by Rachel Lee
He hated to let this matter wait. It had taken him a whole month to track down this one man. What if he moved again?
But truthfully, he would probably be able to follow the guy’s trail even if he moved all the way across the city. Because he had scented it, caught it, memorized it.
Much like he’d memorized the scent of the woman he’d saved. In some corner of his brain, she was catalogued, and he could follow her anywhere. Or recognize her again even if decades or centuries passed.
Hell. He swore under his breath, watching as Chloe settled the woman with a cup of tea and plenty of youthful mothering. Himself he took into the back office, a room without windows, one where he could work even during the day if it was absolutely necessary.
It seldom was a good thing, because the sleep of death was hard to resist. And when he did resist it, sooner or later he had to make up for it, usually during night hours that were rightfully his.
He pulled some blood out of the refrigerator by his desk, and drained the bag without bothering to use a glass. Cold, and not completely alive, tainted with anticoagulants, it never quite satisfied the craving, but it kept him healthy. One of these days soon he needed to call on one of his acquaintances, one of those who would let him feed. No substitute quite made up for the warm, pumping blood of a living donor.
When he finished draining the bag, he sealed it away in an airtight container marked Biohazard. Soon the drops that were left would begin to rot, and the smell of rotting blood was even more repulsive to him than it was to humans. At all costs, that sickly odor had to be concealed.
He’d made the right decision, he told himself. By dawn that nameless woman out there would probably have been a brutalized corpse. While he couldn’t read minds, he could smell intentions and emotions, and those thugs had been full of evil intent and a determination to leave no witness behind.
And something more. Something not quite right in their scents. Not drugs, which he could identify almost as accurately by scent as by a lab test. No, some other odor that left him feeling deeply disturbed.
He would have to deal with them eventually. Of that he had no doubt. But right now he was concerned about his more immediate target. The killer he sought was demonically oppressed, if not possessed, which meant the cops would never find him. Never. At least not until the demon was removed from the picture.
He drummed his fingers impatiently on his desk, and looked at the clock. It told him what his body already knew: not enough time, not tonight. For an ordinary killer, maybe he could squeak it in, but not a possessed one.
A knock on the door called for his attention. “Come in, Chloe.” He knew it was her because her scent wafted more strongly under the door.
She pushed the door open and stuck her head in. “Our lady friend doesn’t want to go home just yet, and Garner just arrived.”
“Garner?” Just what he needed: a visit from an inept hunter who was trying to win his spurs while making a complete nuisance of himself. And a rescued woman who now didn’t want to go home. A damn three-ring circus in his outer office.
“Sorry,” Chloe whispered. “I told him you were busy but he seems to know something about the, um, target.”
Things really couldn’t get any better, could they? he thought sarcastically as he pushed back from his desk. Garner mixing in with a dangerous case and that woman....
Realizing he hadn’t yet shucked his leather coat, he tugged it off and tossed it over his chair. It was the kind of oversight a human might notice, and he didn’t want the woman to notice any more than she already had. Though he was fairly impervious to the ambient temperature, he kept the office comfortable enough for humans, like Chloe. That coat would appear out of place, and with Garner adding to the chaos of the night, he didn’t want one more damn thing to seem out of place.
He stepped into the front office, his gaze first going to the woman. Not only was her scent absolutely intoxicating, but she was far prettier than he’d noticed in the earlier chaos. Long inky hair, wide blue eyes and lips that seemed to beg for a kiss. She sat in one of the client chairs near Chloe’s desk, her legs crossed in a way that revealed surprising length in a woman so small. Her arms were folded tightly, but they failed to conceal the mounds of her breasts, not too small, not too large. She was as much a visual delight as an olfactory delight. Eminently desirable, eminently drinkable. A dangerous combination.
He dragged his gaze away and looked at Garner, who was leaning casually against the wall. Blond, barely twenty-four, Garner suffered from delusions of grandeur brought about by a Gift. The young man looked elegant, in a rough sort of way, and appeared composed, although Jude could smell that he was far from as calm as he appeared. “What do you want?”
“I know something about the, ah, target you’re after.”
“And how would you know that?”
Garner actually flushed a little. Since he wasn’t undead, he still had blood pressure that responded to his emotions.
“Get in my office,” Jude said impatiently. “And close the door.”
Garner didn’t argue, for once. He did exactly what he was told.
Then Jude returned his attention to beautiful and problematic woman. “Why don’t you want to go home?”
She bit her lower lip, revealing a glimpse of perfect, white teeth. “Because that guy who offered me a ride? He knows where I live.”
Chloe spread her hands as if to say, How can you argue with that?
Easy. “Chloe will take you to the police. File a complaint against him for sexual assault. They’ll run him down.”
“But I don’t have any proof he did anything. And if I go to the police…” Again she stopped, as if unwilling to say more. “I don’t want to make him madder,” she said finally.
