Undying Read online

  “Bar tab’s too high again, Mungo. Pay up.”

  ’Bout time dead, he was…

  You know, the blue with the ruffle…. Wore it last Easter Sunday.

  “…Say it again, Jimmy, and I’ll walk out, I will….”

  A shame.

  A pitiful, sorry shame.

  Arlan took the only empty stool between brothers Mungo and Sean Kahill, Fia’s uncles. Sean Sr. was the chief of police and Arlan’s buddy Sean’s father.

  “Evening, gentlemen.”

  “Evening.” Mungo tipped an imaginary cap. The man went four hundred pounds if he went an ounce. Tavia tapped a new keg of stout. We should celebrate your recent accomplishment, we should, he telepathed for anyone within listening distance. “Eva, a stout for my handsome friend,” he called to the barmaid.

  “We’re proud of you, son, we are,” Sean said soberly.

  He had always been a jolly man, but after the murders the previous year, he had never quite seemed like himself. Arlan knew that on some level, Sean held himself responsible for the deaths of Bobby McCathal, Mahon Kahill and Shannon Smith, even though everyone agreed there was nothing he could have done. His behavior was subtle, but Arlan had seen the change. He’d lost so much weight that his jowls sagged, and he drank too much.

  Vampire beheadings would do that to you. Once beheaded, a vampire could never be reborn. He could never really die, unsaved by God, as he was, so he was left to linger in some burning limbo far worse than any human’s hell. Only vampire slayers knew a head must be separated from the body to kill a vampire. All that other nonsense—garlic, silver bullets, sunlight, spit from a virgin—it was all baloney created in books and movies.

  “You’re back,” Eva said, leaning on the bar to bare more than a little of her ample cleavage.

  Arlan glanced at her breasts and smiled with amusement. Eva swore she was a lesbian, but he wondered, sometimes, if she wasn’t bisexual. Why else would she always be showing men her boobs?

  “I’m back.”

  She wiped the wooden bar top salvaged from the original seaside pub. Before that, the boards had served as the keel of the ship they’d come to America aboard. “Everyone else safe and accounted for?” Eva asked.

  He glanced up at her. You’ve talked to Fia?

  Mungo and Sean were busy watching the TV mounted in the corner of the room. The Phillies were up by one over the Orioles. Both men were shouting as a player in orange rounded second. They weren’t listening to Arlan and Eva, but he tried to put up a mental barrier anyway.

  Eva did the same. Ran into Mary Kay at the produce stand. So Regan really is MIA?

  He shrugged. Hard to say with him. He looked up, meeting her gaze. She was pretty in a punk kind of way, with spiky hair and wild, dark blue eye shadow.

  Eva caught his drift. Arlan didn’t know how much she knew about Regan’s previous screw-ups, but he guessed it was more than Mungo and Sean knew. Eva was the same generation as Arlan and Regan. They all hung out together whenever they were in town.

  You talk to Fin? She reached for a clean pint glass and pulled a stout for him.

  Not yet, but he had sept business in Europe. He may have made a stop on his way home, Arlan said, still telepathing. He pulled a bill from his front pocket and tucked it into Eva’s cleavage as she slid the ale across the bar toward him. “A round for the three of us and you.”

  She chuckled. “You’re such a gentleman, Arlan. If you were a woman—” She waggled her finger at him.

  He grinned, picking up his glass and tasting it. “You seen Fia tonight?” He tried to sound casual.

  “I think she went back to Philadelphia. Mary Kay said she was working on that big Buried Alive case. Said she was heading up the investigation.”

  The stout went down smooth and hardy. It had a honey oak taste that was a particular favorite of his. The master brewer and pub owner, Tavia, knew her stout, that was for sure. “Fia is not heading up the case. And she finds out Mary Kay is telling tourists that, she’s going to have her mother’s head.”

  “Just telling you what Mary Kay told me over the new potato bin.” She raised both hands in innocence.

  Arlan looked around, sipping his stout. He knew every face. Some sept members he liked better than others, some he knew better. But they were all family and he felt an intense loyalty to them. It was for these men and women, for their souls, that he risked his life in the shadows of places like Athens, Greece, and Akron, Ohio.

