Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming) (3 page)

He turned, facing her. “Not good. Do you want to leave?”

“And be alone outside right now? With this thing flexing its muscles?” She shook her head. “Let’s just get this done. And don’t touch anything.”

“I don’t need to touch anything.”

“What are you going to do? Smell it?”

“Perhaps.”

She felt her jaw drop a little but snapped it shut and followed him. He was already working his way from the kitchen to the front of the house. Interestingly, he passed the ground-floor study and headed upstairs first.

“What I saw happen was downstairs,” she argued as she followed him up the wide, curving staircase.

“But it started upstairs.”

She couldn’t exactly argue about that. The guy had called and said his family was being murdered, and they had all been found upstairs in bed like shattered rag dolls who had been dumped where they had slept.

She was grateful, however, for the thoroughness of the crime unit. Most of the grisly stuff was long gone, taken as evidence or to the morgue. What remained was some spray and splatter, and plenty of fingerprint dust, something she’d seen countless times.

It would still take a special cleaning crew to make this house habitable again, but that was not the concern of city officials.

In each room they stopped for a minute or two. The way Damien sniffed the air was a little unnerving, but Caro forced herself to ignore it and instead stretch her underused sixth sense to see if it could feel anything.

Unfortunately, she recoiled almost at once. Death was very much in the air. Death and pain. It hit her like a blow, and she staggered out of the room.

“Are you all right?” Damien was there, gripping her elbow. His golden eyes almost seemed to gleam.

“Death. Everywhere.”

“I smell it. The pain, too. It’s heavy in the air.”

He could
smell
it? But why not? she thought miserably. Pheromones might linger as strongly as the stench of blood.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll finish looking.”

But she followed him anyway, hovering on the threshold of each room, trying to pick out anything useful from the waves of terror, pain and death imprinted on the space.

She wondered if anyone could ever live comfortably in this house again. Or who would even want to.

At last they descended the stairs, side by side.

“Can you still feel the watcher?” Damien asked.

“Oh, yeah. It’s right behind me.”

He surprised her at the foot of the stairs, telling her to stop. “Just hold still. If Garner could sense it, maybe I can.”

So she waited, curious, frightened and sickened, while he closed his eyes. This time he didn’t sniff the air. He simply stood stock-still as if he was waiting for something.

Suddenly his eyes snapped open. “It’s done here. It left its work behind but nothing else. Let’s go.”

“But you can feel it around me?”

He hesitated. “Yes. I can. I can’t place what it is, but I think I encountered it once before. A very, very long time ago.” He shook his head in frustration. “But still I can’t place it. Now come.”

He’d encountered this before? How was that possible? What exactly was he? Or Jude for that matter. They weren’t like any private investigators she had ever met before.

Most P.I.’s operated to some extent like cops, gathering information for their clients. The difference was they mainly focused on things that were ugly in a different way, things that weren’t crimes, like infidelity, concealed assets and sometimes missing persons.

Messenger Investigations seemed to operate in an entirely different ballpark. But that was why Pat had recommended them, she reminded herself. Because Messenger Investigations handled things the police couldn’t. Like invisible murderers. An unnerved bubble of laughter tried to rise in her throat, but she swallowed it. Laughter would not soothe what had happened here anytime soon.

Outside she drew in lungfuls of fresh air, grateful to be out of that house. Only in returning to the outdoors did she realize how oppressive it had been in there. Suffocating, at least to someone with senses to detect it.

“Is the feeling of being watched lessening?” he asked.

“No.” No, it wasn’t. Not at all. Her neck prickled, and she couldn’t help looking around the darkened backyard, and into the trees and blank windows of nearby houses. Nothing. But something was most definitely watching her.

“Let’s get you home,” Damien suggested. “I need to search my memory very hard. Something is familiar about this. I just wish I knew what.”

So did she. Squaring her shoulders, she marched to the tape line, ducked under it and headed for the car. She didn’t want to let a feeling terrify her, but she had felt, not seen, that thing that had killed a man right in front of her, and she had felt it turn toward her.

Just a feeling
wasn’t going to be a good enough reason to dismiss it. Not this time.

* * *

Damien grew increasingly irritable. At first it amused him, but not for long. What had he been thinking to accompany this woman? She was driving him insane with Hunger. Every whiff of her breath, every beat of her heart, every one of her scents from fear to moments of arousal when she responded to him.

But here he was, having volunteered for this tour in purgatory.

