by Rachel Lee
“It’s a saving grace, actually.”
That piqued her curiosity and she leaned forward. “How so?”
“Do you think centuries of existence could even be tolerated if the days slipped by without the spice of emotion? And my life is well-spiced. Spiced beyond your imaginings.”
“Can you explain? Give me an example?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “It’s hard because you’ve never experienced it. But let me try. Imagine living life with a veil over everything, dulling colors, dulling sounds, dulling feelings. As if you were mildly drugged.”
“Okay.”
“Then imagine having that veil ripped away. That’s what it’s like for me. A veil was ripped away when I changed. Everything is sharper, sweeter, more colorful. A symphony of textures. In fact, a symphony I enjoyed as a human is a hundred times more beautiful to me now, every note of the orchestra as clear as the purest bell.” He paused, then added wryly, “As long as the orchestra is good.”
“So it’s not painful?”
“It can be, but the good more than makes up for the bad. When I go out at night and look up at the heavens, I see more than pinpricks of light in the sky. I see their full spectra. I see colors you can’t. When I see a rainbow, I see shades and hues you never will. I see more stars than you can. I not only see people as you do, but I see the energy they emanate.”
“Auras?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know if that’s what psychics see. I only know what I see, and it’s beautiful. I can hear the harmonics in your voice rather than the muddle I would have heard as a human. You have one of the loveliest voices I’ve heard in my two centuries. When I watch you walk, I feel an incredible appreciation for your grace. Things I never would have noticed before I notice now. Like the intoxicating scent that surrounds you. No human would even notice it.”
She nodded, beginning to grasp it, at least a little. “But you’re talking about your senses.”
“And you want to talk about my emotions.”
“Yes.” An almost timid agreement.
He fell into thought, as if trying to find a point of comparison. Eventually, he spoke, his voice as deep and dark as rich velvet. “When I was still human, I tossed my heart around freely. I must have fallen in and out of love with the phases of the moon. I dallied freely with the ladies, and moved on quickly. It embarrasses me now, but perhaps I can blame it on youth and war.”
“War?”
“I spent half of my human life at war, in the army. When you’re often unsure you’ll still be alive the end of the next day, you value things differently.”
“I guess I can understand that. Sometimes after working a truly ugly case I get that feeling.”
He smiled faintly. “It has a tendency to heighten your pleasure-seeking.”
“Or your need to find a way to forget.”
“True. Regardless, I was rather careless about others. When my own heart got broken, it tended to heal relatively easily. As for the warring itself, well, it made me feel intensely alive. Which is not to say it wasn’t ugly, but you know what adrenaline can do, especially when added to the sense that your time may be very short.”
“I can imagine.”
“When I turned, I became driven by emotions I couldn’t control because they overwhelmed me. They ruled me. I had thought I knew anger, love and lust, greed, hatred and hunger. I had no idea.”
Terri tried to envision it, but was certain she got only the barest glimmer.
“I had appetites I couldn’t control, needs I couldn’t understand. And I’ll be honest, Terri. Years passed before I ceased to be a slave to my emotions and appetites. Self-control isn’t an emotion, it’s a choice. And even now, after practicing it for more years than I really care to count, it’s not perfect.”
“And now?”
“Now what?”
She didn’t know how to ask. Indeed, she was afraid of what he might say.
He was the one who spoke first. “I keep telling you this is dangerous.”
“Then maybe you should tell me why.”
He sighed heavily and leaned back. “I guess I should. Because I still want you like hell on fire, that’s not going away in the least little bit, so you’d better know what it might mean.”
“And that is?”
“A claiming.”
She waited, but he seemed reluctant to say more, so finally she pressed him. “What does that mean?”
“Vampires are extremely territorial. As a rule you won’t find us in very close proximity to one another. Yes, we can be friends, just as Creed and I are, but as a rule, we’re solitary because territoriality can make us dangerous to each other.”
“Okay. I get that. It even makes survival sense. You wouldn’t want to be too close together because it could reveal your existence.”
“Maybe. Whatever it is, it is. Yes, we have friends, yes, we even occasionally have parties, although I’ve grown tired of most of them. Imagine a nightclub run amok until the wee hours.”
“I don’t think I’d like that much.”
“I know I don’t. But even vampires have a need to socialize sometimes. So we find others of our kind the same way you humans do, people we find agreeable. We form networks, and sometimes even groups we call families. I would consider Creed, for example, to be family.”
“I’m glad. Glad to know you’re not completely alone.”
“Oh, I’m not alone. You’ve noticed Chloe and Garner, and there are others, as well, human and vampire both. Not a large group, but enough for my needs.”
She noticed he seemed to be trying to avoid explaining what a claiming was, and she wondered if she should press him or let it slide. Everything in its own time, she cautioned herself.
But Jude apparently decided to just plunge in. “Claiming,” he repeated. “It’s a very different thing from socializing. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it can be deadly.”
