Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming) (5 page)

“I
am
a predator,” he said, his voice turning hard. “That’s what I am. The difference is that I never take anyone who is unwilling.”

“Why should I believe that?”

“Because I haven’t taken you.”

He smelled it: the best aphrodisiac in the world. The room almost flooded with her response to his words, charging the air with sexuality and that delightful hint of fear. “You wanted to talk about something different,” he reminded her as she tried to glare at him.

“Maybe you should just leave,” she snapped.

“Not until I can’t stay any longer. Not while that thing is still around.”

Her frown deepened, but her scent didn’t change. Ah, this one was going to be interesting. Supremely interesting after so many easy conquests. She was willing to fight herself as well as him. He liked it.

“How old
are
you?” she finally demanded once again, clearly determined to divert him because she couldn’t get rid of him. She didn’t want him to leave her alone with that dark energy, so she was going to tolerate him.

That amused him. No trouble accepting that he was a vampire but plenty of trouble accepting that he wanted her. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I stopped counting years a long time ago. What was the point? They just keep adding up.”

“Do you really live forever?”

“We age. Slowly. Some faster than others. I seem to have aged very little.”

Her lips puckered a bit, nearly driving him insane. “Could that be because you’re a magus?”

At once he stilled and forgot all about his hungers and needs. An intriguing question. “I hadn’t considered it. What made you think of that?”

“My grandmother. Until the day she died, no one thought she was much older than thirty-five or forty. She always said dealing with powers kept her young. But you said you were rusty? Or something like that.”

“I’ve forgotten a lot because I haven’t needed it. It’s been a long time since I practiced my arts as a priest.”

“Because you’re a vampire?”

He shook his head, smiling slowly. “There was a time when that was considered an advantage for my work. That time passed.”

“So everyone
knew?
”

“No, of course not. It was one of our temple secrets. Much better that way. Much more useful. We also severely limited our numbers.”

Her brow knit momentarily. “Well, when you live forever, it would hardly make sense to have many of you.”

“Exactly. Our numbers could make it very difficult to keep the secret, so we remained a small handful.”

She gave a small shake of her head. “I can’t imagine the things you must have seen.”

“Someday, when we’re past this, I’ll tell you some of those things if you want.”

It wasn’t the time, he thought. Not now. Not when his neck was prickling with awareness of that energy, not when he could feel its heaviness in the very air. He changed tacks sharply.

“We’ve got to think of what to do with you come morning.”

“I thought you said it weakened in daylight.”

“Most of these things do. But that doesn’t mean they’re entirely gone. Read your grandmother’s diary. Maybe it will jog something important in your memory. And I need to search mine. I’m sure there’s something there. I
feel
it.”

She nodded slowly and once again lowered her eyes to her book.

The tension in the room, though, was as thick as the sense of threat.

Forcing himself to sit as still as stone, he focused his attention on the preeminent problem of ridding the threat to Caro.

This thing was not an entity—it was an energy. Energies needed direction. That meant whatever it was had been summoned. The question was whether it was still being directed.

He looked over at Caro and saw that she had finally fallen to sleep. He let time tick by until about a half hour before dawn. The back of his neck had begun to burn with awareness of the coming day. He couldn’t wait much longer.

Pulling out the phone Jude had given him, he called his friend. “We’ve got to find a way to protect Caro during the day. And I’ve got to find out everything possible about the victims.”

“Bring her over here,” Jude said. “Chloe can keep an eye on her today, if keeping an eye on her will be enough.”

“It may be. I’m getting the sense that this energy doesn’t want to be witnessed in action. At least not yet.”

“Then bring her here. For our edification, I have a background search running on the victim and his family. Anything else you want?”

“A bookstore. The kind of place that caters to would-be mystics and mages.”

“I know of several. I’ll pull the list together.”

He closed the phone and found Caro watching him from sleepy eyes. “What now?” she asked.

“We go back to the office. Quickly. You must not be alone.”

Chapter 4

T
he embrace of night once again wrapped the city in its heart. The vampires awoke and reclaimed their world.

