by Rachel Lee
“Identity crisis,” Chloe said. “For the love of heaven, Jude, just make the woman whole.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that? I can certainly understand why she doesn’t want to believe this.”
Chloe spoke succinctly. “Prove it.”
Chapter 4
Jude had been in better moods. The man he was after, the guy who was oppressed by demons, had moved on, and somehow he’d done it without leaving a trail. And now it was just before dawn, and Jude had returned as the vanquished rather than the victor.
And it galled him in part because except for intrusive events, such as rescuing a damsel in distress, he’d have already dealt with the problem. Now he was back at square one, and worse, it would require depending on Garner again.
After this night, he really didn’t want to depend on Garner for anything.
And now this? “Proof?” he said incredulously.
Chloe nodded.
He turned to Terri. “Why the hell don’t you just let this go? Just walk away and forget it all.” Walk away and save me from myself. But he couldn’t add that.
“I can’t. I’m a scientist. A medical doctor. And if it’s true…well, I need to know. I can’t live with unanswered questions. I just can’t.”
“What do you want me to do? Feed on you?”
She blinked. “No.”
“Oh, you want something more dramatic.” He snarled, extending his fangs.
She shook her head. My God, he thought, she was crazy. Nuts. Something in her had snapped.
“Fangs,” she said, “can be fake.”
“Oh, for the love of…” He stopped. He was tired. The approaching dawn was prickling the back of his neck like mad. He was annoyed. He was irritated beyond belief that his mission had been stymied.
He was also failing to consider that this woman might need her proof simply for her own peace of mind. Yes, she was a scientist, and her damn science said he couldn’t possibly be a vampire. He didn’t exactly care for such ambiguities himself.
He muttered an oath. Okay then. He’d give her the proof, she could go home comfortable that she knew the truth, and probably by this time tomorrow night she’d have convinced herself it was all some kind of dream, anyway.
But whatever it took, because if he didn’t get her out of here soon, he wasn’t sure his self-control would survive. He wanted to have sex with her. He wanted to taste her. He wanted too damn much. So just do whatever it took to make her leave.
“Come into my office.” He moved so swiftly he had to rely on the sound of her reluctant footsteps to be sure she followed him.
He went to the credenza and pulled out a dagger given to him long ago by a friend. It was an ornamental piece, but it was sharp. Too irritated to fuss with buttons, he ripped the front of his shirt open, baring his chest.
“Here’s your proof,” he said. With the dagger, he gashed his own chest.
She gasped and clapped a hand to her mouth. The blood hardly started to pour before the wound began to close up. She watched, her eyes growing even larger, until it closed completely, leaving only a faint scar that would be gone by nightfall.
“Now,” he said, tossing the dagger on his desk, “I am going to bed, and you are going home.”
Without another word, he turned, unlocked his bedroom, slipped inside and locked it behind him.
For a few moments he leaned against the door. Unbelievable, he thought. Unbelievable that she had wanted proof, and even more so that he had provided it.
He was losing it, he thought as he yanked his clothes off. Losing it. All because that woman’s scent was headier than cocaine to an addict.
He wanted her gone. Now.
He grabbed some blood from his fridge, downed it without tasting it, then crawled under the sheets as the prickling grew.
Every morning, he died again. And no one but he knew how much he hated it sometimes.
Theresa almost called in sick. Two nights without regular sleep had left her wasted. Her eyes felt grainy, her brain seemed to be bobbing on a sea of disconnected thoughts.
But she was still the newbie, and she didn’t want to test Dr. Crepo’s kindness. She took a quick shower and dressed in stylish casual clothes that would be replaced at work by scrubs. A glance in the mirror told her she looked as if her blood had been drained.
Oh, man, she was still having trouble with that. Jude Messenger was a vampire. An honest-to-God walking undead. What did that mean? Reality seemed to be lying in tatters around her feet, and she didn’t know how to reassemble it. Worse, scientific curiosity seemed to be rearing up, demanding answers for how such a thing could be.
Answers she was certain she would never get, a true irony considering that she had wanted proof in order to answer questions. Why hadn’t she realized that if he actually proved to her that he was a vampire that she’d only have more maddening questions? Maybe because somewhere inside she’d been sure he wouldn’t be able to prove it, leaving her with no questions at all.
Ghosts she could deal with. She had lived in a haunted house through much of her childhood, and experience had knitted that possibility into her reality. But a vampire?
And certainly not what she would have expected of one. A vampire had saved her from rape. Possibly from death. He’d extended her every courtesy. He’d even given her the proof she needed, and now when she thought about that, she almost squirmed.
She wasn’t in the habit of making people do extraordinary things to prove they were who they said they were.
Lord, did he even rate as people? As human?
There were no boxes for this one, and for the first time in her life she faced her need for pigeonholes. A way to classify everything. Boxes, labels, stereotypes.
