Undying Page 2

  Macy exhaled, fighting the dark cloud settling over her. As much as she hated herself for it, she couldn’t stop thinking about Teddy.

  She guessed he was thinking about her. That was why she couldn’t sleep. There was this crazy, weird connection between them. Had been for as long as she could remember. And she couldn’t escape it. It was like cancer, a cavernous, black hole eating her from the inside out.

  She wandered through the living room into the office. When she had rented the home, the landlady had said the cozy room would make an excellent spare bedroom for family or friends. Macy had no family left. No friends.

  The Apple logo on her open laptop glowed, but the room was as dark as the others in the house. The open window as naked.

  From here, she could hear an owl hooting.

  She sat down in her chair and flipped on the lamp. Soft light glowed in a circle on the old oak desk she had found at a yard sale. She hadn’t bothered to refinish it, just removed the center drawer and added a keyboard drawer. When she was here at the cottage, which wasn’t all that frequently, she liked to use a full keyboard, sometimes even an additional monitor connected to her laptop. It gave her a better sense of proportions in the pictures she shot.

  She touched the drawer and it glided out. She tapped the mouse beside the wireless keyboard and the laptop screen lit up. She had an instant message.

  He had been waiting for her.

  Her stomach tightened. He always seemed to know when she was awake in the middle of the night. Worse, she knew when he was.

  You there?

  The cursor pulsed.

  She could feel him waiting.

  She glanced at the dark window. He said he watched her. She had never known if he meant literally. Was tonight the night he was out there? Would tonight be the night he took her life and ended the last fourteen years of agonized waiting?

  She looked back at the laptop screen.

  Maybe tonight would be the night she took a stand. Maybe tonight she would ignore him. Maybe she’d even threaten that if he contacted her again, she would call the police.

  It was an empty threat, of course. It would be nearly impossible to track him to a computer, to a location. He traveled for his work, too. He IM’d from Internet cafés, hotel business offices. Even truck stops had Internet access for their customers now. And when he contacted her from home, he said he used different laptops that he bought and sold regularly on the Internet. The stark truth was that even if she could convince the FBI that he was the nutcase they were looking for, it would be nearly impossible for them to track him down through his Internet use. The police would never find him. He knew it. She knew it.

  The curser pulsed. Marceline? Teddy probed.

  He always called her by her given name, as her father had. When Macy had complained as a child about being burdened by such a name, her father had promised she would, one day, grow into it in the same way that Minnie would grow into Minerva. Minnie hadn’t lived long enough to grow into it.

  Macy sat back in her chair, drawing her legs up, hugging her knees to her chest. She stared at the screen. Her hand ached to close the laptop. If she could just walk away…But she couldn’t.

  And he knew it.

  Knees still drawn to her chest, she typed with one finger.

  Why won’t you leave me alone?

  Because I can’t, he replied.

  Why don’t you just kill me, then?

  I don’t want to kill you. I want to love you.

  She drew her hand back and stared at the words. This was love? Killing her family? Stalking her for more than a decade?

  Bastard. Her index finger flew over the keys and then she pulled her hand back.

  Whore.

  She stared at the screen again. Thought for a minute and then typed. Why can’t you sleep?

  I hear her.

  Is she speaking loudly tonight?

  So loud I can hear nothing else.

  Macy’s lower lip trembled. What he was saying didn’t make sense. The full moon had come and gone. He should be feeling better now. What is she saying? she asked.

  You know. The usual. She’s upsetting me. She’s making me upset. You know what happens when she upsets me….

  Teddy, please don’t, Macy begged, a lump forming in her throat as her fingers tapped the keyboard.

  I have to.

  Macy stared at the pulsing cursor for a long moment before she found the courage to reach out and close the laptop. She switched off the light and walked out of the office, through the dark living room, into her bedroom.

  She lay down on her unmade bed. It smelled of the man she had slept with the night before. Derrick.

  Or had last night been Thomas?

  She wondered where he was. What he was doing. Not Thomas or Derrick. Teddy.

