Eternal

by V. K. Forrest

  Derek’s two companions had released Kaleigh when Fia burst in on them; they were now standing, arms splayed, eyes round and blind with fear.

  “Put the gun down,” Derek repeated, drawing the sword over his head.

  “Fee!” Kaleigh cried weakly. “Fee, please. Help me.”

  To give up her gun would put Fia at a serious disadvantage, but she knew in a split second that she had no other choice.

  “Put it down,” Derek repeated. “Guys. Get the gun. We might need it.”

  Fia separated her hands, showing him the pistol. “I’m putting it down.” But instead of dropping it, she clicked on the safety and hurled it into the forest.

  “What the hell! You crazy bitch. I told you I wanted that gun,” Derek shouted, spittle flying.

  Fia moved slowly toward them, her arms still outstretched. “You told me to put it down. I put it down. You don’t think I’m handing you my sidearm so you can shoot me with it, do you? Then I really would be a crazy bitch.”

  “Shut up! Stop talking!” Derek ordered. “You are crazy. You’re all crazy monsters.” He still held the sword over his head, poised over Kaleigh.

  Now that she was closer, Fia could make out the intricate details of the sword. It was some kind of decorative piece. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, it was one of those damned Franklin Mint reproduction abominations. But it was sharp. Someone had sharpened it. She could see that, even at a distance of twenty feet.

  “Now you need to put that down,” Fia said quietly. “And you need to step away, Derek. So far, nothing has happened here that can’t be fixed. So far, you can get yourself out of this.”

  “Yeah, right. Like you wouldn’t come after me in the middle of the night and suck my blood dry. Or…or send one of the other freaks from that freaky town of yours?”

  “Derek? What are you talking about?” Fia slowly lowered her hands to her sides.

  “Fia…” Kaleigh whimpered.

  Fia made a split-second decision. If she could get the sword from Derek, she could take on all three of the boys without risking Kaleigh’s life—

  Fia leaped. At the same instant, Derek turned. Fia didn’t know if he meant to stab her or if he just turned in startled reaction. The damned tip caught her in the shoulder and ripped her sweatshirt; pain blossomed as she tucked, fell, and rolled out of his reach.

  Kaleigh screamed again.

  As Fia spun in the leaves, trying to find the best position to gain her footing again, she heard the pounding of footsteps as Derek’s friends took off.

  “Hey, guys! Come on!” Derek shouted. “Mike. John. Come back here. We’re gonna finish them off. All of them!”

  “Run, boys! Run while you can,” Fia called, unable to stop herself.

  “Shut up. Shut up, you hear me?” Derek turned back to Fia, brandishing the sword.

  Out of the corner of her eyes, Fia could see Kaleigh struggling to pull the pool cue out of her own chest, but she was too weak. The tip was imbedded too far into the ground beneath her.

  “Kaleigh, lie still,” Fia called. “You’ll just make the bleeding worse.”

  “You better shut up and start worrying about your own blood,” Derek snarled, taking another step closer.

  Fia pressed her hand to the wound in her shoulder. She was bleeding pretty badly. Her sweatshirt was soaked. She was dizzy. Slightly disoriented. Think. Think, she told herself.

  Where were her supernatural powers now? This was ridiculous, to have allowed herself to be overpowered by a snotty-nosed teenage human with a toy sword.

  “Derek…Derek listen to me,” Fia started. Negotiation. The FBI was all about the power of negotiation. “We need to talk about this. About what’s going on here.”

  “Nothing to talk about. I’ve been waiting my whole life to do this. To get you back.”

  “Get me back? Get me back for what? Derek, you don’t know me.”

  “Not just you. All of them. All of them, for what they did to my mother!” He held the sword in one hand and wiped at his eyes with the other.

  Getting him to talk…it was working. “What about your mother? What did I…what did we do to your mother? Derek…your mother committed suicide.”

  “That’s what they said, but it was a lie! They all lied!” Tears ran down his cheeks, but he placed his other hand on the sword again.

  As Fia spoke, she shifted her hands behind her, trying to figure out how she could get to her feet, but stay out of his way. If she could get to Kaleigh, if she could get the pool cue, she could defend herself and Kaleigh.