When they got back in the car, it was he who rolled down the windows this time. Too bad if she froze in the winter temperatures—he couldn’t stand smelling her for another minute in the confined space. He’d lose it. Every bit of the self-control he’d so carefully practiced for centuries was about to desert him. Hunger, quieted for a while in the charnel house, had returned, hard and heavy, pulsing through every vein in his body and threatening to overwhelm him with its power.

And that could not be.

However, he was having a bit of trouble remembering why. After all, he knew without doubt that he could seduce this woman and leave her so content she’d never think of complaining.

What was so wrong with that? Jude kept talking about humans becoming “vampire addicted,” but in Damien’s experience that didn’t always happen, and less so when a vampire was careful about both what he took and what he gave. It
was
possible to taste paradise in a way that left most humans simply thinking they’d had an extraordinary experience. Nothing wrong with that.

But the Hunger he felt for Caro exceeded anything he’d ever felt as a human, assuming he accurately remembered his human days. Instead of centering heavily in his groin, it filled his entire body with throbbing need that was impossible to ignore. If he didn’t battle it down, eventually it would become so consuming that he wouldn’t hear or feel anything else but the need raging in him.

He couldn’t let it get that far.

“Can you roll up the windows?” Caro asked. “I’m cold.”

“No.” But then he relented, figuring that the wind coming in her side was probably blowing more of her scent toward him. So he hit the button and closed her side of the car, but left his own window open to beat the aroma back. It worked. Somewhat.

As she directed him toward her place, he fought internally with Jude and himself. Jude was a relatively young vampire. Perhaps his line in the sand came from lack of experience. Damien, thousands of years older, had learned ways to control his interactions with humans that didn’t leave them “addicted.” He hated that word, actually.

There were plenty of delights that could be shared by vampires and humans that left both able to walk away. He knew that for a fact.

So why shouldn’t he indulge just a bit?

But even as the dark side of his nature tried to persuade him, the better side responded. Because she was Jude’s client, because he was Jude’s guest here. Rules of hospitality and all that.

Behave yourself, Damien.
And while behaving himself hadn’t been difficult in a long, long time, the fact was that having lived the past several months on the canned blood Jude purchased, he was Hungrier than ever for the taste of warm, fresh food.

That was one carefully managed indulgence that he was not entirely used to doing without.

He was grinding his teeth in frustration by the time they reached Caro’s apartment building. He’d have loved to just dump her outside, but her admitted fear, and the sense he had of the thing around her, prevented him from doing so.

Whatever his personal problems, he had to do what he could to protect her...a protection that would be limited by dawn’s arrival.

The thought frustrated him even more, mainly because he was sure, absolutely sure, that he had encountered this energy before. This thing that was tailing her. And if he didn’t have entirely too many years of memories stacked up between him and it, he’d probably identify it quickly.

Sometimes he truly felt the weight of his years, and it never made him happy.

* * *

Caro couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to do now. Her apartment was empty—she’d checked it out—and Damien’s contribution to the entire process was to stand in her living room and close his eyes. She was surprised he didn’t follow the procedure she had, that any cop would.

But then she’d already figured out he wasn’t anything like a cop. So how could he be a private investigator?

Regardless, she guessed he was testing the place with the sense he’d used at the victims’ house: smell. Or something else. Watching him stand like a statue only gave her the opportunity to feel that wakening desire again. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t remember if she had ever been so sexually drawn to a man. In fact, she was almost certain she’d never been.

In self-defense, she closed her eyes, too, reaching out with her sixth sense, and she felt that darkness watching her. An invisible force, an almost nonexistent thing that nonetheless had the power to frighten her.

Why had it fixed on her? And why wouldn’t it go away? Using barely remembered skills, she tried to push it back, but it hardly withdrew at all.

For the first time in her life, she truly wished she had listened better to her grandmother.

Then she froze as she felt a whisper of movement in front of her. Snapping her eyes open, she found Damien standing in front of her, not six inches away.

What the hell?

He smiled, a very attractive smile, and despite herself she felt her heart accelerate with eager anticipation. Her mind started throwing up objections, but her body instantly reached the precipice of breathless anticipation and hope. It wanted his touches, and it wasn’t listening to reason. Just like when she’d been young and stupid.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured.

Horse crap,
her brain responded. She knew perfectly well she was no beauty. Passable, maybe, with even features, healthy skin and bright eyes. A little too plump for fashion, but that was the way she was built. When she put on her utility belt, she was convinced she looked dumpy.