  Would a family die tonight? It seemed too soon after the last. Only seven months. But weren’t they always too soon?

  She rolled over on her side and stared through the open window, waiting for tears. They didn’t come.

  They never did.

  Arlan had, for some reason, expected Romano to be a bigger man. He had no idea why. He knew from experience that evil came packaged in a variety of ways, from bright, bubbly female, to dark and brooding male, and everything in between.

  Romano was short, no more than five foot five, with a slight build. His hair was sandy colored with a receding hairline. He was wearing tan pants, a polo shirt, and a navy sports jacket with a silly little handkerchief peeking from the breast pocket. On his shoulder, like most European men, he carried a small brown leather bag. He did not look like a pedophile. He looked like a father, a friend, a grocery store clerk.

  But when Arlan lifted his muzzle and sniffed the night air, he was quickly able to sort out the scents; a chewing gum wrapper on the ground, still minty fresh, the roasting lamb, the whore’s perfume, the dogs. Somewhere in the midst of the scents, he smelled Romano’s malevolence. Undetectable to him was the stench left on his hands by the things he had done. The filthy money that had changed hands. The touch of what should never be touched.

  Arlan’s stomach twitched and bile rose in his throat. Anger buzzed in his ears. His first impulse was to leap out of the darkness and take Romano by the throat. He wanted to rip his jugular and lap up the blood that would spurt from it.

  Arlan felt his entire canine body tremble with the eager thought of it. This man did not deserve to die so easily. He deserved to be tortured before he was murdered. He deserved to watch a dog eat out his entrails.

  But that was not Arlan’s mission, the human side of his brain reminded him. This execution had been entrusted to him by the High Council, by his beloved sept.

  His pulse throbbed in his throat. His heart pounded in his head.

  Arlan could not allow the beast in him to take over. The execution had to be carried out as planned, in the manner in which it had been ordered. Or, in this case, considering his lack of a partner, to the best of his ability.

  Something itched behind his ear and Arlan lifted his rear paw to scratch it. It was a good morph. It had come complete with fleas.

  Romano drew a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket and pushed it between his lips. He tapped his trouser pockets, coming up with nothing.

  He had forgotten or misplaced his lighter. It was the perfect opportunity.

  Arlan had to concentrate to shift inside his present morph in order to use his human voice. “Light?” he asked in Greek.

  Romano turned toward the thick stump of weeds growing up between the rocky ruins of the Areopagus. If archeologists dug for the next ten years, they would not uncover all the ancient treasure buried by rock, human trash, and the natural sediment that came from time and battle.

  Arlan narrowed his yellow dog eyes, every muscle in his powerful body poised to strike as the ordinary-looking monster turned toward the darkness.

  “Ne,” Romano said in affirmation, his cigarette bobbing, his eyes squinting to see the stranger in the dark
.

  Arlan glanced left and then right and sprang off his powerful haunches. Standing upright, he was nearly as tall as Romano.

  Arlan sank his needle-sharp canines into the man’s throat, locking his jaw. The cigarette flew from Romano’s mouth, his brown eyes widening in shock.

  Arlan dragged Romano into bushes so no one would accidentally come upon them. Romano flailed, calling out, and stumbled to his feet again.

  For a split second, Arlan feared he had made a mistake. In his eagerness to see the task done, had he jeopardized the assignment?

  The sound of a growl emanating from the bushes startled Arlan so badly that he nearly let go of Romano.

  Out of the darkness, a shadow leaped. Arlan cried out in surprise, a deep rumble of a growl.

  The gray dog hit Romano in the side, forcing him down on the ground again. The young male from the pack leaped next. The victim cried out once, but his voice was muffled by the growling and snapping of the dogs. The bitches came down on the child-seller from all sides and for an instant, they all bathed in the fury of the bloody flesh.

  Teeth still deep in Romano’s neck, Arlan felt dizzy from the taste of the human blood. For some, it was merely nutrition and even distasteful, but for Arlan it was a heady drug. The man convulsed beneath them. With the aid of the pack of wild dogs, Romano would be dismembered in a matter of minutes.

