Voracious - (Claire Point Vampire 5)

by V. K. Forrest

  Peigi smiled. Mary was a good egg. It was funny how her husband’s death and her subsequent affair with Victor had been what it took for Peigi to really notice her. To realize how much she liked her.

  “Victor said to tell you hello,” Peigi said.

  Mary smiled.

  “He said he was looking forward to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “I hope you don’t mind.” Mary zipped up her yellow rain slicker. “I invited Victor and Brian and Kaleigh and Katy and some of the others over for spaghetti.”

  Peigi glanced at Mary. “And Brian agreed to come?”

  “Victor said he didn’t say he wouldn’t come.” Her tone was hopeful; Mary was the kind of woman who always saw the glass as half-full.

  Peigi had used to be that way. She sighed, hunkering down against the chill. “Mary Kay stopped by to speak to me today, about my request. You know, she’s heading up the committee.”

  “She tell you you’d lost your mind?”

  “She did not.” Peigi turned to Mary. “She was actually very professional. Of course she thinks I’m out of my mind, and she tried to talk me out of it.”

  “She succeed?”

  Peigi returned her gaze to the ocean. “Of course not.”

  Mary was quiet for a moment. “She bring you anything good?”

  “Banana chocolate muffins and cinnamon raisin buns.”

  “Mmm, Mary Kay is the best cook. Far better than me.” Mary looked at Peigi. “You know they’re going to deny your request.”

  “I know. That’s why I asked you to meet me.” She hesitated. “I know you understand what I’m . . . what Brian and I are going through. Because you and Victor, you’re in the same situation.

  “I think we should make a pact.” Peigi rubbed her hands together; they were cold. “In case . . . for when the Council denies my request for readjustment.”

  “A pact?” Mary asked, alarmed. “Exactly what kind of pact are we talking about?”

  Aedan lay in the dark on his back, Dallas asleep on his shoulder. He’d fallen asleep for a while after they’d made love again, this time in bed. He smiled to himself in the darkness. He wasn’t sure the air mattress was any more comfortable than the pool table downstairs. Maybe less. Dallas’s air mattress was so bouncy that he had threatened to buy her a real bed.

  He’d woken around 2:45, and now he couldn’t get back to sleep. His muscles were all tense. He felt keyed up and worried. About what, he wasn’t sure.

  Things had been pretty calm when he’d left the house that evening. Peigi had been on the phone, talking with Mary McCathal. The women had been friends for centuries, but they seemed even closer now. Maybe because of what they were both going through, having young husbands. Peigi had submitted her ridiculous request to the General Council. A special committee had been formed to handle the matter and make a recommendation to the General Council. Mary Kay had offered to head up the committee, which was a pleasant surprise to Peigi. She had told Aedan that Mary Kay had never been interested in politics before, but she had been expressing an interest in the working of the Council lately, and had volunteered for several jobs.

  Aedan glanced at the digital clock on the cardboard box beside Dallas’s bed. It was 3:10.

  When they’d gone to bed, he’d seriously been considering staying the night. Dallas hadn’t mentioned the idea again. She was a strange woman. Most women he knew needed to talk everything out, say everything that went through their minds. Not Dallas. He never knew what she was thinking.

  So he didn’t know if Dallas wanted Kenzie to find him at the breakfast table in the morning or not. And now . . . he wasn’t sure if he wanted her to find him there. The fact that the girl had told her teacher he was her new “daddy” spooked him. He couldn’t be Kenzie’s daddy. He couldn’t be anyone’s daddy.

  Aedan kissed Dallas’s forehead and very gently slid out from beside her. Without waking, she rolled over on her opposite side, wrapping a pillow in her arms. He carefully got out of the bed, which wasn’t easy to do. When he pushed his hands down, the air in the mattress shifted. Dallas gently rose, then fell, as if riding a wave on the ocean.

  He didn’t need a light to dress by. He pulled on his underwear, jeans, and shirt. He slipped out into the hall, shoes in his hand, and carefully closed the door behind him. He found his jacket in the living room. He sat down on the couch and put on his socks and shoes. A sound caught his attention; it took him a second to realize what it was.