“Deadly?” The word took her aback, it was so unexpected.
“Deadly,” he repeated emphatically.
Her mouth felt dry again, something about the way his dark eyes stared at her.
“We call it a claiming. No one knows how it happens or why. But then we don’t know the how or why of much of our existence, so what’s one little thing more? Only this is no little thing.”
She licked her lips. “What is it?”
“When we claim something or someone, a bond is forged, an unbreakable one. That thing or person becomes ours. We will not let it go. If two vampires claim the same thing it usually leads to one of them killing the other.”
“Oh, my!”
“Well, it gets worse. Most claiming occurs between vampires. That’s okay unless only one of them makes the claim.”
“But if only one does?”
He closed his eyes a minute. “Terri, let me put this in frank, simple terms, so you know the danger you’re running here. If I claim you, I will not be able to let you go. You can fly to the farthest part of the planet and I’ll follow you. If you don’t want me, I will become your worst nightmare. You won’t be able to shake me.”
“You’d stalk me?” The thought horrified her.
“Actually,” he said heavily, “I think that before I ever did that to you, I’d kill myself.”
He expected her to jump up, to say she was leaving. He’d seen the play of emotions on her face, had smelled her changing scents as she reacted. He’d known the moment when she felt horror.
But she couldn’t run, not with the threat that seemed to be stalking her. How in the hell could he protect her from that thing and from himself?
She said, her voice cracking, “You think…you think you might claim me?”
“It’s been a con
cern at the front of my mind since I met you. No one has ever affected me the way you do, Terri. No one. Don’t ask me to explain it. These things have no explanation. But now you know exactly the kind of fire we’re playing with here.”
“That’s why you wanted me to go away at first.”
“Exactly.”
“Then for your sake I should go.”
For his sake? “Terri, you can’t. There’s a demon out there following you.”
“So? Do you really think I care so little about you that I’d play with your life?”
But she would play with hers? “No,” he said, putting as much force into the word as he could. “You’re not going anywhere. I won’t have you on my conscience.”
“But if this claiming thing happens—”
He cut her off. “Then I’ll deal with it.”
“Not by killing yourself. Do you think I want that on my conscience?”
Serious as the discussion was, errant humor trickled through him. “Most of your kind would agree that fewer of my kind would be a good thing.”
“Cut it out, Jude. You know I don’t think that.”
“Not anymore, but I still shock you and disturb you. And even horrify you.”
He watched the struggle play across her face, smelled her inner uneasiness and worry. But amazingly, he felt no loathing from her.
She chewed her lip for a moment and he wished he could do that for her. Gentle nibbles. Nibbles that would transport her until she gave herself to him as she had just before sunrise this morning. Those moments of magic lingered with him even more than they did with her. Indelible moments, ones he would never be able to forget, and all the more priceless because she hadn’t chosen to do it because he was a vampire. Hadn’t given herself because he had vamped her with fascination.
He wished he could toss away all his other concerns and carry her to his bed again, this time to take away the layers of concealment he’d left between them last night, to strip her to her skin and drink in her every inch with his eyes, his hands, his mouth. To let her discover him the same way, partly because it had been a long time since he’d allowed a woman to do that, and partly because he wanted Terri to know him that way. Just Terri.
And therein lay the rub, he thought bitterly. He wanted more than he’d wanted from a woman ever before. Maybe that’s what made him so dangerous.
“Promise that you won’t kill yourself,” she said finally.
It was easy enough to promise, because he’d make sure she would never know if it came to that. “You aren’t disturbed by the thought that I might haunt you for the rest of your days?”
“Less disturbed than I would be if you killed yourself. I know you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Well, then, I promise.”
He watched her relax, apparently satisfied that the situation would somehow be manageable. If it happened. Little did she know.
Then he saw another question dawn on her face. A split second later it was followed by hesitation.
“Terri?”
“Yes?”
“I drank from you. I made love to you. I think we’ve reached a point where you can ask any question you want.”
She flushed a bit, and of course had no idea how that called to him. His hunger awoke, and he thought about getting a bag of blood to silence it. But no, nothing would silence the siren call of fresh blood pumping through warm veins, especially when the blood in question had been the most exquisite he had ever tasted. He could wait. He had schooled himself to wait.
“This claiming,” she said. “Is it like love? Only magnified?”
He smiled faintly. “I don’t know. I’ve never experienced it. I suspect that would be the closest human parallel, though. The main difference I can see is that it never fades. It never pales. Chloe calls it ‘new relationship energy,’ that rush humans get in the first throes of love.”
“I’ve felt it.”
“Every thought, every breath seems to revolve around the person you love. The world becomes bright and fresh, feelings are intensified, you ache until you meet again, you can think of little else.”
“Been there. Once. Briefly.”
“Well, from what I can tell, a claiming is much the same except that it never weakens. Never becomes a quieter feeling.”
