So you do it on your own. Why? she typed.
He hesitated. I have to go.
This was the first time in all these years that she recalled him signing off first. The first time she had ever felt in control of the situation.
Good night, she typed. Then she closed her laptop and got up from the table before he could respond.
At the window, she looked out on the street that ran along the front of the hotel. It was quiet and deserted. This was a family resort town. No bars, no arcades. All the restaurants and shops closed at ten P.M, which really was a little odd. Even the local watering hole where Macy had found Arlan the previous night sported a CLOSED sign this time of night, although she would have sworn she had seen light seeping from behind its pulled shades.
The entire town was quiet. Dark.
A large black Labrador trotted along the sidewalk. Seeming to sense she was watching him, he stopped and turned toward her, ears pricked.
She studied him. He studied her.
She took a step closer to the window, placing her hand on the cool glass. Suddenly she had this crazy impulse to go to the dog. To lead him inside. He didn’t seem injured or hungry. In fact, he was muscular, his coat sleek, his eyes glimmering. But she sensed he needed her.
How weird was that?
Chapter 13
Arlan had to force himself to continue walking along the street in the direction of the museum. He hadn’t expected to see Macy tonight. Hadn’t expected her to be waiting for him.
Had she really been waiting for him?
He’d just been trotting down the sidewalk, minding his own business in the form of a Labrador retriever. When he passed the Lighthouse, he had glanced in the direction of Room 22. No reason.
And there she was at the window. Waiting for him.
It was a ridiculous thought, of course. She didn’t know it was him. All she had seen was a big black dog that had wandered from its yard. She didn’t know he could morph into a Lab any more than she knew he could morph into a fox. It was pure coincidence that she had been standing at her open window after midnight, just at the time that he passed, headed for a meeting where he might vote on whether or not to execute a serial killer or a pedophile.
Down a couple more streets, Arlan turned off the sidewalk into an alley, and nearly ran into a pair of long female legs.
“Hey!”
Arlan barked, falling into step at her side.
“What are you doing here?” Fia asked, looking down at him. “Nice collar.”
Arlan morphed from the canine form to his human one. “What am I doing here?” He scratched behind his ear. “What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night. You’re supposed to be in Philly. Lover boy is going to catch you one of these nights and then you’re going to have some explaining to do.”
She frowned. “High Council meeting. You show up unless you’re dead.”
“Not much chance of that,” he joked.
“Exactly.” Reaching the rear of the museum building, she pushed a series of numbers on the key pad and the door opened. “So Peigi convinced you to sit in for Johnny Hill?”
“More like muscled me into it.”
“If it’s any consolation, I think the council is right. You belong here.” She pointed to a closed door, her voice taking on a solemn tone, almost as if they were inside a church. “Men change in there.” She indicated a closed door with a jerk of her head. “Women here. I’ll see you at the table.”
Arlan watched Fia disappear into the room, closing the door behind her. Instead of going where he had been directed, he walked to the end of the long hall and stepped into the main room of the museum. The lights were off, but he had no difficulty making out the furnishings. He could have navigated the room with his eyes closed.
The present building, built over an older foundation, had been constructed in the late sixties to encourage the town’s burgeoning tourist trade. Portraying Clare Point as a pirate’s den in early colonial days, the museum mixed fact with fiction, displaying many objects that had actually been on the ship the sept had traveled aboard from Ireland three centuries ago. When the vessel had wrecked on a reef in a storm and they were all washed ashore, they had collected the objects as well as the scrap wood from the beach and the splintered hull. They had built their first homes with those warped planks; portholes had become windows and the simple white bone china, now displayed in glass cases, had been used on dining tables for decades.
There had been a small colony of wreckers living in lean-tos on the beach when the Kahills washed ashore, but once the sept’s leader, Gair, declared that the family had reached their final destination, the Kahill women had drawn their fangs, the men had raised their swords, and being realists, the pirates had moved south to Virginia to safer ground.
The display cases in the rinky-dink museum, identified by printed signs and sometimes with humorous sketches, were filled with pieces of china, brass candlesticks, and other assorted junk, mostly brought from the ship, although some of it was bounty the wreckers had left behind in their eagerness to escape a colony of vampires. There was also a small exhibit of arrowheads and spear points from the area’s earlier history, when Native Americans had hunted and fished the land now located inside the town limits. Some of the items were often displayed on the round table that had come from the ship captain’s cabin.
His gaze settled there and he fought an ominous shiver. Now cleared of the knickknacks, he knew this was where the High Council took the aontas. Tonight, he might be expected to vote, to thrust his dagger into the scarred tabletop and sentence a man or woman to death. Or, withhold his aonta, and demand further evidence of the guilt of the human in question. The responsibility seemed overwhelming for a handyman.
He shifted his gaze.
During the museum’s operating hours, a five-minute movie was shown in one corner of the room and there was a small gift shop off the hall, near the restrooms. There, plastic swords, eye patches, fake coins, tomahawks, and other assorted souvenirs were sold. On rainy days, in the summer months, the museum made a surprisingly tidy profit.