  “What wasn’t true, Derek? She didn’t commit suicide?”

  “No. She didn’t, I knew she didn’t. My father. The police. They all said she slit her own throat, but it wasn’t true. It was one of you. It was a vampire that killed her.” His voice wavered. “They attacked her and they drained her blood. They just made it look like a suicide. I always knew it was vampires.”

  Fia looked quickly at Kaleigh, but the girl’s eyes were closed. She was drifting out of consciousness.

  “Kaleigh. Kaleigh, stay awake, hon,” Fia called.

  Kaleigh’s body jerked. She opened her eyes.

  Fia looked back at Derek. “Derek. Derek, listen to what you’re saying. There’s no such thing as vampires.”

  “Liar! I know it’s true. I always knew it was a werewolf or a zombie or a vampire that got her. Then I meet Kaleigh and she tells me there’s a whole nest of ’em living one town over. Then I knew it was a vampire who killed her. I knew my mother wouldn’t have killed herself. I knew she would never have left me like that. Let me find her that way.”

  Kaleigh whimpered.

  Fia realized there was no sense asking the girl what she had said. Or asking Derek exactly what she had told him. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that this young man was obviously mentally unstable. Meeting Kaleigh had sent him off the deep end.

  What were the chances such a coincidence could have taken place? Kaleigh actually found the one young man in the state who believed in vampires and then admitted she was one. It would have been funny, had the circumstances not been so grave.

  Fia shifted her gaze. Okay, so the kid believed in vampires. She could go in that direction. “Derek, think about it. It doesn’t make sense. A vampire wouldn’t kill your mother. He…he wouldn’t waste the blood in a tub of bathwater,” she said gently. “Vampires never waste human blood.”

  “Shut up!” Derek took another step closer and Fia had to lean back as he swung the sword in front of her nose, cutting the air with sharp swishes. “I know all about you. I read all about you on the Internet. You think I’m stupid, but I’m not. I’m smart. I read how to kill you. It’s all on the Internet, you know. You just have to know where to find it.”

  “So…you killed the postmaster?”

  A strange smile lifted the corners of the young man’s mouth. “He was so easy, the fat bastard. Never saw it coming. That cop, he was a little harder. He fought, but the three of us took him down. You should have seen the look on his face when I pulled out Excalibur Three.” He demonstrated by cutting the air with the sword tip again.

  Fia drew her head back. Nuts. He was fucking nuts.

  “We waited for the blond slut,” Derek went on. “Waited in her apartment. Ate her chips while we were waiting.”

  “And…and you chose people…randomly?”

  The young man shrugged, pushing his hood back off his head. He was sweating profusely. His hands were shaking. He was scared. Getting more scared by the minute. Becoming less predictable. “The first one, yeah. The cop, he was snoopin’ around in the woods. Found where we killed some rabbits. Gave up their souls to the Horned One.”

  Fia blinked, trying to absorb what the kid was saying. Realizing he was certainly no kid, and nothing he said was going to make sense. “Derek—”

  “Don’t say my name! Don’t you dare speak my name!”

  Derek took a swipe at Fia’s head. She rolled, face down, grunting as he sank the toe of his
boot into her side. Her body jerked involuntarily as hot, blunt pain shot through her body and she tried to continue to roll through the leaves, out of his reach.

  But Derek caught the hem of Fia’s sweatshirt with the heel of his boot and she looked up to see the young man, wild-eyed, lift the sword over his head.

  Her neck was exposed. If his aim fell true, Fia’s head would be severed from her body and she would die a vampire’s death. She would be lost in everlasting purgatory. Dead but not dead. Living but not living.

  Unforgiven.

  Chapter 24

  Glen heard the screams in the distance and drew his sidearm. It was so damned dark. Why didn’t he think to bring a flashlight?

  Because he hadn’t expected Fia to be going into the woods alone. He hadn’t thought she’d be this stupid.

  Someone crashed through the underbrush toward him.

  “FBI,” he called out, halting as he lifted his weapon. “Stop where you are!”