  It was his phone, vibrating. He found it in his jacket pocket. For a second, he contemplated not answering it. Maybe he’d just stick his head in the sand. The fact that Jay had been silent for more than two weeks had been plucking at his nerves. But this wasn’t what he wanted, either.

  “Mark,” he said quietly into the phone.

  “You ought to answer your damned phone, Aedan. I called twice in the last fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s Jay?”

  “Yes, Jesus H. Christ, it’s Jay. I’m on my way to the hospital now.”

  “I can be there in twenty minutes.”

  “No need to hurry. She’s dead.”

  He hung up.

  Aedan arrived at the ER about the same time as Mark. He was standing on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette. Mark had never learned to smoke the way Americans did, with their fingers extended. He held the cancer stick between his thumb and forefinger and puffed on it.

  To keep anyone from getting suspicious about the tall redhead hanging out in the emergency room, Aedan morphed into a forty-something male EMT in a jumpsuit. His nametag identified him as JOSEPH OAKS. He wore a wedding band on his left hand. Why, he had no idea. His morphs were both conscious and subconscious. He didn’t have the time or the energy to contemplate that detail right now.

  Aedan, aka Joe, approached Mark, and nodded. It’s me, he telepathed.

  Gotcha. Mark ground out the cigarette in a standing ashtray in an alcove near the EMPLOYEES ONLY entrance.

  “What happened?” Aedan asked, walking beside Mark. An ambulance had just pulled up to the bay, its siren blaring, lights flashing.

  “Christ Almighty, I’m sick of this,” Mark muttered. He was wearing wrinkled khakis and a white polo shirt with a Delaware State Police emblem. “She was found on the sidewalk, right next to her fucking car.” He kicked a cement support pole and then winced when his toe made contact.

  “In Rehoboth?”

  “Yes. On Baltimore Street.”

  “Christ,” Aedan whispered. “That’s near where I was when you called.”

  Mark glanced at him, but didn’t say anything. Aedan knew he knew he had been with Dallas. Fortunately, Mark also knew to stick to the issue at hand.

  “How long ago did it happen?” Aedan asked.

  “A couple of hours. I don’t know what time. I don’t have any information yet. Just that she was DOA.”

  “But it was him?”

  A nurse, talking on her cell phone, walked out the door. Mark caught the door before it swung shut, and they went inside. “Left his handiwork on her abdomen.”

  The employee entrance opened into a small hallway just outside the ER. Mark flashed his badge at the nurse behind the desk; she was on the phone and trying to pull out a piece of paper jammed in a printer. “Female DOA,” he intoned.

  Aedan just stood there like he belonged there. No one noticed him.

  She covered the mouthpiece on the phone. “Seven.”

  “Anything been done?”

  The woman shook her head, ripping the piece of paper from the printer. “Declared at the scene. Waiting on you guys and the coroner.”

  Mark slid his badge back into his pants pocket and walked down the corridor on the far side of the nurses’ station. Two EMTs wheeling an unconscious, elderly man on a gurney hurried by. Aedan and Mark stepped back against the wall to let them get by. A nurse in a bright green smock rushed past.

  The girl was alone in number seven. Covered with a sheet. The sheet had slid so that her pon
ytail, but not her face, was exposed on the pillow. Her hair was sandy blond brown.

  Mark and Aedan both stood over the body for a moment and stared at the sheet, smudged with blood. Aedan wondered if Mark still prayed. After all these centuries, some of them didn’t anymore. Aedan found his crucifix through his jumpsuit, rubbed it with his thumb, and then pulled back the sheet. “Christ.” He looked away, turned his head, clenching his eyes shut, still holding the sheet between his fingers.

  “You know her?” Mark asked, catching the other corner of the sheet.

  Aedan took a deep breath and looked at her cut-up face. “No. She’s just so young.”

  A plastic bag with a backpack and a phone inside it lay on the table, beside the bed. Mark laid the sheet down gently and opened the bag, then the backpack. He pulled out a wallet.