He broke all of them wide open.
Even at work, trying to focus on a prelim, all she had to do was summon an image of Jude to feel again that pull, that attraction. As if he were a magnet and she a pile of iron filings. Her mind kept wandering down sexually imaginative corridors, wondering what it would be like to kiss him, to feel those steely arms wrapped around her. Did he even make love the way humans did? Could he?
What was that? How could she feel so drawn to something that was inhuman? Dead? Whatever.
He sure didn’t seem dead. She knew death intimately in its many forms, in fact was even now examining a body for every mark, cut, scratch or puncture, even though it was obvious this man had died by gunshot, or in the overworn joke: he’d died from lead poisoning.
Jude might be undead, but he was certainly not dead-dead. He had bled. She had seen it with her own two eyes. Not nearly what she would have expected from a human with a gashed chest, but he had bled.
So what did that mean? His heart pumped. He talked, he walked, he smiled, even laughed, and he could certainly get grumpy.
And he had saved her life, not taken it.
As she made notes on the clipboard on a steel table not far from Case Number HD-451036, aka Daniel Subo, she put her forehead in her hand, feeling as if the ground reeled beneath her feet.
“You don’t look good.”
She lifted her head and stared blankly at her boss, Dr. Crepo. “Sorry, I had trouble sleeping last night.”
He shook his head sympathetically. “It hasn’t been that long since you were attacked. Take some time, Terri.”
“I… Well, I guess I don’t want to give in.”
He sighed. “Sometimes you have to. The mind needs healing as much as the body. Time to deal with things. And I don’t want you messing something up.”
If she went home she’d just have that much more time to think. To beat her head against an impossibility that had become all too real. The thought filled her with dread. “You’re right, but…”
“You don’t want to be alone, do you?”
“Not really.”
“Can’t risk the mistakes,” he said firmly. “Finish those notes, then go out for dinner with a friend or something. Right now you look a hundred years old.”
That mention carried her directly back to Jude. Nearly two hundred years? He’d said that, hadn’t he? And stuff about fighting at Waterloo?
Another shudder ripped through her, and she tried to focus all of her attention on the document on the clipboard. Post mortems were so orderly in so many ways. And when a puzzle turned up, it was fascinating, not frightening.
Too bad life couldn’t be tied up so neatly.
She managed to get the priority stuff finished by four. Then she went home and collapsed in her bed, telling herself she would sleep through the entire night, wake up in the morning and find that everything had returned to normal.
Yeah, sure.
Instead she had crazy dreams, dreams of the ghost from her childhood, dreams of Jude leaning close and murmuring, “I want to taste you.” And when she dreamed that last one she jerked awake in a state of full arousal and sexual hunger.
That made her so mad she beat her fist on her pillow a couple of times before trying to settle down again.
She couldn’t possibly really want that…that vampire. There was something totally wrong about that. It had to be wrong.
Didn’t it?
Of course it was wrong, which explained why she climbed into a cab at two in the morning and headed for Jude’s office.
Something still needed settling so that she could get back into her life. Something. If only she knew exactly what. Compulsion seemed to be goading her, and in some corner of her mind she knew that wasn’t normal. Her only compulsion extended to accuracy in her work. This was weird, but she could no longer fight it off.
She had to ring the bell at Jude’s front door. Chloe’s voice answered promptly. “Messenger Investigations. Can I help you?”
“It’s me, Chloe.”
Silence. “I was hoping that wasn’t you I was looking at on the CCTV.”
Before Terri could answer, she heard a buzz and the door unlocked. She walked into the dark hallway and closed the door behind her. Then down the hall a door opened and Chloe peered out.
“What is it with you, Terri? Do you want to drive the guy nuts?”
“I’m the one who is going nuts.” Terri walked down the hall and entered Chloe’s office. Garner wasn’t there, and that relieved her somehow. “How could I possibly drive him nuts?”
“Did you hear what he said last night?”
“He said a lot.”
Chloe frowned and returned to her desk. She didn’t say anything for a moment, then picked up a pencil and began rapping it on the desk. “You really don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“He said you smell that good to him.”
“So?”
Chloe dropped the pencil and leaned forward. “Imagine a starving man faced with a banquet table. Jude limits himself almost entirely to canned blood. He’s the starving man. And you’re the banquet.”
Shock shook Terri, but the feeling that accompanied it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. That should scare her, but it didn’t.
“You’re fascinated,” Chloe said.
“I guess so. Did he do that to me?”
“He can’t help it. Some people feel it more than others. I felt it.” She shrugged. “Thank God it wears off. But he never told me I smelled good to him. So maybe you ought to be smart and walk out of here. Because even Jude must have limits to his self-control. I haven’t found them yet, but they must be there.”
