Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

but the very youngest and oldest of the sept. One by one they joined the group until they were close to two hundred strong. Then the thoughts began to flow and Fia was caught up and swept away in the tide of their fear and sorrow.

My Bobby, my dear, sweet Bobby.

How could such a thing happen? How, I ask ye?

“Tis impossible. This is impossible, isn’t it?

My dear Bobby, my dear, sweet son.

The killer couldn’t have known what Bobby was.

An accident. A coincidence. So many madmen in the world today.

Couldn’t know who we are….

Fia felt bombarded by those around her. Men and women she had laughed with, cried with, loved, hated, for centuries. It wasn’t just the words hounding her conscience, it was their emotions. Like her dad, she had never been good with her own feelings or anyone else’s, but after Ian, it had become even worse. Harder. It was one of the reasons her career choice in this life cycle suited her so well. FBI agents didn’t have to rely on emotions, not when they had investigative techniques, forensic science, and political pull.

How?

Why?

Who could have done this?

Have they found us?

Found us at last?

The proverbial “they”. But in this case, the threat was very real. “They” were the vampire slayers. The men the sept had been hiding from on the peaceful shores of America for the last three hundred years.

What if it’s worse?

Worse? What could be worse?

One of us.

Hearing the words in her head made Fia shudder. It had been a possibility she had been trying to avoid for two days. Mungo was right. To be killed by one of their own would be worse. But she still wasn’t convinced by the evidence that this crime, however horrendous, was anything more than the killing she had seen in the alley in Lansdowne the other night. Some sick bastard.

“Please, everyone.” Their chieftain, Gair, dressed in plaid shorts and a SURF THE NET T-shirt emblazoned with a surfboard, held his thick, wrinkled hands high in the air. At the age of seventy-three and nearing the end of this life cycle, Fia’s grandfather resembled Spencer Tracy—not when he was young, but as he appeared in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Inherit the Wind. The resemblance was so uncanny that in the summer months he was something of a celebrity among the summer visitors.

Fia loved Spencer Tracy. She loved her grandfather more. In all these years, he was one of the few people who she believed had truly forgiven her for her transgression.

“Please,” Gair repeated, trying to speak above the voices. “We cannot stay here long. There are still humans among us.”

Human police.

Not just police. Visitors. Mary Kay’s got a couple at the inn.

Not police. FBI.

That’s even worse.

Fia brought him.

She shouldn’t have brought him.

There was so much disorder, verbally as well as telepathically, that Fia only caught bits and pieces. She couldn’t tell who was speaking or thinking what. What she did know was that her people were frightened. And angry.

“I know you have questions,” their chieftain said, lowering his hands. “We all do, but for now, there aren’t that many answers.” He turned around to face Fia, who had been standing several rows back, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. “Fee, have you something to say? Something to comfort us?”

She looked down at her feet, then up again. All eyes were on her. Some supportive, but many accusing. “Um…as you know, the FBI has launched a full investigation into Bobby’s death.”

Shouldn’t have ’em here. Should settle the matter ourselves. Find the feckin’ bastard who did this ourselves.

She glanced in the direction of Victor Thomas, a cantankerous, grizzled old fisherman who hated Fia, but no more than he hated the rest of them. “Because Bobby worked for the federal government and the crime—”

The murder…

“The crime took place,” Fia continued, “on federal property, we had no choice in the matter. But Bill…Senator Malley was looking out for us. He made sure I was called in, even though Clare Point isn’t in my jurisdiction.”

“What about the other agent?” a woman demanded. “The human? Why is he here?”

“A minor snag in the bureaucracy. This is his jurisdiction.”

“We don’t want him here.”

It’s not safe.

“I don’t like him being here any more than you do,” Fia assured the crowd. “But I promise you, I’m keeping an eye on him and he should be out of town by tomorrow, the following day at the latest.”

“Still no idea who did this, Fee?”

She turned in the direction the voice had come from. “We’re doing everything we can, but so far, as Gair said, we have little information.”

“Tell us this.” Her father stepped forward, his voice grave. “Was it a coincidence, Bobby bein’ beheaded, or do we have a bigger problem?”

She knew what he was thinking without reading his thoughts. The same thing they were all thinking. Had Bobby been killed by one of the maniacs the world was so full of these days, just a sick coincidence that he was murdered in the one way that could actually kill him? Had one of their own killed him, a crime that had only been committed three times in all these centuries? Or did a human know Bobby McCathal was a vampire?

Chapter 6

Fia was in her cubicle in the bull pen in the FBI office in Philly by nine-thirty Friday morning. She would have been back earlier, but Glen had insisted on sitting down to breakfast at the motel and reviewing the case before they went their separate ways.

She had thought the meeting a waste of time. Both of them knew exactly what they had, or more importantly, didn’t have. Bobby McCathal’s body, released this morning, would be buried in the town’s cemetery the following day without his head and feet. The body parts had not been located, and there were no leads as to where to look for them or who could have committed the crime. Fia knew that Glen knew that with every