Claimed by the Immortal tc-4

by Rachel Lee

  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.

  Tonight he’d lost control. That was enough to make him uneasy about himself.

  Silken ropes wafted into his mind again. He knew how many women preferred to pretend they were helpless so they could indulge free of qualms of conscience. As long as they were bound, they could pretend it was all his doing. Strangely enough, they all came back for more.

  But with Caro, those ropes probably wouldn’t please her at all, unless they were on him. She seemed very much the type to want to be in charge. He could do that. In fact he wouldn’t mind it at all. With this woman, he decided, he wanted her to be sure it was all her doing.

  Right now, that didn’t seem like even a remote possibility.

  Thinking about it wasn’t quieting his needs or his instincts either. The urge to pounce was building again. He was a predator and food, delightful food, sat only a few feet away. He must be mad to stay here. Sanity would dictate that he clear out of here fast and find some other food to satisfy the Hunger.

  But there was that thing, that energy or force he could sense but not identify. Much as he wanted to escape temptation, he feared leaving Caro alone with whatever it was.

  Maybe he could summon up one of the protective spells he’d learned so long ago. Make some kind of talisman for her protection. It would have been helpful, of course, if he weren’t so out of practice. Few vampires needed the powers of a magus when they had so many inherent ones.

  His skills and knowledge were now so rusty he feared to use them because he might misuse them. A lot of good he was.

  Caro broke into his thoughts by speaking. Her tone was reluctant, her words slow.

  “My grandmother,” she said, “claimed to be a witch.”

  He spoke cautiously. “Really?”

  “I don’t mean the kind you see everywhere now. I mean an honest-to-goodness witch with real powers. She said I was descended from a long line of witches and that someday I’d discover my real powers and harness them. She tried to teach me, but I didn’t listen very well. I didn’t believe her.”

  “No?” She had captured his interest, only on a different le
vel than the one already plaguing him. “But you see auras. And you sense...other things.”

  She looked glumly at him. “Believe me, I try to keep that to myself. Besides, plenty of people claim to see auras and be a bit psychic. They call themselves sensitives, not witches.”

  “No, but a witch is a very different thing. A true witch.” Now he was on ground he knew well. “I’d hesitate to even use the term witch for what you’re describing.”

  “What would you call it?”

  He hesitated, seeking the term that would induce the least negative reaction in her. “That your grandmother was a mage.”

  She thought about that for a second. “Maybe. She was certainly right about your existence. But why not witch?”

  “Only because it’s become such a polluted word with so many different meanings attached to it by many. Witch is fine if you like. Mage is an older word, going all the way back to a Persian group of adepts. They were called mogh, and later Magi.”

  She looked thoughtfully at him. “You mentioned Persia. Were you a magi?”

  “Magus. Singular. Yes.”

  She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. “Wow. What just happened to reality?”

  “Nothing. You’ve just seen a part you resisted before.” He tried to take hope from the fact that she was talking to him, no longer waving her pistol at him, and that she no longer appeared furious.

  Her eyes snapped open. They looked strangely hot and hollow. “I need time to think. You can go.”

  “I’d like to try to remember some protection spell or talisman first.”

  She shuddered a little. “I know. It’s still here. What the hell is it?”

  “I wish I could remember, because I’m sure I’ve encountered it before. But I’m concerned about leaving you with no protection.”

  “If I remember right, you’re going to have to do that at dawn anyway.”

  “Yes, but the dark forces are weaker in the daylight. And this one seems reluctant to be observed.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because,” he said simply, “it hasn’t attacked you yet. It may not have had enough strength right after the other murders. Perhaps you haven’t been alone enough. But now I feel it’s strong, possibly strong enough to attack.”