Eternal

by V. K. Forrest

  “What?” He stepped into the room.

  A wave of dizziness washed over Fia. For a moment, she thought she might faint or be sick. Maybe both.

  Slowly, it passed.

  “Garlic,” she repeated, her voice stronger this time. She held up the cloves for him to see.

  “Why the hell—”

  Fia squatted and took a small evidence bag from the kit just inside the door, not really hearing what Glen was saying. She didn’t have to ask why there was garlic in Shannon’s mouth or what it meant.

  “I don’t understand why you have to go.” Glen lay on his side in the bed with its ruffly blue linens and blue fish stenciled on the headboard. He was covered to the waist with a sheet, but as he grabbed her hand to stop her from climbing out of bed, it shifted, giving her a nice view of his dark nest of hair and dangling participles.

  The man had fine participles, she’d give him that.

  She made herself look away and think of something other than his rising hard-on. Something she disliked. Getting her teeth cleaned. Scraping the floor drain in her shower. “I have to go because this is the Blue Gill room and my room is the Starfish room.”

  He wouldn’t let go of her hand and she sat back down on the edge of the bed. She tried to reach for her T-shirt so she wouldn’t have to have this conversation stark naked, but he refused to give her enough line to reach it.

  “Please don’t tell me you don’t want your parents to know you’re sleeping with me.”

  “It’s not the sleeping part I’m trying to keep from them.”

  “Fee. Once again, I’m trying to be serious, and you’re not.”

  She groaned and flopped back down on the bed, head on the pillow beside him, taking care not to brush her hand against that which dangled. She didn’t want to start anything she didn’t have time to finish. She needed to get out of the room so that Glen would go to sleep, so she could make the council meeting. This was not a night to be late.

  “Please.” She turned her head to look at him. “I know where you’re going with this and I don’t think I can deal with this conversation tonight.”

  He was quiet for minute. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” That had been entirely too easy. Twice in the last week he’d attempted to talk about “their relationship” and both times she’d managed to sidestep the conversation nicely.

  “Okay for tonight. I understand you’ve had a crappy day. Back in Clare Point again. Shannon this time.” He drew his hand across her cheek. “But you’re not going to keep putting me off. I know we’re moving awfully fast, but you’re trying to pretend we’re not moving at all.”

  She stared at the ceiling, watching the fan turn. Painted blue, of course. “Glen—”

  “This is not a conversation, which means you don’t have to speak. I just want to say that when you’re ready to have it, I am. I just want to say that even though this is early on and it’s sudden and all that, I want to make it work. I’m not an impulsive guy, you know that, Fee. But this…it just feels right.”

  She turned her head. He was looking into her eyes. She was melting.

  “You feel right,” he whispered.

  Fia sat up, grabbing the pillow, using it as a barrier between her naked body and his. Her heart and his.

  He was a human. She couldn’t do this. She knew she couldn’t do it. Not again. It had been a mistake. She’d been wrong to think she could handle it. She’d been wrong to think that she could just make the relationship about sex.

  “I really do need to get back to my own room,” she said carefully. “And you need to get some sleep.” She leaned down and kissed him, pulling the sheet up to cover him at the same time.

  “What’s the matter,” he teased. “You don’t want another piece a dis?”

  She laughed, trying to keep her voice down. “Good night, Glen. See you in the morning.”

  “See you in the morning, sweet britches.”

  She threw the pillow at him.

  At 1:15 A.M. Fia stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of her parents’ B and B. At 1:17 a black panther joined her on the sidewalk. The creature was sleek and massive. It had to go two hundred, two hundred and twenty pounds. As it walked beside her, its tail twitched. Golden, glowing eyes watched her.

  “Can you do a bear?” she asked. “A hedgehog? This big cat thing is getting tiresome.”

  It’s not safe for you to walk alone, Arlan said. Actually, he didn’t speak, but Fia heard him clearly in her head.

