From Fear to Eternity: An Immortality Bites Mystery (25 page)

Read on for a look back at the first Immortality Bites Mystery,

Blood Bath & Beyond

Available now from Obsidian!

T
he fangs don’t get nearly as much attention as you’d think.

Your average, everyday person doesn’t notice that they’re sharper than normal human canines. If they did, they’d have to deal with the possibility that vampires really exist. It’s a survival instinct on their part, culminating from centuries of living side by side with something they’d prefer to think of as a fictional predatory monster. Or, more recently, as an eternally sparkling teenager.

Real vampires make up approximately 0.001 percent of the population—that’s one in a thousand. So, worldwide, there are about six million vampires.

Humans just don’t see us. It does help that, despite what you might have heard, we can go outside into the sunshine on a lovely early June day like today without turning into a pile of ashes. We blend in with regular human society just fine and dandy.

It’s kind of like we’re invisible.

Someone bashed into me when I glanced down at the screen of my phone as I walked down the busy sidewalk.

“Hey!” the woman snarled. “Watch where you’re going, you dumb bitch!”

“Bite me,” I replied sweetly, then added under my breath, “or I might bite you.”

She gave me the finger, stabbing it violently in my direction as if it were a tiny, flesh-colored sword.

Okay, maybe we’re not
totally
invisible.

I couldn’t help that I had a natural-born talent to rub people the wrong way. It had very little to do with me being a vampire and more to do with me just being . . . me. I liked to think it was simply part of my charm.

I looked bleakly at the phone again. No messages. No calls. It felt like everyone I knew had recently deserted me. It wasn’t far from the truth, actually. Last month, my parents had moved to Florida to a retirement community. Two weeks ago, my best male friend, George, had headed for Hawaii to open a surf shop after he won a small fortune in a local lottery. And now, my best girlfriend and her husband were in the process of moving to British Columbia so she could take a job in cosmetics management.

“We’ll totally stay in touch,” Amy said to me at the airport before she got on her flight an hour ago. I’d met her there to say a last good-bye.

I hugged her fiercely. “Of course we will.”

Her husband stood nearby, giving me the evil eye like he usually did. We’d never really gotten along all that well. You win some, you lose some. “Are you finished yet? We’re going to miss our flight.”

I forced a smile. “I’m even going to miss
you
, Barry.”

He just looked at his wristwatch.

Amy smiled brightly. “This is a new beginning, Sarah. For both of us. We have to embrace change.”

I hated change.

I did hope to see her again soon, not too far into the future.

The future was something I thought about a lot these days. After all, as a fledgling vampire, sired less than seven months ago, I had a lot of future to look forward to. I just hoped it wouldn’t suck too much.

Yes, that was me. Sarah Dearly, immortal pessimist. I had to turn my frown upside down. Right now, I was so far down in the dumps that the raccoons had arrived and were starting to sniff around. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

It seemed as if new opportunities and new adventures had been presented to everyone but me, like they’d won the lottery—
literally
in one case—and I’d mistakenly put my ticket in the wash and now couldn’t even read the numbers.

“You look sad,” someone said.

I glanced over my shoulder, surprised to see a clown standing at the side of the street holding a bunch of balloons.

White makeup, poufy costume covered in colorful polka dots. Red hair. A hat with a fake flower springing out of it. Big red nose. The works.

It was like a bad omen. Clowns scared the crap out of me.

“Sad? Who, me?” I said warily, slipping my phone back in my shoulder bag. “Nah, I’m just melancholy today. There’s a difference, you know. Please don’t murder me.”

“Somebody needs a happy happy balloon to make her happy happy.” He handed me a yellow ribbon tied to a shiny red balloon. I looked up at it.

“Yes,” I said. “This will make all the difference in
the world. Thank you so much. Now life is happy happy for me again.”

The clown glared at me. “No reason to be sarcastic, lady.”

“I don’t need a reason.”

“The balloon’s five bucks.”

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Sold.” I grinned, then fished into my purse and pulled out the money. “Thanks so much, Bozo.”

