Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

with rural murderers. Fia didn’t know exactly how an ME figured out how a person died in cases like this…when the head was gone, but last week Dr. Caldwell had seemed confident he could figure it out. It had to do with when the heart stopped pumping, where the blood pooled, and in what manner. She guessed he might even be a little better at blood analysis than most MEs.

The Cause of Death box simply stated Sanguination (Acute blood loss due to the severing of the jugular.)

She was so surprised that she read it twice. Bobby had died of blood loss from the actual decapitation?

She reached for the little notebook on her desk that she had used at the scene last week, flipped through several pages and punched numbers into her desk phone. She worked her way through an automated answering system.

“Special Agent Duncan,” he said on the other end of the line.

It took Fia a second to regroup. His voice had caught her off guard. Even though she had been the one to call him, she hadn’t expected him to sound so much like Ian. Even more so on the phone than he did in person.

“Agent Duncan…” Feeling foolish, she started again. “Glen, it’s Fia. Fia Kahill.” That sounded silly, too. How many Fias could he have known?

“Hey,” he said, seeming glad to hear her voice. “I was just going to call you.”

“Yeah? What’s going on?” She was surprised by how relaxed he sounded. There seemed to be none of the tension she had felt back in Clare Point. Maybe he’d finally just accepted the fact that they would be handling the case together. Or maybe it was her. Maybe she was more relaxed with a couple of beltways between them. No fear of losing control, having wild abandoned sex with him, and drinking so much of his blood that she turned him into a vampire. Not with all the rush-hour traffic and those beltways to traverse.

“No, you go ahead,” he said. “You called me.”

“You get the ME’s report? It was just e-mailed. You should have gotten a copy,” she said, glancing at her computer screen.

“Hang on. I haven’t checked my e-mail this morning yet. I hate e-mail.”

“I love e-mail,” she said, hearing the tap of his keyboard.

“Nothing but a long list of stuff I have to do.”

“I love long lists of stuff to do,” she came back. Their conversation almost sounded like banter. He was in a good mood. She wondered if maybe he had gotten laid last night. That always put her in a good mood. Since she started seeing Dr. Kettleman, her good-mood mornings weren’t nearly as frequent. She was still having a little trouble with the taking of humans’ blood, but she’d cut way down on the sex with strangers. She liked to think it was progress.

“Here we go,” Glen said in her ear. He was quiet for a second and Fia considered saying something. Anything, just to keep up the tenor of the conversation, but she knew that would be hard to do, considering why she’d called in the first place. She let him read the autopsy report in peace.

“You have got to be shitting me,” he said. “Sorry,” he added quickly.

“You’re right. I’ve never heard that phrase before,” she quipped. Then she moved on. “Can you believe it?”

“Am I reading what I think I’m reading? Did the postman die from having his head cut off?”

“That’s how it appears,” she said, the weight of what had happened settling on her shoulders again.

He was quiet for a minute and she got the feeling that even though he didn’t understand the full impact of what had happened to Bobby, he still felt empathy for the man he had never known. For his family. Maybe even for Fia.

“Still nothing from the lab,” he said after a moment. “I thought I’d give them a call, maybe a little nudge, but I wanted to check with you, be sure you hadn’t already done it.”

“No. Go ahead.” She rocked back in her office chair, staring at Bobby’s autopsy report on her computer screen. “But I have to confess, I’m not too hopeful. Blood that was Bobby’s, stray fibers, dirt that he probably tracked in. I don’t think progress in the case is going to come out of that pittance of evidence we collected.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I see Dr. Caldwell noted that the only thing he could tell about the decapitation was that it was done with a sharp instrument. I’ve been reading up on decapitations—”

“Me, too,” she interrupted. “Great bedtime reading.”

He chuckled grimly. “After what I’ve read, after going over the photos and interviews again, I can’t help thinking our next lead is going to come directly out of Clare Point.”

Chapter 9

Fia knew the call was from Clare Point before she answered it. There was a sudden buzzing in her ears and a feeling of lightheadedness as she lifted the handset.

Something was wrong. No one ever dared called her at the office, not even her mother.

“Special Agent Kahill,” she said because it was how she always answered the phone. “Ma? Are the boys all right?” she whispered.

When she had talked to her mother two nights ago, she had learned Fin and Regan had still not returned from their fact-finding trip. What if something had happened to them? Vampires were at far greater risk in Europe than in the U.S. Americans were too modern, too technologically advanced to believe in the supernatural, but the Old World knew the Kahills and a few other families from different parts of the world were still out there. There still remained small pockets of human slayers which stayed well-concealed and unknown to the contemporary world.

“Ma?” Fia repeated, glancing around her cubicle to be sure no one was passing by.

“Nay. Fee, it’s not your ma. It’s yer Uncle Sean, it is.”

“Uncle Sean?” She leaned over her desk, keeping her voice low. From this distance, it was impossible for her