  “You don’t have to worry about me.” She spoke aloud, preferring the noise of her own voice to the stark absence of sound in the frightened town. Tonight, no cars purred down the streets. No doors opened and closed. Dogs didn’t even bark. Did their domesticated companions fear for the lives of the sept, too? “I can take care of myself.”

  That’s what Shannon thought, too.

  “She was killed inside her apartment, not on the street.”

  Arlan walked beside her, light-footed, fangs bared, long black tail swishing back and forth in a grand arc. So what does that mean, Fee, that none of us are safe now, anywhere?

  “Sweet Mary and Joseph, he cut off her breasts, Arlan.” Fia’s voice cracked with emotion as tears suddenly stung the backs of her eyelids. She covered her mouth with her hand.

  She’d held it together all day but all of a sudden she felt lost. Defeated. “How could anyone do that? He cut them off and he took them with him in a garbage bag from a box under her own sink. He set her head on the bed and stuffed her mouth with garlic.”

  “You know what that means.”

  “Good news, I suppose.” She reached over her shoulder, trying to rub the knot that ached in the center of her back. “It’s not one of us. Only humans believe that we give a shit about garlic.”

  “Thanks to our buddy, Bram Stoker.” Arlan went from four legs to two in a split second. One moment he was sporting a tail, the next he was walking beside her in human form, kneading her tired shoulder muscles with his hand. “But not just him. There were others, too. I’m actually pretty up to date on my vampire-in-the-media trivia.”

  “Good to know. Should I get on one of those game shows and have to call my lifeline for the answer to a question pertaining to vampires in the media, you’re my man, Arlan.”

  “Do you have to be sarcastic about everything?” He lowered his hand. “Shannon is dead. So are Mahon and Bobby. We have to do something, Fee.”

  She whipped around, stopping on the sidewalk. “You think I don’t know that!”

  He was quiet for a minute. They started to walk again. They passed under a streetlamp. A block ahead, an elderly woman, bundled in a hat and coat though it was sixty degrees, hustled across the street, headed for the museum.

  “I think you’re taking this too personally,” he said. “No one cares if you find the killer, or if one of us does. It’s not going to make us think any less of you, Fee, if you’re not the one who stops him. It won’t mean you’re not a good FBI agent or you don’t deserve to be on the high council.”

  She pressed her lips together. “The garlic is the best lead I’ve gotten on the cases, so far. I know now that it’s a human and not one of us, thank God. But it’s a human who knows how to kill us.”

  “Which means one of us had to tell one of them,” he offered.

  “Exactly.”

  They made the turn up the freshly blacktopped driveway to the parking lot behind the museum. Neither spoke, both lost in their thoughts, but Fia found it comforting to have Arlan beside her. It would make it easier to walk into the council meeting.

  They entered the building by the dark rear hallway and made their way into the main room of the museum where chairs had been set up in a circle. Tonight there was no snack table. Not even a pot of coffee; no smell of aromatic coffee this evening, just the clear, strong scent of fear.

  They were among the last to arrive so most of the seats were occupied; she took a chair close to the door. Arlan gave her shoulder a quick squeeze as
he walked past her, taking a seat on the opposite side of the circle.

  Peigi Ross cleared her throat, tapped her pen on her clipboard. Fia noticed that the board that usually listed a dozen items for the agenda was blank. Tonight they would only discuss one topic, and Peigi didn’t need to remind herself what it was.

  “Looks like just about everyone’s here,” Peigi said, “So let’s get started. “This is the way we’re going to do it tonight. I’m gonna talk and then I’m going to call on a few of you—”

  “I don’t know who you think you are, Peigi Ross,” Bobby’s wife said, gesturing grandly. “We all have a right to speak on this council. I have a right to speak.”

  Peigi whipped around to face the red-eyed Mary McCathal. “You do have a right to speak, but we don’t have time for arguin’, Mary, and arguing is just what you’re good at. All of us are. But I’m the chief of this council and that gives me the right to say how things are gonna be done.” She shook her clipboard at Mary, at all of them. “Tonight, we’re not all jabberin’. We’re not making accusations, pointing fingers, or picking fights. We’re going to figure out what we’re going to do about this mess we’ve got here. And then we’re going to do something about it.” Sitting in her folding chair, she slid her clipboard underneath and folded her arms over her middle-aged breasts.