But she’d heard the line before—the first line on the path to seduction. It had been a long time since she’d fallen for it.

She wanted to stiffen, to draw back to safety, but it was as if her feet were cemented to the floor.

“Lovely,” he said softly, and reached out to touch a strand of her dark hair.

He was
touching
her? She hardly knew him. Her brain shrieked warnings as her body tried to purr.

Then his hand trailed down until it brushed over her breast. Silken waves of heat rolled through her and she realized she was in serious danger. Not from him but from herself.

Because it would be so easy to give in.

“Just let me...” He started to lean toward her. She felt her mouth lifting to welcome him as his hand closed over her breast.

With his other hand, he captured her wrists behind her back, arching her in a way that made her breasts more prominent. Looking into his darkening eyes, eyes that no longer appeared golden, she felt herself sinking into the miasma of longing and desire that wanted to melt her every muscle. All she wanted was to let this happen.

Then sanity hit her with a snap. His eyes were
black
now? He was making a pass that she wouldn’t have tolerated from anyone, and she was
letting
him?

She stepped into him with all the training she had, all the strength she possessed, and yanked her wrists free. Then she grabbed his arm to twist it behind him, shoving upward with her other hand to his chin to give him a brain-rattling knock to reawaken his senses.

Who did he think he was?

But before her hand connected, before her grip on his arm tightened, he was gone.

Just like that.

Across the room from her, slightly crouched. And she had not seen him move. Suddenly unnerved, she yanked her pistol from the belt holster, thumbed the safety and aimed at him.

She stared at him, stared at his strange aura, tried to take in what had just happened.

The question burst from her. “Just what the hell
are
you?”

Chapter 3

H
e’d almost had her. He was sure of it. Very few could resist the Voice or the seduction when a vampire put his mind to it. But this one had. Somehow. And she’d gone at him in a way that had made him make the biggest mistake possible: he’d jumped away too fast.

God, where had his mind gone? Of course, he knew. It had gone to that sweetest and most demanding of places where the object of his Hunger had overruled him. He had been near the brink of madness with desire.

But after all these centuries it was embarrassing to have to question himself. Had Hunger truly pushed him into the stupidest thing he could have done?

Evidently so. And now he had to think fast because she was asking a question he should not truthfully answer, and because he’d embarrassed Jude. If this woman talked to her detective friend about this, Jude would be furious and have a lot of explaining to do.

It was not very courteous of him as a guest to have put Jude in this position. He had to fix this and fix it fast so that Jude wouldn’t have to leave town to protect his identity, so that his wife, Terri, who was a medical examiner, wouldn’t be forced to give up her job....

The import of what he had just done crashed through him like a tsunami, to be followed by waves of desperation nearly as strong. The Hunger and lust that had driven him now took a definite backseat to damage control.

He straightened, clearing his throat, and tried to evade the question as his mind raced over how to handle this. Unfortunately, after what had just happened, he didn’t think he was going to be able to make her forget it.

But he tried anyway because there was no mistaking that, for at least a very brief time, she’d responded to his control. “Forget,” he said in the Voice that most humans had to obey. “Forget this happened.”

“I’m not about to forget this,” she retorted hotly. “Just who do you think you are? You’re supposed to be a private detective, you pervert!”

Pervert?
That was entirely possible, and he didn’t exactly object to the word either. Perversion was, after all, largely in the eye of the beholder. He wouldn’t mind binding her with silken ropes and getting her to admit she wanted him, too. And she did. He had smelled her arousal around her as clearly as he could see her right now.

However, this was not solving the problem either. She was mad and needed to be soothed, the quicker the better.

“I was overcome by your charms,” he said, which at least was true. She, however, astonished him by not believing it.

“Yeah. Really. As if you’re a sixteen-year-old who thinks with your groin. You were out of line. Way out of line.”

“I apologize.”

But clearly that wasn’t going to satisfy her either. Concern for Jude hung over him like a dark cloud.

He wasn’t at all concerned for himself. Staring down the barrel of her gun might make her feel better, but for him it meant nothing. He was certain that, like most cops, she was trained to shoot at center mass. Any wound she could give him would not kill him unless she hit him in the head, the last place a cop was trained to aim for.

Regardless, he could move so fast the instant he saw her trigger finger tighten that she didn’t have a hope of hitting him anywhere at all.

But of course he was not going to illuminate her. He’d already illuminated her far too much.

