Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming)

by Rachel Lee

  “Try this,” Damien said a little acidly. “Thousands of years old and only in the last few decades of that time have computers become meaningful at all to ordinary people.”

  At that, Garner smirked. “Time to catch up, vampire.”

  “I rarely waste time learning skills that are utterly useless to me.”

  “Oh, cut it out,” Caro said irritably. “I’ll see what I can do as soon as I get the file number.”

  “I’m still worried about Jude,” Damien said. “I wish he’d given us some idea where he was going.”

  “Maybe,” said Garner, brandishing his phone, “he’s just not answering because it’s me calling.”

  Damien lifted both brows but then pulled out his own phone and put it to his ear. “There you are,” he said after a moment. “Garner is having kittens because you’re not returning his calls.”

  He listened a moment, then laughed. “No, you can tell him that yourself. Caro’s about to use your computer if you don’t mind. Really? All right, I’ll tell her.”

  He disconnected and looked at Caro. “Jude said to wait. Terri is examining the body and he’s already been to the crime scene. He has information.”

  “All he had to do was tell me that,” Garner observed morosely. “Then I wouldn’t have had to worry.”

  Nobody answered him.

  Caro started to remove her jacket as the chill from riding on Damien’s back began to slip away. Coffee. Hot chocolate. Then her hand found the stitched pouch she’d been carrying.

  She pulled it out of her pocket and held it up. “Something affected me tonight when we were in that bookshop. Something made me step back from that man, and it didn’t feel like that thing that’s been following me. Could it be this?”

  “It could,” Damien said. He took it from her hand. “I wonder if I was too trusting.”

  “In what way?”

  “Alika said you need protection. You do, but how can I be sure this will provide it? Maybe it’s not for protection at all.”

  “Lovely,” said Garner.

  Damien barely spared him a glance. “So now we have two questions. Did Alika give you this for real protection? If so, was it this that made you back away from that shopkeeper tonight? If not, why did you back away? Did you sense something wasn’t right about him?”

  Caro racked her brains trying to figure it out, finally admitting, “I don’t know.”

  “Great,” muttered the never-silent Garner. “Either one of them could be involved in this.”

  “Or neither,” Caro said sensibly. “Don’t put on blinders, Garner. It limits investigations.”

  “We still have more places to check out, too,” Damien added. “But I really want to know how the brother-in-law might be involved in this, and whether his death was from natural causes.”

  “That’s important, all right,” Caro agreed. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that coincidences do happen.”

  “Maybe in your line of work,” Garner argued. “In mine there are fewer coincidences.”

  “So what are people saying on the street?” she asked to divert him from his irritability.

  “Woo-woo stuff, which is only woo-woo if you’ve never seen it in action. It probably doesn’t mean much really. At least in terms of anyone knowing anything. So the condo was locked. Anybody walking out could have ensured it was locked up. The only mystery was that when the cops arrived, the door chain was still hooked up.”

  “Really.” Caro sat on the chair beside Chloe’s desk. “No disturbed windows? Nothing?”

  Garner shrugged. “I couldn’t get near the place. The only thing I was interested in was that this guy was related to the Pritchett family.”

  Damien spoke. “Did you sense anything?”

  “I sense things all over this town. There are enough nuts to supply a factory. All that matters is a scent I’m supposed to pick out. This one might have had the lingering odor of whatever was around Caro the other night.”

  “Was?” Damien repeated. “Is it gone now?”

  “It’s not here. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Damien held up the small pouch. “Maybe it is protective.” Then he frowned. “And if so, how would Alika know exactly what you needed to be protected against?”

  “It was clear she’s sensitive,” Caro reminded him. “She knew when trouble was approaching and shooed us out.”

  “So logical,” he remarked, but there was a gleam in his eyes that said he knew when she could be utterly illogical. She glanced away, hoping she didn’t blush.

  That was a memory she wanted to bury in a deep hole. Of course, memory was never that cooperative. Nothing like saying, “Don’t think about an elephant.”

  Jude arrived at last, bringing cold air into the room with him. It clung to him as if he were frozen, sucking heat from around the room. Caro pulled her jacket over her shoulders, wondering how long it took a vampire to reach the ambient temperature. She hadn’t noticed it with Damien, most likely because she’d been nearly as cold herself upon their return.

  “It wasn’t pretty,” Jude remarked. “But I got the important information, at least what’s available for now. Terri says the guy’s heart exploded. She was quite clear he didn’t have a vessel rupture or a collapse in the cardiac wall. His heart literally exploded.”

  Caro felt tension squeeze her own heart. “That’s not possible.”

  “In theory. There wasn’t a mark on him either, and the rictus of his face could be either pain or terror. No way to tell.”

  He popped into his office and returned with two bags of blood. He tossed one to Damien, then bit into his own and began drinking. For the first time, Caro noticed that their eyes changed color as they fed—from black as night to golden.

  A few minutes later, when they were done feeding, Jude took the bags into his office, then returned without them. “Okay, we missed something in the background check. I’m not going to call this a coincidence. No way. Not from Terri’s description of the guy’s heart. We now have six impossible murders, and every one of the victims was related to the rest.”