“It’s Mr. Chuckles.”

“Whatever.”

The balloon did cheer me up more than I would have guessed. It reminded me of going to the National Exhibition with my mother every fall when I was a kid. Popcorn, cotton candy, hot dogs, and balloons. High-calorie memories with a little bit of helium and latex thrown in for good measure. Those were good times.

I’d needed the walk to clear my head. My head was officially cleared, so I returned to the huge luxury townhome I shared with my fiancé and let myself in.

Immediately, I sensed there was something different there. A big clue to this was the large black suitcase placed by the front door.

I heard Thierry on the phone, speaking French to someone. He was fluent, since he was originally from France centuries ago.

Yes, my fiancé was significantly older than me—by about six hundred years or so.

Some of the words I understood:

“Aujourd’hui,”
which I knew meant “today.”

“Seul,”
which meant “alone.”

“D’accord,”
which meant “alrighty.”

“Importante”
 . . . well, that one didn’t really need a translator.

Thierry entered the front foyer with his phone pressed to his left ear. He stopped when he saw me standing there gaping at him.

“
À bientôt
, Bernard.” He slipped the phone into the inside pocket of his black suit jacket. “Sarah, I was about to call you. I’m glad you’ve returned.”

He didn’t have an accent. His English was flawless, since he’d spoken it for at least five hundred years.

Thierry de Bennicoeur appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He was six feet tall, had black hair that was usually brushed back from his handsome face, and piercing gray eyes that felt like they could see straight through you clear to the other side. He always dressed in black Hugo Boss suits, which wasn’t the most imaginative wardrobe choice, but looked consistently perfect on him anyway. He was, in a word, a total fox. Even after all the time we’d spent together, there was no doubt in my mind about that.

Some people perceived him to be cold and unemotional, but I knew the truth. That facade was for protection only. Down deep, Thierry was fire and passion. Only . . . it was
really
down deep. Most people would never see that side of him and I was okay with that. I had the rock on my finger that proved I
had
seen the fire and hadn’t been burned yet.

However, I had to admit, that suitcase was causing a few painful sparks to fly up in my general direction.

“What’s going on?” I asked cautiously. “What’s with the luggage?”

“I have to go somewhere.”

“Where? And . . . when?”

The line of his jaw tightened. “I’ve been called
upon to meet with someone about important Ring business in Las Vegas.”

The Ring was the vampire council. Thierry was the original founder of the organization that tracked any potential vampiric issues worldwide and did what they could to neutralize them. He’d left a century ago after dealing with some personal issues and he hadn’t looked back since. The Ring had carried on without his input or influence.

“What business?” I asked.

“I’ve been offered a job with them. One I can’t decline.”

My eyes widened. “What kind of job?”

“Consultant.”

“What do you mean, you can’t decline it?”

He hesitated. “They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Who were you just talking to, Don Corleone?”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “His name is Bernard DuShaw. He was the most recent of several people I’ve spoken with over the last couple of hours. It’s his position I would be taking over now that he’s retiring.”

I thought of my parents settling in to Florida’s sand and sunshine now that they’d reached their retirement years. “He’s immortal, isn’t he? He doesn’t ever have to retire.”

“After a contracted term with the Ring, one is permitted to leave to pursue other interests if one wishes to. He wishes to.”

I tried to breathe normally. Contrary to one of many popular myths about vampires, we needed to do that regularly. “Okay
.
Well, the universe does work in mysterious ways. I guess this isn’t a bad thing. I think you’d be a great asset for them. Keep them from making any
mistakes or judging anyone too harshly without a proper assessment. So . . . you’re going today to meet with Bernard about this job?”

“Yes.”

“And when will you be back?”

“Perhaps you should sit down, Sarah.”

“I don’t want to sit down.” My anxiety spiked. “You are coming back, aren’t you?”

His expression tensed. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I’ll be returning to Toronto. The position calls for constant travel. I won’t be able to stay in one place for very long during my term as consultant.”

I tried to absorb all of this, but it was too much all at once. “How long is a term?”

He didn’t speak for a moment. “Fifty years.”

