A Kiss Beneath the Veil (5 page)

“Emma, can you tell me whose voice you showed me earlier?” she
asked. Ghosts no longer existed in the stream of time the way living people
did, Emma might not be able to recall something she’d said to Daphne. When the
ghost just continued floating there Daphne tried again.

“Emma, who said ‘needs me to be a killer’ to you? Tell me
what he said again,” Daphne prompted.

Her cheery little office with its butter yellow walls and mossy
green carpeting faded at the edges of Daphne’s perception. She could almost
make out a tree lined road to her left, but when she turned her head it slipped
away. She could hear heavy footsteps on gravel and fear made the hair stand up
on the back of her neck. Someone was coming. Someone evil who was going to hurt
her.

“...needs me to be a killer, then, hey, I’ll be a killer,”
the man said, his voice growing
clearer as he approached. Then a figure became visible on her right. It was a
living scarecrow. A child’s vision of the creature shambling in from a
cornfield entered her mind. These were Emma’s last thoughts before the monster
killed her.

“
Daphne!
” Isaac shouted, shaking her lightly. The
darkened road disappeared along with her brightly lit office. She was suddenly
standing in the circle of Isaac’s arms on a deserted beach. Palm trees were
bowed overhead, framing a star dusted sky. The rhythmic rush of the waves
matched the rush of her heartbeat in her ears as she came out of the trance
she’d been in. Isaac had pulled her away from her office and the little dead
girl, his concerned face was inches from hers and she could tell that he was on
the verge of giving her another shake for good measure.

“I’m okay! I’m okay, relax,” she said, trying to catch her
breath and calm her racing heart.

Her face was suddenly mushed against his hard chest and a
rain of foreign curses was dusted down over her head.

    “What happened? Why did you freak out? She was just about
to show me the killer,” she said, but the words were muffled against the shirt
pressing into her mouth. He was literally going to smother her in a minute, but
before she passed out from lack of oxygen he released her, but only far enough
to see her face.

“What happened?! Your eyes rolled back in your head and you
started speaking in a man’s voice! You couldn’t hear me, I couldn’t wake you!
Thank god you never practiced your gift during the night because my heart
couldn’t have stood it,” he finished, gripping her arms so tightly that she
almost winced. His ebony curls were extra tousled in the soft sea breeze and
his pale blue eyes glowed faintly with emotion.

“I was channeling the dead girl’s memories. Not
intentionally, but still,” she said, shrugging against his hands. He
immediately loosened them, smoothing his palms over the tender area.

“Whatever possessed you was not human. You weren’t reciting
something you saw, you literally spoke in another voice,” Isaac insisted,
frowning down at her worriedly.

Daphne was worried too. No ghost had ever been able to force
her to channel before. “She looked human, I mean her mom was human...I think.
What could she have been?” Daphne asked. The strange way the ghost’s eyes
disappeared wasn’t all that uncommon. Many ghosts retained an echo of the
injuries that killed them. Though Emma had been choked to death and her body
found before it decomposed. Her eyes should still have been intact...

“There are night breeds that have yet to reveal themselves.
Creatures that blend far better into human society than most. It is possible
that the killer is targeting their children. We will have to determine whether
the other victims were human or if choosing this little girl was a random act,”
Isaac said, tilting his head thoughtfully as he continued to stroke her arms
and back.

“Have you eaten yet?” he asked abruptly, surprising her.

“No, actually, I was sort of sidetracked,” she said, trying
not to bring up Mark again. Isaac’s eyes flashed in annoyance, no need to spell
out what had distracted her.

“Come, let me feed you,” he said. How he made such simple
words sound so naughty was beyond her. “You can tell me more about the little
girl while we walk.”

So she told Isaac everything she could remember about the
ghost’s bottomless eyes and the creepy scarecrow man who’d come to kill her. She
also recounted the sessions with the other children, but she had a feeling that
they were different than Emma. Human where she was...other. Speaking just from
her gut, she’d say all the children had been killed opportunistically. Emma was
just in the wrong place at the wrong time and the scarecrow had taken
advantage.