“Why does he limit himself?”
Chloe sighed and sagged back into her chair. “You know, I never ask him questions like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it occurs to me that a guy who’s been a vampire for nearly two hundred years, and who put in a good thirty before that as a mortal, must have had plenty of time to figure things out, and reasons for them, and it’s none of my business. He shares what he chooses and I leave it at that.”
“But don’t you ever wonder?”
Chloe shook her head. “His business. I watch him fight every single day for good things. What more do I need to know?”
But something in Terri wouldn’t leave it at that. “Is he out?”
“Yes.”
“Doing what?”
“He has a case.”
“What kind of case?”
Chloe scrunched up her face. “You don’t take a brush-off very well. I can’t discuss case details with you. You don’t work here. Can’t you just go home, be grateful and leave it at that? Because believe me, you don’t want to get any deeper into this.”
“Into what?”
Chloe hesitated, obviously thinking. Choosing words. Terri wondered if she would hear another lie. But then Chloe sighed, and there was something so open in her face, that Terri knew she was about to hear the truth.
“Remember your reaction to finding out Jude is a vampire?”
“How could I forget?”
“Then multiply it. Because there are far worse things out there than even a vampire running amok.”
A chill touched Terri’s neck. “Like what?”
Chloe hesitated again then said, “Let me give you the short version. Then maybe you’ll have the good sense to go home.”
“Maybe.” Terri wasn’t making any promises.
“Demons,” Chloe said flatly. “Evil. Real, true evil. You don’t have to believe me. I don’t care if you do. But Jude hunts them and gets rid of them. Garner helps, insofar as Garner is ever capable of helping with anything, because he has a gift for sensing them. So Jude is a demon slayer, Garner is a demon hunter, and me…I’m just the jack-of-all-trades and defender of the office gate. Oh, and researcher when necessary.”
“Oh.” Terri’s mind balked again, but not as long this time. A picture was emerging in her mind and amazingly enough, she believed it. “I lived in a haunted house.”
“Meaning?” Chloe looked curious.
“I know there’s supernatural stuff. And not all of it is good.”
“Trust me, Terri, no ghost could prepare you for what Jude fights.”
“Maybe not. But I’m not going to sit here and dismiss what you’re saying.”
Chloe raised a brow. “I guess that means you’re not leaving?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t be surprised if Jude blows right by you into his bedroom. He never comes home from one of these things in a good mood.”
“I don’t care.”
“And I can’t figure you out.”
“I can’t, either,” Terri admitted.
Chloe expelled a noisy sigh. “It’s your head. Or whatever. Well, if you’re going to be sitting here for hours, you can help me.”
“Doing what?”
“Some research.”
Which was how Terri came to be reading M.E.’s reports, and since the cases apparently weren’t closed, she was quite certain she was doing something illegal, even if she herself had legal access. Her access came by virtue of her job, but Jude shouldn’t have access at all.
But Jude apparently could access quite a database of them online. Maybe he had special permission.
She didn’t want to know how he got it, or whether he really had it.
She just kept reading, growing increasingly fascinated herself. She never would have guessed how many murders there had been in this city of several million over the last year, or how many of them had oddities. Teeth marks, claw marks, ritual markings.
Of course, most of the deaths were from natu
ral causes, but eventually she had printed out eight of them as being the unusual kind of thing Chloe said she was looking for.
And just as she was handing them over to Chloe, Jude walked in.
“You?” he said, sounding astonished.
“Her,” Chloe said. “Where’s Garner?”
“I sent him home for some sleep.”
“No luck?”
“No. It’s like word went out on a grapevine or something.” He was talking to Chloe, but he was looking at Terri. She felt herself flush faintly.
Chloe took the papers from her. “She’s been helping with research.”
Jude was still staring at her from those dark eyes. “Why?”
Terri shrugged.
Something in his dark eyes hardened. Then he snatched the papers from Chloe’s hand and vanished into his office so quickly Terri never saw him move. She knew only where he had gone because she heard the dead bolts snap into place.
Chloe shrugged at her. “What did I tell you? He won’t be back out until sunset, so you might as well go home.”
But before the words were barely out of her mouth, the thunk of dead bolts alerted them, and suddenly Jude was standing there in the doorway. And he was looking at Terri.
“Come in here,” he said.
Every instinct warned her not to. But something deeper called her. Slowly she walked toward him and entered his office. Her neck prickled when she heard him close the door behind her. No bolts. He just closed it.
The next thing she knew, he was standing behind her and she could feel the whisper of his breath on her neck. Not warm breath, like a human’s, but cool. A shiver ran through her, a surprisingly pleasant one. Arousal gripped her instantly, a sweet clenching that caused her to feel breathless.
“Don’t you get it?” he whispered, and then inhaled so deeply she felt he was drawing her into his lungs.