Now the shadowy room was filled with an eerie energy. All those years of life and death decisions, Arlan thought. They couldn’t help but leave an indelible impression in the air.
The central air-conditioning unit clicked on, startling him, and he turned back as cool air blew in his face. Arlan dreaded going into the small room and donning the council robe. He dreaded the memories it would churn up. He hadn’t served on the High Council since the mid-nineteenth century. Not since he had voted to execute his lover’s brother.
It was after three A.M. when Arlan hung his cloak, returned his on-loan ceremonial dagger to Gair, and walked out into the hot, humid night air. Lost in their own thoughts after the night’s proceedings, no one spoke as council members filed one by one out the rear door. The contemplative silence seemed appropriate, a sort of reverence to the momentous decisions made behind those closed doors.
The group splintered, each headed home to catch a few hours of sleep before they would have to wake and greet and serve tourists and pretend to be human again. Arlan walked Fia to her car, she apparently being the one exception to the no one drives to High Council rule Peigi had been so adamant about.
“You okay?” Fia asked softly as he opened the door for her.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” They stood face to face with the car door between them.
“You get used to it.” She rested her folded arms on the top of the door, leaning toward him. “You learn to pick and pull through the information. You get a gut feeling about these people. You know when it’s right.”
Arlan had been greatly relieved that no vote was required of him tonight. Fortunately, it had been a meeting where information was exchanged and orders were sent out to teams for further investigation. All he had to do was stand at the table and listen, in a hooded cloak some member of his family had worn for more than two hundred years. Fia had offered up the Buri
ed Alive Killer, making it an authorized sept case. Whether the FBI officially put her on the case or not, as far as the sept was concerned, she was, and it was a top priority.
For a moment, Fia and Arlan stood there in the dark. The moon was already beginning to fall below the horizon. Night insects chirped. A frog croaked from a nearby drainage ditch. They were comforting sounds to him; sounds that were always the same, no matter in what century or on what continent he lived.
“You look tired.” She reached out and stroked his beard-stubbled cheek.
He closed his eyes, savoring her touch. He had ached for Fia for so long that sometimes he forgot about the pain and then suddenly, there it was again, so tight in his chest that he could barely speak. He wanted her so badly, not just in his bed, but in his arms. In his heart.
But she belonged to another man. Her choice. Her life.
“Long day,” he admitted. “I repaired the cracks in Rob’s tomb and installed some track lighting in Mary Hill’s new media room.”
She chuckled. “Pretty exciting life you lead.”
He opened his eyes. “I think so.” He looked down at the white line of the parking space in the museum’s lot. “So you talked to Macy?”
Fia pushed back a lock of red hair. She was letting it grow out. The longer locks made her look younger, less severe.
“She says she’s going to stick around a few days. Some kind of freelance magazine job. I’m going to look into her work, see what kind of dirt I can dig up on her. We’re going to meet Friday.”
“You coming back for Rob’s funeral?”
She shook her head. “Gotta bunk with the boyfriend once in a while.”
“Ah,” he acknowledged. “Don’t want him to get suspicious. Otherwise you might have to suck all the blood from his body, speak the magic incantation, and turn him into one of the living dead.”
“That’s not funny.” She cuffed him on the ear.
“Ouch.” He stepped back, rubbing the offended appendage.
“’Night,” Fia called, slipping into her car and pulling closed the door.
“Night.”
He walked home in human form, taking his time, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his sunglasses propped on his nose. He liked the way the dark lenses changed the light cast from the silver moon. Maybe it was the polarized technology. Maybe it was the magic of the night. Like it or not, he was now a member of the High Council and the responsibility the position possessed was once again on his shoulders. He’d forgotten just how heavy a burden it was.
Arlan was not surprised to find Macy on his porch steps. Maybe he should have been, but he wasn’t. He was glad to see her. In silence, he walked past her, up the steps, and turned the doorknob.
“You don’t lock your doors,” she pointed out, seeming more a spirit of the night than a human. “Me neither,” she said with a sigh.
In his bedroom, they slowly undressed each other as if they had done it a thousand times. They stood naked, face to face, surrounded by a puddle of clothing. Arlan threaded his fingers through hers and held her hands tightly, gazing into her eyes. He was sad. Sad for himself because he could not have Fia. Sad for Fia because she couldn’t break her addiction to human men. Sad for Macy because…he wasn’t even sure why. But he wanted to know. He wanted to know her story.
“Tell me how you know him,” Arlan said, lowering his head to kiss her bare shoulder. He breathed deeply, taking in her feminine, human scent. “The killer.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She rested her palm on his cheek and guided him down to her. She brushed her lips against his, butterfly-light and teasing. Painfully sensual.
“I want to understand,” he whispered against her mouth. “I want to feel your pain.”
“No, you don’t,” she breathed, flicking out her tongue to taste his lips. “Believe me, you don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to feel this.”
He kissed her more roughly. “I can help.”
She grasped his head with both hands, pulling him down to her, meeting him with an equal, building urgency. Her breath was already quick, her voice raspy. Almost desperate. “You can’t. No one can help. No one can save me.” And then she reached down and clasped his already burgeoning erection in her warm hand.