  “Eva!” Johnny Hill called from a table. “Can a man dyin’ of thirst get a pint here?”

  Eva rolled her eyes and tapped the bar top with her palm before walking away. “Catch you later, handsome.” She winked at him. “I’ll put a good word in for you with Fia, if I see her.”

  Maryann Hill caught Arlan’s eye and waved cheerfully. You’ll be there for the burial? she telepathed. It would have been too noisy for him to have heard her at this distance.

  She was referring to her son’s funeral. At times like this, their whole life cycle got a little weird. Maryann was in her midforties. Her son, Rob, had died at the age of eighty-two. He would be reborn three days after his burial, as a teenager.

  Arlan raised his glass to her. I’ll be there.

  And that cute niece of yours? Kaleigh?

  I imagine she’ll be there, too. He turned on the barstool, away from her. He was not playing matchmaker. If Kaleigh and Rob were going to get together, it would have to be by their own efforts. Couples were expected to eventually live together because it helped keep up appearances to the outside world. Sept rules, however, did not demand that each couple live each lifetime as exclusive bed partners. They had realized early on that it was hard enough for a couple to live forty years in marital bliss. Four hundred years would be impossible. Sept members were permitted, once they reached the age of eighteen, to have sex with any other consenting vampire adults so long as they continued to live with their permanent partner. It was a strange form of monogamy, but it seemed to work well enough. The downside was that men and women like Arlan and Fia, who were not married at the time of the mallachd, the curse, could never marry.

  At the crack of a bat on the TV, Sean shouted, raising a fist in the air. “I told you they’d come back, I did!”

  His brother turned away, disgusted by his team’s error in the field. Sean eased off his stool, slapping Arlan on the back. “Thanks for the ale, kid. Tell my brother he pays for the next round, he does.”

  Arlan watched as Sean weaved his way between tables where patrons were eating supper, back-slapping as he went.

  As Arlan slid his empty pint glass across the bar top, there was an audible change in the atmosphere of the room. Voices died down considerably and telepathed thoughts flew around the room faster. The ball game on the TV suddenly seemed to get louder.

  Who’s that?

  Who the hell does she think she is?

  One night of peace and quiet is all I ask.

  Arlan didn’t look up. It was just a tourist who had wandered too far afoot. Someone would steer her the right way. She’d probably gotten confused and was supposed to be meeting her girlfriends down the street.

  “Another?” Eva asked Arlan. She wasn’t interested in HF tourists either.

  “One more.” He slid his glass toward her. If Fia didn’t show up by the time he’d finished his pint, he’d head home. Now that he was here, he realized he wasn’t all that interested in socializing tonight. He had too many things on his mind.

  Where the hell was Regan? Why hadn’t Fin returned his calls?

  Had Fia gone back to Philadelphia to the human boyfriend? She didn’t normally tell him every time she came or went in town but after the trip to Virginia they’d shared, he thought maybe…

  “Here you go, big boy.” Eva slid a fresh pint across the bar top.

  “Hey, big boy.” Someone sat down on the barstool beside him.

  Her voice startled him. He looked over.

  “Could I have what he’s having?” M
aggie asked Eva.

  Eva looked to Arlan. He nodded slightly.

  “One honey stout coming up.”

  “What are you—” Arlan closed his fingers over the cool glass, looking away from her. How was it possible that she could be here? he wondered. He hadn’t told her what town he lived in and he certainly hadn’t told her about the seedy pub where he liked to take a pint of ale a couple of nights a week. This was a little eerie. He tracked men and women for a living. People didn’t track him. “How did you find me?”

  She waited for her pint, took a sip and wiped the foam off her upper lip in what was an amazingly sensual gesture. “I’m good at hiding,” she said in that disquieting way of hers. “I’m also good at finding who I’m looking for.”

  Fia sped north on Route 1. If she didn’t hit any serious traffic on 95, she’d be in Philly in an hour. She felt bad leaving Clare Point without talking to Arlan, but not bad enough to call him. She didn’t want to talk to him. Not tonight. He had a way of reading between the lines.

