfect place for picnics, frolicking in surf, or simply reading a book to the rhythmic sound of the incoming waves.

  But this late at night, with the park officially closed, there were no minivans, no families on vacation. The parking lot was empty except for two red porta-potties and a couple of overflowing trash cans.

  Macy grabbed a hooded sweatshirt off the floor of her car, pulled it on, lifted the hood, and traipsed up the sandy dune crossing, over the crest of the man-made dunes. She had discovered this beach one day while driving south, after an assignment. Although it was on the ocean side of the highway, there was a scraggly woods line not far off the beach. Somehow, over millions of years, plants and trees had managed to evolve enough to live in the sandy soil, just a couple of hundred feet from the salty body of water. She admired those trees with their prickly needles, and the low-lying bushes with the spindly branches. They had managed to survive in adverse conditions. They had adapted.

  Much in the same way Macy had adapted.

  On the far side of the grassy dune, the beach stretched out to the north and to the south. As she had promised Fia, the moon was glowing bright over the ocean. But it was no longer full. Teddy had missed his mark. She crossed the clean beach, walking toward the water. She was early. It would be a few minutes before the FBI agent arrived.

  Macy had checked into a hotel earlier and sat on the edge of the bed with a yellow bedspread and contemplated what she would say to Fia. She had no real information to provide. All she had was this feeling of being on a high-speed train, rushing forward. A train with no brakes. A train about to derail. So why was she here? Did she really think she could stop the train?

  Could she and Fia do it together?

  Macy had an idea that Fia understood something about Teddy. She had picked up on the fact that this was too soon for the killer to strike again. Not enough months had passed. She seemed to sense that some sort of urgency was building in Teddy.

  Macy stopped at the water’s edge and contemplated taking off her shoes to feel the wet sand between her toes. She stared down at the frothy water washing up on the shore, then at the waves, then beyond the breakers to the rippling expanse of the Atlantic seeming to move as if it were alive.

  She walked south, keeping an eye on the parking lot. She had not heard Fia’s car yet, or seen the headlights. It had to be near time for their meeting.

  She’d be here. Macy knew she would come.

  Just as Macy was about to turn around and head north again, movement caught her eye at the woods line. She stopped and stared into the darkness. A pair of glowing eyes—light reflected from the moonlight—stared back.

  She felt her mouth turn up at one corner in a half smile. It was a gray fox. A rare treat. Gray foxes were native to North America as was not the case with the more often seen red fox, which was brought to the continent by colonists wanting to hunt them. Macy stood still, staring at the fox. The fox, poised to run, every muscle in his sinewy body tense, stared back. Should she move, she knew he would startle and lope off into the darkness.

  Macy, at once, felt a kinship to the woodland creature. She understood perfectly his flight instinct. It had been her modus operandi for the last fourteen years.

  Chapter 7

  Arlan stood beneath the prickly low-hanging pine bough as he stared at the woman on the lonely stretch of beach. She was small in stature, slender, almost boylike in shape. She wore jeans and a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. From beneath the hood, golden strands of hair were visible. Her eyes were luminous in the moonlight.

  Arlan swung his long tail one way and then the other, unable to tear his gaze from hers. He had morphed into a large male Urocyon cinereoargenteus so that he could get a better look at Fia’s Maggie. He’d arrived ahead of her and had been watching her since she walked out on the beach. When she spotted him, he should have darted into the brush, as any fox with sense would have done, but there was something about this woman that held him spellbound.

  When she saw him, she had gone completely still, but it appeared she had done so to prevent frightening him. She was not afraid. In fact, from the intensity of her gaze, he sensed that she was as momentarily fascinated by him as he was of her.

  This petite woman with green eyes and spun gold hair was not what Arlan had expected. He had worked with informants before, male and female. They were often drug abusers or alcoholics. They were humans down on their luck, willing to accept money for information. They were skinny, malnourished, and hollow eyed. They had a look about them that was often pathetic. Maggie had never asked Fia for money, for anything actually, and in no way did she appear pathetic. This woman was healthy and she was on her game. Whatever game that was. He could smell that much on the salty night air. Yet, she also seemed sad. Lonely.

  When their gazes locked, he felt some kind of instant connection with her. An understanding. Arlan could not read the minds of humans, but he sensed a vulnerability about her that made him want to reach out. To touch her. To take her in his arms.

  And her neck was so lovely, so pale and slender….

  Arlan shook his head, trying to dislodge the forbidden thoughts from it.

  She didn’t flinch. Instead, she surprised him by taking a tentative step toward him.

  He wondered what she would do if he bolted toward her. Nothing, he decided. She wouldn’t be afraid of him, wouldn’t fear he was rabid. She would stand there and let him trot up to her.

  Arlan had to force himself to turn away. He loped into the brush, running back toward the rental car he’d parked on the road south of the parking lot. He didn’t morph until he reached the car. Then he hopped in and drove the quarter of a mile to the lot. He parked beside her car an
d walked up over the dune.

  She was waiting for him in the moonlight.

  “Maggie?” he called, as he crossed the dunes and walked down the sandy slope toward her.

  Now she was the one poised to lope off into the darkness. She still wore the hood up on her sweatshirt. All he could see was her hair and her eyes. Nothing of her face.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  Arlan was suddenly desperate to see her face. “My name is Arlan Kahill. Fia sent me.”

  “She didn’t say anything about sending someone else. Fia would have called me and told me if she couldn’t make it.”

  “She had a family emergency and she asked me to come in her place. Had she called to tell you, you wouldn’t have shown up, Maggie.”

  She watched him with guarded eyes. “You FBI, too?”

  “No.” He stood still, trying not to spook her, much the same way she had done when she had approached him farther down the beach a few minutes ago. “I…I’m an old friend. I help her out with tough cases sometimes.”

  “That doesn’t sound legal.”

  He smiled to himself. She was pointing out that what they were now doing probably wasn’t legal, but she was making no attempt to walk away. “Fia really wanted to be here, but—”

  “Right, the family thing.”

  “The family thing,” he repeated.

  Both regarded each other for a moment.

  “You said you were friends, but you have the same last name.”

  “We come from the same town. A lot of us have the same surname.”

  She nodded. “I don’t really know anything more than she knows,” she said softly after a moment. “I’m not sure what the point of this meeting was.”

  “But you came anyway,” he pointed out.

  She remained quiet.

  Arlan slipped his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. “Fia was…we were wondering what your connection is. To him,” he said carefully. “How do you know him?”