My Immortal (20 page)

Her stomach dropped.

“You did it again, Adele. You solved another crime for me. I do appreciate it, but I really have business to get back to. We have five murders to prosecute and a suspect with no alibis.”

As he ushered her from his office, for once in her life she was totally speechless.

Adele waited just outside the doors of Channel Five News as twilight approached. She hid from the other people who departed the building, waiting for one person and one person only.

When Denise emerged she juggled her
attaché and her cell phone, not even noticing the dark-haired woman who fell into step behind her. They were to her car before Adele made her presence known.

“
Congratulations,” Adele said, and Denise jumped as she twirled around. “You busted the case. Of course that was easy enough to do after I had already brought Roman right to Vincent’s door.”

“
Oh, come on, Adele,” Denise purred. “There’s enough notoriety to go around in this town. Share the wealth.” Denise started to turn away but Adele grabbed her arm to swing her back around. As she did so, Denise’s shirt slipped open and revealed several scars on her chest, which Denise was quick to cover up.

“
Did he do that to you?” Somehow she doubted it, but she had to ask.

“
Do you care?” Denise bit back.

“
He didn’t,” Adele surmised by the way Denise wouldn’t look her in the eye. “Doesn’t it bother you that you might have sent an innocent man to jail?”

Denise just shrugged.
“Innocent or guilty, that’s for a jury to decide. I’m just here for the story. Vincent Capriotti has no alibi and he knew a little too much about the murders for my taste.”

“
Then why didn’t you turn him in before?” Adele demanded. “Why only when it suited your purpose?”

Denise chuckled as she got in her car.
“The only thing that pisses you off is now he no longer serves your purpose.” Adele’s stomach dropped. So that was why Denise hung him out to dry. “You don’t care if this guy is innocent or not, don’t even pretend that you do,” Denise said as she slammed the car door on Adele’s shocked expression. She put the car into gear and started out of the parking space, stopping only to roll down the window and leave Adele with this parting remark: “There’s a new kid in town now, Adele. I’ve got the guts to go where you can’t.” She tossed one of her business cards out the window and the breeze carried it to Adele’s feet. “But I do have a lot to thank you for. Anything I did here I learned from the Master.”

The wheels screeched as she pe
eled away.

Adele had a hard time digesting that last little dig Denise delivered. Was it true? Was she so committed to the story that she w
ould have hung an innocent man?

She
’d seen their killer face to face, and she knew down on some fundamental level Vincent was not him. She would have felt it, something would have been amiss. She couldn’t be in the presence of a cold-blooded killer and not feel it somewhere in her bones.

“Whether you realize it or not, your heart has already decided you can trust me,”
he had said.
“Listen to your instincts. They will never steer you wrong.”

It was totally against Adele
’s nature to do so, but she just knew in her gut Vincent was innocent. Inexplicably, she had faith.

So she raced home to scour through more of the books
, with time being of the essence. She’d find something, anything, then she’d go to the jail to speak to him. Maybe now he’d be a little more forthcoming.

Page after page of folklore that read like horror fantasy,
though none of it rang true. And none of it was particularly surprising. Most of it was stuff she’d already seen in the movies, except for some of the Balkans lore which predated the era of Bram Stoker. She was just about to give up when she got to a page that showed an illustration of a woman, her dress around her waist, nursing a child with yellow eyes, its fangs biting into her pale breast. A vampire loomed in the shadows.

“
Modern folklore explores the reproduction of vampires, typically with a male vampire siring a child from a human mother. Traditionally when a vampire mates with a human partner, the child produced is called
–” Adele gulped and sat up straight, unable to believe her eyes. "Dhampir,” she breathed.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Adele shrugged on her jacket as she cradled her cell phone to her ear.
“I can’t talk now. Just meet me at the jail. I’ll see you soon.”

She raced to the door, carrying the book in her arms, her page marked with
Denise’s business card. She swung the door open to Nicholas, who carried a full bouquet of pungent blood red roses in one hand and a bag of takeout from Gerard’s in the other.

“
I didn’t mean to startle you,” he apologized while she recovered, offering the flowers. “Were you going somewhere?” She was running away from him again, and it was clear he didn’t like it.

Adele tucked the book under her arm.
“As a matter of fact, I was.”

“
Let me come with you,” he offered hopefully.

“
No,” she was quick to reply. “That’s not necessary. It’s a private matter, actually.”

He nodded. He understood. He obviously
didn’t like it, but he understood. “Of course. Can I walk with you at least?”

“
No, but thank you.” She rushed passed him and the book slipped from her arm and onto the floor, opening to the page with the child Dhampir. She bent to retrieve it but he was much too quick.

“
This is why you can’t sleep, Adele. You shouldn’t read this sort of thing.”

She shrugged.
“It’s just research. For a story.” She grabbed the book from his hands and rushed away with a quick goodbye tossed over her shoulder as she went.

Nicholas knelt down to retrieve the business card that had slipped out of the book.
“Denise Carter,” he read aloud before pocketing the card.

Michael was waiting for her on the steps of the police headquarters. She shoved the book at him.
“Read this.”

He complied. When he was through his shocked eyes darted to hers.
“And this, this is what Isabel called you?”

Adele nodded.

“What does it mean?” Michael asked.

“
I don’t know. But I think I know who does.”

Michael jogged along after her as she took the steps two at a time.