“More likely he’ll cool down and decide he made a big mistake. Maybe he just had too much to drink.”
The woman shook her head, biting her lip harder.
Jude smothered a sigh. “What aren’t you telling me?”
The woman hesitated, then the words came out of her in a rush. “I kicked him in the groin. And he got so mad he started to swing at me and that’s when I stabbed him.”
“Stabbed him?” Had Jude been mortal he was sure that by this point he’d be looking for a double whiskey and a chair.
“With a pen,” she said quickly. “It’s not like I had a knife or anything.”
Jude decided on the chair after all. And maybe a whiskey later, though it would have little effect on him. He sat.
“How badly did you stab him?”
“Not too badly. I got him in the shoulder and I’m pretty sure the pen couldn’t have gone in more than two inches, max. I’m fairly certain I didn’t hit anything but muscle. Then I got out of the car and started running, and he chased me for maybe half a block screaming he was going to kill me.”
“Oh.” He wondered how he had missed that part of the night’s activity. Probably too focused on what he was there to do, or maybe he’d arrived shortly after this altercation. Either way… So the guy had threatened to kill her. Even on his most sanguine day he couldn’t dismiss such a threat out of hand.
He looked at Chloe, then looked at the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Terri. Theresa Black.”
“Okay, Theresa Black, are you absolutely certain you’re telling me the truth?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because there could have been other reasons to stab this guy.”
He smelled the indignation as much as he saw it. All right, she was telling the truth. She’d defended herself from an attacker.
Chloe spoke. “You don’t have time.”
“You’re always worried about my time,” he grumped at her.
“Maybe because I don’t want to look for another job? Y
ou don’t have time tonight. There’s Garner. And other things.”
Like he needed her to remind him.
“Don’t have time for what?” Theresa asked.
“Never mind,” he answered shortly. His inner clock was starting to tick more loudly, warning of dawn’s approach. He glanced at the clock on Chloe’s desk and saw he had less than two hours. Not enough to hunt down a man he knew nothing about.
He looked at Chloe. “I want all the information on the guy who attacked her. Every detail. Right away.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Then you and I are taking her to the cops.”
“Maybe Garner could…”
He interrupted her with a look. “Garner? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Well, it was a thought. He’s got to learn sometime.”
“Not today. Garner can turn the smallest task into an earth-shattering catastrophe. I don’t have time to clean up after him. No Garner.”
“I don’t want to go to the cops,” Theresa said firmly. “That’ll just make things worse with Sam. And if they keep me too long, I’ll be late to work. I can’t afford that.”
“Call in sick.” Jude had had enough. Another minute in the same room with this woman and he might revert. He rose. “If you don’t go to the police, if you go home or go to work instead, then I take no responsibility for anything that happens to you.”
Turning, he walked into his office. Before he closed the door he heard Theresa say, “Is he always so harsh?”
“Only when his night gets messed up.”
Then he closed the door, leaving the problem of Theresa in the capable hands of Chloe, so he could face the much less capable hands of Garner.
Garner lounged in the client chair facing Jude’s desk, one leg thrown over the arm. The instant Jude entered, however, he straightened up, putting both feet on the floor.
Jude said nothing as he rounded the desk and took his own seat. Only then did he speak. “What the hell are you doing here, Garner?”
The younger man shrugged. “I smelled the, ah, target.”
“And?”
“I smelled that same odor somewhere else, earlier today. On someone else.”
At that Jude straightened a bit. “Victim?”
Garner shook his head. He might still be new at all this, but he was sure of his innate instincts. “The oppression involves more than the one guy you found.”
“Hell.”
Garner leaned forward, a little too eagerly. “Look, I know you think I’m too untrained to help at all. I still haven’t figured out how you think I’m going to get trained if you keep me out of all the action. But even you know how good my gift is. And I’m telling you, this is no minor infestation. I bet if I keep moving around town, I’ll find others.”
It was possible, entirely too possible. Such things had happened before, and when they did they invariably signaled a huge problem right around the corner.
“We need to stop it before there are five of them,” Garner said. As if Jude didn’t already know. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper. “I followed the guy home. We can find him here.”
Jude caved, just a little. Reaching into his desk he pulled out a container of pushpins. “Put it on the map.” The map of the city that was tacked to one wall. The red pin already there indicated the target he’d been after tonight.
Garner seemed pleased to be allowed to do even this much. Jude, remembering other times when Garner’s attempts to help had proved more problematic than anything, wondered once again what he was going to do with this young man before the kid got himself into serious trouble. The dead kind of trouble.
Garner marked the spot with a blue pin and returned to his seat. “I can help,” he said again.
Jude leaned forward resting on his elbows. “Here’s how it’s going to be, Garner.”
The kid’s face brightened hopefully.
“You’re going to do a sweep. Start at dawn. Cover as much of the city as you can and report back here at sunset. I need to know how many cases we have.”
