Undying (12 page)

So Macy walked east and then a block off the bay, turned north. As promised, the street was lined with neat, quaint cottages that appeared to have been built at the turn of the century or earlier. Not a single house was less than a hundred years old for what looked like a two-to three-block radius. Like the houses in Cape May, New Jersey, though smaller, they were painted pastel Victorian colors: pink, yellow, robin’s egg blue, making for a picturesque scene.

Delighted by her find, Macy slipped her camera from the canvas bag slung over her shoulder and began to take random shots. Tonight, back in the hotel, she would look at them more closely. Once she chose a couple houses she was interested in, she’d chat with someone in the local chamber of commerce office. It had been Macy’s experience that the chambers of small towns were always eager to help her find homes to photograph when they thought there might be some free publicity for them in the deal.

Macy was halfway down the second block when she spotted an attractive woman watering zinnias that flanked both sides of her quaint entryway. The woman appeared to be in her late twenties and had short, spiky hair that was almost a fluorescent red. Not the person one expected to see watering flowers in her front yard. The young woman smiled.

Macy smiled back, reading
invitation
. “Good morning,” she called.

“’Morning.” The woman held the spray trigger on the hose and a soft rain fell over her brightly colored flowers.

“Beautiful houses on this street.” Macy looked up at the pale peach porch trimmed in white. “This your place or a rental? It’s amazing.”

“It’s been in my family for generations,” the woman said, taking Macy in casually.

Macy slung her camera over her shoulder and reached into her knapsack, coming up with a business card. “Macy Smith. I work for
House Beautiful
and a couple of other home and garden magazines. I’m always scouting for unusual homes and gardens to feature.”

Directing the hose away from Macy, the woman accepted the card, read it and looked up. “Pretty cool. Would you like to have a look around?” She gestured with the hose nozzle. “Out back, I have rosebushes from Ireland that are more than two hundred years old. The blooms are incredible.” She smiled almost shyly. “Eva Hill.” She shrugged. “I have this thing for roses and other thorny things.”

Macy smiled back, offering her hand. Eva didn’t look like the typical rose gardener with her wild hair and dark makeup. Macy liked it when people surprised her. “Nice to meet you, Eva.”

The redhead turned the valve on the sprayer off and dropped the hose, taking Macy’s hand. She had a warm, confident grip.

“Nice to meet you. Come around back. Want some iced tea? It’s going to be another scorcher today.”

That night, unable to sleep, Macy sat at the dinette table in her room at the Lighthouse and flipped through the photos she had taken of Eva’s house and others on the same street. She sipped an iced herbal tea. It was after midnight. She was tired. She should have been able to sleep, but she couldn’t, so she worked. Other than sex with strangers, work was her only balm when she was restless like this.

After a tour of Eva’s amazing rose garden, Macy had ended up touring the inside of the house, too. They had hit it off so well that Eva not only offered her home to Macy to feature in a magazine article, but suggested she might be able to persuade some other homeowners on the street to do the same. Macy was thinking of a serious feature article. Ten-, maybe twelve-page spread. A feature piece would take a lot of time and effort, but she was sure more than one of the publishers she freelanced for would be interested. These houses on the shore were so unusual, true gems tucked away in Smalltownville, East Coast, USA. It might turn out to be her most profitable sale to date.

At three this afternoon, she had spoken to Fia on the phone, telling her she would be in town for a few days. They agreed to meet Friday night. Fia hadn’t been crazy with the idea of being put off any longer, but she was savvy enough to realize that Macy had the upper hand here. Macy was relieved to be able to put the encounter off a few more days. It would give her time to think about what she was going to say. How much she was going to tell. It would also give her the opportunity to chicken out and hightail-it back to Virginia if she so chose.

Walking away without saying good-bye to Arlan might prove more difficult than usual. There was something about him that was different from other men she had known. Something about him that made her wish she was different. But who was she kidding? He wasn’t different. He wasn’t special. None of the men she ever met were. No one could save her. Of course she could walk away. She’d done it countless times before.

After looking over the photos and sending out several e-mails to editors at various magazines, Macy logged online using the wireless Internet code Mrs. Cahall had provided her earlier in the evening. Somehow, Macy wasn’t surprised that the spry old woman was Internet-connected.

Macy was halfway through the mail when the IM box popped up with a
ding.
It was Teddy, of course.

I’ve been waiting for you. Where have you been?

She stared at the flashing cursor.

Did you see the papers? The news. She’s quiet tonight, very quiet.

He was talking about the voice. The voice that he said made him kill. A mixture of fear and anger tightened her stomach. She wanted to close the dialogue window. Shut him up. But if she was serious about helping the FBI, she needed to remain in contact with him and stay in his good graces.

