Claim the Night

by Rachel Lee

  Although occasionally he indulged in them himself.

  “Garner?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Oh, now he was sir. “You give me a headache. I haven’t had a headache since I died, but you’ve managed to give me a headache.”

  “Sorry.”

  Chloe glared at Garner. “Fish food,” she said.

  “I thought she knew.”

  Chloe folded her arms. “Blabbing confidential information just because you think someone knows makes you untrustworthy, you dweeb. And you want to work with us? Hah!”

  “I’ll find a way to make it up, I swear.”

  “Too little too late, you dummy.”

  “Enough,” Jude said. “Grinding him under your heel isn’t going to fix this.”

  “I’ll try to talk to her,” Garner said. “I think I can convince her I was making up a story.”

  Chloe sniffed. “Oh, yeah, you’re so persuasive.”

  “Well, she believed me before!”

  “When you were telling her the truth.”

  “Stop it,” Jude said again. “Just stop it. I’ll have to deal with this somehow, but I think a whole lot better when people aren’t arguing.”

  The two of them fell silent at last. He gave an impatient huff of his own and started drumming his fingers again. “How long has she been in there?”

  “Almost half an hour,” Chloe said. “I tried to talk her out.”

  “Okay. Give her a little longer. At some point she’s going to start wearing down and then I’ll go in.”

  “Maybe I should go in with you,” Chloe said.

  “At this point I don’t think she’ll trust you too much, either. You’re such an inventive liar, remember?”

  Chloe scowled at him.

  He sat motionless, waiting for time to pass, ignoring Chloe and Garner who were tossing glares at each other like ping-pong balls.

  Finally, he stood. He had to go in there, and as near as he could determine, there was only one way to handle it.

  After swiping his key card, he punched in his code and listened to the dead bolts snap back. Then he walked into his office.

  He faced a woman holding a sword in both hands. The hysteria had obviously passed to be replaced by determination and desperation. A lot easier to deal with.

  She backed away from him until she could back up no farther. He left the door open, walked to the opposite side of the room and leaned back against the credenza, folding his arms.

  “That’s a good sword,” he remarked. “I wore it on parade, even had to use it a few times at Waterloo.”

  “Stay away from me.” Her voice trembled with intensity. And she still smelled so tempting.

  “I have no intention of getting any closer. I just want to know one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Why you ran in here instead of running out of the building.”

  She froze, biting her lip, then glared at him again. “I was frightened.”

  “Well, I can understand that. The door’s open. Run any time you want. No one will stop you. Just, please, leave my sword behind. It’s one of my few keepsakes.”

  But she stood there, anyway, legs braced, still waving the sword although her arms must be getting weary. “Is it true?” she demanded.

  “Is what true?”

  “That you’re a…a…” She apparently couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  “I’m a vampire,” he said, keeping his voice calm, even pleasant. “Yes, it’s true.”

  “And you kill people?”

  “I haven’t killed anyone in a very long time who didn’t deserve it. I don’t kill just to feed.”

  A disbelieving sound escaped her.

  He shrugged. “I don’t need much, you know. A blood bank will take more from you than I will.”

  Something in her face was changing. Her mouth opened a little. Was he seeing the dawn of curiosity? He hoped so.

  “Mostly,” he said, “I buy blood. But I never dine without permission.”

  With that her jaw did drop open, and with it the sword lowered. “You’re lying,” she whispered.

  “Why would I lie? I just told you I’m a vampire. And you don’t have anything to fear from me. If you did, I’d have fed on you last night. Because let me tell you, Terri, you smell that good to me.”

  The sword tip touched the floor, but she still looked ready to bolt. More important, he could see questions starting to swirl behind her eyes. Maybe they could get through this. If not, oh, well. No one would believe she’d met a real vampire, and if she grew too insistent, she might even get herself committed. He hoped she didn’t go that route.

  “Why…” Her whisper broke.

  “Why what?”

  She shook her head, still staring at him.

  “You ought to sit,” he suggested gently. “You’ve had a shock. I’ll just stay over here and you can take that chair right by the door.”

  But she still didn’t move. She just kept staring at him, and he could almost see mental furniture being rearranged behind her eyes.

  “You’re a ruthless killer,” she finally said.

  “Only when I have to be.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? What kind of excuse is that?”

  “Would you kill to save your own life? Isn’t that what you were thinking about doing with that sword? Isn’t that what happened last night with Sam?”

  She gasped, and a spark of something flared in her eyes. “Did you kill him?”

  “Sam? No. I’ll admit I would have liked to, but no. I warned him away. I threatened him. But I didn’t even hit him.”

  A shudder passed through her. Dragging the sword, she eased her way to the chair and sat. He managed to suppress a wince at the way she treated that beautiful piece of steel.

  “I can’t believe this,” she muttered.

  “It would be nice if that were true,” he agreed. “Unfortunately, you already believe it or you wouldn’t have reacted the way you did. So here we are. You know my secret. You can leave. Or you can stay.”

