Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming)

by Rachel Lee

Caro stood looking at Jenny, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do now.

  Then Jenny seemed to shake herself. “Sorry, I was woolgathering. I spend so much time alone I’m used to wandering in my own thoughts.”

  “No family?” Caro asked sympathetically.

  “Never had one. Most of the time I think that’s a good thing,” Jenny said. “I have friends, of course, but I’m still alone a lot in this store.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Jenny picked up the card on the counter. “I should call if I hear about something bad going on?”

  “Please, anything at all.

  “Of course.” Jenny became brisk. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything on elementals. My customers don’t get far into the weeds on these things. In fact,” she added almost humorously, “they dabble around and come back in a month looking for something else to play with.”

  Caro laughed. “Thanks for your time, Jenny. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Come back sometime. In fact, on Thursday nights I have a medium who comes in. Whether she’s gifted or not I don’t know, but she sure is fun to listen to.”

  “Thanks. I might do that.”

  Outside, Caro found Damien already in the car. She climbed in beside him. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “Let’s go to your place. Or Jude’s. Whichever. Some things need to be talked about inside protected space.”

  Puzzled, but wanting familiar space and a few of her own personal comforts, she told him to take her home.

  It was a quiet drive, and for the first time she felt waves of uneasiness radiating from Damien. He always seemed so confident, so comfortable, but right now he was almost jangling.

  The result was that she was pretty well jangling, too, by the time they entered her apartment. Nor was she comforted when he asked for the holy oil and sealed her door again by dabbing it on the lintel.

  “What is going on?” she asked.

  He put a finger to his lips. Watching in amazement, he went to get the box of salt from her bedroom. He sprinkled it around the room in a large circle. All the while he chanted something she couldn’t make out, in a language she had never heard. She sat in the middle of the room, waiting until he had closed the circle and joined her.

  “What the hell is going on, Damien?”

  “I just made a protective circle.”

  “I know that,” she said sarcastically, then paused. “What were you chanting?”

  “A spell from ancient times, one I used often and still recall. It strengthens the circle and keeps out all uninvited powers.”

  “And we need that why? What happened with Jenny at the bookshop? Why did you use that voice on her?”

  He cast off his leather jacket and sat on the floor, facing her. “I sensed something.”

  “I could figure that out, too. Details, Damien. Try some details.”

  But he asked a question instead. “How did Jenny strike you?”

  “As a modern businesswoman. Friendly. Welcoming. Not very into the stuff she carries at her store....” Caro trailed off. “That’s not very likely, is it? She’d have to know her subject or she’d soon have no customers. And she did mention healing spells.”

  “Exactly. All the while she was pretending to deal only with dabblers and dilettantes, I got the feeling she was hiding something.”

  “But you used the Voice on her. It worked. I saw it work. She said she didn’t know anything.”

  “The Voice worked on her. But something else was working on her, too. I could feel it.”

  Caro chewed that over. “It’s possible,” she admitted. “She struck me as so out of place in that store.”

  “There’s a reason you felt that way. Work on it. All I know is that she responded to my questions in a way that she was allowed to respond.”

  “How can you tell the difference?”

  “Centuries of practice. Take my word for it. I didn’t get the whole truth. What’s more, this ordinary modern businesswoman picked up on the fact that I’m not exactly human. She may not have identified what I am, but she definitely sensed it.”

  “Alika identified you as a mage.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t make me happy to be identified as something other by someone who is pretending absolutely nothing out of the ordinary goes on in her store, her circle or her life.”

  “You’ve got a point.”

  Caro still hadn’t shucked her jacket, but as she did so now, she felt the pouch of gris-gris Alika had given her. She pulled it out and held it palm up. “I wonder if I should trust this. How do I know it’s for protection?”

  “Close your eyes and concentrate on it. Remember what your grandmother said. You have the power, and the key is belief. Believe you can tell whether it’s for good or ill.”

  “Can’t you?”

  “It wasn’t given to me. I might not sense it in the same way. Besides, for days now I’ve been so aware of that force hovering in your vicinity that I’m not sure my senses aren’t dulled when it comes to you.”

  She hoped all his senses about her weren’t dulled, but she pushed the thought away to try to do what he asked. Closing her eyes, she told herself that she absolutely could tell if that pouch protected her or did something else. That shouldn’t be hard.

  “Just let your mind wander if it wishes,” Damien murmured. “Follow where it leads and don’t fight it. The same power that allowed you to see my aura and sense other things is there. When it is ready, it will answer your question.”

  Sounds of a lullaby her grandmother had often hummed to her wafted up from the deep recesses of memory. Thoughts of the mother and father she had never known rose up along with it, reminding her of loss and, worse, a long-buried feeling of abandonment.

  But she hadn’t been abandoned. She had figured that out a long time ago. Her parents hadn’t chosen to be killed by a drunk driver.

  Ah, but if they’d had those powers her grandmother kept talking about, they could have saved themselves.

  She gasped, dragging in air as if she were drowning. Where had that come from?

  “Caro? Caro?”

