Forever by Jacquelyn Frank Read Free Book Online Page A

to humans. He had sketched the face of the Latino man to the best of his ability and had presented it to three different private detectives, two of whom lived in the area where the attack had taken place. As natives, they had to be able to find some clue as to who this man was. He was not a ghost after all.
    “Menes,” Kamen said quietly when he realized the actual “him” that was being referred to. “Where? New Mexico I take it.” He had been hoping to get a shot at the Politic bastard while he was weak and still in the Blending process. If he was already in his stronghold with Ramses and his contemptible traitor bride to protect them, there was no point in making an attempt on him while Odjit was so indisposed.
    “No,” the acolyte corrected him gently. “It turns outhe’s been hiding in plain sight all this time. Sybelle the chantress has seen it clearly, although she is not of equal power to our great mistress—”
    Chantresses were powerful spiritual women, also known as prophets—or a human might call them psychics. They could see things beyond normal ken. The future. Danger. Sometimes messages from the gods themselves, although it was rare for anyone in Templar ranks other than Odjit to lay claim to such a power. Odjit was easily threatened by anyone who harbored the potential to outgun her.
    “Where is he?” Kamen demanded, cutting away the effulgent praise the acolyte was about to heap onto Odjit.
    “Saugerties. New York.”
    “Get Thorn. And my lead Gargoyle.”
    “Of course, my lord,” the acolyte said, bending to enter a deep bow, as if the depth of his ability to bow before Kamen were equal to the amount of loyalty to be expected from him. But Kamen was no fool. If there was one thing he had learned in his many lives, it was that no one could be trusted.
    No one.
    The acolyte turned, but Kamen halted him with a sharp snap of his fingers.
    “Fetch Chatha to me,” he said darkly. “I have a special task for him.”
    The servant paled by three shades and his fingers almost instantly began to tremble. Kamen watched him with genuine curiosity. Would the acolyte brave Kamen’s wrath by refusing the request, or would he brave the unpredictability of the psychopathic killer? It was an intriguing contest.
    The repeat of a deep bow gave him his answer, and just like that the moment of fascination was gone. Likeall the moments before it, fleeting and ephemeral and nothing. Always such vast nothingness.
    He glanced at Odjit.
    Nothingness. But there was going to be a price to pay for this nothingness. And like anything else, he knew no one source could be trusted to complete the task, so it was best to sic all his best dogs on the problem at hand. Kamen walked over to his mistress, his fingers reaching down to brush over her forehead and over the fading scars at her throat. He knew that if he set a dog like Chatha on the trail of Odjit’s would-be killer that he would go after the quarry with rabid delight, but only for as long as it amused him to do so. Kamen’s job would have to be to make the process as entertaining for him as possible.
    Someone had taken the last vestiges of light from his world …
    … and that someone was going to pay.
    Leo Alvarez opened his eyes to utter darkness and the smell of musty perfume.
    “Shit,” he grumbled under his breath as he fumbled for his watch, trying to do it as gingerly as possible. The owner of the perfume, not to mention the bed, was asleep against him, snoring a little on every breath.
    Six p.m. Or eight a.m. Tasmania time, which is where he’d just spent two weeks routing out the remains of a drug cartel that had been in hiding on the otherwise harmless Australian island. Depending how you looked at it, he had either overslept or was waking just in time to start his day. He groaned softly when pain shot through both the back of his skull and his eyes. No doubt a recollection of the tequila he’d been pounding back, trying to drink some fricken