  Her head shot up. “Why would I want to stay?”

  “Apparently, you didn’t want to leave. I don’t know why. Maybe you don’t, either. And maybe you’d stay because you have more questions. It’s entirely up to you.”

  Her eyes narrowed dubiously. “You’re just saying that. You can’t let me go now that I know.”

  He couldn’t quite suppress a smile, recognizing that she was still having trouble coping with the fact that he was a vampire, and equally so with the notion that he intended her no harm. People often got repetitious as they struggled to accept a truth that violated their notions of reality. “Just who is going to believe you? A hundred years ago you might have been able to assemble a mob to come get me, but these days…” He shrugged.

  “So nothing can hurt you?”

  “Plenty can.”

  “Like what?”

  He shook his head slowly and this time he did smile. “We’re not intimate enough to share those secrets.”

  She leaned forward, putting weight on the sword point and finally he couldn’t keep silent. “Don’t lean on it that way. Please. You’ll damage it.”

  At once she straightened. “Why is it so important to you?”

  “Because I carried it through an entire war. It saved me from serious trouble a time or two.”

  “How is that possible? You’re immortal!”

  “No one is immortal. I’ll even die of old age. Eventually. If I survive long enough. Unlike you, I can die more than once.”

  “This is too much.” She shook her head several times, as if she wanted to deny what she was thinking,
or what he was saying.

  He remained still and silent. His primary concern was to get her past this shock. Then she could leave, try to pick up her life, and one of these days she’d probably even convince herself she had imagined all of this because it simply wouldn’t fit in her world.

  Eventually, she spoke again. “If I struck you with this sword, what would happen?”

  “You’d hurt me. You’d cut through flesh and maybe bone, depending on how hard you swing.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I’d heal, the way I’ve been healing for nearly two hundred years, and by tomorrow night you wouldn’t even be able to tell you’d done it.”

  She lowered the sword then, laying it on the rug. The eyes she raised to him looked pained. “I can’t protect myself from you, can I?”

  “Yes, you can. You can walk out. At any time.”

  “But why?” she asked plaintively. “Why would you let me go?”

  Damn the movies, damn the myths and damn Bram Stoker. He invariably had an uphill battle against those deeply ingrained stories, on the rare occasions he acknowledged the truth of his mere existence.

  “Because—” and this time his voice held a note of steel, mainly because her scent was getting to him again, and self-control, long nurtured, was fraying a bit “—I have absolutely no desire to harm you in any way.”

  “But that’s what vampires do!”

  “Not this one.” He turned his head toward the door and barked, “Chloe. Garner. Get in here.”

  The two appeared instantly as if they had been listening.

  He glowered at them. “Are you undead?”

  “Cripes,” said Garner. “Do I look like it?”

  Chloe loosed a huge sigh. “No.”

  “Not vampires?”

  “Ugh,” said Garner. “I practically faint at the sight of blood.” He almost looked shamefaced.

  “I’m certainly not,” said Chloe.

  “Have I ever harmed either of you? Stolen your blood?”

  A chorus of nos.

  “What would you say if I asked if I could feed?”

  Garner paled. “Oh, jeez, Jude, you know I like you, man, but that? I don’t think so.”

  “Chloe?”

  “I’d say yes, but nobody’s asking.” She tossed her head.

  Jude looked at Theresa. “There you go. And now I’ve got a job to do, one that’s already been put on hold, so I’m leaving now.”

  Garner brightened. “Can I come, too?”

  “After what you pulled tonight, I’m thinking about getting you a gag and a leash. Did you find out anything today?”

  Garner shook his head. “Still only the two cases we know about. But I still have the other half of the city to do.”

  “Okay. Now, I’m going to give you some instructions and you’re going to follow them to the letter.”

  Garner nodded eagerly.

  “Stay here. Apologize to Terri for scaring her half to death. Apologize to Chloe for upsetting her. And then sit here and think about what possible earthly use you can be if all you do is give me headaches.”

  Jude crossed the room swiftly, not bothering to conceal his speed, picked up the sword and restored it to its place of honor on the wall.

  “See you by dawn,” he said, and was gone.

  Theresa didn’t move for a long time. She sat on the chair, staring blankly at the back of Jude’s office. Chloe spoke to her a few times, even offered her a cup of tea, but she didn’t answer.

  A vampire.

  Everything inside her rebelled at the thought now that the earlier terror had passed, now that she’d had that oddly calm conversation with Jude who had actually admitted, admitted, that he was a vampire.

  But there weren’t any vampires. Except… Except… He moved too fast. He had made those guys leave simply by telling them to go. His eyes changed color. And clearly both Garner and Chloe believed it was true.

  She had either stumbled into a group of lunatics or… Her mind balked again. He moved too fast. She had seen it just a little while ago, when he had taken the sword and put it back on the wall. He had moved so fast that she hadn’t seen him at all until he stopped to replace the sword. All she had felt was the breeze of his passage.

  And no matter how she tried to reconstruct it, she couldn’t see Jude where her mind had not seen him.

