Deadly Encounters (Raina Kirkland Book 4) Read online

  “What warning? It’s already begun.” And as my dream faded into darkness his frown was the last thing I saw.

  WHERE THERE ARE BOOKS THERE IS HOPE

  I WOKE A few hours before nightfall to the smell of food. Gross. It smelled like bread, steamed veggies, spices and all those things I used to love so much. Now they made me plug my nose in disgust. Before my death I worried about the time when I’d be forced into an all liquid diet of human blood, but I understood better now. It didn’t feel like I’d given anything up, because what I used to enjoy made me sick to my stomach. All I wanted was blood. It was all I craved. Lying in bed, my mouth salivated for it. I finally understood why so many vampires favored the color red, and preferred humans untainted by perfumes. Perfumes masked their natural animal scent. In human terms, it would be like spaghetti smelling like overpowering sandalwood…Yuck!

  There was a soft knock at the door. “Come in,” I said as I sat up in bed. If I didn’t already smell Alistair behind the door, I’d have expected Damon to wake me. I wanted him to. Ever since I mentioned Adia, I felt a distance growing between us. When I finally came to bed this morning, I tried to cuddle next to him, but he simply gave me a light kiss on the forehead. “I’ll leave you to rest,” he said, and left the bedroom. I felt rejected. There was once a time when he would wake me to passionate lovemaking. Are those times gone forever?

  Alistair came in with his gold hair tied back. He was wearing jeans and a nice red dress shirt, my favorite look on him. With a thick British accent he said, “Your family has just finished their dinner and are outside playing with the snow in the dwindling daylight. I was wondering if you might join me for breakfast in my library. I have some interesting books on possession we could study together.”

  I smiled. “That sounds lovely, but could you first make some calls for me.”

  “Of course. Though, it’s my understanding that Damon has already been in contact with your family on the matter of your return. He’s planned a party for tomorrow night, Sunday.”

  I smirked at his accent. It made him far too irresistible. I couldn’t help but assume it was for my benefit.

  “No shit,” Raphael spat from inside my mind. Was its effect on me that obvious? “Duh.”

  “That was a sweet gesture, but it will have to wait. Raphael warned me about an epidemic of some kind meant to be unleashed in Washington,” I said.

  Alistair moved from the door to the bed and sat down beside me. I fought the impulse to touch him. “What sort of epidemic?”

  “Do you know of the god, Apollo?” I asked tentatively.

  He frowned, “Adia’s god.”

  “But Apollo is a Greek god, not a Celtic god.”

  “Not all gods limit themselves to one geographical region. They change their name, their ‘purpose’ and their look in order to be more marketable to other people. In Great Britain, he is known as Moritasgus, a god of healing. Adia joined their order rather than marry the man our father chose for her. Years later she returned to us as a vampire. Dearg-due they called her. She killed us all, and was gone before the sun rose. The town burned our bodies, but the flames didn’t destroy me completely. The next night I dug myself out of my own shallow grave. I haven’t physically seen my sister since. I’m still not sure why I came here after word of her death reached me.”

  “Curious,” I said to myself. So much new information and so intricately connected. “Raphael warned me that Apollo has created some kind of end of the world thing, and he means to unleash it in Washington.”

  Alistair was silent for a time and I let him be. Finally he asked, “Did the demon give no other information?”

  “I don’t want to put anyone in a panic or stir up any prejudice, but it may have something to do with vampirism. Apparently, Apollo invented it for this purpose thousands of years ago. It didn’t work then, but he never gave up on it.”

  Alistair’s brow creased in thought. He stood from the bed and moved to the door, but he didn’t exit the room. He turned back to me instead. “And you want me to call the authorities and warn them?”

  “Yes, anyone with any authority on vampires, like Detective Fillips.” She was the Department head of Ethereal Investigations or EI. It was a branch of the state police force that dealt with any crimes committed by or against non-humans. She was also a very good friend of mine. “Also, Melvern and any other vampire masters you can think of.”