Damien entered the office not ten minutes after Jude emerged from his inner sanctum. Terri appeared a few minutes later, dressed in casual clothes and heading for the coffeepot.

Caro watched the movement around her and spent a few minutes getting to know Terri, Jude’s wife. She could tell by Terri’s aura that the woman was still human, and the idea made her a wee bit uncomfortable, although she couldn’t exactly say why. Some atavistic response to vampires not being normal?

But according to her grandmother, they were part of the natural world, no different from anything else under the sun—or moon in this case. Evil, her grandmother had always maintained, was a choice not a fate.

She’d been struggling all day to deal with the wild changes in her belief system, and she was slowly coming to realize that while she had rejected her grandmother’s beliefs, she hadn’t entirely escaped them.

She wasn’t as shocked by the existence of vampires as she was by her own stubborn refusal to accept it for all these years. And here she had thought she was open-minded.

“You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?” Terri asked as they stood leaning against the counter in the tiny kitchenette, drinking coffee from mugs.

“That they’re vampires? Yes.”

Terri nodded. She was a small, pretty woman with raven-black hair and bright blue eyes. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Not a thing.” Caro gave a sharp, mirthless laugh. “I’m already up to my neck in hot water because I saw a man levitate and get thrown through the air by something invisible. How much will it help my case to say I know two vampires?”

Terri’s smile was wry. “I heard about it.”

Caro’s heart sank. “I was afraid everyone was gossiping about it. Damn, it’s going to be hard to go back to work.”

Terri shook her head. “I didn’t hear gossip, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m working the case as M.E. and that was part of the information reported to me.”

Caro’s heart lifted a bit. “They at least told you what I saw?”

“It was passed on to me verbally. Trust me, it’s not in the written reports.”

“So who told you?”

“A man you’re probably pretty angry with right now. Captain Malloy. I know he put you on leave, and why he had to do it, but he included the information anyway. As he said, ‘You never know.’”

Caro almost heaved a huge sigh of relief. “I thought he believed I was losing my mind.”

“I don’t know about that. But he kept it out of the written reports, which protects you, and he passed it on to me privately, which says something.”

Caro nodded as a burden seemed to lift from her shoulders. “So what’s your impression?”

“That it would have been physically impossible for that man to get impaled that way by normal means, unless he’d been dropped from the ceiling on those horns, not thrown across the room. However, it’s indisputable that my office had to take the guy down from the wall.”

Caro nodded, savoring the vindication, however small it was. “So what are you going to put in
your
report?”

“Death from impalement by means unknown. What else could I put? Nobody but you saw what happened and the guy was found hanging on a wall on the horns of an elk. Someone else can wrestle with how it happened. I only need to report the facts.”

Caro smiled crookedly. “I tried to report the facts.”

“Eyewitnesses mess things up from shock. I’m not suggesting that you did, but it’s a great cover for you. Just let it go at that, Caro. Some people are happier labeling things
unknown
than they are dealing with the truth. And speaking of shock...how are you handling the vampire thing?”

“Maybe I’m still in shock, but right now it doesn’t seem like a terribly big deal. My grandmother used to talk about them. What about you?”

Terri laughed and turned to dump her coffee in the sink. “I threatened Jude with his own sword. I’ll tell you about it sometime, but right now I have to run or I’ll be late.”

Caro lingered a few minutes longer in the kitchen, trying to imagine Terri, who was tiny, threatening Jude with a sword. That actually seemed like a rational response to her, and she wondered at her own lack of upset. Maybe Terri was right. Maybe she’d suffered too many shocks in a short space of time.

Maybe she was just numb.

Well, except for that ever-present desire to jump in the sack with Damien, which was even more nuts than seeing that guy impaled, when she came right down to it. What the heck did she really know about Damien? Not enough to trust him with her body and her most vulnerable emotions.

Certainly not.

She refreshed her mug and returned to the office to find Damien and Jude in deep discussion.

“The victim,” Jude said, looking up as she joined them, “appears to be clean in all his dealings. No hint of anything unsavory. Same for his family.”