Amusement might have gripped him except for his concern about Jude. Never, not once in Damien’s countless years, had a woman ever denied him. Now that one had, he realized he was in quicksand of his own making. How maddening. But for himself he didn’t care. He could be gone faster than she would be able to see. No, other concerns pinned his feet to the floor, forcing him to battle his natural urges and ignore his own abilities.

He could almost see her thinking rapidly, and he suspected that was going to bode ill for his secrets, too. She had asked the one question that was most important, and he didn’t think she’d forgotten it.

He wondered if Jude would see the humor in it when he explained that he couldn’t tell a lie because of a vow he had made centuries ago. Not likely.

His only hope now, he supposed, was that Caro would disbelieve his answer and throw him out. Then he could let Jude tell him he was no longer welcome and could head back to Cologne. Surely that would appease all the parties who were going to be annoyed with him, from this woman to Jude to Pat Matthews. However, he had promised to hang around for a while just in case any more of those rogue vampires arrived to stir up things for Jude again by attacking innocents and trying to create a vampire-ruled world. Tell a lie or break a promise? The horns of a dilemma indeed.

His mouth lifted in half a grim smile as he contemplated the sword he was about to fall on.

But she didn’t make him fall on it; she pierced him with it. All of a sudden her eyes widened, and she drew a sharp breath and said, “You don’t exist!”

Unfortunately, he did. Of that much he was sure. Dead, undead, vampire or not, he most certainly existed. Now more than a little perplexed, he moved a little farther away, trying to give her space to feel safe and calm down.

He’d been an idiot and was willing to admit it. The question was how to get
her
not to make a big deal out of it.

Her eyes followed him, narrowing as they did so. “Your aura,” she said.

“What about it?”

“It’s not human.”

That didn’t exactly shock him. What shocked him was that she could see it. “Really?” He wondered if he should buy time by going on the attack. After all, not that many humans admitted to seeing auras. Maybe he could use that against her.

But as soon as he had the thought, he despised himself. While he might have slightly different rules of conduct because of his state of existence, that didn’t excuse him from the important rules that governed the behavior of most intelligent beings, such as not attacking people based on who or what they were.

“Your aura,” she said again. “It’s not normal. It’s all one color and too close to your body. Wine-red.”

He looked down, but seeing auras was not among his gifts, sadly. While he could tell much from the ebb and flow of heat in a human body, that was not the same as an aura. “Really. I had no idea.”

“But you still haven’t answered my question, have you,
vampire?
”

In an instant the entire thing went from bad to worse. It was one thing for her to consider him a pervert but to know he was a vampire by his aura—a fact that would certainly give away Jude—was a disaster of epic proportions.

He cursed the urges and stupidity that had led him to dig this hole. Not since he was a newborn had he found self-control beyond his ability. Of course, he’d never met anyone who attracted him the way Caro did either, but that was no excuse for his biggest mistake: assuming his abilities would allow him to seduce her. He’d lived long enough to know that the Voice didn’t work with everyone, long enough to know that getting his way was sometimes chancy.

Hell.

“You don’t believe in vampires,” Damien answered, which was certainly true but also an intentional misdirection on his part. He hoped it would work. It was certainly his last chance for a clean getaway that would harm no one.

But before he could be sure, she took a wholly confusing tack.

“I
wish,
” she groaned, “that I had listened to my grandmother.” Then she lowered her pistol, sank onto a nearby chair and looked at him as if she wanted him to vanish.

Well, he could vanish, and quickly, too, he thought with bitter amusement, but that wouldn’t make things better for Jude. “Your grandmother?”

“Yes, my grandmother. She used to tell me about things, things from fairy tales. At least, I wanted to believe they were fairy tales.”

“I’ll gladly be a fairy tale for you.”

Her head snapped up a bit. “Oh, no, you don’t. You sit right over there,” she said, pointing to another chair with her gun. “I want some answers.”

He debated. He could slip out before she could stop him, race to warn Jude and then catch a wheel well on the next night flight to Europe, an utterly cowardly response that would have made bile rise in his throat, if he still had bile. Or he could sit out the inquisition and try to patch the damage. Which was clearly the only honorable choice left now.

He sighed. “You’re troublesome, Caro.”

“Me? I’m troublesome?” Her voice rose a bit with anger. “Who was it who just pawed me?”

“I didn’t paw you. Please. I fondled you.”

“Without my permission, which makes it pawing!”

“Actually, I could smell consent all around you.”

“Oh. My. God.” She put her face in her hand, but not before he saw her cheeks redden.