  Aedan drew his side of the sheet back farther to get a better look. The woman’s clothing was covered in blood. She was wearing jeans, which hung around her knees, exposing her private parts. She still wore a black waitress’s apron, now around her knees as well. Her bloody T-shirt said MACKY’S BAR AND GRILL and featured a swordfish. It was a little place down the street from Brew.

  Aedan’s gaze drifted downward for just a moment. He wished he could pull up her panties for her; they had pink polka dots. But he couldn’t tamper with the evidence. Not until a rape kit was done on her. Jay’s signature was big across her stomach. “He got sloppy,” he said quietly. “Why was he sloppy?”

  “Catherine Ponds,” Mark read from the girl’s driver’s license. “She turned twenty-one . . . last week. Lives in Milton.”

  “Works at Macky’s on Baltimore. She’s wearing a waitress’s uniform.” Aedan carefully pulled the sheet over her, covering her completely. He’d seen enough.

  “You said you were right there?” Mark asked, setting her license aside to look through the rest of her belongings. “What did you say you were doing there at three in the morning?”

  “I didn’t.” Aedan walked out of the exam room and down the hall. Mark let him go.

  Aedan felt as if his head had just hit his pillow when his phone started vibrating again. He fumbled for it on the bedside table, where he’d plugged it into the charger when he’d gotten home from the hospital.

  “You still asleep?” Mark said in his ear.

  Aedan glanced at the clock beside the bed. It was 12:25. Past noon. He couldn’t believe he’d slept this late. Of, course he hadn’t gotten home until 5 A.M., when the sky was already beginning to grow pink in the east. “No.” He unplugged the phone from the wall so he wasn’t tethered.

  “I just got a call at my desk at work. Came right in through the main switchboard, pretty as you like.”

  Aedan swung his long legs over the bed and scratched his bare chest. His crucifix swung when he hit it. “Okay.”

  “It was Jay.”

  Aedan bolted upright. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. It was really him?”

  “It was him. Had a little bit of an accent. Scottish.”

  “You’re sure?” Aedan got out of bed and went to the window to open the heavy drapes. It was a beautiful, sunny May day. How could the sun shine so brightly when pretty Catherine Ponds lay in the morgue and her parents sat somewhere weeping?

  “About the fact that it was him or that the accent was Scottish? Yes, I’m fucking sure,” Mark snapped. “On both counts.”

  Aedan was quiet for a second. He didn’t take Mark’s shortness with him personally. Mark was a good guy. Big heart. He took every one of these cases personally, not just Jay’s murders, but every murder in the area. Maybe in the world. “What did he say?”

  “He wanted to apologize,” Mark said, putting emphasis on each word. “For getting heavy-handed. He said he didn’t mean to kill her.”

  “You hear what did kill her?”

  “Bled out, internally. When he was carving her up, after he had raped her against her car, he slipped, his knife went too deep, and he nicked some artery in her abdomen,” Mark explained.

  Aedan grabbed a clean pair of jeans from a laundry basket Peigi had left on the floor at the end of his bed. He found a shirt, underwear, and socks and set them all on the bed. “An accent,” he said, thinking out loud. “A Scottish accent. No one’s ever said he had an accent.”

  “It was very slight. Could be no one noticed.”

  “Maybe no one but an Irishman would,” Aedan said, making a bad joke. There had been a time when the Irish couldn’t stand the Scots and vice versa. Some might say the dislike was still there.

  “So, did you get a trace on the call?” Aedan walked out into the hallway, headed for the bathroom.

  “Working on it.”

  “Look, I’m going to jump in the shower. Make some phone calls.” Aedan closed the door to the boys’ room. Both Brian and Victor were asleep in their beds, long limbs dangling from beneath sheets. “I’ll call you back later, but if you hear anything on the trace before then, give me a ring.”

  “There’s one more thing, Aedan.”

  Aedan walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. “Yeah?”

  “Jay said to tell you he said hello.”

  Chapter 19

  “How about dinner?” Aedan said into his Bluetooth. It had taken him three tries to call Dallas while driving, but the fact that she had put her number in his phone last night pretty much demanded that he try it. “And maybe I can grab a movie for after Kenzie goes to bed. You could use a night off.”

