FIRST LINES FRIDAY 56: Sabhailtcachd, M’Cridhe

Detective Alec MacAidan ran through the dark, wet back streets of New York City. The rain gave a silver-scape to the buildings, dulling the stench of garbage-littered alleys, and added an eeriness to what had been an already weird night. Shadows seemed to move and follow him as he ran, making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, but he never quit running. Chasing.

He was one of the fittest guys in his department, and at only twenty-nine, he was younger than most. His jeans were wet to his knees, and water streamed down from his soaked brown hair to his coat. His senses alert, the only sounds he could hear were his own heart pounding in his ears and his boots striking the pavement.

He’d chased down ice addicts before, and this one was no different. Unnatural strength and speed, ashen faces and wide eyes, and manic highs and lows made these people unpredictable and dangerous. But as he navigated his way, chasing the guy through the back alleyways, around corners, over fences, barely catching glimpses of the guy’s dark coat before it disappeared again, the shadows got closer. Alec had the creeping realization he wasn’t chasing someone at all.

He was being chased.

Followed. Hunted.

“Were you lovers with this… Sammy person?” Cronin asked. He said the name as though it tasted bitter.

“Shit! Sammy!” Alec said, and he pulled the bathroom door open. “Sammy!” Alec darted across the short hall and into the open living and kitchen area. “Sammy?” Nothing. There was no sign of him. He looked under the sofa, finding nothing. He went back to the hall and opened the bedroom door, scanning the room, and finally looking under the bed. “Oh, little guy, there you are.” Alec went around to the far side of the bed, got down on his knees, reached in, and pulled out the tabby cat. He stood up, holding the cat to his chest and scratching under its chin. “Did those cops scare you?”

Cronin stood at the door, smiling. “Sammy is a cat?”

“Sammy is,” Alec said, “though I don’t tell him that. Sammy thinks he’s human.”

NYPD Detective Alec MacAidan has always been good with weird. After all, his life has been a string of the unexplainable. But when an injured man gives him cryptic clues, then turns to dust in front of him, Alec’s view on weird is changed forever.

Cronin, a vampire Elder, has spent the last thousand years waiting for Alec. He’d been told his fated one would be a man wielding a shield, but he didn’t expect him to be human, and he certainly didn’t expect that shield to be a police badge.

Both men, strong-willed and stubborn, are still learning how to cope with the push and pull of being fated, when fate throws them another curveball.

Rumors have spread quickly of turmoil in Egypt. Covens are fleeing with news of a vampire who has a talent like no other, hell-bent on unleashing the wrath of Death.

Alec and Cronin are thrown into a world of weird Alec cannot imagine. What he learned in school of ancient pharaohs and Egyptian gods was far from the truth. Instead, he finds out firsthand that history isn’t always what it seems.