Claimed by the Immortal (The Claiming)

by Rachel Lee

  She glared at Damien. “You’re very high-handed.”

  “Mainly because I don’t have a lot of patience or time. Are you coming or not?”

  Muttering inside her own head, she climbed into the car. This wasn’t at all what she had expected.

  But what had she expected? Some soothing private investigator who would listen to her, charge her a few hundred dollars and promise to look into it?

  Instead, she had gotten a couple of guys who were determined to act right now. According to them, they weren’t even going to charge her. But what did she know about these men, after all, except that Pat had told her to trust Messenger?

  Crap.

  For the first time she seriously wondered what Pat Matthews had gotten her into. But maybe Pat hadn’t gotten her into anything. Maybe she’d gotten herself into this mess by refusing to shut her mouth.

  They had to drive nearly all the way across the city to get to Duchesne, but traffic was light at this late hour on a weeknight and they made decent time.

  Caro hardly noticed the speed of their travel. Something kept drawing her attention to Damien, as if he were a magnet and she couldn’t look away. God, he was gorgeous in a medieval sort of way. And she needed him to talk, mainly to distract her from the crime one or both of them were about to commit.

  Maybe Malloy had been right: maybe she was losing her mind, even though he hadn’t quite said that. Unfortunately, however, that question was moving to front and center in her own mind. It was not a question she wanted to deal with right now, so she sought distraction.

  “So you’re from Germany?”

  “Most recently, yes. From Köln, although you probably know it as Cologne. I’ve lived there a long time.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A few months.”

  “You speak English incredibly well. No accent.”

  He glanced her way with a smile, his golden eyes almost gleaming in the flash from some passing headlights. “I’ve had a long time to practice. A very long time.”

  “You said recently. Where did you live before that?”

  “A lot of places.”

  “What was your most favorite?”

  “Ah, that’s a question. Every place has its charms. I certainly enjoyed Persia.”

  “Persia? You mean Iran?”

  “Persia,” he said firmly. “To me, it’ll always be Persia.”

  He didn’t look old enough to have called the country by any other name, she thought, then shrugged away the oddity. Probably something to do with politics.

  She turned forward again, tensing as they drew closer to Duchesne. She dreaded going back into that house. And then she felt Damien look at her again, felt the lust as his eyes raked her.

  The downside of being psychic. Or maybe the upside, because she now knew what she had to worry about with him. She could feel his attention as surely as she could feel that other thing that had attached to her. Maybe even more strongly.

  Just feel flattered, Caro. He wouldn’t try to pull anything. Besides, she knew she was capable of protecting herself against unwanted advances. If he got out of line, she could pin him to the ground in no time flat.

  Then she heard him sniff a couple of times. She looked at him reluctantly, reacting again with a strong surge of hormones. She had to get that under control pronto. What the hell was the matter with her?

  “You smell something?” she asked.

  “You.”

  At once she felt her cheeks heat. She hadn’t showered since before going to work that morning, and now she felt embarrassed. “That bad?”

  “That good. You smell delightful.”

  Apart from a blossoming ball of heat at her center, her only response was to roll down the window and let in the icy night air.

  He laughed.

  At least he was a good sport, she thought. And quick to get the message.

  Figuring that matter was resolved, she focused on the crime they were about to commit.

  “You know,” she said, “you could get arrested for this if the police still have the place sealed.”

  “No one will know except you.”

  That thought didn’t make her any happier. It had been three days since the murders, and the techs were most likely finished, but sometimes they left a place sealed in case their investigation brought something to light that required them to come back. Regardless, she didn’t have any legal right to enter the property now. Her part of the job was done. Oh, she might be able to argue for herself if they were caught, but what about Damien?

  Lord, what was she getting herself into? But every time she remembered the way that man had levitated and then been driven right onto those horns, she remained convinced that the police were never going to solve this. Never. And what if this monstrosity killed someone else?

  She’d never be able to forgive herself.

  So breaking and entering was about to be added to her résumé. Lovely. Not.

  Damien parked a few doors down from the house. Apparently he had some smarts to go with the good looks. The street was dark and deserted, and only an occasional house showed any light at all. Together they walked quietly beneath old trees, and Caro checked to be sure her badge was still in her pocket. It would be their only cover if cops questioned their reason for being out here at this hour. In neighborhoods like this, that was often a good question.

  The yard was still ringed with police tape, and more of it was slashed across the front door, barring entry.

  “If we’re going to do this,” Caro said, “we’d better enter from the back. Although I can’t imagine what you think you’re going to find.”

  “Neither can I. Trust me, I’ll know it if I find it.”

  That was enigmatic enough to irritate her. But she swallowed her irritation and led the way through a neighbor’s yard to the back of the house. Moonlight added a silvery glow to the night but washed out all color. Reluctantly, she followed Damien under the cordon to the back door. Someone had neglected to tape it. Or possibly someone had already entered. Her nerves tensed, given the possibility that right this moment there might be a burglary in progress. She unsnapped her holster and put her hand on her gun butt.

  “There’s no legitimate reason this door shouldn’t be sealed.”

  “It seems odd they would have left it off.”

  “Someone could be in there now. But if there’s no one, this is still breaking and entering.”

  “Then allow me to do the breaking part.” He reached out, gripped the knob and with little effort turned it. The door swung open into yawning darkness.

  They could have turned on the lights, but that could draw the attention of any neighbors who were awake. Damien instead reached into the pockets of his overcoat and brought out two small but powerful halogen flashlights. He passed her one.

  “I don’t smell anyone in here,” he said. “The house smells empty.”

  She was supposed to rely on his sense of smell? Not very likely. She drew her gun and thumbed off the safety. “We’re not going to be able to see much,” she remarked. “Let me go first. If there’s a burglar in here, I’m at least armed.”

  He closed the door behind them. “I’m not counting on seeing. Stretch your senses, Caro. You felt that thing. You might feel its leavings. And if you close your eyes for a moment, what you’ll smell is the detritus of the murders and an otherwise empty house.”

  That was almost something her grandmother would have said. Her initial response was to ignore his suggestion and assume someone might be in here. But then, tugged by some inner working she couldn’t name, she closed her eyes and reached out with those senses she so rarely used.

  Shock rippled through her as she realized with absolute certainty that the house was empty. How very odd.

  Come to think of it, Damien’s suggestion was odd, too.

  He had no way to know she was psychic, but what he said made sense anyway. If she could feel the force, she might feel what had drawn it, or wh
at it had left.

  And she could definitely feel that thing that dogged her steps. As she stepped into the house, she felt it strengthen in some way.

  She froze.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She looked at Damien, who looked almost like a ghastly effigy in the indirect glow of the flashlight beams. “It’s getting stronger, the feeling. The minute I stepped in here.”

  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.