Forever Claimed

by Rachel Lee

“Please don’t call me that.”

  Luc’s brow lifted. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not…because I can’t…” She looked down and covered her face with a corner of the comforter.

  “Je suis désolé,” Luc said, actually sounding sincere. “I’m sorry. I did not know I touched on a nerve.”

  Chloe spoke. “So you didn’t leave entirely of your own volition?”

  Dani’s head shot up and she looked at Chloe. “I did. It was my choice. I didn’t fit and I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

  “I know that feeling well,” Luc said quietly. “All too well.”

  Dani searched his face and for the first time in her life it occurred to her that bloodsuckers might have real feelings beyond satisfying their blood lusts. That they might actually think and feel like the humans they had once been. Some of them, anyway.

  She told herself she didn’t want his sympathy, certainly not the sympathy of one of his kind. Yet her throat tightened, anyway. She had no one anymore, no one. She had left her family behind and had barely started to make friends. Certainly not friends with whom she could trust her true story. So she skimmed the surface, pretending to be just like everyone else when she was not.

  Now her story had come out in the unlikeliest company possible, and she found sympathy in the gaze of one her pack would call their mortal enemy.

  How was she supposed to deal with this?

  From earliest childhood she had been taught to use her nose above every other sense. She had been trained to identify things as good or bad by those scents, and the scent of vampire had been drilled into her as a threat. Even a whiff of it could cause her to shudder.

  Tonight she had been attacked by bloodsuckers, their stench overpowering. Because she could not change, she hadn’t been able to outrun them or fight them off.

  But now she had to deal with the fact that one of that kind had saved her, and another was keeping her safe in his office…and the smell was all around her, and it was not bad.

  Linked to terrors she had been taught, but not at all repugnant in and of itself. Separated from her childhood training, the smell was actually pleasant. Even enticing.

  Perhaps that was why she had been trained to avoid it. Because it might draw her in. By itself, there was nothing to cause repulsion.

  God, she felt like she was losing her mind. The echoes of the attack still reverberated through her, and yet she was drawn to one of their kind. But that was how they operated, she reminded herself. Not by repelling, but by attracting. Like spiders weaving sparkling webs that looked like a safe place to land.

  However alluring, there was nothing safe about a vampire. Hadn’t Luc said so himself?

  Chloe excused herself to go make tea. She disappeared around a corner, and soon there were sounds of cupboards opening and closing, of water running.

  Luc spoke, his voice pitched low. “Your eyes reveal too much, Dani Makar. As do your scents. You want me and you do not like it.”

  She drew a shocked breath, horrified that he could tell so much.

  He gave her a half smile. “You have few secrets when it comes to your feelings. I can smell them. Too bad you cannot smell mine.”

  Her voice came out a broken whisper. “Why?”

  “Because then you would know I want you, too.”

  She couldn’t breathe. Her heart hammered so loudly it filled her ears. “I don’t…”

  He shrugged. “It makes no difference. I have no interest in my wants or yours. Mine can be satisfied elsewhere, and yours…well, your reluctance hardly appeals to me.”

  “I thought your kind liked that.”

  “Some do. They are the ones we will have to fight. It’s never been much to my taste.”

  She felt he was omitting information, but she was fairly certain she didn’t want to know what it was. Bad enough he’d been so blunt and exposed something she had scarcely faced herself. She had the worst urge to slap him or storm out, but knew she couldn’t do either.

  She was trapped until dawn with a vampire who perceived too much, and feelings she hoped she would eventually be able to forget ever having. Her family would be so ashamed of her.

  She swallowed hard and was so glad when Chloe returned with two mugs of hot tea. It gave her something to hold and something to do. The need to stay active grew stronger with each passing minute. The problem was she couldn’t imagine what she could do. She had no way to pursue her attackers. She couldn’t bring this to the police, who wouldn’t believe any of it, and she couldn’t fight a bunch of vampires, anyway.

  Unless she made what her family would consider an unholy alliance.

  But her attraction to Luc terrified her. Now that she’d been forced to face it, she wanted to find a hole to bury it in. It would have been nice to blame it on the shock of the attack she had experienced earlier, but she was quite certain that wasn’t it. Based on the attack, all she should be feeling was horror and repulsion.

  She felt as if her beliefs and her feelings had been tossed into a cement mixer. The pattern of her own thoughts and reactions felt alien, as if they belonged to someone else. She needed solitude to sort herself out again, to settle all these shocks. But she would have none until dawn.

  Luc spoke. “We should send you back to your family first thing tomorrow. Away from here, away from all danger.”

  She had been trying to build a life, to escape depending on her family. To leave behind the constant yearning that gnawed at her, the yearning to be fully one of her pack. To go back before she had achieved her full independence and grown the confidence she had come here to find seemed like failure. Utter failure.

  She was always failing. Did she want to again?

  But when she allowed her mind to touch on the attack, she wondered if failure wouldn’t be better. If Luc was right, that those rogues would know she hadn’t died and that this was all about hating to be thwarted, she would certainly be on their list for coming nights.

  She couldn’t stand against them alone. If she ran, she’d fail. If she stayed, she might die.