  “And how should I tell them I came by this information?” he asked, and he looked upset. He had good reason to be. Not only were we all in danger from some unknown attack, but vampirism is suspect. When any preternatural creature is suspect, bad things happen. Mass imprisonment comes to mind. Rampant hate crimes. And even if we survived this ‘attack’ we’d be dealing with years of negative repercussions on the vampire community. That’s nothing to take lightly. The best thing we could do to soften the social blow, was participate fully.

  “Truth.”

  “Right, Raina Kirkland has come back from Hell with bad news….” He almost chuckled at the statement, but stopped himself, and left me to get dressed.

  I found a small bag of my clothes left at the foot of my bed with a few articles of clothing, nothing more; some underclothes and a deep blue dress, simple but flattering. I put on light makeup, my flat velvet shoes, hair up in a high pony tail and done.

  ♦♦♦

  Alistair’s library was huge. The room was three stories tall with wall to wall books from all over the world, collected over hundreds of years, as he explained it. We were sitting in front of a tall tinted window on the second floor of the library. The window overlooked Bastion Fatal’s parking lot, and I could see the kids playing. It seemed that Katie was back, and she brought Everett with her this time. Isobel was bundled up tight, almost completely covered by her hat and coat, and holding onto Katie’s legs. The boys hurled snow balls at each other. It looked fun, but I couldn’t join them. I had books to read.

  I held my second mug of blood up to my mouth and breathed in the intoxicating scent. I took a long savoring sip of the blood. Mmm, such rich flavor.

  “Without you, they fell apart. With you, they’re a family again,” Alistair said as he came up from behind me and hugged me, wrapping his arms around my waist and tucking himself in against my back. I broke his hold on me by turning in his arms and moving toward our table, piled high with books. The books left little room for the large pitcher of hot blood and our electronic tablets.

  I picked up my tablet and scrolled down the internet page by pressing my finger down the screen. It was just another website that claimed to have information about the occult and possession, but it seemed clichéd and utterly useless, like so many of the others. I wasn’t really reading the page, which was comparing humans possessing other humans to demons possessing humans…Though an interesting comparison, it was something I’d read twice already that night.

  A human possessing a human showed no outward signs of possession besides an abrupt change in personality and habits. Like when Adia possessed Alistair. He went from being the man that saved my uncle’s life some thirty years ago, to the man that tortured my brother over twenty years later.

  Now, a demon possessing a human; that was something I truly never want to encounter. Picture a human with super powers, only his body is contorted, mangled, rotting and disfigured. Human bodies weren’t built to contain such raw power. Reading these horror stories made me look at my left hand. The light was covered by a thick black glove. I truly wasn’t the least bit human anymore, was I? Humans weren’t built to contain such energy, but I was.

  “What plans do you have for after your family has gone to bed?” Alistair asked from across the table. I balled my left hand into a fist and looked up at him. He was sitting with crossed legs, holding a book in his lap. His hair was tousled, his ears failed to hold all of it from falling into his face. The complete nerd in me found the image sexy as hell.

  “I plan to visit Nick at Kamaria’s. He’s probably worri
ed sick, or worried angry, rather.”

  He looked back down at his book, and said, “And after that.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  He shrugged broad shoulders and looked up at me. “I know a place in Seattle that serves vampires exclusively. It’s quite nice, classy actually.”

  I tilted my head like a cat that heard a strange sound. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

  Alistair groaned. “Only if you want to go with me.” He shook his head, “I know its terrible timing, what with the end of humanity as we know it, and your daughter’s possession.”

  “Yes.”

  He looked hurt for a fraction of a second before putting on a mask of indifference. “Of course,” and he looked back down at his book.

  I flinched. It hurt to see him shut down just like that. “I meant, yes, as in, yes I want to go with you. We probably won’t be able to do anything about Isobel’s possession until later tonight and no amount of sitting around here is going to make the world or my daughter any safer, so yes.”