  “Don’t shoot us!” a young woman cried as the branches of a bush parted.

  Two shaking teenage girls peered through the tree at him, hands up, their faces white and stained with tears. “They have them. Derek and the guys. They have Kaleigh,” the dark-haired one sobbed. “And Fia.”

  Glen’s heart had been pounding in his chest. Now it seemed as if it were burstnig through his sides. Fia was in danger. Glen eased past them. “How many?”

  “Three. Derek, Mike, and John. They hurt Kaleigh. We heard her scream,” she managed through another wave of tears.

  The boys Fia had interviewed this afternoon.

  He tensed his jaw. Damn it! Why the hell hadn’t she trusted him enough to tell him something was going on? Why would she have come into the woods to meet them alone? What the hell was she thinking?

  “I want you to get back to town. Can you do that, alone?” Glen asked, already moving in the direction of Fia’s voice. He could hear her speaking, though he couldn’t make out what she was saying. What was obvious was that she had a situation. He could hear the graveness in her voice, interspersed with the staccato shouts of a young man. “Go to the police station. Have them send police here. And call for an ambulance in case anyone is hurt. Can you do that, girls?”

  He hated to send them alone through the woods, but he thought they would be safer running for town than waiting in the dark for him.

  “The police. We’ll get the police.”

  “Good. Run,” he called over his shoulder.

  Hearing the girls’ footfalls, Glen turned his full attention to the sound of Fia’s voice. As he approached in the dark, he caught bits and pieces of the conversation. He only heard Fia and the one male voice. Derek, he guessed. The teenage boy sounded frenzied. Unstable.

  Glen was nearly blind in the darkness. He followed the voices, staying on the path because it was easier than cutting through the underbrush, the way the girls had come. Finally, he spotted a flicker of firelight. There was a clearing with a campfire. He heard Fia call out from where she lay sprawled on the ground and saw the silhouette of a figure, illuminated by the glow of the fire, raise something over his head.

  Holy hell. He had a sword.

  Images of the decapitated victims in the town flashed through Glen’s head like stills from a slide projector. But in his mind they were in living color, heavy with horror and the scent of freshly spilled blood.

  “Stop. FBI!” Glen barked.

  The young man heard him. Glen knew he heard him, but Derek didn’t turn. Derek raised the sword high as if preparing to strike. Fia yelped. Rolled.

  “Halt or I’ll shoot,” Glen warned, breaking into a run. “FBI.”

  It all happened so quickly that it would be days later before Glen and Fia were able to figure out exactly what happened. She rolled to get out of Derek’s way and sprang up with inhuman strength. Derek missed, raised the sword again. Swung again, this time dead on, and hit Fia with the sword. Fia fell. Tumbled silent into a heap in the crackling leaves.

  Glen called out in warning once more. It was the first time in eighteen years on the job that he had to make the decision whether to pull the trigger or not.

  The young man ignored his warning and raised the sword again over Fia.

  It was easier than Glen thought it would be to squeeze the trigger. He wondered, in that split second before Derek went down, if his father hadn’t hesitated on that street corner, would he still be alive today?

  Derek fell forward under the impact, his arms flying out in front of his body, the sword falling from his hands. He went down over Fia’s body and Glen ran toward them, prepared to fire again if the teenager moved.

  The gunfire echoed in Kaleigh’s head and she felt her body convulse. Was she dying?

  She smelled her own fresh blood, sweet and pungent, and the aroma teased her into awareness. The pool cue was still there, securing her bleeding body to the ground, but the excruciating pain had eased. Kaleigh could smell the grass. The wood burning in the campfire. She felt surrounded by the presence of the sept. Men and women who were individuals and yet moved as one.

  Was this what it was for a vampire to die?

  But Kaleigh knew she couldn’t be dying. She could feel the life pulsing inside her. Her body, on a cellular level, was already rejuvenating.

  She raised one hand slowly to touch the place in the side of her abdomen where Derek had impaled her to the ground. Tears filled her eyes and she gulped. How could she have been so stupid? So blind? How could she have risked the lives of those she loved in this town for a boy like Derek?