  She told her mother she had to get back to work, which was true. She told Mary Kay that Regan would turn up and that was probably true. She’d told Glen she was staying with her mother another night. A flat-out lie.

  But she just couldn’t go home to her apartment and her cat tonight. She was too keyed up, so keyed up that she felt as if she was busting at the seams.

  It had been months since Fia had been out on the prowl, and it was killing her. A taste of human blood was all she needed. Just a taste.

  Nothing in her life was going the way she had thought it would. After solving the big case in Clare Point last year, she had thought she would be promoted in the bureau. That hadn’t happened. She had started dating Glen and she had thought that would make her happy. It hadn’t, and lately it seemed as if she wasn’t making him happy, either.

  And it just got better. Regan was now possibly missing, possibly in some kind of serious trouble. And the Buried Alive Killings were starting to get under her skin. Maggie was starting to get under her skin and she didn’t often let that happen with a case. She couldn’t afford to, not and do her job right.

  Fia was annoyed that Arlan hadn’t gotten more out of the chick. She’d expected better out of him. He was so good with women, really good with HFs, although it pissed him off when she said so.

  Now, with no way to contact Maggie, Fia would just have to sit tight and wait for the woman to call her. If she did call again. What if Arlan had scared her off? Fia couldn’t believe he had slept with her informant. Arlan was such a slut.

  She smiled to herself, looking down at the short black leather skirt, fishnet stockings, and four-inch heeled boots she’d changed into at the rest stop. Her black T-shirt was so tight, she could see the rings of her areolas through it.

  Nothing like calling the kettle black.

  “Why are you here, Maggie?” Arlan asked.

  He had never expected to see her again and now that she was sitting here beside him, looking so small and unassuming, he felt guilty all over again for his thoughts back at the hotel. How could he have even considered biting her and drinking her blood? What kind of man on the road to redemption was he? There were plenty of willing female vampires here in town, and elsewhere in the world. Attractive, smart, fun vampires in Ireland and France and Germany. Why a human? Why this one?

  Arlan was annoyed that Maggie had brought out the worst in him and that she was now here to remind him of it. He knew he shouldn’t have gone back into the room and left the flower and coffee and donuts.

  “I asked you a question,” he said stiffly.

  “I’m not a stalker.”

  Her tone was dry. Almost amused. She was an interesting person, this HF. She came off so vulnerable, so skittish, and yet she had a backbone.

  “I didn’t tell you where I lived.”

  “I was hoping to find Fia.” She sipped from her glass, casually glancing around the low-lit pub room.

  So she hadn’t come looking for him. Arlan was relieved. Maybe just a little disappointed. “Fia had to go back to the office in Philadelphia. She’s expecting your phone call.”

  “I just thought face to face might be better.”

  He turned toward her on his barstool and her knees brushed his shins. “You have information for her?”

  “I just want to talk to her.”

  He looked down at her. “You’re a strange woman, Maggie.”

  “You’re pretty odd yourself, Arlan,” she came back.

  That made him tilt his head back and laugh. And a sense of humor. He loved women with a sense of humor.

  “Can I buy you another?” He pointed to her glass.

  They each had two more pints and then Arlan decided it was time he called it a night. If he didn’t, he feared he’d end up asking her to come home with him and that was definitely on the top of the list of very bad ideas. He stood up and paid the bar tab.

  The Hill was already beginning to thin out. Disgruntled sept members had gone home. Arlan was sure he would hear of their displeasure tomorrow, what with him bringing a human into their sanctuary—even though he hadn’t invited her.

  “You staying in town tonight?” he asked.

  “Hotel down the street.” Maggie picked her bag up off the floor under her barstool. “Guess I got lucky. The old lady at the desk said she was usually booked most of the summer.”

  “Ah, Mrs. Cahall. She’s older than the hills. Hard of hearing, too.” He cupped his hand to his ear. “What’s that, missy? You want a broom for the night?”