  Damien knelt before her but didn’t touch her. As she opened her eyes, still gasping, she realized that hot tears were running down her cheeks.

  “Caro? What happened?”

  She hurt so much she couldn’t prevent herself from blurting the source of her pain. Brokenly, still breathless from the way her diaphragm had cramped with agony, she told him. “My parents died in a car crash before I was a year old. If my grandmother was so damn powerful, Damien, why couldn’t she save them?”

  Then he did touch her. He sat close to her on the floor and lifted her onto his lap as if she weighed nothing at all. She still clutched the pouch, but he pried it gently from her hand, then began rocking her slowly.

  “Mein Schatz,” he said quietly, “some things are ordained. No power can prevent them.”

  She hiccuped. “Are you going to tell me the murder of the Pritchett family was ordained?”

  He sighed quietly, his breath cool as it trickled over her cheek. “There are mysteries. There will always be mysteries. Among them is a greater power than any can imagine, the power that set the universe in motion and gave birth to all things. There are plans and fates and probabilities that we can’t control. The overall arc of our lives is beyond that. We have lessons to learn and journeys to take.”

  “But what about the Pritchetts?”

  “They were murdered,” he said. “We know that. The murder was wrong. There are times and ways we can twist fate, but somehow it always snaps back to where it will go, with us or without us.”

  “I don’t like that.”

  “I doubt many do. But I am not dismissing the murders. I’m not saying they weren’t a crime. Of course they were. But in some way, the greater power will balance out and adjust for it. In your life, perhaps part of your arc was to lose your parents. Regardless, there are some strands in the universe we simply cannot bend to pe
rsonal will.”

  “If my grandmother had the power, if my mother had the power Grandma said she had, she should have been able to save them!”

  “Perhaps she didn’t have time. Perhaps it all happened too fast.” He cradled her closer and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “And perhaps it was meant to be. But now I understand why you resisted your grandmother’s teachings so much.”

  She couldn’t deny it. How could she believe what her grandmother said when her mother, who had supposedly possessed the power, too, hadn’t been able to avoid one drunk driver?

  As the question settled into a hidden, hollow place inside her, another understanding hit her like a gut punch. “I blamed my mother for not saving them.”

  “Of course you did.” He shifted a little, then turned her face up so that he was gazing into her eyes. “That was a natural response to your grandmother talking to you about a mage’s power. So first you blamed your mother, and then you decided such power couldn’t exist or your parents would have still been alive.”

  He lifted his finger from her chin and gently wiped away her tears. “Whatever happened, for some reason it was beyond your mother’s power to control. No mage is omnipotent, Caro.”

  She closed her eyes, letting the emotional earthquake roll through her. Fault lines, covered over by years of denial, ruptured and settled into a different geography.

  And with that shift, she saw her entire life in a new light. Why she had become a cop. Why she had resisted senses and skills that might rightfully be her own. Why she had fought so hard to maintain a life of ordinary reality and battled the suggestion there were things she could not detect with her five senses. Things that were as real as the vampire who held her now.

  Then, startling her, Damien said, “I can’t do this.”

  An instant later, she was sitting all alone and he had backed to the farthest edge of the circle.

  “Can’t do what?” she asked, totally at sea.

  “I can’t act normal. I’m not normal. I’m a damned vampire and there’s just so much ordinary I can give you.”

  * * *

  Damien’s eyes burned in a way he couldn’t remember feeling since his change. His entire body was overloaded with the hungers she woke in him. His blood pounded in his ears. His Hunger had pushed him to a brink where he felt he might snap. The ache to taste her blood, to lose himself in the ecstasy that sex with her would be, had reached phenomenal proportions, agonizing in their intensity, all the more dangerous now because he was aching for her pain. An emotional connection threatened him far more than a physical one.

  And she sat there, uninitiated human, looking so shocked and, damn it, wounded by the way he had withdrawn so suddenly.

  But it had either been that or give in to the tsunami of need that hammered him, that tried to sweep him away on its roaring waters to places Caro didn’t want to go, might never want to go.

  His basest instincts raged, demanding satisfaction, and the little voice in his head that was trying to remind him of all the reasons that wouldn’t be wise was almost drowned by waves of need and Hunger.

  Every single instinct he possessed demanded that he pounce and pounce now. He couldn’t remember the Hunger ever being this strong, except in the days right after his change, when the temple had kept him well satisfied with willing food.

  Wisdom dictated he should get out of here before he did something Caro would never forgive. Wisdom also reminded him that he couldn’t leave her alone. Not yet. Damn, never in his many centuries could he recall having felt so torn by competing needs. Willing women had always been easy to find. Always.

  But while this one might be showing signs of willingness, there was still resistance. And worse, somewhere deep inside he feared that he might become the one addicted.

  He’d always avoided that. What the hell was he doing here? He should just turn her over to Jude and get back to Cologne.

  A wildness filled him as he realized he was trapped. This woman was trapping him as surely as if she had chained him out in the sunlight.

  He looked at her and saw not only the object of his desires, but also the biggest threat he had ever faced.

  “Damien?”

  He couldn’t even speak. How could he possibly begin to explain what was tearing him apart inside to someone who had no such needs.