“Like a compulsion?”
“Perhaps.”
And he realized he had really had enough. He had sat here calmly discussing these matters as if they were no more than the weather, when indeed they were a tsunami, a hurricane, a major earthquake. The vampire version of a huge natural disaster.
All the while he’d been doing it, he’d been fighting his instincts, fighting his hunger, fighting his lust. Feelings on a scale that beggared any human experience.
His control slipped. Before she could blink he was on the other side of the desk, reaching for her. He half-expected her to pull back in shock, because she couldn’t possibly have seen him move, but she didn’t. When his hands touched her shoulders, she rose toward him, not away. She let him wind her in his arms, and when he buried his face against her neck, he felt her cradle the back of his head.
Unbelievable.
It would have been so easy to take her then. With one little lick, he could numb her throat, and then with one small bite he would feel her heartbeat inside himself as she nourished him with her very life. He could once again taste that champagne.
He leaned back against his desk, drawing her into the cradle between his thighs, letting her know that in one way he was just like any mortal man. She gave a small gasp and let her head fall back even more as she pressed herself against him, giving him an answer in the timeless language of the body.
For an instant, his brain seemed to turn into a red haze of need, just one instant, one thought away from frenzy.
Then he caught himself, nuzzling her, drawing in her scent until it filled his lungs.
“Why don’t you?” she whispered.
“Because,” he whispered back, “longing is such a sweet ache.”
“Maybe when you have centuries. Not so much when you only have decades.”
He laughed almost soundlessly, then drew another lungful of her heady scent before lifting his head. Searching her blue eyes, seeing they looked sleepy with the same passion he was feeling, he couldn’t help but smile.
“Unfortunately,” he said, brushing a strand of her dark hair back behind the delicate shell of her ear, “we have important things to be concerned about tonight.”
She sighed. Her sweet breath reached him, heightening his longing. It was hard, so hard to cling to his self-control.
“This is important, too,” she said, but she sounded regretful as if she knew he was right. She tipped her face up and brushed a kiss against his lips. Then he loosened his hold on her as she stepped back.
“I did promise Chloe protection,” he said.
“You did,” she agreed.
“Much easier to provide when my office door is open.”
“It certainly is.”
Then before he could forget himself, he whisked across the room to open the door. He looked back to see Terri frowning.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m just wondering if I’ll ever get used to the way you can move. It’s disorienting.” Then her frown vanished and she smiled.
God, what a smile. He’d follow that to the ends of the earth, too, if he wasn’t careful. Right to perdition.
Creed arrived about two in the morning. Garner appeared to be sleeping off a long day at his place, but he had promised to show by dawn.
“How’s your granddaughter?” Jude asked Creed.
“Better. Much better. The crisis passed and the improvement is remarkable.”
&nb
sp; “I’m glad.” Simple words that conveyed a wealth of feeling.
“So what have you learned?” Creed asked. He settled on the couch again. Jude was already at Chloe’s desk, and Terri had decided to sit on an armchair farther away. She wasn’t sure why, but just now she felt a reluctance to be close to Jude. Maybe that claiming idea had disturbed her more than she realized. Imagine being hunted by a vampire for the rest of your life, if you decided you didn’t want to be his?
At the same time, she wanted Jude beyond anything right now, and had the feeling that given just a tiny bit more time, she might become as obsessive about him as he was afraid of becoming about her.
Just looking at him made her ache with deep yearning, and some dastardly voice in her mind kept asking: But do you really want to love a vampire? Maybe not, but love was seldom a choice. Of course she wasn’t in love yet. She couldn’t be.
“What I’ve learned,” Jude said, “is that one of these things is no real threat to you or me.”
“Really.” Creed arched a brow. “How is it we’re so fortunate?”
“I don’t know. However it is, for this kind of demon to possess either you or me would be as hard, if not harder, than an ordinary demon taking over a human.”
“Ordinary?” Terri spoke, feeling a slither of astonishment. “How can any demon be ordinary?”
Jude cocked a brow at her. “It’s a relative thing.”
“I guess it must be.”
“So,” Creed asked, “what is it after?”
“Either you or me.”
Shocked, Terri felt as if the room turned suddenly cold. “How can that be? Garner said it was following me. I felt it.”
“Have you felt it following you since you walked in on me doing that exorcism?”
“No.”
Jude spread his hands. “My guess is that you felt compelled to follow me that night because of that demon. It was hoping you’d be weak, that you’d open a door, distract me, make me vulnerable in some way. But it didn’t happen. Because you’re strong.”
“So it couldn’t use me to get at you?”
“Apparently. Now it’s trying another angle with Creed.” He looked at his friend. “My guess is that it wants a vampire, any vampire. If you had gone after it by yourself, it might have found a way to anger you into inviting it in. Instead, you came here. You exercised restraint. So it hasn’t gotten at you, either.”