  “Terri? Terri.”

  At long last she blinked and looked at Chloe.

  “We need to get to the station and look at the mug shots. We promised Detective Matthews, remember?”

  Feeling stiff, and not at all like herself, Terri followed Chloe to her car, a considerably nicer model than what Jude drove.

  “You look like you’re still in shock,” Chloe remarked as they pulled away from the curb.

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Believing in vampires is hard at first.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t.”

  Chloe’s jaw dropped and she hit the brake, pulling over to the curb. Once she parked, she turned to face Terri. “Girl, you were threatening to kill the man. You were terrified. What do you mean, you don’t believe it?”

  “I don’t know what came over me,” Terri said, still feeling wooden and numb. “It was like I was possessed or something.”

  “Hey, we at Messenger Investigations don’t joke about that.” A pause, then “What do you mean? I don’t get it.”

  Terri finally looked straight at her. “I don’t get it, either. I can’t believe I believed Garner. I can’t believe I was waving a sword at Jude. I can’t believe my whole reaction. That wasn’t like me. I’m a scientist. Give me physical evidence or I don’t buy it. I must have had some kind of break.”

  Chloe opened her mouth then shut it, apparently reconsidering her words. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Most people rationalize it away. Why should you be any different?”

  “I’m not rationalizing. I wasn’t myself and that scares me a bit.”

  “Whatever it takes to make you feel better. Even if that means you think we’re all either crazy or lying.”

  Terri winced at Chloe’s tone, and fell silent again as Chloe pulled them away from the curb and drove to the police station.

  Did she think they were lying to her? No. But the only other explanations were equally unpalatable. They didn’t seem like lunatics. Maybe it was some kind of reinforced delusion among the three of them?

  But she kept coming back to the way Jude had moved too fast to see, the way his eyes changed. God, she needed an answer, a solid answer.

  At the station they spent the next three hours going through an endless stream of mug shots. Terri felt wearier by the minute, until finally her eyes began to blur with fatigue. And she didn’t recognize a single one of them.

  Back in the car, Chloe steered them back to the office.

  “Just take me home, Chloe,” she asked quietly. “I’ve had enough. I’m exhausted.”

  “No.”

  “No? Why not? Do you want me to get a cab?”

  “No. Dammit. You need to see Jude.”

  That woke Terri up. “What in the world for?”

  “You’ll see,” Chloe said darkly.

  “Just take me home!”

  “I will after you see Jude. You want answers. Well, guess what. Now I want them, too.”

  “What kind of answers do you want?”

  Chloe didn’t answer, and short of diving out of a moving vehicle to land on empty streets in the wee hours, Terri had no choice. And after what had happened to her just last night on these streets, she wasn’t inclined to be alone out here.

  Jude emerged from his inner office only
moments after she and Chloe stepped inside. The instant he saw Terri, he stiffened. “You?”

  “Her,” Chloe said. “We want some answers.”

  “Answers? To what?”

  Chloe stepped forward, dragging an unhappy Terri with her. “This one,” she said, indicating Terri with a jerk of her head, “doesn’t believe you’re a vampire.”

  “So?”

  “So why did she get so scared and come after you like that?”

  The question arrested Jude. He stood as still as a statue, staring at Terri.

  “She says she felt possessed.”

  Jude drew a sharp breath. Before Terri could even register that he moved, he stood in front of her, inhaling deeply, studying her with intent, dark eyes. She wanted to pull back, but felt frozen.

  “No,” he said after a moment. “A hint of something…but no, she’s not possessed.”

  “Okay then,” Chloe continued doggedly. “You might not care what she thinks of you, but as it happens, I do. And I care what she thinks about me, too. We are not liars and we are not crazy.”

  Jude stepped back, giving Terri room to breathe. “What do you want?”

  Terri shook her head. “Nothing. I’m sorry, this wasn’t my idea. I didn’t want to come here and accuse anyone of anything.”

  “Yes, you did,” Chloe retorted. “Get some gumption.” The she looked at Jude. “It’s too much. You should have seen her sitting there after you left. I couldn’t even get her to answer me for nearly an hour.”

  Terri was starting to feel awful. Regardless of what she felt, she hadn’t meant to insult anyone, and now here she was indirectly insulting two people who had come to her rescue. “It’s okay,” she said desperately. “It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

  “But it does,” Chloe said. “If it gives you mental peace, it matters. Even if you still want to think I’m a liar.”

  Terri’s throat tightened at that generous statement.

  “What am I missing here?” Jude asked. He looked at Terri. “What exactly is the problem?”

  “It’s my problem.”

  “Just tell me.”

  Terri drew a deep breath. She could hardly bear to look at either of them. “It’s just that…I’m a forensic pathologist. By training and inclination, I never leap to conclusions. Everything must be based on evidence. Everything. People’s lives depend on it. So I can’t imagine why I believed Garner at all. I can’t believe the way I reacted. And then I accepted it when you simply told me it was true.”