I saw. She hit the Enter key, then added, How could you?

I don’t like your tone, he responded. Her fingers flew over her keyboard. You’re a liar. You lie to me. You lie to yourself.

Orphan.

“Ah, so we’re going to play that game tonight, are we?” she said aloud. “What, we’re twelve?” She hesitated before she typed. I wish you had talked to me. I wish you hadn’t done it.

If wishes were horses, Teddy answered.

I’m serious. Macy didn’t know what was making her so bold. We should talk.

But we do talk, dear Marceline. You’re my best friend in the whole world. We talk all the time.

The idea of being this monster’s friend made her want to throw up. The idea that he
thought
they could be friends after what he had done was somehow even worse.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as she considered what she should say. If she was going to talk to Fia Friday night, she should have something to take to her. Some sort of proof she wasn’t a nut job. Some sort of information that really could help.

I noticed the moon that night. It wasn’t right, Teddy. You missed the full moon. You hesitated. Then you did it anyway.

His words popped up almost instantly. The moon? How do you know about the moon????

She sensed she’d struck a nerve. I know all about the moon.

Teddy didn’t answer. She waited. She sipped her tea. As the seconds stretched to a minute, two, she began to feel empowered. All these years she had just sat here afraid. Afraid to talk to him, afraid not to. Now maybe he was afraid.

Just when she was ready to shut down her computer and go watch something mindless on TV, another line of text appeared.

No one knows about the moon…

She thought before she typed. No one but you and me. Because we’re friends, right?

Another hesitation before she read, Friends.

So why did you do it when the moon wasn’t right?

I…I don’t know, he answered. I thought I could wait but I couldn’t.

Does someone tell you to do it? she probed.

No, no one tells me. No one is the boss of me!

No one is the boss of me?
The surprising outburst made Macy sit back in her chair and stare at the computer screen. He seemed to have regressed further. Now, he sounded like a five-year-old. She thought about all the pictures he had cut out of magazines and sent her years ago when he still did that sort of thing. The reccurring theme had been little boys. At one time, she had wondered if he was some kind of sexual predator, too, but now she wondered if all the little boys were him. Were Teddy.

So you do it on your own. Why? she typed.

He hesitated. I have to go.

This was the first time in all these years that she recalled him signing off first. The first time she had ever felt in control of the situation.

Good night, she typed. Then she closed her laptop and got up from the table before he could respond.

At the window, she looked out on the street that ran along the front of the hotel. It was quiet and deserted. This was a family resort town. No bars, no arcades. All the restaurants and shops closed at ten
P.M
, which really was a little odd. Even the local watering hole where Macy had found Arlan the previous night sported a
CLOSED
sign this time of night, although she would have sworn she had seen light seeping from behind its pulled shades.

The entire town was quiet. Dark.

A large black Labrador trotted along the sidewalk. Seeming to sense she was watching him, he stopped and turned toward her, ears pricked.

She studied him. He studied her.

She took a step closer to the window, placing her hand on the cool glass. Suddenly she had this crazy impulse to go to the dog. To lead him inside. He didn’t seem injured or hungry. In fact, he was muscular, his coat sleek, his eyes glimmering. But she sensed he needed her.

How weird was that?

A
rlan had to force himself to continue walking along the street in the direction of the museum. He hadn’t expected to see Macy tonight. Hadn’t expected her to be
waiting
for him.

Had she really been waiting for him?

He’d just been trotting down the sidewalk, minding his own business in the form of a Labrador retriever. When he passed the Lighthouse, he had glanced in the direction of Room 22. No reason.

And there she was at the window.
Waiting for him.

It was a ridiculous thought, of course. She didn’t know it was him. All she had seen was a big black dog that had wandered from its yard. She didn’t know he could morph into a Lab any more than she knew he could morph into a fox. It was pure coincidence that she had been standing at her open window after midnight, just at the time that he passed, headed for a meeting where he might vote on whether or not to execute a serial killer or a pedophile.

Down a couple more streets, Arlan turned off the sidewalk into an alley, and nearly ran into a pair of long female legs.

“Hey!”

Arlan barked, falling into step at her side.

“What are you doing here?” Fia asked, looking down at him. “Nice collar.”

Arlan morphed from the canine form to his human one. “What am
I
doing here?” He scratched behind his ear. “What are
you
doing here? It’s the middle of the night. You’re supposed to be in Philly. Lover boy is going to catch you one of these nights and then you’re going to have some explaining to do.”

She frowned. “High Council meeting. You show up unless you’re dead.”

“Not much chance of that,” he joked.

“Exactly.” Reaching the rear of the museum building, she pushed a series of numbers on the key pad and the door opened. “So Peigi convinced you to sit in for Johnny Hill?”