 She told him about everyone who’d worked on the case as well,
and who she’d shared information with, including Mark who’d always been
extremely passionate about finding the killer. All the while Isaac held her
hand as they walked slowly down a moonlit path by the ocean - no telling which
one - the scent of sweet flowers and salt breezes surrounding them.

“Mark has led the search for this killer for a year and
hasn’t stopped it yet?” Isaac finally asked. Daphne wanted to defend Mark, but
something had changed about him recently. Once he’d finally gotten the hint
that she just wasn’t going to go out with him he’d grown even more aggressive
about finding the killer. Pestering her almost daily about some facet of the
case or another; it was the only thing they actually had to talk about anymore.
For a moment she questioned whether he’d drawn out the investigation as a way
to maintain contact with her, but then she forced that thought away. Mark
allowing children to be murdered as a way to hit on her? Come on!

“The killer is just really good at hiding his face from the
kids and covering his tracks. Mark’s done everything humanly possible to catch
this guy,” she said firmly. She
wouldn’t
believe otherwise.

“Indeed. Then perhaps it is time to do everything
inhumanly
possible,” Isaac said with a lifted brow.

Daphne agreed.

Their walk ended at the edge of a small town. It was
somewhere in the Bahamas, according to Isaac. She’d never been to an island
before and couldn’t help grinning in enjoyment. Isaac’s mood seemed to lift
when he saw her smile. His own lips curving in turn as he escorted her to an
open air restaurant on the beach. She didn’t think the little shack had a name,
but it was filled to capacity with laughing people enjoying delicious smelling
food served on thin paper plates. All signs pointing to the probability that
she was about to eat something fantastic.

Isaac miraculously wrangled them a table, probably using his
looks alone and not some secret vamp mind-control. An ice cold drink was placed
in front of her and was soon followed by piles of seafood and fried cakes of
some kind. All Daphne knew was that it was ambrosial. Isaac even ate some.
Vampires couldn’t digest food, but they could eat for the pleasure of the
taste. They just had to regurgitate it at some point, which wasn’t any worse
than how anybody else got rid of the food they ate, if you thought about it.

“So, what now?” Daphne asked later, once she was stuffed and
lounging back to watch the tourists dancing and flirting. Her own thoughts had
darkened, returning to the ghost and the killer. “We need to stop him, Isaac,”
she said softly.

“Now I will find out what Emma’s mother knows about her daughter,”
Isaac said, stroking the back of her hand with the smooth pad of his thumb.

She turned to meet his eyes, almost shocked anew by his
beauty. The fact that he was a thousand years old, wealthy beyond measure - if
his castle was any indication - and had the honor of a hero ready to hunt down
a murderer, all while still being easygoing enough to take her to dinner at a
crab shack on the beach just blew her mind. How could she have run from him?

“Isaac...” she began, but couldn’t finish. Would “sorry” be
enough?

Isaac’s eyes sparked and his mouth softened as he drew her
into his lap as easily as she might lift a blanket over her knees.

“Super-strength,” Daphne murmured, watching the shape of his
mouth change even more, obviously with the extension of his fangs.

“We did not lie about that,” he answered. Yep, he was
flashing fang now.

Daphne smiled and drew the length of her unbound hair over
her shoulder, allowing the desire that constantly sparkled between them to
overshadow the worry in her mind. “Come, let me feed you,” she said, mirroring
his words and wondering for a moment if they would have the same effect on him
as they’d had on her. She had the barest instant to wonder before his fangs
were buried in her throat and he was groaning in pleasure against her skin.

She sighed into his hair as pulses of bliss echoed through
her body. A vampire’s kiss was indeed delicious.