Caro couldn’t keep quiet. One thing she had learned on her way to making detective was how dangerous it could be to assume the obvious. “We’re presuming the guy was the intentional victim here. Maybe he was collateral damage. Anyone in that family could have done something wrong.”

Jude looked at Damien and they appeared to agree.

“You’re right,” Damien said. “For all we know, the mother may have been dabbling with dark powers. Or one of the teens. There may be no purpose behind these killings at all.”

“Which only makes them harder to solve,” Caro admitted grimly. “But it remains that we narrow our focus too much if we assume the father was the intended victim.”

“He just seemed the likeliest,” Damien said. “He was a real-estate developer. The mother didn’t have a career. The kids were in school. Although these days, just going to school seems to be enough to set off the worst in some people.”

Caro couldn’t deny that. “It’s sad but I see it too often. Some kids gang up on some other kid. Just to gang up. We need to look more closely at that. Who knows what one of the victim’s children might have done if they were being picked on badly? Or if they were picking on someone else?”

“I’ll get on it,” Jude said.

Chloe, sitting at her desk, sighed. “You mean I’ll get on it.”

“No, you’re going to get some rest so you can keep an eye on Caro tomorrow.”

Chloe rolled her eyes at him.

“Me, I’m going to a bookstore,” Damien said. He eyed Caro almost warily. “Want to come?”

“Depends on what you’re looking for.” Although that wasn’t true. Amazingly, frighteningly, she just wanted to be with him. What the heck was wrong with her?

“Esoterica.”

“Count me in.”

* * *

Damien climbed into the car with Caro and proceeded to castigate himself for stupidity. Even well fed, as he was now, she was still as tempting to him as candy in a store window to a kid. Maybe more so. He just had to remember that a pane of glass lay between them.

If only it were so. At least then he wouldn’t have to deal with the aromas as well as the sights. Renewed Hunger pounded throughout him.

Then Caro startled him with a statement.

“You guys seem too normal.”

He glanced at her. “Would you prefer it if I flashed my fangs?”

“You have fangs? Really? That’s not a myth?”

“Retractable. Of course we act normally. Would you have us skulking around like creatures out of a bad movie? We were human once. And now that we’re not, appearing as human as possible is our camouflage.”

“That makes sense.”

He almost thanked her sarcastically, then reminded himself he was on edge because she awakened such a powerful need in him. He lived to drink blood and have sex. Sex was his lure, blood his food. Seeming normal was merely survival strategy.

“Do you ever get tired of living so long?”

“Not usually.”

“Not bored?”

He rolled down his window a bit in self-defense. “Our experience is much more vivid, much stronger than when we were human. Knowing that you’ll die adds the piquancy to your life. For us it is the strength of our experience.”

He noticed her hesitation. Then she asked, “In sex, too?”

“Most especially in sex.”

“That must make you promiscuous.”

A laugh escaped him. “It can.” He supposed he
was
promiscuous by her lights. But her survival depended on different things, and that admission probably hadn’t helped his case any. Although why he should want to help his case remained a mystery. He was beginning to think Caro could be a danger to his conscience and self-respect. For all he knew, given that her grandmother was a mage, she might even be dangerous to him in ways he hadn’t imagined.

Damn, couldn’t the traffic move any faster? He was dangerously near the point of finding a dark alley in which he could teach her that sex with a vampire exceeded her wildest imaginings. That would not do.

Gritting his teeth, tightening his grip on the wheel, he sped up a bit—not enough to draw the attention of the police—and tried to get there faster.

He also tried to focus on other things. The night came alive for him in ways humans couldn’t imagine. Distracted though he was by Caro’s scents, he was still aware of other things: the hum of tires on the pavement, sounds issuing from apartments around them, the laughter in a movie theater and the amazing, brilliant colors that brightened his nights, colors that made up for the lack of sunlight. More than made up for it.

The moon didn’t wash out his world—it brought it to luminous life. Every sense was exquisitely tuned to his existence. All he remembered about being human was how dull the experience had been by comparison.