  “Someone out there?” Kaleigh whispered, choking on her tears. All she wanted was to go home. To be home with her parents. With the sept. With those who had loved her all these centuries.

  Where were they? She could still feel their presence.

  Her eyes were open, but she saw no sept members. All she could see when she turned her head was Agent Duncan rolling Derek’s body over onto his back and checking for a pulse.

  Derek was dead. She knew he was dead. She could feel death’s cold, spiny fingers in the air. She could smell Derek’s blood, spilled into the leaves on the ground.

  Get him.

  Take him now.

  The thoughts of sept members surrounding them in the woods hit Kaleigh hard. They really were here. Sweet Mary, what was happening? She wanted to call out. But the human was right there.

  She could feel the sept members closing in. Eight or nine of them, creeping through the darkness.

  Kaleigh squeezed her eyes shut hard and tried to listen, the way Maria and Katy said it was done. For weeks, Kaleigh had been catching pieces of other sept members’ thoughts, but she’d been fighting it. She wasn’t ready. Didn’t want the gift that had somehow seemed more of a curse to her. At least until this moment.

  But she was getting nothing! Just jumbles of words and thoughts and the overwhelming feeling that something terrible, even more terrible than this, was about to happen….

  Kill him. Kill the human FBI agent.

  That thought came through so clearly that Kaleigh’s eyes flew open. “No!” she shouted.

  “It’s okay, Kaleigh, I’m coming,” the agent called from across the clearing. “Just try to stay still. Stay calm.”

  No, Kaleigh thought. They can’t kill him. I can’t let them. “Fia!” she cried out. Fia would stop the black-cloaked sept members approaching in the darkness, their daggers gleaming.

  “Kaleigh,” the human called to her. “Fia’s not dead. She’s hurt, but I think she’s going to be okay. She’s breathing normally. Starting to come around. I’m coming. Just hang on!”

  Kill him. Kill him now.

  He knows too much. He will be the death of us all.

  The voices were suddenly so loud in Kaleigh’s head that there was no denying them. Misinterpreting them. Stop, she warned them telepathically. Stop now. He saved us. He saved our lives, mine and Fia’s. It was Derek. Derek killed them. You can’t harm the human.

  Kaleigh? A
voice probed in her head. It’s Mary. Are you all right?

  Now. We must strike now, one of the men in the forest insisted.

  Stop them, Mary, Kaleigh telepathed. Stop them. Special Agent Duncan saved our lives. He doesn’t know about us. Don’t let them do this.

  Stop.

  Stop.

  More voices echoed in Kaleigh’s head. It was the oddest sensation. Not only could she hear the sept members’ words in her head, but lying on the cold ground, she could feel their words.

  Everyone was listening to her. They knew her voice in their heads. There was only one dissenter.

  No. He must die. It’s the only way to protect the sept.

  It was Fia’s brother Regan.

  Kaleigh remembered now why she had never liked him in previous lives. She remembered that she could never quite trust him.

  I said STOP NOW. Stop now, Regan Kahill, or you’ll stand before the council and defend your actions!

  “Kaleigh.” Special Agent Duncan sprinted toward her. He fell to his knees, looking down on her, brushing her hair from her forehead. He looked scared. He thought she was going to die.

  She almost laughed. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  Around her, Kaleigh could feel the sept members backing up. Someone was arguing with Regan, putting strong hands on him. Leading him away. The others were quietly withdrawing…disappearing into the darkness.

  “There’s help coming,” the FBI agent assured her, taking her hand in his. “Just hang in there.”

  “Kaleigh? Kaleigh, are you all right?” Fia stumbled toward the girl still sprawled on the ground. Still impaled. Fia was dizzy. Disoriented. Her head hurt like hell.

  Glen was on his knees leaning over Kaleigh, talking softly to her, holding her hand. He looked up when he heard Fia.

  “You okay?” His voice cracked with emotion. He was scared for her, for Kaleigh, God bless him.

  Fia could tell that he wanted to go to her, that he felt torn between Fia and the teenage girl.

  “I’m okay.” Fia rested her hand on his shoulder and eased to the ground on her knees, peering into Kaleigh’s eyes.