“More like muscled me into it.”

“If it’s any consolation, I think the council is right. You belong here.” She pointed to a closed door, her voice taking on a solemn tone, almost as if they were inside a church. “Men change in there.” She indicated a closed door with a jerk of her head. “Women here. I’ll see you at the table.”

Arlan watched Fia disappear into the room, closing the door behind her. Instead of going where he had been directed, he walked to the end of the long hall and stepped into the main room of the museum. The lights were off, but he had no difficulty making out the furnishings. He could have navigated the room with his eyes closed.

The present building, built over an older foundation, had been constructed in the late sixties to encourage the town’s burgeoning tourist trade. Portraying Clare Point as a pirate’s den in early colonial days, the museum mixed fact with fiction, displaying many objects that had actually been on the ship the sept had traveled aboard from Ireland three centuries ago. When the vessel had wrecked on a reef in a storm and they were all washed ashore, they had collected the objects as well as the scrap wood from the beach and the splintered hull. They had built their first homes with those warped planks; portholes had become windows and the simple white bone china, now displayed in glass cases, had been used on dining tables for decades.

There had been a small colony of wreckers living in lean-tos on the beach when the Kahills washed ashore, but once the sept’s leader, Gair, declared that the family had reached their final destination, the Kahill women had drawn their fangs, the men had raised their swords, and being realists, the pirates had moved south to Virginia to safer ground.

The display cases in the rinky-dink museum, identified by printed signs and sometimes with humorous sketches, were filled with pieces of china, brass candlesticks, and other assorted junk, mostly brought from the ship, although some of it was bounty the wreckers had left behind in their eagerness to escape a colony of vampires. There was also a small exhibit of arrowheads and spear points from the area’s earlier history, when Native Americans had hunted and fished the land now located inside the town limits. Some of the items were often displayed on the round table that had come from the ship captain’s cabin.

His gaze settled there and he fought an ominous shiver. Now cleared of the knickknacks, he knew this was where the High Council took the
aontas.
Tonight, he might be expected to vote, to thrust his dagger into the scarred tabletop and sentence a man or woman to death. Or, withhold his
aonta,
and demand further evidence of the guilt of the human in question. The responsibility seemed overwhelming for a handyman.

He shifted his gaze.

During the museum’s operating hours, a five-minute movie was shown in one corner of the room and there was a small gift shop off the hall, near the restrooms. There, plastic swords, eye patches, fake coins, tomahawks, and other assorted souvenirs were sold. On rainy days, in the summer months, the museum made a surprisingly tidy profit.

Now the shadowy room was filled with an eerie energy.
All those years of life and death decisions,
Arlan thought. They couldn’t help but leave an indelible impression in the air.

The central air-conditioning unit clicked on, startling him, and he turned back as cool air blew in his face. Arlan dreaded going into the small room and donning the council robe. He dreaded the memories it would churn up. He hadn’t served on the High Council since the mid-nineteenth century. Not since he had voted to execute his lover’s brother.

It was after three
A.M
. when Arlan hung his cloak, returned his on-loan ceremonial dagger to Gair, and walked out into the hot, humid night air. Lost in their own thoughts after the night’s proceedings, no one spoke as council members filed one by one out the rear door. The contemplative silence seemed appropriate, a sort of reverence to the momentous decisions made behind those closed doors.

The group splintered, each headed home to catch a few hours of sleep before they would have to wake and greet and serve tourists and pretend to be human again. Arlan walked Fia to her car, she apparently being the one exception to the
no one drives to High Council
rule Peigi had been so adamant about.

“You okay?” Fia asked softly as he opened the door for her.

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” They stood face to face with the car door between them.

“You get used to it.” She rested her folded arms on the top of the door, leaning toward him. “You learn to pick and pull through the information. You get a gut feeling about these people. You know when it’s right.”

Arlan had been greatly relieved that no vote was required of him tonight. Fortunately, it had been a meeting where information was exchanged and orders were sent out to teams for further investigation. All he had to do was stand at the table and listen, in a hooded cloak some member of his family had worn for more than two hundred years. Fia had offered up the Buried Alive Killer, making it an authorized sept case. Whether the FBI officially put her on the case or not, as far as the sept was concerned, she was, and it was a top priority.

For a moment, Fia and Arlan stood there in the dark. The moon was already beginning to fall below the horizon. Night insects chirped. A frog croaked from a nearby drainage ditch. They were comforting sounds to him; sounds that were always the same, no matter in what century or on what continent he lived.

“You look tired.” She reached out and stroked his beard-stubbled cheek.

He closed his eyes, savoring her touch. He had ached for Fia for so long that sometimes he forgot about the pain and then suddenly, there it was again, so tight in his chest that he could barely speak. He wanted her so badly, not just in his bed, but in his arms. In his heart.