  “Fia,” Peigi said, settling her gaze on her. “There’re plenty of rumors bouncing around Clare Point. Why don’t you tell us exactly what we know and what we don’t know and give us your assessment of the situation. Not just from an FBI standpoint, but as a member of this sept.”

  Fia debated whether to sit or stand but decided to stand, thinking it would give her more authority. “This is what we know. Shannon worked until nine at the Hill, and was out until sometime between 11:15 and 11:20 P.M. Liz Lilk, across the street, saw her walking up her driveway. Where she was between clocking out from work and arriving at home, I haven’t been able to find out yet. Shannon placed a personal phone call to me at 11:25 and sometime between then and midnight, she was murdered.”

  Fia heard whispers, but no one spoke up. All gazes were fixed on her.

  “The killer could have followed her in, but it’s more likely he was waiting for her. Probably hiding in the bedroom. He decapitated her…” Fia kept her voice steady. “He placed her on the bed, he removed her breasts, put garlic in her mouth, and set the bed on fire.”

  “Her breasts,” someone whispered. “Bobby’s feet, Mahon’s hands. Now Shannon’s breasts.”

  Fia looked in the direction the voice had come from and the room was silent again.

  “I don’t yet know why the killer is taking body parts, but all of us in this room understand the beheading and the burning. The head is separated from the body, the body is burned, to prevent the body from regenerating and the soul reentering the body. What’s different about Shannon is the garlic in her mouth. A few weeks ago we were looking at each other, wondering if one of our neighbors, our family members, could have been committing these heinous crimes. Now we know it’s not one of us.”

  “How do we know?” Jim Hill piped up.

  She turned to him. “Because only humans believe in the repelling quality of garlic among vampires. You put garlic in your marinara sauce, Uncle Jim.”

  He lowered his head, nodding in agreement.

  Fia took the moment to look at each member of the council, slowly turning so that she could look into each of their faces. “So, the good news is that it’s not one of us.” She hesitated. “The bad news is that it’s one of them, which means we’ve been found.”

  “What does the FBI think about all this? Beheadings. Now the garlic.” Peigi asked.

  “Fortunately for us, the FBI doesn’t believe in vampires. The assumption is being made that the killer is just another one of the crazies we’re all trying to rid the world of. The FBI is serious about this investigation and we believe we’re getting closer to the killer.” The words sounded hollow in Fia’s ears. “What the FBI is doing right now, what I and my partner are doing, is trying to put all the evidence we have from the three murders together and figure out what it means.”

  “I can tell you what it means. It means one of us ran our mouths,” Mary Hill blurted out, staring at Mary McCathal. “Means one of us got too friendly with the tourists. Too friendly with the Federal Express man.”

  “I never told anyone about us,” Mary McCathal hissed at Mary Hill. “You’re the one always gossipin’, Mary Hill. You’re the one runnin’ around with people’s husbands.”

  Mary Hill’s mouth popped wide open, but before she could say another word, Peigi stood. “Ladies! This is just what I’m talkin’ about. What I won’t have.” She glared at the two Marys. “Go on, Fia.” She sat down again.

  Fia opened her arms, then brought her hands together. “The good news is, as I said before, we’re closer to the killer, closer to finding out who did this and protecting each other. The bad news is that now we have to decide how to figure out what the humans know about us.”

  “How we supposed to do that?” someone asked. “If I told the checker at the grocery store in Dover about me being a vampire, I certainly wouldn’t admit it to anyone else!”

  Everyone started to talk at once and the noise rose until it reached a crescendo. Fia let them talk for a moment or two more and then raised both hands. “Ladies, gentlemen, please.”

  Everyone quieted.

  “Before we start accusing each other, thinking the worst of each other, let’s consider this. Maybe no one told anyone anything. Maybe a human has learned of our existence by accident. Maybe someone saw something, heard something he shouldn’t have. Think about all the humans that come and go in this town every day, especially in the summer—tourists, delivery men, college kids seeking employment.”