With relief he found the shop at last, on a dimly lit and quiet side street. It looked innocent enough, with neon signs announcing New Age books and supplies for adepts. He liked the innocuous “adepts.” So few really were, but so many tried.

But they no sooner approached the door of the shop than he froze.

“Do you feel it?” he asked Caro.

“What?”

“That energy has pulled back.”

She closed her eyes a moment, nodded, then looked at him. “But why?”

“There must be power within this store.”

“I wonder if it’s what we’re looking for? The source.”

“I don’t know. I’m just glad to know that something can make it withdraw. It’s still out there, but not as close. Not nearly as close.”

When they opened the shop door, a small bell jingled. The shop itself was crowded with old books, their musty scent mixing with incense. There was barely enough room to maneuver through the stacks, and the wood of old floors creaked beneath their feet.

A woman immediately emerged from a curtained door at the back. Small and wiry, with long curly hair, beautiful café au lait skin and dark eyes that seemed big in her fine-boned face, she regarded them with a smile.

“What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to browse your books,” Damien answered. “Your oldest books.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed as she studied Damien. “Perhaps something very old?”

“The oldest you have.”

“I have a special shelf I don’t show many.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“Not until I know more about you. Some things are meant only for initiates.”

He felt Caro’s eyes snap to him. She was probably wondering how he was going to handle this. He studied the woman before him a few seconds before he spoke, “I am
mogh,
” he said. “And you are an initiate, as well. I could feel the power before I entered. You have a strong spell for protection.”

“A thing one too often needs, sadly.” The shopkeeper extended her hand, and Damien gripped it palm down.

“I’m Alika. And you are?”

“Damien. Formerly Atash.”

Alika’s eyebrows lifted. “I rarely meet one who touches such a distant past.” She turned to Caro. “And you, too, have the power, although I can see it is not focused. My books won’t help you.”

Then she closed her eyes, lifted her arms a bit and stood very still. “You come seeking a way to cast off a spell.”

Alika opened her eyes and dropped her arms. “It wants her.” She frowned at Caro. “Vodoun. Did you anger a bokor?”

“What’s a bokor? You mean this is voodoo?”

“In its current incarnation, yes. And a bokor is one who practices the dark arts.” Alika returned her attention to Damien. “Come, I’ll show you the books. But I want to hear about this.”

“And I want your help. I wasn’t aware there were any bokors here.”

Alika shook her head. “Sometimes one becomes a bokor temporarily for a reason. Never wise. Never.”

“Playing with dark forces is
usually
disastrous. So you have no idea who it might be?”

“None. And if you don’t mind, I’d rather not get directly involved.” She looked again at Caro. “But why would it be after her?”

Caro answered. “Because I saw what it did.”

* * *

Caro wasn’t allowed in the small back room along with Damien and Alika, but she had enough to absorb from the shelves out front. She dove into a book on Louisiana voodoo and was overcome by the numbers of saints who seemed to have individual powers that practitioners could call on. Most of it seemed benign, though, a fascinating blend of animism and Catholicism.

There was nothing in the book, however, that suggested or even encouraged calling on darker forces.
No help,
she thought as she closed it and tucked it back onto the shelf.

Just then, Damien emerged carrying an old book. “Alika would like us to leave.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Apparently she senses we’re drawing attention her way.” He reached her and took her hand, pressing a small leather pouch into it. “Some gris-gris for you. She hopes it will help. Now let’s go before we draw
her
into this mess.”

Caro shoved the pouch into her jacket pocket and hurried to keep up with Damien as he sped from the store. She was now so full of questions she felt she could burst.

She saw the trouble as soon as she stepped onto the street beside Damien. A group of five youths were standing around, and they didn’t look as if they were there by accident. Their gazes immediately locked on her and Damien, and they seemed to pull together before they even took a step. Then their postures shifted, knives came out of pockets and they stepped forward as a unit.
Just like a gang fight,
Caro thought, and somehow they had become the target. Danger was written all over this, and ordinarily she’d have been reaching for her radio. But she didn’t have her radio.