“You cheat,” he half whispered, half groaned.
She stroked the length of him, maintaining eye contact with him. There was something about the way that she looked at him as she caressed him that sent a shock wave through his body. He grabbed her up in his arms and carried her to his bed, flinging her down on the unmade sheets that still smelled of last night’s lovemaking.
Macy gave a little cry of surprise at his sudden roughness, but she didn’t protest. She reached up to him, pulling him down on top of her, meeting his greedy kiss.
Arlan didn’t know what had gotten into him. Maybe the power and magnitude of the evening. Tonight, he didn’t just want to make love to Macy; he wanted to possess her. He squeezed her breasts and ran his hands down her slender torso, kissing her hard, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. He pushed his groin against hers, and grabbed her bare legs, forcing them around his back. They kissed and stroked in a seeming frenzy, their desire for each other rising with each panting breath they took.
“Arlan,” she gasped. “Now. I need you now.”
But he did not take her. Instead, he pressed his mouth to her neck and tasted her salty skin with the tip of his tongue. He even went so far as to draw back his lips.
No. He would not bite her. He would not take her blood, although he thought she probably wouldn’t even care. She seemed, at this moment, to be as out of control as he was.
Instead of biting her, he spread her legs wide and sank hard into her. She cried out with pleasure and he did not relent. He pushed again and again, their movement so violent that they slid across the bed, taking sheets and the coverlet with them. Macy clung to him, making little whimpering sounds of passion.
They climaxed, Macy first, then Arlan, both closing their eyes and gasping in satisfaction. Breathing hard, he lowered himself over her, propping himself up so that he wasn’t too heavy on top of her. He brushed away the golden hair that had stuck to her damp cheek, kissed her closed eyelids.
She put both her palms on his chest and pushed. He rolled over onto his back and for a moment they just lay there in the dark, the ceiling fan ticking overhead, listening to each others’ labored breathing.
Arlan was suddenly so tired, so spent, that he felt himself drifting. She moved on the bed beside him and he reached for her, opening his eyes. “Where are you going?” he asked, groggy.
She brushed her fingertips across the palm of his hand and climbed out of the bed. “Back to the hotel.”
“You can stay the night.” He never invited anyone to stay after sex. No one but Fia had that privilege, but as the unexpected words came out of his mouth, he realized he wanted Macy here. He wanted her to sleep in his bed beside him.
“I don’t stay the night,” she said, picking through the clothing on the floor, trying to identify what was hers.
He closed his eyes. Just for a minute. Just to decide what he should say to make her stay. When he opened them again, it was daylight, the clock read 9:10, and he was late to repair Eva’s pantry shelves.
“You invited her here?” Arlan’s words were garbled by a mouthful of nails.
“She might feature the house in a magazine,” Eva said enthusiastically. “I don’t get anything for that but the fame, but she says that sometimes advertising money comes out of it. You know, people see photos of the house and they want to shoot their toothpaste or hemorrhoid cream ads in my rose garden.”
He plucked the nails one by one from between his lips and laid them on the counter that ran under the shelves on one end of the eight-by-six room. Arlan had specifically built the room back in the nineteenth century to store dry goods. “This is going to take more than nails. I’m going to have to pull down some of these shelves, rebrace them and then put them up a
gain. I’ve been telling you for years that you needed some maintenance work in here.” He turned to her. “Eva, you can’t invite Macy here. You can’t get all friendly with her. She’s an HF.”
“And you’ve never had humans in your house?” Eva stood in the doorway between the kitchen and pantry, a perfectly plucked black eyebrow raised. “Puh-lease.”
“She’s here to talk to Fia about the Buried Alive Killings.”
“She’s Fia’s snitch?”
He frowned, not liking Eva’s choice of nouns. Not liking the connotation of the word. “No, she’s not a snitch. She might have some information that could help the FBI on the case, that’s all.” Arlan wasn’t sure how much he should say. He didn’t know what Fia would want him to say. What Macy would want him to say. He suspected he’d already blabbed more than he should. How did he always get into situations like this? Trapped among women.
“Okay, so she’s possibly got some info for Fia. I don’t see how that concerns me.” She lifted her elfin nose haughtily. “She’s a photographer. She takes great pictures. Arlan, she understands my rosebushes.”
He rolled his eyes. “She’s not a lesbian, Eva.” He removed his measuring tape from his leather tool belt and began to take down numbers on a scrap of paper. “You’re barking up the wrong tree if you’re looking for love.”
“How do you know what her sexual orientation is?” Eva was quiet for a second and then she gasped. “Don’t tell me you slept with her?” She slapped her muscular thigh. “Saint Mary, Mother of God’s bones! You screwed Fia’s snitch!”
“She is not Fia’s snitch!” He grabbed his scratch paper and strode past her, into the kitchen. He was aggravated. Aggravated with Eva for being too friendly with Macy. Aggravated with Macy for snooping around where she had no business snooping. Eva could be a dangerous woman; hell, he could be dangerous. He was even aggravated with Fia for her relationship with Macy. He was pissed at them all.
Undying Page 12