  “Hush,” he said, and closed his eyes. Not that it helped much. He could still smell her. The gods had never created a better ambrosia than this woman’s scent.

  “What am I doing wrong?” she asked.

  His eyes snapped open. “You exist.”

  He was surprised she didn’t leap up and flee across the circle. Instead, her cheeks still tear-stained, she simply looked at him.

  “You can leave if it would make you feel better.”

  “Leave? Really? I can’t leave you alone with whatever this threat is. I’m a better vampire than that. Besides, you haunt me even when I’m not with you. If I could still dream, I’m sure you’d be there, too.”

  Astonishment washed over him as he saw one corner of her mouth crook upward and a faint blush come to her cheeks. “You certainly haunt my dreams.”

  That was something he did not need to hear. She was a witch all right, although not the kind her grandmother had meant. She had ensorcelled him, wrapped him in the spell of her scents, his needs, her temptations. A Siren. A real Siren, not some creature of myth.

  Her faint smile faded, and her expression became damnably earnest. Then her words told him that she was pained for him, as well. “You said you could drink from me without hurting me.”

  “No, Caro. No.”

  “You mean you can’t?”

  “I can, but it’s dangerous.”

  “I’m willing, if that’s what you need.”

  “You didn’t just go there.” He closed his eyes again, as once again powerful needs surged, trying to break the fragile leash that controlled them. “Just stop it. Don’t provoke me. Don’t tempt me.”

  “You look like a man in agony.” Her voice had grown tight with a deep caring he could actually smell. She hurt for him. For him!

  A man. For the first time he wished he were just an ordinary man, one whose hungers couldn’t turn him into a ravening beast. He’d been content with what he was for a long time now, and it shocked him to realize he could actually wish for the days when he’d been an ordinary mortal.

  She was doing that to him. Had he been able, in the maelstrom of conflicting emotions, he might have added hatred to the storm.

  Except he could not hate her. Nothing in him would allow that.

  He studied her gloomily. “You don’t get it and you can’t get it.”

  “Then try to explain it!”

  “I have. Apparently the words don’t explain well enough, or you simply can’t understand, being a mortal.”

  “Then try again. Please.”

  “You’ve never been an addict, have you?”

  “No.”

  He waved a hand. “Then you can’t begin to understand.”

  “Try anyway.”

  A burst of anger filled him, and in one fluid, invisible instant he attained his feet and loomed over her. “Listen very carefully, Caro. Accept that I am not exaggerating.”

  She nodded, looking a little uneasy. Of course she looked uneasy, but she had asked for this.

  “There are delights no mortal can imagine until they are experienced. There is a place where vampires can take their mortal lovers, a place between life and death where ecstasy becomes a pale word to describe what happens. I can lift you to heights of satisfaction and completion you will never find any other way. If I drink from you, you’ll get just a taste of that ecstasy. More than one human, after experiencing that, has gone on a lifelong hunt to experience it once again. To use your analogy, like a crack addict.”

  “How can it be so good to be drunk from?”

  “It just is. How in the world do you think we’ve survived for so many centuries? If we had to kill everyon
e we drank from, we’d all be dead, or you’d all be dead.”

  “Oh.” She barely breathed the word, and he could see she was trying hard to understand. “But there’s more, isn’t there?”

  “Of course there’s more. I told you about claiming. Maybe you don’t really believe it. But if I were to claim you—and I’m not at all sure that is something I have the power to decide—I’d follow you to the ends of the earth or beyond. The only way I could stop would be to kill myself. You don’t want to risk that, nor do I.”

  “Just from drinking from me?”

  “Drinking from you and making love to you at the same time. Thank goodness it can’t happen from just one or the other separately. Not for vampires. Not as far as I know. But drinking from you could make you addicted. I won’t hurt you like that.”

  “You don’t know for sure that will happen.”

  God, she was driving him to the edge of madness. It would have been so easy just then to swoop and take everything he wanted and then, when she looked at him with hazy, amazed and satisfied eyes, tell himself that she had asked for it. Because she was asking, whether she realized it or not.

  “You’re playing with fire,” he said sharply. “You have absolutely no idea how badly I want to taste you. No idea of the Hunger that is pushing me to do it. Imagine if you had been starving for weeks and suddenly someone offered you food. Would you be able to say no? This is as bad or even worse, because that rotgut canned blood Jude insists on serving may keep me alive, but it doesn’t satisfy my real needs.”

  She looked down, gazing at her twined fingers. He wished he knew what she was thinking, because a few choice thoughts might be enough to yank his leash back into order.

  But when she looked up, she appeared sad. “So offering comfort to me is painful to you.”

  “Beyond painful.”

  “I’m sorry. I won’t let it happen again. But one more question.”

  “What?”

  “Would that change if you could drink from me?”

  Damn, she was determined to push him over the edge into madness. There could be no other explanation. None. She couldn’t be this dense. No, she was far too bright for that.

  So what was she doing? Trying to provoke him into tasting her blood? Or was this a genuine attempt to understand the parameters of what he was trying to explain?