  Caro’s phone buzzed, and she pulled it out. “Pat texted the case-file number.”

  “Forward it to me,” Jude said. “I’m going to spend the rest of tonight researching.” Then he looked at Damien. “Take Caro home until dawn. This place is about to become a beehive, and she looks exhausted.”

  “I can help,” she objected.

  “Tomorrow. When you have some rest. I need everyone in top shape. That means you, too, Garner. You get back here in the morning to help Caro and Chloe. I’ll leave a list of what I learn and questions to be pursued.”

  * * *

  They took Jude’s car and Caro was grateful not to be out in the biting wind, moving at nearly supersonic speeds. Damien rolled down his own window a few inches, but this time it amused her because she understood why. Her scents drove him crazy. She’d never enjoyed driving a man crazy before, and she rather liked the illusory sense of power it gave her. She knew it was illusory, though, because she had no doubt this vampire could overpower her in an instant if he chose.

  “Are you scared?” he asked.

  “Do you care?”

  “Actually, yes. There’s a great deal I can protect you from, but unless I figure this out I may be no protection at all. And that scares me.”

  “I’m touched.”

  He snorted. “Seriously, Caro, you ought to be afraid.”

  “I don’t seem to scare easily. I have to be in a situation, not thinking about one. And then after the first burst of fear comes, adrenaline kicks in and I’m one of those people who gets the fight rather than flight response.”

  “Just as well. From this thing there is no flight.”

  “But Garner said he couldn’t sense it around me. So I don’t need protection, do I?” Although, strange as it would have seemed only a couple of days ago, she didn’t want this vampire to leave her alone.

  “I take Garner with a grai
n of salt. He’s not perfect. And not sensing that thing around you at that moment doesn’t mean it won’t come back.”

  She felt a trickle of uneasiness then. She really didn’t want to feel that thing watching her ever again. Think of something else. Like her irritation at not being able to work the case because Jude had sent her home to rest. Like whether Damien had any feelings beyond lust.

  She turned a little in her seat, studying him as light from streetlamps flashed across his face. “Does anything frighten you?”

  “Something bad happening to you on my watch.” He pulled into a parking place near her building and switched off the ignition.

  “Cut the crap, Damien. I mean what really frightens you?”

  “That was it.” He turned, putting his arm over the back of the seat. “As for other things...” He shrugged. “I don’t fear death. A vampire dies every morning. I don’t fear never resurrecting, because I’ll never know. I don’t fear pain because I heal so fast.”

  “What about other things? What about your heart?”

  “You mean my feelings?”

  “Yes.”

  He hesitated. “Long, long ago, after I entered the priesthood, I had to make a choice. I chose to serve even though it cost me the woman I loved. I was never permitted to see her again. It was a long time ago.”

  “I guess. So you never loved again?” That seemed sad, but then she reminded herself that she’d given up such things for her job, too. At least for now.

  “I never permitted myself to. Look at the way I live, Caro, and ask yourself how many would want to share my life except briefly.”

  Before she could answer, he climbed out of the car and came around to open her door for her. One look at his face was enough to tell her that the subject was closed.

  All the way up to her apartment, she puzzled the question. He seemed content enough with his life. In fact, he had told her it had benefits that made up for the sacrifices. So why did he feel it was so unlikely that anyone would want to share life with him?

  “What about other vampires?” she demanded when they were inside her apartment. “Couldn’t you find someone who already lives your life?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “We’re territorial. Finding two of us together is rare. That includes males and females. A few manage, and all of us can manage for brief periods. But for eternity? That’s rare indeed.”

  She guessed she could understand that. “I’ve read that many human marriages start falling apart by the eighteenth year.”

  “Thus you make my point. And for us there’s an additional complication.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Just get your sleep. I’ll wake you before dawn and we’ll go back to Jude’s.”

  But she stood stubbornly still. “Are you saying you can’t divorce? Why would that be?”

  “It’s not about divorce.” He sighed, and for the first time she saw him run his fingers through his hair in a sign of true exasperation. “Maybe you should know,” he said finally. “I keep telling you we’re playing with fire but then I only tell you half of it.”

  “I’m not planning to play with fire again,” she said firmly.

  At that he actually smiled. “Plans. Yes. They so often work.”

  “Stop it.”

  His smile remained, and she was quite certain he’d smelled the scents of her desire for him off and on all evening. If she were to be honest about it, the only time her body wasn’t demanding more of him was when she could keep her mind distracted enough, and even then there was an edgy sort of yearning between her legs. Desire seemed to have a mind of its own. Since meeting him, there seemed to be a part of her that was always ready, always aware, always wanting.

  Frankly, that sucked, but nothing seemed to stop it.

  “There’s an addiction that vampires experience,” he said, his smile fading. “I’ve managed to avoid it for millennia, and I’d like to continue to avoid it.”

  “Like crack addiction, what you said I might feel?”

  “Worse. The only cure is death, or sometimes vengeance.”

  She caught her breath. “Whose death and whose vengeance?”