But she belonged to another man. Her choice. Her life.

“Long day,” he admitted. “I repaired the cracks in Rob’s tomb and installed some track lighting in Mary Hill’s new media room.”

She chuckled. “Pretty exciting life you lead.”

He opened his eyes. “I think so.” He looked down at the white line of the parking space in the museum’s lot. “So you talked to Macy?”

Fia pushed back a lock of red hair. She was letting it grow out. The longer locks made her look younger, less severe.

“She says she’s going to stick around a few days. Some kind of freelance magazine job. I’m going to look into her work, see what kind of dirt I can dig up on her. We’re going to meet Friday.”

“You coming back for Rob’s funeral?”

She shook her head. “Gotta bunk with the boyfriend once in a while.”

“Ah,” he acknowledged. “Don’t want him to get suspicious. Otherwise you might have to suck all the blood from his body, speak the magic incantation, and turn him into one of the living dead.”

“That’s not funny.” She cuffed him on the ear.

“Ouch.” He stepped back, rubbing the offended appendage.

“’Night,” Fia called, slipping into her car and pulling closed the door.

“Night.”

He walked home in human form, taking his time, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his sunglasses propped on his nose. He liked the way the dark lenses changed the light cast from the silver moon. Maybe it was the polarized technology. Maybe it was the magic of the night. Like it or not, he was now a member of the High Council and the responsibility the position possessed was once again on his shoulders. He’d forgotten just how heavy a burden it was.

Arlan was not surprised to find Macy on his porch steps. Maybe he should have been, but he wasn’t. He was glad to see her. In silence, he walked past her, up the steps, and turned the doorknob.

“You don’t lock your doors,” she pointed out, seeming more a spirit of the night than a human. “Me neither,” she said with a sigh.

In his bedroom, they slowly undressed each other as if they had done it a thousand times. They stood naked, face to face, surrounded by a puddle of clothing. Arlan threaded his fingers through hers and held her hands tightly, gazing into her eyes. He was sad. Sad for himself because he could not have Fia. Sad for Fia because she couldn’t break her addiction to human men. Sad for Macy because…he wasn’t even sure why. But he wanted to know. He wanted to know her story.

“Tell me how you know him,” Arlan said, lowering his head to kiss her bare shoulder. He breathed deeply, taking in her feminine, human scent. “The killer.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She rested her palm on his cheek and guided him down to her. She brushed her lips against his, butterfly-light and teasing. Painfully sensual.

“I want to understand,” he whispered against her mouth. “I want to feel your pain.”

“No, you don’t,” she breathed, flicking out her tongue to taste his lips. “Believe me, you don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to feel this.”

He kissed her more roughly. “I can help.”

She grasped his head with both hands, pulling him down to her, meeting him with an equal, building urgency. Her breath was already quick, her voice raspy. Almost desperate. “You can’t. No one can help. No one can save me.” And then she reached down and clasped his already burgeoning erection in her warm hand.

“You cheat,” he half whispered, half groaned.

She stroked the length of him, maintaining eye contact with him. There was something about the way that she looked at him as she caressed him that sent a shock wave through his body. He grabbed her up in his arms and carried her to his bed, flinging her down on the unmade sheets that still smelled of last night’s lovemaking.

Macy gave a little cry of surprise at his sudden roughness, but she didn’t protest. She reached up to him, pulling him down on top of her, meeting his greedy kiss.

Arlan didn’t know what had gotten into him. Maybe the power and magnitude of the evening. Tonight, he didn’t just want to make love to Macy; he wanted to possess her. He squeezed her breasts and ran his hands down her slender torso, kissing her hard, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. He pushed his groin against hers, and grabbed her bare legs, forcing them around his back. They kissed and stroked in a seeming frenzy, their desire for each other rising with each panting breath they took.

“Arlan,” she gasped. “Now. I need you
now
.”

But he did not take her. Instead, he pressed his mouth to her neck and tasted her salty skin with the tip of his tongue. He even went so far as to draw back his lips.

No.
He would not bite her. He would not take her blood, although he thought she probably wouldn’t even care. She seemed, at this moment, to be as out of control as he was.

Instead of biting her, he spread her legs wide and sank hard into her. She cried out with pleasure and he did not relent. He pushed again and again, their movement so violent that they slid across the bed, taking sheets and the coverlet with them. Macy clung to him, making little whimpering sounds of passion.

They climaxed, Macy first, then Arlan, both closing their eyes and gasping in satisfaction. Breathing hard, he lowered himself over her, propping himself up so that he wasn’t too heavy on top of her. He brushed away the golden hair that had stuck to her damp cheek, kissed her closed eyelids.