  But somehow that last thought crystallized something in her.

  Better to die than live a life of fear and self-loathing. She wouldn’t go back to her pack with her tail between her legs—even if she didn’t have a tail.

  No.

  Worse, if she told them what had happened to her to send her home, they might feel obligated to come down here and hunt for vengeance. Oh, there was no might about it. They would come.

  “I can’t go home,” she announced. “I can’t. If my pack finds out what happened they’ll come here to avenge me. I don’t want them in the middle of your war.”

  Luc nodded then sighed. “I doubt they would discriminate between the rogues who attacked you and the rest of us.”

  “No, they wouldn’t.”

  “Then it’s best not to let them know. Things will be difficult enough without a pack of angry wolves getting into it.”

  “So what do we do with her?” Chloe demanded. “Cripes, Luc, you’re full of problems and don’t have any solutions.”

  “Oh, I have a solution,” Luc said almost bitterly. “I’ll protect her. I can spirit her away if I sense a threat.” Then he looked at Dani. “If she will let me, of course.”

  Dani’s heart sank. She wanted most of all to get away from this damnably attractive bloodsucker who was making her feel things she didn’t want, making her want things that ought to make her shudder. Just looking at him sent a shiver of desire through her. The vampire magnetism, she told herself. That’s all it was. Hadn’t her family warned her?

  Her reply, when it came, was heavy with dislike. “What choice do I have?”

  “None, ma petite,” he said. “None. These rogues have narrowed the choices for all of us. They will get their war. And they will not succeed.”

  “So sure?” Chloe asked acidly.

  “No. But it never pays to go into battle full of doubt.”

  With that, he appeared to draw into
himself, to ponder whatever unhappy thoughts darkened his face.

  Jude returned in the hour before dawn. His first words were “It’s begun. Four violent murders tonight.”

  “Terri?” Chloe asked with instant concern.

  “She’s at the morgue surrounded by enough people to be safe. Whoever the rogues are, they weren’t interested in following the bodies. And soon they’ll be going to ground.”

  “Did you learn anything else?” Luc asked.

  “Other than that the bodies reeked of vampire? No. From time to time while I was watching Terri on the streets, I thought I caught a whiff of them, but they seemed to have kept moving all night.”

  “So they do not yet feel truly confident,” Luc remarked.

  “That would be my guess. It may be that so far there are only those that attacked Dani.”

  Luc waved a hand. “Perhaps. If they can’t gather others to their cause, they can deal with that quickly enough. Perhaps tomorrow night we’ll have fewer bodies. And the next night we’ll be dealing with newborns.”

  Chloe gasped. Dani asked, “Newborns?”

  Luc’s golden gaze had darkened a bit. “Newborns,” he repeated. “The newly changed. The most dangerous vampires of all.”

  Apprehension prickled through Dani. “Why?”

  “Because they’re the strongest vampires of all. Because they’re voracious and out of control. The last time I had to deal with a new vampire, it terrorized an entire city and it took two of us to execute it.”

  Dani drew a long, shaky breath.

  “You see,” Luc continued, “those are the stories which persuade your kind to see my kind as such a threat. Most of the undead follow certain rules. The newborns follow no rules at all.”

  Chloe slumped at her desk. “No wonder you don’t want to change Terri.”

  Jude spoke. “It’s possible to prepare someone for the change and make it easier by providing plenty of food. But if you leave them on their own, yes, that’s where you get true monsters. What a devil of a thought, Luc.”

  “I’m trying to think of everything. How else can we prepare?”

  “Damned if I know,” Jude said almost wearily. “All right. Time is short right now. You need a place to go to ground, Luc. Soon. And then it’ll be safe for Dani and Chloe to go home. That leaves darkfall to deal with.”

  “I’m not leaving this office, boss,” Chloe said firmly. “I’ll sleep right here.” Then she looked at Dani. “Can you get home by yourself once it’s light?”

  “Of course.” She sounded more certain than she felt, though. Yesterday she had felt completely safe in this city, and now she didn’t feel safe at all. Not even knowing the bloodsuckers couldn’t roam in the daylight eased her apprehension.

  Chloe hesitated. “I’ll drive you home at dawn. Then I’m coming back here to get ready for the siege.”

  Chapter 4

  Luc waited for Dani outside the university building where she worked. Chloe had managed to get the information from her, and while he didn’t exactly want to be here, he knew no one else could promise Dani any kind of safety.

  He smelled the approach of snow on the air and suspected that before the night was over, a white blanket would cover the city. It mattered to him not one way or the other, for he felt neither cold nor heat, but it might slow the rogues down a bit. It would be hard for them not to leave trails that even human eyes could read once it snowed.

  He had donned clothing unfamiliar to him: a parka, rather than the leather that he preferred because it could stand up to the treatment he gave it, and jeans—the human preference for which he could not begin to understand. He hoped to blend in as he stood here waiting.

  Already the city was on heightened alert because of the four murders last night, all of them grotesque, savage enough to hide any evidence vampires were involved. He didn’t want to appear out of place at all. Not now, not when he was here to protect Dani. Another time it would have made no difference to him, but tonight he could not take to the rooftops or vanish swiftly and without warning, not unless he wanted to terrorize Dani more than she already had been.