  Maggie chuckled, but her laughter was a little sad, much like her demeanor. Arlan wondered if she would ask him back to her room. He shouldn’t say yes, of course, but what if she did? That certainly wasn’t the same as having her back to his house.

  They walked together toward the exit. By the time he opened the door for her, he had decided that he would say no if she invited him back. He was already in hot water with Fia; he didn’t need to push it to the boiling point.

  “Thanks for the beer,” she said out on the sidewalk. “Good night.”

  Arlan stood in the dark for a moment, stunned. She hadn’t asked him back to her room. And he was so sure she was going to. She’d just had that look on her face that he knew so well. Lonely and horny.

  He walked home alone in the dark, hands stuffed in his pockets, unsure if he was insulted or just plain hurt.

  Chapter 11

  Fia pressed her back to the brick wall in the alley and slowly slid down until she was sitting on the ground, her knees pulled up to her chest. She was cold despite the heat of the steamy June night. Last call in the bars had been at least half an hour ago. She needed to get home, get cleaned up and catch a couple of hours of sleep before she had to go to work.

  First she needed to do something with him.

  She glanced at the unconscious man sitting across from her. He was handcuffed to a drainpipe with one of the disposable plastic ties that she, like most law enforcement agents, always carried with her. He was wearing a gray pinstripe suit. He had been wearing a red power tie until he slipped it over Fia’s neck and tried to choke her.

  Big mistake on the suit’s part. Wrong miniskirt to cross.

  It was a good thing she’d artfully disposed of the drinks he’d ordered for her. At least one of them had been laced with some kind of date rape drug; she had seen him pour the powder from the envelope into her glass when she was on the dance floor. Dumping the martinis in the potted plant had been easy. How stupid had the jerk thought she was?

  But there were plenty of women out there naive enough to accept drinks from a good-looking stranger in a five-hundred-dollar suit, and that didn’t mean they deserved to be drugged and sexually assaulted. No one did.

  She slipped her hand into her bag and pulled out her cell phone. She dialed from memory. As she listened to it ring, she was surprised by the lump that rose in her throat and the way her chest tightened. Cry? She was going to cry over something so stupid as a man w
ho had tried to take advantage of her?

  The phone continued to ring. He didn’t always keep his cell next to his bed. Maybe it was charging in the kitchen.

  Fia was just about to hang up when she heard a click on the other line, then a sleepy male voice.

  “’Llo?”

  She thought about hanging up. Of course, he would know it was her. He’d check his Received Messages and know she had called at 2:35 A.M. He’d wonder where she was and what she was doing. He would know she was somewhere she shouldn’t be. They’d been together too long.

  “Fee?”

  She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, drawing into a tighter ball. Somehow she’d torn her stockings. “I screwed up,” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  She closed her eyes. “I don’t know. An alley behind some bar in north Philly. I’ve got an unconscious guy handcuffed to a drainpipe.” She looked up. Even in the dark, her vision was good. Superhuman. There was a large, red egg rising on his temple.

  “He alive?”

  She watched him for a second. His chest rose and fell. “Oh, yeah. Sure,” she said cheerfully.

  “Did you—”

  He didn’t have to finish his sentence. She could see the two red bite marks and the glisten of blood, even in the dark. “A little.”

  “Fee, you can’t do that!” He groaned on the other end of the phone. “You have to let him go. You have to remove the handcuffs and get the hell out of there before he wakes up.”

  “But the bastard tried to slip rhohipnol into my drink. He wanted to play some kind of crazy erotic asphyxiation game with me in the alley. He didn’t even have the good manners to take me back to his apartment or a hotel.”

  “Fee, if he wakes up and sees you, you might have to feed again. It could kill him.”

  The drinking of blood had a crazy side effect on most humans. They lost their short term memory and never knew what hit them. The suit might vaguely remember meeting Fia in the bar, but he was drunk enough and her blood-taking was hypnotizing enough that he would never remember that she had bit his neck and sucked his blood. However, if he woke up and saw her, he might be able to put the pieces together. If she drank his blood again, so close to the last feeding, it might kill him.