Eternal by V. Forrest (primary phonics books .TXT) 📕

on the bar again. “I just figured you had your life in Philadelphia. Your FBI career.” Her voice sounded wistful. Hurt. “We were good friends, Fia. For a long time. What happened? What did I do wrong?”

Fia made herself look at Sorcha. “You didn’t do anything,” she said softly. “It’s me.” She was quiet for a minute, thinking. She had shut Sorcha out. And Eva. And Alana. They had all been such great friends for a long time. Hundreds of years. And then, Fia had gotten caught up in her life with Joseph, then the FBI…her human life…and…

She wasn’t sure what had happened. Why. She had just pulled back from Clare Point and everyone here, including her friends.

Sorcha waited, sipping her beer.

“I don’t know what to say.” Fia grimaced and looked up. “I’m sorry?”

Sorcha grinned, sliding her bottle across the bar to clink against Fia’s bottle. “To old friends.”

“Old friends,” Fia agreed.

As the two talked, the party around them gained momentum. Maybe it was just the beer and lack of sleep, but as the hours passed, the music seemed to Fia to get louder, the movement of the bodies around her more frantic.

By her fourth beer, Fia was beginning to think it was time she made her exit. Sorcha had wandered off with Eva to dance with a human couple sporting plastic, glow-in-the-dark fangs and Fia was left alone on the bar stool to finish the last of her beer and find enough energy to walk out.

She was watching a woman dance…actually, watching the woman’s Gucci shoes—they were really cute—when her buddy from earlier in the evening swooped in, satin cape flapping.

“A dance, madam?”

She was going to say no. She had no intentions whatsoever of dancing with him. How did one slow dance to Def Leppard, anyway? But then he drew his hand down his throat, catching Fia’s attention, and she slid off the stool, mesmerized by the steady pulse in his throat.

“Billy’s Got a Gun” throbbed in her head as Jeremy wrapped his arms and his cloak around her. It was just so easy…easier even than with the men she picked up in bars. This guy asked her if she’d like to taste his blood.

Everything, everyone, was spinning around Fia. She brushed her lips against Jeremy’s throat and he moaned. She bit gently, testing the waters. He groaned.

She’d only intended to take a tiny sip. No sex of course, and just a taste. But he wanted it. Wanted her. It was what all the humans in the room wanted.

Jeremy’s blood warm and sweet and tangy on her tongue, she caught him in her arms as he passed out. Realizing what she had done, she glanced around, afraid someone had seen her. But there were other young sept members on the dance floor supporting their unconscious partners.

There were humans lying on the couches, on the floor. Sorcha was kissing a good-looking human wearing a costume straight out of the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula, including the spectacles and top hat.

Fia eased Jeremy’s six-foot frame onto the carpet. As Arlan said, he’d remember nothing in the morning. If this party was like the ones in the old days, while still unconscious, the humans would be transported back to where they had come from and in the morning they would be weak, hung over. They would remember nothing of where they had been or what they had done. At the very most, they would all talk about the weird dreams they had had.

A human, lying half under an end table, caught Fia’s hair and twisted it around his fingers. She crawled toward him. He lifted his chin, groping her breasts and offered his neck, already dotted with punctures. She only took a couple of sips. She didn’t know how much of his blood had already been drained. Then Eva, stretched out on the end of couch, beckoned her.

Fia half crawled, half dragged herself to the couch, where a human male lay passed out in Eva’s lap. Eva smiled, her mouth red with the man’s blood.

Fia lowered her head and drank greedily.

Fia didn’t know how long she was on the floor or how many humans she sampled or how many vampires she shared her own blood with. It had been a very long time since she had overindulged this way and after a while all the faces faded. She saw nothing but blood. Smelled nothing but blood. Tasted nothing but sweet, forbidden, human blood.

It was almost dawn when she stumbled up the cellar steps, missing one flip-flop. She left the other under Mrs. Hill’s kitchen table. In the gray dawn, Fia cut across yards and slunk into her mother’s house. She thought she would do better just to shower, get dressed, and get on with her day, but by the time she let herself into the Seahorse bedroom, she was so tired that she decided to lie down. Just for five minutes. Then she would have to get up. She was meeting Glen for breakfast. She had work to do. A life to return to. A real life.

Fia must have dozed off. She missed breakfast, grabbed a shower. A glance at her neck in the mirror while dressing made her realize that the tank top she had intended to wear under her suit jacket was definitely not going to do today. She stole one of her little brothers’ turtlenecks out of the laundry room. Maroon. She hated maroon. She found Glen on the front porch in an antique glider. She dropped down beside him. “Mornin’.”

He glanced at her. Then a double take. “You okay?”

Sounded like genuine concern.

She lowered her sunglasses from her damp hair and sipped from the white mug in her hand. Mornings like this, she wished she drank coffee. She could have used the extra kick of caffeine. “Fine.”

“You don’t look fine. You look…hungover. I thought you said you didn’t drink.”

She would have smiled had her head not felt as if someone were driving nails into it with a pneumatic gun. What