Chapter
Four

They stood on Mrs. Berkley’s doorstep, waiting for the bell
to draw a response. It was too late to be bothering normal people, but Mrs.
Berkley wasn’t normal. She was a woman living in a ruined world. A place that
her daughter had been savagely ripped from. Things would probably never be
normal for her again.

Isaac nodded slightly and stood a bit straighter, obviously
sensing her approach before Daphne heard her soft footsteps on the other side
of the door.

“Yes?” A woman’s voice called through the wood.

“Mrs. Berkley? It’s me, Daphne, the medium you came to
yesterday,” Daphne responded.

The locks immediately scraped open and the door swung wide.
“Yes? Did you find something? Does Emma need me?” Mrs. Berkley asked quickly,
reaching for Daphne’s arm. She was dressed in a thick white robe and socks, her
hair tied back and frazzled on one side as though she’d been pulling on it for
some time.

“We needed to talk with you a bit more about Emma. May we
come in?” Daphne asked, patting the woman’s clutching hand awkwardly. She could
smell alcohol on the her breath and didn’t blame her one bit, but hoped it
didn’t affect her ability to answer their questions.

Mrs. Berkley’s red rimmed eyes flicked to Isaac who bowed his
head respectfully to her.

“Why did you
bring a vampire with you?” she asked suspiciously. Daphne blinked in surprise.
Most people couldn’t tell a vamp from a human unless they were, well, vamped
out. For a drunk woman to tag him in the dark was more than odd.

“I am
assisting Daphne in catching the murderer. Your daughter visited her again this
evening and revealed more clues to us. We now need you to clarify them,” he
replied.

At the
mention of her daughter the woman’s eyes brightened. “Of course! Come in! What
did she say? When did you see her?” she asked, stepping back with a slight
wobble and waving them toward the living room.

A bottle of
rum sat on an end table next to a pile of used tissues and a photo album opened
to Emma’s picture. Daphne’s heart clenched in sympathy for the mother and for
the poor little girl.

“We spoke at
full dark,” Daphne said, not wanting her to know that Emma hadn’t been with her
mom all day. “She told me something that the killer said.”

“Emma also
showed Daphne her true face,” Isaac said, following Daphne to a long couch and
waiting for her to sit as Mrs. Berkley sank down next to her album. “We need to
rule out the possibility that the other children were of the breed, and that
the killer is targeting our children on purpose.”

Daphne had
basically told Isaac that she didn’t think so, but he’d said this was the best
way to approach Mrs. Berkley so as not to put her on the defensive. The hidden
breeds were extremely cagey, one false move and they’d shut you out, or shut
you up, permanently.

 For a long
moment the woman just watched them, then she slowly shook her head. “None of
the other children were of our kind,” she said, refusing to elaborate.

“Is there
anything more that you can offer us to help find the killer?” Isaac asked.

Again the
woman simply stared at them, her eyes shifting from Daphne to Isaac and back.
It made Daphne’s shoulders tight, as though any second the stillness would
break when a zombie leapt up from behind them to chomp on their brains.

“Only a
human could have killed my daughter,” she finally said.

Isaac’s hand
flew out faster than Daphne could track, and faster than she could gasp in
surprise he’d transported her away from the woman’s house.

She landed
on her bed with Isaac’s hand clapping over her mouth to stifle the scream she
was about to belt out.

“Sshhh....
It’s alright, don’t scream, love,” he said quickly, finally pulling his fingers
away one at a time to make sure she didn’t bellow the neighbors down on top of
them.

“Why the
hell did you do that?! What just happened?!” she hissed clutching her chest to
hold back the heart that was trying to beat its way out of her.

“That woman
was a Garmorlgan,” Isaac said, then paused as though waiting for her to recoil
in horror.

“What’s
that?” she asked in confusion.

“It’s a
nightmare. Literally. A creature born of human fears. It’s difficult to explain
their genesis, but what she said is true. Only humans can destroy them,” he
said.