  “I don’t understand.” Rob Hail rubbed his balding head. “Why would someone seek us out and murder us? We’ve been living peaceably here for three centuries.”

  Fia shrugged. “Why have we been persecuted for fourteen hundred years? It’s all part of the mallachd, Rob. We’ve just forgotten because we have lived so peacefully on these shores for so long.”

  Again, there were whispers, but people were listening now. They wanted to hear what she had to say.

  “So what are you proposing?” Peigi asked.

  “I think I should interview everyone in this town, find out what humans we each have contact with and try to cross-reference the names. See which humans are coming in and out of town regularly.” As time-consuming as the idea seemed to her, Fia really thought that this was the best way to tackle it. It would be tricky with Glen in town, but she could manage it. Maybe once their official investigation was complete, she’d make some excuse to remain in Clare Point for a few days. Without Glen watching over her shoulder, she thought she could make her way through the townspeople pretty quickly.

  “Interview every sept member? You know how long that will take?” Mary Hill demanded. “We’ll all be dead before you get anywhere. I say we round up a posse the way we used to do it—”

  “And what? Ride through the nearby human towns on horseback, or maybe in our pickups, in the middle of the night, setting houses on fire?” It was Fin who had spoken up. “Is that what you want, Uncle Jim? You want to go back to those days? Innocent people dragged from their homes, left to die in puddles of their own blood?”

  A thick, frightened silence fell over the circle of council members.

  “No. That’s not what we want,” Fin said, quietly but firmly. “We’re here on these shores because we have been given a second chance to redeem ourselves before God. We’re here to protect innocent humans, not kill them. So we’ll do this the right way. We’ll do it Fia’s way.” His gaze met hers across the room. “Because Fia will find him. Fia will stop him. I know she will. I would bet my life on it. I would bet hers…”

  Chapter 20

  The dining room of the B and B, which had become Fia’s and Glen’s makeshift office, was ble
ssedly quiet as Fia logged on to her laptop to check her e-mail. It was the first week of October, and while her mother still had a few guests on weekends, the place was dead on a Wednesday afternoon. Pun unintended.

  Fia could hear Glen chatting with Mary Kay in the kitchen. Somehow, over the weekend, they had become best buddies. Glen was complimenting Mary Kay’s children, her cooking, and her choice of décor, and Fia’s mother was baking cookies, brownies, and muffins left and right. If Glen continued to eat the home cooking the Seahorse advertised in trade and travel magazines, he’d need a double membership to the local gym when he returned to Philadelphia.

  As Fia waited on the slow wireless Internet connection one of her younger brothers had rigged, her cell phone rang. Recognizing the number, she snatched the phone off the dining room table, knocking a stack of manila folders off the table onto the polished hardwood floor in the process.

  “Shit,” she muttered. Then into the phone, “What do you want? I’m at work.” She had no intention of telling Joseph where she was. If he showed up in Clare Point right now, she had a feeling there would be a lynching and it would be her own neck in the noose. Her family members couldn’t kill her by stringing her up, but they could certainly make her uncomfortable for a couple of weeks.

  As she got out of the chair, squatting to retrieve the mess she made, she glanced in the direction of the kitchen. She could still hear her mother talking.

  “You’re always so pleasant, Fee,” Joseph said in her ear. “Always such a pleasure to talk with.”

  “What do you want?”

  In the kitchen, Glen clasped the tray Mary Kay had made up and, for a moment, he thought he’d have to engage in a tug-of-war with her. He was just trying to be nice. Trying to get Fia a cup of tea and a couple of cookies, or a muffin or something. He hadn’t intended to stand here and shoot the breeze with her mother for half an hour.

  He was worried about Fia. She wasn’t eating. Wasn’t sleeping. She was leaving her room late at night to go God knew where and she was acting oddly, even for Fia. There was something going on in this creepy town of hers besides the obvious, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was or how she was involved. And he was beginning to wonder if his attraction to her was clouding his judgment.