  Not like this, the human inside Arlan’s dog brain warned. This must be done correctly. There can be no mistakes. You cannot let your fury take over your common sense.

  It was all Arlan could do to relax his jaw. He tore his mouth away, his teeth shredding through delicate human flesh.

  Two daggers were required by law for the execution, but one would have to suffice. Arlan would answer to the High Council later.

  With a blink of the dying man’s eye, Arlan morphed back into a man. “Go,” he ordered the dogs that had come to his aid.

  Shocked by the transformation, the big gray fell back on the ground, eyes rolling in his head.

  “Go on! Get out of here,” Arlan grunted in Greek.

  The gray took off, followed by his pack, whining and yelping as they made their frightened retreat.

  Thank you, Arlan telepathed after them. You did a good deed tonight, my canine friends.

  The metallic taste of human blood in his mouth, Arlan slipped the ancient dagger from his leather jacket and leaned over Romano. “For the little children”, he said softly, in ancient Irish Gaelic.

  Arlan plunged the dagger into Romano’s heart and the light behind his eyes flickered. By the time Arlan was drawing back the steel, the light had already gone out.

  A pity he did not suffer longer.

  Arlan stared for a moment at the dead man, then glanced up. He could hear voices in the distance. A drug buy. But no one had seen him kill Romano. No one would see him go.

  He plucked the silly handkerchief from the man’s bloody suit jacket pocket. First, he wiped his mouth, then he wrapped the handkerchief around the blade. He slid the dagger into his leather jacket, stepped over the dead body and walked out into the dim light cast by the Acropolis high on the hill behind him.

  “Looking for a party?” one of the whores called to him as he headed west, back toward the pulse of the city and the restaurant where the rest of the team would meet him later for a glass of wine.

  “Nah,” Arlan answered in perfect Greek, Romano’s blood still on his breath. “Already had one tonight, sister.”

  Chapter 3

  Arlan was on his second glass of wine by the time Jimmy and Sean arrived at God’s Restaurant on Makrygianni Street. Both men took seats at the sidewalk table. Jimmy poured two glasses of wine and refilled Arlan’s.

  “Task complete?” Jimmy lifted the tumbler to his lips to drink the bloodred house wine.

  “Complete.”

  Jimmy glanced at the fourth glass, still empty. “Regan?” He looked around.

  Arlan swirled his wine, watching the way it climbed up the side of the glass before spinning in the center in a whirlpool. “A no-show.”

  “Ah, Jezus,” Sean cursed under his breath. Like his father, he was a big man, and also like his father, the chief of police in their hometown, he still carried a slight Irish accent, even after all these centuries. It became especially pronounced for both father and son when they became emotional. “Yer shittin’ me.”

  Arlan didn’t meet either of his companions’ gazes. He lifted the tumbler to his lips, sipped, and glanced up at the Acropolis, lit up and gleaming in the darkness. As the wine touched the tip of his tongue, he realized he could still taste Romano’s blood.

  “And you went through with it anyway?” Jimmy’s voice was taut. Jimmy was the worrier of the team. Jimmy worried, Arlan teased, so that the others didn’t have to. “That’s not protocol. You should have aborted.”

  “You get the kids?” Arlan asked. He was in a dark mood. Had been since his encounter with the dogs and Romano. Tonight he had almost lost control, almost given in to the animal inside him, and he didn’t like it. It scared him. After all these years he thought he had learned temperance. He thought he had become a better person. More human. Had he been kidding himself? He glanced at Jimmy. “Did we get them?” he repeated. “The kids?”

  “Yeah, we got them. Both were still alive, seemed to be scared but…unharmed,” Jimmy said delicately.

  Unmolested was what he meant. Jimmy was a tenderhearted man. Emotional. Always had been, even after the fall from grace that had hardened many of the Kahills.

  “And I got Romano, so all’s well that ends well.”