Vincent sat in his jail cell, in a lotus position on the floor. He didn’t seem upset, he didn’t seem scared. He didn’t seem any different at all from any other time she’d seen him. The only thing absent were his normal clothes, replaced by an ugly orange jumpsuit.

He
didn’t even open his eyes as she stood by the bars, Michael just behind her. “I read the books,” she said softly.

“
Then you know who you are,” he stated, without opening his eyes.

“
I still don’t know that,” she said. “But I know that you can tell me. Because you’ve known it from the start.”

He opened his
eyes and looked at her. Such sadness was there it took her breath away. “We tend to know each other,” he finally said as he stood to his feet.

Sh
e watched him approach the bars until he stood directly in front of her. He raised his hands and without being told to she matched his movement. Their hands touched and for a horrifying moment she saw her mother as a much younger woman being over taken by a man in a long black cloak his fingers long and bony, his eyes burning yellow like the sun.

Adele gasped and tried to move her hands away, but Vincent held tight. Michael was quick to assist her but he was no match for the man behind the bars. He may not have been a big man, but his strength was
bigger than all three of them.

Adele looked into his eyes and saw her mother giving birth. Brenda grunted and groaned, then screamed as her legs parted to a priest in front of her. A bloody blue body emerged – a male child. Just then the window of the room exploded open and the same
dark figure appeared. He snatched the newborn from the hands of the priest, and then sliced into the baby's face with his claws, drawing blood before disappearing into a mist, taking the screaming baby with him.

Her eyes immediately went to the scar on
Vincent’s cheek, stretched thin with time. It made sense. The scar, the photos… why she knew he wasn’t capable of murdering those children. They were one in the same. “You’re my brother,” she finally gasped.

“
I am,” he said.

“
Then you are a Dhampir as well,” she said.

“
I am,” he repeated.

“
That means the killer is our father,” she concluded.

“
And only we can stop him,” Vincent told her. “Dhampirs are hunters. This is what we were born for. And what you were reborn for.”

Her brow creased.
“What?”

“
He brought you back, Adele,” Vincent whispered, clutching her hands with his own. “You used to be one of them.”

Michael could tell Vincent was gripping her hand hard when blood started to ooze in between his fingers.
He’d reopened her wound. “Guard!” Michael cried out as he tried to pull Adele away from the crazy-eyed man.

“
Wait!” Adele screamed to Michael before she turned back to Vincent. “One of what? One of what?!”

“
A vampire,” Vincent growled as guards rushed the scene. They tried to pull her away. “A female child born of rape, fathered by a vampire. You were a damned soul.”

“
Let her go,” yelled the guards, brandishing their batons.

“
He’s come back for you,” Vincent cried out, tears running down his face. “It’s you he’s been after from the start.”

One of the guards used his baton on Vincent, breaking his arm in a sickening crack. Adele
fainted into Michael’s open arms.

Adele
opened her eyes to complete darkness. She reached up to find herself enclosed in a wooden box, just like her hallucination from the cemetery. She gulped in air but there didn’t seem to be enough to fill her lungs. Hysterically she began to claw at the top, the wood chipping away under her sharpened nails. It crumbled away as she burrowed through the hard wood and soft dirt, rising up out of a grave with a horrifying screech. She glanced up at a castle nestled in the mountainous skyline, outlined by a full moon.

In the nearby woods a wolf brayed. Her face curved into a smile as she seemed to float over the ground and straight
into the heart of the dark forest.

She wore a long silk gown in deep
emerald green. The top dipped in between her heavy breasts and her neck throbbed in pain.

W
hat hurt much worse was the hunger in her belly. It was a primitive hunger that propelled her forward, her hands flung out to either side as she made her way amidst the trees, her long talon-like nails chipping the bark away. Her hair flew behind her back and the moonlight burned her face like the sun. In the distance she could hear a man singing. She laughed, a deep guttural laugh, as she seemed to fly in that direction.

The hunter had made camp and was preparing his evening meal.
A skinned wolf carcass crackled in the flames as he went through bags of jewels just within the circle of light from the campfire. She knew those bags at first sight. They were her bags. He had stolen them. Her whole body ached to be fed, but it wasn’t the meat she needed.

She slowly circled the encampment. Twigs broke under her bare feet, drawing the hunter's attention. He grabbed his crossbow and went as far as the light would allow.
“Is anyone there?” he called out.

She laughed in response, a shrill cackling laugh that echoed through the camp. A wind stamped the flames almost completely out. The hunter's hand shook as he took aim with the crossbow and fired fruitlessly into the night.

Twigs broke behind him and he whirled around. There she stood just at the edge of the campfire. Her long gown was mired in dirt, her violet eyes danced as a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“
It’s you,” said the hunter, lowering his weapon. “Didn’t get enough of us before, eh?” He tossed the bow aside and sauntered toward her. “I knew you really didn’t mean to complain. Your mother sure didn’t.” He laughed then. “But it should comfort you to know she died happy.”

An anger consumed Adele as she approached the man. He grabbed her by the neck and pulled her close for a hard kiss full of lust, rage and dominance. Had he kissed her mother like that, she thought to herself, right before he raped and kill
ed her?

He drove his tongue in between her lips and as she opened her mouth her newly formed fangs pu
nctured either side of his face, spilling blood into both of their mouths. He wrenched back to stare at her hungry bloody smile in wide-eyed terror. Easily Adele snapped his arm in two, like a twig.