  He saw her emerge from the building, wrapped in a long coat with a knit scarf around her neck and a knit cap on her unusual hair.

  He forced himself to walk at a human pace toward her.

  “Good evening,” he called, so his appearance wouldn’t startle her.

  She turned to look at him, and those amazing eyes of hers widened then narrowed. “Chloe told you,” she said.

  “But of course. I said I would protect you.”

  She looked as if she desperately wanted to argue but thought better of it. She glanced around at the darkness held at bay only by the walkway lamps around the campus and then back at him. Truly a choice of evils. The thought amused him.

  “We will walk,” he said and stepped toward her, offering his arm. It was an old habit, but he wasn’t at all surprised when she visibly hesitated. Finally she took his arm reluctantly.

  “We can take the campus bus.”

  “Perhaps you can. I cannot.”

  “Why not?”

  “How much torture do you expect me to subject myself to?”

  “Torture? Oh.”

  He watched the understanding dawn on her face and enjoyed it. Damned if he was going to pretend to be something other than what he was. As Chloe would have said, she could “like it or lump it.”

  Then she startled him by asking, “What do you live for?”

  It had been a very long time since a question had set him back on his heels. They continued to wend their way through the campus, heading toward public streets that he knew to be lined with apartments frequented by students.

  Prime hunting ground, because youth made many students relatively fearless, and they came and went at all hours of the night to visit one another or get something to eat.

  “What do I live for?” he repeated, even as he began scoping the vicinity with an eye to see how easy or difficult it would be to hunt. “Why should you care?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “What do you live for?”

  Satisfaction filled him when she didn’t answer. It wasn’t a question easily answered by anyone, and certainly it was not the kind he cared to discuss with a virtual stranger. Even a stranger who smelled like ambrosia and awakened his every instinct to take her, drink from her and come to know her in that intimate, exquisite place only vampires and their lovers could go.

  They reached her street eventually and he paused, surveying everything intently.

  “Do you smell something?” she asked.

  “City smells, humans. Coming snow.”

  “Then why do you look so concerned?”

  “Because this would be a marvelous place to hunt.”

  She stiffened, but she didn’t pull away. “How so?”

  He raised his other arm and began pointing. “See all the dark places between the buildings? All the large evergreen shrubs? The little alcoves around doorways, not all of which are lit?”

  “Yes…”

  “Those rogues would look at this place as a smorgasbord.”

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  “You have reason for concern.”

  “Yes, but I’m not just worried about myself. Most of the people living here are just kids.”

  “I know. All the more tempting.” He shook his head. “I will keep my assessments to myself, if that will make you more comfortable. But I must say, if this is where you live, I am reluctant to leave you alone here.”

  “I can lock myself in.”

  “Locks don’t stop us if we choose to ignore them.”

  He felt the shudder pass through her and smelled her rising level of fear. That scent called to his kind and inevitably would call to the others.

  “You’re practically a beacon,” he said irritably. “Your fear is perfuming the air. Let’s get to your place before we discuss what to do to protect you.”

  She didn’t arg
ue. Indeed, she quickened her step, guiding him toward her apartment on the third floor. The alcove around her door was lit, but it didn’t reassure him.

  He stayed her hand as she started to use her key, holding it back until he had inhaled the air around the edges of her door.

  “It’s empty,” he said finally and let her open the door.

  She stepped quickly within, closing the door behind them and locking it before she even turned on a light.

  What Luc saw affected him. She owned little, and what she owned appeared to be very much second- or thirdhand. Little spots of color, like a pillow here and there, and the dishes on her counter tried to liven the tiny space. Not that he owned much anymore. Not since Natasha. He had plenty of money, just no desire to spend it. He suspected this was a very different situation.

  She hurried over to her kitchenette, as if she wanted to put distance between them, and began a pot of coffee. Then she pulled something from the freezer and put it into a small microwave.

  He took the opportunity to check out her apartment, including the bedroom behind the closed door. The quality of construction was about as poor as the builders could get away with, and even the walls looked worn from abuse.

  He returned to find her waiting, watching. Uneasiness roiled in her. She didn’t like having him here, but he suspected she would like being alone even less.

  “Eat,” he said as the microwave pinged. “While you do, we’ll discuss measures to protect you.”

  She nodded slowly, then turned to pull a prepackaged dinner out of the microwave. A cup of coffee soon sat beside it on the tiny dinette. He settled onto one of the creaky chairs facing her.

  “This apartment affords little protection,” he told her flatly. “If you insist on staying here, you must keep your windows and doors tightly closed at night.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever go out at night again.”

  “It must feel that way right now. But trust me, Dani, you would not like to live as I do, claiming only half the day for yourself. When we have taken care of this problem, you’ll learn to feel safe again.”

  “Maybe.”

  His gaze fixed on her lips as she licked away a bit of food. Her mouth had a lovely shape, and the plumpness of her lips enticed him. His entire body responded with a hunger so intense he froze for a few seconds, fighting it, seeking self-control. It wasn’t easy.