Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

witches’ altar,” Shannon insisted. “Turn north up here at the fork in the path. Northeast.”

“You shouldn’t be out here alone, Shannon.”

“You like hunting with a buddy system?” Shannon asked.

Fia didn’t answer.

“Besides, it was last week, before Mahon was killed.”

“Hey, you smell something?” Sorcha asked. “Like…something burning?”

“Could have been from back there,” Fia said carefully. She knew Sorcha knew, they all knew, what she meant.

“No, not that smell. This is different.” Sorcha stopped on the path. They all stopped. “You smell that? Something burning, like wood…and something sweet.”

Fia did smell it now. But the source was downwind of them. The scent was very faint. Too faint for anyone with normal senses to smell. “How much farther to the altar?” she asked Shannon, beginning to get that uneasy feeling again that she’d first experienced when they entered the woods.

It was as if…as if someone was out there. Someone watching them.

“I don’t know. Right around here, somewhere. I think we’re close.” Shannon didn’t sound quite as confident as she had earlier, when she had insisted she could find the place again. “It wasn’t very big. Just some grass trampled down and a tree stump where there was black candle wax and some rabbit fur and blood.”

“Rabbit sacrifices? Poor bunnies,” Eva said.

Fia halted, holding her hand up to tell the other women to be silent. Everyone froze.

The smell of burning wood mixed with that sweet smell was getting stronger. And Fia thought she might have heard voices. They were far away. At least half a mile. Just a faint murmur. “Do you hear that?” she whispered.

Eva turned slowly in a circle where she stood. “Yeah,” she whispered. “Sounds as if it’s coming from east of here. Toward the beach.”

Without discussion, the three women followed Fia off the deer path. As they headed east through the darkness, dodging branches and circumnavigating monstrous trees, the smell grew stronger and the hum of the voices became clearer.

The women walked a quarter of a mile, maybe a little farther, before Sorcha, taking up the rear, halted. “Shit,” she groaned, dropping her hand to her hip. “It’s Kaleigh and Katy and…Marie, I think.”

“How do you know?”

Sorcha frowned. “I just caught a pretty interesting train of teenaged horn-ball thought. They’re not alone, ladies.”

“Human boys?” Fia whispered.

As they spoke, all the women raised mental walls to block their thoughts so that the teenagers would be less likely to suspect their presence. Although Kaleigh’s telepathy had not returned yet, the other two girls had at least some ability to communicate without words.

“You want me to…you know.” Eva blinked dramatically.

“How many martinis did you drink?” Fia whispered.

“I don’t know. Four…maybe six.”

“No,” Fia said. “You are not going to attempt to teleport yourself. You’ll end up in the center of their bonfire. You remember the time you tried that in Rome after we’d drunk all those bottles of wine?”

“No,” Eva said defensively.

Shannon giggled. “I remember it. She tried to pop back to the house where we were staying and ended up in the Vatican.”

Sorcha chuckled.

“It’s okay, Eva. Don’t feel bad. You know me. I can’t teleport a leaf stone sober.” Fia squeezed the woman’s shoulder.

“Oh, baby, can you do that again, big, brave FBI agent?” Eva joked, rubbing up against Fia. “Only a little lower and to the left, next time.”

Fia ignored Eva’s flirtation. “What do you think? Split up and surround them, or just holler and make them scatter?”

“If we sneak up on them, we might catch them sacrificing bunnies,” Sorcha teased, obviously still not sure she believed there was any witch altar in the woods.

“I didn’t say it was Kaleigh who made the altar,” Shannon said. “I just said the kid was acting weird.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I said I wondered if it was them.”

“Okay, so maybe we should check into what they’re doing?” Fia cut in, breaking up the little tiff. She still felt uncomfortable, but she didn’t get the sense that any of them were in danger. Not the women. Not the girls. But something wasn’t right. “Everyone okay with splitting up? Everyone sober enough?”

“Pul-lease,” Sorcha moaned, walking off into the woods. “Five martinis is nothing to a Kahill. I’ll come around from the north. You guys come from the other directions. Meet you at the bunny roast.”

Chapter 16

Kaleigh was so busy swapping spit with the human that she never heard the women until Fia walked up behind her and tugged off the hood of her sweatshirt. Derek leaped to his feet.

“What do you think you’re doing out here in the middle of the night?” Fia demanded.

Kaleigh jumped up from the log and whipped around. “What am I doing? What are you doing? You’re following me, now?”

The other two girls, who had also been making cozy with human boys, were on their feet as Eva, Shannon, and Sorcha surrounded them. Fia could hear Shannon giving them a piece of her mind. The teens had all been sitting around a campfire, roasting marshmallows, of all things. And making out, of course.

“I wasn’t following you.” Fia lowered her voice so that the humans couldn’t hear her. “We were out taking a walk”—she indicated the other three women—“and we smelled the campfire.” Not exactly a lie. “We were concerned.” Complete truth. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it could be for you girls to be out here in the middle of the night?”

“Mahon was alone in broad daylight.” Kaleigh glanced sulkily over her shoulder. The boys were quickly gathering their belongings: sweatshirts, a football, a bag of marshmallows. Shannon was still giving them all hell, pointing a finger now at one of the boys. “And you guys are out here. You don’t seem to be afraid of any vampire slayers,” Kaleigh said.

Fia rested her hand on her sidearm secured in its shoulder holster. “I’m carrying a G22 loaded with a 165-grain Gold Dot. Are you?” She looked away and then back at Kaleigh. She didn’t know how to make the girl understand how selfish her behavior