Garner nodded. “Absolutely.”
“The more there are of them, the faster I need to work. Clear? And you’re not going to get in the way, and you’re not going to do anything stupid. You’re just going to report back.”
Garner’s hope appeared to be tempered with a touch of disappointment, but he nodded again. “I can do that.”
Jude tapped the desk with a fingertip to emphasize his point. “You are not ready to deal with these guys. Are we clear on that? If they catch on to you, you run the risk of infestation or possession yourself. So you’re going to prove to me that you know how to be very cautious, understood?”
“And if I do?”
Jude sighed, knowing there was no way out of this. If the infestation was spreading, he might not be able to keep up without help from someone who could hunt during daylight hours. “If you prove that you can follow orders exactly, I’ll think about the next step in your training.”
“Thanks, Jude!” Garner leapt up, having won at last. Or so he thought.
Jude knew better. Garner had no idea of the realities of the world he was trying to enter. No idea at all.
But when Garner opened the door of Jude’s office, the scent of Theresa Black wafted in. God. Jude almost banged his head on his desk. A screwed-up night, and now the most enticing morsel he’d encountered in at least fifty years was out there in his extra room, close enough to…
No.
He forced himself to look at the wall map, but two pins did not a pattern make, and he knew he was fooling himself, thinking he could gain a thing by pondering two locations.
Sometimes he hated his belated development of a conscience. Sometimes he hated his self-imposed exile.
It was several centuries too late to start thinking that he could use a hobby of some kind to fill hours.
Damn, he hated it when a night got messed up.
A couple of minutes later, Jude stood just inside his office, the door ajar, listening. He knew he was being a damn fool, maybe a double-damned fool, but that woman’s scent kept drawing him.
“Your boss is a strange man.”
Jude smelled Chloe bristle, heard it in her voice. Despite all the instincts that were urging him to walk in there and take what he wanted, he had to smile faintly. Chloe couldn’t have been more protective of him if she’d been his own mother. In fact, come to think of it, his own mother hadn’t cared that much.
Chloe said, “That’s a nice thing to say about a guy who just saved your life.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. Just that he’s…different.”
“We’re all different in some way. Jude gets pretty intense when he’s working a tough case.”
“Okay.” Theresa sighed. “Sorry. But Jude is a little, well, overwhelming. It was kind of weird the way he made those guys leave. And then he moved so fast!”
Chloe responded easily, even as her fingers typed rapidly at the keyboard, no doubt researching Terri’s assailant. “He’s a sprinter. Or was.”
Good lie, Chloe. Sometimes he thought Chloe would lie under oath to protect him. He hoped they never had to find out.
“I guess that would explain it.”
“You need to talk?”
“I’m just trying to absorb it all.” Theresa laughed uneasily. “I moved from one near rape to another in a matter of a few minutes, then your avenger boss came out of nowhere and cowed those guys as if…as if by magic.”
“It’s his confidence,” Chloe said. “Most cowards won’t take on a man who knows he can take them out.”
“Really? There were four of them.” And she sounded awfully dubious. He couldn’t blame her.
; “And Jude knows all the martial arts. He’d have had them all flat on their faces before you could blink.”
“Oh.” Theresa didn’t sound as if she quite believed it.
Well, not all the martial arts, Jude thought, mildly amused. His inhuman speed had a lot to do with it.
“Look,” Chloe said after a minute, “you don’t have to worry about Jude. I’ve worked with him for four years now, and I can promise you he’s one of the good guys.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Yeah, he has his moods. He can get impatient. He hates it when his night gets messed up. He even gets crabby and short-tempered at times. You know, like the rest of us.”
At that Theresa gave a small laugh. “Okay. It’s just… I’m sorry. He’s your boss and you like him.”
“Just what?”
“Well, somehow he feels different. I can’t explain it.”
“He is different,” Chloe said. “If this were a comic book, he’d probably be one of the superheroes.”
He really needed to tell Chloe not to go over the top like that. That was downright embarrassing.
Theresa spoke again. “What’s he going to do with the information about the guy who tried to attack me in his car?”
“Well, if the cops don’t have enough to arrest him, I suspect Jude will pay him a visit and convince him to forget he ever met you.”
Too close to the truth, Chloe. Watch it.
“How is that going to help? It’ll probably just make the guy madder.”
“Trust me,” Chloe said, “when Jude puts the fear of God into someone, it sticks.”
Terri asked for the restroom and Chloe offered to show the way.
Jude had fully opened the door of his office when Chloe emerged from the hallway to the restroom. She saw him and glared at him, obviously annoyed that he’d been eavesdropping.
Not that he cared. He jerked his head toward his office, then went inside to wait. And Chloe, of course, made him wait. She must have filled the teakettle and put it on the stove before she meandered his way. Chloe drank tea as if it were the staff of life.
“Close the door,” he said.