  “We saw that play. Shakespeare.” Sean pointed at Arlan. “Like 1740 in London. Goodman’s Fields…or was it Drury Lane? You remember? The orange girls—”

  Jimmy dropped his empty glass on the table. “Sean.”

  “Sorry.” Sean reached for the carafe of wine and poured the last of it into his glass. He lifted the carafe to a waiter who was serving a table of tourists.

  Jimmy looked back at Arlan. “You’re missing the point. Again. You don’t go it alone. You’re supposed to follow protocol. It’s what keeps you safe,” Jimmy said.

  “What was I supposed to do?” Arlan turned his dark gaze on Jimmy. “Let that pervert, that murderer, walk?”

  “Protocol is what keeps us all safe,” Jimmy insisted firmly. “This isn’t just about you. Or even us.” He drew his glass in a circle, indicating their tight knit group.

  Arlan set his glass down and ran his fingers through his dark hair, still not making eye contact. “All right,” he said quietly. “You’re right. Next time, I follow protocol.”

  “Sure you will.” Sean chuckled under his breath.

  The men were silent as the waiter approached, bringing another carafe of wine. He took the empty one with him.

  “So what do we do about Regan? He call in?” Jimmy asked when the waiter had gone.

  Arlan plucked his cell phone from the pocket of his leather jacket and checked the screen. “He never called.”

  Sean poured more wine for everyone. “We know where he is?”

  Arlan shook his head. “Haven’t heard from him since the meeting in the airport two nights ago.” He shrugged. “Of course, I didn’t expect to see him until tonight unless there was a problem.”

  “Well, we’ve got to find him.” Jimmy wrapped his fingers around his glass. “He could be in trouble.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he is.” Sean plucked an olive from a tray on the table and sucked on it noisily.

  “I’m serious.” Jimmy looked to Sean, then back at Arlan. “We have to find him.”

  Arlan didn’t pick up his glass. Suddenly he no longer wanted wine. Or the company of his friends. The situation with Regan had been out of hand for some time. What if Regan really was in trouble this time and not just off binge drinking, whoring, and gambling—simply losing track of time, which was usually his excuse? It would be Arlan’s fault if something happened to Regan. Arlan was the one who had insisted tha
t the rest of the team keep Regan’s nefarious activities to themselves.

  “How you think we’re going to find him, Jimmy? We’re in a city of what, three million? Four?” He lifted his hand and let it fall. “Besides, protocol requires that we return to Clare Point. Immediately.”

  Jimmy was quiet for a minute. Sean spat his olive pit into his hand and dropped it on a plate in front of him.

  “You’re right,” Jimmy conceded. “It’s best if we go home. Regan will find his way. He always does.”

  Arlan rose, tossing some euros on the table. “See you back at the ranch, partners.” He walked down the sidewalk, away from the lights of the restaurant, into the dark, feeling very alone.

  Macy woke hot and sweaty, overwhelmed by a heavy sense of dread. As she showered and went through her morning ablutions, she tried not to think about the meaning of it, or the IM’s last night. How many times had she been through this? There was nothing she could do. Nothing last night. Nothing this morning. Except maybe make that dreaded call.

  The call would make it real.

  She dressed and poured a cup of black coffee in a travel mug. Her appointment today was just a pre-meet, but the assignment was a big one; five full-color pages of the exterior of a house and its garden, northeast of Richmond. She collected her laptop, some files and photographs from her desk, and the canvas backpack she always kept packed in her closet. She did not lock the door when she left.

  Late morning, Macy met the homeowners, walked through their garden and made suggestions as to what could be done to improve the property aesthetically before it was photographed. Often, she took her own photos, but for this assignment, the magazine would be using their own photographer. Then, while waiting on the photographer assigned to her, Macy excused herself to check phone messages.

  Instead of checking her voice mail, which was a pretty involved process, she made the call, punching in the extension she knew from memory.

  “Special Agent Kahill.”

  Macy hesitated. She always did at this point. Why did she torture herself this way? The FBI was no closer to finding him than they had been fourteen years ago. Why did she make the calls?