I just looked at him, momentarily rendered speechless by this unexpected news. Silence stretched between us.

His gaze moved to my balloon. “What’s this?”

My mouth had gone dry. “My happy happy balloon. I got it from a clown named Mr. Chuckles.”

His lips curved at the edges. “I thought you were going to the airport.”

“I did.”

“You stopped by a circus on the way home?”

“Thierry,” I said sharply. “What is going on? How can you just leave? Fifty years? It sounds like a prison sentence, not a new job. Are you saying . . . Are you saying that—” I didn’t want to speak my thoughts aloud. After everyone else I loved put thousands of miles between me and them, perhaps I should have expected this. But I hadn’t. This was a complete and total shock.

Everyone was leaving me. And now Thierry was joining the list.

“Sarah—”

“I heard you on the phone. You said
seul
, which means you’re going alone.”

“That’s what they want. This job requires focus and twenty-four/seven availability. I assumed you wouldn’t want to travel so much, never knowing where you’re going next. There’s a great deal of uncertainty involved with this job.”

“This job that you can’t say no to for some mysterious reason. A job that you’re going to be doing for half a century all by yourself, with no prior warning.” I crossed my arms tightly. Everything about this made me ill. “You know, maybe this job came at just the right time for you to change your mind about being with—”

“Please don’t finish that sentence.” He took me by my shoulders, gazing fiercely into my eyes. “All I want is for you to be happy—don’t you know that by now?”

I swallowed hard. “The clown thought a balloon would make me happy.”

“And did it?”

“For a couple minutes.”

He looked up at it. “It is a nice balloon.”

“Screw the balloon.” My throat felt so tight it was difficult to speak.

Thierry’s and my path hadn’t been an easy one, not since the very first moment we met. It wasn’t every day a twenty-eight-year-old fledgling hooked up with a six-hundred-year-old master vampire—we were so completely different in temperament and personality it was frequently glaring and often problematic. But we had and it felt right, yet somehow I knew, down deep, that it might not last forever. Forever was a very long time when you’re a vampire.

Just because I knew it, didn’t mean my heart didn’t break into a million pieces at the thought of losing him.

I tried to compose myself as much as possible after realizing that someone else I cared about would be moving away from me. This, though . . .
this
stung even more than saying good-bye to Amy. This felt permanent. Forever.

I wanted to be cool about getting dumped for a “job he couldn’t refuse,” but I wasn’t sure if I had it in me.

“I get it, Thierry. You don’t want to be distracted by someone who has a tendency to get into trouble at the drop of a hat. I can take a hint. I’m a liability. You want me to stay here.”

He let out a small, humorless laugh. “What I want is irrelevant. Can you honestly say you’d leave behind your life here in Toronto, everything you’ve ever known and most of your possessions, in order to accompany me on a job that will be frequently boring for you; one that will mean you’ll never know where your true home is?”

I stared up at him. “Are those rhetorical questions?”

“No, they’re real questions.” His brows drew together. “Would you come with me if I asked you to?”

I let go of the balloon, which floated up to the high ceiling of the front foyer before catching on a sharp crystal from the chandelier. It popped on contact.

I grabbed the lapels of his black jacket. “In a heartbeat.”

Something I rarely saw slid behind his gray eyes then, something warm and utterly vulnerable. “Then I suggest you pack a bag. Our flight leaves in three hours.”

I looked at him, stunned. “
Our
flight?”

“I wasn’t sure you’d be open to this abrupt change, but I did purchase you a ticket just in case.”

My heart lifted. “You’re so prepared. Just like a Boy Scout.”

“I try.” A smile played at his lips. “I just hope that this trip doesn’t make you change your mind about me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” My smile only grew wider before faltering just a little. “But I thought they wanted you to come alone. Won’t they give you a hard time about this?”

“If they want me for this job, then they will get my fiancée as well. They’ll just have to deal with it.” He took my face between his hands. “I love you, Sarah. Never doubt it.”

He kissed me and I couldn’t think of any happy happy balloon that could make me this happy happy.