  He didn’t smile. I wished he’d smile, but he didn’t. He just nodded and kept his eyes on his book. Darn it…

  “Any luck?” Damon asked quietly as he climbed the steps to the second story. He was alone, no kids. Where were they? I put the tablet down and zoomed over to the window. Everett and Thomas were still outside, building a snow-dragon. “Katie’s feeding Isobel,” Damon said, probably guessing my unasked question. Without thinking, my hands went to my breasts. I only got to breastfeed Isobel for a couple of days before my death. I mourned that loss.

  “No luck so far,” I said as I came back to the table, and poured myself another mug of the red stuff. For some reason that made Alistair smile.

  “Maybe not you, but I’ve found something rather intriguing,” Alistair said. He stood up and placed his large open book on top of the other books on the table, so we could all get a good look at what he’d found.

  “This is a book written by an African shaman. Well, it’s more of a journal put together by his relatives long after his death.” While holding his place, he flipped through some of the other pages to show us beautiful sketches and hand written journal entries before moving back to his intended page of interest. “In this entry a young child was brought to the shaman. The child was thought to be possessed by a demon. Normally, the town’s people would burn the demon out, rather than go to all the trouble of taking him to a shaman.”

  “They burn their children?” I asked. I didn’t even want to imagine that, but I had a bad habit of seeing in my mind everything people say and the very idea that any child had been tortured in such a way made me furious. If I could, I’d Mother Goose the entire world, and no child would ever be abused. Not on my watch, not ever.

  “Not this one. Shaman Fungai wasn’t the sort of healer to jump to conclusions. He was very wise. He watched the boy closely for days and did a thorough investigation into the boy’s family and village. In the end he concluded that the boy was being possessed by a human, not a demon. His mannerism and diction had changed, nothing else.”

  “So, definitely human,” I said.

  Alistair smiled at me, bright and proud. “Right.” Boy I loved his smile.

  I didn’t realize I’d been staring at him until Damon put his hand on the book hard. “Am I right to assume this story has a helpful ending?” He sounded irritated.

  Alistair stood up tall and looked down his nose at Damon. He was half a foot taller than him…but not for long. Being a shape-shifting barguest, Damon grew taller than Alistair. Had I missed something? I’d never known Damon to be so petty.

  I shook my head. “Stop fighting.”

  “We’re not fighting,” Damon said.

  “Yeah, right—,” I set my cup down and I put myself between them. “What happened to the boy?” I asked Alistair in a flat tone of annoyance.

  He looked back down at the book, but placed his hand at the small of my back, and it was enough to make my heart race a tad. He looked up over my head at Damon. “You hear that?” he asked with laughter in his voice. Damon stepped closer and towered over both of us.

  “Damon, Alistair! What the fuck happened to you two?” I shouted, earning me some mean looks from the other folks in the library. I ignored them. Instead I looked from Alistair to Damon. “Before I died, you were friends.”

  Damon looked down at me. “Pain changes people. We all deal with grief differently. Alistair obsesses over what he’s lost until he can think of nothing else.”

  “And Damon fucks every willing woman he can,” Alistair said through clenched teeth and a deep frown. “Were you thinking of Raina while you were fucking them?”

  “Stop,” I said.

  “I’d lost a woman I loved. I sought comfort. I don’t see what I did wrong.”

  I made a sour face. I didn’t like how he phrased that last comment; ‘a woman I loved.’ Maybe I was being overly sensitive. Alistair fired back at him and I face-palmed.

  “There are more important things happening here,” I growled. They both stopped and looked at me, but their anger made the space around us hot, too hot to stand in comfortably, so I took a step back from them and turned to Alistair. “Tell me what the shaman did to the boy.”

  He turned back to the book, “Shaman’s are men and women capable of out of body experiences. They can travel between worlds and enter the minds of others, not physically, but mentally.”

  “I’ve done that once,” I spoke up. “Master Melvern put my consciousness inside of a girl in a coma to help identify her attackers.”

  “Exactly. The shaman entered the boys mind. He expelled the human entity and the boy woke up cured of the possession.”