  “Ours. We call it claiming. An innocuous word for something so dangerous. If a vampire claims someone or something, it’s beyond obsession. For example, were I to claim you, you’d never be able to leave me. You might run to the farthest end of the planet, and I would follow and find you. I wouldn’t be able to prevent myself except by ending my own existence. And were I to claim you and you died, I would have only two choices—to avenge you or die to break the claiming.”

  “Wow,” she whispered.

  “Judging by what happened to my friend Luc after his claimed mate died, I’m not so sure that vengeance is a cure either. Most of us attempt to avoid claiming, although it’s beginning to seem to me that it’s not something that happens by choice. Jude claimed Terri, and that’s the third case I’ve seen since coming here.”

  “But...she’s not a vampire. So what happens when she dies?”

  “Exactly what I told you. Thus Jude will have a decision to make eventually. Terri wants him to change her so she can fully share his life. But he’s reluctant because he knows how painful the change is and knows there’s no way back once it’s done. But at some point or other, he’s going to have to decide whether to keep her by changing her or face her eventual death, and his own as a result.”

  Caro tried to imagine it. “I’ve heard of heartbreak, but this is beyond anything I’ve ever heard of. Well, not true. Some humans become that obsessed.”

  “But obsessed in a different way usually. How many cases have you seen in your career where a human would rather kill the object of his obsession than leave it?”

  “Too many,” she admitted.

  “Our kind...we kill ourselves rather than those we’ve claimed.”

  Her eyes felt strangely hot as she looked at him. “That’s scary.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “So we avoid it if there’s any way we can. You’d better get some sleep. Dawn will come all too soon.”

  She turned toward her bedroom, not because she wanted to obey him, but because she felt a need to think over what he’d said. But just before she entered, she looked over her shoulder to ask, “Isn’t there anything good about claiming?”

  “I wouldn’t know from personal experience. But Jude seems happy with it.”

  She carried that to bed with her, trying to imagine what he’d said and telling herself that being stalked by an obsessed vampire was not something any woman could really want. She’d seen enough obsessed people and it had never struck her as a healthy state of affairs.

  But it wasn’t claiming she was thinking about when she finally slipped away into sleep. It was the thing stalking her and the sense it was coming closer somehow, and growing more dangerous.

  In her dreams, it dogged her heels as she tried to run—she was never able to see how close it was or what it intended.

  All she knew was that somehow Damien was there with her, encouraging her, promising to place himself between it and her.

  * * *

  She didn’t want to wake. A half hour before dawn, Damien tried to get her up and out of bed, but she’d finally reached a point of exhaustion where nothing short of a fire in the house would get her moving quicker than a snail’s pace.

  She heard him moving around her room as sleep tried to cloud her brain again, then felt him lift her in his arms as easily as if she were a child.

  And for some reason, she didn’t mind that he carried her down the stairs, put her in the car, buckled her seat belt and drove off with her.

  Vaguely she knew she was too groggy, that she never had this much trouble waking up, but she didn’t care. She was asleep again as they pulled away from the curb, and she stirred only when they jolted to a stop in front of Jude’s office.

  One thing she did notice: the sky was lightening with the first rosy tinge of dawn. “Light,” she said, unable to form a more
coherent sentence.

  “It’s all right,” he murmured. Then strong arms lifted her again, and she retained only the merest memory of being carried inside to the office and laid on the sofa.

  As sleep started to claim her again, she heard Damien say, “Something’s wrong. I can’t wake her.”

  Then she slipped over the abyss into the nightmares and darkness again.

  * * *

  Damien and Jude gathered in his office where, with the door closed, no light could enter. There they could postpone the sleep of death, but only for a little while.

  Neither of them felt they could simply let their own deaths take over when Caro couldn’t wake up, yet Damien knew the prickling on the back of his neck was painful and would soon become utterly distracting. In fact, soon he wouldn’t be able to avoid the sleep of death at all.

  “Maybe she’ll be safer here,” Jude said. “I’ve got a lot of wards on this office.”

  “I’m worried about when neither of us is awake. Who is going to watch over her and ensure this sleep doesn’t turn into something else?”

  Jude’s frown deepened. “How can we be sure what’s going on here? How can we know how to counter it? I’d suggest you keep her in my office with you throughout the day, but...”

  “But,” Damien agreed. “But I’ll be virtually useless unless she tries to wake me. If she opens the damn door to get out I’ll be cooked, and she could die right beside me without me ever knowing. No solution.”

  The burning on the back of his neck was beginning to feel like hot coals. Soon he wouldn’t be able to avoid dying any longer.

  “We need to get her attention,” Jude said. “Wake her enough to get it through to her.”

  “All right, I’ll try.”

  Jude stopped him before he turned. “I don’t think you can go out there now.”

  The flames that seemed to be licking at the base of Damien’s skull would seem to agree. “Then what the hell are we going to do?”

  “Chloe.” Jude picked up the phone and punched in a number. “I need you over here now. Something’s going on with Caro, and we’re not sure what. Regardless, neither of us is going to be awake for more than a few minutes. You’re going to have to keep an eye on her. We can’t.”