He decided that taking a seat might be the wise thing to do now, especially since he had just put her on the defensive. Just a little, but perhaps enough to settle this matter before it got worse.

Her head jerked up. “I don’t care what you smell. Never do that again without my permission.”

Well, he couldn’t exactly promise that. Considering that her scents, including her anger, which was tinged with just a dash of fear, were calling to him almost irresistibly, he tried to find a response that would soothe her.

“Promise me,” she demanded.

Truth again.
Never in all his centuries had he so regretted taking that vow. “I can’t lie to you,” he said, “so I can’t promise you that. I can promise to
try,
but nothing more.”

“Why? Are you incapable of self-discipline?”

“I’m not incapable of it. Actually, I’m usually quite good at it.”

“Then why not now?”

He sighed. “I gather you’ve never been deprived of something essential to life.” While also true, this was yet another evasion. For some reason he wanted Caro even more than he wanted the usual mix of sex and blood, but he absolutely didn’t want her to know that. She was on an edge right now and could teeter either way. Teetering the wrong way would cost Jude and his wife enormously.

“Sex isn’t essential to life. Not even a vampire’s.”

How had they moved so quickly to her accepting that he was a vampire? But that wasn’t the question before him right now, so he watched the puzzling emotions skitter across her face and tried to divine her reactions from her scents. Neither was really giving him a strong clue right now. Whatever she was feeling was scattered all over the place.

“Sex,” he said finally, “is not essential to my survival. What goes with it is.”

At that her face went utterly still. Then fury tightened her eyes. “You were going to take my blood without my permission?”

“Never.” That he could say with absolute truth and certainty. “Never.”

“Then...” She stopped. Drew a deep breath. Clenched her hands. “I can’t believe this.”

“Then don’t.” It would be excellent if she returned him to the pervert category and convinced herself that he wasn’t a vampire at all.

But that was not to happen. “You really exist,” she said quietly.

“So it seems.”

She stared at him almost miserably, then slapped her hand on her thigh. “That does it.”

“What does it?”

“I told you all about why I came to you. To Jude. Evidently you were part of the package and I need your help.”

He regarded her warily. “I can remove myself from the package if you like.”

“No, that won’t change a damn thing. Because Jude has the same aura.”

He’d blown it. He’d blown it to hell and gone. Now it was just a matter of how to deal with it, and right now he didn’t have a single decent idea that could spare Jude and Terri.

“So,” he said slowly, “are you going to expose Jude?”

At that she laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound. In fact, it sounded edgy. “Sure. I just got put on medical leave because I refused to stop trying to tell my boss that I saw a guy levitate and get thrown across the room by an invisible force. If I go to anyone and tell them you and Jude are vampires, I can kiss my career goodbye.”

“Oh.” His instant sense of relief gave way to concern. “I didn’t know your career was in danger.”

“Because I didn’t tell you. Do you think it makes me feel good to know my boss thinks I’m having some kind of breakdown? That if I don’t shut up permanently I’ll lose my promotion to detective? And now this! Oh, I really needed you on top of everything else.”

She at last thumbed the safety on her pistol and shoved it back into her holster. Evidently she had remembered enough to realize how useless it would be against him. “I could put you in jail, you know. That was sexual battery. So keep your mitts to yourself.”

He resisted the urge to remind her there was no way in hell she would get him jailed, but he decided to accept her warning as it was intended. For now, at least. Besides, as things began to settle, he began to feel urges. Urges to solve the mystery of Caro Hamilton and why she called to him so strongly. Urges to understand her quixotic mix of traits and beliefs. Urges to protect her. He halted himself there.
Protect her?
Whoa,
as Chloe would say. Over the top, surely? But this woman was facing something that concerned him, and he was certain she couldn’t deal with it alone.

Then she fell silent, staring gloomily into space, and he let her be. He had no idea how he could help her with any of her problems, except possibly the force that was hovering nearby even now. The cat was out of the proverbial bag, and he had to admit to a little shame that he had added to her problems when all he had been trying to do was share with her a few utterly satisfying moments of passion. He wondered if he would have been any wiser had he known the pressure she was under in addition to being stalked by some unseen and deadly power. Too late for an answer to that.

It was difficult to keep a rein on himself, though, sitting here in her small apartment, swamped in her scents, listening to the beat of her heart and smelling the fresh blood moving in her veins. The difficulty of it surprised him, and he blamed it on not having indulged in fresh food for so long. Certainly not since he was a newborn had his needs driven him to the point of utter folly. He prided himself on deciding who, what, where and when.