  I clapped my hands and nearly jumped for joy. “So, we call Melvern. He can send my consciousness into Isobel’s mind and I can expel Adia,” I smiled. “So simple!”

  “How did the shaman ‘expel’ this human entity, and what became of the entity?” asked Damon. I nodded and looked to Alistair. Both were valid questions.

  Alistair picked up the book and started flipping through the pages, “He didn’t elaborate on that, but this is something, isn’t it? Melvern can send Raina in. She can talk to Adia.”

  “And what is supposed to come of that?” Damon barked.

  Alistair looked pissed again. I stepped up to Damon and put my hand on his chest. “It’s something. It’s a chance to learn more.” I looked at the clock on the wall. “And it’s getting late and I want to spend as much time as I can with my children before they have to go to bed.”

  “I’ll call Melvern, I’m sure he’ll be glad to help us,” said Alistair.

  “Thank you,” I said, and then I walked away, down the stairs and out of the library. Damn, drama is draining. What the hell?

  “They’re fighting over you like a couple of high school girls,” said Raphael. “Isn’t that what every woman wants?”

  “No.”

  LEARNING TO HATE

  BACK IN DAMON’S apartment, Katie busied herself in the kitchen while I sat at the dining table, watching Isobel meticulously put sliced cucumbers in her mouth and eat them one at a time with dainty fingers. I smiled down at her, my little lady. Every time I looked at her or thought about her, I felt cheated, wronged and guilty for not having been there for her. It was a depressing cocktail of emotions. I had to force myself to see the bright side. She was healthy and I would be there for her from now on. I’d never leave her again. I brushed away tears from my cheeks and pet her head. My skin looked so discolored next to her creamy complexion. It was off-putting.

  “You sure love your veggies,” I said with a smile.

  “She’ll only eat cucumbers,” Katie spoke up from the kitchen.

  I looked up at my half-sister. “Why?”

  She leaned against the kitchen counter with a dish cloth in her hands. “She used to eat more, but she self-limited down to just cucumbers—Well, she’d eat f.r.i.e.s., too if we’d let her.”

  I looked do
wn at Isobel. No wonder she was so small. She was undernourished. “This isn’t healthy. She needs more than just cucumbers,” I said.

  “I know, but trying to get her to eat anything else is like trying to give a feral cat a bath,” she joked, and threw the dish cloth to the counter.

  “Speaking of cats, how did your talk with Everett go?” I asked.

  “He knows he fucked up big time, and he’s willing to do anything to make it right. Basically, he’s my bitch until I say otherwise,” she said with a smirk.

  I laughed. “So, no more familiars then,” I began. “Is he going to quit his job?”

  She frowned and shrugged. “After your mom married Ruy, she gave Fauna full ownership of The Natural Kitchen, and moved to Darkness to live with him. Fauna needs Everett, but I can’t have him abusing my animals. On the other hand, he needs a job, because we need the money. My job pays well, but not well enough to buy a house and start a family.”

  “I have money,” I said. “I’m sure Fauna can find another witch to help her in the shop, and I’ll help you support yourselves until Everett finds another job. We can move back into the house. We can totally convert the basement into a little apartment for you two.”

  “No,” she said. “I can’t accept that kind of help. It’s too much.”

  “It’s not too much, because I love you.”

  “Thanks, but it is…,” she said. “Especially since you have no money anymore. After you died the bank just took it all away, and put it into Thomas’ locked bank account to wait until he turned eighteen.”

  “Shit,” I shrugged. “I’ll call the lawyer first thing Monday, and see if I can’t fix that.”

  Katie pushed herself away from the counter and stood up tall. “Well, I’m more than willing to break our lease at our crappy apartment and move back to the house. Will Damon be moving back with us?”

  I looked at Isobel and felt a sadness creep into my mind. I hadn’t thought about it. “I don’t know,” I began, but I heard people coming off of the elevator. It smelled like Damon and the boys. “The boys are back,” I said.