  “How about you slow down a little, Romeo,” she answered. She was pleased he had called, though. He could hear it in her voice.

  “You’re the one who gave me your number,” he defended himself.

  “I don’t know if dinner is a good idea. You know, the whole family illusion.” She groaned in obvious indecision. “But Kenzie would like it.”

  He signaled and got into the lane to make the left-hand turn into Rehoboth. He was only a mile or so from Brew, but he wasn’t headed there. Not now. Mark had called. Jay’s call had been traced to a popular pizza place on Rehoboth Avenue. Aedan was meeting Mark there. “We can go out or stay in.”

  “School night,” Dallas said.

  “I make a mean mushy cauliflower.” The light turned green, and he turned off Route 1.

  “I was thinking sushi.”

  “Kenzie eats sushi?”

  “Of course not. I’ve got something here she’ll eat. She doesn’t care about dinner. It’s you she wants to see.” There was a little resentment in her tone.

  “Okay, so sushi for us, Rice Krispies for Kenzie.” He hesitated. “Last night, Dallas, it was—”

  “It was,” she cut in. “I was surprised you didn’t stay.”

  “Yeah . . . I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea,” he admitted.

  “Because you can’t stay stay.”

  He pressed his lips together. He liked his job; he was good at it. He liked the fact that he traveled, that he never stayed in one place long. The last time he had wished he could have stayed somewhere, it had been in a little town in the south of France. “You’re right. I can’t stay stay.”

  She was quiet for a minute, quiet long enough that he wondered if he’d accidently disconnected her on the Bluetooth. Then she said, “It’s okay, Aedan. That there’s no future. I mean that . . . I just think . . . I think—God, this is hard to say. I think we need you right now. Kenzie and I.” She paused again. “That too heavy for you?”

  Tears stung the backs of his eyelids. Lack of sleep, probably. “I’m sorry it can’t be different. I just . . . I don’t want to make promises. To you or Kenzie. And I’ve got this case, and . . .” He let his sentence fade into silence.

  “Come on, we’re just talking about dinner,” she joked. “Not eternity. Look, I’m at Kenzie’s school. I gotta go.”

  “Yeah. I gotta go, too.” He pulled into a parking spot. After this weekend, after Memorial Day, he’d have to feed the meter, which had actually been swapped out for a fancy park
ing kiosk in some places in Rehoboth. “I’ll call you later about dinner?” he said.

  “Sounds good.”

  As Aedan was getting out of the car, his phone rang. It took him a second to switch the call from the Bluetooth to the phone. Kaleigh’s name came up on the caller ID. She was calling him back.

  “So, you actually went to school today?” he asked, walking down the sidewalk.

  “Calculus final,” she groaned. “And my last week of high school ever, so I thought I’d give it my all.”

  “So you make a decision?”

  “On what essay to write for my English final due tomorrow? Nah. I thought I’d give it ’til midnight. It’s not due ’til morning.”

  “On college.”

  “You didn’t hear? I thought for sure someone would have told you in the diner or the gym. It’s a wonder my mom didn’t have it put up at the post office. I’m going to the University of Delaware. It’s not too far away, so if anyone needs me to do any wisewoman stuff, I can come home. But I’m going to college.”

  “Good choice,” Aedan said. “I’m proud of you.”

  “You didn’t call me to tell me you’re proud of me,” she said dryly. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve got a little info for you on this nut job we’re looking for.”

  “Okay, cool. I was headed to the library tonight. Pre-midnight, I gotta clean my room first, then I was going to the library, then to Peigi’s to check on my peeps. I might see you there.”

  “Maybe,” he said noncommittally, hoping he’d be lying on an air mattress tonight. “I don’t know if this will be any help, but the creep called Mark today.”

  “He called him? Eww. Gross. Didn’t he attack another girl last night? I heard it on the radio.”

  He hesitated. “She’s dead.”

  “We gotta get this guy, Aedan. I know you’re not really supposed to be doing anything, but—”

  “Mark’s trying. I’ve been doing a little undercover work, trying to bait him, walking around looking like a twenty-one-year-old girl.”